#Fish billed as local isn't always local

[fundielicious-simblr]

(Kyleigh's POV)

The holiday season at my parents place is always my favourite time of the year, I like to think the kids agree too. We packed up our RV and trailer and travelled to Brindleton Bay to spend the holidays with my parents. We're actually going to be here well into the new year, we being the kids and I, Barrett headed home soon after new years eve to head back into work. The work being done on our house is due to start once the snow has melted, and we're praying work can be done quickly so that we're not away for too long. The kids haven't spent an extended period of time away from home, but they're enjoying the time they get to be at their grandma and grandpa's house. Every winter they always enjoy playing in the snow, making snow angels and having snowball fights. This year Barrett and the older boys were able to catch great fish that are sure to keep us fed over the next few weeks.

Being that we'll be here for an extended period of time, I brought almost a months worth of shelf stable groceries with us in the trailer so that my parents' grocery bill isn't overwhelmed by all of us being here. Thankfully they have access to local farms and farmers markets where its easy to get fresh fruits and vegetables, so we go and get those as and when we need them. For Christmas we had a crown roast as the main star of the show, with loads of different sides to keep everyone full.

My parents really go enjoy having us all live with them during the holiday season, and since we're here for an extended period of time they've gone and rented a house to fit all of us. Initially we were going to split the kids up where the older ones sleep in my old bedroom, and the younger ones are in cribs/pack'n'plays in my parents room and with us in the RV. They really want to soak up this extra time they get with their grandkids and don't mind the extra work, my dad can create his own schedule so they're both excited to be hands on these next few weeks while I parent alone. Our contractors have done all the paperwork and pulled all permits necessary, all we need is good weather.

[paxton-brady]

Paxton laughs, stifling it with his hand, and he's quickly waving off Harry's concern. "By all means, she'd be offended if you didn't take advantage. You know how she works." God forbid the day Harry turns down a homemade meal, tossed into a glass dish with a lid, or even worse, says he doesn't like the taste of it. The poor woman would be heartbroken.

"There's no moose out here. I'm more so referencing back home. I don't think anyone tries — not locals. Tourists might try to touch one, but that's almost always a death wish." Or an expensive hospital bill in progress. "Zero out of ten, would not recommend." He himself had warned some folks once, but he'd just been ten and no one listens to a child.

Pax almost goes to give Harry a good push into the lagoon. Instead, he gives him a firm slap between the shoulders. "Right, so if you can fight off lions and bears, you can wrestle my dog in the bathtub because now he's going to need a bath too. He smells like, ugh, lagoon water." Which isn't the same salty seawater smell. It's more fishy and earthy.

"Can't have fish paws on the carpet, nope. Nosiree. I'm commandeering your bathtub."

It was kind of novel for Harry to have someone else’s mother be so generous towards him with seemingly no reason for it other than the goodness in her own heart. Not to say his own mother wasn’t a warm person, she was just a warm British person who on top of that had blue blood, which was an entirely different thing in itself. As a nation they weren’t overtly free with their emotions. 

“I don’t want to take advantage, she’s a good woman, I’m lucky to have plopped myself in this house next door to you all.” And he really meant that. No intention of taking advantage of any of the kindness shown to him by the Brady family. Within their first meeting the boy felt like he’d been welcomed with open arms and he never wanted to feel anything else when it came to them. A second family to him. “Shit, alright dude no need to pull out the big guns.” 

Laughing made it a little tricky for him to wrangle the dog before his food income stream was unceremoniously severed but he made it work - gently tugging him towards the dock. “Come on Duke, don’t make things even worse for yourself young man.” Propping him up so it was a bit easier for Pax to get him out onto the dock, letting out a breath once it had been managed, gratefully accepting the hand to get out himself. 

“Cow-tip a moose? Is that something people actually do out here, because I was pretty convinced it was just a thing from movies and shit.” Scrunching up his nose as another thought dawned on him. “Wait, are there many moose….mooses…meece? Here in Aurora Bay?” Seemed like more of a Canadian thing but what did he know - he wasn’t a native to this place by a long shot. 

“Aww, well fine fine, to save Mrs Brady the heartbreak of losing me I won’t. Although don’t think I didn’t notice how you casually implied I would lose the fight - which is rude because I’m very good at the old fisticuffs.” Putting his fists up in front of his face as he did a couple of jabs for good measure, complete with sound effects just because he could. 

[chaos-writes]

Soft Rikiya Yotsubashi x reader headcanons

So he's got money and we know this. He has more than he knows what to do with so in the beginning of your relationship, he will take you to more lavish dinners and cover the whole bill like a gentleman. (Not that anybody irl needs to pay for a whole dinner bill or got to lavish dinners :/) but he does practice traditional chivalry.

Speaking of chivalry, he will open car doors for you, hold your hand walking up stairs, and link arms with you while walking. I can also imagine the whole romance movie trope where he would take his suit jacket off and drape it over your shoulders if you get cold. (Gender identity and expression literally do not matter to him, you could be the manliest mf, 8'2" with a full grown beard, and he would still do all of the above.)

He would love for you to move in with him. 8 months to a year into your relationship he would happily invite you to his home, a little more... permanently. He's not getting any younger, you know.

Hes the type to either have a roomy penthouse or a comfortable yet luxurious upper-suburban home. You would have plenty of room for anything you may need and he would have skeptic's puppets doing all of the hard work for you. You get a beautiful city skyline view in your (if youre ok with it) shared bedroom.

Cuddling with him is a dream come true. If you decide to lay your head on his chest he will 100% have his arms wrapped around you. If you wanna sit in his lap on the couch or bed while watching movies he is always down. He is more than happy to cuddle with you or at least be in physical contact with you for as long as posible.

On days where he's not very busy at all and he isn't having a meeting in his office, he'll sneak you in and sit you at his desk beside him so he can hold your hand or talk to you while he does whatever he has to do for the day.

The whole MLA adores you!!!! At first, they weren't very keen on you being so close to their ReDestro and then all of a sudden being introduced to them (in a scenario where you didnt meet him thru being in the MLA). Its a lot like children to a father with a new girlfriend. They don't trust you and they have to assume your motives are... well... not peachy. But after getting to know you, they absolutely adore you and think that you're perfect for Rikiya!

His colleagues and employees have noticed more color coming into Rikiya's skin. He is positively glowing all the time now thanks to you. He's a lot happier and brighter now that you're in his life.

He has lots of favorite pet names for you. Ones like "Little One," "dearest," "baby/baby girl/baby boy," but his all time favorite is "Sunshine." Some honorable mentions include "prince/ss/x," "darling," and "sweetness."

His favorite to call you is "Sunshine" because he cannot live or flourish without you by his side, like a flower needing sunlight for photosynthesis in order to live.

Not that he's entirely desperate for you, but he does need you. If you left him he would probably be spending the rest of his life looking for parts of you in other people.

Let's change the subject before it gets too deep, shall we?

His favorite food is seafood!!! He likes sushi, seafood boils, crab, shrimp, fish, you name it! He also secretly likes ice cream mochi as a street food snack. Its also been established in his episodes that he likes a glass of fine wine from time to time.

If you two ever go to America, please take him to local Mexican food trucks and new york-style restaurants. He would MELT!!!

Kiss the tip of his nose and remind him of how handsome he is. He's usually being teased and insulted at work by his own employees, and on the outside he's not fazed, but on the inside he needs a warm embrace and someone reminding him how much he is worth, and just how gorgeous he is. He would die for you.

Domesticity with this man is a little complicated. Considering he's always busy at work, and with the MLA, and other events, you're not gonna see him at home much. If it is okay with you, you would most likely be handling at least 60-70% of the house work. Which is why he tries very hard each day to make it a little easier on your life by never making a mess and cleaning up after himself, and even going so far as to make one-pan breakfasts for the both of you before he leaves for work. Coffee as well.

If you use essential oils, room sprays, fabric freshener, or skincare, etc. before bed, pleaseeee do it along with him. He would love for you to spread a liquid mask over his cheeks and use lavender oil in the oil diffuser. He has this cheesy smile on his face the whole time.

He loves to spoil you. Even if you say that he shouldn't, he will. In one way or another. A gorgeous outfit perfect for a lavish date? Check. Bills? Don't even think about putting your own money into that. Your earbuds broke? 3 hours later you got an aux compatible wireless headset, wireless sports earbuds, and everyday wired earbuds. He can't help it because he's got more money than he knows what to do with!

Even though he's the CEO and president of Detnerat, and he's the leader of the MLA, he constantly feels like he has to prove himself to you. That he's good enough and you are able to put your faith in him. He has live a long time without any sort of partner, but now he really wants to work for it and make it worthwhile. He is very afraid of losing his sunshine.

Overall very sweet man and please dont take advantage of him or his money or something 10/10 love the old fart.

[localpackersmoversmumbai]

Before You Move Know What It's Like To Live In A Beach Town

That beautiful sunset on a beach is really a bliss, for some people living near a beach is in their bucket list, so whenever they get urge to enjoy the beauty of beach they can walk or peddle and can get their in a minute. Maybe they wanna start their mornings by doing yoga and wanna bath in that sweet sunrise. You can imagine right how blissful it will feel in reality? But like every coin have two sides living in a beach have it's own drawbacks too. So here we are, Packers And Movers In Mumbai to help you in deciding what is #best for you, so shall we see why you can #move to a beach town.

Being close to nature is enough reason to move, and when you love beaches then what excuse can stop you. Sunny days, cool waves, rhythmic sound of waves are an anti depressants and an perfect environment of promote healthy living. These are the enough reason to make a strong points in favour of #moving to the beach.

Weather:

Moving to a beach is whole new experience, if you were fade up with paying high electricity bills then moving will save you now no more heating bills in winter and no more A/c's maintenance and bill headache because mother nature will handle it well throughout the year. When packing for move know before what things will not be of any use when you start living there like winter gloves, snow shovel and parka so you can get rid of them in time and can avoid wastage of time and effort. The coast boasts moderate climates so, #packaccordingly.

The beach:

Moving to a beach town definitely means you love beaches otherwise what’s the occasion for moving there. Depending on where you are moving you are just minute away from enjoying that beach view you can go there from bike, Packers And Movers Mumbai to Bangalore car or if it's not so far then can take a good walk. If you are a content creator or you tuber then you know this is a great place to add more value to your content you can click good water life pictures, can do creative thing's using the beach view, there are lot to do when you set your mind on creativity.

If you are not on a vacation then you can explore for new hobby like volleyball, fishing, sailing or surfing. Looking for #safestorage space in Mumbai then Contact Packers And Movers In Mumbai for #storage and #warehousing facility.

Healthy environment:

You will be glad to know that doctors have recommended visiting a beach once in a year if you are facing obesity, anxiety or Depression. Also salt air can be helpful for relieving some breathing issues while beach sand is a good scrubber when it comes to removing dead skin.

Also it is considered that listening to a wave sound will give you a peace and will be helpful for maintaining healthy mind and body.

Household Shifting in Mumbai

Visitor:

When you live near to such a beauty you may expect some extra guest's, may be your cousin who haven’t contacted you from a years suddenly wants to catch up at your home during vacation, due to beach town. If you don't want much interference then it's #best to set the boundaries before you #move.

Reasons to reconsider your choice.

Crowd:

As it's a beach town people who have vacation home there will stay for 2 to 3 months and if it's a tourist attracted town then you will facing crowd in banks, grocery store, at your favourite restaurants, or at hair salon, as there may be limited recourse but the demand will be high. Wanna Move your pet and plant from long distance safely? Doesn’t worry call Movers And Packers Bandra Mumbai.

Home cost

Depending on your beach town the cost of living may vary, if you live in a famous place where there is frequent visit of tourist and outsider then the demand for house is more so the rent.

Also if you wanna purchase the house then due to salt air the paint damage faster and the normal wear and tear cost will be little up then the uptown home costs. Also you have to take care of flood insurance and pay higher home insurance premium.

Sand:

If you live near to beach you will find sand every wherein your car, cooler, shoes, bicycle, or may be in your pocket, at first it will be Packers And Movers Mumbai to Ahmedabad like welcome reminder, it will remind you are where you wanna be but after a while it will become annoying like sand everywhere you have to clean your house I don't know how many times it will take in a day to feel your home tidy and clean. Looking for effective #Packingtips then check out Movers And Packers Guide.

Weather:

We know beach town isn't sunny always, it faces tsunamis and coastal storms. Also there you won't snow there but that chilly wind blows are enough to make you that much cold.

Also having too much vitamin D, means sun have some negative consequences like wrinkles, age spot and tanning even if you apply lots of sunscreens.

No matter wherever you are moving #Local #Packers And #Movers In #Mumbai are ready to assist you with their qualified team, they are just one call away.

Source url: https://blog.packersmoversmumbaicity.in/2021/08/before-you-move-know-what-its-like-to-live-in-a-beach-town.html

[investmart007]

MONTAUK, N.Y. | AP Investigation: Fish billed as local isn't always local

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MONTAUK, N.Y. | AP Investigation: Fish billed as local isn't always local

MONTAUK, N.Y. — Even after winter storms left East Coast harbors thick with ice, some of the country’s top chefs and trendy restaurants were offering sushi-grade tuna supposedly pulled in fresh off the coast of New York.

But it was just an illusion. No tuna was landing there. The fish had long since migrated to warmer waters.

In a global industry plagued by fraud and deceit, conscientious consumers are increasingly paying top dollar for what they believe is local, sustainably caught seafood. But even in this fast-growing niche market, companies can hide behind murky supply chains that make it difficult to determine where any given fish comes from. That’s where national distributor Sea To Table stepped in, guaranteeing its products were wild and directly traceable to a U.S. dock — and sometimes the very boat that brought it in.

However, an Associated Press investigation found the company was linked to some of the same practices it vowed to fight. Preliminary DNA tests suggested some of its yellowfin tuna likely came from the other side of the world, and reporters traced the company’s supply chain to migrant fishermen in foreign waters who described labor abuses, poaching and the slaughter of sharks, whales and dolphins.

The New York-based distributor was also offering species in other parts of the country that were illegal to catch, out of season and farmed.

Over the years, Sea To Table has become a darling in the sustainable seafood movement, building an impressive list of clientele, including celebrity chef Rick Bayless, Chopt Creative Salad chain, top universities and the makers of home meal kits such as HelloFresh.

“It’s sad to me that this is what’s going on,” said Bayless, an award-winning chef who runs eight popular restaurants and hosts a PBS cooking series. He said he loved the idea of being directly tied to fishermen — and the pictures and “wonderful stories” about their catch. “This throws quite a wrench in all of that.”

As part of its reporting, the AP staked out America’s largest fish market, followed trucks and interviewed fishermen who worked on three continents. During a bone-chilling week, they set up a camera that shot more than 36,000 time-lapse photos of a Montauk harbor, showing no tuna boats docking. At the same time, AP worked with a chef to order fish supposedly coming from the seaside town. The boat listed on the receipt hadn’t been there in at least two years.

Reporters also tracked Sea To Table’s supply chain to fishermen abroad who earn as little as $1.50 a day working 22-hour shifts without proper food and water.

“We were treated like slaves,” said Sulistyo, an Indonesian fisherman forced to work on a foreign trawler that delivered fish to a Sea To Table supplier. He asked that only one name be used, fearing retaliation. “They treat us like robots without any conscience.”

Sea To Table owner Sean Dimin emphasized his suppliers are strictly prohibited from sending imports to customers and added violators would be terminated.

“We take this extremely seriously,” he said.

Dimin said he communicated clearly with his customers that some fish labeled as freshly landed at one port was actually caught and trucked in from other states, but some chefs denied this. Federal officials described it as mislabeling.

____

A century ago, small-scale fisheries dotted America’s coasts and fed the country’s demand for seafood. But as time passed, overfishing, strict government regulations and outsourcing to developing countries changed the industry, making it nearly impossible for local fishermen to compete.

The U.S. seafood market is worth $17 billion annually, with imports making up more than 90 percent of that. Experts say one in five fish is caught illegally worldwide, and a study last year by the University of California, Los Angeles and Loyola Marymount University found nearly half of all sushi samples tested in L.A. didn’t match the fish advertised on the menu.

Sea To Table offered a worry-free local solution that arrived from dock to doorstep by connecting chefs directly with more than 60 partners along U.S. coasts. While its mission is clear, scaling up to a national level while naming specific boats and docks is currently unrealistic. Still, the company is predicting rapid growth from $13 million in sales last year to $70 million by 2020, according to a confidential investor report obtained by the AP.

As its business expanded, AP found Sea To Table has been saying one thing but selling another.

For caterers hosting a ball for Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who had successfully pushed through a law to combat seafood mislabeling, knowing where his fish came from was crucial.

The Montauk tuna arrived with a Sea To Table leaflet describing the romantic, seaside town and an email from a salesperson saying the fish was caught off North Carolina. But the boxes came from New York and there was no indication it had been landed in another state and driven more than 700 miles to Montauk. A week later the caterer ordered the Montauk tuna again. This time the invoice listed a boat whose owner later told AP he didn’t catch anything for Sea To Table at that time.

“I’m kind of in shock right now,” said Brandon LaVielle of Lavish Roots Catering. “We felt like we were supporting smaller fishing villages.”

Some of Sea To Table’s partner docks, it turns out, are not docks at all. Their seafood was advertised as “just landed” from wholesalers and retailers like Santa Barbara Fish Market — which also has imports — and Red’s Best in Boston. Both collect seafood at harbors and companies up and down their coasts.

Sea To Table also promoted fresh blue crab from Maryland in January, even though the season closed in November. In addition, the company said it never sells farmed seafood, citing concerns about antibiotics and hormones. But red abalone advertised from central California are actually grown in tanks — it’s been illegal to harvest commercially from the ocean since 1997. Rhode Island and Washington state also supply aquacultured seafood, such as oysters and mussels.

Dimin said farmed shellfish “is a very small part of our business, but it’s something that we’re open and clear about.” When asked to provide evidence that the company has been transparent about its use of farmed shellfish, he paused and then replied, “There’s nothing to hide there.”

However, days later, he said he decided to drop aquaculture from his business because it contradicts his “wild only” guarantee.

Private companies that mislead consumers, clients and potential investors could face lawsuits or criminal liability. Both the Food and Drug Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are charged with enforcing laws to prevent fish fraud. Sellers who know, or even should have known, that fish is mislabeled could be found guilty of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government, mail fraud and wire fraud. The crimes carry potential fines and jail time.

Carl Safina, an award-winning author and leading marine conservationist at New York’s Stony Brook University, said companies that prey on consumers’ good intentions “deserve to be out of business immediately.”

A half dozen commercial fishermen and dealers in various regions of the country voiced concerns and, in some cases, anger about Sea To Table. Others have lashed out in the past using social media. Most spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern for their safety and their businesses in an industry where relationships often overlap.

Eric Hodge, a small-scale fisherman from Santa Barbara, said he considered partnering with Sea To Table a few years ago. He quickly changed his mind after seeing canary rockfish on the distributor’s chef lists when the fish was illegal to catch. He also learned Sea To Table was buying halibut from the fish market, which relies heavily on imports. He said he spoke to the company about his concerns.

“Honestly, they know. I just don’t think they care,” Hodge said. “They are making money on every shipment, and they are not going to ask questions. And in seafood, that’s a bad way to go about it because there is so much fraud.”

___

The idea for Sea To Table began with a family vacation to Trinidad and Tobago more than two decades ago. Following a fishing trip there, Michael Dimin and his son, Sean, eventually started shipping fresh catch from the Caribbean nation to chefs in New York. Later, they shifted their model to work exclusively with small-scale American coastal fishermen.

Restaurants and other buyers demanding sustainable products were drawn to the company by a marketing campaign that provided a story not just about where the fish came from, but the romantic image of an American pastime. And they were willing to pay a lot — sometimes more than $20 a pound — for high-end species.

The New York Times, National Geographic, Bon Appetit magazine and many others singled out Sea To Table as the good guys in a notoriously bad industry. Larry Olmsted, author of the bestselling book “Real Food, Fake Food,” recommended it as an answer to fraud in a Forbes article.

After learning about the problems, Olmsted said he was disappointed, and that it made no difference to him if part of the business was legitimate: “It either is reliable, or it’s not.”

Sea To Table partnered with sustainability giants such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Marine Stewardship Council and the James Beard Foundation, which collaborated on events and referred to the distributor as an industry favorite. They expressed concern that suppliers who knowingly mislabel catch will damage the movement.

Sea To Table’s products are sold in almost every state, reaching everywhere from Roy’s seafood restaurants to Tacombi taco chain. It can be found at eateries inside the Empire State Building in New York and Chicago’s O’Hare airport, direct to consumers from its own website and even on Amazon for home cooks to order. In addition, more than 50 college campuses such as Yale, Ohio State and the University of Massachusetts have signed up. So have some of the biggest make-it-yourself meal kits, including Home Chef and Sun Basket, a rapidly growing market that Sea To Table says generates a third its revenues.

Whether they know it or not, a company spending money at any point in a long chain that begins with an abused fisherman and ends with a diner is inadvertently supporting the problem. Customers who responded to AP said they were frustrated and confused.

“Not ok,” Ken Toong, who is responsible for UMass Dining, said of Sea To Table. “We believed them.”

____

AP’s investigation began with one of Sea To Table’s nearby suppliers. Located on New York’s eastern coast beyond the posh Hamptons, Bob Gosman Company opened in Montauk as a mom-and-pop clam shack more than six decades ago.

Now run by cousins Bryan and Asa Gosman, it is a small empire sitting on a multi-million dollar property. Oceanfront restaurants, shops and motels bustle with tourists in the summer. And its fish market, where 70 percent of the tuna is imported, has become one of the biggest wholesalers in the area.

Gosman’s gets most of its tuna along with other species from a place in the state where fish can always be found, regardless of the season: The New Fulton Fish Market. The nine-acre refrigerated warehouse just outside Manhattan is the second-largest facility of its kind, moving millions of pounds of seafood each night, much of it flown in from across the globe.

Beautiful maroon slabs of imported high-grade tuna were on display for several nights in December, January and February, as well as other times throughout last year, when AP reporters roamed the market. The frigid building buzzed with workers on forklifts zigzagging across slick concrete floors, stacking orders waiting to be picked up.

In the early hours, often between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., boxes of fish bearing foreign shipping labels from all over the world were arranged into piles with “Gosman” scribbled across them in black marker. They were later hoisted onto a waiting truck with the same name.

After a three-hour drive east, the AP watched the loads arrive at the company’s loading dock in Montauk, just as the sun was rising on the tip of Long Island.

The tuna, swordfish and other species were then ferried inside Gosman’s warehouse. They came from Blue Ocean in Brazil, Vietnam’s Hong Ngoc Seafood Co., and Land, Ice and Fish in Trinidad and Tobago. Occasionally, boxes showed up from Luen Thai Fishing Venture and Marshall Islands Fishing Venture, part of a Hong Kong-based conglomerate that’s a major supplier of sushi-grade tuna. Despite recent conservation partnerships, Luen Thai has a checkered past, including shark finning and a bribery scandal that resulted in the jailing of a former Cook Islands marine resources minister in 2016.

Bryan Gosman said Sea To Table stressed it would not take imports. But with no yellowfin tuna landed in New York during the coldest winter months — which a federal official confirmed — it was impossible to provide high-quality loins from Montauk.

“So in the beginning, there were times when we were trying to hustle around fish,” Gosman said. “Buying fish at different places, so it could be a legitimate business plan that they’re trying to follow.”

Eventually, with Dimin’s blessing, Gosman said he started getting fish from as far away as North Carolina and trucking it up to New York.

They stopped that arrangement in March. Gosman said it wasn’t profitable. Dimin said they wanted to avoid the “complexity of communicating” their sourcing.

Meanwhile, in the dead of winter, AP had turned to a chef to order $500 worth of fish on their behalf. Sea To Table provided a receipt and verbal assurances that the seafood — which arrived overnight in a box bearing the company’s name and logo — had been landed in Montauk the day before.

The invoice even listed the “Standin Up” as the boat that caught it. But the vessel’s owner said it was in another state at the time, hundreds of miles away.

“I know my name is being used,” said Robert Devlin, who was upset by the news. “A lot of people do fraud that way.”

The AP also shipped tuna samples supposedly from Montauk to two labs for analysis: Preliminary DNA testing suggested the fish likely came from the Indian Ocean or the Western Central Pacific. There are limitations with the data because using genetic markers to determine the origins of species is still an emerging science, but experts say the promising new research will eventually be used to help fight illegal activity in the industry.

Bryan Gosman said they keep Sea To Table’s fish separate, but acknowledged there’s always a chance some imported tuna can slip through with domestic.

“Can things get mixed up? It could get mixed up,” he said. “Is it an intentional thing? No, not at all.”

___

The investigation didn’t end in Montauk. One of the boxes in Gosman’s stack at the Fulton fish market was stamped with a little blue tuna logo above the words “Land, Ice and Fish,” out of Trinidad and Tobago.

This is where the AP traced companies in Sea To Table’s supply chain to slave-like working conditions and the destruction of marine life.

The global seafood industry is known for providing cheap fish that comes with another price. Unscrupulous foreign companies operate with virtually no oversight in vast swaths of international waters, as AP reported in a series of stories in 2015. Those reports helped free more than 2,000 enslaved fishermen in Indonesia.

Though it’s nearly impossible to tell where a specific fish ends up, or what percentage of a company’s seafood is fraudulent, experts say even one bad piece taints the entire supply chain.

On learning that Sea To Table’s supply chain could be tracked to businesses engaged in labor and environmental abuses, Dimin said it was “abhorrent and everything we stand against.”

He said he was temporarily suspending operations with two partners to conduct an audit.

During the investigation, reporters interviewed and obtained written complaints from more than a dozen current and former Indonesian fishermen — including Sulistyo — who were connected to companies in Sea To Table’s supply chain.

Sulistyo said his trawler plied waters between Africa and the Caribbean. Occasionally, it stopped in Trinidad and unloaded swordfish, yellowfin and bigeye tuna at Land, Ice and Fish.

Some crew members who docked there said they were beaten and forced to work when they were sick or hurt. At times, they said, migrant workers died on board and were tossed in the freezer with their catch while the boat continued to fish.

“You are out 500 miles or a thousand miles from shore, he is the law at that point,” John Duberg of Land, Ice and Fish said of individual captains. “And if he feels he has a misbehaving crew member, he may have to take disciplinary actions.”

Marine life was treated with even less respect. Some men said they were ordered to pull in as many sharks as they could catch and slice off their fins, which are a delicacy in Asia. The bodies were tossed back into the ocean, a practice banned by many countries.

Whales also were killed, their heads sometimes chopped off and their teeth extracted as good luck charms. The workers showed photos and videos of fishermen posing with mutilated sharks and whales. While some men appeared to celebrating, others said it left them feeling sickened.

Sulistyo endured the abuse and long hours for a year before jumping to another ship in 2017, demanding to be taken to port. He returned to Indonesia and was classified as a victim of trafficking by the International Organization for Migration.

After hearing that just 30 pounds of tuna could be sold in America for more than $600 — the amount Sulistyo earned during his entire year of work — he stared at the ground in disgust.

“I want to say to the Americans who eat that fish, please appreciate what we did to catch this fish with our sweat, with our lives,” Sulistyo said. “Please remember that.”

____

AP journalists Julie Jacobson in New York and Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Indonesia contributed to this report

By ROBIN MCDOWELL, MARGIE MASON and MARTHA MENDOZA,

By Associated Press

___