Australia’s first prawn farm, built nearly 40 years ago at Palmers Island, is one of three in the region up for sale in the wake of a white spot disease outbreak on the New South Wales North Coast.
Key points:
- NSW prawn farmers are ineligible for compensation provided to Queensland counterparts
- The government offers on-farm grants to enhance biosecurity measures
- Prawn farmers are unwilling to gamble investing another season while the disease threat lingers
Alan Roberts from Tru Blu Prawn Farm near Yamba said the virus had effectively wiped out his business, which had ridden the highs and lows of aquaculture since 1983.
“It’s like we’ve been given the kiss of death,” Mr Roberts said.
“We just got out of debt and now to back into a couple of million dollars of debt or more, with no security if we get white spot again, who will pay the clean-up cost?
“We are done and dusted.”
Disease returns
White spot was first revealed in NSW in August 2022 through routine testing of brood prawns caught off the coast near Iluka and brought onto the Roberts farm to breed.
The virus is lethal to crustaceans but poses no risk to human health or food safety.
The NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) led an eradication effort including decontaminating the farm and destroying prawns.
It also tested wild prawns in the nearby Clarence River and found no evidence of the virus before declaring the area was free of white spot.
However, six months later sick prawns on a neighbouring farm tested positive.
Within weeks, all three prawn farms on Palmers Island had white spot, including Aus Farm run by Steve Lii.
“We lost everything. All our staff lost their jobs — they’ve been working here for more than 15 years,” Mr Lii said.
Aquatic veterinarian Matt Landos, who has worked closely with two of the affected prawn farms since the disease outbreak, said the NSW government’s declaration in September 2022 that the area was free of white spot was premature.
“The mistake is saying we’ve eradicated it, we’ve got it all, which would have been amazing,” Dr Landos said.
“White spot persists at low levels and is tremendously difficult to find.”
Costly clean-up
The NSW prawn aquaculture industry was valued at around $14 million in 2021–22.
Dr Landos said the NSW DPI had not yet provided guidance to farmers on what the rules would be if they got white spot again.
“The government spent over $4 million on chlorine last time, and if you are a prawn farmer who is going to pick up the tab next time?” he said.
“You might be very reluctant to farm again.”
NSW chief veterinarian Joanne Coombe said wild-caught prawns at Lake Woolewayah were detected with white spot during the height of the outbreak.
“There were five prawns out of more than 2,500 that had very, very low detectable levels of white spot DNA, but no signs of clinical disease,” Dr Coombe said.
“You can’t ever give complete assurance of zero risk of disease.
“We have basically given the go-ahead if those farms are able to demonstrate that they have good biosecurity in place that they are able to restock.”
But Dr Landos said that was a tough ask.
“The way this has been handled is literally ending NSW prawn farming,” Dr Landos said.
“It’s incredibly serious.
“We’ve spent $20 million controlling a disease. But if the outcome of the control is the end of an industry, that’s not a particularly good outcome.”
Dr Coombe said white spot disease was still a prohibited matter and affected farms could get up to $500,000 to help install further biosecurity measures.
“At this stage, we still have a control order in place until June 2025,” she said.
“We are offering some assistance for them to improve some of their biosecurity measures on farm, which may of course then help to protect them against future incursions of the disease and they would be able to farm again during that control order period if they choose to do so.”
The NSW government has allocated $21.4 million to its white spot response.
White spot is believed to have first made its way into Australian waters through imported raw prawns, used as bait by recreational fishers.
Fishermen, industry, and scientists have all argued the Commonwealth has not adequately addressed the risks associated with imported prawns.
Submissions from the NSW, Queensland, and WA governments to the Commonwealth have all called for imported prawns to be cooked, but no change has been implemented.
Questions over compensation
Prawn farmers across Australia have paid a biosecurity levy to help pay for compensation to affected Queensland farmers since a 2016 white spot outbreak in the Logan River in south-east Queensland.
Tru Blu Farm’s Correy Roberts said there was no agreement in place for the affected NSW industry.
“The Commonwealth government brought in a white spot levy and that’s what kept the Queensland farmers afloat,” he said.
“Yet when we have white spot here, we’re entitled to nothing.
“It’s a kick in the guts.”
A federal Department of Agriculture spokesperson said there were no formal arrangements in place to share the costs and responsibilities for aquatic emergency animal disease responses and NSW was responsible for managing this detection and dealing with the costs.
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