MEDIA RELEASE – Winter salmon mortalities worse than last year, 17 July 2026
Statement by Peter George, Independent MP for Franklin:
The EPA’s latest revelations of salmon mortalities for the first half of this year reveal on-going carnage in the industry’s diseased salmon cages.
Despite the use of massive doses of the antibiotic, florfenicol, that closed nearby fisheries last summer, the EPA’s figures reveal that 13,675 tonnes of salmon died in their cages between January and June 2026.
https://epa.tas.gov.au/business-industry/regulation/salmon-aquaculture/salmon-waste-management
Rather than things getting better with the salmon industry’s use of massive doses of florfenicol in diseased cages, the rate of mortalities is now worse than it was during the first big disease outbreak in the summer of 2025.
Despite the introduction of florfenicol, the rate or salmon deaths during autumn and winter this year is markedly worse than in the same period of 2025.
Thirteen thousand tonnes of dead fish in just six months reveals once more that Tasmania’s warming waters there’s no place for the salmon industry to survive this state
The industry is now so riddled with disease that cannot be eradicated, the only way for it to survive is to use increasing amounts of antibiotics like folorfenicol with the risk that poses to human health, to wild fisheries, marine life and the health of waterways.
Despite the tonnes of florfenicol dispersed in diseased salmon pens over summer, the rate of mortalities this autumn and winter is even higher than during the massive 2025 outbreak when mortalities trailed off during the cooler months.
In March this year, the industry reported 3,820 tonnes of dead salmon (3,395 in 2025)
In April this year 1,903 tonnes of mortalities (1,337 in 2025)
In May this year 1,220 tonnes of mortalities (828 in 2025)
In June this year 1,350 tonnes of mortalities (634 in 2025)
The industry needs to explain how it intends to manage the increasing mortalities without damaging Tasmania’s important wild fisheries and without massive doses of antibiotics.
The short term answer is to destock all its diseased pens, reduce the density of fish in pens generally.
The long term answer is to get out of Tasmanian waterways and move on land.
That’s the choice: Move on land or leave.
