John has been involved in seafood for roughly 7 years, having been drawn to the industry by a keen
interest in the health benefits regular fish consumption offers and having grown up in Annapolis,
Maryland, a place where seafood is ingrained as a pillar of the community’s culture.
John attended graduate school at the University of Akureyri in Iceland, achieving a Master’s in Coastal and Marine Sciences, a program that embeds students in a fishing village in Iceland for the purpose of immersion in a community built on and supported by seafood production for the study of actively operating fisheries alongside theoretical coursework. John was responsible for development of an original graduate project aimed at creating additional value for the then underutilized lumpfish species (Cyclopterus lumpus) in Iceland via new product development and potential marketing strategies with support funding provided by the Icelandic Regional Development Institute and Biopol, EHF. John’s time in Iceland then led him to Alaska, where he was worked for the past 5 years a the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI).
At ASMI, John works extensively on seafood topics with a wide variety of individuals from across the sector. These topics have a high degree of variance, including impacts to human nutrition, sustainability, quality and handling, emerging technology, and biology/ecology pertaining to seafood species. John has engaged in direct research as a primary investigator on several projects,and has managed many collaborative research efforts between academic institutions and the seafood industry. He is responsible for generation of outreach and educational materials aimed at numerous audiences, engaging on industry’s behalf on intra-agency endeavors, oversees material development, is a spokesperson for Alaska seafood education on a regular basis, and serves as a scientific resource for the industry. John is currently serving as the 2024 President of the Pacific Fisheries Technologists Conference, lives in Juneau, Alaska, and has played hockey for over 20 years.
