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Seafood marketing group eyed |
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A visitor to this year’s International Seafood Show in Boston last month could take in pavilions touting products from Alaska, Florida, Louisiana, Quebec, Japan, China, Chile and even Oman. Notably absent: Maine. Although a few individual Maine companies had booths, no larger Maine brand was promoted. “This is the biggest international seafood show in the United States and we’re lost in the shuffle,” says Dane Somers, executive director of the Maine Lobster Promotion Council, which has a booth at the show each year. “It’s ironic.”
In recent years, Maine’s relatively fragmented seafood industry has been unable to organize itself for the purposes of marketing like, say, Alaska, where the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute has promoted all Alaskan seafood — from wild-caught salmon to king crab — and the Alaska brand since 1980. Lacking an overarching organization and funds, Maine’s The initiative originated in Alaska, but Somers and the Maine Lobster Promotion Council quickly got on board and have been heavily involved the past couple of years, Somers says. Marketing the $90 billion domestic seafood industry is important for the economy and jobs, especially in Maine, he says. “We spend taxpayer money and industry money on rebuilding, protecting and maintaining this valuable resource,” Somers says. “But we don’t really spend anything on how we bring this resource to market and to make sure we get a return on that investment.” Read the complete story from Maine Biz.
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MELISSA WOOD, NATIONAL FISHERMEN: Meting out the meager
May 22, 2012 - Listening to the New England Council's Groundfish Advisory Panel talk about how that industry is going to pay for monitoring costs is kind of like trying to figure out how to pay your bills when you've just lost your job. Though monitoring is important keeping costs down is critical. As Panel Member Gary Libby pointed out, "If we had 100 percent monitoring we probably wouldn't have an industry."
