LISTEN

As a joint Gulf of Mexico states seafood marketing effort sails into the sunset, the program’s Marketing Director has left for a job in the private seafood sector. Joanne McNeely Zaritsky, the former Marketing Director of the Gulf State Marketing Coalition, has joined St. Petersburg, FL based domestic seafood processor Captain’s Fine Foods as its new business development director to promote its USA shrimp product line.

Joanne McNeelyZaritsky
Ed Lallo/Newsroom Ink photo
Captain’s Fine Foods, sister company to Trans-Global Products, processes and packs Key West pink shrimp, Texas brown shrimp and East and Gulf coast white shrimp. McNeely Zaritsky’s responsibilities will include providing marketing, training and seafood web content for supermarkets, restaurants and distributors.

McNeely Zaritsky, a 25-year veteran with expertise in marketing, sales and consumer perception, was the Bureau Chief of the Florida’s Seafood and Aquaculture Marketing Bureau for 22 years. Under her guidance, the Gulf Seafood Marketing Coalition worked with the five gulf states to increase demand for gulf seafood in the marketplace and restore consumer confidence in gulf seafood products. The retail/restaurant partnership programs she oversaw had increased sales from 30 percent to more than 1,000 percent.

The Gulf Seafood Marketing Coalition was formed after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in 2011 with a $5 million grant to the Gulf and South Atlantic Fisheries Foundation from the Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commission. Funding for the program was the result of an Oil Disaster Recovery Program with a supplemental funding opportunity made available to the commission by the U.S. Congress through NMFS.

Have you listened to this article via the audio player above?

If so, send us your feedback around what we can do to improve this feature or further develop it. If not, check it out and let us know what you think via email or on social media.

Jessica Hathaway is the former editor in chief of National Fisherman.

Join the Conversation