On Tuesday, January 7th, Washington state joined other west coast states, California and Alaska, in prohibiting open net pen aquaculture in state waters. The Pacific Northwest has a troubled history with open-net pen aquaculture, as accidents and ecological harm have plagued the region and struggling wild populations of fish and Southern Resident Killer Whales. For example, in 2017, one of Cooke Aquaculture’s nets collapsed allowing 250,000 Atlantic salmon to escape into Puget Sound. An investigation later revealed that the net’s collapse was due to Cooke’s negligence.
That was just one of numerous ‘accidents’ or inevitabilities of this industry. Other impacts include destruction of living benthic habitats, entanglement with marine mammals, spreading disease and viruses, pollution, unsustainable feed sourcing, and die-offs from pesticides to name a few.
Prior to Tuesday’s State Board of Natural Resources meeting, Emma Helverson, Executive Director of the Wild Fish Conservancy, wrote in the Seattle Times:
“We urge Washington’s leaders to take this critical step and formally declare commercial finfish net-pen aquaculture is not fit for our waters. The time to act is now — for the fish, the water and the generations to come. Please join us in urging the DNR Board to ban commercial aquaculture net pen leases.”
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This is a big victory for the PNW and wild fish advocates everywhere. While the world population does need accessible and sustainable sources of protein, open-net pen aquaculture has a poor operational track record and harmful ecological impacts on wild populations. Until these companies can demonstrate their ability to limit or effectively mitigate their ecological impact, they should not operate in these biodiverse waterways.
Cover image and aquaculture graphic courtesy of Wild Fish Conservancy’s Save our Sound, Save our Salmon Campaign.
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