Washington State must protect its waters and native salmon by banishing fish farms

Res­i­dents of Wash­ing­ton’s Olympic Penin­su­la have been close­ly mon­i­tor­ing devel­op­ments stem­ming from the the escape of pos­si­bly more than 160,000 non-native Atlantic salmon from an indus­tri­al fish farm near Cypress Island.

Here is my take on this issue.

Some back­ground: In 1972, Con­gress enact­ed the Coastal Zone Man­age­ment Act, (CZMA). Each coastal state was asked to devel­op a coastal man­age­ment plan. One of the fea­tures of the Act used to lure states into the pro­gram was the fed­er­al con­sis­ten­cy clause, sec­tion 307. It requires fed­er­al actions that affect a state’s coastal zone to con­form to a state’s coastal man­age­ment plan.

In 1980, the Depart­ment of Inte­ri­or pro­posed a sale of oil and gas leas­es in the out­er con­ti­nen­tal shelf off California’s coast. Cal­i­for­nia fought this sale on grounds that it vio­lat­ed sec­tion 307. A divid­ed U.S. Supreme Court even­tu­al­ly ruled in favor of the Depart­ment of Inte­ri­or, revers­ing two low­er fed­er­al courts.

More than a decade lat­er, Con­gress amend­ed sec­tion 307 in response to this Supreme Court rul­ing, to clar­i­fy and affirm coastal states’ con­sis­ten­cy rights.

The Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion (NOAA) has shown inter­est in the pos­si­bil­i­ty of even­tu­al­ly expand­ing aqua­cul­ture fur­ther away from the coast, mean­ing the waters in the Exclu­sive Eco­nom­ic Zone (EEZ) between three and two hun­dred miles offshore.

The intent is to reverse a seafood trade imbal­ance. Fed­er­al pol­i­cy­mak­ers are look­ing to expand aqua­cul­ture and grow the indus­try in the Unit­ed States.

Due to Alaska’s strong stance against the indus­try and the fact that the Alas­ka Coastal Man­age­ment Act dis­al­lows fish farms, Alas­ka is like­ly to use sec­tion 307 to ban and oppose any effort of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to open its waters to the kind of com­mer­cial farm­ing activ­i­ty that has been allowed down south.

Wash­ing­ton State’s stance has been weak­er. Three coun­ties adopt­ed shore­line man­age­ment plans that dis­al­lowed or made place­ment of fish farms in their waters prob­lem­at­ic. These plans help make up Wash­ing­ton’s coastal man­age­ment plan.

The Wash­ing­ton Depart­ment of Ecol­o­gy, pres­sured by fed­er­al pol­i­cy­mak­ers, recent­ly made these three coun­ties (of which Jef­fer­son is one) write new Shore­line Man­age­ment Plans that allowed for the place­ment of fish farms in their waters.

Peo­ple in Jef­fer­son Coun­ty respond­ed with protests and peti­tions, and the coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers worked with Kevin Van De Wege (then a state rep­re­sen­ta­tive, now a state sen­a­tor) to intro­duce leg­is­la­tion to allow coun­ties to ban net pen aqua­cul­ture. (That leg­is­la­tion, HB 1599, received a hear­ing but unfor­tu­nate­ly did not advance.)

Then-Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er Phil John­son, a for­mer com­mer­cial salmon fish­er who has adamant­ly opposed in-water fish farm­ing, hailed the bill “as a step in the right direc­tion”. And I’d like to add: What good is sec­tion 307 if the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is influ­enc­ing what our Coastal Man­age­ment Plan allows or doesn’t allow?

There are many threats from indus­tri­al fish farms.

One is the real pos­si­bil­i­ty of spread­ing virus­es from farmed Atlantic salmon to native salmon, threat­en­ing their sur­vival and sustainability.

Piscine reovirus was first iden­ti­fied in Nor­way. It results in heart and mus­cle inflam­ma­tion caus­ing lethar­gy. In wild salmon it could impact their abil­i­ty to escape preda­tors. It has been found in wild salmon of British Columbia.

Infec­tious salmon ane­mia is very con­ta­gious and dead­ly, like­ly has a Euro­pean ori­gin, and if detect­ed in any farm, total erad­i­ca­tion is required.

Hematopoi­et­ic necro­sis (PDF), mean­while, can be one hun­dred per­cent mor­tal to fry and adults that sur­vive become carriers.

Anoth­er prob­lem is that wild smolts migrate pass fish farms on their way to sea and many are infect­ed with sea lice, which weak­ens them and reduces their sur­vival rates.

Fish farms also have adverse impacts on her­ring and oth­er for­age fish pop­u­la­tions as they are attract­ed to fish farms. There are tons of pol­lu­tants from the farms them­selves that set­tle under­neath. Farmed salmon often escape, some­times in large num­bers, as we just saw this past month.

Atlantic salmon prey on the same food as wild salmon and are sus­pect­ed of prey­ing on young wild salmon smolt if the escape­ment occurs dur­ing their migra­tion to sea. There is also the fear they may spawn and propagate.

Of the two places in the world where fish farms have been locat­ed in waters shared with native salmon, the native salmon pop­u­la­tions plunged and com­mer­cial fish­eries depen­dent on them have been hit hard (Nor­way and British Colum­bia).

Com­mer­cial fish farms have no place in Wash­ing­ton’s marine envi­ron­ment or rivers.

Land based facil­i­ties with no con­nec­tion to a riv­er show promise as an alternative.

If we con­tin­ue in the direc­tion we are head­ed, with the waters of the Pacif­ic sim­ply con­sid­ered anoth­er resource in need of exploita­tion, I fear for the future of our native fish­eries. NPI believes that we must act as a state to pro­tect our salmon and our her­itage from fur­ther destruc­tion. We need more than a mora­to­ri­um on fish farms in our waters: we need to fol­low Alaska’s exam­ple and insti­tute a total ban.