Saving Seafood

3 reasons we’re farming Atlantic salmon in Puget Sound

May 1, 2018 — Every time I report on the Great Atlantic Salmon Escape of 2017, someone asks me the same question: Why don’t we just farm Pacific salmon species in Puget Sound?

Listener Michael Hrankowski wrote in recently with that exact question. Well, here’s why not.

First, there’s the business reason.

The difference between farming Atlantic salmon and farming Pacific species is like the difference between raising cattle and raising bison. Atlantic salmon are docile, they don’t get into fights in the pens, and they get fat fast.

In other words, they’ve been domesticated. They’re the cows of the sea.

Second, there’s the historical reason.

In 1971, scientists from the Northwest Fisheries Science Center started to raise Atlantic salmon in the Pacific Northwest with the end goal of shipping the fish back east to restore Atlantic salmon runs in New England. Halfway through the project, fisheries officials back in New England decided they didn’t want the fish because of the possibility that viruses and parasites from the Pacific Ocean might be introduced into the Atlantic.

Read the full story at KUOW

 

This Is Why You Don’t See People-Size Salmon Anymore

March 13, 2018 — While the orcas of Puget Sound are sliding toward extinction, orcas farther north have been expanding their numbers. Their burgeoning hunger for big fish may be causing the killer whales’ main prey, Chinook salmon, to shrink up and down the West Coast.

Chinook salmon are also known as kings: the biggest of all salmon. They used to grow so enormous that it’s hard to believe the old photos now. Fishermen stand next to Chinooks almost as tall as they are, sometimes weighing 100 pounds or more.

“This has been a season of unusually large fish, and many weighing from 60 to 70 pounds have been taken,” The Oregonian reported in 1895.

Now, more than a century later, “it’s not impossible that we see individuals of that size today, but it’s much, much rarer,” University of Washington research scientist Jan Ohlberger says.

Ohlberger has been tracking the downsizing of salmon in recent decades, but salmon have been shrinking in numbers and in size for a long time. A century’s worth of dam-building, overfishing, habitat loss and replacement by hatchery fish cut the size of the average Chinook in half, studies in the 1980s and 1990s found.

Dam-building and fishing have tailed off, but Chinooks have been shrinking even faster in the past 15 years, according to a new paper by Ohlberger and colleagues in the journal Fish and Fisheries. Older and bigger fish are mostly gone.

Read the full story at KUOW

 

Trump Budget Would Zero Out Funding For Puget Sound Recovery, Again

February 14, 2018 — Members of Congress who represent Puget Sound are pushing back against the Trump administration’s budget for 2019 in part because it would zero out all federal funding for cleanup and recovery of the iconic ecosystem.

The proposal cuts all funding for the Environmental Protection Agency’s geographic program for Puget Sound, as well as for a national estuary program and for Pacific salmon recovery through National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries. The administration says it wants local governments to take on the responsibility and continue recovery efforts.

The missing money totals more than $30 million, says Sheida Sahandy, Executive Director of the state’s Puget Sound Partnership, which coordinates cleanup. Those funds are leveraged with money from other state and local sources to get work done, so she says the cuts would be “crippling.”

“We’re at tipping point for, for example, the Orca,” she said, referring to the dwindling population of southern resident killer whales, which has reached its lowest number in 30 years. Only 76 are left in the wild.

“We are fearing extinction around the corner and stopping our efforts at this point in their tracks would essentially mean that we’re giving up on saving them,” Sahandy said, adding that the orcas are only the most obvious example of what’s at stake.

If there’s any silver lining, it’s that her agency has been through this once before.

Last year, the President’s budget proposed nearly identical cuts. Congress ultimately pushed back, reinstating all $28 million in the geographic program for Puget Sound in the 2018 budget.

But Sahandy says it will take a lot of advocacy once again. She says Washington state is so far away from the capitol that many well-meaning members of Congress need to be reminded why their support is critical.

Read the full story at KNKX

 

Washington: Cooke not giving up after state senate votes to finish salmon farming

February 12, 2018 — International seafood producer, Cooke Aquaculture is vowing a fight as it attempts to hold on to its operations in Washington state.

The New Brunswick-based company suffered a major setback Thursday when the state senate voted 35-12 to end Atlantic salmon aquaculture operations as leases on cage sites expire over the next six years.

The bipartisan bill passed despite an all out effort by the company in support of an amendment proposed by one senator that would have allowed Atlantic salmon aquaculture to continue using only female fish. The amendment was designed to ensure non-native salmon could not breed should they escape into the wild.

“We‘re going to just continue to look forward, we‘re going to work with legislators,” said Joel Richardson, the company  vice-president, public relations. “We‘ve been advocating hard on behalf of our employees. We have 180 employees in Washington.

“We believe those employees‘ jobs are worth saving and we‘re going to do everything we can to save them.”

Cooke has found itself on shifting ground since the Aug. 19 collapse of a net-pen farm that allowed tens of thousands of Atlantic salmon to escape into Puget Sound, raising fears they would stress wild native salmon or otherwise contaminate the marine environment.

This photograph of a fouled salmon-cage net was included in a report prepared by a state investigative panel looking into the collapse of the Cooke Aquaculture salmon farm. (State of Washington)

State officials earlier said 160,000 fish escaped, but a report released this month by an investigative review panel concluded the real number is somewhere between 242,000 and 262,000 — numbers that Cooke disputes.

Read the full story at the Kaplan Herald

 

Washington: Lawmakers consider bill to ban commercial net pens for fish farms after massive spill

January 11, 2018 — OLYMPIA, Wash. — A bill that would ban commercial net pens used for fish farms in Washington State is now being considered in Olympia.

It comes after last August’s massive spill in the Puget Sound where tens of thousands of Atlantic salmon were released near the San Juan Islands, and more than 105,000 remain unaccounted for.

“That is a great concern,” said Sen. Kevin Ranker, (D-Orcas Island), who is sponsoring the bill that would ban Atlantic salmon farms in Washington.

On Tuesday, Ranker testified at a hearing of the Senate Agriculture, Water, Natural Resources & Parks Committee.

“Having these fish, which are considered – under our own laws – a pollutant in our ecosystem makes no sense if we are going to continue to recover our marine ecosystem,” said Ranker.

Ranker is worried about more fish escaping from net pens in the future and the daily operations of the facilities owned by Canadian-based Cooke Aquaculture.

“Frankly, this bill kills rural jobs,” said Troy Nichols of Phillips Burgess Government Relations who testified on behalf of Cooke Aquaculture.

Cooke Aquaculture employs 80 people at its eight facilities in Washington.

“We do an excellent job raising fish there- here in the Puget Sound, said Tom Glaspie who is the farm manager at Cooke’s Hope Island facility. “We give it our all. We care about the environment. Most of us are fishermen; (our) families have fished, and we’re proud to be Washingtonians.”

Read the full story at KOMO News

 

How Fishermen Are Faring In Washington Months After Salmon Spill

December 28, 2017 — Last summer, more than 100,000 farmed Atlantic salmon spilled into Puget Sound, threatening the wild salmon population. Local fishermen scrambled to catch them. NPR’s Ari Shapiro speaks with fisherman Riley Starks about what’s happened since.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

This week we’re checking back in with people we met on the program during 2017. Over the summer, more than a hundred thousand Atlantic salmon escaped from an ocean farm in Puget Sound off the coast of Washington state. Local fishermen feared a complete disruption of the ecosystem. Back in August, I spoke with one of those fishermen, Riley Starks, who was on a hunt for the fugitive salmon.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

RILEY STARKS: Fishermen love to fish, and so there is a certain sort of joy in it. But it’s like a Fellini movie. There’s the overshadowing sort of despair, you know, that underlies it.

SHAPIRO: And Riley Starks is back with us now once again. Welcome to the program.

STARKS: Thank you, Ari – nice to be back.

SHAPIRO: Did you catch all the fish?

STARKS: We did not catch all the fish. We caught – I’m going to say about a third of the fish that escaped.

SHAPIRO: So where’d the other two-thirds go?

STARKS: Well, one-third were scooped up by Cooke themselves.

Listen to the full story at New England Public Radio

 

Disappearance of wild salmon hurts local economy

November 20, 2017 — SEATTLE — Salmon and the Pacific Northwest used to go hand in hand, right? Not anymore. Back in the early 1900s, hundreds of thousands of naturally spawning salmon and steelhead could be found in Puget Sound each year. Today there are only tens of thousands. This is an alarming change, for our environment and local economy.

“I started at Pacific Fish in August, 1977,” says Bob Simon, general manager of Pacific Seafood. “In those days my job was to drive the waterfront, picking up fish. The Seattle waterfront was much different then.”

Simon remembers a string of seafood companies on the waterfront. “New England Fish Company around Pier 58. Salmon Run Seafood around Pier 54. Booth Fisheries around Pier 45. Olympic No. 2 under the viaduct. Olympic No. 3 under the viaduct. Seattle Seafoods around Pier 45.”

“These are all gone,” Simon says.

Puget Sound Partnership numbers indicate that chinook salmon populations have dropped to as little as 10 percent of their historic numbers.

This year, scientists also noted a record-low number of juvenile salmon in the Columbia River. For the first time in 20 years, some nets came up empty, showing no wild chinook salmon.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times

Fugitive salmon may be dead, but the court case is just getting started

November 15, 2017 — A Washington state conservation group is suing the owners of an Atlantic fish farm that failed over the summer.

Wild Fish Conservancy says the company negligently allowed the salmon escape to happen, which would be a Clean Water Act violation.

More than 100,000 non-native Atlantic salmon escaped into Puget Sound when Cooke Aquaculture’s pens near Cypress Island collapsed.

Aside from the spill, the Wild Fish Conservancy also contends Cooke violated its Clean Water Act responsibilities over the past five years. Attorney Brian Knutsen is representing the conservancy.

Knutsen: “Permits require that Cooke Aquaculture implement pollution prevention plans at all eight of its facilities. Cooke Aquaculture has over the last five years failed to implement these plans in a manner that’s required by its clean water act permits.”

He said the lawsuit seeks to hold Cooke responsible for the fish escape in August and for allegedly failing to follow its pollution plan.

Read the full story at KUOW

 

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