Lousy future looms for farmers
AQUACULTURE
MACQUARIE Harbour is six times the size of Sydney Harbour, but despite the best efforts of the Environment Protection Agency and the Tasmanian State Government, in relation to salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour, oxygen levels there are again at low levels.
Tassal has been blamed for overfishing but continues to look elsewhere before the scourge of salmon farmers in the northern hemisphere hurts the salmon industry here.
That scourge is the salmon louse and the amount of chemicals needed to contain it in Scotland have already ruined around 40 of that country’s once pristine lochs.
Huon Aquaculture plans to farm deeper and much rougher waters, presumably to help disperse fish waste and chemicals, but it will still have to face possible future legal claims of employees in a dangerous working environment. telling the public they are moving offshore where conditions will be testing. But the labelling on their salmon will be true — “wild Tasmanian salmon’’. Bring it on Huon.
Acceptable impact?
TASSAL has applied to the Department of Environment and Energy to dump 300 cubic metres of fish waste a week into Macquarie Harbour at the inside entrance to the Kelly Channel on outgoing tides.
In the application under “description of likely impact” Tassal states: “there is very little risk of cumulative environmental or ecological impacts occurring”. This company has been given the right to self monitor its operations out of Okehampton Bay by our current government.
I wonder what they will claim as acceptable impact for the East Coast?
No sense
LET me get this straight. Tassal is allowed to exceed the stocking limit in Macquarie Harbour, on condition that it collects all the fish waste, and none gets into the harbour.
Now Tassal is proposing to pump the liquid from that waste back into the harbour.
Is this Alice in Wonderland, or simply cloud cuckoo land? And heaven help Okehampton Bay.
Just marriage
I BELIEVE everyone should have the opportunity to marry but please let’s not get too sensitive and abolish Father’s Day or Mother’s Day.
That does it
DONALD Trump’s comments and actions on Puerto Rico (throwing paper towels at dispossessed, saying aid will cause budget stress) and comments after shootings (look at gun laws in due course) proves incompetence and lack of sensitivity as leader of the free world. Every world leader has the authority to demand his removal if his own people do not.
Big deal
IN his second stint as Hawthorn president, it hasn’t taken Jeff Kennett long to open his big mouth ( Mercury, October 6). No-one should be fooled by his professed concern for Tasmania should the Hawks be shown the door. His big worry is the loss of the ridiculously generous financial deal his club gets courtesy of Tasmanian taxpayers.
Pay attention
THERE is one simple reason marriage might end up being redefined in Australia — most people are not paying attention to what is really going on.