The July 22 PSPA announcement said that Barrows would take over as president on August 15.
Reed said the greatest accomplishments during his tenure as president belong to his staff and members, who worked with him as a team.
“Our members were able to achieve positive outcomes in rationalizing Alaska’s Pollock and crab fisheries, strengthening our community ties on hunger relief through SeaShare and sponsorship of the annual Beans Café Toast to the Coast in Anchorage,” he said.
Major issues facing PSPA members today “include continued funding and support for science-based fisheries management to insure the sustainability of our renewable resources, better understanding and adapting to a changing climate, and maintaining and growing meaningful representation in the state and federal regulatory processes that govern us,” Reed added.. “Through those efforts we can offer expertise and participate in the design of important fishery management programs in the Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands, and Gulf of Alaska; improve trade and compete in the global markets where Alaskan seafood is in demand; and ensure that we have access to available labor. These are some of the things that allow us to improve the value of Alaska fisheries for all participants.”
“We also work consistently to illustrate to policy makers the investments the seafood industry has in Alaska communities, and continues to make year after year,” Reed said.
Reed’s connection with the fishing industry began when, as a 12-year-old boy he fished a setnet site at Clam Gulch on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, then aboard a drift gillnetter for several years out of Port Moller. He served as city administrator for Sand Point before becoming the assistant city manager at the city of Unalaska/Port of Dutch Harbor, and then in 1992 the deputy commissioner of the Alaska Department of Commerce and Economic Development.
In April of 1997 he became the executive director of the North Pacific Seafood Coalition, a post he held until becoming president of PSPA in January of 1999.