Blog

Cooke faces tough questions on cusp of Washington ban

It has not been a great six months for Cooke Aquaculture, the Canadian fish farming company responsible for a Atlantic salmon net-pen farm collapse off of Cypress Island, in Washington state.

A half-year after the collapse, Washington has moved to ban Atlantic salmon fishing outright. A bill passed both houses of the state’s legislature in February, a move that could cost Cooke – the largest salmon-farming company in the state – tens of millions of dollars.

On Wednesday, 28 February, some of the country’s leading marine scientists penned an open letter to Washington’s elected officials, calling on them to rescind the legislation. The scientists include Linda A. Chaves, a retired senior advisor on seafood and industry issues and National Aquaculture Coordinator for NOAA; John Forster, the former president of Stolt Sea Farm Washington, Inc.; Robert N. Iwamoto, the retired director of the office of management and infor-mation at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and one-time chief science officer for NOAA; and Conrad Mahnken, also a former NOAA national aquaculture coordinator…

Read more here.

Skip to content