- Division of Marine Fisheries
Seafood Expo North America
The 40th edition of Seafood Expo North America/Seafood Processing North America (SENA) was scheduled for March 15-17, 2020. DMF planned to be there highlighting local seafood, however, it made headlines as the first major business event in Boston to be postponed due to the coronavirus. We hope to be back in 2021!
Response to the Coronavirus Crisis
In March, the Seafood Marketing Program emailed all permitted retailers and wholesalers of seafood in the State to create a list of businesses open in any capacity and selling local seafood. This list continues to be updated as businesses open up for the season, lives on DMF’s website, and is promoted through our social media and other channels.
The Seafood Marketing Program produced a video “Supporting and Preserving our Seafood Industry during Covid-19” that acted as an informative and nuanced message from DMF’s Dan McKiernan about the status of the seafood industry and dynamic response efforts during the Spring of 2020. Dan emphasized how hard-hit the entire seafood industry is due to restaurant closures and encouraged everyone to buy seafood to cook at home. This video was widely spread and applauded by industry members.
Summer is usually a time for the Seafood Marketing Program to participate in and sponsor events around the Commonwealth. We have pivoted to the current climate by creating content to support the seafood industry this summer, such as Massachusetts Seafood Chef Series: Chef recipes for the home cook and demonstration videos, an advertising campaign, and additional messaging about availability.
Seafood Marketing Grant Program
$50,616 was awarded by the Seafood Marketing Grant Program for three projects to enhance the viability and stabilize the economic environment for our local commercial fishing and seafood industries and communities. The funded projects will support the commercial seafood and fishing industries and communities by increasing awareness and preference for seafood from Massachusetts through education, promotion, research, marketing, and/or additional strategies. Priority was given to those proposals that are for the greatest good of the Commonwealth’s seafood industry as a whole. Project outcomes, materials created, and reporting from the project will provide information and insight to those in the region doing work with similar goals.
The following received grants:
$13,376 – Eating with the Ecosystem: Real-Time Seafood Marketing: Synchronizing Supply and Demand in a Dynamic Environment
The project will support Massachusetts’ fishing and seafood communities by developing a crowdsourcing and consumer mobilization platform to test methods for real-time seafood purchasing advice, with the goal of making the state’s retail marketplace rapidly adaptable to variation in supply of local species.
$31,240 – Our Wicked Fish, Inc.: A Blueprint for Marketing Local Seafood at Colleges & Universities
Our Wicked Fish and UMass Dining will conduct a month-long campaign for New England caught seafood at UMass Amherst in October (National Seafood Month). Components of the campaign will include social media content, on-campus contests, online giveaways, meet-n-greets with fishers, and could also include events such as a film screening, fish cutting demonstrations, cooking demonstrations, and brief before-and-after online survey.
$6,000 - New Bedford Port Authority: Marketing New Bedford Seafood Internationally & Locally
New Bedford Port Authority will update their website and develop additional features that: (1) market the New Bedford-based businesses to international buyers, and (2) further educate local and regional residents about locally landed species. This website will also support the Commonwealth as the species being highlighted are landed throughout New England, and content will be shared.
By Wendy Mainardi, Seafood Marketing Coordinator
