"Deadliest Catch" captains to become spokesmen for Florida seafood

Three captains from the “Deadliest Catch” television program are soon going to be spokesmen for Florida seafood. Captains Sig Hansen and Johnathan and Andy Hillstrand --well known to viewers of the Discovery Channel's "Deadliest Catch" series about Alaskan crab fishing in the Bering Sea -- will appear in television spots and other media promoting Florida's fishing industry. They will be featured in a public awareness campaign promoting Florida seafood products and the "working waterfronts" where the state's fishing heritage is preserved and cultivated. The television public service announcements featuring the three fishing captains are expected to start airing statewide in December. Images of Hansen, captain of the "Northwestern," and the Hillstrand brothers, co-captains of the "Time Bandit," will also appear in print and web-based media. The Department of Agriculture, which is producing the spots, hopes that as the public learns more about Florida fishermen and the struggles they face to supply consumers with quality products, the more they will ask for domestically harvested seafood when shopping or dining out. In addition to promotions featuring the three fishing celebrities, the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services is producing a series of documentaries about several of Florida's working waterfronts. The extended-length High Definition videos will detail the historical development of each area's commercial fishing industry, promote tourism, and spotlight the fishermen who bring home Florida's "Tastiest Catch." The first video, titled "Florida's Fishing Traditions: Sebastian," will be released in October. Future videos will feature Cortez, Tarpon Springs, Jacksonville, Destin and Apalachicola, and Miami and the Florida Keys. Florida's commercial fishermen annually harvest more than 83 million pounds of seafood and fishery products with a dockside value of more than $168 million dollars. Florida leads the U.S. in the number of seafood processing businesses with 500. Another 800 businesses buy and sell seafood as dockside fish buyers, wholesale brokers, importers or exporters. Retail and restaurant sales of Florida products total $24 billion dollars annually.

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