The big show

The place to be this weekend is Boston.

The International Boston Seafood Show, running Sunday through Tuesday, is a giant exhibition — one that many in Alaska's fishing industry find well worth the transcontinental flight.

It's a must event for seafood marketers and dealmakers.

No surprise, then, to find the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute among the show's exhibitors, right there with the Alabama Seafood Marketing Commission, the U.S. Catfish Institute, the Norwegian Seafood Council and many others.

Top Alaska seafood processors such as Trident, Icicle, Peter Pan and Ocean Beauty will be there, too, along with competitors like salmon farming giant Marine Harvest.

The show also features a slate of panel discussions.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, will deliver opening remarks for a panel on "Seafood Jobs in America."

Another panel will feature aquaculture consultant John Forster. You might recall he once wrote a rather ominous report for the state of Alaska on halibut farming.

The show website offers this description of Forster's planned talk:

Through a collaborative effort among academia, officials, farmers and financiers, Chile's salmon aquaculture industry has made a strong recovery from the impacts of a major disease outbreak. Forster will describe how lessons learned there can be proactively applied in other regions.

Sounds interesting. Too bad Deckboss will be stuck here in the Anchorage snow.