‘Awful’ footage of tonnes of dead fish being disposed of after Tassal suffers another fish kill
Tassal has suffered another fish kill, this time at its Kimberley barramundi farm, with footage emerging of tonnes of fish being disposed of.
Stomach-churning footage has emerged of a truckload’s worth of dead fish being dumped and buried at a remote tip.
The video, which was obtained by environmental NGO Environs Kimberley, shows earthmovers unloading large tubs of fish from a truck and burying them at a waste facility in Broome, Western Australia.
It comes after Tassal’s barramundi farm in Cone Bay, hundreds of kilometres further north, suffered a fish kill in October.
Tassal told the ABC that its Cone Bay farm experienced “lower-than-usual survival rates” last month, but declined to specify the quantity of barramundi lost.
It said blood fluke, a species-specific parasite, was responsible for the loss and said “lower-than-usual ocean temperatures” may have influenced the event as this “can affect fish resilience”.
“It’s an awful sight, very sad,” Environs Kimberley director Martin Pritchard told news.com.au of the footage.
“The truck was parked in a parking bay outside Broome one particular night and some people went up to it to investigate and it absolutely stank to the point where they were pretty much throwing up.”
He understands that the dead fish were shipped from the Cone Bay farm to Derby and then trucked about two hours south west to the Broome tip.
“What we heard was that there was a significant fish kill happening in [Tassal’s] current sea cages,” Mr Pritchard, who estimates that about 100 to 150 tonnes of fish died in the event, said.
“We are really concerned”.
Images from the farm obtained via the same source show dead barramundi floating in fish pens.
The industry regulator in Western Australia, the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, said the dead fish were removed from Tassal’s sea pens and appropriately disposed of at an approved waste management facility.
Neither the regulator nor Tassal considered it a mass mortality event.
Tassal is currently seeking to expand its farming operation in the Kimberley region, something Environs Kimberley is hoping to prevent.
The group doesn’t believe industrial fish farming is appropriate in the area and is calling on WA Minister for Environment Matthew Swinbourn, and his federal counterpart Murray Watt, to reject Tassal’s plans for expansion.
“We believe this proposal to hugely expand the sea cage farming on the Kimberley coast should not go ahead,” Mr Pritchard said.
“We’re talking about a globally significant coastline; the Kimberley Coast is in the top 4 percent of the most pristine coastlines in the world. It’s national heritage-listed and a marine park in pretty much its entirety.
“The marine life is exceptional, we’ve got humpback whale carving grounds, we’ve got many species of rare turtles, dugong, and freshwater swordfish. People are pretty disgusted that this is going on, and that this is a threat to the pristine marine environment.”
Tassal was one of two businesses directly impacted by a mass mortality event at the beginning of this year, which saw dead salmon wash up on beaches in south-east Tasmania.
Close to 15,000 tonnes of dead salmon were disposed of between January and April, according to data from the Environment Protection Authority, with a review released last week finding that the bacterial disease P.salmonis rickettsia was the principal cause of the event.
news.com.au has contacted Tassal for comment.
Originally published as ‘Awful’ footage of tonnes of dead fish being disposed of after Tassal suffers another fish kill
