according to cooke aquaculture pacific, the pen break was due to unusually strong tidal currents during that week's solar eclipse, but washington state department of natural resources investigators found that the tidal currents were well within the range that the net pens had survived in previous years, and the solar eclipse did not affect the tidal currents significantly. the investigators determined that insufficient maintenance and cleaning of the biofouling on the net pens was the primary cause of the break. investigators found that the pen held around of biofouling, which was over 600-percent of the total original weight of the pen.