Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin – Leader of the Greens) – Honourable Speaker, I thank Mr George for bringing this on as a matter of public importance. It’s a critical time. Since the commencement of salmon farming in Long Bay it has been burdened by the pollution from salmon pens and the expansion that has occurred and the damage that has been done has been laid out. There’s a wealth of evidence that the EPA will be looking at now for the licence. It’s a scientific fact that salmon farming has caused water pollution in Long Bay, persistent new algal blooms and damage to the reef and the seagrass habitats in the low and very sheltered and poorly flushed areas of Long Bay. It’s a highly biodiverse area and it was always the wrong place for a salmon farm.
It’s so narrow and poorly flushed and shallow that the nutrients that come in there are not able to be flushed out. We’re looking at a bay that is now crammed full of salmon pens. For people who are interested in looking, there is information online. Pens drown out that bay. What was once a beautiful, pristine bay now has algal blooms that foul the waters and smother the unique seagrass beds that were once plentiful across the floor of the bay.
It leads to eutrophication, in other words, the death of the seagrass and other marine life at the bottom of the bay. Those algal blooms affect recreational and commercial fishers, swimmers, divers and tourists who come to the Tasman Peninsula and the Port Arthur region and Long Bay to explore the incredibly beautiful coastlines, and unfortunately when they look under the water they find an ecosystem that’s almost dead. It is shocking. It’s caused so much heartbreak for locals. I want to call out, thank and acknowledge the hard work of locals on the Tasman Peninsula, Trish Bailey in particular, but so many others from the Tasman Peninsula who have been working for years with TAMP, the Tasmanian Alliance for Marine Protection, and other groups of locals trying to fight the scourge of salmon farming in these inshore areas.
Disease outbreaks are frequent in Long Bay now and mass mortalities have occurred, the biggest of which, in 2021, was an appalling experience. Recreational and commercial fishers raised concerns with Tassal about that at the time and about the quantity of antibiotics that were being dumped into that shallow and poorly flushed area. I am sure that Tassal is lining up to dump florfenicol in Long Bay, and if they haven’t already done it we would expect that would be their instinctive response, instead of doing what they should be doing, which is destocking pens, getting rid of diseased fish, making them fallow, and in fact, getting them out of Long Bay.
They should never have gone into Long Bay. It is a travesty on what is beautiful and precious about Tasmania. The fact that they’re in Long Bay at all just says everything about how out of control this industry is. That lease was granted 10 years ago to a Tasmanian salmon farm before it went multinational, and once it went multinational it turned into a global behemoth that cares nowt for these beautiful places. They are just there as grist for the mill for profit-making.
We have an opportunity now. I know that the EPA has a wealth of evidence before it. There’s the Tasmanian Independent Science Council and you talked about the IMAS spatial planning tools that were used to assess Long Bay. It’s clear that it was never and should not be considered suitable for finfish aquaculture because of a range of environmental, socioeconomic and physical criteria. The point is that when this minister says the EPA is beyond the reach of politics and is entirely independent, that’s a load of hogwash, because the reality is that this minister and this government has a death grip on the EPA and it’s called a statement of expectations. It still sits over the top of the company and that is exactly what is wrong with the EPA.
