Escaped Washington salmon spark concerns in B.C.

The escape of hundreds of thousands of Atlantic salmon from a fish farm northeast of Victoria on the Washington state side of the San Juan Islands has sparked concerns by B.C. conservation groups about the potential impacts on wild Pacific salmon.

The farm operator, Cooke Aquaculture Pacific, said anchor lines to net pens broke Saturday afternoon and is blaming strong tides and currents leading up to Monday’s solar eclipse for causing the damage and allowing an unknown number of adult fish to escape.

While Washington state officials believe the escaped fish are healthy and disease-free, B.C. conservation groups worry about the potential for a large number of fish to spread pathogens in nearby waters at a time when wild-salmon stocks are vulnerable.

“Salmon up-and-down the coast are horribly depressed in numbers,” said Karen Wristen, executive director of the Living Oceans Society.

Besides the spread of pathogens, the concerns are that the large number of Atlantic salmon would compete with wild fish for food and habitat, and “our stocks are simply not in shape to withstand that,” Wristen said.

The Cooke farm is near Cypress Island, about 50 kilometres northeast of Victoria, but southwest of Bellingham, Wash., in the San Juan Islands, so Wristen said it would be overstating things to say that there is a big concern about the fish reaching Canadian waters.

On the Canadian side, Michelle Ranier, a Department of Fisheries and Oceans spokeswoman, said the agency hasn’t received any recent reports of the domesticated fish being caught to its Atlantic Salmon Watch program, but continues to monitor the situation.

However, Washington state’s Lummi First Nation fishermen starting to report Atlantic salmon in their nets in waters off Bellingham as early as Monday, according to a Seattle Times report.

“We know they have migrated north (toward Bellingham), so whether they’re in B.C. waters or still in Washington waters and where they’re going, we certainly don’t know,” said Ron Warren, assistant director of fish programs for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Warren’s agency has given Cooke permission to try to recapture their fish using seine nets in waters around the farm’s net pens, and are waiting for the company to come up with an inventory of the number of fish left in their pens.

The solar-eclipse event did present Canadian salmon farmers with challenging conditions, “but our farms in British Columbia all held up and withstood the pressures of that phenomenon,” said Jeremy Dunn, executive director of the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association.