Cooke Aquaculture has won an extension to give it more time to harvest fish and remove equipment from its finfish farms in the U.S. state of Washington, which canceled all of the company’s remaining leases in November 2022 and banned net-pen aquaculture in December 2022.
On Friday, 6 January, a Washington Superior Court judge granted a motion filed 20 December, 2022, by Cooke Aquaculture Pacific against the Washington State Department of Natural Resources and Washington Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz that extends its deadline to clear out its net-pens.
The company now has until 14 January, 2023, to harvest all remaining fish at its Rich Passage and Hope Island fish farms in Puget Sound – around 360,000 steelhead in total – and has until 14 April, 2023, to remove all its equipment.
“Cooke operates its farm sites according to carefully coordinated farm management plans, with employee safety being its top priority. Significant changes in harvest schedules can both increase safety risks for employees and disruptions for customers. The arbitrary timelines originally set forth by DNR were impossible to meet without exposing Cooke employees to dangerous winter working conditions, increasing perceived environmental risks, and causing significant financial harm,” Cooke Aquaculture Vice President of Public Relations Joel Richardson said in a press release. “Cooke sought this preliminary injunction to protect its employees and ensure safe working conditions. We are grateful that the court granted our request as this extension gives our employees the flexibility required in a marine environment to ensure safe working conditions. Cooke can now remove the fish on its original harvest schedule and properly remove our equipment without subjecting employees to unnecessary risk.”
The Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada-based seafood firm originally farmed Atlantic salmon in several net-pen sites in Washington it acquired from Icicle Seafoods in 2016, but switched to steelhead farming following a statewide ban on non-native finfish aquaculture approved in response to a large-scale salmon escape in August 2017 from a Cooke farm near Cypress Island, Washington.
In November 2022, The National Fisheries Institute, the National Aquaculture Association, and the Northwest Aquaculture Alliance called for an independent review of Washington’s decision to cancel Cooke’s net-pen leases. On 14 December, Cooke Aquaculture filed a lawsuit appealing the lease denial, and on 16 December, its business partner in Washington, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, filed suit against DNR alleging the state’s ban on net-pen aquaculture violated the tribe’s sovereign rights.
Photo courtesy of Cooke Aquaculture
