Trust Issues
When ‘Local’ Seafood Is Anything But
Recent reports of fish fraud provide warnings—and lessons
There was a time in my life, not too long ago, when the only fish I ate were the fish I caught myself. Sportfishing was my passion. Back then, I’d have sooner driven a Hummer than bought a slab of commercially caught tuna. I ended up writing a book that encapsulated much of my thinking on the subject called Four Fish. It was then that I first met Sean Dimin.
At a reading of the book at a now-defunct bookstore in Brooklyn, Dimin introduced himself and told me he had come to hear me talk because he and his father had recently founded a small seafood company whose mission was to help save the sea, oddly enough, by fishing. The business was called Sea to Table, and their plan was to buy fish from actual fishermen and sell it directly to actual fish eaters. Simplicity incarnate.
If they could make it work, they would offer an alternative to a seafood distribution system in which a fish usually changes hands at least seven times between leaving the water and hitting the frying pan. I liked the idea. I believed then and still believe that shortening the seafood supply chain could help people who really want to know where their seafood comes from as much as it could help people who really wanted to…
