Nordic Aquafarms, the company planning to build a $400 million fish farm at Humboldt Bay, announced Thursday it has fired its new local project director over a photo that surfaced of him posing with a lion he had shot and killed with a rifle.

Shawn Harriman was terminated just a week after the company announced his hiring as the first on-the-ground exec for the major fish farm operation. Harriman had already moved to Humboldt County for the job.

Nordic exec Marianne Naess announced Harriman’s firing after the Lost Coast Outpost asked the company for comment on the photo, which has surfaced on blogs and Twitter feeds over the past several years.

African animals beware: wildlife terrorist Shawn Harriman will be stalking you soon #bantrophyhunting #opfunkill pic.twitter.com/BPA8J7a9Yg — quorndawg Ⓥ (@QuornDawg) August 6, 2016

“We have just been made aware of unfortunate circumstances pertaining to Shawn Harriman, who was recently hired as SVP Projects for Nordic Aquafarms in California,” Naess said in a statement.

“We want our Humboldt County partners and the community to know that we take any concerns regarding our values or stewardship of natural resources very seriously and therefore we had no choice but to terminate our relationship with Shawn,” she added.

In the photo, Harriman is holding a rifle with an attached scope, kneeling over a lion that appears to be dead.

Naess told the Times-Standard on Thursday that the director confessed to having shot and killed the lion but claimed the photo was over 15 years old, and said the lion had charged at him before he killed it in self-defense. He also told Naess he doesn’t currently own any guns.

Naess called the situation “unfortunate.”

“We don’t condone this kind of behavior or support this kind of hunting,” Naess said Thursday. “We know that this picture was taken a long time ago and it’s real. We also consulted with people from the local community. It’s important to stand by our statement that we take animal welfare very seriously.”

Harriman didn’t immediately respond on Thursday to a requests for comment.

The photo didn’t come up during Harriman’s interviewing process, nor in subsequent Google searches of his name by the company, Naess said. The new hire had “come across as a nice person and a very competent project director.”

Lynette Mullen, the project’s community liaison, similarly said Harriman had seemed like a viable candidate.

“Clearly, (the company) was operating on incomplete information,” Mullen said Thursday. “For better or worse, some of that stuff you’re just not going to know ahead of time.Our executives acted quickly and decisively.”

The animal rights organization PETA has previously spoken out against Nordic’s forthcoming project, buying ads on local buses and releasing a statement criticizing the concept of farming fish.

On Thursday, the organization further weighed in on Nordic’s decision to fire Harriman.

“This company was right to take a stand against trophy hunting, but now PETA urges it to extend its compassion to all species,” PETA President Ingrid Newkirk said in an emailed statement.

“Whether they have fins or fur, all animals are living beings who have the capacity to suffer, and it should be no more or less acceptable to kill a lion for a trophy than millions of fish for food,” Newkirk said.

With a $400 million budget, Nordic is rapidly spending money to establish the Samoa Peninsula fish farm, at the site of the former industrial pulp mills. With approval from its board of directors, the company has been ramping up efforts to obtain permits for the venture.

Shomik Mukherjee can be reached at 707-441-0504.