More than 200 tonnes of dead fish are estimated to be rotting at the Coorong’s South Lagoon, including yellow-eyed mullet, mulloway and small bream.
The 48-hour incident on June 6-7 is believed to be a result of weather events stirring up sediment and salinity levels.
Commercial fisherman Gary Hera-Singh has told Adelaide Now the mass fish death has been catastrophic for the industry and environment, with the total commercial catch for the whole fishery dead in just two days.
“With a lot of water shunted around, and because the lagoon is in such poor ecological condition, it created a black ball of gooey mess high in hydrogen sulphide and toxic to fish when it gets into their gills. It kills them almost instantly,” Gary Hera-Singh said.
The Member for Barker, Tony Pasin MP, said the event should serve as a “wake up call” to both levels of government to get on with addressing hyper-saline levels in the water.
“State and Federal Labor governments need to pull their finger out and prioritise resources towards solutions rather than contingency plans.”
He said the project was intended to address hypersaline water in the southern Coorong yet almost six years since the $70 million Healthy Coorong, Healthy Basin project commenced one of the only infrastructure projects anywhere near being close to construction is at Lake Hawdon North, nowhere near the Coorong and do nothing to address salinity issues.
A spokesperson from PIRSA said the State Government has written to the Commonwealth urging them to release $27.9 million to enable the next phase of the Healthy Coorong Healthy Basin Plan.
They plan to investigate long-term engineered solutions to improve water quality in the southern Coorong, including constructing a pipeline to the ocean.
