When Foreign Owned Aquaculture Moves In, Do Aussie Lobster Fishers Have to Move Out?

On the morning southern rock lobster crews were meant to steam out for the first pots of the new season, the government pulled the pin. Key fishing grounds south of Tasmania’s D’Entrecasteaux Channel were suddenly closed to commercial rock lobster fishing, not because of anything lobster fishers had done, but because aquaculture companies had been given emergency approval to dose their salmon with a powerful antibiotic.

Those pens are owned by multinationals. The boats that are now tied up at the wharf belong to Australian families.

This is what it looks like when foreign owned aquaculture is put ahead of locally owned wild fisheries.

Foreign owned aquaculture at the centre of the decision

Over the past few years, every one of Tasmania’s big three salmon operators has been sold offshore.

• Tassal is now owned by Cooke Inc, a Canadian seafood group, after a multi-billion dollar takeover in 2022.

• Huon Aquaculture is owned by JBS, the Brazilian meat giant.

• Petuna is majority owned by Sealord, a New Zealand based company.

Tasmania’s big three salmon operations are now all foreign owned.

At the same time, Tasmanian wild catch sectors like southern rock lobster are still dominated by small, domestically owned family businesses that pay Australian wages, buy their diesel and groceries locally, and rely on seasonal access to the same shared waters.

When government agencies talk about the aquaculture companies in this story, they are talking about foreign owned aquaculture outfits with far bigger balance sheets and far more political reach than the individual lobster fishers who work alongside them.

Emergency antibiotics for aquaculture companies, emergency closures for fishers

The immediate trigger for the closure was a decision by the federal regulator, the APVMA, to grant an emergency permit for the antibiotic florfenicol to be used on Atlantic salmon in Tasmania. Florfenicol has been used in small quantities in the past, but this is the first time it has been approved under an emergency permit for large scale treatment of P. salmonis in the current salmon farming regions.

On 7 November 2025, the day the emergency permit was announced, Tassal began florfenicol treatment at its Meads Creek and Stringers Cove leases near Dover, with other aquaculture companies expected to follow.

Eight days later, on 15 November 2025, the Tasmanian Government closed parts of the commercial rock lobster fishery south of the D’Entrecasteaux Channel. A line was drawn three kilometres out from the treated salmon leases and lobster fishing inside that boundary was shut down.

The reason given was simple. Export markets like China and Japan have very strict limits on antibiotic residues. If traces of florfenicol showed up in rock lobster taken near treated pens, those markets could close.

In practice, foreign owned aquaculture received an emergency permit to medicate its stock. Australian lobster fishers received an emergency ban.

Government emphasises export market risk

Public health advice has made it clear there is no evidence of adverse human health effects from the low levels of florfenicol that might occur in fish and crustaceans near treated pens. At the same time, people are being advised to avoid eating fish caught close to the medicated cages as a precaution.

The government’s own statements about the lobster closure focus on something else. Ministers have been explicit that the immediate concern is export market access for southern rock lobster, particularly into countries that set very low tolerance levels for antibiotic residues.

So local fishers are not being kept off the water because their product suddenly became unsafe in any everyday sense. They are being locked out because foreign owned aquaculture companies are running high density farming systems that now require emergency antibiotics, and global buyers do not want to see any trace of those drugs in the wild catch that swim past the cages.

Australian families on lobster boats are absorbing the cost so that multinational aquaculture brands can keep their export channels clean.

Who pays when foreign owned aquaculture creates the risk

Right now, when lobstermen and women lose access to grounds so that aquaculture companies can keep exporting, there is no automatic compensation and no clear package on the table. The costs land on Australian family boats in the form of lost days, lost catch and more effort crammed into smaller areas, while foreign owned aquaculture keeps operating inside its exclusion bubble.

Any help fishers might see will only come after political pressure and lobbying, if it comes at all. That imbalance is part of the problem.

The pattern: social licence for some, sacrifice zones for others

This is not happening in a vacuum.

The same waters that have now been closed to lobster pots have already been under strain from salmon mortality events and large scale disposal of dead farmed fish. Thousands of tonnes of dead salmon from this year’s outbreaks have been trucked to rendering plants, compost facilities, land spreading and landfills, and oily waste and fish matter have washed up on nearby beaches. Locals have watched this play out in the D’Entrecasteaux Channel and Huon region for months.

Time and again, when conflicts arise between foreign owned aquaculture and wild fisheries, it is the wild sector that gets moved on first.

• When dissolved oxygen collapses, it is wild species like the Maugean skate and local reef fish that pay the ecological price, while aquaculture companies call for more reports and more time.

• When antibiotics are brought in to prop up stressed stock in crowded pens, it is wild lobster grounds that are shut down to keep export paperwork in order.

Foreign owned aquaculture gets the benefit of the doubt, the emergency approvals and the political protection. Domestically owned family fishing businesses get the residual risk, the last minute closures and the bill.

What a fair deal would look like

If we are serious about looking after Australian fishing communities and Australian seafood consumers, a different set of principles needs to drive decisions like this.

1. No emergency approvals without full, public impact mapping - Before a single pellet of medicated feed is dropped into the water, there should be a clear, publicly accessible map of all exclusion zones, affected wild fisheries and the timeframes involved. That map should be developed with wild sector input, not dropped on fishers after the fact.

2. Transparency and accountability from aquaculture companies - Any use of antibiotics, any major mortality event and any significant pollution incident should be reported in real time, not buried in quarterly summaries. Local communities and wild fishers deserve to know what is being added to their shared waters.

3. Domestic ownership should matter in policy decisions - Governments talk about jobs and investment when they defend aquaculture companies. Those jobs are real, but so are the jobs on the cray boats and in the small wharf sheds. When all major salmon operators are foreign owned and most wild fleets are Australian owned, that imbalance should carry weight in ministerial decisions.

4. Wild fisheries must not become sacrifice zones for industrial aquaculture - The default setting should be that aquaculture operations adjust their practices, stocking densities and locations to protect existing wild fisheries, not that wild fisheries are shifted or shut whenever there is a conflict.

Choosing whose future we close off

Right now, key Australian fishing grounds have been closed so that foreign owned aquaculture can run high density operations with an emergency antibiotic safety net and still ship to markets that do not want to see the residue.

No one has argued that southern rock lobster fishers caused this problem. The public record is clear. The closure is about managing the market fallout from florfenicol use at nearby salmon pens, not about any failing in the lobster sector itself.

That makes this a political choice, not just a technical one.

When our governments choose to prioritise foreign owned aquaculture companies over Australian owned wild fisheries, they are choosing whose future gets closed off first.

At Ocean Truth, we believe those choices need to be named, documented and challenged in the open, before another family fishing business becomes collateral damage in someone else’s emergency plan.