Why is it a challenge to be a migratory fish?
A short animated film about fishes by EUSDR PA4 has been completed
The water quality priority area of the EUSDR highlights the importance of the link between water quality related pressures and its impact on the aquatic ecosystems. EUSDR publications dealing with migratory fishes have been published in 2021 and 2022 aiming at to promote measures to enable fish migration in the Danube river basin and also call the attention to a specific pressure, to the ship noise and water waves. EUSDR PA4 highlights the importance of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM), and in line with that the interactions between water quality related pressures and it impact on the aquatic fauna. To investigate on the pressures on ship noise and water waves a measurement was held on the Hungarian section of the Danube, which pointed out that the life of migrating fish is greatly influenced by hydromorphological and other acoustic effects (noise) in the water, which in the long term can lead to the impoverishment of the fish fauna in a given area.
The background study on ship noise and waves for e-learning material and the background brochure on fishes is the basis of the short animation, which was developed in the frame of the DTP-PAC2-PA4 (PA04 – water quality) projects. The aim is to briefly demonstrate that, in addition to the already known negative human effects (e.g. oil pollution, plastic pollution, nutrient pollution, pollution from hazardous substances, negative effects caused by hydromorphological interventions – hydropower plants block the waterways), the increasing ship traffic caused by the increasingly developed waterways and the noise and wave pollution caused by this can also cause serious damage to fish populations.
The animation can be downloaded from here in English and in Hungarian.
The brochure on “Promoting measures to enable fish migration in the Danube River Basin” can be found here.
The background e-learning study on “Ship noise and water wave measurement on the Hungarian section of the Danube” promoting the importance of IWRM can be found here.
