Patagonia

Back to surfers – one who has helped to bring the fight against Salmon Tasmania to a national audience is Marti Paradisis. Living and surfing in the southeastern communities affected by the pens, Marti’s view is that of an ordinary ocean-goer – albeit one who has achieved extraordinary things as a pioneering heavy wave athlete. Mainland surfers know who he is, and they respect his voice.

The current expansion in Storm Bay, he explains, is at the entry to a series of bays like Frederick Henry Bay: big, populated coastal communities that revolve around the coast. Surfers, fishers, people who appreciate the pristine place they live in. As Marti puts it, “Their whole lives change with these farms.”

“I’ve seen the expansion of the industry,” he says. “Apart from being an eyesore, the biggest thing is seeing how it affects the rocks, the sand, the sediment in the water. These beautiful pristine bays and beaches; the farms go in and the beaches get rank residue over the sand. The rocks turn slippery. The water loses clarity, gets algal, and you don’t enjoy being in it.”

“I just see it with my own eyes, and I’m not the only one,” says Marti. “People down the (D’Entrecasteaux) Channel, where the expansion’s been, they’ve seen it. Fishermen say it’s affected catches at spots like Nubeena and Port Arthur.”

Marti Paradisis is the living embodiment of the local rejection that Flanagan and George talk of. “No-one eats the shit down here,” he declares. “I know people who work in the industry, and some who got out because they disagreed with the practices. You can’t trust what these companies are saying. With their track records? I can’t see them not bullshitting us. They’re not locally owned. The people who run the companies have no connection to the area, let alone to nature. Why would they care?”

“Don’t buy the shit,” he says. “And if people are serving it in a restaurant, make a point about it. They won’t have any idea otherwise.”

Despite everything written here, activist groups are not pressing for the abolition of Tasmanian salmon farming. Although sea-based farming is being banned in other parts of the world such as Canada and Argentina, what Tasmanians want to see – set out in a foundational document called the Dennes Point Declaration – is fundamental change in farming practices. They want salmon out of the sea and onto land. “It’s not perfect,” says Richard Flanagan, “and it needs good and independent regulation, but it is a compromise that won’t destroy the marine environment. It’s the compromise Tasmanians are willing to accept at this point. Land-based is taking off world-wide.”

That’s an environmental aim. But even if achieved, it doesn’t undo the harm that’s been done to the body politic, which is a separate battle, entangled in this one. The stranglehold that the salmon industry currently has on Tasmania’s democracy must not be taken as hopelessly entrenched.

We know from historical examples that the power structures behind destructive, outdated industries can be deposed. Old growth forestry and hydro both claimed the appearance of indispensability at one time or another. In the early 2000s, then-Premier Paul Lennon made an obsessive personal crusade of championing the Gunns pulp mill project. Two thousand Tasmanian families would be lifted from poverty by it, he claimed. It’s remarkable how these profit-grabs are sold as the cure for Tasmanian disadvantage. They’ve all come and gone, and the systemic problems remain.
But change won’t come easily. “Tasmania’s a democracy that’s hollowed out,” Richard Flanagan says. “This will get really ugly. They’re fighting it differently now, doubling down.”

Peter George combines the scepticism of a journalist with a refreshing brand of optimism. This will take years, he says. “The ordinary population are onside, but the powers that be, including bureaucracy, government and industry, are tied up in a Gordian knot and we need to find the loose threads.”

These are his solutions.

Firstly, federalism – the idea that making a Tasmanian problem into a national one, as the Franklin Dam campaign did in the 1980s, circumvents the local power structures that prevent change. Secondly, litigation. Politicians who stubbornly sit on their hands, as the federal Environment Minister is doing, can be compelled by courts to do their jobs. Thirdly, in George’s words, “We all need to make sufficient noise that even the industry understands it’s over.” That third pillar is the logic behind the dramatic ‘EATING SALMON? KILLING TASMANIA’ billboards. And lastly, as Marti Paradisis does, George favours undermining the companies’ market by working on restaurants, supermarkets and consumers.

Another cure for despair is that you never know what the turning point is. Bob Brown, Christine Milne, Richard Flanagan and others who have spent their lives in environmental activism, all maintain that you just don’t know what will turn an issue. “It suddenly comes out of nowhere,” says George.

“They undoubtedly have the power, the money, and the influence,” says Flanagan. “They have Albanese and Dutton and every other muppet on speed dial. But Tasmanians love their island home. Over generations Tasmanians have again and again fought long, hard battles to protect it. We know how to fight, we don’t give up and we win. The salmon corporations’ greed is great, but our love is stronger. And our love will prevail.”

These articles have not covered every disturbing corner of the salmon industry. Such as: that it takes fish protein from developing nations to make feed pellets to put a gourmet product on Australian tables. And that seals are routinely shot with beanbag rounds to terrify them away from pens. And that salmon flesh contains antibiotics and dyes. And the shocking evidence linking salmon hatchery pollution in Hobart’s drinking water catchment to growing rates of motor neurone disease in Hobart. There simply isn’t enough room here to explore all the ways in which this industry has made itself a parasite, and Tasmania its host.

Salmon farming is just the latest front in the long history of Tasmania’s destruction-for-jobs swindles. When we see it for what it is, an ugly moment of state capture, we’ll be ashamed that we ever tolerated it.

Captives Going in Circles is a three-part series examining the environmental, social and political effects of the Tasmanian salmon industry. Salmon Tasmania did not respond to a request for comment.