New environmental standards proposed for the Tasmanian fish farming industry have been described as "half baked" and weaker than the ones already in place.
Louise Cherrie is an environmental management specialist and a former member of the Tasmanian Marine Farming Planning Review Panel, which approves new salmon farming leases.
She resigned in 2018, frustrated at the lack of questioning over fish farm expansion into Storm Bay.
"In five years we've managed to come up with no more detail than is already in the environmental licences," Ms Cherrie said.
"The technical detail is absent. There are no strong numbers in there, no strong standards, the objectives are absent.
"We continue to perpetuate this reliance on visible evidence of harm and then operators taking action where practicable, which is, as we all know, when the production cycle has ended."
Ms Cherrie said she felt the aquaculture industry was being held to a lower standard than other sectors.
"I do a lot of work in mining and there's no way a developer would be allowed to progress a development without having done a noise survey and some noise modelling," she said.
"In these standards, we only talk about these things happening after a complaint. If an issue is raised, then we may go and ask you to do some noise surveys.
"It's just really a backward step."
Independent scientist Christine Coughanowr is a member of the Tasmanian Independent Science Council and agrees the standards "provide less protection and less clarity than the existing standards".
She said in some instances, they actually increased the degree of damage allowed near a lease.
"Currently no significant impact is allowed beyond 35 metres but the draft standards have added another 100 metres to that, so it's now 135 metres," she said.
"On top of that there's a new regional zone within which some measurable impact is allowed. But the definition of how the regional zone will be defined is not clear, so we're really left with potentially a larger footprint of impact than we have now."
Fish farming has become increasingly controversial in Tasmania, with some rural communities calling for fish pens in local waterways to be withdrawn because of the environmental damage they can cause.
In 2021, Booker-prize winning author Richard Flanagan — who lived for many years near a fish farm on Bruny Island — published Toxic, a book highly critical of fish farming practises in Tasmania.
Earlier this year, the EPA confirmed Tasmania's largest salmon producer Tassal had tried to stop it releasing information about its use of antibiotics to control a disease outbreak.
Both Tassal and the state's second-largest producer Huon Aquaculture are now owned by foreign interests.
Louise Cherrie said she would have liked to see the salmon farming draft rules include specific operating standards for fish farming companies, like how and where they can dispose of the water used to bathe fish on well boats.
"That's an incredibly impactful and normal part of operation," she said.
"At the moment we have bathing water being released directly into the marine environment and the standard doesn't really talk about that. "
Dr Coughanowr is urging policy makers to put a pause on fish farm expansions until the draft regulations are improved.
"We have a very complex set of conditions, " she said.
"Some apply to future leases, some don't apply to current operators. There's huge discretion from the EPA director on what is deemed significant or practicable.
"What we need is … some clear standards with numbers and timelines associated.
"It really has been very confusing for everyone."
Submissions on the draft standards closed on Tuesday and are now being assessed by the Department of Natural Resources and Environment.
In a statement, the EPA said the department had oversight of the environmental standards, and once they were finalised the EPA would develop technical standards to accompany them.
Monitoring defended as 'world class'
A spokesperson for Salmon Tasmania said the industry "strongly supports a collaborative and consultative approach for the review of existing regulation" and said it had "welcomed the proposal of a standardised and streamlined framework from the outset".
"The industry is aligned with the intent of the environmental standards in protecting the Tasmanian marine and coastal environment by promoting the sustainable use of Tasmania's marine waters for finfish farming," the spokesperson said.
"In 2018-2019, The Tasmanian Salmon Industry Scorecard benchmarked Tasmanian environmental monitoring programs against international regulatory practices for salmon aquaculture.
The spokesperson said the Tasmanian government report card "assessed Tasmania's environmental monitoring as 'world class'."
"We look forward to continuing to deliver world class and environmentally responsible aquaculture for Tasmania."
