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From the Lake Pedder and Franklin River campaigns in the 1970s and ’80s, to the logging and destruction of old growth forests for woodchips, lutruwita/Tasmania’s history of strong campaigns against environmentally damaging development has always been framed as a “jobs versus environment” issue, when it has really been about profits versus the environment.

Environmental activists point to the toxic practices of industrial-scale fish farms and say they risk lutruwita’s reputation as “clean and green”.

lutruwita’s salmon aquaculture industry started as a small, low-tech industry in the 1980s. It has grown to become a billion-dollar operation, producing about 75,000 tonnes of Atlantic salmon each year.

Atlantic salmon, a non-native species, is farmed in sea cages along lutruwita’s estuaries, inshore channels and harbours. The cages are open to the ocean and waste washes into the surrounding water. Salmon smolt are raised in hatcheries in some of the state’s most pristine rivers. Minimally treated hatchery waste is often released back into the rivers. Fish pens have taken over beautiful channels and bays.

Labor and Liberal governments appear to be completely captive to aquaculture companies’ demands. As production accelerates, lutruwita’s once healthy waterways have become devoid of plant and fish species.

The high densities of fish and exposure to pathogens create breeding grounds for disease and parasites. Weakened fish suffer congenital diseases and succumb more easily to viruses, bacteria and harmful parasites. From eggs to adulthood, the salmon are manipulated to enhance rapid growth to the detriment of the fish’s health.

Disease and abnormalities are rampant. Pesticides and insecticides also cause disease, as chemicals affect embryo development and cell structures.

Salmon are affected by oxygen levels in the water, population density and feed quality, with treatment by antibiotics throughout the fish’s life.

A from Tassal Aussie Seafood to Tasmania’s Environment Protection Agency (EPA) in 2022, released under freedom of information, revealed the salmon industry had used more than 31.4 tonnes of antibiotics in marine leases between 2003 and 2022.

Antibiotic overuse

The has warned that misuse of antibiotics is accelerating the development of antibiotic-resistant organisms. It describes this as “one of the biggest threats to global health”, with the ability to render some of the most critical drugs in modern medicine ineffective.

Animal welfare groups describe the salmon fish pens as “petri dishes of pathogens”, given their high levels of ammonia and carbon dioxide, mixed with pesticide residue, antibiotics and faeces.

Nothing lives beneath these pens. Sailors and fishers will attest to the once beautiful D’Entrecasteaux Channel near Hobart now marked with huge dead areas where fish pens have been.

Over 2017–18 there was a mass die-off of 1.35 million farmed salmon and trout in Macquarie Harbour on the west coast, a unique and sensitive waterway adjacent to a World Heritage Area. It was the result of a combination of high temperatures, low dissolved oxygen and the disease called pilchard orthomyxovirus.

Marine dead zones were recorded as spreading as far as the Wilderness World Heritage Area. 

A bacterial outbreak of farmed salmon in the lower D’Entrecasteaux Channel earlier this year led to rotting chunks of fish and fatty globules washing up on beaches across southern lutruwita. The EPA has refused to disclose the amount of antibiotics used or the number of salmon cages treated during the outbreak, with EPA director Wes Ford saying the information was “commercial in confidence”. This is despite the regulator having previously revealed details of salmon farm antibiotic use.

There is little independent monitoring and enforcement, despite laws requiring both. The industry acts as a law unto itself.

, spokesperson for Marine Protection Tasmania, said the government should regulate a requirement for real-time disclosures of antibiotic use at fish farms. “People have an absolute right to know all the information when tonnes of antibiotics are entering their recreational waterways.”

The EPA’s disclosure practices have changed over time. In April last year, it ���ٳ����Tasmanian Inquirer that Tassal had used 180 kilograms of oxytetracycline to control a disease outbreak at its Soldiers Point lease near Bruny Island.

However, after the state election in March last year, it  a freedom of information request for real-time disclosure of antibiotic use as a routine measure.

Secretive industry

Salmon corporations have pressed government agencies to keep embarrassing information secret. Freedom of information documents  that Tassal lobbied the EPA against the public release of two antibiotic residue reports in 2022. The agency released the reports.

Alistair Allan, marine campaigner for the Bob Brown Foundation, describes the salmon industry as “out of control”. “As much as 15% to 20% of all farmed salmon die as part of this environmentally and morally bankrupt industry. The closest number of animal deaths in Australian farms I could find was battery cage chickens at 4%.”

Allan said the malpractice is industry wide, but “unbelievably the RSPCA still thinks it’s appropriate to certify Tasmanian salmon”. He wants them to drop this certification, “given their mandate to prevent cruelty to animals”.

The collusion with the government and regulators continues unabated. Seven weeks before it was revealed thousands of tonnes of fish had died, the chief veterinary officer quietly downgraded the biosecurity risk of Piscirickettsia salmonis, the bacteria killing the fish, from being a “prohibited matter” to a “declared animal disease”.

This substantially reduced the corporations’ obligations on how to deal with the outbreak: it now admits that fish from diseased pens are being sold for human consumption.

Luke Martin, Salmon Tasmania’s ex-chief executive, confirmed in April that salmon was being harvested for human consumption from infected pens. Martin assured the public that quality control checks were in place. “The companies are very confident that the quality … of the product is not being compromised at any level.”

Allan said the latest drone footage taken at a Huon Aquaculture farm in the D’Entrecasteaux Channel appeared to show live fish being placed into a dry tub with dead fish which, he said, meant the RSPCA had “no choice but to drop [its] certification of this toxic and cruel industry”.

Allan said the reality of factory-farmed salmon means “our waterways and beaches are covered with rotting chunks of diseased salmon”. It also means the Maugean skate, a species of ray endemic to lutruwita, “has been pushed to the edge of extinction, reefs and sea floors are covered in sludge and slime, and communities are completely fed up with the corporate takeover of their waters”.

Amendments to EPBC Act

Just before the caretaker period, Labor rushed though amendments to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) to further protect the destructive, commercial salmon industry in lutruwita.

This could sound the death knell for the endangered Maugean skate, which is only found in lutruwita’s Macquarie Harbour. Scientists have repeatedly warned that salmon farming is its key threat.

The amendments dilute the EPBC Act’s effectiveness in protecting threatened species and critical habitats. This includes allowing development approvals to be transferred to state governments, which may have less stringent environmental protections.

Alternatives to industrial fish farming in lutruwita include continuing to explore and enact new methods such as on-land farming and offshore operations to reduce its environmental footprint. The Environment Defenders Office recommends immediately reinstating the moratorium on new salmon leases and revoking salmon farming leases in shallow, low-flush bays and estuaries.

Eloise Carr, from , argued in 2023 that the industry could be restructured to create a sustainable industry, “without significant impact” on employment or government revenues.

“The Tasmanian salmon industry never misses an opportunity to promote its economic claims, but one word is rarely mentioned — tax. The salmon industry’s economic claims always focus on the big dollar figures of sales revenue.

“But how much actually goes back to the Tasmanian public? Near zero.”

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Rallying against fish farms at Parliament House lawns, April 27. Photo: Philippa Skinner

She said Australian Taxation Office data shows that the three main salmon companies, which sold more than $7 billion worth of fish, paid just $51 million in tax over the past nine years.

“Taxpayers have been subsiding this industry and its administrative and scientific burden for too long. But now that we have that science, we should at least listen to it.”

Australian Bureau of Statistics data suggests that 1100–1700 people work directly in the salmon industry, less than 1% of state jobs. The industry estimates that up to 3000 people are employed indirectly.

“All jobs are important, especially in regional communities, and workers should be supported to transition to sustainable employment," Carr said. "But the government needs to be making decisions based on fact, not fiction.” 

She said scientists have been warning the industry about the problems with fish farming in Macquarie Harbour for more than a decade, but they have done nothing to prepare their workforce “for this inevitable situation”.