Inland capture fisheries in Indonesia deliver food security and income for rural households and also serve as a valuable source of protein and important micro-nutrients. Nevertheless, inland fisheries are becoming increasingly threatened by riverine development projects, such as dams and weirs as means for rapid development in response to increasing population and demand for agriculture products and hydropower generation. That potentially decrease capture fisheries productivity through any changes in fish migration, reproduction and biodiversity of aquatic populations due to the existence of river barrier.
The Indonesian government is recognized the importance of fishways as appropriate mitigation measures of alleviate possible impacts from such migration barrier to increase the sustainability of fishery resources. However due to the limited information, the first fishway in Perjaya Dam was built based on solutions developed in North America and was not suitable in the local context. The Perjaya Dam blocked the Komering River, the river that has a high biodiversity, recorded at least 55 species of fish found in the system, comprised 21 genus from 5 families (Balitoridae, Cobitidae, Cyprinidae, Schilbeidae and Sisoridae).
The research aims to investigate effectiveness of existing migration facilities in maintaining riverine productivity. A field-based adaptive-management approach has been applied for this type of work where as sampling and collecting representative samples of the fish community were conducted in the upper, down stream and within the fishway of Perjaya Dam, Komering River.