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March 21, 2011

Seafood marketing group eyed

Photo/David A. Rodgers Dane Somers, head of the Maine Lobster Promotion Council, says a proposed national seafood marketing group could funnel $6 million to Maine each year
By Whit Richardson

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.”

The domestic seafood industry could use some marketing attention. Currently, 84% of the seafood consumed in the United States is imported, which creates a $8 billion trade deficit, the country’s third largest behind oil and automobiles. “This is a critical time for U.S. fisheries,” Somers says in a statement. “Here in New England, we have lost 20% of fisheries industry-related jobs in just the past few years. This is a crisis. These lost jobs supported local coastal economies and communities, many of which are rural and totally fisheries dependent.”

Benefits for all

Besides the money issue, the challenge of marketing Maine seafood is fragmentation of the industry’s sectors — farmed kelp and hand-picked diver scallops, lobster and wild-caught cod and others fall under the seafood label. Somers says using a marketing campaign with a catch phrase, such as pork (“the other white meat”) or beef (“it’s what’s for dinner”), “doesn’t really work because the industry is so varied. It wouldn’t do much good to say ‘Eat fish! It’s good for you.’”

The national coalition intends to create five regions covering the entire country — even landlocked states have aquaculture production facilities — each with its own regional board. In the proposal, New England is lumped together with the Great Lakes region. The $100 million the coalition is asking for would be split among five regional boards, 80% being allocated evenly among the boards and 20% based on the volume of existing landings in each region. Each regional board, made up of industry and other stakeholders, would entertain proposals from groups within that region seeking marketing dollars. “Nobody knows the New England marketing issues better than the New Englanders. Nobody understands the issues in the Gulf better than the folks in the Gulf,” says Bruce Schactler, marketing chairman for the United Fishermen of Alaska and director of the nascent national marketing coalition. “That’s why each area has a regional marketing board that can strategically direct funds to address the needs and to move the needle up.”

Somers says the coalition and potential fund could mean as much as $6 million coming to Maine each year on a consistent basis and could help pay for, say, a Maine pavilion at the seafood show or allow the scallop industry to launch an advertising campaign to market Maine scallops.

But there are challenges ahead. Dana Temple, chair of the Maine Scallop Advisory Council, says marketing Maine scallops would be great for the industry. But even if money was available, Temple’s not sure the Maine scallop industry is organized enough to mount an advertising campaign. “Do I think it’s a great idea? Yes. Is it possible? I think we need a more cohesive unit before marketing can work,” Temple says.

The other challenge is getting Congress to allocate $100 million. Schactler says the funds are already there, and cites a 1954 law, the Saltonstall-Kennedy Act, that established a fund the commerce department is supposed to use to finance projects for fishery research and development. On paper, the program is still there, but Schactler says over the years the money has been appropriated for other things, such as funding research and operations facilities at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Maine’s congressional delegation has voiced support for the measure, though none is ready to commit to sponsoring or co-sponsoring the bill. Somers met with Rep. Chellie Pingree and Sen. Olympia Snowe, ranking member of the Senate’s oceans and fisheries subcommittee, at the recent Maine Fishermen’s Forum, held in Rockport. Snowe said in a statement that Maine’s seafood industry must be promoted to expand demand and increase the revenue for Maine fishermen and lobstermen. When pressed about potential sponsorship, a spoksperson for Snowe says she “is talking to the potential sponsor of the legislation, Senator Murkowski, while currently reviewing the language of the bill.”

Pingree’s spokesman, Willy Ritch, says “we haven’t seen a final version of the legislation yet so we can’t say if she’ll be a co-sponsor, but I can say she very much likes what she’s seen so far.”

Supporters would like to see the bill introduced as early as this spring.

 

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