Washington’s fish farms have operated in Puget Sound since the 1980s under an assortment of owners throughout the years. In 2016, Cooke Aquaculture Pacific purchased the farms, retained all its rural workforce and began investing to modernize the operations.

in 2017, the company faced some $332,000 in fines over water quality after hundreds of thousands of Atlantic salmon escaped a Cooke net-pen structure.

Following the escapes, the Washington Legislature in March 2018 voted to phase out farming of non-native fish — including Atlantic salmon — in Washington waters.

This vote, described as an ‘emotional response by politicians’, was cast despite there being no example of the transfer of disease from farmed salmon to wild fish ever being documented by a regulatory agency in Washington.