- Washington State Senator Kevin Ranker (D-Orcas Island) plans on proposing legislation in the upcoming session to ban Atlantic salmon net-pen farming, reports the Seattle Times. The legislation is in response to an August 2017 incident where 100,000 fish escaped into Puget Sound from a net-pen farm. The Washington Department of Ecology defines Net-Pen finfish aquaculture as the practice of raising fish in an underwater net that serves as a pen.
- The salmon escaped due to a failed net-pen structure owned by Cooke Aquaculture, a multi-billion dollar, privately held corporation based in Canada. The Washington Department of Natural Resources manages the land on which the net-pen farm is located and has a tenant contract with Cooke Aquaculture. Sen. Ranker’s bill would allow the leases for eight existing Atlantic net-pen farms in Washington to expire in 2025 but would not allow any new permits to be issued or existing ones to be renewed.
- Also in response to the August incident, the Wild Fish Conservancy (WFC) filed a citizen suit against Cooke under the Clean Water Act. WFC explained in a press release, “These discharges represent blatantly negligent violations of the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits under which Cooke Aquaculture’s Atlantic salmon net pens currently operate.”