Cooke recovers remaining fish from US escape site
Cooke Aquaculture Pacific has cleared its wrecked Cypress Island No.2 farm of fish, recovering 142,176 of approximately 305,000 salmon that were in the pens that failed during high tides nearly two weeks ago.
At least 20,000 escaped fish have been caught by members of the native Lummi Nation, and tribal, commercial and recreational fishers are continuing to pull more out of the waters off the coast of Washington state in the US and British Columbia, Canada.
Cooke spokesman Chuck Brown told fishfarmingexpert.com: "We have begun the process of removing nets and are starting to dismantle the farm equipment.
"We will work carefully and safely to clean up the damage and we will be doing our own investigation and cooperating with state agencies as they investigate this incident. We all want to know the root cause of this issue and we want to make sure nothing like this ever happens again."
Emergency response
Cooke originally thought the failure of the farm, which it has owned for less than a year, was the result of exceptionally high tidal ranges caused by a solar eclipse, but oceanographers have since pointed out that the tides at the time were not unusual.
A hearing into Cooke's plans to relocate another farm in the area from Port Angeles harbour into more open water in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, allowing it to increase production by 20 per cent, has been postponed by authorities at the company's request "to allow us to focus on the emergency response effort and for us to work with you to evaluate next steps with respect to our permit applications".
Hilary Franz, commissioner of public lands for Washington’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) – which leases public bed lands to Cooke for its fish-farm operations – is requiring inspections of all structures licensed to Cooke in Washington waters, with DNR personnel present during the inspections.
