A bid to breed an 'ambassador' population of the endangered spotted handfish in captivity in Melbourne has been so successful, there are hopes the program may grow enough to return some to the wild.
"But we do have a population back of house as well that are currently being reared as an ambassador population that we hope to house at a sister site either at Sydney or Mooloolaba."
From there, the aquarium team worked to replicate the handfish's environmental conditions in the wild, including changes in temperature, food availability and lighting and salinity levels — to get conditions just right for breeding."We're quite confident that we should be able to breed them moving forward.
However, he said every step taken to bring awareness to the species along the way — and breeding successes like these — played a vital role."It's a really important part," he said. "It's very hard to raise public awareness.
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