The new regime imposes stricter environmental controls on marine pens and requires farms to submit to independent environmental auditing.
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Tasmania's salmon aquaculture industry will operate under a fundamentally reformed regulatory framework from the new financial year after the state government accepted the core recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Aquaculture Management, which found the existing framework was inadequate to protect marine ecosystems.
The new regime requires all existing and future marine cage operations to undergo independent environmental audits on a two-year cycle, submit real-time water quality monitoring data to a public database, and demonstrate compliance with new sea lice and parasite management standards that are more stringent than those currently applied. Operations that fail audits will be subject to suspension of their pen licences until remediation is demonstrated.
Environment Minister Roger Jaensch said the reforms represented the most significant tightening of salmon farming regulation in Tasmania since the industry began operating in the 1980s. "This industry is worth $1.4 billion to the Tasmanian economy and employs 5,000 people. These reforms are about making it sustainable for the long term, not about restricting it unnecessarily," he said.
The Tasmanian Salmonid Growers Association accepted the reforms in principle while flagging concerns about the administrative burden of the new audit and reporting requirements. Chief executive Luke Martin said the industry would need a two-year transition period to implement the monitoring systems required. The government has agreed to a 12-month transition, with enforcement of the real-time monitoring requirements commencing immediately but audit compliance required from the following financial year.
Environmental groups said the reforms were long overdue, though some expressed concern that self-reporting obligations still gave operators too much flexibility in how they characterised compliance.
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