PORT ANGELES – Cooke Aquaculture, the controversial Canadian company that owns several net pen facilities in Washington state, including here in Port Angeles Harbor, is today making repairs to a net pen that appears to have started sinking last week at its Orchard Rocks facility at the south end of Bainbridge Island.
Department of Natural Resources spokesman Joe Smillie says his agency is on the scene monitoring the repair of a pen that he says does not contain any Atlantic salmon that could escape, though some of the pens at the facility do have salmon in them.
“So we were notified Sunday that there was some pontoons that supported part of the southern array of net pens malfunctioned. The whole array didn’t collapse, only kind of one portion of it. And turns out there was a hole in one of them and they have contractors in to repair the pontoons. They’ve been working on the repairs, they expect it to be finished today.”
The facility, which was built in the year 2000, is one of three Cooke facilities in that area. It’s composed of 10 separate pens, two of which are stocked with Atlantic salmon at this time. The company’s lease extends until November of 2022.
Smillie says the DNR will follow up with a report after an investigation.
“It looks like it should be…the repair should be done today, and they our staff will be investigating what happened to independently verify it, and I know there are some ultrasound scans they’re going to do of all the pontoons in those arrays over the next few days.”
After about a quarter million fish escaped from Cooke’s Cypress Island facility in 2017, the state of Washington put a ban on Atlantic salmon farming but is allowing the company to finish growing any remaining stock it still has.
In the meantime, Cooke Aquaculture and the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe announced this month they plan to work together to transition the Port Angeles Harbor facility to raise cod and native steelhead.
(Photo of net pen in question courtesy of Tom Hansen.)