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Report
Oyster farmers in SA reeling from environmental devastation
ABC NEWS (Australia)
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7/4/2025
The future of many South Australian oyster farms are in limbo, due to the widespread algal bloom on the coast. Winter storms and cooler temperatures have failed to break up the toxic outbreak, which has been dubbed an 'underwater bushfire'.
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00:00
The coastal hamlet of Stansbury on South Australia's York Peninsula is a haven for
00:09
fishing, crabbing and growing oysters. It's where Steve and Jerry Boley have built a business
00:16
and a life. Beautiful one day and beautiful the next.
00:23
But that life took a dramatic turn when a harmful algal bloom, Karenia mikimotoi, appeared
00:29
along parts of South Australia's coast, killing thousands of marine creatures.
00:35
When toxins showed up in oyster samples, some farms on the York Peninsula and Kangaroo
00:40
Island were closed as a precaution. We haven't sold an oyster for many, many weeks
00:46
now, so we've had absolutely no income. My real concern is what's the recovery going
00:55
to look like in the next 12 months? Are we ever going to be able to sell our oysters again?
01:01
The answer may come from across the ditch, where the same toxins brought an industry in
01:06
New Zealand to its knees.
01:08
We had one in the early 1990s that really devastated our aquaculture industry. The whole industry
01:14
was closed for almost a year while we had developed these testing methods and identification methods
01:20
so that we could really protect human health from these toxins.
01:24
The Cawthrawn Institute is using that expertise to test water and oyster meat samples for the
01:30
South Australian Shellfish Quality Assurance Program. Researchers are now focusing on what
01:35
other species might exist in the bloom. They're also analysing brevatoxin levels in oyster samples,
01:43
which need to be at safe levels before closures on the affected harvest areas, are lifted.
01:50
And that means an anxious wait for the likes of Steve and Gerry Bowley.
01:56
The biodiversity of the marine ecosystem is being severely compromised by this thing.
02:02
And something's going on out there, guys, and we need to know what it is.
02:08
We need to know what it is.
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