Townsville school's Nemo nursery helping to protect wild clownfish

A Townsville school has become the first primary school in the world to sustainably breed baby Nemos to try and protect wild clownfish.

Belgian Gardens State School has been successfully breeding baby clownfish through the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority's Reef Guardian Program for six years.

The primary school has successfully have raised hundreds of clownfish and has distributed them to local aquariums to protect the species from being taken from their natural habitats such as the Great Barrier Reef.

Clownfish populations on coral reefs have been declining since Finding Nemo was released. Photo: iStock

Marine researchers found a 30 per cent increase in clownfish sales around the world when Disney's Finding Nemo was released in 2003 and there are fears there could be another spike in demand with the release of the movie's sequal, Finding Dory, this week.

Half of all clownfish sold in aquariums are taken from the wild.

Belgian Gardens State School science teacher Brett Murphy, who heads the school's breeding program, said it was a great opportunity for the children to get real life learning while at school.

Xavier Hood watches over the baby clownfish he and his fellow classmates help breed. Photo: Roslyn Budd

"We are very proud to be the only primary school in the world to breed Clownfish," he said.

"There are tanks here, they can see the interactions happening, we use it for science and design tech (sic) lessons, it is open every day for kids from our school and others."

The idea came to Mr Murphy in 2010 after a pair of clownfish at the school began laying eggs.

Students from Belgian Gardens State School at their Reef BG Aquarium. Photo: Roslyn Budd

"Across the pair of clownfish we had, they just kept laying all the time, the kids kept saying what can we do because they would see eggs hatch and get eaten in the tank," he said.

"We explored if it was possible to breed them, it is hard work but good science."

Mr Murphy went to James Cook University to learn how to breed the fish in a captive environment and set up a system that has seen more than 200 clownfish successfully raised to date.

Anneke Everson and Ruby Dowling from Belgian Gardens State School, Townsville. Photo: Roslyn Budd

The school breeding room, nicknamed Reef BG, has 20 tanks filled with clownfish, seahorses, coral, jellyfish and a turtle named Myrtle.

Mr Murphy said each successfully-raised captive clownfish was given to the local aquarium for it to sell on to the public.

The school is then given store credit to purchase food and equipment for their tanks.

"It is just a small portion, but every one clownfish we sell is one less they need to take from the reef," Mr Murphy said.

"In Australia there is not a big clownfish breeding program.

"It would be awesome one day if they don't need to take clownfish from the reef, that they could all just be bred."

While the program was successful, Mr Murphy said it was not without its problems.

"There are a lot of easy ways to kill them, the first batch, one of our best batches ironically, was about a month old, we were releasing them into a bigger tank, they were in bucket and pouring them into the tank," he said.

"It swirled in once, looped the babies and three quarters of them went into shock and died straight away, they fell dead to the bottom and we were just shocked and disappointed, we couldn't believe it.

"The kids are fine, with fish they are aware of the idea that we have fish die from time to time and you just give it as a science lesson to explain how fragile things are and how fragile the reef is."

The school children rostered for feeding and cleaning duties at Reef BG are nicknamed BG rangers and once a week they go into a draw to be able to walk Myrtle.

"We have a turtle named Myrtle and every week the kids take the turtle for a walk each week to get him out in the sun, we make a big circle and sit with the turtle," Mr Murphy said.

"He needs to go out in the sun for his shell, they go into a draw to walk the turtle."

The school have also begun breeding rare black and white clownfish and use the "fish poo" from Reef BG to compost their fruit and vegetable garden.

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