Fishermen, seafood processors, and other agencies from across Bristol Bay traveled to Seattle last month for the 2025 Pacific Marine Expo, the West Coast's largest marine trade show. They were there to talk to experts, buy and sell merchandise, and swap business cards and industry stories.
Crystal Briette is the communications and marketing coordinator for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, or ASMI, Alaska's official seafood marketing organization.
While at the expo, she talked to KDLG about AMSI resources available for fishermen, marketing strategies in the Bristol Bay area, and fishermen's role in marketing their catch in the domestic and global markets.
*This interview is part of a series of voices from the 2025 Pacific Marine Expo.*
Briette: We are a public-private partnership between the Alaska fishing industry and the state of Alaska, and we work to promote Alaska seafood within Alaska, domestically, and in international markets.
So a huge goal for us at this expo is to connect with fishermen and members of the fishing fleet in Alaska, particularly our Alaska fishermen. We really like to support them with our marketing materials, and so we like to connect with them and share our different kinds of fishermen outreach and our fishermen resources.
So we have all sorts of posters and videos and all sorts of things that direct marketers can use. We have technical resources on nutrition and on fish handling and all sorts of things.
We have the pink salmon media package, so that is a side of different media items. We have a logo for it. We have a brand guide for it. We have videos, photos, recipes, all sorts of things, all highlighting pink salmon. So we've really been sharing that with folks around. So that's just a brand new thing we did this year. And then we're also just pushing our general fleet resources, so our media asset library, our printed assets, all of our different things that we provide to fishermen. We're just kind of promoting these always-on resources. Just get in contact with ASMI if you need anything to help market your fish, or to help make a sale, or anything. We're here to help and just kind of connecting with fishermen to say that we're here to help.
ASMI works really closely with the BBRSDA (Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association).
With BBRSDA, you know, we support with different logoing. They're part of our media asset library. So they have access to all the different assets. We have hundreds of thousands of them. We've often have done certain fan trips, familiarization tours where it will actually bring media up to Bristol Bay, and then they get to see kind of how the fishery works and bring it back home, wherever they might be.
This past summer, we just hosted a big fan trip with Whole Foods up to Bristol Bay, and that was really successful in getting Bristol Bay into Whole Foods Market.
Fishermen are really important to marketing the product. You know, there wouldn't be a product if it wasn't for the fishermen. And so it's really important for us to tell the fisherman's story. Really like amplifying kind of the sustainability of Alaska seafood and those fishermen’s stories. Those really resonate well with audiences, both domestically and globally, too. People love to hear from Alaska fishermen. Kind of the life on the boat, if it's a family operation. We know that, you know, fishing operations in Alaska are a lot smaller than maybe in other places, and so hearing those authentic stories from those fishermen is a really great resource for ASMI to help amplify all the voices in Alaska seafood.
We believe a rising tide lifts all ships, and so we support all the different Alaska seafood species.
It's been really great. We've been able to talk to a lot of different folks walking through here. It's just great to see where all the different kind of fishing faces come from. We've met a lot of, you know, generations of fishing families have been coming through here and talking with us. We've also met some first-time fishermen, first-generation fishermen, which has been really cool to see, kind of the newer faces in the industry.
