Environmental organisation Bob Brown Foundation has condemned the toxic fish factory industry in Tasmania after another mass fish death episode.
“It beggars belief how many hundreds of thousands of fish need to die before Tasmania cleans up its disgraceful toxic salmon industry,” Bob Brown Foundation Fish Farm Campaigner Rebecca Howarth said.
Shocking reports of 60,000 salmon dying at Petuna’s Rowella lease in Tasmania’s north, is the latest in a string of mass salmon deaths at industrial fish farms.
“This is at least the sixty-ninth reported mass fish death since 2019 and demonstrates that Tasmanian coastal waters are not suitable for an expanding salmon industry in the face of warming waters and the climate crisis. This is an animal welfare disaster,” said Rebecca Howarth.
“Tasmania’s three salmon companies have reported 68 mass fish death incidences since 2019. Many of these events have been caused by low oxygen linked to high water temperature, and/or disease. As Tasmania’s waters continue to warm on the trajectory they are predicted to, Atlantic salmon mortality events will undoubtedly become more common.”
“Change to this destructive salmon industry is urgently needed. The frequency of these mass fish death events is alarming and penalties for such animal cruelty are non-existent. Salmon are sentient beings and experience stress and pain. They suffer distress as they die from suffocation en masse,” concluded Rebecca Howarth.