Report: Salmon net pen’s collapse followed earlier breakdown

SEATTLE – A report to state regulators says a collapse of an Atlantic salmon net pen in August was preceded by a serious breakdown less than a month earlier in which nearly half of its anchor lines snapped.

The Seattle Times reported the owner of the Cypress Island net pen, Cooke Aquaculture Pacific, filed last week a chronology of the net pen collapse that spewed more than 160,000 adult Atlantic salmon into Puget Sound.

More than 100,000 of those fish are still unaccounted for.

The report was provided to state investigators looking into the collapse.