How to Make your Seafood More Local

Hint: start with the squid

How to Clean a Squid by John Donohue

Even as a local food movement continues to grow all over the US, the squid many of us love to eat deep fried, grilled or thrown into a stir fry, are being caught, frozen, sent to China, unfrozen, processed, refrozen and sent back to the United States in giant 50,000-pound shipping containers.

That’s right: Every year, 90% of the 230 million pounds of California squid (by far the state’s largest seafood harvest) are sent on a 12,000-mile round-trip journey to processing plants in Asia and then sent back across the Pacific, sometimes to seaside restaurants situated alongside the very vessels that caught the squid in the first place.

California squid, wild Alaska salmon and tons and tons of Bering Sea pollock, make the round trip to Asia and back into our ports, twice frozen.

And it’s not just squid. Overall a third of what is caught in American waters — about 3 billion pounds of seafood a year — is sold to foreigners. Some of those exports, such as California squid, wild Alaska salmon and tons and tons of Bering Sea pollock, make the round trip to Asia and back into our ports, twice frozen.