Latest news with #Maugean
The Age
13-05-2025
- Politics
- The Age
As Plibersek moves out, Mr ‘Fix It' takes on plagued environment job
Senator Murray Watt has kicked off his stint as environment minister with backing from the warring mining and environment sectors to break the deadlock that dogged predecessor Tanya Plibersek and deliver the government's long-promised environment reforms. The government promised in 2022 to create a national environment watchdog and committed to pursuing broad reforms to nature protection laws, but failed to deliver either. Plibersek began in the portfolio with a promise to end native species extinctions. She ended it on the outer with the environment lobby, which has been disappointed at the lack of new nature protections, and after a deal with the Greens to pass the Environment Protection Act in the Senate was scuppered by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese following vigorous lobbying against the bill from the mining industry and the Premier of Western Australia Roger Cook. Albanese also weighed in on Plibersek's portfolio for a second time, in December, when he assured Tasmania's salmon farming industry its future was secure. This assurance appeared to preempt an ongoing review of commercial operations in Macquarie Harbour, on the state's west coast, due to its impact on the endangered Maugean skate. Plibersek has been moved to the social services ministry, an appointment she welcomes with a social media statement saying she was 'delighted to be the minister for social services in the new Labor government', as it was an area she had long been interested in. She takes on responsibility for the department that oversees welfare spending – the single largest expenditure in the federal budget – as well as issues close to her heart, such as domestic violence prevention and gender equality. Loading Watt, who earned a reputation as a fixer in the emergency services, agriculture and then industrial affairs portfolios in the first term of the Albanese government, said he was thrilled to be appointed Minister for the Environment. 'Our natural environment and water supply is the foundation of life on Earth and only a Labor government can advance its long-term conservation,' he said. The former workplace and industrial relations minister is a key powerbroker from Queensland, riding high in the party for delivering a swathe of seats in the state.
Sydney Morning Herald
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
As Plibersek moves out, Mr ‘Fix It' takes on plagued environment job
Senator Murray Watt has kicked off his stint as environment minister with backing from the warring mining and environment sectors to break the deadlock that dogged predecessor Tanya Plibersek and deliver the government's long-promised environment reforms. The government promised in 2022 to create a national environment watchdog and committed to pursuing broad reforms to nature protection laws, but failed to deliver either. Plibersek began in the portfolio with a promise to end native species extinctions. She ended it on the outer with the environment lobby, which has been disappointed at the lack of new nature protections, and after a deal with the Greens to pass the Environment Protection Act in the Senate was scuppered by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese following vigorous lobbying against the bill from the mining industry and the Premier of Western Australia Roger Cook. Albanese also weighed in on Plibersek's portfolio for a second time, in December, when he assured Tasmania's salmon farming industry its future was secure. This assurance appeared to preempt an ongoing review of commercial operations in Macquarie Harbour, on the state's west coast, due to its impact on the endangered Maugean skate. Plibersek has been moved to the social services ministry, an appointment she welcomes with a social media statement saying she was 'delighted to be the minister for social services in the new Labor government', as it was an area she had long been interested in. She takes on responsibility for the department that oversees welfare spending – the single largest expenditure in the federal budget – as well as issues close to her heart, such as domestic violence prevention and gender equality. Loading Watt, who earned a reputation as a fixer in the emergency services, agriculture and then industrial affairs portfolios in the first term of the Albanese government, said he was thrilled to be appointed Minister for the Environment. 'Our natural environment and water supply is the foundation of life on Earth and only a Labor government can advance its long-term conservation,' he said. The former workplace and industrial relations minister is a key powerbroker from Queensland, riding high in the party for delivering a swathe of seats in the state.
The Age
09-05-2025
- General
- The Age
Salmon critics say fish farms should be on land. How it works for Murray cod
The ponds at one of several aquaculture sites near Griffith are rectangles of murky green water fringed with reeds in a flat landscape of orange clay. The pelicans perusing the perimeter and kites circling above see what the untrained human eye cannot – beneath a protective net, the water is teeming with Murray cod. The ponds are part of the operations of Murray Cod Australia, trading as Aquna Sustainable Murray Cod. Chief executive Ross Anderson explains the colour of the water is by design – it's because the staff promote the growth of beneficial native algae. Together with the water plants around the ponds' edges, the algae absorbs the nutrients from the fish poo and releases oxygen into the water by night. This results in less water usage and reduced need to mechanically oxygenate the water; an energy saving. Another benefit: the algae creates a living culture that consumes other byproducts of the fish, preventing the build-up of chemical compounds that change the flavour of the fish. 'It's quite counter-intuitive, but from this muddy, green looking water, you get a clean, white-tasting fish,' Anderson says. 'Whereas in an artificial system in a tank … from that crystal clear water, you'll often end up with a muddy-tasting fish.' While Anderson refrains from discussing the environmental woes facing the Tasmanian salmon industry, the contrasts are obvious. Farmed salmon are fed ground-up wild fish – putting pressure on other ecosystems such as Antarctica – and antibiotics. Aquna feeds its Murray cod sustainable fish feed made from crops such as lupin, chickpeas and soybean and offcuts from chicken, beef and lamb – and their water quality control means they don't need to use antibiotics. Salmon are farmed in open pens in the sea, releasing effluent into the water. In an unprecedented mortality event this summer, thousands of tonnes of dead salmon washed up on beaches in south-east Tasmania. Murray cod are farmed on land in ponds with no connection to natural waterways, using a relatively small amount of water from the Snowy Hydro scheme that later irrigates land including crops. Salmon is threatening the critically endangered Maugean skate in Macquarie Harbour in western Tasmania. Aquna is helping state governments restock the vulnerable native Murray cod in the Murray-Darling basin. The mass fish kill in Tasmania was caused by a bacterial outbreak against the backdrop of a marine heatwave, a problem that will probably recur as climate change worsens, unless the industry can adapt. Murray cod have evolved to withstand a wide range of temperatures and swings between drought and flood. Aquna co-founder Mathew Ryan says he was drawn to aquaculture because the world needs to increase protein production using fewer resources, and specifically Murray cod because he wanted to stay in the Riverina and provide local jobs. 'Aquaculture was something that always fascinated me because the amount of production that you can get from a hectare of land [used for aquaculture] or from a megalitre of water is quite phenomenal,' Ryan says. Murray cod is technically a perch but has an oily, white flesh like cod – I tried the Aquna product and found it had a delicate flavour and a satisfying meatiness. Some consumers are buying it instead of salmon, while in restaurants it competes with coral trout and Patagonian toothfish. The company now has multiple properties near Griffith, with hatchlings in indoor tanks, juveniles in nursery ponds, and bigger fish in grow-out ponds. Anderson explains the fish have to be kept with others of the same size otherwise the bigger fish will eat or injure the smaller fish. At the grow-out site with ponds dug out of the local clay soil, Ryan estimates 100-200 megalitres of water a year will produce 1000 tonnes of fish. By contrast, it takes 3800-4400 megalitres of water to produce 1000 tonnes of almonds, not including the shells, based on figures from the Almond Board of Australia and analysed by this masthead. The company leans heavily into the sustainability of its operation in its pitch to consumers, marketing its product as fish 'for foodies who care where their fish comes from'. It does have the backing of the Australian Marine Conservation Society's GoodFish guide, which endorses farmed Murray cod from NSW and Victoria as well as farmed barramundi (but not wild caught) from all over Australia. As the salmon industry grapples with social licence not just in Tasmania but around the world, many critics are calling for the fish to be farmed on land. Industry group Salmon Tasmania has rejects this as fanciful, saying it would require too much land, water and energy and be five to 10 times more expensive. Independent aquaculture experts confirm there are significant logistical challenges. 'There is no single company with a major salmon farming initiative on land that is profitable, so it is, as yet, an undeveloped concept,' says Professor Tim Dempster, an expert in marine biology and aquaculture at Deakin University. That's not the case for other species. Land-based aquaculture is the dominant form of fish farming globally, practised for centuries, especially in Asia. But is it more sustainable? The main knock-on effect of farming salmon in the sea in Tasmania is the effluent that pollutes the marine environment. Dempster says New Zealand only avoids this problem because the industry is much smaller and more spread out. In the salmon-producing countries of the northern hemisphere, such as Canada, Norway and Scotland, the main environmental concern is lice from farmed fish infecting wild salmon and reducing stocks, Dempster says. Canada has decided to remove open-net salmon farming from British Columbia by June 2029 and told the industry it must transition to land-based systems. Dempster doubts this will happen – he says the industry will probably move elsewhere. Norway is experimenting with farming salmon onshore, but it is not a model for Tasmania because it is releasing the untreated seawater back out into the fjords, with the goal to direct the water to places where lice are least likely to infest wild fish. There is also a fully self-contained approach – a 'recirculating aquaculture system' where the water is treated and reused. Atlantic Sapphire has spent $US1 billion ($1.55 billion) since 2011 pursuing this in Florida and is still bleeding money. Farming salmon on land removes some environmental harms, but it is vastly more carbon intensive – both to build the tanks, and maintain the cool, clear water with high oxygen levels that salmon require. Dempster says a salmon pen in the ocean in Tasmania might contain 50,000 cubic litres of water and produce 500 tonnes of fish. Salmon production in the state is 75,000 tonnes a year, according to Salmon Tasmania, so the volumes of water are vast. Dempster says there are about 200 species globally that are farmed on land – mostly freshwater fish that can cope with lower water quality and higher temperatures, and don't require wild fish in their diet. (Marine fish need a source of Omega 3). In Australia, there are several native fish that are suitable. Besides Murray cod there is the perennial pub favourite barramundi, which is both wild caught and farmed in tanks, ponds or occasionally the ocean, throughout Australia and Asia. Dempster says the environmental impacts are small. Loading Globally, most land-based aquaculture around the world is done in tanks, and some of it is not environmentally sustainable at all. 'In some countries, say in China, where they are farming a lot of carp, they pour a lot of fertiliser in to fertilise those water bodies because the carp [eat plankton], and that then leads to that a lot of those nutrients exiting into the environment,' Dempster says. 'It depends on the species, the location and the farming system as to how good that system is for the environment.'
Sydney Morning Herald
09-05-2025
- General
- Sydney Morning Herald
Salmon critics say fish farms should be on land. How it works for Murray cod
The ponds at one of several aquaculture sites near Griffith are rectangles of murky green water fringed with reeds in a flat landscape of orange clay. The pelicans perusing the perimeter and kites circling above see what the untrained human eye cannot – beneath a protective net, the water is teeming with Murray cod. The ponds are part of the operations of Murray Cod Australia, trading as Aquna Sustainable Murray Cod. Chief executive Ross Anderson explains the colour of the water is by design – it's because the staff promote the growth of beneficial native algae. Together with the water plants around the ponds' edges, the algae absorbs the nutrients from the fish poo and releases oxygen into the water by night. This results in less water usage and reduced need to mechanically oxygenate the water; an energy saving. Another benefit: the algae creates a living culture that consumes other byproducts of the fish, preventing the build-up of chemical compounds that change the flavour of the fish. 'It's quite counter-intuitive, but from this muddy, green looking water, you get a clean, white-tasting fish,' Anderson says. 'Whereas in an artificial system in a tank … from that crystal clear water, you'll often end up with a muddy-tasting fish.' While Anderson refrains from discussing the environmental woes facing the Tasmanian salmon industry, the contrasts are obvious. Farmed salmon are fed ground-up wild fish – putting pressure on other ecosystems such as Antarctica – and antibiotics. Aquna feeds its Murray cod sustainable fish feed made from crops such as lupin, chickpeas and soybean and offcuts from chicken, beef and lamb – and their water quality control means they don't need to use antibiotics. Salmon are farmed in open pens in the sea, releasing effluent into the water. In an unprecedented mortality event this summer, thousands of tonnes of dead salmon washed up on beaches in south-east Tasmania. Murray cod are farmed on land in ponds with no connection to natural waterways, using a relatively small amount of water from the Snowy Hydro scheme that later irrigates land including crops. Salmon is threatening the critically endangered Maugean skate in Macquarie Harbour in western Tasmania. Aquna is helping state governments restock the vulnerable native Murray cod in the Murray-Darling basin. The mass fish kill in Tasmania was caused by a bacterial outbreak against the backdrop of a marine heatwave, a problem that will probably recur as climate change worsens, unless the industry can adapt. Murray cod have evolved to withstand a wide range of temperatures and swings between drought and flood. Aquna co-founder Mathew Ryan says he was drawn to aquaculture because the world needs to increase protein production using fewer resources, and specifically Murray cod because he wanted to stay in the Riverina and provide local jobs. 'Aquaculture was something that always fascinated me because the amount of production that you can get from a hectare of land [used for aquaculture] or from a megalitre of water is quite phenomenal,' Ryan says. Murray cod is technically a perch but has an oily, white flesh like cod – I tried the Aquna product and found it had a delicate flavour and a satisfying meatiness. Some consumers are buying it instead of salmon, while in restaurants it competes with coral trout and Patagonian toothfish. The company now has multiple properties near Griffith, with hatchlings in indoor tanks, juveniles in nursery ponds, and bigger fish in grow-out ponds. Anderson explains the fish have to be kept with others of the same size otherwise the bigger fish will eat or injure the smaller fish. At the grow-out site with ponds dug out of the local clay soil, Ryan estimates 100-200 megalitres of water a year will produce 1000 tonnes of fish. By contrast, it takes 3800-4400 megalitres of water to produce 1000 tonnes of almonds, not including the shells, based on figures from the Almond Board of Australia and analysed by this masthead. The company leans heavily into the sustainability of its operation in its pitch to consumers, marketing its product as fish 'for foodies who care where their fish comes from'. It does have the backing of the Australian Marine Conservation Society's GoodFish guide, which endorses farmed Murray cod from NSW and Victoria as well as farmed barramundi (but not wild caught) from all over Australia. As the salmon industry grapples with social licence not just in Tasmania but around the world, many critics are calling for the fish to be farmed on land. Industry group Salmon Tasmania has rejects this as fanciful, saying it would require too much land, water and energy and be five to 10 times more expensive. Independent aquaculture experts confirm there are significant logistical challenges. 'There is no single company with a major salmon farming initiative on land that is profitable, so it is, as yet, an undeveloped concept,' says Professor Tim Dempster, an expert in marine biology and aquaculture at Deakin University. That's not the case for other species. Land-based aquaculture is the dominant form of fish farming globally, practised for centuries, especially in Asia. But is it more sustainable? The main knock-on effect of farming salmon in the sea in Tasmania is the effluent that pollutes the marine environment. Dempster says New Zealand only avoids this problem because the industry is much smaller and more spread out. In the salmon-producing countries of the northern hemisphere, such as Canada, Norway and Scotland, the main environmental concern is lice from farmed fish infecting wild salmon and reducing stocks, Dempster says. Canada has decided to remove open-net salmon farming from British Columbia by June 2029 and told the industry it must transition to land-based systems. Dempster doubts this will happen – he says the industry will probably move elsewhere. Norway is experimenting with farming salmon onshore, but it is not a model for Tasmania because it is releasing the untreated seawater back out into the fjords, with the goal to direct the water to places where lice are least likely to infest wild fish. There is also a fully self-contained approach – a 'recirculating aquaculture system' where the water is treated and reused. Atlantic Sapphire has spent $US1 billion ($1.55 billion) since 2011 pursuing this in Florida and is still bleeding money. Farming salmon on land removes some environmental harms, but it is vastly more carbon intensive – both to build the tanks, and maintain the cool, clear water with high oxygen levels that salmon require. Dempster says a salmon pen in the ocean in Tasmania might contain 50,000 cubic litres of water and produce 500 tonnes of fish. Salmon production in the state is 75,000 tonnes a year, according to Salmon Tasmania, so the volumes of water are vast. Dempster says there are about 200 species globally that are farmed on land – mostly freshwater fish that can cope with lower water quality and higher temperatures, and don't require wild fish in their diet. (Marine fish need a source of Omega 3). In Australia, there are several native fish that are suitable. Besides Murray cod there is the perennial pub favourite barramundi, which is both wild caught and farmed in tanks, ponds or occasionally the ocean, throughout Australia and Asia. Dempster says the environmental impacts are small. Loading Globally, most land-based aquaculture around the world is done in tanks, and some of it is not environmentally sustainable at all. 'In some countries, say in China, where they are farming a lot of carp, they pour a lot of fertiliser in to fertilise those water bodies because the carp [eat plankton], and that then leads to that a lot of those nutrients exiting into the environment,' Dempster says. 'It depends on the species, the location and the farming system as to how good that system is for the environment.'
ABC News
01-05-2025
- Business
- ABC News
The Greens want to move salmon farms from water to land. The Tasmanian industry says it can't be done
Tasmania's salmon industry — a $1.3 billion operation concentrated mostly in the state's south — has become a contentious political topic this federal election campaign. It produced almost 75,000 tonnes of Atlantic salmon in the 2022-23 financial year, and those in support of the industry argue it's an important economic contributor to the state, while providing employment to regional communities. Photo shows Salmon farm location map 4 Those black, circular things floating in the water off the Tasmanian coastline? They are salmon farms. Here is how many there are — and who owns them. The industry, made up of three foreign-owned companies — Tassal, Huon and Petuna — has recently found itself at the centre of several environmental incidents, and has played a key role in a last-minute In February, Rotting fish and Not long after, video released of live salmon being placed into bins with dead fish resulted in Tasmania's salmon industry operates mostly in the state's south in channels and bays. ( ABC News: Luke Bowden ) The industry has been criticised by conservation and environmental groups for years over its impact on the To mitigate the impacts to marine areas, environmental groups such as Neighbours of Fish Farming (NOFF) have argued that commercially-farmed salmon could be moved to land-based operations. They say land-based farming also minimises the spread of disease, reducing the need for antibiotics, and removes noise and light pollution for coastal communities. In Iceland, grow-out tanks by land-based salmon company Laxey — each measuring 28m in diameter and 13m in height — can hold up to 5,000 cubic metres of seawater. ( Laxey ) It's a strategy the salmon industry strongly opposes, arguing the move to 100 per cent land-based farming would be economically, logistically and politically unrealistic. The push to land-based salmon farming In Tasmania, commercially grown salmon starts in freshwater land-based hatcheries, before being moved to saltwater open-pen farms on maturity. Land-based farming uses Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RAS), a controlled environment that reuses water and limits the movement of fish. On Wednesday, Tasmanian Greens Senator Nick McKim announced a new policy to force salmon farms out of the state's coastal waters and in to land-based farms. In his announcement, Senator McKim said "for too long, the salmon corporations have treated Tasmania's oceans like a dumping ground". ( ABC News: Jake Grant ) The Greens' proposal includes $50 million of Commonwealth funding for environmental remediation, independent monitoring of salmon farms for compliance with animal cruelty and environmental standards, and a "jobs transition package" for Macquarie Harbour workers. Under the policy, the salmon industry would self-fund its transition to land-based farming. "This is about transitioning the industry onshore, getting the industry out of Macquarie Harbour, to give the Maugean skate a fighting chance of survival," Mr McKim said. The Greens have not put a timeline on the completion of the transition. In April, Laxey completed its first salmon transfer to land-based grow-out tanks in Iceland. ( Laxey ) Photo shows Large ship next to a fish farm pen in the ocean. Foreign companies now own Tasmania's big three salmon farming operations. Here's a look at how industrial fish farms are run overseas — and the problems operators have encountered when there's opposition to their practices. Tasmania's salmon industry is regulated by the state government. Mr McKim said there were "plenty of levers that can be pulled" at a state level to instigate the transition. "There's no doubt that the powers exist to transition the industry on shore and to force it to transition on shore," he said. The Tasmanian government has not supported the Greens' policy. "They clearly have a focus on shutting down Tasmanian industry. They are anti-everything," Minister Felix Ellis said. Independent federal candidate for Franklin and Climate-200-backed anti-salmon campaigner, Peter George, has also flagged land-based aquaculture as an environmentally positive alternative. Mr George took leave from his role as NOFF's president to challenge federal Fisheries Minister Julie Collins in the federal election. In his campaign material, Peter George says "Labor and Liberal … are putting corporate interests and overseas profit before the people of Franklin". ( ABC News: Ebony ten Broeke ) Why the Tasmanian industry says it can't work Luke Martin, outgoing chief executive of the industry's peak body Salmon Tasmania, dismissed the case for 100-per-cent land-based farming as "voodoo economics". "It will never get to a point where you do the entire production period, the entire two-year life cycle of the fish, on land," Mr Martin said. Mr Martin says he doesn't think land-based salmon farming would be economically viable. ( ABC News: Luke Bowden ) He said large amounts of water, energy and land would be required to transition the industry, requirements he deemed unfeasible. Mr Martin also argued that the cost of moving the industry to land-based farms was significant and would drive up the price of the product, making it economically unviable. "We're talking about giant artificial ponds, enormous tanks built into the Tasmanian landscape — which community would be lining up to put their hand up in Tasmania?" he said. " It is just not economically possible. I don't believe it's environmentally feasible and certainly the engineering considerations are very complex as well. " Thousands turned out to Hobart's parliament lawns to protest the environmental damage caused by marine fish farms. ( ABC News: Jake Grant ) However, he said the industry was investigating how it could expand the amount of time fish spend on land before being transferred to marine pens — with an eye to expanding operations. "The future of the industry lies with a combination of partial on-land farming for the small fish, where the smolt [young fish] would spend around 12 months of their life," he said. "And then secure leases in deeper water, into more open water areas like outer Storm Bay, potentially off the coast." Mr Martin said if land-based farming did become feasible, he believed the industry would move closer to bigger mainland markets to minimise costs. Has it worked elsewhere? Other commercially grown finfish, such as barramundi, are farmed at land-based facilities in Queensland and the Northern Territory at far smaller volumes than Atlantic salmon. Photo shows Large ship next to a fish farm pen in the ocean. Foreign companies now own Tasmania's big three salmon farming operations. Here's a look at how industrial fish farms are run overseas — and the problems operators have encountered when there's opposition to their practices. However, land-based commercial Atlantic salmon farms do exist, and have been implemented at small scale in many countries — most notably in the US, Canada, Japan and Europe. The scale of production at these land-based locations is far smaller than their ocean counterparts. The largest example of land-based RAS aquaculture is Florida-based company, Atlantic Sapphire, which raises salmon in a "bluehouse", a climate-controlled indoor facility that minimises the risk of disease and environmental contamination. But profitability remains a challenge. In 2023, the company harvested just over 1,500 tonnes, a decrease of about 700 tonnes from the previous year. Atlantic Sapphire is the largest global onshore aquaculture company in the world. ( Supplied: Atlantic Sapphire ) Canada is the world's fourth-largest producer of Atlantic salmon, with the majority of its industry farming in west coast waters off Vancouver Island in British Columbia. It is attempting to transition part of its billion-dollar industry to land-based practices. In June last year, the Canadian government promised to ban marine salmon farming in British Columbia by 2029, citing environmental concerns and the need to protect wild salmon populations. The plan has left the region's peak-industry body, the British Columbia Salmon Farmers Association, concerned and doubtful it can be achieved without significant job losses. Its executive director, Brian Kingzett, told the ABC the estimated cost to transition the industry was more than 2 billion Canadian dollars. "We had a political decision, not based in science," Mr Kingzett said. "Much like Tasmania, we're largely a remote island. Our salmon farms are in rural areas, we don't have the power grid or the land to support on-land aquaculture."
