• Australia does not have a wonderful record regarding species extinction! In fact we are one of the worst!  However, many of these extinctions were because of a lack of awareness of the plight of the creatures. Now, however, we are facing the imminent extinction of a thoroughly researched, foretold and long-time predicted extinction.
  • To make matters worse it is the Maugean skate,  a stingray-like creature that is as old as the dinosaurs, 'a thylacine of the sea', with Australia's Macquarie Harbour, on Tasmania's remote west coast, part of a celebrated World Heritage Area, its  only refuge left on Earth.     
  • And we know exactly why this extinction is happening- and has been happening for a long time - with the support not only of corporate greed - but also Australian governments at the highest levels!
  • Do you happen to be planning to have a nice piece of Tasmanian Salmon or Ocean Trout tonight? Supporting the Tasmanian economy and west coast fishermen?  Well, think again - because if your fish isn't 'wild caught' it's farmed in Macquarie Harbour and the results of that farming are not only killing the Maugean skate and every other marine animal in Macquarie Harbour but gradually destroying the entire marine ecosystem.
  • And if it's not 'wild caught' then your fish has grown in a 'fish sewer' where the breaking down of the fish excrement has depleted the oxygen levels in the water so much that marine creatures are increasingly unable to survive:  '... marine creatures like the Maugean skate are literally being choked to death in their home that we have turned into a giant toilet'  [Dr Leonardo Guida, Australian Marine Conservation Society] - and previous and current  Tasmanian & Australian governments have permitted the damage to continue and increase.
  • You probably think you are supporting the Tasmanian economy and the fisherfolk of west Tasmania?  No! Not at all.  There are, according to the Tasmanian government's own figures 81 Tasmanians are full-time employed in the fish-farming industry in Macquarie Harbour!
  • And NONE of the three companies that control the fish-farming industry and are responsible for the increasing pollution and damage are Tasmanian or Australian!! 
  • 'Salmon Tasmania', the logo proudly displayed on our PM's vis-vest when he visited the west coast, is the 'front organisation of the three 100% foreign-owned companies that comprise Tasmania's salmon industry' . The first of these is Cook Aquaculture with the brand name of 'Tassal'. This company supplies certified 'responsibly farmed'  fish to Woolworths and Coles. The same company has used 60,000 seal bombs - explosive devices that can shatter bone and kill seals and other marine creatures - to protect their fish.  As Richard Flanagan says, when we buy Tassal fish, 'it's not even greenwashing- it's just duped Australians paying for an extinction at the checkout'  ['Labor's First Extinction' The Monthly, May 2024, p20]
  • The second is Sealord, a company half-owned by ex-whaling Japanese company Nissui. 
  • The third, is the biggest, JBS 'Huon Aquaculture', known locally as the 'Brazilian butchers'- and a company that is a 'global byword for bribery and corruption' whose owner is quoted as saying 'corruption is the rule of the game'. JBS has been linked to price fixing, worker exploitation, tax evasion,  Amazon deforestation and with a carbon footprint bigger than that of Italy. There is clear evidence of JBS's 'financial support' of Tasmanian governments and politicians.
  • And don't think for one moment that your purchase of Tasmanian farmed salmon is supporting the Tasmanian or Australian economies!!  While the companies receive large subsidies they together pay less than $1 million/year for licenses and leases to pollute Macquarie Harbour.  According to Australian Tax Office data while earning $7 billion income over 9 years till 2022, much of it from Australian $$s- the companies paid $51 million tax - and nothing for 2022-2024!!
  • All the three companies are interested in is making maximum profits from exploiting and polluting Australian Heritage waters to send to their international shareholders! They have no interest in protecting the waters of Macquarie Harbour or the fragile ecosystems and creatures that inhabit them - certainly they don't care a fig for the Maugean skate or its continued existence! 
  • In 2017-18 Summer the predicted inevitable catastrophe happened! More than 1.4 million salmon and an unknown number of wildfish and other marine creatures, died! 'The fish slowly suffocated to death swimming in a poison toilet of rotting food, fish excrement and noxious gases from mounds of filth below'!
  • Louise Cherie from the Government's Marine Farming Review Panel viewed the confidential video footage of the sea floor below the salmon farming nets. She said to Flanagan, 'If Australians were able to see this video THEY WOULD NEVER EAT SALMON AGAIN .... it was the direct  result of prolonged mismanagement [read by state and federal governments and the international fish farming companies] and gross failure to respond to the issues of concern'.  (p.20) .    

  • SO! Next time you decide to buy any Tasmanian fish, make sure it is 'wild caught' - not one that has been raised in waters depleted of oxygen, contaminated by fish poo, been shot with antibiotics, and protected by destructive explosive seal bombs: an environment in which the prehistoric unique creature of the Maugean skate is slowly dying - not from our ignorance - but because of our knowing culpability and shame.  

    * And don't believe the ads in the Supermarket chains that tell you their salmon has been 'responsibly sourced and sustainable'!!          How can any industry be 'sustainable' when it is causing the extinction of species?!

    * Flanagan's final comment:  If our governments and politicians can't save just one species, 'then how can we look to them to save our own?

    * NOTE: Oter countries in the world - Argentina, the Falkland Islands and Canada - have banned sea-based fish farming.

    [David Smith, for Electrifying Bradfield Inc.]

    ** And a final postscript - just in case you think I am being critical of only one side of politics - I should add that Flanagan has significant criticism of Lyall Howard [John Howard's nephew] one of the Right wing 'Green Mafia', lobbyists of the fossil fuel companies that were influential in shaping in the 2000s the then Australian government's fossil-fuel stance on climate change issues, and who, as Chair of the Salmon Corporations, Flanagan says has overseen the gradual destruction of Macquarie  Harbour backing comments like those of CEO Luke Martin, who said that his 'employers were happy to extinguish a globally unique species and destroy a World Heritage Area for its profits'.    

    [Source: Richard Flanagan,  'Labor's First Extinction' , The Monthly, May 2024, pp 16-28.