March 1, 2022 — Cooke Aquaculture Pacific has won two victories allowing its plan to farm steelhead in the U.S. state of Washington to advance.
In a unanimous, 9-0 decision, the Washington Supreme Court upheld a decision by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) to allow Cook to convert its idle Atlantic salmon net-pen farms to raise steelhead. The move was precipitated by Washington’s ban on farming of non-native species in its waters.
January 14, 2022 — The Washington Supreme Court has sided with Cooke Aquaculture in a unanimous 9-0 ruling that upholds the company’s fish farming permits in the state.
The lawsuit has its origins in a five-year permit that the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) granted to Cooke in January 2020, allowing the company to farm steelhead trout in Puget Sound and the Salish Sea. Soon after the permit was granted, a consortium of conservation and environmental groups including the Wild Fish Conservancy (WFC) filed a lawsuit challenging the permit, claiming the department was allowing the farms without fulling considering what the impacts would be on water quality in the surrounding areas.
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August 30, 2021 — An investigation is underway into what caused a mass die-off of salmon at a Cooke Aquaculture operation Down East.
In a statement, Cooke Aquaculture spokesperson Joel Richardson writes that “uncommonly low oxygen levels in the cages” are being blamed for the fish die-off, and that the company is “completing the safe removal of mortalities that have occurred” at salmon farm sites off Black Island, near Frenchboro.
New Brunswick-based Cooke Aquaculture was cited in 2019 by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection after multiple violations were found at net pen sites in Hancock and Washington counties. The company agreed to pay more than $150,000 as part of the case resolution.
The violations included overcrowding of fish pens. The company was also cited for failing to conduct environmental sampling or submit reports on schedule.
August 19, 2021 — Cooke Aquaculture has confirmed its interest in purchasing Tasmania, Australia-based salmon-farming firm Huon Aquaculture, in the midst of a takeover bid from Brazilian meat processing giant JBS.
However, JBS has run into difficulty in the form of activist investor Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, who has used his minority interest in Huon to push for increased environmental standards. In response, JBS issued a parallel bid for control of the company that seeks a 50.1 percent minimum acceptance condition. In a notice filed with the Australian Stock Exchange on 17 August, Huon announced JBS had upped its ownership to 40.53 percent of the voting power of the company.
August 17, 2021 — Salish Fish, a joint venture between family-owned Cooke Aquaculture Pacific LLC and the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, has officially launched and is moving forward with plans to stock its ocean fish farm in Port Angeles Harbor, Washington, U.S.A. with native steelhead and possibly sablefish in the coming months, according to the company and the tribe.
For Cooke, the move represents a reboot of its Washington operations after a 2017 escape at its Cypress Island farm led to the state banning the farming of non-native finfish, effectively phasing out Cooke’s Atlantic salmon farming.
August 6, 2021 — Cooke Aquaculture has received a key permit from the U.S. state of Washington that will allow it to stock its Hope Island farm with rainbow trout.
The permit, issued by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife on 5 August, will allow Cooke to stock its Hope Island farm, in Puget Sound’s Skagit Bay, with 365,000 steelhead, also known as rainbow trout. But the facility’s lease expires in March 2022, before the fish will be ready for harvest, meaning the company must either obtain an extension on its lease or move the fish to another site by that time.
March 17, 2021 — Cooke Aquaculture’s Kelly Cove Salmon received approval for a new land-based salmon hatchery on Digby Neck.
The Nova Scotia Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture (NSDFA) posted its decision on March 23 and Kelly Cove Salmon Ltd., the Atlantic Canadian salmon farming division of Cooke, will have its new facility near Centreville.
February 9, 2021 — The global COVID-19 pandemic has been a mixed bag for the seafood industry, with retailers notching record seafood sales and the category as a whole seeing gains, even as the foodservice industry virtually collapsed.
That downturn is expected to change direction this year, with foodservice operators optimistic about 2021. Seafood company CEOs and advisors, speaking during the National Fisheries Institute’s Global Seafood Market Conference’s economic outlook panel, also expressed optimism about the industry’s recovery. While in the short-term the rebound may be slight, as trend experts have predicted, once relative normalcy returns demand could see a big boost.
January 7, 2021 — Washington’s Department of Ecology has revised four water quality permits to Cooke Aquaculture to farm steelhead in net-pens it formerly used to raise Atlantic salmon.
Cooke had already received approval from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, though conservation groups have sued to block their issuance. The facilities are located near Bainbridge Island and La Conner, and are now permitted for steelhead, also known as rainbow trout.
December 31, 2020 — An aquaculture worker who got hurt tending to salmon raised in offshore pens is covered under state law, but not under the federal law that defines some of the rights for mariners, Maine‘s supreme court ruled.
The court ruled unanimously on Tuesday in a Workers’ Compensation Board appellate division decision involving a woman who was injured while working for Cooke Aquaculture’s salmon operation off the coast of Eastport.
The woman, Darla Potter, slipped and hurt her knee while caring for salmon, which were raised in cages located less than a mile offshore.
Great Falls Insurance Company contended that the Workers’ Compensation Board lacked jurisdiction because Potter should be considered to be a “seaman” under federal admiralty law known as the Jones Act.
The Supreme Judicial Court said the closest analogy to an aquaculture operation is an offshore oil platform, and it noted that oil platform workers have never been found to fall under the Jones Act jurisdiction.