Fine ending to Cypress Island fish farm disaster

It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.

Having first blamed the sun and moon for the collapse of net pens at its fish farm off Cypress Island that allowed one quarter million Atlantic salmon to escape into area waters last August, Cooke Aquaculture was swept under by a recent State-led investigation and tidal wave of testimony in Olympia.

The state Department of Ecology announced last week it is fining Cooke $332,000 – a little more than a buck per escaped fish –for alleged poor cleaning and maintenance that led to the buildup of tons of mussels and other marine organisms deemed responsible for pulling the net pen facility asunder.

The company had initially linked its pen failure to tidal action from last summer’s much ballyhooed total solar eclipse.

Swinomish Tribal Senate chair Brian Cladoosby, the immediate past President of the National Congress of American Indians, who has called the escaped Atlantic salmon “zombie fish,” was among those who testified.

“The testimonies were definitely interesting,” Alex Visser, reporter for the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association (WNPA) Olympia News Bureau, told the La Conner Weekly News. “You had a mix of people worried about the environment and those worried about losing their jobs. Then you had Tribal representatives with their viewpoints.”

Cooke, which has criticized the investigative process because it says it was not allowed to join the probe, has a month to appeal the State ruling.

Aquaculture in Washington state has an interesting history, to say the least.

Early on it was pitched as a way to both create jobs and increase fish volumes to meet population growth in Puget Sound. Studies have long linked fish in regular diets to longer lifespans.

Pacific salmon were initially introduced at commercial net operations, but Atlantic salmon – which also thrive in cold marine water – emerged as a cost-effective option as farmed fish.

The State, ironically, had tried unsuccessfully to establish wild Atlantic salmon runs here in the early 1950s. None of the Atlantic salmon returned from their releases, however.

Opposition to aquaculture in Washington state arose from shoreline residents fearing visible pens would impact property values and subject adjoining waters to pollution.

Those concerns -- and others – were raised locally in the late 1980s by the Kiket Bay Organization citizens group in response to pens sited near Hope Island.

Environmentalists and Tribal fisheries would weigh in by citing threats posed by potential Atlantic salmon escapement. Those included the possibility of farmed fish spreading disease to wild salmon and competing with native runs for food and spawning grounds.

Some, though, pooh-poohed the prospects for such, contending that farmed fish would not establish self-sustaining populations in the wild because they are used to being fed.

Environmental writer Daniel Jack Chasan was told by a state agency rep in 2016 – a year prior to the Cypress Island net pen failure – that “escapes don’t really pose a threat.”

That isn’t the prevailing view in Olympia this legislative session.

Visser said Washington Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz termed the Cypress Island incident a “disaster,” one that put the State’s aquatic system at risk.

Economics have come into play as well.

State Sen. John McCoy, D-Tulalip, told the media last month that Atlantic salmon serve to depress market value for wild salmon. He was among those who endorsed a moratorium on new net pen leases issued by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee in August.

Inslee later heard Tribal concerns over the Cooke net pen collapse while attending the 28th Centennial Accord at Swinomish in the fall.