— by Mark Yuasa from Crosscut.com —
Atlantic Salmon released from Deepwater Bay. photo courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service
Lummi Tribal fishermen fishing near Samish south of Bellingham Bay have already reported catching some of the thousands of Atlantic salmon escapees that fled a Cooke Aquaculture fish farm over the weekend.
On Monday, state fisheries issued a free-for-all emergency sport-fishing bounty on an unknown number of farm-raised Atlantic salmon that escaped from net pens in Deepwater Bay, located on the east side of Cypress Island in the San Juan Islands. The Cooke Aquaculture net pen holds about 305,000 fish averaging eight to ten pounds each, a news release said.
The Cooke Aquaculture farm blamed “exceptionally high tides and currents coinciding with [Monday’s] solar eclipse” for the net pen failure.
But Tribal fishery managers disagree about what might have caused the accident reported to Fish and Wildlife on Saturday, Aug. 19.
(to read the full article, go to https://crosscut.com/2017/08/atlantic-salmon-escape-solar-eclipse-washington-tribes-say-no/ )
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