The Seafood Industry Research Fund (SIRF), which is managed by the National Fisheries Institute (NFI) and provides grants to universities and other institutions for research related to the seafood industry and its consumers, is celebrating its 60th anniversary in 2024.
SIRF is supported entirely by contributions from individuals and companies operating in and around the aquaculture and wild-caught seafood industries.
“I don’t think SIRF gets enough credit for the work it does,” NFI President and CEO Lisa Wallenda Picard told SeafoodSource. “For the last decade, the group has gotten together at [the annual SIRF] Soiree [fundraiser] to celebrate and highlight platinum-level scientists and their research. Without SIRF and its generous donors, much of that work wouldn’t exist in the first place. SIRF is quietly a force for knowledge and progress that, in the long run, helps chart the course for the seafood community.”
The organization has cumulatively raised over USD 4 million (EUR 3.6 million) for more than 400 research grants, with results visible in the publication of several hundred research papers, according to NFI. Most SIRF grants span a duration of one year, but there have been a few exceptions that have extended over multiple years.
“Typically, they're more short-term and very applicable, science-based [grants], versus more of the theoretical science, so that there’s a [direct] benefit back to the industry,” NFI Director of Scientific Affairs Margaret Malkoski told SeafoodSource.
For example, a recent SIRF-funded project titled “Novel Experiments to Measure the Effect of Irradiation on Vitamin D Stability in Finfish” addressed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s concerns on the potential negative impacts of irradiation on vitamin D stability and, as a result, the potential obstacles involved with approving the use of irradiation as a food safety measure in finfish production. The project will be wrapping up shortly, Malkoski said.
One of SIRF’s longer-lasting projects,“Rethinking Seafood Byproduct: A Path to Provide Sustainable Nutrition and Improve Resource Utilization,” is a private-public partnership with Oregon State University that aims to develop strategies that aid in combating food waste in the seafood industry. The project is currently two-thirds complete, Malkoski said.
“Once the research is done, a manuscript is written. To get published, there can be a several-month delay of going back and forth that the researcher conducts with the journals they are trying to get published within. SIRF requires them to be open access so that it’s publicly available,” Malkoski said.
This year, SIRF celebrated the 10th anniversary of its annual Soiree fundraiser and raised USD 84,270 (EUR 78,065) for the John P. Connelly Memorial Fund – an organization that SIRF helped establish in September 2023. Connelly served as the president of NFI from 2003 to 2022
The event took place on 22 January at NFI's 2024 Global Seafood Market Conference in Orlando, Florida.
