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
seafood sectors — lobster, scallops, clams, groundfish — have no united voice in international markets.
That could change, however, if a Maine-backed initiative to create a National Seafood Marketing Coalition reaches fruition. Discussed for years, the coalition now has 70 organizations backing it who are seeking support for federal legislation to create a national seafood marketing fund. The fund would be capitalized through an allocation of $100 million a year from existing duties on imported seafood, which totaled roughly $378 million in 2010.
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.”
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