Huon Aquaculture reported that between 50,000 to 52,000 salmon escaped from a damaged pen in D’Entrecasteaux Channel, Tasmania, Australia, in the early hours of 23 November, after a fire broke out at the firm’s Zuidpool-leased site.
Approximately one-third of the pen was damaged in the incident, Huon Aquaculture said in a press release. Fire burned through and melted the pen’s infrastructure above and just below the waterline, according to the company.
“We are estimating that we have lost between 50,000 and 52,000 four-kilogram fish, and in accordance with our reporting requirements, we have notified MAST, EPA, and DPIPWE Marine Farm Branch,” Huon CEO Peter Bender said.
The firm arrived at its escape figures by dispatching a wellboat to count the fish that remained in the pen. Calm weather aided in crew efforts to “thoroughly search the surrounding area including shorelines to retrieve any pen components that had come adrift during the fire,” the company said.
In more than three decades of seafood farming, Huon Aquaculture hasn’t experienced an incident of this kind, Bender said.
“We have electrical equipment on our pens, but in 35 years of farming, we have never had an electrical fire on a fish pen, so the cause has baffled us,” he said. “An investigation into the cause of the fire is underway and we are not ruling anything out at this early stage, and we encourage anyone who saw the fire to contact us.”
Taking into account studies of previous fish escapes as well as the 2018 IMAS survey, Bender said it was unlikely the escaped fish will have any impact on native marine fauna.
“The IMAS survey was consistent with previous studies (here and overseas) where farmed salmon generally don’t appear to feed on native species, as they are typically used to feeding on fish pellets,” Bender said. “Tasmania has no native salmonids, so there is no impact on wild genetic stocks (a problem in some Northern Hemisphere countries), plus escaped salmon typically don’t last long, unfortunately. What the seals don’t get, the fisherman quickly do.”
No Huon employees were harmed in the fire, the company confirmed.
