Tasmanian salmon mortalities rose in 2025 amid higher water temperatures
At least four million Atlantic salmon died prematurely at Tasmanian fish farms in 2025, according to data published by the state’s Environmental Protection Authority.
The data show that around 500,000 fish died during November and December, coinciding with rising ocean temperatures. Total losses for the year amounted to 20,133 tonnes of salmon that died before processing, with more than 2,500 tonnes recorded in the final three months of the year.
In December alone, average daily mortalities exceeded 40 tonnes, nearly three times the monthly average recorded between July and October, the EPA figures show.
Scientific studies have found that Atlantic salmon performance deteriorates as water temperatures approach 18°C, with higher temperatures associated with lower oxygen availability, reduced appetite, increased disease susceptibility, and organ stress.
Tasmania’s marine salmon producers harvested close to 68,000 tonnes of gutted salmon for human consumption during the 2024–25 financial year.
This shows the futility of King Salmon being in Marlborough Sounds. However Ministry of Fisheries and Marlborough District Council have bent over backwards to prop up King Salmon’s continuing existence there, despite heavy fish losses.
This article reminds us that farmed salmon, when combined with climate change, threatens Atlantic salmon with extinction in our lifetime. This is industrial food, and it’s inferior in taste to wild salmon. Couple that with rubber genetics, which pollute their gene pool, and political corruption from the salmon industry, and you’ve got massive environmental and biodiversity loss. Boycott farmed salmon.
Locals reported rubbish mainly dead salmon from King Salmon farms in the Marlborough Sounds, being trucked to the Blenheim rubbish dump. So I enquired to the Marlborough District Council as to the amounts trucked and deposited.
The council refused to give me the figures on the grounds of “commercial sensitivity.”
Yes MDC was seemingly protecting King Salmon by not disclosing figures.
So I went to the Ombudsman who after investigation, told MDC to release the figures to me.
I received MONTHLY figures. The amount per month were staggering, ranging from 20 tonnes – yes tonnes – to over 100 tonnes.
I agree with Tony’s concern about the once fabulous Sounds of Marlborough (my birth place). The pristine Sounds were never suitable for forestry of salmon farming. A lot of money was wasted setting up these daft enterprises. The Sounds always warmed up over summer well before climate change became an issue. Now we have hill sides scarred and sea beds destroyed. The issues resulting from dead salmon alone would fill a book; not the least being waste disposal. Wake up investors.
That won’t stop the politicians; they will still try to push trout farming in our rivers and lakes, even if the oceans are warming. They always dangle the prospect of endless riches before a gullible populace.
A couple of months back I wrote to David Seymour objecting to trout farming (it had been suggested by the Ministry of Regulation: https://www.regulation.govt.nz/our-work/what-weve-done/no-more-trout-pout/).
I have had no reply.
Grant
Thank you for alerting the NZFFA of yet another (repeated) attempt to allow trout farming.
I have been contacted recently by an independent journalist from
Australian asking “how can the government work towards allowing trout farming when its inadequate environmental protections on Canterbury – The Nitrate Emergency means wild trout can not longer breed in Canterbury’s lowland rivers and streams?”
This was not a trans Tasman poke at the Kiwis, this guy was serious.
He wants a chat when he comes to NZ in February.
Chris Bishop and David Seymour appear to have become a mini-me Nero(s),
(the Roman emperor at the fall of Rome), issuing National Policy Statements to allow the rape of our Natural Environment Environment as it collapses around us.
The idea of issuing NPSs in lieu of consents to manage diffuse pollution from intensive farming came from the farming lobby not scientists “Deregulation” is about freeing farmers from the “user pays” principle with regard to nutrients.
Grant
Thank you for alerting the NZFFA of yet another (repeated) attempt to allow trout farming.
I have been contacted recently by an independent journalist from
Australian asking “how can the NZ government work towards allowing trout farming when its inadequate environmental protections in Canterbury – The Nitrate Emergency means wild trout can not longer breed in Canterbury’s lowland rivers and streams?”
This was not a trans Tasman poke at Kiwis, this guy was serious.
He wants a chat when he comes to NZ in February.
Chris Bishop and David Seymour appear to have become a mini-me Nero(s),
(the Roman emperor at the fall of Rome), issuing National Policy Statements to allow the rape of our Natural Environment Environment as it collapses around us.
The idea of issuing NPSs in lieu of consents to manage diffuse pollution from intensive farming came from the farming lobby not scientists. “Deregulation” is about freeing farmers from the “user pays” principle with regard to nutrients.
(Apologies for the lack of proof reading)
Thanks for contacting David Seymour, Grant. Our fishing and hunting generate $1 billion a year in economic activity, yet he leads the charge in undermining the habitat necessary for healthy hunting and fishing habitat. Rather than promote a truly free-market economy, Seymour and Chris Bishop regularly pick winners and losers–comparable to Putin’s Soviet kleptocracy. Trout farming, like intensive dairy farming, is incompatible with freshwater habitat and our wild trout, whose genetic strains remain among the purest on earth, the late great salmonid expert Dr Bob Benhke has written. Because our trout haven’t had their wild genes diluted by rubber trout genetics, they’re more than simply a national resource but have international significance in a world in which wild salmonid populations are declining and climate change forecasts predict the disappearance of 40 percent of coldwater habitat in coming decades.