Mary River cod
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| Maccullochella peelii mariensis Rowland, 1993 |
Mary River Cod (Maccullochella peelii mariensis) are a Maccullochella cod found in the coastal Mary River system of southern Queensland, Australia. Mary River Cod are significant because they are the most northerly of the four Maccullochella cods found or once found in coastal river systems of eastern Australia.
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[edit] Description
A large fish, reliably recorded to at least 27 kilograms in the early years of European settlement. Very similar in appearance to Murray Cod and Eastern Freshwater Cod; a striking looking, deep-bodied fish with dark green or black mottling. Curiously, Mary River Cod have a slightly shorter, thicker caudal peduncle (tail wrist) than the other cod species.
[edit] Conservation
Mary River Cod are subject to the usual story of woe. Incredibly abundant at the time of first European settlement, they were grossly overfished with nets, lines and explosives by the early European settlers and, as with other Maccullochella cods, were even used as pig feed. (Such gross disrespect and wastefulness with such beautiful fish is hard to fathom.) This overfishing, combined with the massive siltation of their habitats by land-clearing, destruction of riparian vegetation and cattle trampling river banks, and dams and weirs blocking migration, rapidly caught up with this large, slow-growing, long-lived Maccullochella cod species, as it has with all its close relatives.
Mary River Cod are now critically endangered. A survey in the mid to late 1990s estimated only around 600 wild fish existed. Those fish were present in a number of fragmented, isolated populations, some already below minimum viability and in terminal decline.
Mary River Cod continue to be the victim of political games; serious protection or restoration of their habitat by the Queensland Government has not occurred and the only captive breeding of them has been done by private individuals without Government funding.
[edit] Classification
Taxonomically, Mary River Cod are designated as "Maccullochella peelii mariensis", which denotes that they are a sub-species of the Murray Cod, Maccullochella peelii peelii. This was done on the basis of examination of muscle proteins and enzymes. (This designation of Mary River Cod as a sub-species of Murray Cod was actually the cause of the Murray Cod's recent name change from Maccullochella peeli to Maccullochella peelii peelii.)
Two recent genetic research projects using mitochondrial DNA, which offers far more resolution, indicate that Mary River Cod were in fact more closely related to Eastern Freshwater Cod, Maccullochella ikei, of the Clarence River (the most southerly of the four coastal cod populations) than they are to Murray Cod. If this finding is correct then it suggests that Mary River Cod should be renamed Maccullochella ikei mariensis to denote that they are a sub-species of Eastern Freshwater Cod. If this finding is correct it also, logically, suggests that Murray Cod only crossed the Great Dividing Range via a natural river capture event once, into the Clarence River system, and that the four coastal cod populations (Clarence, Richmond, Brisbane and Mary Rivers) were all sub-species of Eastern Freshwater Cod of the Clarence River. Dramatic drops in sea-level during glacial periods (aka "Ice Ages") and/or "lateral" river capture events could easily have seen these four coastal river systems linked at times and Eastern Freshwater Cod gaining access to each one.
[edit] References
Rowland, S.J. 1993. Maccullochella ikei, an endangered species of freshwater cod (Pisces: Percichthyidae) from the Clarence River System, NSW, and M.peelii mariensis, a new subspecies from the Mary River System, QLD. Records of the Australian Museum 45: 121-145.
[edit] Note
This page has been composed by the primary author of the Native Fish Australia web page on Maccullochella cods. No copyright has therefore been infringed.
