Wild fish kills happen regularly, all across Australia. The more spectacular kills are reported in the media. However, timely sampling of dying fish and their environment is critical to achieving a diagnosis. The identification of the causes of significant wild fish kills is important to the public, environmental groups, recreational, aquaculture and wild capture fisheries in detecting early occurrence of exotic diseases, identifying major pollution events (both accidental and deliberate) and in supporting at international level our surveillance and monitoring capability. This activity underpins export market access and strengthens national biosecurity initiatives.
The sampling of dead and dying fish is a complicated procedure. There needs to be a system for reporting incidents, getting trained staff to the site quickly with sampling equipment. Since many fishkills are associated with poisoning events there are significant OH&S issues involved and if prosecutions are to be successful, legal issues must be addressed and forensic sampling techniques (chain of custody etc.) must be employed. Thus planning and funding fishkill responses requires detailed planning and funding across agencies within jurisdictions. As a result, the ability to respond to fishkills varies greatly between Jurisdictions across Australia.