Cooke escape much worse than first feared

Original estimates put the number of two-year-old, 4.5kg salmon released into the wild from the Deepwater Bay facility off Cypress Island in Washington state in the US at between 4,000 and 5,000, but later reports say up to 300,000 fish may have escaped.

Cooke based its original figures on the assumption that two pens in the 10-pen farm had been damaged on Saturday, but further examination the next day revealed every pen had been compromised.

Not out of the ordinary

Cooke's contention that the incident was caused by highly unusual tidal variations because of the eclipse have been questioned. “The data speak for themselves: there were large tidal ranges around the day of the eclipse, but not out of the ordinary, and in fact they were smaller than during some recent months,” Parker MacCready, an oceanographer at the University of Washington said.

In response, Nell Halse, vice president, communications for Cooke Aquaculture Pacific, told fishfarmingexpert.com: "We are aware of the tide tables but our experience was that we had extreme tides that were the catalyst for the collapse. Our crew are seasoned farmers who have spent years on the farm and say the conditions on the weekend were extreme with 3.5 knot currents running through the site. We will be doing a full assessment of the situation to determine all causes once we have recovered the fish and salvaged the farm.

"No one knows the number of escapes but we do know that there are still fish swimming in the nets. Records are being kept of all fish recaptured and once we remove all fish from the site we will have a more accurate number.

"Our first estimate was based on the damage to two net pens on Saturday but on Sunday the damage involved the entire farm so we reported that the escapes were more significant.

"We are making daily reports to all state agencies on recapture, recovery and salvage operations."

Call for shutdown

The Seattle Times yesterday reported that the Native American Lummi Nation is trying to mop up thousands of the escaped salmon, and the Swinomish tribal chairman has called for a shutdown of the industry as the fish reach tribal fishing rivers. The farmed Atlantic salmon also have made their way into the Nooksack River, where Lummi fishermen have had treaty-protected fisheries for generations.

Canadian-based Cooke has operations on both the east and west of the US and Canada, in South America and in Scotland, where it has 45 salmon farming sites in Orkney and Shetland.