Fish farm says 'sorry' as they work to fix odour issues

Mr Musa said, regrettably, he had been informed of the problem “later than I would have liked” but the team at Mainstream were working hard to fix the issue and were investing in equipment to more effectively remediate the issue if ever it happened again.

“We’ve made significant efforts over multiple weeks to try to contain, control and ultimately try to neutralise the odour coming from that algae,’’ Mr Musa said.

“It’s not as simple as us draining the pond. If we were able to drain the pond, the odour would have dissipated but clearly we don’t want to be releasing that water into the environment so it has been a process of treating the pond.’’

Mr Musa said there had never been previous odour concerns reported to Mainstream Aquaculture or authorities, and provided his number to residents to contact him directly if they did seek to raise concerns.

“I’m certainly not suggesting there was not an issue last week, because absolutely there was, but I am very strongly suggesting that this is the first time that we have had an issue where we have interrupted our neighbours and the local community and we are working incredibly hard to deal with it,’’ Mr Musa said.

“We’ve had DESI on site three or four times and we’ve been seeking guidance from them.

“I think on reflection we could have taken a different approach, especially immediately post the mass mortalities we could have taken measures to remove and dispose of fish faster.

“It probably rings hollow to the neighbours but you don’t plan for a mass mortality event when running a successful aquaculture business. So we probably didn’t have the infrastructure capability to rapidly remove such a large number of fish from the pond.

“We are now investing in that infrastructure and we’re going to have that on site. That’s a significant cost to the company and the only reason that infrastructure will be there is in the event that if there’s a future event we can basically empty a pond in 24 hours so what took five to seven days will now take less than 24 hours and I think that’s going to eliminate the risk of an odour imposition on our neighbours in the future.’’

Mr Musa said residents wanting to discuss concerns or understand the measures Mainstream Aquaculture have put in place at the fish farm can contact him directly on 0411 895 068.