The fish are being seen in areas around British Columbia’s Vancouver Island, around the San Juan Islands, in south Puget Sound and where the Strait of Juan de Fuca meets the open ocean.

The state Department of Fish & Wildlife has received a report that one was caught in the Columbia River along the border with Oregon, but agency spokesman Bruce Botka said that report was not reliable.

This week, tribes have reported hauling thousands of the fish out of the water and sport fishermen have reported catching about 1,400 fish, according to an online Fish & Wildlife map.

Of those, nine were reportedly caught in the lower Samish River.

Brett Barkdull, a fish biologist with Fish & Wildlife, said although not reflected on the online map, fishermen have also caught Atlantic salmon in the Nooksack and Skagit rivers.

The Atlantic salmon have not traveled far upstream, however, as Fish & Wildlife staff have not encountered them while conducting surveys of spawning chinook and pink salmon in the mid-to-upper reaches of those rivers, the Sauk and Suiattle rivers, and tributary streams, Barkdull said.

He said he’s not worried about the non-native, farm-raised Atlantic salmon threatening native Pacific salmon species, at least for long.

“This isn’t the first time this has happened by any means. There has been intentional introduction of Atlantic salmon in the past and we’ve had some major releases of them in the past and there were no signs of successful reproduction,” Barkdull said. “History has shown that they’re not very good at adapting to the wild ... the majority of them will presumably be prey or starve to death.”

Meanwhile, several members of Congress sent a letter Wednesday to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Army Corps of Engineers demanding federal action to protect native salmon from the potential impacts of the farmed fish.

“The released Atlantic salmon pose a threat to wild Pacific salmon, including multiple endangered and threatened stocks in the region. Tribes, fishermen, and state agencies are working to respond to the escapement but the scale of the release calls for immediate and direct federal response,” wrote the members, who include Democratic Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray and Reps. Suzan DelBene and Rick Larsen.

Although Cooke Aquaculture, the company that operates the Cypress Island fish farm, has not released an official statement on the number of fish lost, about half of the 305,000 that were in the net before it broke remain unaccounted for.

While the Atlantic salmon are now widely dispersed, they don’t seem to be using the same waters that Pacific salmon tend to favor.

“They act different than native fish by a long shot. They’ve mostly been hanging out along the beaches in shallow water,” Barkdull said. “They’re not really hanging out in typical Pacific salmon type areas.”

Many of the Atlantic salmon also haven’t traveled far from the farm.

Cooke Aquaculture removed 141,576 of the fish out of the damaged net before removing the net on Tuesday.

The majority of the catches reported by sport fishermen have been around Cypress, Guemes and the San Juan Islands.

Barkdull said many of the fish remain in bays along Cypress Island and along the Guemes Island shoreline just east of the farm.