Rowan Armitage

Clear lessons for East Coast fish farm plans

half Tassal’s production and nearly all its growth since the new Tassal was formed.

In Tassal’s 2016 Sustainability Report, it acknowledged it has only opened one new salmon farm site in the past 10 years and that was lease 266.

Tassal has farmed in Macquarie Harbour at an intensity up to three times greater than the other two companies with leases there.

Tassal has now had to fallow Lease 266 for an indefinite period due to the damage to the environment from overstocking. Tassal’s 2017 smolt intake for the harbour has been cut by the Environment Protection Authority from more than two million smolt to 500,000 smolt as a result of the loss of Lease 266 and a new maximum stocking density of 13 tonnes per hectare. That is a reduction of 1.5 million fish, which at their target weight of 5kg hog is a loss of 7500 tonnes not available to sell in the 2019 financial year.

Hence the focus on Okehampton Bay on the East Coast. Okehampton can probably grow salmon and be successful until we get the next El Nino event. This will send extra warm currents down the East Coast and cause water temperatures of 23C, as were recorded in 2016.

Tassal plans to grow 800,000 salmon on 80ha in Okehampton Bay. Based on its target HOG weight of 5kg that number could reach a live weight density of over 50t/ha.

Okehampton is different from Macquarie Harbour, but it is also sensitive compared with other farming areas. The water flow is not strong and water temperatures are higher.

Just because Tassal has been forced to cut back in Macquarie Harbour and have nowhere else to go, why would the EPA allow a stocking density of any more than 13t/ ha at Okehampton? Surely given the issues in Macquarie Harbour and the publicity and community concern and scrutiny, a conservative stocking density is appropriate for, say, the first five years.

Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past.

Shane Pritchard was chief executive of Nortas and Aquatas from 1995 to 2005. Rowan Armitage, a former Skretting Executive, was the previous owner of the Okehampton marine lease.