Mainstream Aquaculture QLD and director fined $360,000 over environmental authority breaches
A Port Douglas barramundi farm has been fined for its "extraordinary gamble" to stock $5.9m worth of fish without environmental approvals.
An “extraordinary gamble” to stock hundreds of tonnes of barramundi at a Port Douglas prawn farm site before the company had the right environmental approvals in place has cost the company and its director $360,000 in fines.
MainStream Aquaculture Queensland farmed around $5.9 million worth of barramundi “essentially unlawfully” in 2022 and 2023, Cairns Magistrates Court has been told.
By November 2023, it had more than half a million barramundi onsite at its operation north of Port Douglas with a biomass of 750 tonnes, the court was told.
It also introduced 25 tonnes of copper into its barramundi ponds for parasite treatment over time, which could have made its way into local waterways that feed into the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, the court was told.
Earlier this year the company fought the charges against it, and lost.
This week Magistrate Jakub Lodziak fined MainStream Aquaculture Queensland $300,000 after finding it guilty of eight charges - five counts of unlawfully depositing a prescribed substance in local waterways, two of failing to comply with a directions notice and one of carrying out an environmentally relevant activity.
The company’s chief executive officer Boris Musa, was fined a further $60,000 on eight counts of failing to ensure a corporation complies with the Environmental Protection Act.
Magistrate Lodziak noted that no actual environmental harm was caused by the company’s actions.
But said deterrence was important.
Department of Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation prosecutor Saul Holt said the company made a profit-driven and “deliberate, quite sophisticated attempt” to establish a “substantial commercial operation without the appropriate approvals in place.”
Mr Holt said Mr Musa knew he needed a permit, but had tried to find a “tricky way around it”.
“It was overwhelmingly clear that, effectively, they had taken ... a gamble’ ... there was a deliberateness to the conduct.” Mr Holt said.
Defence barrister Jeffrey Hunter said Mr Musa and the company were not “extending a metaphorical middle finger to the department”, but believed they had a window of six months before they would be discharging water from the barramundi ponds, and approvals would be in place by then.
He said the company had recorded multi-million losses out of the exercise.
“The present case has been a painful lesson, and he and Mainstream has learnt from the experience,” Mr Hunter said.
He described Mr Musa as an otherwise “good corporate citizen”, saying he had helped build a company that exported to 32 countries and had the world’s largest barramundi hatchery in Victoria.
He said Mr Musa sits on professional boards, does philanthropic work, and had plans to further expand MainStream’s presence in North Queensland.
Magistrate Lodziak recorded convictions against the company, but did not record convictions against Mr Musa.
He said he accepted that Mr Musa “regretted” his actions and that recording convictions may have too serious an impact on his financial and social wellbeing.
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Originally published as Mainstream Aquaculture QLD and director fined $360,000 over environmental authority breaches
