Tasmania’s peak environment body is restating its calls for public reporting of mass fish kills in the state’s waters, after an image of a “morts” bin was leaked.
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It comes after the Greens raised allegations in State Parliament this week that 1200 fish were supposedly dying each day at Tassal’s Dover and Tasman salmon farm leases due to Pilchard Orthomyxovirus (POMV), a naturally occurring virus.
The company has denied an increase in POMV affecting its stock, saying it was expecting good growth and harvest volumes for the current year, partly due to the way it has managed POMV in the past.
On Thursday, Environment Tasmania released a photograph taken at a fish farm lease in the state’s South-East recently, which shows a bin full of dead salmon.
“We have received … reports of increasingly steady salmon deaths over the last month in the state’s South-East,” Environment Tasmania strategy director Laura Kelly said.
A Tassal spokesman did not confirm whether or not the image had originated from any of its own sites.
“As we have already stated, we are responding to minor outbreaks of POMV with juvenile fish loss the lowest experienced in three years at 0.5 per cent,” the spokesman said.
“All farmers have to deal with biological challenges from time to time – POMV is one of those.”
The spokesman stressed that humans were not susceptible to the virus.
