Author: Mildred Bell

Sheer and dark against whatever the sky is doing that day, the Cliffs of Moher rise seven hundred feet out of the Atlantic, and in County Clare, the sky is nearly always doing something. The enormity of the location takes a moment to comprehend while standing at the observation point on a morning with low clouds and a westerly breeze, with the ocean pressing against the base of the rock below and no other sound competing with it. It’s one of those sceneries that takes good but incomplete pictures. The picture is always lacking something. That moment is one of…

Pacific Seafood is one of the major seafood processing enterprises in the United States, operating operations up and down the Pacific Coast and selling fish to stores, restaurants, and distributors across the country. Without legal counsel and environmental professionals, it is not a tiny operation. When interpreting the Oregon DEQ’s decision to sanction the corporation $3.2 million for wastewater violations across three coastal plants, it is important to keep in mind that this isn’t an instance of a marginal operator taking short cuts. What American fish processing can actually do under current environmental regulations is at the heart of this…

The frozen margarita, the conch fritter from a chain restaurant on Duval Street, and the lobster soup that tastes like it came from a Sysco box are examples of the Florida Keys that exist for tourists. You can find that version everywhere. It can be found in Key West’s main strip, in hotel restaurants, and at establishments with a hostess stand and a QR code menu. It’s alright. It’s also not the reason the Florida Keys are America’s top seafood destination. The water is where the true case for the Keys begins. The archipelago, which is located where the Atlantic…

If you spend enough time in the fish area of a large American supermarket, you will eventually get paralyzed. It’s because there’s too much to read, not because there’s nothing to buy. Labels pile on top of one another. Regional certification badges, “responsibly sourced” labels, “sustainably harvested” statements, blue fish emblems, and green checkmarks. Even after reading the back panel of a bag of frozen shrimp for four minutes, you might not be able to determine if it is a better or worse option than the bag next to it. This isn’t a failing of the customer. There is a…

In Pennsylvania, a trout must be at least seven inches in size to be kept for forty-three years. Many generations of fishermen, numerous changes to other laws, and decades of shifts in the state’s fisheries management practices have all been surpassed by that figure. If the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission decides as anticipated at its board meeting on July 27, it will reach nine inches on January 1, 2027. It is two inches. It seems insignificant on paper. In reality, it completely transforms native wild brook trout. The mechanics of the proposal are simple. An angler must have trout…

Between San Antonio and Seguin, Guadalupe County, Texas, is situated along Interstate 10, a level, swift-moving thoroughfare that is frequently traversed by eighteen-wheelers without much notice. There, deputies frequently deal with stolen stuff. Tool theft, cattle disputes, and the odd car. Up until lately, they had not dealt with frozen snow crab worth a quarter of a million dollars traveling west on the freeway in a semi-truck without a license plate on the back. Florida is where the story began. A truck carrying a load of snow crab, the kind found on restaurant menus and in the freezer sections of…

Compared to earlier times, the rivers are now quieter. When you speak with people who have been observing Atlantic salmon for a sufficient amount of time, the first thing you notice is the lack of fish in areas where there used to be plenty, not the data or the policy documents. The same thing is being said in several languages by guides, biologists, and Indigenous knowledge holders on rivers in Nova Scotia, the Highlands of Scotland, and parts of the Restigouche in New Brunswick: the fish are not returning in the same manner. What the river watchers have been describing…

It was easy to assume that New England would prevail. In the food media narrative that has solidified around American oysters over the past 20 years, it nearly always does. The Wellfleet oyster, with its strong mineral punch and the kind of pure ocean finish that makes people close their eyes for a moment, the cold, clear waters of Maine, Cape Cod—that’s the story. That’s what is written about. The raw bars in Manhattan charge four dollars per shell, and that’s what people order. After three weeks and five areas, the narrative had changed. Due in part to location and…

There was no TripAdvisor sticker on the door, no English-language menu, and no card payment option. Additionally, it was the best fish dinner a traveler could have throughout the year. The deadzoning travel trend is based on this combination: no signals, no reviews, and no platform validation safety net. Additionally, it’s gaining traction among those who take their diet seriously in ways that the mainstream tourism industry hasn’t yet caught up with. In its most basic form, deadzoning is the deliberate travel to locations without dependable internet or cell connection. It began as a reaction to burnout, a means of…

The oyster market in Cancale, Brittany, was booming on a Tuesday morning in late July. People who had driven here from Rennes or taken the train from Paris the previous evening were receiving paper plates from vendors who were shucking at folding tables along the harbor wall. Japan was not mentioned. Portugal was not mentioned. They were eating oysters that had been harvested from the bay that morning in front of the Atlantic, and that seemed to be sufficient. For the past two years, tourism economists have been attentively observing this spectacle, which is replicated in various forms around the…