Smeared with the Flanagan brush, 41°South fights back

Sharon Webb

The Meander Valley’s only salmon farm has been knocked by blowback from Richard Flanagan’s expose of the Tasmanian salmon industry.

41°South co-owner, Ben Pyka, said locals and tourists visiting his Moltema business are complaining that he is killing the ocean, when he is more than 70km from Bass Strait.

‘In the early days of the book, we were smeared with the same brush as the coastal salmon industry,’ Ben said.

‘We’ve been hit by the perfect storm.’

As if it wasn’t enough to have 41°South, the business started by Ben’s parents Angelika and Ziggy, wrecked by COVID-19, Pyka’s business has also been hit hard by what he calls ‘Australia Post’s inability to be efficient’.

Accessing the domestic market during COVID has been difficult because perishable goods need to be delivered on time, and apparently Australia Post hasn’t managed that.

At a time when many Australians don’t have much money for a niche market product like hot-smoked salmon, Flanagan’s book, Toxic, the rotting underbelly of the Tasmanian Salmon Industry, has tipped the scales for 41°South.

COVID’s lockout of interstate and overseas tourists has hit 41 South hard, and Pyka has halved his staff.

In normal times around 70 per cent of his sales are to international tourists, with the rest to domestic tourists. Apparently few Tasmanians are willing to drive to Moltema for Pyka’s product.

The problem with Flanagan’s book is that many people are willing to grab a sound bite from the media and run with it without knowing more.

Pyka’s salmon farm does not pollute the ocean, or anywhere.

He grows Atlantic salmon in 20 freshwater ponds and uses the surrounding wetlands as a filter for the waste produced.

The plants in the wetlands absorb the fish waste,’ he said.

‘The fish poo drops to the bottom and becomes soil. The trees, reeds and weeds absorb the soluble waste.

‘With our system, even though it is flow through and not closed loop, we don’t have an impact on the environment.’

The problem with the ocean-based fish farms is their density, Pyka said.

‘If you have 20-50 pens in one estuary, the water movement needed to flush out the system drops.

‘The difference between us and these fish farms is huge.

‘We produce 10 tonnes a year. Tassal does that in two or three hours.’

Ironically, 41°South has put plans for a project 10 times larger than their current operation to Tasmania’s Environment Protection Authority, and been refused.

‘They won’t accept wetlands as biofilters even though water flowing out of our farm is cleaner than when it went in,’ Pyka said.

‘All industry pollutes but it’s the density of the ocean fish farms that’s the problem. And the EPA allows them to do it.’