From the Wild Fish Conservancy.
Cooke Aquaculture, an Atlantic salmon net pen conglomerate, is threatening the health of Puget Sound with their plans to further transform it into an epicenter of Atlantic salmon net pen production. We cannot risk putting our Sound, our salmon, and our future into the hands of an industry with a long history of negative environmental, social, and economic impacts – impacts that led California, Oregon, and Alaska to wisely ban this industry.
It’s time for us to stand up for our Sound. It’s time for us to stand up for our salmon. And it’s time we stand up for our future by stopping the expansion of destructive Atlantic salmon net pens in Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
California, Oregon, and Alaska have all banned Atlantic salmon net pens to protect the health of their salmon and waters. Take action today and tell Governor Inslee it’s time Washington joins them and takes the first step forward by banning the expansion of Atlantic salmon net pens in Washington’s waters.
Salmon farms and their pens and cages have greatly reduced runs of WILD Atlantic salmon in a number of West Coast Scottish salmon rivers and wiped out once great sea-trout (sea-run brown) fisheries over the past three decades. Sea lice infestation of wild fish smolt juveniles leaving rivers for the saltwater feeding grounds and have to swim past loused-up salmon-filled pens and cages causing massive, “eaten alive” mortalities, contamination of the wild adult gene pool by regular mass escapes of pellet-fed zoo fish from the same pens. It’s grisly.
You really don’t need them. Keep them out, guys.
just trying to educate myself, but why are they pen rearing atlantics on the west coast? food or sport?
It’s for food. Low quality farmed salmon they can sell primarily in Middle America.