Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association Receives Two Grants Totaling $687,700 for Naknek River Sonar Counting and Wild Sockeye Foodservice Promotion

The Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association (BBRSDA) announced on November 12, 2026 that it has recently received two grants totaling $687,668 (€621,879) from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The two awards respectively fund a sonar fish-counting project on the Naknek River and the marketing and promotion of wild Alaska salmon products in new markets.

Of the total, the NFWF grant is $188,268 (€170,285), awarded through the agency's Electronic Monitoring and Reporting Grant Program, which also receives funding support from NOAA. The project will use sonar technology to count salmon on the Naknek River near King Salmon, Alaska, running from June 1, 2026 to May 31, 2028. Sonar technology counts fish underwater using sound waves; this technology grant will support researchers in achieving automated counting without the need for technicians to read the data and generate counts. BBRSDA said the counts will be transmitted to a real-time dashboard operated by SeaSignal Technologies, Coastal Measures and BioSonics, and updated continuously throughout the fishing season.

"Better information during the season means better decisions for everyone who depends on this fishery," BBRSDA Executive Director Lilani Dunn said in a press release. "Sonar lets us count fish across the wide stretches of the Naknek River and get those numbers into the hands of fishermen, processors and managers while they can still act on them. We thank NFWF and NOAA Fisheries for investing in a tool this fleet has wanted for a long time." The project initially funds one hydroacoustic sonar system on the Naknek River, and BBRSDA said it plans to integrate more systems into other Bristol Bay waterways in the coming years.

The other grant comes from NOAA's Saltonstall-Kennedy grant program, in the amount of $449,400 (€406,451). The program as a whole allocated $8.9 million (€8.04 million) to various organizations and universities for marketing, development and infrastructure, or science and technology projects. According to NOAA's press release, BBRSDA's funding will support sales growth for wild Alaska sockeye salmon (sockeye salmon) in the U.S. foodservice market. BBRSDA said the association is seeking a marketing agency to lead the newly funded work, with a contract period from December 1, 2026 to August 31, 2028. Marketing areas within the U.S. foodservice market include restaurants, health systems, colleges and universities, and corporate dining.

BBRSDA said in the press release that a marketing agency can help identify initiatives to raise product awareness through digital channels and in person, and build prospect lists through new customers and trade shows. "We are proud to announce that BBRSDA has been awarded a grant from the NOAA Fisheries Saltonstall-Kennedy grant program to fund a new project: wild Alaska sockeye salmon in foodservice," the association said on LinkedIn. "This is BBRSDA's first Saltonstall-Kennedy award and one of the few federal grants designed specifically to support marketing and promotion of Bristol Bay sockeye salmon. It represents a meaningful federal investment in the future of our fishery."

Other BBRSDA-led projects in 2026 include a mobile app for fishermen that receives real-time Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) datasets and hourly updates, and a remotely operated drone that uploads tens of thousands of fish-counting images to an artificial intelligence-driven database for fish counting.