The devastating algal blooms that swept South Australia's oceans captured national attention. But behind the headlines, the SA fishing industry reeled. Richard Cornish talks to two fishers that nearly lost everything, about life after the bloom.
Good Friday 2025 was a devastating day for Nathan Eatts. The sixth-generation South Australian commercial fisher, a finalist in the 2026 delicious. Harvey Norman Produce Awards, watched a storm blow in from the west, pushing a toxic algal bloom onto the coast that would change his life. For around a month, unusually high water temperatures, a major upwelling of ocean water and earlier flows of nutrient-dense water from the Murray River had fuelled an unprecedented growth of several toxin-producing species of Karenia algae.
The effects of the algal bloom were catastrophic and widespread. Millions of marine animals, including sharks, seals and dolphins, were found dead, washed ashore. Beneath the waves, entire ecosystems were devastated, from seagrass meadows to mollusc beds. On land, the damage continued as seaside towns watched tourism collapse and residents were unable to enjoy vast stretches of their spectacular coastline for months. Among those hardest hit were the state’s commercial fishers.
An estimated $100 million was wiped from South Australia’s seafood industry, with large areas of coastal waters still closed to commercial fishing.
That Good Friday storm pushed deeper water from Gulf St Vincent into the shallows where Eatts fished under the name Cape Calamari.
“The calamari were trapped between this wall of toxic water and the shoreline,” Eatts recalls. “They were in water so shallow, they were almost climbing onto the rocks trying to escape. When calamari die, they don’t float – they sink. Then they just disappeared.
“Before the algal bloom, I was catching calamari in the waters off the Fleurieu Peninsula, near Kangaroo Island, harvesting about eight tonnes a year by hand. Every squid was caught on a handline with a single squid jig.”
The day after each catch, he would deliver his calamari directly to restaurant kitchens, from Esmay in Adelaide’s Hackney to the Salopian Inn among the vineyards of McLaren Vale.
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“Nathan is such an amazing fisherman,” says Salopian chef and co-owner Karena Armstrong, who is also a National Judge for the Produce Awards. “We were buying 20 kilograms of calamari from him every week. He’d arrive with his dad, and then one day it just stopped.”
Several months later, the algal bloom reached the waters off Goolwa, about 80 kilometres to the east. This is home to Goolwa Pipi Co., a company 30 percent owned by the Ngarrindjeri people, which hand-harvests around 300 tonnes of pipis each year along a 70-kilometre stretch of ocean beach in Coorong National Park. The company, another 2026 Produce Awards finalist, had just invested almost $1 million in a new processing facility when the algal bloom hit. Harvesting was shut down from July 2025 to February this year.
“It was hard,” says Goolwa managing director Tom Robinson. “We have families who depend on this business for their livelihood. We were surviving on handouts. It was an emotionally challenging time.”
By the time South Australian health authorities declared the pipis safe to eat, demand had reduced to a trickle.
“All the work we’d put into building the brand over the past 15 years had disappeared,” Robinson says. “We’d been a reliable supplier for more than a decade, but when the only thing you can deliver is uncertainty, month after month, you’re off the menu, and it’s bloody hard to get back on.”
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The Ngarrindjeri word for pipi is kuti, and it’s the name given to Goolwa restaurant Kuti Shack. Chef and co-owner Brendan Roache remembers the week the bloom reached his coastline.
“There was a huge amount of media coverage and, unfortunately, local pipis and South Australian seafood generally were all tarred with the same brush,” he says. “People thought it was unsafe to eat. I’m here to tell you the pipis are back. They’re safe, they’re delicious and they’re as good as they’ve ever been.”
Back at Cape Jervis, the ban on calamari fishing has forced Eatts to change tack. He is now venturing into the deeper waters of the Southern Ocean, targeting lesser-known species such as swallowtail, nannygai and gummy shark. Each fish is caught by hand, brain-spiked, bled and packed into an ice slurry onboard.
“I take orders from chefs based on what they need,” Eatts says. “Once I’ve filled those orders, I turn the boat around, head back to shore and deliver the next day.”
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“I’m taking whatever he’s got,” Armstrong says.“We cooked an eagle ray recently. I’d never prepared one before. I poached it, skinned it, gave it a light brine, gently smoked it, then poached it in olive oil with white wine. My goodness. It just fell apart. It had this incredible, lip-smacking succulence.”
For Armstrong, the effects of the algal bloom have reminded her why relationships between chefs and producers matter.
“This past year has really made me think again about what I’m cooking and why,” she says. “One of the beautiful things about being a chef is that you have to adapt. Seasons change, conditions change, but you also have to look after those precious relationships with your suppliers.”
Watch this space to find out who wins the 2026 delicious. Harvey Norman Produce Awards, announced in August.
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