I have the April 24 Seattle PI article, and it does not mention gulls.
Perhaps there was another article?

Pink Ring-bills have been seen for at least the last 15 years in the
northwest, and their concentrations are highest east of the Cascades. Would
Ring-bills be likely to hang out at coastal fish farms?

Lisa Hardy
Kingston, ID
-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Paulsen <ipaulsen at krl.org>
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Date: Wednesday, April 30, 2003 5:41 AM
Subject: pink gulls


>HI:
> See below! Has anyone seen pink gulls around here?
>One of the other Chatters today informed me that the color additive added
>to
>farmed shrimp (such as those in Ecuador), which also is known to pigment
>Elegant Terns, is astaxanthin. [see: "Carotenoids produce flush in the
>Elegant Tern plumage" (Hudon and Brush, 1990, Condor 92:798-801]. And, a
>Seattle Post-Intelligencer article recently indicated that Ringed-bills
>in
>the Northwest are turning up pink; canthaxanthin and astaxanthin are used
>to color farmed salmon in that area. This extremely interesting since it
>implicates food coloring (at least in part) as causing the outbreak of
>"pink-gull".
>
>P.S. I also learned that >50% of the FrGu's appearing at Bear River NWR,
>UT
>are brightly pink this year too.
>
>
>Ian Paulsen
>Bainbridge Island, WA, USA
>ipaulsen at krl.org
>A.K.A.: "Birdbooker"
>"Rallidae all the way"
>
>