Tasmania’s peak environment group turns to Tassal investors as government fails to act

Following revelations by Huon Aquaculture and leading scientists of an impending catastrophe in salmon farms in Macquarie Harbour on Four Corners last night, Environment Tasmania has reiterated calls for a moratorium on any further lease expansion approvals in the industry.

“Last night Tassal’s second largest substantial shareholder, Tribeca Investment Partners, divested itself of AUD 3,785,714.46 in Tassal shares.

Environment Tasmania will be meeting with Tassal’s remaining substantial shareholders in the coming weeks to brief them on the damage Tassal’s farming practices are doing to Tasmania’s environment and the risks this poses to the company’s social licence to operate and jobs and investment in the company,” said Laura Kelly, Strategy Director at Environment Tasmania.

Last night’s Four Corners episode quoted research by Melbourne University’s Associate Professor Tim Dempster, which was funded by the Fisheries Research Development Corporation. The scientific research showed that conditions in Macquarie Harbour last summer consistently breached the maximum conditions which salmon can withstand without experiencing sub-lethal stresses and mortalities.

“This research shows oxygen levels in Macquarie harbour got down to 26% last summer – a level at which you start to see signs of stress, like anorexia and skin lesions, and mortalities. The salmon were crushing into small parts of the pens, because they were the only places where they could breath – effectively increasing stocking density some 3-4 times more than the legal limit.”

“This morning Tasmanian Fisheries Minister, Jeremy Rockliff, questioned the reliability of scientific research in Macquarie Harbour and claimed that his government has tightened regulation of the salmon industry. The truth of the matter is that the research he is questioning was funded by the Australian Government, and Minister Rockliff recently acted to weaken regulations in Macquarie Harbour. In April 2016, the Minister removed licence conditions on pollution indicators – at exactly the same time as he approved a 1500 tonne increase in salmon production in the Harbour,” Ms Kelly said.

“Environment Tasmania is calling on Minister Rockliff to conduct an open review of Tasmania’s twenty year-old salmon industry regulations, and to make the 6000 submission which have been made to the review of Tassal’s controversial East Coast expansion publicly available,” Ms Kelly said.
Laura Kelly, Strategy Director at Environment Tasmania