Net pens, net profits

Whose treaty rights are more important?

The battle over treaty rights. The lousy truth about sea lice. The global hierarchy of indigenous communities. Fish farming may be krilling the whales.

According to Jamestown Tribal Vice-Chair Loni Grinnell-Greninger, "Nobody should be stopping Jamestown."

"We believe the current rule violates treaty rights by taking away the commercial arm, the commercial portion of our treaty rights,” Grinnell-Greninger told Fox 13 Seattle after the Washington State Board of Natural Resources (DNR) decided to codify a ban on net pens. It’s disappointing for the Jamestown Tribe, which had lobbied the DNR for years to approve net pens.

While the Jamestown Tribe says their treaty rights support commercial fish farming in net pens, other tribes cite treaty rights in opposition to them. According to an article in We Are Aquaculture, Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe (LEKT) chairwoman Frances Charles commented publicly that banning commercial net pens “is the most responsible action the board can take to safeguard the tribe's treaty rights and protect the salmon runs.”

The LEKT wasn’t the only Tribe to oppose net pens. The Swinomish, Suquamish, Lummi, and Samish Tribes also opposed them. In fact, net pens are opposed by over 200 organizations, tribal nations, and businesses, including the Orca Conservancy, the Endangered Species Coalition, the Olympic Forest Coalition, the Wild Fish Conservancy, and several Audobon Societies.

Washington joins Alaska, Oregon, and California in banning net pen farming. Canada announced that open-water salmon net pen aquaculture will be banned by mid-2029.

The DNR said the fight to ban net pens began in 2017 when 300,000 non-native Atlantic Salmon escaped from a collapsed net pen operated by Cooke Aquaculture. Two years after the ecological catastrophe, struggling Cooke Aquaculture entered a joint venture with the Jamestown Tribe called “Salish Fish, LLC.”

“For us in the Northwest, aquaculture is a way of life.” — Jamestown Tribe CEO Ron Allen to KNKX radio

When the net pen ban was introduced in 2022, the Jamestown Tribe filed suit against the DNR, calling the decision “highly undemocratic.” The Tribe said, “For millennia, S’Klallam people fed their families with fish and shellfish, and traded their abundant harvest with other Tribes, devising methods for holding fresh catch, and preserving the harvest for future consumption.”

The Jamestown Tribe wasn’t alone in pushing for net pens in local waters; the Northwest Aquaculture Alliance (NWAA) supported the Tribe’s fight against the State. The Tribe and NWAA insisted that the DNR’s decision “went against science.” In a 2023 email statement, NWAA’s Executive Director Jeanne McKnight said, “Without a doubt, the eco-activists who made the most noise had the least credible science or no science at all.”

The science

Factory farming in confined spaces can spread diseases — swine flu, bird flu, and mad cow disease are examples. Similarly, raising fish in crowded net pens increases the risk of disease transmission and outbreaks.

Environmental organizations like "Our Sound, Our Salmon" argue that diseases, sea lice, and pesticides from industrial net pens harm wild salmon populations. In contrast, NOAA Fisheries, a federal agency, claims that net pens pose minimal harm to the ecosystem.

Sea lice, tiny parasites that attach to salmon and feed on their skin and blood, are particularly problematic. Wild adult salmon often carry a few sea lice, but outbreaks are common in crowded net pens, leading to high mortality rates. Fish infected with sea lice can't be sold due to the lesions they cause.

In nature, sea lice die when adult salmon enter freshwater to spawn, which keeps their population in check. However, if net pens are near river mouths, a higher concentration of sea lice can attach to juvenile salmon exiting waterways and entering into the ocean — a few sea lice latching onto a juvenile salmon can pose a fatal threat.

A sea louse on an adult coho salmon.

Using harsh chemicals makes managing sea lice outbreaks easier, but that has a downside. Treatments can cause fish to lose their appetite, which slows growth. Fish can’t be sold immediately after the treatments are administered — the chemicals must dissipate so fish are safe for consumption. Additionally, fish can build up resistance, requiring more chemicals.

Some treatments target the sea louse’s ability to molt, which, as a crustacean, means death. Unfortunately, the chemicals find their way to other crustaceans beyond the net pens, like crabs and shrimp. This can lead to “dead zones” under and near net pens.

Four facts:

1. Sea lice larvae are less than one millimeter long and often float along, hoping to find a host.

2. Migrating native wild salmon congregate where waterways empty into saltwater.

3. Salish Fish LLC intended to construct net pens in the protected waters of Port Angeles Harbor.

4. Due to lawsuits from Tribes (including the Jamestown Tribe), taxpayers are spending hundreds of millions to restore salmon habitat in Tumwater, Ennis, and White Creeks, which flow into Port Angeles Harbor.

Why would the Jamestown Tribe introduce sea lice, disease, toxic chemicals, and dead zones into an environment we are working so hard to ensure is salmon-friendly?

A commercial fish farm in the calm waters of Port Angeles Harbor. (Photo courtesy Salish Fish LLC).

Marginalized communities

Concentrations of fish mean concentrations of fish waste and uneaten fishmeal.

Uneaten fishmeal and fish feces accumulate on the ocean floor below net pens, potentially causing environmental issues. Excess nutrients (like nitrogen and phosphorus) cause algae blooms, which can deplete oxygen in the water and contribute to dead zones where marine life struggles to survive.

The fishmeal fed to penned salmon is made from corn, soy, wheat, and other fish. About 4-5 pounds of fish must be harvested to create one pound of fishmeal. Peru is the biggest fishmeal producer because of its abundant supply of “anchoveta.” Chimbote, Peru, a major hub for fishmeal production, has experienced severe environmental and economic degradation due to the industry.

Cooke Aquaculture, the same company Jamestown partnered with, acquired Peru’s largest anchoveta fishing firm this past November.

“Economic devastation resulting from uncontrolled fishing malpractice has gone far beyond outcompeting small-scale fishers, including indigenous groups. Consequently, they are forced to work in the fishmeal plants where they are losing their traditions in slave-like conditions.” — Environmental Justice report on Chimbote, Peru.

According to the OAK Foundation, small-scale fisheries in West African countries like Ghana are struggling after centuries of depending on the ocean. Indigenous populations that have centered their culture around fishing since time immemorial are encountering significant competition from industrial trawlers. Commercial fishing fleets are depleting the ocean’s natural resources and threatening West Africa’s food security, and they’re doing it primarily to make one product — fishmeal.

“It is our sardinella, in a state of overexploitation, that are being transformed into fishmeal and oil for export, often to feed aquaculture fish in other countries,” says Gaoussou Gueye, president of an organization that represents small artisanal fisheries.

In other words, the fish farming industry infringes on the rights of marginalized African Indigenous communities by taking fish from their usual and accustomed grounds, which has been an essential part of their cultural, subsistence, and economic well-being for millennia.

Fishing is not just a means of sustenance for West Africans; it’s also a deeply ingrained cultural practice and a source of spiritual connection. Fishing ensures that Africans can maintain their way of life and pass down their traditions to future generations.

“This is an equity issue,’ Dr. Daniel Skerritt said in a paper published in Science Advances last year. “It puts local [West African] fishmongers at an unfair disadvantage because they cannot compete with the prices the plants are willing to pay for this global commodity.”

Save the whales

Another source of fishmeal is Antarctic krill — a two-inch-long swimming crustacean that gives farmed salmon that familiar pink hue. Commercial trawlers off the coast of the South Orkney Islands, near Antarctica, scoop tons of krill from the ocean while weaving among their competition — humpback and blue whales.

Researchers from the University of Washington and Stanford observed that krill fishing competes directly with whales, which can consume between one and six tons of krill daily. From 2021 through 2023, four humpback whales died after becoming entangled in krill fishing nets.

Now, krill fishing is on the verge of expanding. Along the Antarctic Peninsula, the fishing industry has proposed increasing the catch limit from 155,000 tons to 668,101 tons annually. Nearly all that catch will be used to make fishmeal or omega-3 dietary supplements.

The business of making fishmeal for farm-raised fish just doesn’t seem sustainable.

Why?

With so many tribes, organizations, and businesses staunchly against net pens, why is the Jamestown Tribe an outlier in advocating for an expansion of fish farming? We know the Jamestown Tribe is the best environmental steward because they tell us.

“You know, we consider ourselves the best stewards around,” Jamestown Tribe CEO Ron Allen told KONP radio when taking over management of the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge (“The Spit” to locals). “I mean, nobody does a better job of protecting the environment and restoring the environment than we do,” Allen said regarding his tribe’s opening of a commercial oyster farming operation within the refuge.

We also know of their superior environmental stewardship because the Tribe hired Cascadia Consulting Group to draft their 2024 Priority Climate Action Plan, which was submitted to the EPA. It reads, “Since time immemorial, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe (JST) has lived and cared for the land and waters of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. Rooted in a deep understanding and knowledge of place, the Tribe continues to restore, maintain, and protect resource-rich ecosystems.”

Why would the Jamestown Tribe infringe on the treaty rights of other tribes, risking salmon restoration? Why would the potential harm to marginalized Indigenous communities in Peru and the threat to West Africa’s food security be ignored? And what about the danger to the food source for humpback and blue whales?

The following is an excerpt from the 2023 Jamestown Tribe Report to Tribal Citizens:

Jamestown Seafood successfully completed the joint NOAA-University of Washington Sea Grant-JST project designed to examine the market feasibility for farming of sablefish in net pens in Puget Sound. Market acceptance of farmed sablefish was excellent, particularly for several high-end distributors that specialize in sushi-grade and/or gourmet products. Approximately 6,700 pounds (dressed) of sablefish was provided to these types of outlets @ $6.50/ pound, with the remining 19,000 pounds sold to a local processor. With the Total Allowable Catch up in Alaska during 2023, the general market price was poor by late season when these fish were harvested. It is imperative that we continue to develop the high-end market relationships if continuation of this project is to be financially successful.

To read more about NOAA’s partnership with the Jamestown Tribe, click here.

Polls

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• 68% said, “Hurting this county.”

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• 3% said, “Making this county better.”