Fish farming veterans given lifetime achievement awards

North American fish farming advocacy group, the Northwest Aquaculture Alliance (NWAA), has announced its “Lifetime Achievement Award” winners for 2023.

Sharing the honours this year are two Pacific Northwest aquaculture industry veterans from Cooke Aquaculture Pacific: Kevin J Bright and Randy E Hodgin.

In addition, NWAA named the Cooke Aquaculture Pacific leadership team of Tom Glaspie, Brett Raemer, Doug Simms, and Nichole Robinson as ‘Aquaculture Champions’, a new award that recognises “unsung heroes who work tirelessly in caring for the fish, the environment, their colleagues, and the industry,” said NWAA president Jim Parsons.

'Best and brightest'

Parsons, a former general manager of Cooke Aquaculture Pacific, described the awardees as “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”.

He added: “I have known this group of professionals for many years now and am pleased that the leadership of NWAA chose to award them all with its highest honour. To a person, the award is well deserved.”

Bright, permit coordinator of Cooke Aquaculture Pacific (CAP), 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 organisation, the Washington Fish Growers’ Association.

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

Under pressure

Open net pen fish farming in Washington State has been under pressure from politicians since the collapse of a recently-acquired Cooke farm at Cypress Island, Puget Sound, led to the escape of thousands of Atlantic salmon in 2017.

State legislators outlawed the net pen farming of non-native fish – effectively, Atlantic salmon – which led Cooke to begin farming native steelhead salmon (seagoing rainbow trout) instead.

In November 2022, public lands commissioner Hilary Franz, an elected official opposed to net pen farming, issued an order ostensibly banning net pen farms from state-controlled waters.

In October last year, a court ruled that Franz’s diktat does not make net pen fish farming illegal and was simply an internal directive to begin the rulemaking process regarding commercial net pens in state aquatic lands. However, with Franz still in position and able to block fish farm lease applications until November this year, the sector cannot re-start immediately.

Franz had planned to run for governor in Washington, but didn’t get the support she had hoped for, and now aims to be elected to the US House of Representatives instead.