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This essay is part of What to Eat on a Burning Planet, a series exploring bold ideas to secure our food supply. Read more about this project in a note from Eliza Barclay, Opinion’s climate editor.

Not that long ago, if you saw a piece of fish on your plate, you wouldn’t have thought to ask where it came from or whether it was sustainable.

That began to change in the 1990s as conservation groups fought to protect all kinds of life in the ocean from overfishing. After persuading Congress to create and enforce strict plans to bring back species, they set in motion a virtuous cycle that made seafood, from the mighty swordfish to the humble sea scallop, abundant again. New rules for other species have had similarly positive effects. Sea turtles that once drowned in shrimp nets can now escape. Fewer diving seabirds are getting caught on fishing lines. And limits on fishing smaller species such as menhaden mean that whales off our coasts have more to eat and today can be seen cavorting within sight of the Statue of Liberty. What’s more, American commercial and recreational fisheries generated 35 percent more sales in 2022 than in 2018.

But walk into your local supermarket, and you may still be buying snapper blasted from their reefs by Indonesian fishermen using dynamite or illegally caught yellowfin tuna and squid. U.S. fisheries may be much improved, but up to 80 percent of the fish and shellfish on American plates is imported. Much of it comes via obscure international seafood conglomerates that purchase fish from companies that have been accused of fishing illegally and profiting from forced labor, as the nonprofit Outlaw Ocean Project has documented.

We in wealthy nations unwittingly support these abuses by using the world’s supply of fish as if it were a limitless line of credit. But this credit is running out. The global catch of fish and other wildlife in the ocean peaked in the 1990s and has since drifted steadily downward. Soon, not even forced labor may be able to squeeze profit out of the remaining wild fish.

Expanding fish farming, or aquaculture, was once thought to be a potential solution to this problem, but it has also not, as hoped, given wild fish the break they need. Salmon and shrimp, Americans’ favorite farmed seafoods, are still fed wild fish caught in poorly regulated foreign waters. Highly nutritious fish, such as anchovies and sardines, that make up 20 percent to 30 percent of the global catch are fed to salmon and shrimp — a staggering waste of protein.

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