FRESH WATER FOCUS CALL
THOSE who know and love Tasmania’s rivers best want better regulation and monitoring to protect our special places.
Local fishers say the state’s aquaculture industry appears to be contributing to the decline of some of our best fishing spots in places such as the Tyenna River, the Russell, the South Esk, and the Florentine.
Anglers Alliance Tasmania vice chair Terry Byard said the angling community was alarmed at aquaculture’s impacts.
“Our concern is about what’s coming out of those hatcheries and our view is that the water coming out after its done its business for the hatchery should be equal to the quality of the water that came in,” he said.
“At the moment, the quality of that water coming out is highly degraded.”
Mr Byard said open flow hatcheries should be converted to closed-loop to improve water quality.
“We’ve got numerous reports from anglers of decreasing catches. In some cases people are almost unable to wade the rivers or the streams because the level of algal slime over the river makes it very difficult to walk. The habitats have been highly degraded,” he said.
“We get regular reports from anglers who are concerned about this issue. We’ve reported those sort of matters to the EPA, the EPA have done what they can but it lacks regulation.
“We’d like the government to acknowledge the problem. You know, there are serious, serious environmental harm going on to these streams.”
John Stanfield, a recreational fisher on and off shore in Tasmania‘s waters for decades, said the impact of fish farms was piling on top of industrial heavy metal, effluent pollution, sewerage outfall and agricultural runoff, making it less appealing for many people who had a choice to eat fish caught in some parts of Tasmania.
“Most of my mates wouldn’t eat fish out of the Derwent,” he said. “What I’ve seen over my lifetime is that the Derwent is a lot worse now than it was in 1982 … and I don’t see a future where that’s going to change.”