Brian Hagenbuch

A new report published by Alaska Sea Grant says China’s growing middle class represents a large potential for growth in sales of wild Alaska salmon fillets that could include a head-and-bone market. 

Researchers from the University of Alaska partnered with colleagues from the University of Purdue to carry out the study, which surveyed more than 1,000 shoppers at grocery stores in three major cities in China – already Alaska&rsquo… Read More

The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI) and a group of U.S. marketing organizations are gearing up for a second trade export mission to Southeast Asia in as many years, hoping to crack a large, untapped market of seafood consumers.

Hannah Lindoff, international program director for ASMI, said industry members who council ASMI committees urged the marketing agency to pursue markets in Southeast Asia, leading to a government grant and a trade… Read More

Speaking at the SeaWeb Seafood Summit on Wednesday, 7 June in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A., University of Washington fisheries researcher Ray Hilborn said the perception that the world’s fish stocks are declining is incorrect, and that fishing could sustainably be stepped up in areas with good management.

Hilborn pointed to figures from the RAM Legacy Stock Assessment Database that indicate that fish stocks dipped through the last part of th… Read More

Despite living in the heart of red meat country, consumers in the Midwest United States are embracing a sustainable seafood campaign at Hy-Vee grocery stores, a chain with more than 240 employee-owned supermarkets throughout the Midwestern United States. 

Speaking at a session on business models that support small-scale fishing on Wednesday, 7 June at the SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Seattle, Washington, Brett Bremser, Hy-Vee’s executive v… Read More

The Seafood Stewardship Index is set to begin work on a new two-year project that will benchmark the world’s largest seafood companies against the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

Bas Geerts, a lead at the Seafood Stewardship Index, said the benchmarking will be in the methodology phase for the next year, with reports expected to be released in the second half of 2019.

“The index will consist not only… Read More

Diverse funders discussed ways to draw capital into the seafood industry in ways that promote sustainability, highlighting a need for smaller-scale investments that tend to perpetuate sustainable fishing practices.

Speaking at a plenary session on Tuesday, 6 June at the SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A., Hoyt Peckham, president of SmartFish Group, an enterprise that incentivizes sustainable artisanal fishing in Mexico, said the… Read More

Major growth in aquaculture – also known as the “blue revolution” – will depend heavily on a paradigm shift from competition to cooperation, a panel of industry experts asserted on Monday, 5 June at the SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.

Pre-competitive collaboration was the buzz phrase at an afternoon plenary that featured talks by Avrim Lazar of the Global Salmon Initiative (GSI) and Jason Clay, senior … Read More

Bristol Bay, Alaska is primed for yet another above-average run this season in the world’s largest wild sockeye salmon fishery, but a portion of the industry’s energy this season may again be redirected to a fight the Pebble Mine, a massive copper, silver and gold mine proposed for location at the headwaters of Bristol Bay.

The administration of former U.S. President Barack Obama had stalled permits for the extraction site under a cla… Read More

What started out as a thesis project to build bridges in the seafood industry in Iceland is quickly spreading across the United States.

The Iceland Ocean Cluster — an organization designed to bring together disparate industry players — grew out of founder and CEO Thor Sigfusson’s Ph.D. dissertation, completed in 2011, on the effectiveness of clusters.

Sigfusson launched his project with a simple act: He gathered people in a roo… Read More

What started as a simple search for a cedar plank upon which to cook salmon has grown into a business that sold more than 250,000 planks last year. Now Fire & Flavor co-owner Davis Knox calls business for his specialty cedar planks “booming.”

Knox, an Athens, Georgia, U.S.A. native, founded Fire & Flavor in 2003 with his wife Gena, who got the idea for the business after she read about the Native American technique of cooking… Read More