Leon Compton
Interesting. So you fish commercially. How are you feeling about what clearly seems to be an impending deal where people who do what you do will be paid for the loss of access to Chinese markets because florfenicol is being used in the waters that you fish?
Bryce Way
Well, as far as I’m concerned, we’re not going to let that happen for starters. That’s just not how it is. But I’m not here to argue against the salmon farm or debate its environmental impacts, things like that. My concern is the livelihoods of the commercial fishermen. That’s the ab divers, the scale fishermen and the rock lobster fishermen, and anyone else in between. We operate under some seriously strict regulations in our industries. All of us do. We pay our fishing rights. We depend on access to productive fishing grounds and to earn a living. And then you’ve got this introduced species coming around wanting to shut our areas. And it’s just not fair. It just makes no sense to us how they think it is right to do.
Leon Compton
And so you’re clearly frustrated. If the industry gets approval to use florfenicol, will clearly mean closures of a part of the Tasmanian coastline that you and others fish in. And you’re not happy with that price.
Bryce Way
It’s a loss of fishing grounds. It’s going to have financial impacts. It’s got future closures. With a lot of things like this, where does it end? It’s only four to six weeks now. What’s next year? 12 weeks. Their dead loss last year was 19 times greater than the total allowable catch of the rock lobster commercial industry.
Leon Compton
Sorry, can you say that again there? What was?
Bryce Way
The loss of salmon as a whole to the whole industry, Tasmanian salmon, equates to 19 times more than the total rock lobster caught as an industry.
Leon Compton
That was the number of fish that died?
Bryce Way
That’s the number of fish that died as salmon as a whole, all industry in Tasmania as a whole. And that’s just on their website. You can find that information. That’s for people to understand a bit better, 4,000 African elephants. That’s 2 million cartons of beer. That’s a lot of dead fish.
Leon Compton
You’ve done some great equivalences. Bryce Way is our guest this morning, commercial crayfisher. I’m going to quote to you from the APVMA website. Their management plan and what they’re looking at, actually this is referring to the state management plan, is underpinned by an expectation that a wild fishery support package will be agreed and will be paid for by users of the Theraputin to the affected wild fishery industries. Now, what that looks like to us is crayfishers being paid for the loss of access to coastline around Tasmania in exchange for the salmon industry getting to use full florfenicol. You’re saying you’re not happy. You don’t want that, Bryce.
Bryce Way
No, I don’t want that. You don’t want, because when’s it end? When’s it, you accept that little payout, whatever. You don’t fish in that area. And the next year they go, oh, well, we’re actually putting pens down here now. And then all of a sudden they do the same thing and you lose a whole other bunch of area. Yeah, money’s great. We all depend on it, but it’s the livelihood of the fishermen. It’s not just about going out and having a great catch and earning a heap of money per se, but it’s the livelihood. I’m a third generation fisherman.
Leon Compton
What’s the vibe like? What’s the mood like across your industry? Because we’re trying to talk to sort of leadership in the industry who don’t want to come on because it sounds like deals are being negotiated as we speak. What’s the vibe like amongst fellow crayfishers?
Bryce Way
I haven’t met a fisherman that said, this is great. This is what we want. It’s just not. We’re not accepting any of it. If the salmon industry thinks that five kayaks and one dinghy was disruptive, what do you think’s going to happen when you get 150, 200 commercial boats? Protesting. Angry and annoyed. Oh, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. You had the farmers on the lawns the other day. Well, we’ve got boats and we’re on the water. We’re going to do the same thing. Right. It’s not acceptable. It is not acceptable at all.
Leon Compton
What about an amount of money that would be acceptable? I mean, is there an amount of money that could be acceptable to people like you to be compensated for not being able to catch in Storm Bay and in whatever parts of the coastline are excluded around Okehampton Bay?
Bryce Way
If you’re accepting money, you’re selling your soul. That’s all you’re doing. That’s just, if you care about the industry, you shouldn’t be accepting any dollar value to have an area closed.
Leon Compton
I’ll just ask you one more question and then we’ve got to get to Dr. John Whittington, the CEO of Salmon Tasmania. Bryce Way, my question is always, what happens to the deckies and what happens to the divers? The quota owners in both the cray and the ab industry might accept a payoff. What happens to the people who don’t have quota, who just dive and who just work on decks if you’re bought out of fishing in parts of the coastline?
Bryce Way
Oh, well, for crews, if they can manage to get ahold of quota owners and start buying quota out, however, we are a statewide fishery. So a fisherman that fishes King Island, Flinders, he’s got the same license to fish down the bottom here too. So if you’re talking a payout for quota owners, I don’t know how you’re going to divide that between whose quota gets caught where because it’s a statewide fishery. So it’s not working. So here’s another point.
Leon Compton
Bryce, why can’t you just go fish somewhere else? On the NRE website yesterday, I think it talked about three to nine percent. I might be wrong, but if you added the wider sort of range, three to nine percent of the coast might be excluded to you from fishing so that you don’t catch fish that could have florfenicol in them, which if detected in China, as an example, would see you at the risk would be locked out. Why not say just go fish further south, go fish further northeast, go fish west? Is that reasonable?
Bryce Way
No, it’s still not reasonable. You’ve got little boats like last year with the five or six fishermen that got displaced. They’ve only got little boats. They’re either single handers, older gentlemen that have been in the industry for 30 years. They don’t want to be displaced because by being displaced, they’re having to take greater risk to themselves, their vessel and their operation by moving into different areas. They might not know these areas, they could be more dangerous due to weather conditions. They don’t understand the weather in those areas. You’re asking for risk. Salmon Tasmania was happy to put a post on Facebook the other day saying that the disrupting operations at sea creates risk to those safety of workers and protesters, as well as risking the right to health of fish. Everyone should have the right to go about their work safely without disruption.
Leon Compton
Bryce, I appreciate hearing your perspective this morning. Thank you for sharing it. Thank you.