The Alaska Blue Economy Center: Connecting Mariculture to the State’s “New Blue Economy”

In recent decades, Alaska has seen reductions in the population of working-age adults, according to the Alaska Economic Trends Magazine. This is hitting Alaska’s seafood industry, which generates billions of dollars for the state and the US economy, but is seeing declines in its output.

Maritime industries in Alaska are also being impacted by climate change. Melting ice caps, rapidly warming ocean temperatures, and ocean acidification are impacting the resilience of one of the state’s most important economic sectors.

Moreover, Alaskans are also deeply connected to the ocean on a cultural level, with Alaska Native communities having used coastal waters for thousands of years, and coastal fishing villages like Chignik suffering when their fisheries decline.

However, there is a growing movement within the last frontier to rebuild its historic ocean industries, especially in mariculture.

The Alaska Blue Economy Center (ABEC), launched in 2019, is at the forefront of this movement. It’s built around the ideas of a blue economy, which recognizes and promotes the economic significance of ocean industries in a sustainable manner.

ABEC is trying to revamp the state that produces over half of the nation’s seafood by building up future generations of workers in a state where they’re desperately needed.

UAS Applied Fisheries students preparing sampling kits for deployment to salmon hatcheries. (Credit: Angie Bowers)

Workforce Development

Tommy Sheridan has been with ABEC since 2022 and has been the director since August 2024. Before joining ABEC, which is part of the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), he worked for 20 years in the Alaskan seafood industry.

What Sheridan has seen as a vital mission of ABEC is to secure funding and resources to help Alaska’s maritime-related industries, which are part of their “blue economy.”

“We have really worked to stimulate external funding in support of the state’s blue economy,” he said during a recent fisheries seminar at UAF.

This plan has certainly worked in recent years. In 2022, the Alaska state legislature appropriated $7 million to UAF to “support mariculture research, industry support and workforce development,” of which $2 million was given directly to the ABEC.

The next year, in 2023, UAF was awarded another $20 million through an EPSCoR grant to research “culturally and commercially important” species in the Gulf of Alaska. This five-year grant, known as the Interface of Change, brings communities, universities, and researchers from across the Gulf together to build “resilience” in coastal ecosystems and economies through mariculture.

ABEC and its partners have also benefited from the US Economic Development Administration awarding $49 million to the “Alaska Mariculture Cluster.” Sheridan has seen the push that national and state organizations are making for Alaska’s mariculture industry, and wants ABEC to maximize the funding and resources the industry obtains.

However, none of this funding matters if there aren’t workers to support the mariculture industry, which ABEC is particularly focused on. This is a vital step that ABEC has recognized and is working to improve: mariculture workforce development.

ABEC’s Tommy Sheridan and PWSC’s Dr. Amanda Glazier conduct mariculture sampling in Prince William Sound. (Credit: Tommy Sheridan)

In 2023, they contributed to the Alaska Mariculture Workforce Development Plan, which was designed to meet the “current and forecasted training needs” of one of the state’s most important economic industries. Sheridan says that this plan recommended creating “glidepaths” for students, which means not only showing but also supporting clear paths toward careers in Alaskan mariculture.

ABEC has supported students as young as junior high, supporting programs like the Alaska Science Olympiad. They’ve also partnered with the Teaching Through Technology (T3) program, which offers career support for high schoolers across Alaska.

“T3 is a STEM-focused program based at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks,” Sheridan explains. “We’ve worked with them to help them develop a mariculture curriculum.”

ABEC also provides a landing place at the university level to learn about and interact with several other mariculture educational institutions around the state.

Within the University of Alaska system, ABEC connects students to programs like the Applied Fisheries Program at the University of Alaska Southeast, or the Prince William Sound College, located right on the Gulf of Alaska. Sheridan says they also funded a state-wide mariculture research initiative that resulted in significant engagement with industry and community partners.

ABEC stretches beyond Alaska as well. With national partners like the American Fisheries Society, ABEC is collecting and sharing knowledge, resources, and career pathways in the hope of rejuvenating a younger mariculture workforce and ultimately preparing them to contribute to Alaska’s blue economy.

“There was an acknowledgement for the need to prepare the workforce for the new blue economy,” Sheridan says. “[…] that includes improving STEM education in the K-12 environment.”

UAF’s Tommy Sheridan with PWSC students and staff, sampling mariculture farm sites in Prince William Sound. (Credit: Tommy Sheridan)

Alaska’s New Blue Economy?

The blue economy is an economic framework that recognizes and promotes the importance of ocean-based industries. Alaska has long been known for its productive and well-managed wild fisheries and salmon hatcheries, but Sheridan says the state’s “new blue economy” will also include mariculture.

For instance, in 2023, through its Mariculture Innovation Research Fund, the ABEC funded research exploring how salmon hatcheries and mariculture could be combined at the same locations.

“We funded research looking at Alaskan salmon hatchery release sites, doing water quality testing to determine which release sites, if any, around the state were conducive to mariculture production,” Sheridan says.

The research project supported dozens of students around the state, engaging them in the growing mariculture sector of Alaska’s blue economy.

This past summer, ABEC continued its push for incorporating mariculture in Alaska’s established salmon hatcheries. UAF is an affiliated partner with NOAA’s Cooperative Institute Fostering Aquaculture Research and Marketing proposal, which will provide $300 million for aquaculture and mariculture projects around the country. ABEC hopes to receive and direct some of those funds toward mariculture development in Alaska.

In Alaska’s current economy, Sheridan says the mariculture industry is only a small component compared to the much bigger commercial fishing and processing industries. However, their goal is to transform it within the new blue economy into a thriving industry.

This transformation must be thought-out, however, and Sheridan says the new direction for the state’s ocean industries also prioritizes sustainable extraction.

He wants to bring outside organizations, such as the Marine Stewardship Council, to teach students about sustainable fisheries and possibly create a sustainability certification at UAF.

Sustainable extraction from ocean ecosystems requires understanding the ecology and habitat where mariculture farms and fisheries exist, to ensure that populations remain balanced.

Sheridan explains that this is another reason ABEC wants to promote higher education in the mariculture workforce, because the new blue economy requires its workers to understand the ocean on a scientific and data-driven level.

“The new blue economy is really […] technologically advanced, very heavy on big data,” Sheridan explains.

With Alaska experiencing rapid global warming in the Arctic and northern latitudes, ABEC recognizes the importance of creating not only a growing mariculture industry but also a sustainable one. Recent studies have shown that the term “blue economy” has become increasingly linked with the word “sustainability” and global sustainability frameworks.

Following this path, ABEC is promoting Alaska’s blue economy by emphasizing a sustainable, data-informed, and knowledge-driven attitude.

“The new blue economy is a knowledge-based economy,” Sheridan says, “looking to the sea, not just for the extraction of material goods, but for data and information to address societal challenges.”

UAF staff and Teaching Through Technology high school students attending a City of Valdez City Council meeting. (Credit: Tommy Sheridan)

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