The environmental group, Wild Fish Conservancy, has filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue Cooke Aquaculture Pacific, the company responsible for a massive leak of farmed Atlantic salmon into Puget Sound.
“The accident began Aug. 19 and continued into Sunday, when one of three net pens at Cooke Aquaculture’s Cypress Island facility in the San Juan Islands collapsed. Nearly a week later, neither the company nor Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has an estimate of how many of the 305,000, 8- to 10-pound Atlantic salmon at the farm escaped,” says The Seattle Times.
Tribes and commercial fishermen worry that the thousands of Atlantic salmon now swimming in their waters will eat up the prey that native salmon species like the endangered Puget Sound chinook depend on or spread disease. Meanwhile, sports anglers have struggled to help clean up the mess, since the farmed salmon eat pellets and won’t latch onto a hook.
“Cooke Aquaculture is based in Blacks Harbor, New Brunswick, near the Bay of Fundy, and is the largest farmed salmon operation in North America with farms in Atlantic Canada, Maine and Washington, as well as Chile and Scotland. Cooke has a variety of brands, including True North Seafood, and purchased its eight farms in Washington from Icicle Seafoods last year,” says the Times.