As chunks of stinking salmon pieces are found washing up on the shores of the Huon Valley beaches as early as Sunday 16 February 2025, the Huon Valley Council was silent on the unfolding crisis.

Mayor Sally Doyle, as the only official spokesperson for Council, was missing in action and nothing was being reported from Council about this rapidly growing crisis until a HVC Facebook post nine days later.

Posted on the HVC Facebook page, 25 February 2025 Council wrote:

“Council acknowledges the concerns of the community regarding the substance that recently washed up on Verona Sands beach.”

“The Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) responded to the pollution incident at Verona Sands beach on Monday, 17 February, by taking samples to identify the substance. The substance was cleaned up by Huon Aquaculture.”

Nothing further is to be heard from Council until Mayor Sally Doyle decides to post a publicly accessible picture on her own Facebook page at 8.50am on Saturday morning 8 March 2025 saying:

“Beautiful day at surveyors”

It is well known in the Huon Valley that Sally Doyle and her husband Lindsay have their home on the beach at Surveyors Bay Beach. It is not something they have kept quiet about. Her page was set to public.

Then Doyle’s BFF Frances Bender quips on the post; “Send Linds in for a swim” and Doyle responds “If you zoom in there is (sic) swimmers”.

Doyle then goes one step further with an invitation to the person who first posted Doyle’s pic. It was an ‘anonymous’ person (for good reason I am sure), and she comments:

“Anonymous member come down and I will make you a cup of tea”

Just three minutes later Doyle says:

“You need to come and have a look … Surveyors Bay Beach is fine”,

which is seemingly an invitation to one and all to come on down, nothing to see here … and perhaps even be given a cuppa courtesy of the Mayor of the Huon Valley.

However, what the Mayor of the Huon Valley did not mention on her post, is that at 7.30am the Friday before, and at 7.30am the same Saturday as her picture was posted, workers from the Huon Aquaculture Company were at Surveyors Bay Beach picking up the stinking fat balls and salmon waste that was washing up onto the shore.

They were also on the beach the following Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, and likewise cleaning the putrid mess that was being washed up on the nearby Big Roaring Beach.

A local resident posted on Facebook:

“On Friday both Surveyors Bay and Big Roaring Beach were inundated with fatty globules which were cleaned up by the Huon clean up team and seagulls and the tides! Yes the problem has gone from those beaches now but other beaches are being impacted and who is to say our beaches won’t be impacted again.

The NIMBY vision of it’s not in my backyard cannot prevail. There is a problem, merely saying sorry and times are tough is not good enough.”

A local resident in the area advised Tasmanian Times:

“Monday morning between 7.30am and 10am they [Huon Aquaculture Company workers] patrolled both Surveyors Bay and Big Roaring Beach. They were at Big Roaring for 2 hours and made some very outlandish statements. They confirmed they were solidified fatty deposits from deceased, diseased fish. They also told me the EPA have told them it is organic material and is no different to taking a fish oil capsule!

“I told him I don’t think eating fatty deposits from deceased, diseased fish would be FDA approved!”

Back to the Council’s one and only Facebook post on 25 February 2025, and further down it states:

“Council is continuing its recreational water quality sampling program over summer and we have today (25/02/2025) undertaken additional sampling at Verona Sands. We are monitoring the recent incident to determine if it has impacted recreational water quality and will take appropriate action based on the results.

“Any test results that do not meet the limits set in the Recreational Water Quality Guidelines 2007 will lead to signage at the affected beach and additional sampling.”

Tasmanian Times has been advised the Huon Valley Council do not actually have any such ready-made warning signage in their store.

Two public questions on notice were put to the Huon Valley Council for their 26 March 2025 Ordinary Meeting of Council. (Questions are unnecessarily wordy with excessive punctuation given that only two questions per person may be asked of Council).

Question 1:

Given the bacteria has been confirmed by the Chief Veterinary Officer as being Pisciricketsia salmonis (though there are still outstanding questions as to its specific genetic makeup and its endemic status), and given the EPA have confirmed there has been salmon feed containing oxytetracycline antibiotic fed to the salmon in the Huon Aquaculture’s fish pens; and given that the EPA issued a warning to wash hands if any of the fat globules are handled by members of the community, will Council please advise the details of their specific testing which according to HVC reporting has historically been Heterotrophic Colony Count, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and E.Coli, and how would they therefore determine if the waters a Verona Beach, and anywhere else was safe to swim (The water quality is fine) as advised by Councillor Armstrong on 7 March 2025, or has Council been testing for what might be the impacts of the bacteria Pisciricketsia salmonis or the presence of oxytetracycline antibiotic in our public waters.

Response:

Council tests the water quality, for the presence of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and E.Coli only at Council’s recreational pools in accordance with Council’s legal obligations under the Public Health Act 1997 and in accordance with the Recreational Water Quality Guidelines 2007 (maintained and published by the Tasmanian Department of Health).

Council tests marine water at popular local beaches for enterococci bacteria from December to March each Summer, as required by the same Guidelines. Council’s testing of the marine water at Verona Sands Beach has recently been increased to weekly intervals to monitor any impact on recreational water quality from (sic) recent marine pollution event. Water samples are sent to the Public Health Laboratory for analysis and the results are published on the Council website.

To date, the Department of Health has not found the marine water to be unsafe for recreational swimming according to the Guidelines.

As has become the norm with public questions asked of the Huon Valley Council, their response is incomplete. No mention of what Council did in fact test for at Verona Sands, and if they are not testing for the presence of antibiotics or P. salmonis, then perhaps it is safe, or perhaps not.

According to Councillor Armstrong, “the water quality is fine”, whatever that means.

Question 2:

At 9.15am on Friday morning 13 March 2025 Mayor Sally Doyle in speaking on ABC radio with Leon Compton in Dover said when asked by Compton if our Mayor had considered closing the beaches, the Mayor’s response was “No … they are not ours to close”.

Will Council please advise which beaches in our Huon Valley, listed by name, are the responsibility of our Council as defined by the Local Government Act, in that Council does have a role in providing for the health, safety and welfare of the community.

I am not referring to the water itself, rather the beach sand and areas where the tide washes onshore.

Response:

Most, if not all, of the beaches located in the Huon Valley Municipal area are Crown Land Public Reserves and fall within the jurisdiction of the State Government’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania through the Parks and Wildlife Service under the Crown Lands Act 1976.

As Crown Land, the Tasmanian Public Health Department leads public health issues and the EPA leads environmental protection, regarding public beaches.

This now begs the question as to why Council bothers to test the water (for some unknown impact) if the beaches are not within their remit.

And how is it that the neighbouring Kingborough Council, regularly close their beaches along with health warning signs?

On Friday 21 March 2025 the independent Member (House of Representatives) for Clark Andrew Wilkie and the federal candidate for Franklin, Peter George held a media briefing on the revelation that dead, diseased and dying salmon is going into the human food chain.

This was further evidenced with the release of new previously unseen footage from the Bob Brown Foundation (BBF) on the afternoon of Saturday 22 March 2025 which clearly showed dead fish being pumped from a pen and separated into a mortality bin, and into another bin filled with ice slurry.

“This footage of fish being pumped from an infected pen now means Salmon Tasmania must directly answer the public’s concern that potentially diseased fish are being sold to consumers”, said the BBF.

Kerry Vincent MLC, Julie Collins MP and HVC Mayor Sally Doyle

In a media event on the same day, Saturday 22 March, Mayor Sally Doyle is seen side by side with Local Government Minister Kerry Vincent and Federal Fisheries Minister Julie Collins.

Vincent speaks of “the hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands* of jobs that are involved in this industry we need to support those people and show a bit of faith.”

*[1888 direct jobs as published in the confidential April 2023 Deloitte Access Economics report to Salmon Tasmania which used data supplied by HAC, Tassal and Petuna]. The number contrasts with Australian Bureau of Statistics data which suggests the number of jobs might be as low as 1100 or less than half a percent of all Tasmanian jobs.

Collins stated:

“I think the State government could and should do better when it comes to the EPA, and the industry”.

Mayor Doyle has continued to remain silent as this salmon crisis continues into its eighth week since fish mortalities were first reported 29 January 2025.

This is not the first time Doyle has put her support behind the salmon industry.

Tasmanian Times reported on Doyle’s part to play in pulling the Huon Valley Councils submission to the Legislative Council Fin Fish Inquiry in 2020.

https://tasmaniantimes.com/2020/05/whos-in-charge-of-the-huon-valley-council

As of this past weekend the salmon crisis has gone national and international with further reporting on the ABC, The Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald, along with a series of  ‘advertisements’ excoriating the pollution of beaches and waterways by industrial salmon producers in Tasmania. These have been released globally.

So where the bloody hell are you Huon Valley Council?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay_3OQe8bN8