Saving Seafood

Environmental groups sue Washington state to slow Cooke’s shift to farming steelhead

February 12, 2020 — A group of conservation and environmental groups filed a lawsuit on Tuesday, 11 February, against the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife, citing the department’s decision to allow Canada-based Cooke Aquaculture to farm steelhead trout at its former Atlantic salmon farm sites.

Last month, the Washington Department of Fish and wildlife approved a five-year permit for Cooke to farm steelhead in Puget Sound and the Salish Sea. In March 2018, the Washington state legislature voted to phase out the farming of non-native finfish after at least 300,000 Atlantic salmon escaped from a Cooke farm near Cypress Island the previous year.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

NOAA is pro-aquaculture, but won’t weigh in on salmon farm ban

March 13, 2018 — BOSTON — Don’t look for the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to challenge the recent decision by Washington state to end salmon farming off its coast. The federal government’s hands are tied, said a senior NOAA official at the Seafood Expo North America, in Boston, Massachusetts, on Sunday afternoon.

“We do have separation of powers in the United States between the federal government and the state government,” said Michael Rubino, NOAA’s director of aquaculture, when asked. “And this was largely a state government matter.”

Washington state governor Jay Inslee is expected to soon sign House Bill 2957, a bill passed by the state’s Senate, 31-16, on March 2 that would allow the leases for offshore aquaculture facilities there to expire by 2025. The state’s House voted roughly two weeks earlier to support the bill.

Washington state’s dramatic action followed the much-publicized escape, in August, of more than 250,000 Atlantic salmon from a Cooke Aquaculture facility near Cypress Island.

When asked if NOAA might weigh in, Rubino simply responded that NOAA doesn’t have a say in the matter.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

Cooke authorised to raise 1M more Atlantic salmon in Puget Sound despite recent escape

October 6, 2017 — The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) has granted approval for Cooke Aquaculture to rear 1 million more Atlantic salmon in Puget Sound after one of the largest fish-farm escapes the firm has faced in history.

In August the company’s Cypress Island net-pen facility near the San Juan Islands collapsed and released tens of thousands of Atlantic salmon into Puget Sound and nearby waters.

Following the net pen collapse, Governor Jay Inslee directed that no permits be issued for new aquaculture net pens while the incident was being investigated.

However, current laws and administrative rules do not give state regulators the authority to deny Cooke’s permit to move healthy fish into an existing net pen.

In a prepared statement, Inslee said he had asked the company to withdraw its permit application to move 1 million juvenile Atlantic salmon from the company’s hatchery in Rochester, Thurston County, to its existing net-pen facility in Puget Sound at Clam Bay, along Rich Passage. He also expressed disappointment to know the firm decided to go ahead while thousands of salmon that had escaped have not been recovered yet.

Read the full story at Fish Information & Services

After Atlantic salmon spill, fish farms’ future under attack on both sides of border

September 13, 2017 — Cooke Aquaculture Pacific knew it had problems at its Cypress Island fish farm before the catastrophic failure that spilled tens of thousands of Atlantic salmon into Puget Sound.

“The farm site No. 2 was identified as the first priority for upgrades. We knew it was at the end of its life cycle and it needed upgrades right away, and we were in the process of doing that,” company spokesman Chuck Brown said this week.

But the company never got the chance.

Instead, the farm capsized the weekend of Aug. 19, with 305,000 Atlantic salmon inside. The company collected 142,176 in all from its nets. The rest escaped.

Though evidence of damage to native fish runs is sparse, the accident has sparked an outcry to shut down the Atlantic salmon fish-farming industry in Washington. The state already has said it won’t allow new or expanded farms until further review, and 20 Western Washington tribes with treaty-protected fisheries say they want Puget Sound farms shut down entirely.

It also comes as the industry is under intense scrutiny across the border in British Columbia. First Nations people on Aug. 25 began an occupation of a net pen farm at Swanson Island near Alert Bay, demanding permits be revoked for the farms in their local waters because of concern about disease, fish waste and parasites harming wild stocks.

Read the full story at the Bellingham Herald

Seattle Times: Keep a sharper eye on farmed-fish industry

Open season on Atlantic salmon is fun, but the accidental release of thousands of farmed fish near Anacortes raises serious questions for regulators and farm operators.

August 24, 2017 — THE open season on Atlantic salmon fishing right here in Puget Sound, prompted by a broken fish pen near Anacortes, is a fun way to end a remarkable summer.

But the accidental release of thousands of farmed salmon raises serious questions about the oversight of this growing offshore industry.

Myriad state and federal agencies are involved in the permitting of fish farms, yet Cooke Aquaculture still experienced a substantial net-pen failure on Aug. 19 at its farm on Cypress Island, between Guemes and Blakely islands.

That prompted the state Department of Fish and Wildlife to declare open season on the thousands of Atlantic salmon that were released, inviting anglers to catch as many escapees as possible.

An initial flurry of misleading information, suggesting the accident was related to tides during the Aug. 21 eclipse, puts the onus on Cooke Aquaculture to better explain what happened. All operators must do a better job informing the public when incidents occur in publicly owned waters they lease from the state.

Read the full editorial at the Seattle Times

‘Environmental Nightmare’ After Thousands Of Atlantic Salmon Escape Fish Farm

August 24, 2017 — Commercial fishing boats are scrambling to catch as many Atlantic salmon as they can after a net pen broke near Washington’s Cypress Island. Fishers reported thousands of the non-native fish jumping in the water or washing ashore.

A fish farm’s net pen failed Saturday afternoon when an anchor pulled loose and metal walkways twisted about. Onlookers said it looked like hurricane debris.

The pen, in the state’s northwestern San Juan Islands, contained about 305,000 Atlantic salmon. Now, owner Cooke Aquaculture and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife are trying to determine how many escaped.

Kurt Beardslee, the director of the Wild Fish Conservancy Northwest, called the escape an “environmental nightmare.”

Department officials blamed the structure failure on high tides caused by the eclipse — but that explanation is being questioned because tidal waters had been higher in July.

“Our understanding is with the solar eclipse came some pretty severe tidal exchanges, and within the San Juan Islands themselves, those currents are pretty strong at times,” Ron Warren, the department’s assistant director, told KUOW’s The Record.

A statement on Cooke Aquaculture’s website said that “exceptionally high tides and currents coinciding with this week’s solar eclipse” caused the damage.

Read the full story at New England Public Radio