Don't take any seaweed off the beach between now and the end of March, or you might unintentionally kill thousands of herring waiting to hatch. That's the friendly message of warning from the local Streamkeepers group.
According to Dianne Sanford, herring on the Sunshine Coast spawn from mid-February until the end of March, gluing their eggs onto seaweed and then leaving them to hatch on their own.
"They're tough little suckers, these eggs. Even though the eggs are attached to seaweeds that break off and wash up, as long as they're getting moist, they can even be exposed for a while between tides and they will survive," Sanford said. "So if we go and we pick seaweed and take it away, we're destroying thousands of potential babies."
You can do your part by not collecting seaweed from now until the end of March, in order to give the herring babies a fighting chance at survival.
