After one of the largest fish-farm escapes in history, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife has approved a permit for Cooke Aquaculture to rear another 1 million Atlantic salmon in Puget Sound.
The approval stoked outrage still simmering after the catastrophic failure in August of one of Cooke’s eight Puget Sound facilities that sent a cascade of Atlantic salmon into Puget Sound waters.
The permit for the company corporation was approved even as the more than 100,000 fish that escaped from Cooke’s pen at Cypress Island in the San Juan Islands continue to infiltrate Puget Sound rivers and beyond. The fish have been detected as far north as Chilliwack on the Fraser River in British Columbia and as far west as the Quinault River. The fish can be traced to the farm escape because their ear bones are marked at Cooke’s hatchery.
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