Salmon advocates coastwide celebrate BC First Nations' landmark success as Canada agrees to remove 19 salmon farms in the Discovery Islands

Map from discoveryislands.ca

On Thursday, in a truly inspiring victory for wild Pacific salmon, orcas, and BC First Nations, the Canadian government agreed to phase out all open water salmon farms in BC's Discovery Islands near Campbell River over the next 18 months.

This historic decision is the result of the unwavering dedication and direct action of the BC First Nations and their supporters. For years, they have called on Canada's local and federal officials to end net pen salmon farms in their traditional waters where they operate without the Nations' consent. These facilities further contribute to the decline of BC's imperiled salmon runs and threaten the way of life, food security, and the health of the environment of First Nations coastwide.

Net pens located in Discovery Islands are scheduled to be removed in the next 18 months.
Photo by Tavish Campbell (@tavishcampbell)

This new agreement is the largest and latest success by BC First Nations to demand the removal of net pens in their traditional waters. Last year, in a historic negotiation, First Nations in the Broughton Archipelago successfully advocated for the Canadian government to require the immediate removal of five farms and the decommissioning of the remaining twelve by 2023.

The Our Sound, Our Salmon campaign commends the hard work and dedication of the Discovery Islands First Nations, as well as First Nations and Tribal Nations coastwide, who continue to lead this inspiring effort to protect wild salmon and end this dangerous industry throughout the Pacific coast.

In 2018, on the same day Washington passed a landmark law banning all Atlantic salmon net pens, Wild Fish Conservancy’s director and staff proudly participated in a peaceful protest led by the First Nation-led Wild Salmon Defenders Alliance outside a prominent BC legislator's office in Vancouver, BC.

Beginning in April 2019, sea lice outbreaks were reported at 30% of fish farms throughout the BC coast. Researchers found infection rates of juvenile salmon migrating near the pens were most severe in the Discovery Island where 97% of juvenile salmon were infected. For these young salmon, even a few sea lice can be lethal.

The photo gallery below shares photos taken by Tavish Campabell (@tavishcampbell) during sampling of juvenile salmon at farms including the Discovery Islands. Salmon lice were never reported on juvenile salmon in BC prior to the introduction of salmon farming.

Following the alarming sea lice outbreak in the Discovery Islands, 101 B.C. First Nations and their supporters called on the Canadian government this September for the removal of all Discovery Islands salmon farms, asking they be moved to land-based closed-containment systems.

The group called for the government to uphold a key recommendation of the Cohen Commission (which published its landmark study on how to reverse the decline of Fraser River salmon in 2012) to close salmon farms in the Discovery Islands by September 30, 2020 if they continued to pose a risk to wild salmon. Read the letter Our Sound, Our Salmon delivered to Canada's leaders standing in solidarity with BC First Nations.

The removal of these 19 facilities within the Discovery Islands represents a major victory and a huge step forward for our coastwide, international coalition and shared effort to end commercial net pen aquaculture throughout the Pacific coast. Salmon have no borders, and neither does our shared advocacy to end this dangerous practice coastwide.

Learn more about the Taking Back Our Sound campaign to end commercial net pen aquaculture in Washington’s Puget Sound.

Environmental groups appeal approval of Cooke's new net pen project to Washington’s Supreme Court

Cooke Aquaculture, the company responsible for releasing over 250,000 nonnative and viral-infected Atlantic salmon into our public waters, will face another challenge in their attempt to begin raising domesticated steelhead in their Puget Sound net pens.

Today, Wild Fish Conservancy and our partners filed an appeal taking our legal challenge over the approval of Cooke's new net pen proposal straight to the WA Supreme Court.

This decision comes in response to an unfortunate but not unexpected ruling by a lower court to uphold a permit granted to Cooke by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) and to defer to the agency's misguided decision to greenlight Cooke’s project without conducting a comprehensive scientific review of the potential environmental impacts to Puget Sound's ecosystem.

“We are disappointed that the lower court has upheld WDFW’s inadequate environmental review of Cooke’s destructive net pens," said Hallie Templeton, senior oceans campaigner and deputy legal director at Friends of the Earth. "We will appeal the flawed decision that allows Cooke’s floating factory farms to persist in Puget Sound, further destroying water quality and our endangered salmon and orcas.”

“Net-pen farming in Puget Sound promotes private profit over public resource preservation,” said Amy van Saun, senior attorney at Center for Food Safety. “We will continue fighting this harmful practice to help to protect our endangered salmon and orca for future generations.”

Last February, Wild Fish Conservancy and partners at the Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, and Friends of the Earth, filed a lawsuit against WDFW for violating state law by permitting Cooke's new proposal without requiring a comprehensive environmental impact statement (EIS). This type of review would have fully analyzed the risks posed to wild fish, water quality, and the overall health of Puget Sound.

2017 Cypress Island collapse. Photo: WA Department of Fish and Wildlife

As it stands, WDFW's current deficient environmental review that largely relied on a woefully outdated EIS from 1990 sets a low bar for what level of risk and uncertainty should be acceptable when it comes to making decisions with the potential to endanger the health of Puget Sound.

“Fish factory farming has no place in Puget Sound,” said Sophia Ressler, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Doing the work to fully understand how this project could harm our waters and endangered wildlife is absolutely vital to protecting our state waters, and the failure to require this will be destructive.”

In early November, the lower Court ruled they did not have the scientific expertise necessary to overrule WDFW's opinion. As a result, the Judge was unable to consider the merits of the lawsuit, deferring to WDFW on the very decision and underlying scientific review being challenged. The WA Supreme Court, with its increased capabilities and resources, is likely to be far more capable and prepared to address the technical merits of this case moving forward.

“The question at the heart of this lawsuit is whether or not the agency’s environmental review of the science sufficiently considered the risks posed by Cooke’s new project,” says Kurt Beardslee, Executive Director of the Wild Fish Conservancy. “The Court’s decision to rely on the expertise of the very agency being challenged means the scientific merits of this case have not been considered. The health of our Sound is far too important, we will appeal this case directly to the Supreme Court.”

Today’s appeal, echoes the calls of thousands of members of the public, including six Tribal Nations, salmon and killer whale experts, and commercial and recreational fishing groups, who all urged WDFW in public comment to do their due diligence and conduct an EIS that fully analyzes the potential environmental impacts before making a decision on whether or not to permit this new project. Even the Department of Natural Resources, a jurisdictional agency to the review process, submitted comments expressing concerns that were never addressed by WDFW’s environmental review process.

The risks posed by commercial net pen aquaculture are not only well-documented in the scientific record, but are all too familiar here in Puget Sound— daily untreated pollution, viral outbreaks, and catastrophic collapse events to name a few. This spring, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made a new Endangered Species Act (ESA) determination finding that Puget Sound net pens “are likely to adversely affect” ESA-listed salmon, steelhead, and rockfish in Puget Sound. As a result, the National Marine Fisheries Service is currently preparing a biological opinion to further analyze this initial finding.

The federal agency’s recognition of the potential risks to our most fragile wild fish populations and the decision to conduct a current and more informed analysis of those potential risks stands in stark contrast to WDFW’s reliance on the 1990 EIS and their arguments in trial that there was no agency record of environmental harm in Puget Sound.

“Wild Fish Conservancy, our attorneys, and our legal partners all remain more confident than ever that when the science and the merits of this case are considered, we will prevail.” says Beardslee. “We refuse to let the science be ignored.”

Learn more:

• Notice of appeal (filed 11-23-20)

• Lower court’s final order (filed 11-6-20)

• Complaint (filed 2-11-20)

• Additional Information (press release 2-11-20)

Wild Fish Conservancy is a nonprofit conservation ecology organization dedicated to preserving, protecting, and restoring the northwest’s wild fish and the ecosystems they depend on, through science, education, and advocacy.
wildfishconservancy.org

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.7 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
biologicaldiversity.org

Center for Food Safety's mission is to empower people, support farmers, and protect the earth from the harmful impacts of industrial agriculture, including aquaculture. Through groundbreaking legal, scientific, and grassroots action, we protect and promote your right to safe food and a healthy resilient environment.
centerforfoodsafety.org

Friends of the Earth fights to create a more healthy and just world. Our current campaigns focus on promoting clean energy and solutions to climate change, ensuring the food we eat and products we use are safe and sustainable, and protecting marine ecosystems and the people who live and work near them.
foe.org

The conservation and environmental groups bringing this challenge are represented by Kampmeier & Knutsen, PLLC and by attorneys at the Center for Food Safety and the Center for Biological Diversity.

Bainbridge Island City Council Resolution Supports Taking Back Our Sound

On November 27th, the Bainbridge Island City Council passed an official resolution declaring support for the Taking Back Our Sound campaign, a competing proposal to lease all waters in Puget Sound leased and degraded by the net pen industry for over three decades.

A RESOLUTION of the City Council of Bainbridge Island, Washington, hereby declaring the City Council’s support for the Wild Fish Conservancy’s proposal to the Washington Department of Natural Resources to lease aquatic lands in Rich Passage currently leased for commercial marine net pen finfish aquaculture for the purposes of restoring these aquatic lands to their natural state and restoring full access of these aquatic lands for the public’s full benefit, use, and enjoyment.

The resolution urges Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz to deny new leases to Cooke Aquaculture in Rich Passage and to instead lease those same public waters for the Taking Back Our Sound Restoration Project proposal that seeks to eliminate all commercial net pens and the environmental impacts they pose, thereby restoring these industrialized sites and public access to 130 acres of Puget Sound— 54 of which lie in waters surrounding Bainbridge Island.

The Council also encourages all Bainbridge Island residents to sign the Taking Back Our Sound petition to Commissioner Franz which urges the Department of Natural Resources to stop leasing our public waters for net pen aquaculture and to guarantee the public that these waters—currently degraded and restricted for private profit—will be restored and managed for the public’s benefit and use by all citizens

The resolution, introduced by City Council member Christy Carr, passed with unanimous support form all six council members and was signed by the Mayor. The resolution describes the Council’s concerns over the well-documented risks and environmental impacts posed by three commercial net pens spread across Rich Passage, with specific concern over the impacts to the Orchard Rocks Conservation Area. Two of Cooke’s three net pens in Rich Passage lie directly within this conservation area, designated for special protection in 1998 for the unique and priority habitat it provides for a rich variety of marine plants, mammal, fish, and bird species.

The Council also expresses their concern over the potential for the Bainbridge Island net pens to create a dangerous obstacle and nuisance attraction for marine mammals, including the endangered Southern Resident killer whale population. In April, a Bainbridge Island resident captured video footage of killer whales swimming dangerously close to the net pens in Rich Passage while the industry was operating their harvest vessel. Similarly, sea lions and seals have been observed by local landowners both inside the pens and hauling out on the structures, increasing the risk of harassment, boat strikes, entanglement, consumption of pharmaceuticals, and other chemicals, as well as the potential for unnatural levels of predation on wild fish also falsely attracted to the pens. The gallery below shows one case in which over 100 pinnipeds were hauled out on a single pen near Fort Ward Park.

The Council also state’s their concern over the industry’s history of permit violations and mismanagement at the Bainbridge net pen facilities. Violations at these pens includes:

• 1999 net pen facility collapse that released approximately 100,000 non-native salmon into Puget Sound

• 2012 outbreak of Infectious Haematopoietic Necrosis (IHN) that lasted several months, spreading from one to all three net pens in Rich Passage and occurred while juvenile salmon were out-migrating through Rich Passage

• 2017 violations by Cooke Aquaculture that resulted in fines for unlawfully discharging polluting matter into state waters, pressure washing equipment, nets, and vehicles over the water and allowing wastewater to enter Puget Sound, changing boat engine oil over the water, failing to put safeguards in place to protect water quality, failing to correct water quality violations when directed

• 2019 partial failure of one of Cooke’s net pens located in the Orchard Rocks Conservation Area

We appreciate this support and dedication from the Bainbridge Island City Council and greater community to protect Puget Sound from harm by this industry. A special thank you to Commissioner Christy Carr for introducing this resolution.

The Net Pen Industry's Modest Proposal for Starving Southern Residents

Last week the aquaculture industry’s favorite propaganda news site, SeaWestNews, released an article proposing a self-proclaimed radical idea to recover the northwest’s starving Southern Resident killer whales— chase the whales down in boats and try to force them to eat farmed Atlantic salmon.

While not a serious proposal, this tongue-in-cheek satire is undoubtedly an attempt to paint net pen aquaculture in a positive light to a public increasingly concerned about the risks the industry poses to critically endangered orcas and their prey.

Photo: NOAA

The industry insiders offer vague descriptions of how this supplemental feeding of farmed Atlantic salmon would work and no scientific data to support the idea, further suggesting that this is not a serious plan but an attempt to exploit starving killer whales for profit.  

They point to the example of Springer, an emaciated Northern Resident killer whale who in the early 2000's was fed a diet that included farmed Atlantic salmon as part of her rehabilitation before being reintroduced into the wild.

While Springer was taken into captivity for her feedings, we can be glad the aquaculture industry doesn’t suggest rearing whales in net pens. Instead, the article suggests large vessels carrying farmed fish could be driven straight into the whale’s foraging areas, an idea that directly contradicts coastwide efforts and legislation to reduce vessel noise in close proximity to the whales.

While not mentioned in the article, both scientists quoted as supporting this approach serve as board members or advisors to the Northwest Aquaculture Alliance, the very group that would stand to profit from marketing farmed fish as feed for killer whales.

The industry promoters flaunted this Swiftian idea again this week in another pro-aquaculture publication where their claims diverted even further from science. First, distastefully holding up marine parks as great examples of orcas adapting to new diets, and then suggesting that like other wild animals whose habitat and prey have been reduced by humans, whales can simply adapt to be dependent on humans for food, likening the whales to trash pillaging bears, and apparently, farmed Atlantic salmon to garbage.

Most egregious is that both articles attempt to circumvent well-established evidence that open water net pen aquaculture contributes to the decline of the Southern Resident’s primary food source, wild Chinook salmon. By exposing Chinook and other wild salmon populations to harmful pathogens, rampant pollution, and escaped farmed fish, open water net pens pose an enormous threat to the survival of the northwest’s killer whales.

And beyond impacts to Chinook, open water net pens also expose orcas to a variety of other environmental risks. Often located in killer whale and salmon migration corridors, net pens require Southern Residents and other whales to navigate dangerous underwater infrastructure such as long cables protruding hundreds of feet out from the pens underwater.

The industry’s vessels expose migrating whales to underwater noise pollution at close distances that further reduce the whale’s ability to successfully navigate and locate prey. 

Video footage captured by Bainbridge Island residents, a group of transient orca whales swam are seen swimming in dangerous proximity to one of Cooke Auquacultur’s rich passage net pens.

Further, as northwest communities work to reduce toxins that further imperil emaciated Southern Residents, this industry has a poor environmental track record when it comes to abiding by local and federal water quality laws.

This “modest proposal” is another example of how far the aquaculture industry is willing to go to profit at the expense of the northwest’s wild salmon and killer whales.

Video footage captures orcas swimming dangerously close to Bainbridge net pens

Traditionally Bainbridge Island residents take pride in the opportunity to observe killer whales as they pass through Rich Passage. However, last week Bainbridge residents watched with apprehension as a group of transient orca whales swam in dangerous proximity to one of Cooke Aquaculture’s net pens where the industry was operating their harvesting vessel.

By exposing Chinook and other wild salmon populations to harmful pathogens, rampant pollution, and escaped farmed fish, open water net pens pose an enormous threat to the survival of the northwest’s killer whales, especially the critically endangered Southern Residents. But beyond this direct impact to the whale’s primary food source, open water net pens also expose orcas to a variety of other environmental risks.

Often located in killer whale and salmon migration corridors, net pens require Southern Residents and other whales to navigate dangerous underwater infrastructure such as long cables protruding far out from the pens underwater.

The industry’s vessels, such as the harvester boat observed in this video, expose migrating whales to underwater noise pollution at close distances that further reduce the whale’s ability to successfully navigate and locate prey.

And, as Washington strives to reduce toxins that further imperil emaciated Southern Residents, this industry has a poor environmental track record when it comes to abiding by local and federal water quality laws.

In 2018, Cooke Aquaculture was fined $8,000 for unlawfully discharging pollution at this same Rich Passage site, and, among other charges, failing to correct water quality violations when directed.

The science is clear, commercial open water net pens are incongruent with wild salmon and killer whale recovery.

Legislature requires net pen industry to pay for oversight

Aquaculture net pens operate in the public waters of Washington state. The state government sets rules for the pens, monitors and inspects the pens, and when things go wrong, the state must step in to protect the public waters and the citizens and wildlife of the state. As it stands, Washington taxpayers—not the billion-dollar corporations running these facilities—foot the bill.

That could change soon, thanks to a bill drafted by Senator Christine Rolfes and recently passed by the Washington State House and Senate. The bill requires the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to “provide for the recovery of actual costs incurred for required inspections, monitoring, and compliance testing by the department.” This would ensure that the agency has resources to use its authority to observe fish harvest and monitor bycatch, test fish from the pens for viruses and other pathogens, and inspect the structures and ensure they meet strict standards. As long as these net pens remain in our public waters, this is an important step forward.

Too often, problems with the net pens have been discovered not by agencies, but by concerned and observant citizens. The 2018 law cracking down after the Cypress Island collapse—which Our Sound, Our Salmon helped move through the legislature—gave agencies greater authority to hold the industry accountable, but those powers only help when agencies can afford to use them. This bill will give more teeth to the law.

This bill has passed both houses of the legislature with overwhelming support, WDFW testified in support, and even Cooke Aquaculture testified favorably. While we continue working to remove open-water net pen aquaculture from the public waters of Washington state, we applaud the legislators who have moved this forward, and are eager for Governor Inslee to allow it to become law.

Salmon Advocates Challenge Approval of Washington Net Pen Aquaculture

Today, Our Sound, Our Salmon leader Wild Fish Conservancy and coalition partners at Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, and Friends of the Earth filed a joint lawsuit challenging the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife's (WDFW) a January decision to authorize Cooke Aquaculture to rear steelhead in their Puget Sound net pens.

Photo by John Gussman, Doubleclick Productions

For nearly two years, the public has been celebrating and counting down to 2022, when Washington's recent law would have required Cooke to remove their net pens from public waters. The new permit approved by WDFW in January will allow the company to continue operating in Puget Sound past the legislative phase out date by transitioning from banned Atlantic salmon to a domesticated, partially sterile form of steelhead.

This decision will not go unchallenged. The lawsuit filed today by WFC and our partners charges that WDFW's decision to permit this change of species violates the State Environmental Protection Act (SEPA). The proposal poses significant environmental risks and the agency's proposed mitigation measures are insufficient to prevent this well-documented environmental harm to Puget Sound, especially to threatened and endangered species. Review the filed complaint.

The SEPA violations include, but are not limited to:

• failure to properly designate the lead agency failure to analyze direct and indirect impacts of the proposed actions

• failure to analyze cumulative impacts of the action when added to other impacts to the Puget Sound ecosystem and environment

• failure to base the threshold determinations on reasonably accurate information

• failure to include sufficient mitigation measures

• failure to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) failure to conduct an alternatives analysis

This legal argument echoes the concerns raised in public comments submitted this fall by thousands of Washington citizens, environmental groups, sport and commercial fishing groups, other agencies, and at least seven Washington tribal nations. These comments overwhelmingly called for WDFW to require an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to ensure a comprehensive review of the risks, and challenged the agency's decision to instead rely on an outdated EIS completed in 1990, before the federal listing of Puget Sound steelhead, Southern Residents killer whales, and several populations of salmon. Learn more about the risks in comments submitted by Our Sound, Our Salmon.

WFC Director Kurt Beardslee collects samples from Atlantic salmon recovered by local tribes and commercial fishers following the August 2017 Cypress collapse. Research published in 2019 by Wild Fish Conservancy exposed nearly 100% of all the fish that escaped were infected with an exotic virus introduce by the industry.

“It’s outrageous that once again the State is leaving the oversight of this industry to the public,” says Kurt Beardslee, executive director of Wild Fish Conservancy, lead counsel in the case. “After the Cypress net pen collapsed, our research discovered that nearly every fish that escaped was infected with a pathogenic exotic salmon virus that had been undetected by WDFW and unreported by Cooke. Our litigation has won settlements many times larger than the penalties levied by the State, and the State has left it to us and the pens’ neighbors to detect serious problems. Given this history, it is beyond comprehension that WDFW would grant this permit without first completing a comprehensive assessment of its effects on our salmon, our sound, and our killer whales.”

While the State fined Cooke $332,000 for the 2017 collapse, WFC’s lawsuit over those same violations and others uncovered only by WFC brought a $2.75 million settlement. Until WFC presented the State with video of Cooke disposing of wild bycatch, WDFW accepted Cooke’s word that they never caught anything but the fish they were rearing.

“We need to be doing everything we can to save our wild salmon and orcas,” said Sophia Ressler, Washington wildlife advocate and staff attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity and co-counsel on the case. “Fish feedlots simply don’t belong in wild salmon waters. These net pens undermine the crucial work that has gone into restoring native fish runs.”

“Washington officials have turned their back on Puget Sound, its wildlife, and the communities living and working nearby,” said Hallie Templeton, senior oceans campaigner at Friends of the Earth. “It seems clear from recent history that Cooke does not abide by environmental conservation and protection standards in the state. Extending this corporation’s fish farming tenure without regard for the laundry list of environmental and socio-economic harms is both unlawful and irresponsible.”

“Washington state needs to stop giving away our public waters and wild species to private interests—factory fish farms do not belong in Puget Sound,” said Amy van Saun, senior attorney with Center for Food Safety’s Pacific Northwest office, and co-counsel in the case. “Washington officials are accountable not just to industry, but to the people of Washington, who want wild coasts and invaluable species protected from companies that do not respect our special places.”

Washington is the only state on the Pacific coast that permits these facilities. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently announced plans to transition all open-water industrial aquaculture in British Columbia to land-based facilities by 2025.

The conservation and environmental groups bringing this challenge are represented by Kampmeier & Knutsen, PLLC and by attorneys at the Center for Food Safety and the Center for Biological Diversity.

Canada: Fish Farms Out Of The Ocean By 2025

Photo by Alexandra Morton

In a victory for wild fish and First Nations, fish farms will be leaving British Columbia's waters. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau followed through on an election promise in a letter to the incoming Minister of Fisheries, Oceans, and the Canadian Coast Guard, informing Minister Jordan that one of her "top priorities" should be:

Work with the province of British Columbia and Indigenous communities to create a responsible plan to transition from open net-pen salmon farming in coastal British Columbia waters by 2025 and begin work to introduce Canada’s first-ever Aquaculture Act.

This policy, which was a plank in the party's campaign platform, is a result of years of pressure by First Nations groups concerned about harm from Salish Sea aquaculture on wild salmon and orcas, and by other environmental and business groups. British Columbia's provincial leaders announced a 4-year plan to transition fish farms out of the Broughton archipelago, with 5 farms already removed, 5 more with plans to be decommissioned by 2022, and 7 more that would be shuttered by 2024.

First Nations groups occupied some British Columbia net pens last year, amid lengthy legal battles to ensure the First Nations can exercise jurisdiction over their territories. The farm owners and First Nations reached an agreement to remove pens and ensure that First Nations' oversight of threats to wild salmon posed by aquaculture, including transmission of pathogens and diseases.

Canada's commitment to move aquaculture out of the water and into safer, shore-based systems is a tremendous win for the oceans and wild salmon, and a reminder to policymakers in Washington State that there are better alternatives to open water aquaculture.