A South Australian MP has waded into the state's long-running snapper fight the hard way — by filming herself catching the banned fish and posting it to Facebook. Chantelle Thomas, the One Nation member for Narungga, launched off the Wallaroo boat ramp on 29 May and pulled several snapper from Spencer Gulf, releasing them on camera as a protest against a closure she wants scrapped.
"We've just launched off the Wallaroo boat ramp, I'm going to show the current government how much snapper is out here," Thomas said in the video. Her argument was economic. "It's time to lift the ban so we can boost our local economy, and businesses no longer have to suffer," she said.
Snapper fishing has been off-limits across South Australia's West Coast, Gulf St Vincent and Spencer Gulf since 2019, when managers closed the fishery to give a depleted stock room to rebuild. Rather than reopening, the closure was extended to June 2027 after a harmful algal bloom tore through the state's gulf waters. On the official assessment, the stock is still classified as depleted.
The reaction from the seafood industry was swift and unimpressed. Kyri Toumazos, executive director of Seafood Industry South Australia, said deliberately targeting a recovering species — even catch-and-release — was the wrong message. "The catch and release of a species that we're trying to rebuild is not something that we support," Toumazos said.
Greens MLC Melanie Selwood was blunter, framing the stunt as recklessness dressed up as advocacy. "It's shocking to see One Nation disregarding the needs of our environment," Selwood said.
The flashpoint is not just the optics. Even released snapper can die from barotrauma when hauled up from depth, which is part of why managers treat a full closure as the safest setting for a stock trying to claw back numbers. Catch-and-release, the argument goes, is not the harmless gesture it looks like on a phone screen.
Approached afterwards, Thomas declined to comment further. The Liberal opposition and the ministers contacted also stayed out of it, leaving the video to do its work in a debate that has split coastal communities for years — between operators who say the ban has gutted charter and tackle businesses, and scientists and industry bodies who say a depleted stock pushed further by an algal bloom is in no shape to reopen.
With the closure locked in until at least June 2027, the snapper are likely to stay legally off-limits well past the next state election — which may be exactly the point of putting them on camera now.