Alaska Fisheries Marketing Board

The Alaska Fisheries Marketing Board has been a dream come true to those of us at UFA who worked and waited several years while Senator Ted Stevens worked tirelessly on behalf of Alaskan fishermen to provide relief when we needed it most.

This board has 11 members. Ben Stevens is no longer chair so there are currently 10 members on it while we await that seat replacement.

AFMB is one of Senator Ted Stevens reigning commercial salmon industry accomplishments.
He's already sent back $36 million in 3 years (4 annual installments) (10-10-9-7 , so as you can see it's getting smaller).

This money is used from tariffs on seafood IMPORTS into the US, notably Vietnamese catfish, Norweigan salmon and Thailand shrimp. This money is supposed to be used as it is being used in Alaska. In 1998, Senator Stevens approached Bruce Schactler in a meeting in Girdwood and told him to pursue this avenue. Bruce listened to the good Senator and after a few years of working with the S&M ( Schactler and McAllister) Marketing plan- which was renamed to the UFA Marketing Plan-- we finally achieved this. Then the board was picked.

Ray Riutta- ASMI Executive Director
Al Burch- Alaska Dragger's Association, UFA board member
Bob Thorstenson- United Fishermen of Alaska( although my mail addresses me as PSVOA)
Bruce Schactler- UFA Marketing Chairman
Ben Stevens ( past seat) Senate President
Duncan Fields- UFA Secretary
Joe Gulley- Safeway
Mark Tupper- Orca Bay
Paul Dale- Snug Harbor Seafoods
Jim Jansen- principal, Lynden family of companies
Trevor McCabe- past UFA board member and ED of APA.

Now aside from the large proportion of UFA board members on this board, I don't see anything at all wrong with the cross section of this board aside from the fact that there are too many members from Kodiak. Just kidding.

Anyways, we're doing great things over at AFMB and we'll continue to do so.

Keep the faith.

bobbyt