The Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association (BBRSDA) recently received two grants totaling USD 687,668 (EUR 621,879) from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) and NOAA.
One grant will help fund a sonar salmon counting project on the Naknek River, while the other will contribute to marketing campaigns for wild Alaskan salmon products in new markets.
According to a release by BBRSDA, the NFWF grant of USD 188,268 (EUR 170,285) was awarded through the organization's Electronic Monitoring and Reporting Grant Program, which also receives funding from NOAA. The project will support salmon counting on the Naknek River near King Salmon, Alaska from 1 June 2026 through 31 May 2028 with sonar technology. Sonar technology works by using sound waves to count fish underwater, and this added technological grant will allow researchers to do so without a technician reading data and producing counts, with automatic counting taking place instead. BBRSDA added that counts will then be sent to a real-time dashboard updated during the season, run by SeaSignal Technologies, Coastal Measures, and BioSonics.
“Better information during the season means better decisions for everyone who depends on this fishery," BBRSDA Executive Director Lilani Dunn said in the release. "Sonar lets us count fish across a wide stretch of the Naknek and get those numbers to fishermen, processors, and managers while they can still act on them. We are grateful to NFWF and NOAA Fisheries for investing in a tool the fleet has wanted for a long time."
While the project funds a hydroacoustic sonar system in the Naknek River initially, BBRSDA said the organization plans to integrate additional systems on other Bristol Bay waterways in future years.
The organization's other grant comes from NOAA's Saltonstall-Kennedy grant program, for USD 449,400 (EUR 406,451). The entire program allocated USD 8.9 million (EUR 8.04 million) to various organizations and universities for marketing, development and infrastructure, or science and technology projects.
BBRSDA's funding will support the growth of sales of wild Alaska sockeye salmon in the U.S. food service market, according to a release by NOAA. BBRSDA said the organization is now looking for a marketing agency to lead the newly funded effort for the contracted term of 1 December 2026 to 31 August 2028. Areas of marketing within the U.S. food service market include restaurants, healthcare systems, colleges, and corporate dining.
In a release by BBRSDA, the organization said a marketing agency can help target initiatives that raise product awareness both digitally and in-person, as well as building a prospect list through new clients and trade shows.
“We're proud to announce that BBRSDA has been awarded a grant from NOAA Fisheries' Saltonstall-Kennedy Grant Program to fund a new project: Wild Alaska Sockeye Salmon in Food Service,” the organization said on LinkedIn. “This is BBRSDA's first Saltonstall-Kennedy award, and one of the few federally funded projects specifically designed to support Bristol Bay sockeye salmon marketing and promotion. It reflects a meaningful federal investment in the future of our fishery."
In 2026, other projects led by BBRSDA included a mobile application for fishermen to recieve Alaska Department of Fish & Game (ADF&G) datasets and and on-the-hour announcements in live time and a remotely operated drone that uploaded tens of thousands of fish counting images to an AI-powered database for fish counting.
