Eclipse's tides collapse fish farm, Atlantic Salmon in Puget Sound

[countryjake]

Solar eclipse’s tides blamed for broken net, up to 305,000 Atlantic salmon dumped into waters near San Juans ~ By Lynda V. Mapes ~ Seattle Times environment reporter ~ August 22, 2017

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/oops-after-accidental-release-of-atlantic-salmon-fisherman-being-told-catch-as-many-as-you-want/

It’s open season on Atlantic salmon as the public is urged to help mop up a salmon spill from an imploded net pen holding 305,000 fish at a Cooke Aquaculture fish farm near Cypress Island.

Lummi fishers out for chinook on Sunday near Samish, south of Bellingham Bay, were shocked to pull up the spotted, silvery sided Atlantic salmon — escapees that turned up in their nets again on Monday.

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is urging the public to catch as many of the fish as possible, with no limit on size or number. The fish are about 10 pounds each. No one knows yet how many escaped from the floating pen, but the net had some 3 million pounds of fish in it when it imploded about 4 p.m. Saturday, said Ron Warren, fish program assistant director for the WDFW.

Cooke, in an estimate to WDFW, put the number of escaped fish at 4,000 to 5,000, according to Ron Warren, fish program assistant director for the WDFW...

~snip~

Lummi fishers were incensed at the Atlantic salmon intruding in home waters of native Washington Pacific salmon. “It’s a devastation,” said Ellie Kinley, whose family has fished Puget Sound for generations. “We don’t want those fish preying on our baby salmon. And we don’t want them getting up in the rivers.”

[Jim Lane]

1. An eclipse has no effect on tides

This headline is misleading. The company that runs the fish farm actually said that the accident occurred because of "exceptionally high tides and currents coinciding with this week’s solar eclipse" (emphasis added).

Tides are strongest when the Sun, Moon, and Earth are all in a line. Solar and lunar eclipses happen only at such times, but the alignment and the resulting tides occur about twice a month whether or not there's an eclipse.

[countryjake]

2. 'Twas Cooke Aquaculture who attempted to blame tides,

not me or the Seattle Times reporter (who wrote the original article that I'd shared).

When she appeared on our local tv news reports of the collapse of her net pens, Cooke's entire excuse was "Eclipse", not that her operation was a serious accident waiting to happen, of course.

We've been trying to get these fish farms out of our waters for years because feed-lot Atlantic Salmon have escaped before during the high tides of Winter. With practically all of our native Pacific Salmon now on the threatened list in our Washington rivers (even some of the Humpies this year) there's really no earthly reason to deliberately stick a risky overcrowded net pen full of non-native species into the Puget Sound.