| Porthole 17 Jan 22

PASSENGERS aboard Murray River cruises may in the future be able to spot some truly unique aquatic wildlife – robotic fish created to handle one of Australia’s most invasive species.

A paper published in the IScience journal last month detailed the development of the bionic fish by an international team of engineers and biologists from Australia, the USA and Italy.

The decoy is an automated version of the largemouth bass – the natural predator of mosquitofish which the researchers at the University of Western Australia described as “one of the most problematic animals on the planet”.

Also known as Gambusia, the fish were introduced about a century ago to combat mosquitos, but has thrived so much that it’s become a major threat to native species.

The study details how the robotic bass was able to alter the behaviour, physiology and fertility of the invasive fish, ultimately “scaring it to death”.

“We made their worst nightmare become real – a robot that scares the mosquitofish but not the other animals around it,” said report author Giovanni Polverino, adding that the novel approach was an alternative to “killing them one by one”.