It is hard to look at the seafood counter in Adelaide right now without doing a double take. King George Whiting at the Central Market is hovering around the kind of money typically reserved for Christmas trading, and South Australia's peak industry body is warning that the squeeze on whiting, calamari and garfish supply is far from over. A 22 May ABC News report by Rachael Merritt has set out just how long the run-up could last after the state pushed out the closure that triggered the shortage.
Gulf St Vincent was shut to commercial marine scalefish fishing in November 2025, after a toxic algal bloom tore through fish stocks across the gulf — including southern calamari, King George Whiting and garfish. The reopening, originally pencilled in for July this year, has now been pushed to May 2027. With one of the state's most productive grounds out of action for a longer stretch, retailers and processors are working around the gap.
Seafood Industry SA executive officer Kyri Toumazos said the extended closure was the right call for the gulf's long-term sustainability, even if it keeps prices elevated.
"That is always a risk when you have less supply," Toumazos said.
He puts Gulf St Vincent at roughly half of South Australia's annual marine scalefish production, with garfish, whiting and calamari taking the heaviest hits. The pressure has fed through to retail.
"There's definitely been a shorter supply of seafood over the last few months — some species, definitely we've seen a slight [price] increase, such as calamari and whiting are the two that are predominantly the drivers here in South Australia," Toumazos said. "Garfish, we've seen a little bit of a [price] increase, but garfish usually is a product that gets caught at different times of the year so we're hoping that over the next few months we will see greater catches."
"That is without another re-occurrence of a bloom or the traces of the bloom continuing as we're seeing in Spencer Gulf for long periods of time," he said.
At Angelakis Brothers, director Alex Knoll said the most visible impact at the market is on what customers expect to find at this time of year.
"We would normally start to see an abundance of King George Whiting come through the markets, that's not happening at the moment but we are getting some good numbers of garfish," Knoll said. "It will be a little bit harder for the South Australian squid but there is always an alternative available which I think is really important."
Knoll noted that premium whiting hitting close to $100 a kilo is not unheard of around Christmas trading peaks. The current run-up is unusual mostly for how long it has gone on.
"I guess it's been sustained for a lot longer because we haven't had the abundance of fish coming out of the water so we can then reduce the price," he said.
Down the road at Fair Seafood, owner Amanda Prance said the supply changes have effectively redrawn her stock list.
"We haven't had King George Whiting in for probably about four weeks," Prance said. "If you want to do a curry, if you want to put something on the barbecue, if you want to have a pan fry, we've always got a fish available for that. Particularly with cost of living, that's obviously a consideration — we always try and make sure we've got fish in those different price points."
The state government's latest water testing turned up low or zero levels of karenia across most of the South Australian coast, with elevated readings still showing up at six sites on the Eyre Peninsula, one on the Yorke Peninsula and parts of Spencer Gulf. That mixed picture is exactly why Seafood Industry SA is keeping a close watch on the zones still in production, with so much of the state's supply now resting on them.
