Cooke Aquaculture veterans recognized with lifetime achievement awards

The Northwest Aquaculture Alliance (NWAA), a sustainable aquaculture advocacy organization has named Kevin J. Bright and Randy E. Hodgin as Lifetime Achievement Award winners for 2023. 

The two Pacific Northwest aquaculture industry veterans are from Cooke Aquaculture Pacific. 

Hodgin started his aquaculture career in 1986, working in salmon culture for Stolt Sea Farm-Washington. From 1994 to 2018, he was the site manager for Sea Farm of Washington and Cooke Aquaculture Pacific and eventually managed all of Cooke’s marine sites in Washington.

Bright, who’s permit coordinator of Cooke Aquaculture Pacific, serves on the NWAA board of directors and has been involved in fisheries for more than 30 years. Bright also served on the board of NWAA’s predecessor organization, the Washington Fish Growers Association.

NWAA also named Tom Glaspie, Brett Raemer, Doug Simms, and Nichole Robinson as Aquaculture Champions, a new award that recognizes those “unsung heroes who work tirelessly in caring for the fish, the environment, their colleagues, and the industry,” said NWAA president and Jamestown Seafood chief executive officer, Jim Parsons.

Nichole Robinson received an award as an aquaculture champion. (Photo: Northwest Aquaculture Alliance)

Parsons, the former general manager of Cooke Aquaculture Pacific, said he’s known the awardees for years and the honour is well-deserved. He said they’re “some of the best and brightest in the aquaculture sector, exemplifying professionalism and integrity in the face of extraordinary challenges brought about when the state’s Department of Natural Resources terminated Cooke’s leases—leaving the state with no commercial net pens.”