On the 14th of October 2005, teachers and students from Blue Gums School, Bayne from ACTEW AGL and Waltraud and Jacinta from FoMM conducted a water bug survey in the top dam. Before setting off for the dam we talked about what should and shouldn’t be in our waterways. Blue Gum students identified many things including sports balls, rubbish and garden chemicals that shouldn’t be but often are present in our waterways. We then walked up to the dam to investigate what bugs live in there now. It will be interesting to see if there is any change in the types and number of bugs living in the dams as a result of Project Dragonfly.
Bayne collected water from the dam and placed it into 10 shallow plastic trays. In small groups we gathered around each tray to identify and count the different kinds of bugs. To have a closer look we used pipettes to move some of the smaller bugs from the big tray into ice cube trays being very careful not to squash them. We identified seven different kinds of bugs; they are listed in the table below.
The day was very informative and enjoyable for all involved. The Blue Gum students were very enthusiastic and we look forward to catching more bugs together in the future.
| WATER BUG TYPE |
NUMBER OF BUGS |
| Very sensitive to most pollutants |
|
| Mayfly nymph |
1 |
| Caddisfly lava |
7 |
| Moderately tolerant of most pollutants |
|
| Beetle or beetle lava |
4 |
| Yabby or shrimp |
20+ |
| Fly lava or midge |
1 |
| Very tolerant of most pollutants |
|
| True bug or true bug nymph |
5 |
Leech |
1 |
