What is your seafood eating?
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seafood → eat → What
Investigation traces problems in global feed supply
Fish meal and fish oil used in aquaculture linked to pollution, overfishing and labour abuses
The following story is part of a larger investigation conducted by an international team of journalists based at The Outlaw Ocean Project, a news organization in Washington, D.C.
In 2020, a team of government investigators in Goa, India, arrived at a factory named United Marine Products to find out how it was disposing of its toxic wastewater.
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it → trace → wastewater
For years, local residents had complained that the factory was making their air unbreathable and their drinking water deadly.
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water → complain → years
This factory produces fish meal, a protein-rich powder used to feed farmed fish, which is made by pulverizing and cooking wild-caught fish.
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which → produce → fish
Soon enough, the inspectors discovered that the plant operators had employed a new and illegal way to dispose of the facility's wastewater, drilling bore holes into the ground in a field behind the plant.
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operators → discover → plant
The authorities later concluded these holes likely contaminated groundwater and sickened villagers and livestock.
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holes → conclude → villagers
In 2020, investigators determined the plant had drilled holes into the ground behind the plant to illegally dispose of wastewater from fish meal processing.
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plant → determine → processing
The plant owner denied wrongdoing.
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owner → deny → wrongdoing
Seafood consumers in Canada might think they have no connection to these sorts of far-away problems.
But this factory in India supplied Skretting, a major feed producer used by dozens of fish farms in Canada — so its product may feed the salmon from British Columbia and New Brunswick or trout from Quebec you see on store shelves.
uncertain
you → think → shelves
A five-year investigation by The Outlaw Ocean Project, a news organization in Washington, D.C., uncovered a variety of similar hidden costs involved in producing this feed, including the loss of artisanal fishing jobs, chronic chemical exposure, avoidable worker deaths, and violent protests spurred by the horrid stench from fish meal factories.
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investigation → uncover → factories
These social and environmental impacts exact a price primarily paid by the poorer countries where the feed ingredient is harvested and processed, far from where the resulting luxury types of seafood are eaten.
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types → exact → seafood
A worker unloads a crate of anchovies from the holding area of a boat at the port of El Callao, Peru.
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worker → unload → Callao
The world’s largest producer of fishmeal, Peru faces growing concern about overfishing and pollution from its fishmeal industry.
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Peru → face → industry
Whether domestically raised or imported, the most popular types of farmed seafood consumed in Canada – salmon, shrimp, trout, sea bass, sea bream – are fed fish meal, which is made from the very kinds of wild fish that aquaculture claims to be saving, thereby accelerating ocean depletion, say fisheries scientists.
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scientists → raise → depletion
“Any accounting of the true impact of aquaculture has to start not with the farm, but with the feed,” said Daniel Pauly, project director of the Sea Around Us initiative at the University of B.C. in Vancouver.
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Pauly → have → Vancouver
“And that kind of accounting offers a very different picture than the industry offers.
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industry → offer → picture
Since 2022, more than half of the seafood eaten globally has come from fish farms rather than wild catch, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
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half → eat → Organization
Aquaculture is a $444-billion industry and the fastest-growing segment of global food production.
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Aquaculture → grow → production
Most of these fish farms are powered by fish meal and fish oil, made from wild fish pulled from the ocean.
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Most → power → ocean
Unlike growing bivalves such as oysters, clams, and mussels, which do not typically require external feed, the toughest challenge to raising carnivorous seafood, such as salmon and trout, is feeding them.
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challenge → grow → them
A worker drives a tractor past mounds of fish meal made from menhaden fish to be used as animal feed supplements in Reedville, Va., in 2015.
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worker → drive → 2015
Canada has more than 200 fish farms, most of which rely on fish meal or fish oil that, when made domestically, comes primarily from Pacific anchoveta, chub mackerel, herring, haddock, pollock, sardines, and frigate tuna.
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that → have → anchoveta
Canada prohibits boats targeting fish for the sole purpose of making fish meal or fish oil, so domestic fish meal is typically made using skin, bones and other byproducts of processing that would otherwise be thrown away.
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that → prohibit → processing
That’s widely viewed as a more sustainable way to produce feed protein than using whole human-edible fish.
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That → view → fish
However, at least two-thirds of the fish meal used in Canada, primarily by aquaculture farms – roughly 53,000 tonnes in 2023 – is sourced from abroad, which ties Canadian consumers to these hidden and overseas social costs.
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which → use → costs
Canada also imports more than $4 billion in seafood annually, of which a third is primarily farmed salmon and shrimp, which rely heavily on fish meal and fish oil.
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which → import → meal
Food for Feed investigation
The Outlaw Ocean Project’s five-year investigation mapped roughly the entire global fish meal industry, including more than 1,400 fish meal factories across 64 countries, tracing supply chains from fishing vessels to processing plants, feed mills, fish farms and seafood retailers.
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investigation → map → plants
The reporting effort involved dozens of journalists from as many countries who visited factories and farms and boarded fish meal ships at sea.
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who → involve → sea
In Gambia and Mauritania, the investigation documented how the industry drives food insecurity as fish that once sustained local communities are diverted into fish meal factories for export.
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that → document → export
Workers sort catch aboard the China-flagged Lu Lao Yuan Yu 010 in Gambian waters in 2019.
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Workers → sort → 2019
When Outlaw Ocean reporters boarded vessels, they documented widespread complaints about poor living and working conditions.
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they → board → conditions
In India and Peru, the industry was tied to at least 80 protests, some violent, in the form of labour strikes and demonstrations sparked by the water pollution or the stench from factories cooking thousands of tonnes of decomposing fish.
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some → tie → fish
In China’s Xinjiang region, the reporting detailed the use of forced labour on fish farms.
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reporting → detail → farms
The investigation mapped more than 1,000 fish farms in Xinjiang and Tibet — two regions subjected to severe state repression — that produce an estimated half-billion dollars’ worth of farmed seafood annually, some of which is exported to the United States and Canada.
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some → map → States
A worker tosses fishmeal pellets into pens at a fish farm in Thailand in 2021.
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worker → toss → 2021
Over half of the seafood eaten worldwide comes from fish farms.
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half → eat → farms
‘Overexploited’ or worse
The investigation assessed more than 2,400 ships tied to fish meal production in at least 30 countries.
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investigation → assess → countries
It found that most of these ships do not fully comply with the Global Charter for Fisheries Transparency, a guide created by ocean-focused civil society groups detailing accountability standards for industrial fishing fleets.
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most → find → fleets
For example, less than 30 per cent of the fleet had publicly available location information and less than 25 per cent had a unique vessel identification number (or ship licence plate).
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cent → have → number
Such opacity makes the fleet difficult to police.
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fleet → make → ?
…and 31 more, not listed.
The Aporia
