Once Georgie had finished her schoolwork we went for a dinghy ride up into Ida Bay and then back to Southport for a walk up to the caravan park which serves as a grocery store, post office and hotel all in one.
Josh asked if we’ve seen any Swift Parrots during our time at Bruny Island. There are less than 300 Swift Parrots in the wild, they are an endangered species, and they are meant to nest around Bruny Island, Southern Tasmania during Summer and then fly to the mainland. Unfortunately, we have not seen any yet.
We departed Southport at 1330 arriving at Dover at 1530. The swell was less than 1 metre with the wind 15-20 knots from the east. The Dover anchorage (west of the Dover wharf) was quite deep at 11 metres so we put out 55 metres of chain. Our general rule is to use a bare minimum of 5:1 scope – 5m of chain for every metre of depth in good conditions (more if strong winds are forecast or holding is poor).
TASSAL has a processing plant at Dover along with a lot of fish farm related vessels working from the bay. There are several other commercial fishing vessels, with only a few yachts and recreational vessels.
There were several schools of small salmon present in the bay with lots of activity on the surface as they jumped out of the water, unfortunately Mark didn’t have any luck in catching any.
In December 2020 there was an unexplained incident where about 130,000 fish escaped a Huon Acquaculture fish farm through a significant tear in a pen at Storm Bay. The following week in the D’Entrecasteaux Channel the company lost another 50,000 fish when a fish pen caught fire melting part of pen. The company founder was reported to have wished a “Merry Christmas” to all the local fishers who were out in droves trying to catch the salmon.
