Horrific figures released by the EPA has confirmed what we all feared – in just two months, ten million kilograms of industrial farmed salmon have died from an insidious disease.
At least thirteen percent of the entire annual statewide production of the Atlantic salmon industry has suffocated and starved in sea cages in our once-pristine bays and estuaries, in just two months. That figure doesn’t include the fatty and fleshy remains of fish that washed up on our shores, ruining the summer for southern Tasmanians.
Ten million kilograms of dead fish equates to around 2.5 million mature Atlantic salmon that have suffered a cruel death at the hands of Huon Aquaculture and Tassal – an animal welfare catastrophe.
However, the EPA can’t or won’t provide an accurate breakdown of which leases these deaths occurred within, or even which region of Tasmania they occurred in.
The unchecked outbreak of disease throughout Tasmania is a biosecurity disaster of unprecedented scale in modern history. The Rockliff government has failed to explain how the disease has become endemic throughout Tasmanian waters – the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the biosecurity plan has been a failure.
Weak biosecurity conditions and self-regulation by the multinational salmon companies has created this obscene situation and yet the Rockliff government continues to back in an industry gone rogue that is destroying our marine environment.
The EPA has also published results from sampling to test antibiotic levels in wild fish following the dumping of oxytetracycline on the Zuidpool lease in the D’Entrecasteaux Channel, but the sampling was done over two kilometres from the lease and no testing of wild fish within the lease has been made public.
Tasmanian anglers can have no faith in these results. It is clear the EPA is hindered from doing robust and independent monitoring and desperately needs reform and additional resourcing.
The Greens once again call for this reform of the EPA, and demand the industrial salmon industry be reigned in and made accountable through a comprehensive parliamentary inquiry into this disaster.
