Oyster farmers in SA reeling from environmental devastation

ABC NEWS (Australia)

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'.

Transcript

00:00The coastal hamlet of Stansbury on South Australia's York Peninsula is a haven for

00:09fishing, crabbing and growing oysters. It's where Steve and Jerry Boley have built a business

00:16and a life. Beautiful one day and beautiful the next.

00:23But that life took a dramatic turn when a harmful algal bloom, Karenia mikimotoi, appeared

00:29along parts of South Australia's coast, killing thousands of marine creatures.

00:35When toxins showed up in oyster samples, some farms on the York Peninsula and Kangaroo

00:40Island were closed as a precaution. We haven't sold an oyster for many, many weeks

00:46now, so we've had absolutely no income. My real concern is what's the recovery going

00:55to look like in the next 12 months? Are we ever going to be able to sell our oysters again?

01:01The answer may come from across the ditch, where the same toxins brought an industry in

01:06New Zealand to its knees.

01:08We had one in the early 1990s that really devastated our aquaculture industry. The whole industry

01:14was closed for almost a year while we had developed these testing methods and identification methods

01:20so that we could really protect human health from these toxins.

01:24The Cawthrawn Institute is using that expertise to test water and oyster meat samples for the

01:30South Australian Shellfish Quality Assurance Program. Researchers are now focusing on what

01:35other species might exist in the bloom. They're also analysing brevatoxin levels in oyster samples,

01:43which need to be at safe levels before closures on the affected harvest areas, are lifted.

01:50And that means an anxious wait for the likes of Steve and Gerry Bowley.

01:56The biodiversity of the marine ecosystem is being severely compromised by this thing.

02:02And something's going on out there, guys, and we need to know what it is.

02:08We need to know what it is.

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