October 27, 2020 — The Northwest Aquaculture Alliance (NWAA) has pushed back against a video by clothing company Patagonia titled “Take Back Puget Sound,” which focuses on net-pen aquaculture.
The new video focuses specially on Washington state, and opens with footage of a net-pen collapse suffered by Cooke Aquaculture, with speakers involved calling net-pen aquaculture “a dirty industry.”
June 23, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
There is an especially valuable environment in Puget Sound made up of the beaches, bluffs, inlets, and river deltas: the nearshore. Nearshore habitat matters to Southern Resident killer whales because their primary prey, Chinook salmon, need them to grow and find safety when they are young. Unfortunately, we have been losing these habitats in Puget Sound to industrial and residential development and agriculture.
Southern Resident Killer Whales eat salmon, primarily Chinook salmon. The whales search out and rely upon the ever-changing abundance of many different Chinook salmon runs up and down the Pacific Coast. Puget Sound Chinook salmon are one of the most important of these for the Southern Residents’ recovery. Puget Sound Chinook salmon, however, are themselves threatened with extinction.
Killer whales eat Chinook salmon when the fish have grown into adults three years old and weighing close to 30 pounds. The salmon are headed back from the ocean through Puget Sound to their home rivers to lay their eggs. To make it to adulthood, though, these fish need to survive their adolescence as “juveniles” or “fry.” That’s where the nearshore zone comes in.
Tiny young Chinook salmon emerge from the gravel where they hatched from eggs in the rivers of Puget Sound and the Salish Sea—the Skagit, Elwha, Nisqually, and others. Then the young fish follow one of several different strategies to grow as juveniles before heading out to the ocean. They can rear in the river and freshwater floodplains or head downstream to the great tidal river deltas. They can also head all the way out into Puget Sound looking for safety along the shore in pocket estuaries, kelp and eelgrass beds, coastal creeks, or lagoons.
May 12, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
Consider this Northwest twist on a familiar saying: “Give a killer whale a salmon, and it will eat for a day. Restore the habitat the salmon and whales depend on, and they will live for generations to come.” At NOAA Fisheries we are determined to get more Chinook salmon to the endangered Southern Resident killer whales, and that begins with more and better habitat.
It is up to everyone to maintain room for these magnificent creatures as our own footprint on the Puget Sound region grows ever bigger.Focusing on salmon habitat is essential.
Improving Salmon Habitat
Washington Governor Jay Inslee’s Orca Task Force emphasized habitat. It highlighted actions such as removing culverts that block salmon migration, protecting shoreline habitat, and building on other efforts throughout the region. We must work together to restore the streams where salmon spawn and grow, and protect the dwindling nearshore habitat that shelters and nourishes juveniles.
Improving fish passage through dams must continue. It is important to get salmon into their prime habitat.
Through partnerships, we’ve made progress in recent years on these goals. Restored habitat in the Skagit River estuary, funded in part by the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund, now supports hundreds of thousands more Chinook salmon smolts. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is constructing fish passage at Mud Mountain Dam, renewing access to miles of habitat in the White River. The Nisqually Tribe led one of Puget Sound’s most ambitious tidal marsh restoration efforts in the Nisqually River Delta—just to name a few.
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.
January 23, 2020 — The Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife (WSDFW) has approved a five-year permit for Cooke Aquaculture to farm steelhead trout in Puget Sound and the Salish Sea, according to The Seattle Times.
In March 2018, Washington state’s legislature voted to phase out the farming of non-native finfish after some 500,000 Atlantic salmon escaped from a Cooke farm near Cypress Island the previous year.
December 31, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
Some 8,000 aging culverts under roads and driveways around Puget Sound block threatened Puget Sound steelhead from reaching high headwaters streams where they historically spawned, forming a major obstacle to the species’ recovery.
A new recovery plan developed under the Endangered Species Act for Puget Sound steelhead addresses these impassable culverts and other threats. It provides a roadmap to help the native fish recover into self-sustaining populations and resume their prominence in Puget Sound. NOAA Fisheries developed the plan with help and support from many partners.
Nearly 1 million wild adult steelhead historically returned to Puget Sound rivers but fewer than 5 to 10 percent of that return today. Puget Sound steelhead were designated as threatened in 2007, bringing them under the protection of the Endangered Species Act.
“Puget Sound steelhead are remarkably resilient, but they have been pushed to the limit by decades of habitat loss, and adverse marine conditions,” said Elizabeth Babcock, North Puget Sound Branch Chief in NOAA Fisheries’ West Coast Region. “Based on the best available science, this plan is a solid and comprehensive blueprint for recovery.”
Recovering the steelhead that are highly valued by Northwest tribes, prized by fishermen, and preyed upon by endangered killer whales would provide ecological, cultural, and economic benefits.
December 30, 2019 — Limits on bass and walleye fishing — alongside other warmwater species — were liberalized by the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission on Saturday.
New rules, going into effect mid-February, remove size limits and daily limits on rivers and streams throughout the state.
The rules also double the daily limits for most species on 77 lakes throughout Washington, said Steve Caromile, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s warmwater fish program manager.
The changes are in response to new legislation aimed at increasing chinook survival in hopes of helping struggling orca populations in the Puget Sound.
Bass and walleye eat salmon smolts, although to what extent they impact the migrating fish is disputed.
Initially, WDFW officials proposed removing bag limits statewide, but the commission directed them to narrow their proposal.
October 31, 2019 — Maquoit Bay in Brunswick and Puget Sound in Washington state are separated by thousands of miles, but shellfish farmers in both places are feeling some heat.
Earlier this month, a federal judge in Seattle ruled that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit that authorizes virtually all shellfish aquaculture in Washington state was void because “the Corps has failed to adequately consider the impacts of commercial shellfish aquaculture activities” as required by the federal Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.
The court’s order could force Washington’s shellfish farmers to cease activities other than the harvest of animals already in the water until the Corps issues individual permits for each shellfish farming site.
For the moment, the court’s decision applies only to the Washington state aquaculture industry but, even if the court expands its reach, Maine’s aquaculture industry won’t be affected.
“It has no bearing in the rest of the country,” Jay Clement, chief of the Maine Project Office in the Corps of Engineers’ New England District Regulatory Division, said last week.
The permit the court considered was a “nationwide permit” authorizing discharges, structures and work related to commercial shellfish aquaculture activities.
“There have been no nationwide permits in New England since 1995,” Clement said. “It really doesn’t apply to how we do business in Maine.”
October 28, 2019 — What was once an endless supply in the Pacific Northwest is now endangered. Millions of Chinook salmon are not surviving migration. Now, the shortage is causing officials to make some difficult decisions.
As much as air or water, so much life in the Pacific Northwest depends on salmon. Over 130 species rely on nature’s original food delivery but fewer salmon are surviving the heroic swim from the open ocean to spawning streams hundreds of miles inland.
And that means trouble for two creatures that really, really love the king of fish. Killer whales and us.
In your grandparent’s day, the Columbia Basin seemed to produce a never-ending supply and salmon the size of people. But those big “June hog” Chinooks are extinct now and this year numbers were so low, the fall fishing season was canceled.
Columbia Riverkeeper Brett Vandenheuvel said, “The estimates are about 17 million salmon would return to the Columbia every year. It was the greatest salmon fishery in the world. And now it’s about a million fish return.”
And most of those are hatchery fish with weaker genes and less fat than their wild cousins. So the southern resident killer whales that live on Chinook are starving. There are only 73 of this kind of orca left on the planet and after a grieving orca mom pushed her dead calf around Puget Sound for weeks last summer, it rekindled a decades-old debate: salmon vs. dams.
July 3, 2019 — Shellfish farming in Washington is a multimillion-dollar industry with a history as deep as Puget Sound. However, recent decades of warming oceans and higher levels of ocean acidification continue to challenge shellfish farming practices.
In and around Whatcom County there are several aquaculture farms, such as Lummi Shellfish Hatchery, Drayton HarborOyster Co., Blau Oyster and Taylor Shellfish in Samish Bay. Each farm varies in size, number of employees and type of shellfish produced, but they share one thing in common: the water quality of Puget Sound.
There are more than 300 aquaculture farms across Washington, according to the Pacific Shellfish Institute. A WashingtonState Maritime Sector Economic Impact Study in 2017 found that the industry directly supports 15,900 jobs. Samish Bay shellfish farms alone include $2 million annual payroll and $6 million in wholesale oysters, clams and geoduck.
In June, four ocean acidification bills made bipartisan progress, in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, to becoming law. The bills are designed to encourage research and spur new ideas for adapting to the affects of ocean acidification. The bills include the COAST Research Act of 2019, the Coastal Communities Ocean Acidification Act of 2019,the Ocean Acidification Innovation Act of 2019 and the NEAR Act of 2019.
As carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere a certain percentage is absorbed into the water, causing a chemical reaction that makes the water more acidic. According to the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, roughly 25%of carbon dioxide emissions are absorbed into the worlds oceans. The process is similar to bubbles escaping from a soda can, but in reverse. Since the industrial revolution ocean acidification has increased by 30% and reduced carbonate ions by16%, said Bill Dewey, director of public affairs for Taylor Shellfish. By the end of the century it is predicted that ocean acidification will increase by 100% to 150% and reduce carbonate ions by 50%, said Dewey.