practices, while its for-profit business
sells their goods directly to high-end
restaurants and the public.
When asked what his ancestor would
think of a QR code slapped on a frozen
hunk of yellowtail or snapper bound for
California, Coronado’s serious demeanor
suddenly erupts into a chuckle. “Are you
crazy?” he quips, mimicking Celso’s imagined reaction. In his
mid-50s with jet-black hair, Coronado is younger than most
of his graying co-op members. With very few of their children
interested in carrying on the family business, he knows that if
something doesn’t change soon, there will be nothing but gill
nets—and dangerously dwindling stock—left.BEFORE THE CO-OP JOINED SMARTFISH IN 2019,
Coronado dealt with at least two middlemen—one in Tijuana and
one in California—who bought the group’s catch. He knew the
goods would shuffle about a lot before reaching a shelf or plate, but
a fisherman’s main concern is simply moving stock off the dock.
The Byzantine global distribution of seafood resembles a bi-
zarre game of cold potato: Unable to hold their catches on ice
indefinitely, fishermen are beholden to third parties who can
wait for ideal market conditions to unload inventory. While dis-
tributors can stockpile frozen supplies of mahi-mahi for months
or even years, folks like Coronado must often accept low prices
simply to unload their perishables. Some 27 percent of fish gets
lost, discarded, or wasted before it can reach the consumer,according to the Food and Agriculture Organization
of the United Nations. In Mexico, some “fishers catch
high-quality wild seafood, but with poor handling, it
turns into sunbaked rotten mash,” says Cecilia Blasco,
executive director of SmartFish, which partners with
five cooperatives around the Baja peninsula.
Blasco estimates that in a conventional supply chain,
up to 12 different parties might touch a yellowtail on
its way to the consumer from Guaymas. Typically,
fishermen offload their catch to a local entrepreneur,
who takes it to the closest town and sells it to a small
aggregator; from there, buyers from larger markets
in Mexico City or Guadalajara purchase high-value
species—all before the goods reach a distributor or
exporter. Buyers at every stage command a cut, and
those doing the actual fishing in western Mexico usu-
ally receive only 18– 20 percent of the final price.
Shady practices on larger vessels further disadvan-
tage the little guys. One of the most common schemes:
Refrigerated cargo vessels, called “reefers,” stay in in-
ternational waters, which allows them to circumvent
regulations if, say, they aggregate legal and illegal fare
from multiple smaller crafts. (The practice is most112 WINTER 2020 / POPSCI.COM