Over its lifetime, an Alaskan pink salmon can swim nearly 1,000 miles. Thanks to modern fishing supply chains, it might travel some 10,000 miles more after its death.
From the hold of a fishing boat in the Gulf of Alaska to a processing facility in Dalian, China, to a refrigerated container at the Port of Norfolk, and finally, to the seafood aisle at supermarkets from Walmart to Target, the trans-Pacific journey such fish take illustrates the extraordinary, and often counter-intuitive, nature of globalized food supply chains.
This week, The Wire takes a look at how the fish we eat arrive in our stores — and how that may be changing following the Covid pandemic.
FISH FACTS
The U.S. imported 3 million metric tons of seafood in 2020, worth almost $21 billion, accounting for over 90 percent of the seafood Americans consume, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But by one estimate, approximately one-third of imported seafood was ori
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