Cooke fined $332,000 for salmon escape
COOKE, the largest US producer of farmed Atlantic salmon, was fined $332,000 on January 30 following the escape of thousands of fish into Puget Sound last summer, the Associated Press reported.
Washington State’s Department of Ecology released a report saying Cooke violated water quality laws by failing to adequately clean nets holding farmed salmon, leading to a net pen failure in August 2017.
The nets failed because they were laden with mussels and other marine organisms, the department reported. That increased the drag on the nets from tidal currents and overwhelmed the mooring system.
‘Cooke knew they had a problem and they didn’t appropriately respond to deal with the problem,’ said state ecology director Maria Bellon.
State officials also accused the company of under-reporting how many fish escaped into Puget Sound on August 19 and over reporting how many fish were captured.
However, Cooke dismissed the state’s investigation as incomplete and inac- curate. The company said Cooke employees under state supervision counted each fish as it was recovered
Company vice president Joel Richardson said in a statement that Cooke was shut out of the investigative process, leading to ‘an inaccurate and misleading document’, referring to the report by state officials.
He said Cooke acknowledged that the facility fell behind in cleaning the nets before moorings failed in July 2017. But he said the company provided records showing it had washed the nets at the site after that July incident and before the August event.
Governor Jay Inslee said he would keep in place the state’s moratorium on net pen permits.
In December, the state terminated Cooke’s lease at another farmed salmon operation in Port Angeles, saying the company violated the terms of the lease. Cooke has challenged that decision.
The pen off Cypress Island held about 305,000 Atlantic salmon that were close to being harvested, with an estimated 160,000 fish escaping.