Book review: Acclaimed Australian author takes on local ‘salmon barons’
MELBOURNE — Large, healthy salmon leaping out of crystal-clear water is the kind of imagery the major fish farming companies in Tasmania, an island state of Australia, have worked hard to convey. But the glossy business brochures claiming the highest standards of quality, safety and sustainability do not hold up to scrutiny, according to renowned Australian author Richard Flanagan, whose latest book catalogs a trail of environmental destruction and problematic practices in the industry.
Published in April, “Toxic: The Rotting Underbelly of the Tasmanian Salmon Industry,” is already in its fourth printing in Australia, where salmon is a popular staple. Flanagan is best known for his fiction, including “The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” which drew on his father’s experience as a Japanese prisoner of war and won the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2014.
“Toxic” is also a personal issue for the Tasmanian-born writer, who has witnessed the damaging impacts of the salmon farming industry over the years from the doorstep of his small shack on Bruny Island, the idyllic second home where he has habitually gone to write, just south of Hobart, the state capital.
What began as a small-scale farm in the waters across from his shack in 2002 gradually grew “larger, noisier and filthier,” Flanagan writes, with huge ships and machinery brought in to work around the clock. Soon the water turned brown, the sea grass began to recede, and then the fish disappeared.
“In the end, you couldn’t even catch flathead, the most common sort of recreational fish,” Flanagan tells Nikkei Asia. “It was shocking. And this slow, rolling destruction started becoming omnipresent.”
Workers check a pond, which can hold tens of thousands of fish, during a daily inspection of the nets at a salmon farm in Hideaway Bay, south of the Tasmanian capital of Hobart.
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Speaking from his Hobart home, Flanagan details the mix of corporate greed and poor regulation that has combined to threaten entire ecosystems where the huge floating farms are located, including along Tasmania’s southeast coast and the large inland waterway of Macquarie Harbour, part of a UNESCO World Heritage site, to the west.
“I started talking to different people [for the book] and each person I talked to, whether it was a commercial fisherman, a surfer, a scientist, somebody involved in the industry, a worker, they would have a shocking story,” he says. “I was stunned by the scale of it … And the real tragedy of this is that the industry that is trading on the beauty and wonder of Tasmania is the same industry that is actually destroying it.”
Commercial salmon farming in Tasmania is big business. Worth an estimated 1 billion Australian dollars a year ($754 million), the state’s farmed Atlantic salmon is the most valuable fisheries product in Australia. The three major companies involved, Tassal, Huon Aquaculture and Petuna, produced more than 61,000 metric tons of salmon in 2017-18, according to The Australia Institute think tank, and there are plans to double production by 2030 — a red flag for critics of the industry’s checkered past.
A typical display of salmon varieties in an Australian supermarket is dominated by Australian-produced salmon with some imports. (Photo by David Hopkins)
“Toxic” vividly describes the floating pens as “swirling vortexes of filth,” where tens of thousands of salmon are packed like “battery hens,” sometimes starved of oxygen and battling disease. The massive discharge from the pens, Flanagan writes, including chemicals and tons of fish feces, has destroyed marine habitats and even threatened Hobart’s drinking water.
In Macquarie Harbour, all marine fauna within at least a 500-meter radius of a Tassal-run salmon farm was found to be dead, according to data obtained by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in early 2017. Over the following year, more than 1.25 million salmon died due to low oxygen levels, Flanagan writes, and the Macquarie Harbour ecosystem, home to species such as the endangered maugean skate, found only in Tasmania, was left devastated.
More common marine life, such as seals, also face risks. Seals are a problem for the industry because they damage nets, eat salmon and generally interfere with farming practices. In response, companies have used methods that Flanagan describes as “more suggestive of suppressing a civil uprising than responsible environmental management.”
These include shooting at seals using “beanbag rounds,” a cloth sock filled with lead pellets, or by throwing so-called seal bombs into the water, which have been known to kill fish and maim marine mammals. In 2016, salmon farmers used over 39,000 of the latter, Flanagan writes, but the potential harm they are causing is unknown.
“Toxic” vividly describes the floating salmon pens as “swirling vortexes of filth,” where tens of thousands of salmon are packed like “battery hens,” sometimes starved of oxygen and battling disease.
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Another unknown is the potential implications for consumers of the eccentric list of ingredients that make up the diet of farmed salmon. This includes ethoxyquin, developed by Monsanto of the U.S. as a pesticide in the 1950s, which is used as a stabilizer in fishmeal. Potentially carcinogenic, it is banned in human food. A synthetic chemical called astaxanthin — made from petrochemicals — is also fed to the fish to produce the pink color that wild salmon naturally acquire by eating crustaceans that in turn feed on algae.
Another little-known component of fishmeal is industrial chicken waste, which Flanagan refers to as “the macerated remains of the parts of chicken that nobody wants to eat and formerly went into waste streams, such as the mashed-up skulls, beaks, claws [and] guts of chickens, along with their feathers.”
He adds: “That’s what you’re eating when you’re eating salmon.”
The salmon industry has emerged from scandals before, and seems to retain a magnetic power over local politicians, who champion it as a source of economic gain and much-needed employment. Those opposing it have often faced repercussions, as Flanagan outlines, including legal threats and intimidation. When one young woman at a public meeting spoke out about the noise pollution from salmon farms near her home, Flanagan writes, dead wallabies with slit throats were left in her front garden.
Top: In his book, Flanagan describes how a synthetic chemical called astaxanthin — made from petrochemicals — is fed to farmed salmon to produce the pink color that wild salmon naturally acquire by eating crustaceans that in turn feed on algae. (Getty Images) Bottom: A seal rests on a float at a Tasmanian salmon farm. To prevent the sea mammals from damaging nets, eating salmon and generally interfering with farming practices, companies have used methods that Flanagan describes as “more suggestive of suppressing a civil uprising than responsible environmental management.” (Reuters)
Will the release of “Toxic,” and the attendant publicity, change anything? Flanagan remains hopeful. He sees new community campaigns and heightened national awareness, and believes that salmon sales are on the decline. Some community groups are pressuring supermarket chains to take action in line with their rhetoric on sustainability, while others are simply buying and distributing copies of “Toxic.”
The salmon farming industry in Tasmania said it welcomes robust discussion, but appears to be digging in. “[The] industry is always striving to do better for the environment and our communities, and feedback is an important part of that,” a spokesperson for the Tasmanian Salmonid Growers Association, which represents the industry, told Nikkei.
“[But] debate must allow all sides to comment [and] more importantly, use science-based evidence. … Tasmanian salmon is a global leader, independently accredited by organizations like the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, Best Aquaculture Practices and the RSPCA [Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals].”
A worker inspects a salmon fillet at a processing plant in Dover, south of Hobart.
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The concerned community members, scientists and others who feature in “Toxic” are not seeking to destroy the Tasmanian salmon industry, but wish to see it become genuinely sustainable. To achieve this goal, many support a transition to land-based salmon farming, a practice that is seen as more environmentally friendly and is prominent in countries such as Norway.
Flanagan says the truth about the industry will eventually overcome the marketing spin, jargon and obfuscation that has until now continued to underwrite it.
“Your average consumer thinks that when they buy their little piece of salmon in heat shrink plastic that this has been hooked by some burly bearded fellow in a balaclava off the back of an artisanal wooden fishing boat. And the reality is, this is a very synthetic product created in massive floating feedlots,” he says.
“The choice the Tasmanian [state] government has to make is whether they’re going to allow this industry to die on their watch just because of the salmon barons’ greed, or [whether] they’re going to step in and try and do something.”
“Toxic: The Rotting Underbelly of the Tasmanian Salmon Industry” by Richard Flanagan is published in Australia by Penguin Books
