SICA Success Stories: ALFA

The Diesel Dilemma 

For small-scale fishermen working Alaska's coastal waters, diesel fuel represents a harsh reality – it can consume up to 40% of total operating costs. It's an expense that cuts into already thin margins, yet for decades it seemed like an inescapable cost of doing business. The omnipresent diesel engine powered everything: propulsion, deck equipment, freezers, etc. While hybrid and electric boat systems existed elsewhere, Alaska's fishing community faced steep barriers to entry: limited infrastructure, high upfront costs, and virtually no proof of concept for their unique operating conditions. 

Alaska Longline Fishery Association (ALFA), a 2022 Seafood Industry Climate Awards (SICA) winner, set out to change this equation. 

A Community Built by Fisherman, For Fisherman 

ALFA was founded to recruit a domestic workforce to fish Alaska’s abundant waters, reduce foreign fleet dominance, and rebuild previously overfished stocks. Over the decades, they've built an impressive track record – from restoring depleted sablefish stocks to securing a ban on trawling in Southeast Alaska. At its core, ALFA has always been about giving small-scale fishermen a collective voice to drive change within the industry. 

Today, they continue that tradition under the leadership of Executive Director Linda Behnken, who has been working to future-proof the commercial longlining industry. For Linda, that means a focus on sustainability, economic viability, and thriving coastal communities. This vision manifests in many ways – from the formation of the Halibut Coalition to the launch of the Southeast Alaska Sperm Whale Avoidance Project. But in recent years, Linda has set her sights on a new challenge to address: energy efficiency and decarbonization for the fishing fleet. While larger-scale operations may have the capital to invest in these upgrades, small-scale fisheries can have a more difficult time implementing these changes. The motives to adopt these initiatives are not purely altruistic – Linda is reading the writing on the wall and working to ensure the continuity of an industry that is so closely tied to climate-impacted natural resources. This reason, paired with the ability to cut costs by up to 40% and boost the bottom line of fishermen, makes this an important strategy to pursue.  

SICA Steps In

Linda recognized the opportunity to transition the fleet’s diesel workhorses to hybrid and electric engines early on and spent years looking for partners who would help support this goal. For nearly eight years, ALFA explored and applied to different grant opportunities focused on energy efficiency. But as Linda puts it, "We were told we were a square peg in a round hole." These grants were more often written for large-scale projects, bigger facilities, or industrial vessels, not necessarily the crucial small-scale fleets like the one ALFA represents. 

The Seafood Industry Climate Awards (SICA), funded by the Acme Smoked Fish Foundation, was one of the first sources of philanthropic dollars to step in to support ALFA’s efforts. SICA seeks out impactful programs that may be too early for alternative financing options, giving bold ideas an opportunity to bridge the gap between an idea and a scalable solution. It was a perfect fit for ALFA and Linda's vision. The SICA award provided the seed funding ALFA needed to move from research to action. With the grant, they were able to retrofit two boats with different hybrid systems: a Transfluid system in one and an E-Voith in the other, allowing them to compare performance and select the most promising technology for Alaska’s longline fleet.  

The hybrid systems are now allowing fishing vessels to run propulsion, deck equipment, freezers, and other systems entirely utilizing electric power. When recharging at the dock in Sitka, where the grid is powered predominately by clean hydropower, both carbon emissions and fuel costs drop dramatically. The goal of this project is to prove that a hybrid fishing boat is economically viable, and to get buy-in from more fishermen in the fleet. While some may think that fishermen can be resistant to change, Linda believes that if something is well-proven, fishermen can be quick to adopt. A great example she gave is the swap from J hooks to circle hooks – a switch that happened almost overnight once the impacts were made clear. Linda believes that the same will happen with these hybrid and electric engine systems: once early adopters have proven their success and cost savings, others will quickly follow suit.  

A Rising Tide

Since winning the SICA Award, ALFA has leveraged the support to secure additional funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Transitions Initiative Partnerships Project. They are now converting the first two vessels in their fleet to hybrid systems — one already under retrofit in Sitka and the second scheduled to begin soon. The proof of concept is working, opening doors that were closed for nearly a decade.

ALFA continues its work building a more sustainable and economically viable future for Alaska's small-scale fishing communities. Their success demonstrates exactly what SICA was created to support: climate-positive, community-based programs that create scalable solutions for the seafood industry's greatest challenges. 

Applications for this year's Seafood Industry Climate Awards are currently open. If you know of an impactful project or innovative solution working to improve sustainability in the seafood industry, we encourage you to apply or nominate a worthy candidate at climateaward@acmesmokedfish.com.