In 2010, environmental NGO Oceana ordered studies of fish in 14 major metropolitan areas and found that roughly one third of the fish found in restaurants and markets was mislabeled . PHOTO: Wikimedia Commons

The efforts of the government to regulate Big Fishing and all its known and unknown evils often have the adverse effect of undercutting people for whom the ocean is something more than mere industry. The realities on the docks aren’t always as legislators understand them, says this first installment of the Medium‘s  inaugural episode of Food Crimes: The Hunt For Illegal Seafood.

The United States imported as much as 90 percent of its fish in 2013, up from 54 percent in 1995, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In fact, the United States has tripled the dollar amount of fish it imports, to more than 5 billion pounds of fish worth $18 billion. Couple these figures with the staggering estimate that between one quarter and one third of all fish sold in the United States is illegal, and you’re an equation or so away from going vegan.

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