Salmon Tasmania, the industry’s peak body, has apologised for the impact of “unprecedented mortality event” involving mass salmon deaths and fatty globules on Tasmanian beaches and promised to review the ”evolving event” and take remedial action, according to ABC News’ state political reporter Lucy McDonald..
More than 5.500 tonnes of dead fish – about 6 percent of the industry’s annual production – were dumped at waste facilities in Tasmania last month, says the Environmental Protection Authority.
Salmon Tasmania CEO Luke Martin said the industry was dealing with “an unprecedented, first of its size, seasonal mortality event in the south east.”
He apologised for the impact and said it had been devastating for both farmers and scientists.
“Salmon are not immune to the vagaries of the natural environment, he added.
Tasmania’s chief veterinary officer had said the salmon deaths were “largely due to an endemic bacterium,” Piscirickettsia salmonis (P. salmonis)The dead fish come from pens in south eastern Tasmania owned by Huon Aquaculture and Tassal.’Luke Martin put the cause down toi summer conditions and a new strain of microbe.
Federal Independent MP Andrew Wilkie said he was appalled at “EPA’s inability” to get to grips with the situation.
He said he didn’t want the industry shut down but the industry was not on a sustainable footing when there was mass die-offs, unprecedented use of antibiotics and “terrible secrecy” around the industry as to exactly what was happening. He accused the state government – and state opposition – of running a “protection racket” for aquaculture and said the EPA was under-resourced and had limited legislative powers.
Andrew Wilkie said the industry should be put on a sustainable footing by lowering the concentration of pens, moving them to shallower water and the eventual closure of onshore farming.
A recently published book “The New Fish”
published by Patagonia has exposed the realities of
salmon farming
Fish farming is no substitute for proper, sustainable management of the wild fisheries. Fish farming has a history of fragile economics and disease outbreaks. Environmentally it is “yuk!”
Producing a kilogram of farmed salmon may require 4 or 5 kilograms of wild fish, which isn’t a sustainable approach to feeding the world’s growing population.
Farmed fish eat multiple times more weight in wild fish caught from the ocean.
At the end of the day, it therefore means a scarcity of fish in the ocean. And of course farming fish results in environmental disasters like has happened in Tasmania.
And this is what Shane Jones is hoping is future for NZs seafood exports? It’s both a risk to the environment AND NZs clean green reputation.
How long before that happens here if hasn’t already?
I don’t know who in their right mind would eat farmed salmon these days. Not a morsel has passed my lips since I viewed a You Tube video on the world’s most toxic food stuff, Norwegian farmed salmon, a few years ago.
“Tasmania’s chief veterinary officer had said the salmon deaths were “largely due to an endemic bacterium,” Piscirickettsia salmonis (P. salmonis.)”
This is interesting as the Australian government Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment had stated that P. salmonis was “an exotic disease -not recorded in Australia” in 2020.
Both New Zealand and Australia have identified other Rickettsia like organisms (RLOs) associated with mass moralities in farmed salmon. In the NZ case primarily at NZKS sites in the Marlborough Sounds where previously no RLOs had been identified.
The NZ authorities named this infectious agent the New Zealand RLO, (NZ-RLO).
This cynic believes this was a ploy to conceal an exotic disease incursion.
An exotic disease incursion would require notifying client countries and require an exotic disease response aimed at eradicating the infectious agent. Both of these responses would be costly and given the marine setting, would be unlikely to be successful.
In 2022 MPI developed a risk management strategy to manage RLOs.
As fish meal is imported from Peru and Chile, where P. salmonis has wrecked havoc, to Tasmanian feed mills who in turn supply NZ salmon farms, it is surprising MPI has not put greater effort into investigating this obvious source of disease.
NZKS now vaccinates against NZ-RLO as a strategy to manage the disease.
I suspect political forces are compromising this story as successive governments have been attracted to the proposition that aquaculture will be the next new primary industry to supercharge NZ’s economy.
This view is naive.
‘…it was a ploy to conceal exotic incursion’. I absolutely agree.