Commercial fishermen in South Australia’s Coorgon wetlands are blaming state and federal governments for failing to prevent the biggest fish kill they have seen in 40 years. They say a combination of high salinity and toxic sludge has led to the death of hundreds of thousands of fish in the southern lagoon. The fishermen are angry at a failure to capitalise on record water flows which have breathed new life into the River Murry.
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00:00The Coorong is recognised as a wetland of international importance.
00:07Recent floods were a reprieve for the struggling ecosystem, but it's now in decline again.
00:12It just makes me angry.
00:13We had the gift of a lifetime with the floods.
00:16The smell.
00:17The smell in the water, the slick on the water, it's everywhere, like there's 20 kilometres
00:22worth of it.
00:23A combination of a spike in salinity and wind stirring up monosaphytic black ooze is
00:29being blamed for the estimated loss of hundreds of thousands of fish.
00:33And it's a perfect toxic swill for killing anything that lives in that water column.
00:40The South Lagoon came close to ecological collapse during the millennium drought, but
00:44the arrival of fresh water flows from the recent Murray River floods delivered a glimmer
00:49of hope.
00:50And after two years of high river flow, there should be fish jumping into people's boats
00:57and what have we got?
00:59Fish dying left, right and centre.
01:01But there is no sign of a quick response to avert the ecological collapse of the South
01:05Lagoon.
01:06The state government is waiting for the federal government to release $28 million for phase
01:11two of the Healthy Coorong, Healthy Basin Action Plan.
01:14I recognise that it's been delayed for the last year or so and we are trying to put pressure
01:19on.
01:20So we need that next stage now before we can start talking about very large engineered
01:25solutions.
01:26The people who live and work in this part of the world have a straightforward response
01:30to that.
01:31Tell that department to get off their backsides and get that Healthy Coorong, Healthy Basin
01:36project that they've squandered four years out of five to get up here and fix this bloody
01:43South Lagoon.
01:44Exactly if and when that fix happens, we'll decide whether this wetland is saved from
01:49ecological collapse.