Washington State Poised to Ban Net Pen Aquaculture

Photo: See1,Do1,Teach1/Flickr

According to the Wild Fish Conservancy, Washington state is “on the verge” of permanently banning and removing net pen aquaculture from Puget Sound.

Net pen aquaculture is the practice of raising fish in pens in the ocean. For years, it was seen as a way to keep robust populations of endangered fish from going extinct (alongside hatcheries located on the mainland) and of course, as a “sustainable” source of seafood. Recently, however, the negative impacts of open-water net pens have become quantified, studied, and shown to the broader fishing community. Salmon and steelhead both suffer from net pens because pens are a breeding ground for bacteria and disease which is easily transferred to wild fish migrating through the area to spawn.

According to the Center for Food Safety, “Norway’s wild salmon population has been cut in half since the introduction of their aquaculture industry, partially because of the spread of sea lice from farmed fished to wild salmon runs passing the net pens during their ocean migration.”

Fish raised in these pens aren’t bred for genetic diversity, and when they escape (some will almost always escape pens) they can negatively contribute to the wild gene pool not just of their species, but other fish as well. Pink salmon have been shown to stunt steelhead growth, for example.

So, advocates for both wild fish conservation and the removal and ban of net pen aquaculture in Puget Sound are happy to see Washington might make this fish farming officially illegal.

In 2022, Washington Commissioner of Public Lands, Hilary Franz, issued an executive order in response to applications from Cooke Aquaculture, who wanted new leases to operate their net pens in Puget Sound. That executive order “[prohibited] commercial net pen aquaculture in Washington marine waters,” per the Wild Fish Conservancy. “Cooke Aquaculture is the company responsible for the catastrophic Cypress Island net pen collapse in 2017, which released over 260,000 nonnative, virus-infected Atlantic salmon into Puget Sound.”

That order has stayed in place and in 2024, Puget Sound was free from all commercial net pen aquaculture equipment. In addition to the threat posed by disease, the Wild Fish Conservancy also says that net pen aquaculture discharges untreated pollution from the pens, including fecal waste, feed, and pharmaceuticals, into the surrounding water.

A vote is set to take place on January 7, 2025, that would make the current order permanent, and no longer allow net pen aquaculture in Puget Sound. If this happens, Washington will be the first government in the world to do away with the practice entirely, according to the Wild Fish Conservancy.

You can read more about the effort to ensure net pen aquaculture is outlawed here.