Even after winter storms left US 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 US dock and sometimes the very boat that brought it in.

However, an investigation found the company was linked to some of the same practices it vowed to fight, the Associated Press reports.

Preliminary DNA tests commissioned by AP suggested some of the company’s yellowfin tuna were likely to have come 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.

Sea to Table has been a darling in the sustainable seafood movement, building an impressive list of clientele, including celebrity chef Rick Bayless, Chopt Creative Salad chain, top US universities’ catering departments 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 TV cooking series on PBS. 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 AP’s reporting, journalists staked out America’s largest fish market, followed trucks and interviewed fishermen who worked on three continents. A camera was set up that shot more than 36,000 time-lapse photos of a Montauk harbor at the end of Long Island, showing no tuna boats docking. Meanwhile, a chef shared details about orders for fish that were supposedly coming from the seaside town. The boat listed on the receipt hadn’t been there in at least two years.

Tracking Sea to Table’s supply chain, it reportedly led 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 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.”

Preliminary DNA tests suggested some of the company’s yellowfin tuna were likely to have come from the other side of the world. Photograph: travelgame/Getty Images/Lonely Planet Images

When interviewed, the Sea to Table owner Sean Dimin said his suppliers are strictly prohibited from sending imports to customers, and added that 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.



The US seafood market is worth $17bn annually, with imports making up more than 90% 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 Los Angeles 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 US coasts. The company is predicting rapid growth from $13m in sales last year to $70m by 2020, according to a confidential investor report obtained during AP’s investigation .

For caterers hosting a ball for the Washington state governor, 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 said 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.”

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”.

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.”



Sea to Table has had a lot of good press coverage. Larry Olmsted, author of the bestselling book Real Food, Fake Food, recommended it as an answer to fraud.

After learning about the problems, Olmsted said he was disappointed.

Sea to Table’s products are sold in almost every state.

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.



