Mulloway on the rocks by Joe Crafts Bay
I’m a fish idiot. I see them all the time as I paddle around the Hawkesbury – grey, striped and translucent; foot long granddaddies heaving themselves out of water and hundreds of fry flicking the surface like tiny scaly synchronised swimmers . But don’t ask me what sort of fish they are, where they hang out, or anything else about them really. I don’t eat them, or hunt them, or keep them as pets so somehow my brain spontaneously ejects all information about them.
But it was hard to ignore a fish as big as this, splayed out on the riverside rocks near Joe Crafts Bay. Especially given the spectacle of the local white-bellied sea eagles trying very hard, but ultimately not hard enough, to carry this giant juicy snack to a convenient spot in the treetops.
White-bellied sea eagle trying to fly off with a very big fish
This fish was too much even for the second largest raptor in Australia to carry off to eat in peace. Male sea eagles can weigh as much as 3.7 kilos, females half a kilo heavier, with wingspans of two metres or more. But this great big fish, I have been assured by expert fishermen, was a mulloway, a giant of coastal waters that can weigh 60 kilos and grow to two metres long. This one was a tiddler, maybe only two or three feet in length (I guess. But then I’m the kind of person who has to try two or three lids before successfully covering a saucepan, so I could be wrong). But the sea eagle still couldn’t wrangle it safely into the trees. Trust me, it tried. Take off was aborted several times. And then a boat with some noisy humans came and anchored inconveniently close to this enormous and tempting snack.
The sea eagle flew off, disgruntled. But it didn’t fly far. Or more to the point, they didn’t fly far: in fact, there were three sea eagles keeping an eye on this feed – a pair and a youngster I labelled “Itchy”.
The boat moved along, after a while – obviously no other mulloway were coming up from the deep that morning. Before the sea eagles got wise, someone else decided on seafood for breakfast.
The raven and its mate tried to keep the great big fish to themselves, but in the end, might is right on the river it seems.
Pair of Australian ravens chasing a sea eagle
I’m not sure if Itchy got a look-in, but the sea eagle pair both got a decent meal, taking it in turns to run the gauntlet of the river-traffic (including a nosy kayaker with a zoom lens). One bird ate warily while the other stood guard in a nearby tree.
White-bellied sea eagle enjoying mulloway for breakfast
They’d hardly made a tiny dent in the corpse of the mulloway by the time a second boat came along to break up the party. I’m sure another meal happened later in the day, but I try to be out of the water by the time the roar of powerboat engines drowns out the whizz and plop of yak-fishermen casting. One less bothersome boatie for the sea-eagles to worry about.
Boat off Joe Crafts Bay
I’m sure this mulloway has a story. If the white-bellied sea-eagles couldn’t take off with this whopper fish, it’s hard to imagine how they could have caught it and lifted it from the water. How did this beauty end up, forlorn, on the river-side rocks? Surely no human fisherfolk would leave such a prize behind? My fishing friends tell me that the great mulloway, jewels on its back glimmering in the water, is a fish to dream about and pursue – after dark, in the deepest holes in the river. And good eating too.
Stocks of these big fish crashed by the early noughties, burdened by commercial and amateur fishing. The minimum catch size for recreational fishing went up from 45 to 70 cm long, so maybe this one was caught but found short of the mark (like most of the mulloway hooked by recreational fisherfolk). Released, perhaps, already wounded, destined to wash up on shore, breakfast for the ravens and the eagles.
Thanks to Denis Crowdy and Peter Doyle for fish identification and mulloway tales.
Other posts about the raptors in our beautiful backyard
Sibling rivalry as the young collared sparrowhawks in our neighbour’s pine tree learn to hunt…
The world’s fastest bird catches a meal