There has been a lot of chatter about the fish pens located in our harbor, most negative.
The pens have some undesirable characteristics but there are a couple of things to consider.
When you take a trip to your local grocery store, and go to the seafood department it’s mostly farm-raised, shrimp, tilapia, oysters, clams and Atlantic salmon and other seafood are offered, with little local fresh seafood for sale.
You should not be surprised that beef, pork and fowl are also farm-raised; so are your vegetables.
Local jobs, direct and indirect, would be lost if the pens were removed.
Some 690,000 fish dressed out selling for $10 a pound or more is huge.
These fish are sold where there is no other option for folks to eat fish, but Atlantic salmon.
What, pray tell, will the state replace farm raised salmon with at the local market?
What is Plan B?
This state will willfully destroy a business that provides salmon to customers who want the product.
When crabbers drop their pots in the harbor, I think they are always in close proximity to the pens; seems to be more crab there.
Eat at a restaurant, ask them what the salmon is they serve.
You may get fresh local salmon from time to time.
The company that owns the pens say the problems can be corrected; give them a chance.
With what we all know now, I’m sure they would do better.
I do not eat Atlantic salmon. They taste like pellets but most people couldn’t tell you if a salmon were caught on a hook, in a net or raised in a pen.
Robert A. Beausoleil
Port Angeles