No fish farm trash
by Jack and Jude 19 Feb 2018 20:25 NZDT
No fish farm trash © jackandjude.com
It's just so disappointing! Nine months ago the west Tasmanian community did a full harbour clean up, 80 volunteers including Jack and Jude covered 80 kilometres of shoreline, and this beach was spotless.
This very much reflects the history of man's development. Profit before sustainability and just look where we are at. Denuded land, forests gone, species destroyed, there's less and less for our children. Stricter guides and morals should be a part of how we do things and would not add much costs to production. In fact, in this case, it would help the farms be acceptable, instead of getting stonewalled by communities.
You may have heard in the news that the Fish Farms are a bit on the nose currently. For good reasons. The Tasmanian Government should never have approved the expansion that allowed the quadrupling of fish stocks to what is now around five million fish; in what is, pretty much dead water. But the most apparent and flagrant disregard Fish Farms have for the community and Nature, is the huge amount of Fish Farm trash that litters these shores. In honesty, thousands of rope ends, kilometres of black poly pipe, plus runaway buoys, there's a never-ending list to what's getting caught up in the foreshore growth.
Amazingly there is a community group that liaisons with the farms, but you know how some corporations think the community are just dullards. But the Friends of Macquarie Harbour do not. So we made a video of the trash we found on just 200 metres of shoreline and sent it to the Premier and Minister of the Environment, plus to many more environmental groups. Wow! Next day fish farm boats were going every which way with crews on shores dragging off their great lengths of poly pipe and bags of ropes, and they're continuing to, now weeks since we published that video.
You can watch it here:
Of course the farms contribute to the local economy by providing local jobs to a community that is somewhat suffering from population and property value decline – BUT that's no excuse for destroying the environment and littering what is world heritage area. Instead of ensuring their workers are diligent in keeping ropes and pipes from escaping, and building a protective barrier around their work site. They'd rather let their litter float away and destroy what once was pristine foreshore.
This article has been provided by the courtesy of jackandjude.com