Fire has damaged a fish farming pen at a salmon farming lease near Hobart — the third incident to hit one of Tasmania's largest salmon producers since late November.
Jillaine Williams was on a boat passing Huon Aquaculture's pens at Hideaway Bay, in southern Tasmania, when she saw the fire break out.
She told ABC Radio Hobart, Huon's wellboat was at the scene.
"[It was] quite a large blaze, quite high flames, a metre and a half," Ms Williams said.
"The smoke was thick and black, [Huon] had a few vessels there, they seemed to put it out in about 15 minutes."
In late November, Huon lost more than 50,000 fish when a pen caught fire in the D'Entrecasteaux Channel, melting part of the structure.
In early December, 130,000 salmon escaped through a "significant tear" in a fortress pen in Storm Bay.
In a statement, Huon Aquaculture said today's incident was at the company's Hideaway Bay farm, where a "small electrical fire caused minor damage to the railing on an outer pen".
Huon said the pen was "empty of fish" at the time and has "completely different infrastructure" to the one involved in last month's incident.
