Author: Mildred Bell

The picture of thousands of salmon moving through a frigid Norwegian pen while underwater cameras silently record their feeding habits, detect lice before they spread, and automatically adjust feed dosage based on an algorithm that has seen more fish than any human crew could ever hope to capture is almost cinematic. It sounds like a demonstration of technology. It isn’t. In partnership with Tidal, a spinout of X, the experimental division of Google’s parent company Alphabet that once discreetly set out to solve the most challenging issues in commercial fish farming, SalMar, the second-largest salmon producer in the world, is…

You’ll hear some variation of the same grievance in every Maine coastal fishing town, whether it’s over coffee at the dock or while unloading catch in the chilly morning air. The Midwest’s corn and soybean farmers receive endless federal funding, but what about a lobsterman trying to fix his boat or an oyster farmer growing their business? I wish you luck in locating a program that meets your needs. The Farm Bill, an unlikely vehicle, may finally be addressing that frustration that has been quietly building for more than ten years. Together, the recently passed House agriculture appropriations legislation for…

Observing someone defend something they once attempted to destroy is particularly ironic. The irony in Washington seafood trade circles takes the form of the Seafood Import Monitoring Program, a federal traceability regulation that the industry fought, ridiculed, and eventually sued for years. Some of those same players are now subtly—almost reluctantly—referring to it as one of the positive developments for their company. That wasn’t how it began. The National Fisheries Institute and eight seafood companies filed a lawsuit to halt the Obama administration’s final-day push for the Seafood Traceability Rule, which required importers of species like tuna, swordfish, grouper, and…

The corner of Eighth Avenue in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, smells just like you would expect on a warm Saturday morning: salt, wet concrete, something living, and something recently dead. Blue crabs scramble sideways over one another in wooden bins that are overflowing. Behind a table of whole striped bass, a fishmonger wearing a full rubber apron moves his hands quickly and speaks more quickly. Consumers close in, pointing, haggling, sometimes shaking their heads and turning to leave, only to come back thirty seconds later. It’s noisy. It’s disorganized. Almost no other food market in this city is able to be…

The sound of a casserole dish being placed on a folded dish towel, the scent of something bubbling in the oven, and a grandmother who never once used a recipe card but always managed to get it right are some types of kitchen memories that are difficult to forget. For many Americans who grew up in homes built in the middle of the 20th century, that memory is known as tuna casserole. In 2026, sourdough starters and sheet-pan salmon with preserved lemon have become so popular in home cooking culture that it seems almost out of style to say it…

The fishing docks in Charleston, Oregon, smelled like salt air, diesel exhaust, and something rawer underneath it all for years. fish excrement. byproduct of processing. The kind of odor that results from a business operating near the water, doing its unglamorous but necessary work. However, what regulators claim transcends an offensive smell. Last month, Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality revealed that Pacific Seafood, one of the biggest seafood companies in the nation, had been releasing fish parts, oil, grease, and chlorine into state waters through three coastal processing facilities. In some cases, this had been going on for almost ten…

Some dishes are more significant than just their ingredients. Among them is Cioppino. It’s sitting in a large bowl that’s steaming, dark red, and packed with shrimp, mussels, and crab legs. It looks almost too good to disturb when you walk into the right restaurant along San Francisco Bay on a chilly December evening. It smells like garlic, the ocean, and a hint of sweetness, like wine that has been slowly reduced over an extended afternoon. It’s the type of dish that forces you to put your phone away. Cioppino’s backstory is nearly as delicious as the stew itself. In…

Somewhere in San Francisco, there’s a bowl of cioppino that tastes just like it did when your grandparents might have ordered it. It’s steaming with tomato and white wine and loaded with Dungeness crab. It’s not marketing. That’s exactly what occurs when a restaurant determines that the recipe is complete at some point in the past. Completed. Not subject to discussion. In 1938, Alioto’s on Fisherman’s Wharf is frequently credited with popularizing cioppino and making it a destination for travelers. The stew itself predates that; according to legend, it originated from Ligurian and Italian fishermen who worked off Meiggs Wharf…

When you’re eating shrimp and grits for the fourth time in a row in Charleston, South Carolina, the ridiculousness of the entire endeavor begins to seem less like a joke and more like common sense. It seems dishonest to refer to the dish as the same twice because it varies so much between kitchens. One area has smoked gouda grits with blackened shrimp. At the next, a creamy bowl is crowned with fried green tomatoes. Eating shrimp and grits six times in a 48-hour period begins to resemble something more akin to research than gluttony because the variations are so…

Over the past few years, something changed in American weeknight cooking, and it had nothing to do with air fryers or intricate grain bowls. It required a large amount of heavy cream, sun-dried tomatoes, a skillet, and a bag of shrimp. Ten years ago, creamy Tuscan shrimp was hardly a part of popular recipe culture. Today, it’s one of the nation’s most sought-after, pinned, and replicated dinners. There’s a good chance that someone in the seafood section of any suburban grocery store on a Tuesday night is preparing precisely this meal. The recipe itself is almost too easy. After searing…