A flurry of applications has resulted in a firm focus on Moore’s Creek, Rockhampton for this year’s Fitzroy Partnership for River Health Care for Creeks bursaries.

Fitzroy Partnership for River Health Executive Officer Nathan Johnston said they were delighted with the interest in the 2014 bursaries and decided extend the bursaries to support three applications focusing on monitoring the ecosystem health of Moores Creek.

“The concentrated interest in Moores Creek offered a unique opportunity to establish a grassroots collective that will engage the local community in better understanding the health of their local waterway,” Mr Johnston said.

The Lighthouse Christian College, Central Queensland Christian College and North Rockhampton Guides will now receive waterway monitoring kits including a salinity meter, turbidity tube, pH test strips, waterbug sampling equipment, a local weed guide and a fish trap and guide, as well as field sheets to record their data and access to a new web-page to record their ongoing community data.

“We wanted to embrace the enthusiasm of fake watches these three groups and promote local citizen science by providing the equipment, materials and knowledge to collect vital information about their local waterway,” Mr Johnston said.

“Taking this one step further, we also wanted the groups to be able to share their findings with the world so we will enable this by preparing a webpage where community data can be loaded and visualized publicly.

“This community monitoring will build on our recent Great Aussie Creek Crawl for National Science Week, kindly supported by the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, which found that Moores Creek was in good condition, scoring a high “C” grade overall with water quality, fish and water bugs scoring well, while weeds and riparian vegetation were found to be fair.

“We look forward to working with these groups to provide a more complete picture of the health of Moores Creek, which is an important recreation zone and waterway for Rockhampton, as well as a critical migration zone for a range of fish species including barramundi and sea mullet,” he said.