Atlantic salmon. (Photo: Hans-Petter Fjeld/CC BY-SA 2.5)

Washington Govt denies Cooke’s permission to move Atlantic salmon

UNITED STATES
Thursday, May 24, 2018, 01:30 (GMT + 9)

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) has denied permission for Cooke Aquaculture to transport 800,000 juvenile Atlantic salmon from its hatchery near Rochester to net pens at Rich Passage in Kitsap County due to the likelihood of disease spread.

The company had applied for permission to move the fish in April so as to replace adult fish that were recently harvested.

WDFW officials pointed out that the denial stemmed from the fact that the population of the Atlantic salmon that would have been transported had tested positive for a form of the fish virus PRV (piscine orthoreovirus) at the Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory at Washington State University.

Ken Warheit, fish-health manager for the WDFW, will, as soon as possible, test Cooke’s settling ponds at its incubator in Rochester, Thurston County, as well as Scatter Creek and its confluence with the Chehalis River for the presence of the virus found in the Atlantic salmon smolts raised by the firm.

“The pathogen could have contaminated surrounding water, raising a concern for its potential to affect native Pacific salmon,” Warheit said.

WDFW points out that another reason for the denial raises from the fact that Cooke also had failed to observe its own biosecurity best practices by seeking to move the fish into pens at its Orchard Rocks farm in Rich Passage near Bainbridge Island without allowing them to lie fallow for at least a month.

It also sought to put the fish in pens near older fish. That mixes age classes of fish, another violation of biosecurity protocol.

Warheit stressed that it is now up to Cooke to decide what to do with its 800,000 rejected fish, adding that the one thing it can not do is plant them in state waters.

The WDFD explained that the firm had hatched the fish from eggs the company imported from its supplier in Iceland. Those eggs are presumed to be the source of the virus.

The northern Atlantic strain detected in Cooke’s fish is different from the eastern Pacific variety of the virus already known to be present in local waters and in both farmed and free-ranging salmon, including hatchery fish.

This month a team of researchers from the University of British Columbia and Canada’s federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) reported that the strain of PRV commonly found in Atlantic salmon in British Columbia pens is associated with health problems in native Pacific chinook salmon, including massive rupture of red blood cells.

“There obviously are things going on with this virus that are associated with disease,” Warheit said. Not all the fish that have PRV get sick, he said. But some — both Atlantic and Pacific salmon — do, and scientists don’t understand why that is, which adds to the concern, The Seattle Times informed.

On the other hand, Kurt Beardslee of the Wild Fish Conservancy, a nonprofit that opposes Atlantic salmon net-pen farming, said precaution requires an immediate response to the pathogen found in Cooke’s fish.

“I have been asking the state to do this exact thing for years,” he said of the disease testing that WDFW has initiated. The conservancy tested tissues from mature Atlantic salmon that escaped from Cooke’s pens last August and also detected PRV of Icelandic origin.

The Washington Legislature last session passed and Gov. Jay Inslee has signed legislation that phases out Atlantic salmon net-pen farming in Puget Sound as soon as 2022.

Related articles:

- Atlantic salmon virus could also affect chinook salmon
- Cooke not allowed to restock salmon in Cypress island farm
- Washington passes Atlantic salmon farm ban law
- Cooke Aquaculture fined for negligence that led to salmon escape

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