Five minutes are on the clock as Catch the Current hosts Amanda Buckle and Lorin Castiglione talk about Lent's "it" fish, Alaska pollock, with Craig Morris, the CEO of the Association of Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers (GAPP).

Amanda and Lorin join Craig at GAPP's booth at Seafood Expo North America (SENA) in Boston, Massachusetts, to talk about the GAPP partnership programs during Lent, the work being done to make Alaska pollock a year-round staple on QSR menus, and of course, the need to diversify as tariff uncertainties loom.

The clock starts now!

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Don't have time to listen? You're missing out! But you can also read a full transcript of the podcast interview below:

Amanda Buckle (AB): You're listening to Catch the Current. I'm Amanda Buckle.

Lorin Castiglione (LC): And I'm Lorin Castiglione.

AB: We are live in Boston for Seafood Expo North America, where we are taking the show floor by storm for an epic series we are calling "Boston 2025 in 5."

LC: That's right. We are covering as much ground as we can over the next few days, bringing you the best of the best that SENA has to offer.

AB: So without any further ado...

AB and LC: Let's "catch the current."

AB: This is Amanda Buckle.

LC: And this is Lorin Castiglione.

AB: And we are at the GAPP booth -- again  -- with Craig Morris, the CEO of the Association of Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers. Hello again, Craig.

Craig Morris (CM): Hello again. It is great to be with you --  again.

AB: So we did interview Craig on day one of the show, and you could tell it was day one of the show because you could only hear the excitement of the show around us. So we're going to give this another go.

LC: So, Craig, once again, set the tone for us. What has been GAPP's hopes and dreams for this show?

CM: Well, let's just begin where we started yesterday, which was there's a Chinese curse that when translated into English is: "May you live in interesting times."

And boy, do we live in interesting times.

The Association of Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers booth at Seafood Expo North America in Boston. Photo Credit: GAPP

LC: We sure do.

CM: GAPP's focus at this show is partnerships, first and foremost.

We are all about making partnerships with long-lasting partners. We're not talking one club store. We're not talking a restaurant chain with tens or even hundreds of outlets.

We're talking about long-term relationships with some of the largest seafood buyers in the world, people that come to us with their ideas about how they want to build value into our fishery and want to be a true partner with wild Alaska pollock.

LC: I'm on the price reporting side of things at Undercurrent, and I've seen prices of cod go up, haddock go up, even tilapia go up. How do these challenges with other species position pollock?

CM: We're really well-positioned right now. This morning, all the conversation is about what a great value proposition Alaska pollock is.

I think more importantly, what a lot of the seafood industry has seen as supply shocks, we're a reliable partner. I mean, we are the nation's largest commercial fishery. We're the largest certified sustainable fishery in the world.

Alaska pollock is the most consumed wild-caught fish on the planet, and that's really our message right now. If you're building your brand around a particular species and you want that wild-caught domestic origin, there's really no other fish that checks all of those boxes of our scale in the world. 

AB: You can see that across the board with Lent right now. I mean, nearly every QSR has an Alaska pollock sandwich on it, and most of them are advertising it as that, which is huge. And I'm assuming that GAPP and its partnership program play a substantial part in some of that.

CM: Absolutely. I mean, when we started at GAPP and we started talking to our partners there in the branded community and the quick-service restaurants that had different fish sandwiches, be it for LTOs or core menu items, we really wanted to make sure if they were going to introduce the fish to consumers, they did it the right way. So, really, our foundation from day one has been consumer research. We sit down with focus groups and talk to them about all of the factual attributes and what are the ones that really matter.

And certainly in a quick-service restaurant, what people are looking for is that wild-caught, that domestic origin. They want that mild taste. They know it's seafood, so it's nutritious and sustainable. So that's really what we've done at GAPP is make sure that our brand partners are all talking about it the same way and want to put it on front of pack. We've had our influencer program out there, and we think that has really encouraged our partners like Wendy's and Burger King and White Castle and, of course, McDonald's and all of them out there to really call out Alaska pollock as their fish of choice.

AB: Now, Alaska pollock is the fish of choice, but during Lent, McDonald's has their sandwich year-round. What is GAPP doing to kind of get Alaska pollock to be a year-round staple at some of these QSRs?

CM: One of the partnership programs that we were the most proud of this year was the Arby's campaign that predated Lent. So we were really happy to see them bring in their fish sandwiches before the Lent period. Normally, that would be an LTO for them.

Arby's fish sandwich. Photo Credit: Arby's Facebook

One of the things that we want to show is the success of that campaign and how our dollars really supported their marketing efforts. We want to make sure that we go out to other brand partners and say, "Hey, look, it worked for them. Maybe it could work for you. And what could we do with our resources to help support you if you're willing to make a fish item a core menu item for you on your menu."

AB: We talked a little bit about just the global aspect of Alaska pollock and selling it to different markets. Does the program now have any issues with tariffs? Is it more difficult to make these partnership programs global?

CM: Yeah. I mean, we definitely never want to put all of our fish in one basket. We know diversification is the key to an industry as large as ours. So we're very much with the partnership program about diversification. Right now, we have partnership programs running in Spain, Brazil, Colombia, Japan.

We're all about making sure that at any point in time, if our country, for whatever reason, has a strain-trained relationship with a particular other country, we've got other places that we have strong demand building opportunity and growth. 

This year, it's go big or go home. We're really looking to use our dollars to their maximal benefit. If we've learned anything from our consumer research, consumers recognize and remember the name Alaska pollock from seeing it on packages of product and grocery. So we really want those large branded partners to be calling us out on that front of pack.

Obviously, the smaller programs that we've had in the past have been wonderful in teaching a small subset of consumers about our product. Right now, with the dollars that we have, we're going to probably invest those in fewer but much larger campaigns with those very large customers globally. My job over the next year is to meet with them at the CMO or CEO level and just tell them, look, we've got resources.

We want to be your partner for the long haul. We want to build your brand. We're not about the GAPP logo. We're not at all about ourselves. We're about helping you, and what can we do to do that?

AB: Our time's up, but quick plug for the open positions that GAPP has right now.

CM: We have three positions out there right now. We have a vice president position, which is our director of communications for the Alaska Pollock Fishery Alliance that's very focused on ensuring that Alaskans understand the positive impact that our fishery has in that state.

We are also bringing on a content creator to just develop some really beautiful turnkey content that our branded partners can use as they try to promote our product. And then we're going to have a social media manager. You know, GAPP loves our social platforms.

We're really excited about it, that if you Google "Alaska pollock" or you go on TikTok or you go on Instagram or you go on Facebook, there's not a lot of voices out there. We really want to support our member companies to make sure that they have a presence too so it's not just ASMI [Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute] and it's not just GAPP that are out there talking about wild Alaska pollock. All of our companies that actually harvest this amazing fish, they're out there bragging about it too.

That community manager is going to really help them create their own voices and get those voices out there. We're excited to be a small but mighty team.

AB: You can say that again. Thanks, Craig. Again.

CM: Thanks, guys. Again.