Wild Alaska salmon and halibut from different parts of Alaska are displayed on June 28, 2023, at Sagaya City Market in downtown Anchorage. U.S. consumers have a preference for wild fish and Alaska fish, but they are still price-conscious, so cheaper fish can pose tough competition, Jeremy Woodrow, executive director of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, told lawmakers. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
Increased state investment in marketing will help the battered Alaska seafood industry seize an opportunity to improve sales within the United States, the head of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute told state lawmakers on Wednesday.
Jeremy Woodrow, ASMI’s executive director, attempted to make his organization’s case to the state Senate Finance Committee for $10 million in new state funding.
The money, if appropriated quickly, could be put to work right away to promote Alaska seafood at a time when there is no competition in the domestic market from Russian seafood, Woodrow said at the committee’s hearing.
ASMI is proposing that the $10 million be appropriated in a supplemental budget, a spending plan that could go into effect right away instead of waiting for the July 1 start of the next fiscal year.
Cheap Russian seafood that glutted world markets is now depleted, leaving a $452 million hole in the U.S. domestic market, Woodrow told the committee.
“It really provides opportunity for all of our seafood,” he said.
Alaska could use the opportunity to market what U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, has dubbed “Freedom Fish,” differentiated from that coming from Russia, Woodrow said. However, other seafood-producing countries, like Chile, Norway and Iceland, could also take advantage of the same opportunity, he said.
“This is not a given to us. We need to compete for this marketplace,” he said.
If the Legislature does appropriate the $10 million, it would help bring ASMI’s annual budget to about $22 million for each year in an aggressive three-year marketing period that the organization has planned. That would be a record high for the organization, Woodrow said.
And if it appropriates the money quickly, “that would allow us to hit the ground running a little bit faster with our current marketing plan,” he said.
Typically, half or more of ASMI’s annual funding comes from a tax that the seafood industry levies on itself. Federal funding, largely for international marketing, typically accounts for most of the rest.
But because of depressed prices across the industry, the coming year’s contribution from the seafood industry is set to be about $3 million less than this year’s total, Woodrow said.
The state has contributed in past years, including with $5 million during the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2024. For the five prior years, the state’s general fund provided no money to ASMI.
The Legislature appropriated $10 million for ASMI last year to carry the marketing organization through the current fiscal year, but Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed the funding, saying that the institute had not provided details for a required marketing plan.
This year, the governor is supportive of a $10 million appropriation for ASMI, said Dunleavy spokesperson Jeff Turner.
However, last year’s veto still rankles some members of the Legislature.
The same opportunity to replace Russian fish in the U.S. market existed a year ago, said Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka and the committee co-chair. Dunleavy’s decided to veto the appropriation “for whatever reason that didn’t make much business sense to me, quite frankly, to watch that opportunity go by,” Stedman said at the hearing.
This year, ASMI will probably not get the funding as quickly as desired, Stedman told Woodrow.
“I think it’s highly unlikely we’re going to do a supplemental budget, fast supplemental budget, with the financial challenges we have at the table,” he said.
Rather, funding for ASMI will probably be part of “one big package with a pretty bow on it when we’re all done,” an overall budget passed as early as mid-May but that would have to wait for the governor’s signature, he said.
Whatever the timing, Stedman said he considers more funding for ASMI to be crucial for an industry that is in crisis.
“We’ve got an issue, an underlying issue that affects 44,000 Alaskans roughly. And this is a big part of the solution, in my opinion,” he said.
Stedman is a member of a legislative task force that has made several recommendations for helping the ailing Alaska seafood industry. Those recommendations include increased funding for ASMI.
The opportunity to replace Russian fish in the U.S. market could be short-lived. President Donald Trump’s administraion is moving toward lifting sanctions on Russia, opening the door to resumed exports of seafood to the U.S.
One committee member, Sen. James Kaufman, R-Anchorage, raised that possibility.
“What if we find ourselves marketing ‘Freedom Fish,’ and suddenly that doesn’t have the same fine marketing point that that might have had?” he asked Woodrow. Alaska could lose that edge “if things with the Russian situation change rapidly and suddenly we kind of move along from the Ukraine situation that drove the political issues around the marketplace,” Kaufman said.
Woodrow acknowledged the risk.
“If that ban were to be lifted, it would create a lot of turmoil for the Alaska seafood industry because of the ability to compete with those low prices,” he said.
While U.S. consumers have a marked preference for wild fish and see Alaska fish as a product worth a premium, price remains critical, he said. Even for highly regarded Alaska seafood, “consumers are willing to come up only so much on price,” he said.
The Trump administration’s newly imposed tariffs on trading partners such as China, and the trade war the administration has ignited, present another challenge.
Seafood presents a small portion of U.S. exports, he said. “So we’re often collateral damage. We’re not the bargaining chip,” he said.
The damage can be long-lasting. Alaska seafood lost its entire market of Chinese fish consumers “overnight” in 2018, the last time a trade war started with that country, he said. That was during the first Trump administration.
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