Patagonia NZ

Announced late last year, the plan was billed by the Tasmanian Government as a ‘reset’ for the increasingly controversial industry. The draft plan offered a one-year moratorium on new leases, with a goal to make the industry sustainable in the long term by moving it onto land, or out into deeper “offshore” waters. Environmental groups who’ve battled both the industry and the state government on fish farms for over a decade however were openly sceptical.

“This is not what we see in the draft document, or are hearing in the community briefing sessions,” says Jess Coughlan, who’s been fighting against fish farms down in Tasmania and attended the Flinders community night. “Essentially, use of the term ‘sustainable’ in the plan itself, applies to how much the environment, as a resource, can sustain the industry, with acceptable collateral damage, and not how the industry can operate in a way that sustains a functioning, balanced ecosystem.”

The draft salmon plan in many areas posed more questions than it answered. It contains no maps, for a starter. The draft plan doesn’t define what’s considered “offshore waters”, and also exclusively refers only to salmon, despite the industry looking at expanding into white flesh fish like kingfish as ocean temperatures rise with the effects of climate change. At the briefing session, islanders asked questions around the use of freshwater by the industry, the effects on the local cray and abalone industries, the use of often lethal seal deterrents and the recognition of Indigenous water rights. They were left underwhelmed by the responses.

Jess Coughlan sees the plan lacking in crucial detail, and more a greenwashing exercise than a legitimate attempt to clean up the industry. “Since the plan’s draft publication and briefing sessions, the government has taken the 10-year time frame off the document, and announced it is a more fluid document, without timeline-adhered goals. This is typical of what Tasmanians have come to expect from an industry that operates on a model of adaptive management. What this looks like is irresponsible optimistic planning, which favours industry’s demands above the needs of the environment, and a government not willing to commit to regulating it.”

The real fear though for Tasmanians and locals on the Bass Strait islands is that this weakly defined plan has dropped at the same time that two of Tasmania’s original aquaculture companies have been snapped up by giant, aggressive multinational companies with dubious environmental track records and histories of aggressive growth. In November, Cooke Inc snapped up Tassal while Brazilian meat giant JBS bought Huon Aquaculture.

“I don’t trust them,” says Flinders local, Addy Jones, “the Government or the big companies. They came here with their plan telling everyone not to worry, there’ll never be salmon farms here. Well if that’s the case, why were they even here?”