Media release – Neighbours of Fish Farming, 24 January 2024
The Wombat arrives: Too little, too late or Maugean skate
Any effort to improve the health of Macquarie Harbour from the ravages of industrial salmon feedlots is welcome but the oxygenation project is far too little and far too late.
Efforts to restore the waterway should have started before summer as the science indicated.
Federal conservation advice says it should have begun with reducing salmon feedlots as the fastest, most efficient way to attempt to halt the dramatic decline of the Maugean skate and start improving oxygen levels.
The launch of the Wombat barge marks the start of a highly subsidised programme paid for by Australian taxpayers to protect tax avoiding multinationals who send their profits overseas.
The Maugean skate captive breeding programme and the Wombat oxygenation project are tinkering at the edges and neither gives much hope for a positive outcome.
NOFF notes that oxygenation of waters close to the feedlots will help both fatten and speed the growth of the caged Atlantic salmon.
Media release – Bob Brown Foundation, 24 January 2024
No real action taken as Maugean Skate slips closer to extinction
Today’s announcement from Salmon Tasmania that their unproven and experimental oxygenation barge is in place is just more tinkering, not action to save the Maugean skate.
With only a trial in the Swan River in Western Australia, a water body that has an average width of 102m, it is very unlikely it will have any impact on Macquarie Harbour, a body of water that is 6x bigger than Sydney Harbour.
With the recent news of a 50% death rate in the captive breeding programme and now with the oxygenation experiment, the only actions happening on the Harbour are long shot, unproven technological ones. This is in complete contradiction to the advice that was given to Federal Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek, whose own department listed significantly reducing or removing fish farms in Macquarie Harbour as the number one priority action before summer.
“This is experimentation at a time that requires action. There is absolutely no guarantee that this will do anything to save the Maugean skate,” said Alistair Allan, Antarctic and Marine campaigner at the Bob Brown Foundation.
“The Federal conservation advice was abundantly clear, fish farms need to be removed from Macquarie Harbour. It is that simple. Tanya Plibersek was told to remove fish farms before summer. We are in summer now and this has not happened. More must be urgently done by the Federal government. They made a promise of no new extinctions to the Australian public and they must keep that promise.”
“Salmon Tasmania’s expectation that the announcement of this unproven technology in Macquarie Harbour should be met with applause, is laughable as they are the ones responsible for the crisis. The only reason this barge is in Macquarie Harbour in the first place is because industrial fish farms destroyed the harbour.”
“This is just more deflection from Salmon Tasmania, in a desperate effort to ward off the only viable solution to prevent the extinction of the Maugean skate, which is the removal of fish farms from the harbour,” said Alistair Allan.
