- An advocacy group has sued the last company in the U.S. still farming salmon in sea cages, citing alleged violations of the Clean Water Act.
- Cooke Aquaculture runs more than a dozen sites in the northeastern state of Maine. The lawsuit accuses the company of illegally discharging pollutants, exceeding limits on effluents and nutrient buildup, and reporting violations.
- The legal action comes the same month that the state of Washington became the last on the West Coast to ban industrial salmon aquaculture over environmental concerns, making Maine the only U.S. state where the practice continues.
- Critics argue that netpen salmon farming not only pollutes the marine environment but also threatens wild salmon populations, while requiring the harvest of too much wild fish and krill for feed.
This month Washington became the last state on the U.S. West Coast to reject salmon aquaculture over environmental concerns. A new lawsuit now takes aim at operations on the country’s East Coast — the only commercial netpen salmon farms left in the country.
On Jan. 14, the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), a Boston-based environmental advocacy group, filed a lawsuit against Cooke Aquaculture, the owner of more than a dozen salmon farms in the northeastern state of Maine, under the U.S. Clean Water Act. The lawsuit alleges a pattern of illegal discharges from the farms that create “toxic” marine conditions.
“We’re just holding this multinational corporation accountable and defending Maine’s right to a clean, healthy environment,” Heather Govern, a CLF vice president, told Mongabay.
Govern said it was a problematic industry that pollutes the seabed with feed and fecal matter, spreads disease and threatens wild fish populations, and that only in recent years have people begun to fully understand the scale of its environmental impact.
“The cat’s out of the bag about these issues,” she said.
Steven Hudland, Cooke Aquaculture USA’s director of public affairs, declined to comment for this story, pointing Mongabay to a statement the company published in November after CLF issued a notice of intent to sue. In the statement, Cooke rejected CLF’s claims and said its operations were audited and certified by sustainability organizations — though the example the company cited, the Global Seafood Alliance’s Best Aquaculture Practices third-party certification program, is run by a trade association. Farmed Maine salmon is rated as a “good alternative” by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program, the statement also notes. (The other categories are “best choice” and “avoid.”)
Maine lawsuit
Cooke Aquaculture, based in Canada, is one of the largest private seafood companies in the world, with billions of dollars in annual revenues and netpen operations in 14 countries. The lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court of Maine, targets its U.S. subsidiary, Cooke Aquaculture USA.
The company has 13 active sites in “Downeast” Maine within roughly 100 miles (161 km) of the Canadian border. Each site has between six and 30 netpen cages that are 100 meters (330 feet) in diameter and can hold tens of thousands of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) apiece. Altogether there are millions of fish at the sites, according to CLF, which drew data from a freedom of information request to state regulators.
CLF’s 44-page lawsuit alleges a wide range of unlawful activity at the Cooke sites, such as discharging “blood, sea lice, disease, and undisclosed chemicals from delousing boats and barges”; exceeding limits on effluents and nutrient buildup; and reporting violations. CLF found evidence of at least 735 violations of the Clean Water Act at Cooke sites over the last five years, Govern said.
In August 2023, more than 50,000 salmon escaped from two Cooke sites in Cobscook Bay after a seal damaged cages, potentially putting wild fish at risk. Maine’s Atlantic salmon are endangered and the focus of decades-long conservation efforts. Threats include factors such as climate change, the damming of rivers, and the loss of food, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Dwayne Shaw, executive director of the Downeast Salmon Federation, told Mongabay netpen aquaculture could undermine the success of conservation efforts. Five of the eight distinct wild salmon populations in Maine are in the vicinity of the Cooke sites, he said, and his organization is working with state and federal agencies to preserve genetic lines of populations that spawn in specific rivers.
“We face the prospect of extinction if we don’t act,” Shaw said.
Escaped farmed salmon pose a threat in part because they could interbreed with wild salmon and erode the wild genetic profiles.
In addition to the 2023 incident, there have been a series of smaller escapes from Cooke sites, including a 2019 incident that led to the possible transference of infectious salmon anemia to wild salmon; 17 wild Atlantic salmon in the Penobscot River tested positive for the disease, and CLF maintains it came from a Cooke site. Disease transference is a well-known risk of industrial finfish aquaculture, as parasites, viruses and bacteria can spread easily in the crowded conditions.
Those conditions also raise welfare concerns for the farmed fish themselves. Critics compare industrial netpen operations to the notorious concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), or “factory farms,” used by large agricultural firms for land animals. The lawsuit identifies two major die-offs at Cooke sites, including one in August 2021 in which 100,000 salmon died because of low levels of dissolved oxygen in their pens.
People in Downeast Maine harvest worms, clams, scallops, urchins, seaweed and lobster, all of which can be negatively impacted by Cooke’s industrial salmon farming, according to Severine Welcome, a small-scale terrestrial farmer and aquaculture operator in Pembroke, Maine, on Cobscook Bay.
“Certainly the science is very strong to suggest that these intensive operations cast a long shadow in the water,” she said.
CLF contends that regulations in Maine are weak. There’s no requirement to try to track escaped fish, so it’s hard to know where they’ve gone. However, domesticated fish have at times been found in wild Maine waters, raising concerns not just that they may be interbreeding with wild Atlantic salmon but also that they could be competing for food and other resources.
In suing, CLF seeks to force Cooke to hire more staff for monitoring and inspection of the marine environment. Govern said a settlement could also involve a reduction in the number of fish being farmed or a third-party monitoring system. She added that the state agencies in charge of regulating Cooke — namely, Maine’s Department of Marine Resources and Department of Environmental Protection — don’t have the resources to thoroughly monitor Cooke’s operations.
The agencies didn’t respond to a request for comment from Mongabay.
Sebastian Belle, executive director of the Maine Aquaculture Association, another trade association, defended Cooke and criticized CLF, implying in a November op-ed in SeafoodSource, a trade publication, that the nonprofit was made up of “ambulance-chasing lawyers.” Belle said the company followed regulations devised with conservation groups in the 2000s, a process he said established industry-leading best management practices.
Local lawsuit, global debate, local implications
Worldwide salmon consumption has seen roughly a threefold increase since the 1980s. Industrial salmon farming is big business in Norway and Chile, which together produce most of the salmon found in supermarkets worldwide. Proponents of large-scale aquaculture say it’s necessary to meet growing demand, but the increase in farmed salmon has led to controversy in Europe and South America. In addition to the concerns over pollution and wild fish raised in the CLF lawsuit, critics also warn that farmed salmon and other carnivorous species require the harvest of too much wild fish and krill for food, undercutting ecosystems and people’s food security in places as disparate as Antarctica and West Africa.
North America has also seen its share of aquaculture controversy, including around Cooke’s operations. In 2009 and 2010, a division of Cooke in Canada illegally used pesticides at 15 sites that killed hundreds of lobsters in the Bay of Fundy; the company, which acted knowingly, according to Canadian authorities, pleaded guilty in 2013 and was fined about $490,000.
In 2017, hundreds of thousands of Atlantic salmon escaped from a Cooke site on Puget Sound in Washington state on the U.S West Coast. The Seattle Times called it “catastrophic.” Cooke settled a lawsuit relating to the incident. Washington authorities didn’t renew Cooke’s permits, and just this month banned finfish netpen aquaculture in state waters, following similar bans in the other three U.S. West Coast states and in British Columbia, Canada, which has pledged to close netpen facilities by 2029. Netpen salmon farming, run by Cooke and other companies, continues on Canada’s Atlantic coast.
Advocates in the U.S. and elsewhere are pushing for a controversial expansion of finfish aquaculture to the high seas, where they say it will be more environmentally sound than nearshore. A 2018 study indicated that offshore aquaculture may have a lower level of nutrient pollution than its coastal counterpart.
The U.S. and other countries are starting to see an increase in land-based aquaculture, which is often done in factories using recirculating systems that reduce the need for freshwater. Such farms tend to receive higher environmental scores than marine netpen operations, but they too have critics. Nordic Aquafarms, a Norwegian company, tried for years to establish a land-based salmon farm in Maine, but faced local resistance. The company announced on Jan. 17 that it was abandoning the project.
For now, most finfish aquaculture occurs along coastlines. It remains unclear how much of Maine’s could eventually be used for farms. Currently, Cooke is the only such company in the state, but its operations could potentially be scaled up, as it has 11 unused sites in addition to its 13 active ones, Govern said. Though regulatory and permitting decisions are made primarily at the state level, a few local municipalities have tightened rules on Cooke, an effort led by a nonprofit called Protect Maine’s Fishing Heritage Foundation, which has issued a template ordinance for towns to adopt.
Other finfish aquaculture companies are trying to get into Maine, thanks to what CLF has called the “sweetheart deal” of light regulation. State authorities killed a controversial $300 million salmon farm project near Acadia National Park in 2022, following local resistance.
The industry’s global record and Cooke’s in Maine made the CLF lawsuit a necessity, said Shaw of the Downeast Salmon Federation.
“It doesn’t come as any surprise, given Cooke’s track record, and given the limited amount of monitoring and enforcement the state is capable of mobilizing,” he said.
Banner image: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is working with federal, state and nonprofit partners to restore endangered Atlantic salmon to the Penobscot River watershed in Maine. Image courtesy of U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (Public domain).
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Citation:
Welch, A. W., Knapp, A. N., El Tourky, S., Daughtery, Z., Hitchcock, G., & Benetti, D. (2019). The nutrient footprint of a submerged‐cage offshore aquaculture facility located in the tropical Caribbean. Journal of the World Aquaculture Society, 50(2), 299-316. doi:10.1111/jwas.12593
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