I’ve spent the last couple of days with Phil Sawyer visiting Port Lincoln and other interesting places at the tip of the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia.
They have had a bit of rain.
We drove down to Sleaford Bay on Friday.
Its a rugged landscape.
Some of the first settlers were whalers.
Here’s a 300 kg bubber pot once used by Sleaford Bay whalers to extract oil.
More recently Port Lincoln residents have got rich fatten tuna for Japanese markets.
These pilchard will be fed to tuna that are held in cages in the sea to the south of Port Lincoln.
Prawn trawlers, abalone and crayfish fishermen still operate out of Port Lincoln. I watched a procession of about 20 prawn trawlers leave the harbour Friday night. They will be out for 11 days.
This is a photograph of some of the rigging on the boats in the afternoon, before they departed.
The Mayor suggested to me yesterday that Port Lincoln would be a good place for a wind-powered desalination plant.
There are already wind turbines in the area. This picture was taken yesterday from Coffin Bay National Park looking south.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Yes, lovely place Jen. Bit cold for some of us desert types. Rains for 6 months of the year – then the winter sets in.
But seriously now, I have always wondered where they source the pilchers for the tuna farms. Anyone know?
Correction – pilchards.
Hi Helen,
Tim Lowe (2001) writes about one of two ‘recent’ pilchard massive dieoff events which effected not only our ‘own’ pilchards, but off course all that ate them, including many little penguins:
“After analysis, flesh of the dead fish was found to harbour a herpes virus of a kind never seen before. All the evidence suggests it entered Australia in frozen pilchards or fish meal fed to sea-caged bluefin tuna in South Australia. Each year Australia tuna farms import more than 10,000 tonnes of seafood from Japan, Russia, Peru, Chile and California – all without quarantine inspection.”
I know the captive animal industry (ie zoos and aquaria) uses WA pilchards, but whether this extends to the fish farms I am not sure. Sorry, I haven’t bothered to search the net for any additional info.
Libby: I tracking down the fate of the old Triabunna fish meal plant in Tasmania I came across this interesting doc.
http://www.sardi.sa.gov.au/pdfserve/aquafin/annual_reports/2005_2006_aquafin_crc_annual_report.pdf
Too big a document Gavin. I’ll bust my internet account limit downloading too many such 98 page documents – then have to pay stiff excess fees. How about summarising what is relevant to the topic? Thanks.
On the fish die-out a few years ago, I saw it. Small, glistening dead fish washed up along the beaches. Looked pretty from a distance; not so pretty close up.
But do we know where that virus came from? If it had never been seen before, how can we know?
And did it actually affect the tuna in the farms?
I never heard that it did.
Helen: In notes on the Port Lincoln based sardine fishery there are boats with nightly catches from 20 – 120 t. “Despite a recent quota cut, it remains Australia’s biggest fishery by volume”. A key statement follows –
“The rationale for directing as much of the catch as possible to the seafood sector is irresistible. As tuna feed, the fish are worth perhaps 45c/kg to the catchers; as seafood, $3/kg”
Its been a while since I tasted our canned sardines from WA in a trial to establish the local product in the supermarket but I recall they were about half the price of King Oscar and each fish was at least twice the size of the Norwegian cheapest line, hardly appetizing on a piece of toast.
I saw a mass “pilchard” beach stranding in 1950’s with waves of predators likewise killed in long rows behind them. Each species were arranged by size with the incoming tide. Authorities thought the problem then was anything but the nearby untreated sewage outfall.
I understood the infection was blamed on a import of NZ fish?
I accepted this as truth, can’t remember where read it though.
fluff4
I decided to find out where the pilchards (sardines)for the tuna farms came from. Mostly from the gulf waters near Pt Lincoln and from Kangaroo Island waters. Some are fed fresh to the tuna, while the rest are snap frozen. A smaller percentage is imported from South America, I believe.
Regarding the fish mortality along southern Australian coasts in 1998, no direct link established between that and imported pilchards. In other words, while the herpes virus was found on the dead fish, it was not conclusively ascertained that this was the cause of the deaths, nor where it could have originated from. The jury is still out.
I have been given two references:
Fisheries WA: Impacts of mortality possibly due to herpes virus on pilchards along the South Coast of Western Australia 1998-99. DJ Caughan, RW Mitchell, & SJ Blight.
Ward et.al. 1999 Pilchard Mortality events Final Report Joint Scientific Pilchard Working Group. A South Australian Fisheries report, I understand.
Hi Helen,
I followed up on your query today … yes, most of the pilchards caught within 3-4 hours of Port Lincoln. Population has recovered from the disease of 10 years or so years ago that killed 50-70 percent of the population. I have lots more information and photographs … will upload once I download/transcribe the tape and photographs … once back in Brisbane.
Hi Jennifer
Im still very interested in the real cause of the pilchard die offs that occured in the 90s
as I was a pilchard fisherman until the 98/99 virus sent me broke..
Their is no doubt the virus was imported into our once clean pristene enviroment by imported pilchards for aquaculture food,West Australian fisheries scientists state the days and places that the actual infection took place.Getting anybody that could or would do anything about it, admit it, is going to take a long long time.Money is more important to humans than the marine enviroment is,this will be covered up for some time yet,it to political..
I cant believe I didnt get a reaction from anybody after the last statement I made about the causes of the pilchard virus… Money has won out again , just ask the recreational horse owners of Australia . Stike 2 for AQIS.
Hi all,
I know that I am a bit out of date on this debate. But I just want to ask anyone of you who knows about Dolphins stranded in fishing nets (pilchard fisheries mostly) in Port Lincoln. Any hint on where to search for that?
For the people that haven’t read this snippet from WWF
As reported by Ward et al. (2001), in 1995 and 1998-1999 the Australian population of pilchard, Sardinops sagax was affected by two mass mortalities that each killed more fish over a larger area than any other mono-specific fish-kill ever recorded. The responsible agent was found to be a previously unknown herpesvirus (pilchard herpesvirus PHV, Hyatt et al., 1997), thought to be exotic to Australian sardines (as suggested by the lack of previous similar events, the focal origin of epizootics and the dramatic spread through the entire species range; Gaughan, 2002). The first epidemic event spread at about 30 km/day from Anxious Bay, South Australia, and covered 5000 km of coastline from March to September 1995. In 1995 but not in 1998, mortalities also spread to New Zealand (Smith, 1995). As a result, spawning biomass of S. sagax in South Australian waters fell by 75%; spawning biomass reduction following the 1998 event is estimated at about 70% (Ward et al., 2001).
There is consensus among independent scientists to point to the introduction of thousands of tonnes of imported, untreated (frozen whole) pilchard S. sagax in the marine environment by the tuna farming industry as the most likely origin of PHV in Australian waters (Jones et al., 1997; Ward et al., 2001; Gaughan et al., 2000). The outbreaks began in two areas (Anxious Bay and Spencer Gulf) located less than 250 km from Port Lincoln, where large quantities of untreated imported frozen pilchard were fed to bluefin tuna held in sea cages. Ward et al. (2001) report that the location and timing of the 1995 and 1998-1999 mortality events was not random; according to Gaughan (2002) the probability of a second mass mortality starting randomly within the same 250 km stretch of coast in Australia is only 0.001.
Why has some one not been sued and compensation given to W.A fishermen when the pilchard virus wiped out their industry causing major financial loss and hardship and in many cases caused health problems as a direct result of the stress indured by these fshermen?