What you might not know about seafood

I've noticed that there is a big difference in smell and taste when I purchase shrimp and any fish from Airline Seafood, a local fishmonger. "Fresh" fish/shrimp should not have a fishy smell. Every single time I've bought fish or shrimp whether frozen or from the seafood counter at a grocery store, it has a strong, pungent smell. Both farmed and wild-caught.

This is ludicrous!!!! Read the following snippets from two articles I read:

• The fish are de-headed and gutted on the ship in the Bering Sea, then frozen and sent to China.
• Once there, they are boned, skinned and cut into portions of 2 ounces to 6 ounces
• The company freezes its salmon within hours of harvest and then ships them to China, where they are thawed to 40 degrees and boned. The journey there and back takes two months.
• Crab shakers in Qingdao get $100 to $150 a month to extract meat from crab shells with pincers — one-tenth what it might cost in the U.S.
• To remove fish bones by hand, “that would cost us [America] $1 per pound labor here, they get it done for 20 cents in China.”
• The labor is so much cheaper that it makes the shipping cost-effective. When you ship things via freighter, frozen, the cost per mile is relatively low compared to, say, air freighting or train travel or truck freighting (I need to see numbers)
• We export millions of tons of wild, mostly Alaska salmon abroad and import mostly farmed salmon from abroad. So salmon for salmon, we're trading wild for farmed. Another great example of this fish swap is the swapping of Alaska pollock for tilapia and pangasius [catfish]. Alaska pollock is the thing in [McDonald's] Filet-O-Fish sandwich; it's the thing in that fake crab that you find in your California roll.
• The largest shrimp producer for us right now is Thailand. It turns out, a certain amount of the shrimp that come to us from Thailand seems to be coming to us in part as the result of slave labor.

How I wish I had some friends who fish. Reading these articles gives me a better understanding of the local seafood market vs. the greedy, industrialized, mass-distributed seafood industry.

After discovering this, I will NEVER buy seafood from the supermarket within the United States again unless there is enough information to prove where the direct sources are coming from. The less amount of money they get from my pocket, the better. I already refrain from eating tilapia and catfish when dining out because they are always farmed. I believe both fishes are not native to America. But now, I don't think I can even eat any seafood at restaurants. I might be eating shrimp or fish that's months old, refrozen like 5 times, and traveled 20,000 miles (from Alaska to East Asia to who knows where and eventually to Houston) but the menu says "FRESH", mouth-watering photos to lure you, and they claim to prepare "high-quality" meals. And perhaps, the fish is not even in season at that time of year. And I should use my money to contribute towards such high levels of deception????

Let me share with you a personal example of seafood quality. Might not be a big deal but there is a difference. A few years ago, I prepared a rice dish that contained raw gulf shrimp from HEB (a private Texas-based supermarket). The shrimp had a pungent fishy/seafood smell. Never once did I think it had to do how old it was. I assumed that maybe that's the way it was supposed to smell (ignorance). I could taste the stench in the cooked shrimp and partially in the rice. It made the kitchen smell. The mistake I made was when I warmed up the dish one evening at work. My coworkers complained. It remained on their mind for a week or so, lol. But guess what? The fish pie and fish tacos I took to work does not have a smell after reheating, especially the fish tacos. Where did I buy the fish from? Airline Seafood.

Enough with cheap and easy food. It's disgusting and not fair to anyone! If any business is selling to the public cheap, low-grade food, let it be known in regardless of the price. I rest my case.

Reference Links:
1. http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/07/01/327248504/the-great-fish-swap-how-america-is-downgrading-its-seafood-supply
2. http://www.seattletimes.com/business/nw-salmon-sent-to-china-before-reaching-us-tables/