Salmon Net Pen Failure: Non-native Atlantic salmon are reported to have spread over an area of 60 miles

Timing is everything. Attend a meeting on why net pens in the Straight of Juan de Fuca is a bad idea.

TUESDAY 29 AUGUST 6-8 PM

Sequim Transit Center 190 W. Cedar Street
Kurt Beardslee - Executive Director Wild Fish Conservancy 
Chris Wilke- Executive Director Puget Soundkeeper Alliance 

"Science" said they would stay

closed to home and wait to be fed.

We're free and we never liked that stuff you were feeding us to make us look pink so we are going elsewhere.
The Seattle Times writes on August 28 the Department of Fish and Wildlife are reporting non-native Atlantic salmon, released from failed net pens off of Cypress Island, have spread over a 60 mile area. This completely destroys any belief in escaped salmon staying close to home, waiting to be fed. Instead, this non-native salmon is now spreading throughout the Salish Sea.

It was the eclipse! No, wait, sorry.

Saturn was in the house of Leo.

Or was it Cancer?

Meanwhile, while astrological charts are being read,

non-native Atlantic salmon are

spreading throughout the Salish Sea.

Caught in a gross understatement (to be kind) and a blatant mis-representation of the failure.
In addition, the initial reports of only 4 thousand fish having escaped has also been shown to be a gross understatement. To date, the Lummi Tribe alone has reported its commercial fisherman have netted over 200,000 pounds of Atlantic salmon, or an estimated 20,000 fish. This total does not include the unlimited amount the public has been allowed to catch or what other commercial fisherman may have caught. Or those who have found better food elsewhere.

They'll only eat processed food. Yum.

Of course when that food isn't 

being fed to them,

they eat other things.

Farmed and dangerous (thank you Scientific America)
Washington's Department of Natural Resources, who leases the bedlands below the pens to Cooke and is in part responsible for oversight of this operation, has notified Cooke their pen failure and subsequent release of the non-native Atlantic salmon into Washington's marine habitat (and now likely Canada's) has put Cooke in default of their lease agreement. They should put them to bed. The threat posed by the escaped salmon on native salmon is real, whether it be from consuming native smolt to spreading sea lice to spreading disease. Scientific America writes on the escape and notes a dearth of research, and many assumptions.

No worries. We're with the government and have formed an incident command response team to deal with our lack of prior oversight.
August 24, the various agencies responsible held a conference call to try and figure out what to do. As noted in the notes from the meeting, it was felt it would be a good idea to form a committee of various agencies responsible for oversight. Despite years of assurance that net pen farming was being regulated and that failures such as this were unlikely, they note:

"Much concern was expressed yesterday about the lack clarity as to which agency is responsible for addressing and managing the response of the incident." 

Get involved and tell Governor Inslee and your elected officials it's time to remove these industrial operations from Puget Sound's waters.