Northern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association personnel have recovered about 1,100 large, empty, plastic fish feed bags from the waters of southern Chatham Strait where a large number of the bags fell off a Lituya Freight Runners barge in May.

The fish feed was fed to juvenile salmon at the Hidden Falls hatchery in 2021.

Association general manager Scott Wagner said on June 16 that while his staff is “making every effort to clean these bags up in the most efficient manner,” it’s been “frustrating to respond as we’re able to a situation that we didn’t necessarily directly cause.”

The nonprofit salmon hatchery operator issued a press release about the cleanup on June 13.

“It’s an unfortunate situation, something that obviously would be great if it didn’t occur,” Wagner said.

The cleanup effort began May 20 when a good Samaritan vessel reported that empty “Bio-Oregon” feed bags were floating in the water around lower Chatham Strait near the entrance to Frederick Sound, the release stated.

The bags are about two feet by three feet.

On May 21, the hatchery operator launched vessels from its Hidden Falls facility, as well as a spotter floatplane to “ascertain location, distribution and origination” of the green-and-white plastic bags bobbing in the water.

Lot numbers and dates printed on the bags revealed they were used at Hidden Falls in 2021.

Lituya Freight Runners, based in Petersburg, had removed the bags from Hidden Falls in 2021, but the company later disclosed that the shipment of empty bags “was not delivered to Petersburg per arrangement.”

Instead, the bags were stored for four years on a barge anchored in Murder Cove, located on the southern tip of Admiralty Island between Hidden Falls and Petersburg.

“It appears this barge was moved out of the remote location immediately prior to the Good Samaritan sighting of feed bag debris on May 20,” the hatchery association news release stated.

Wagner said the bags would have been stored in a pallet cube filled with “refuse, whether it’s scrap metal, these feed bags or whatever we have at Hidden Falls.”

At the hatchery site, on the eastern side of Baranof Island, pallet cubes containing solid waste are loaded onto a landing craft to be shipped out for disposal. Wagner said Lituya Freight Runners collects materials from Hidden Falls every year, “usually once or twice a year.”

“We make every effort to consolidate our trash, so we can fit a lot of bags in a pallet cube,” he said. Hatchery workers flatten and roll up the empty bags to save space.

Wagner said he doesn’t know how many bags fell from the barge.

Lituya Freight Runners told the hatchery association on June 13 that the company would launch its own efforts to recover the plastic bags, sending vessels into Chatham Strait for the work.