So Mike, to start with, can you tell me what the locals in southeast Tasmania discovered recently?
Well, it was about nine p thirty on Sunday morning, a little over two weeks ago when Jess Coglin, who's a campaigner with Neighbors of Fish Farming or NOF, she got a phone call and it was a local calling her to say that thousands of these oily, stinky globs had washed up on for Ona Sands Beach, which is about sixty kilometers south of Hobart. The caller suspected it was fish food from one of the salmon farming pens
in the area. You know, there are scores of them, and he said that his dogs as well as flocks of guggles were quote in a frenzy eating it. So anyway, Jess grabbed Ajar hastened down to the beach to grab a sample and see for herself this massive amount of gobs that were scattered along the entire length of the beach. And she collected samples, intending to send them off to
the state's epa inter alia. She rang a contact of hers who was a retired diver and he said, break open some of the larger clumps, and she did, and inside was pink flesh and fish scale. So it wasn't just fatty stuff, it was actual chunks of fish.
She realized pretty quickly.
I guess that it wasn't fish food, obviously, it was dead rotting salmon.
That's just gross spike.
Well it is. There were thousands of these things.
There were small blobs of fatty stuff and there were larger chunks that were actual fish flesh.
From Schwartz Media on Daniel James. This is seven am. Warmer waters, disease and antibiotics have pushed tasimani As salmon farms into crisis. But it's not just an environmental disaster. It's a political one. Now, with an election looming, the Albaneze government is pouring millions into salmon farming, hoping to save jobs and votes in the process, even as rotting
fish littered the shore. Today National correspondent for the Saturday paper, Mark Second on what is happening in Tasmanian waters and why it might impact the upcoming election. It's Monday, March three. Mike, You've been looking into the salmon industry in Tasmania and how it's likely to impact the upcoming election, So can you tell me what you specifically set out to investigate?
Well, funny story. I actually started to look at the Albanesi government's recent announcements of funding to prop up salmon farming at Macquarie Harbor on the west coast of Tasmania, where Labor is trying to win the seat of Bratton, but events very quickly redirected mealswhere down to the southeast corner of the state and to the seat of Franklin. The southeast of Tasmania produces the bulk of farmed salmon in in Tasmania and in the nation. It's a billion
dollar industry. It produces roughly eight hundred thousand tons of fish a year. We hear a lot about Macquarie Harbor because of the threat of extinction of the more Gan skate, but it only counts for about ten percent of production. The southeast has hundreds of pens floating around holding millions upon millions of fish. And the seat that I wound up being more interested in is the seat of Franklin, which is one of the few labor held seats being
targeted by a climate two hundred in this election. Mostly they go after liberal health seats, and Franklin is also the only one held by a current cabinet minister, that is Julie Collins, the Minister for Agriculture and importantly Fisheries, and against her is running a number of candidates, including a Green but the interesting one is Peter George. He's got a bit of a profile. He's a former senior reporter for the ABC. A lot of people would remember
him from Four Corners and Foreign correspondent. He's also the founder of a group called Neighbors of Fish Farming, which is a group that's been campaigning against the industrial fish farming in Tasmania for about a decade and that's essentially what's going to be George's pitch running as an independent for this election. That was one of the interesting things
that shifted my focus. But the bigger one was that I started hearing about a bizarre and frankly gross thing that was happening on some beaches in the southeast in the electorate of Franklin.
A shoreline discovery causing.
A stinct There were chunks of what appeared to be salmon flesh partially broken down at very very well.
So it became pretty clear pretty quickly that this was dead rotting salmon, So where were these globs coming from?
They're the result of what happens when salmon die. They sink to the bottom of the pens, they rot, and then their flesh an oil rise back up to the surface,
and that appears to be what happened here. As to where they came from, Jess Coglan and her other activist friends suspected they came from a farm being operated by Huon Aquaculture, which is one of the two big producers of Atlantic salmon in Australia, and sure enough, later that day workers from Huon Aquaculture turned up at the beach and began cleaning it up.
Although she says they didn't actually identify themselves.
They weren't in uniform or anything, and they wouldn't answer any questions that the locals put to them. But it wasn't just Forona's hands. Remains continued washing up on other beaches too, both on the mainland side of the channel and also on Bruney Island, which is just across the other side of the channel, and there employees from the other big aquaculture company, Tassel, were witnessed cleaning up the mess.
Right, So there might have been something bigger going on here than just an accident one particular seven farm.
It would appear to be the case, and it would appear that it wasn't just fish in one of the scores of pens that doted the channel. It was more
widespread than that. But even before then there were signs that something major was going wrong, because a week prior, hugh On Agriculture had revealed that it was using antibiotics at one of its sites near Bruney Island, and then on February fourteen, our Brown Foundation released drone footage of hundreds of dead and decomposing fish being vacuum pumped from a pen well to the north near the Tasmanian Peninsula. By then was pretty obvious that some kind of major
incident had happened, probably a disease outbreak. But for a week, maybe longer, neither the Tasmanian Environmental Protection Agency nor the companies involved, you know, provided much in the way of detail about what was happening.
So when did we start getting answers.
Mike Well, it took a while.
Under pressure from environmentalists and the media, the Tasmanian EPA put out a statement on the Friday after the Sunday when the fish started turning up, and it was pretty anodyne, frankly, it just said they'd start an investigation into how quote a quantity of biological material had washed up at Arana Sands.
So that's not much of an answer at all.
No, it's not so.
I put some questions to the EPA and they provided a little more detail. They said that there had been unusually worn over recent months, and there had been a proliferation of pest species that can irritate salmon gills. But the thing that appears to be actually killing the fish
is something called reck Rickettsia, which is a bacteria. It appears to have broken out in one or more pens and quickly spread, And according to the EPA, the particular strain of this bacteria that's affecting the salmon is endemic to Australia, and for that reason they say it's not
a danger to native species. But opponents of the industry aren't so sure about that, whether it is in fact an endemic species, and in any case, whether having these millions upon millions of salmon there as a sort of pull potentially of the bacteria couldn't still lead to deaths
among native species. The other that they confirmed was that the companies were dumping large quantities of dead fish into landfills, which is significant because in the usual course of events, when there are deaths in the fish pens, the dead fish get turned into either pet food or fertilizer. But in this case there were clearly too many for that purpose, so they had to go to the last resort, which was just dumping them.
What do we know about the scale of his frozen die off?
It's huge.
The peak body for the Tasmanian salmon industry, which is called Salmon Tasmania, I found actually more forthcoming than the EPA. I spoke to its CEO, Luke Martin, and he confirmed that they were dealing with, and I'm quoting him here, unprecedented mortalities in the southeast. He didn't give exact numbers, but he did say that the normal, as he put at some immortality rate for salmon farms was about five percent. Given the scale of production in Tasmania, that equates to
several thousand tons of dead fish. Activists, not surprisingly, have been more keen to hazard estimates of the numbers. The Bob Brown Foundation's Alistair Allen, who's not only a campaigner for Bob Brown Foundation but also a Greens candidate for another seat in Tasmania. He said that industry sources had told him that two million fish had died in just a couple of weeks. I also spoke to Peter George.
The boat that his contact worked on had pumped seventy tons of dead fish and fish parts and that it was just one of thirteen pump boats working in the area at the time. So based on those numbers he estimates, you know, hundreds of thousands of fish were being removed on a daily basis.
These are astonishing.
Numbers after the break the political.
Wash up, Hi Ruby Jones. Here, seven am tells stories that need to be told. Our journalism is founded on trust and independence, and now we're increasing our coverage. Every Saturday until the election, will bring you an extra episode to break down the biggest political moments of the week. If you enjoy seven Am, the best way you can support us is by making a contribution at seven am podcast dot com dot are you forward slash support. Thanks for listening and supporting our work.
Mike, this is all happening in the lead up to an election, and the Prime Minister Anthony Albanez he visited Tasmania to cement his support for the industry, even enjoying a plate of grilled salmon at a community barbecue. So how is all this playing out politically.
Well, first observation, exquisitely bad timing on Albanizzi's part. I suppose you couldn't foresee that there would be this kind of catastrophe in the industry. But you're right it is becoming a big political issue in a couple of ways. We're talking about two electorates here, quite different electorates. There's Franklin, a large progressive cohort there. I think the Greens at the last election got fifteen sixteen seventeen percent of the vote and Labor holds it by what appears on paper
to be a reasonably comfortable margin. And of course there Peter George is running as a community independent against Julie Collins, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.
We're getting a two party system that has delivered an environmental mess, has delivered us with an environmental crisis, and has delivered us a cost of living crisis.
Peter George could potentially have been a threat to Julie Collins. Even before this, the fish started washing up on the beaches, one would have to think that his vote probably goes up proportionate to the number of fish that turn up riding on the beaches. That's the southeast. Then we have Bradden up in the Northwest, which is a much more conservative seat. It's currently held by a Liberal member, but he's retiring at the election and the government is hoping
they can flip it. They're running a pretty high profile candidate, Anne Urkhardt, who's currently a Senator for Tasmania. She's hoping she can make the shift to the lower House. And of course Albanezi was in Bradden tucking into the salmon and potatoes even as the fish were turning up dead on the beaches. In the Southeast, he was announcing a further two point nine million dollars in funding for a captive breeding program for the more Ga skate, which is
in danger of extinction. And of course one of the key reasons why the more g and skate is endangered is because of salmon farming in Macrori Harbor. Essentially, there were two principal problems affecting the skate. One was low oxygen levels and the other was large quantities of fish pooh, which both affect the skates which feed at the bottom
of the harbor. So the government has been spending money not only on this captive breeding program, but also on technology that pumps what they call microbottles into the water to try and lift the oxygen levels. And in total, so far this support has cost thirty seven million dollars. And to be fair, there's some evidence that there's been a bit of success. A recent study found that oxygen levels had increased and that the skate population had stabilized,
although still at pretty low numbers. But anyway, Albanizi was down there and he was portraying the thing as a win win situation. The skate was being protected, as were local jobs in the industry.
The Commonwealth money subsidizing this industry. So how many jobs are we talking about here.
Mike, Not a lot, About seventy If you want to divide the amount of money the government's kicked in by the number of employees, that's roughly half a million dollars per employee. So anyway, I spoke to Andrew Wilke. He represents another seat in Tasmania, the seat of Clark. He makes the point that Macquarie Harbor, where Escape lives only, it counts for about ten percent of Tasmanis salmon production,
five percent of the jobs. He sees what Albanize he's doing as purely an exercise in shoring up Labour's hopes of winning the seat.
So there's a calculation here that if the Albanezy government is wanting to win seats in Tasmania, they need to appease this industry. But do you think it will pay off, particularly when people are seeing these images of rotten fish washing up on beaches everywhere.
Well, the government is certainly making the political calculation here that there's a seat to be picked up in the northwest of Tasmania, but it could potentially cost them the seed of Franklin. When I asked ull Collins office for a comment about the outbreak about this crisis unfolding in her electorate in the salmon industry, a spokesperson declined to talk about it. The only thing they would say was they stressed that salmon farming is regulated by the Tasmanian
State government. One might have thought that as the local member. If not as Fisheries Minister Collins would take an interest, but apparently not. There is a bigger picture here too, I think a global picture, and that is that around the world we see offshore salmon farming starting to look like a sunset industry. You know, across the world, from Chile to Scotland, they've experienced big, big disease outbreaks. In the United States, Washington State has just banned salmon farms
because of the environmental damage they do. And all around the world there's money going into actual onshore fish farming, you know, which can be done and apparently billions of dollars of being spent on it, and that avoids a lot of the environmental damage that is done by offshore farming. Frankly, it's particularly dirty industry, huge amounts of fish poo apart from anything else, and I think it may be losing its social license.
Mike, I hope we haven't put too many people off their breakfast.
Thanks for your time, Thanks mate, cheers.
Also in the news today, an extra fifty billing urgent care clinics will be in operation by mid twenty twenty six if Labour wins reelection. The government has announced. The plan will cost six hundred and forty four million dollars and deliver extra clinics in every state and territory, with eighty percent of Australians being able to access one within
a twenty minute drive. At the last election, Laborer announced fifty new urgent care clinics, but went on to open eighty seven at this term of government, and Britain will lend Ukraine four point five billion dollars to spend on military procurement, with the money coming from the profits of frozen Russian assets. British primary to Kirs Starman met with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenski over the weekend to design the
deal and emphasize his country's ongoing support for Ukraine. The show of support comes after an explosive meeting at the White House on Friday where US President Trump and Vice President j d Vance accuse the Ukrainian president of not being grateful for their support. We'll have a full breakdown of that meeting and the implications for the war in Ukraine on seven AM tomorrow. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.