Primary food resources for key waterbirds and benthic fish in the Coorong

Estuaries are highly productive and dynamic systems that are used by a range of biota, including fish and waterbirds. The services they provide are broad. Estuaries may support all life stages of resident species; for non-resident species, they may provide a refuge area from predation and adverse environmental conditions, breeding habitats, nursery areas for development of early-life stages, staging or stopover sites along migration routes, and foraging habitat (Elliot et al. 2007, Wołowicz et al. 2007, Tian et al. 2008, Potter et al. 2015). In the case of migratory shorebirds, their abundance in estuaries may reflect complex interactions between salinity changes and estuarine food webs including their prey species (Canham et al. 2021).

In southern Australia, the Coorong estuary and Lakes Alexandrina and Albert are internationally recognised under the Ramsar Convention as a wetland of high ecological and cultural significance (Phillips and Muller 2006). This site has a range of wetland types that provide ecological services to a diverse community of biota that includes nationally and internationally threatened, endemic and wetland-dependent species.