
The Sushi Hype: Ravenous Appetites and Species Extinction
Sushi went from luxury dish to global fast food, and this DW investigation follows its supply chains to see what that shift costs. Reporters travel to contested tuna fishing grounds in the Indian Ocean, to giant salmon farms in Northern Europe, and to a factory near Gdansk that turns out some 115,000 sushi boxes a day, roughly 23 tons of ready-made product, some of it bound for German supermarkets. WWF fisheries expert Philipp Kanstinger explains why yellowfin tuna, a sushi favorite now threatened with extinction, is almost never truly sustainable, no matter what the packaging claims. The film lays out how aggressive fishing methods deplete wild stocks, how salmon farming operates at industrial scale, and how labor conditions in parts of the fishing industry amount to modern slavery. Interviews with fishers, industry figures, and conservationists sit alongside footage of processing plants and fishing vessels, building a picture of an industry racing to keep up with demand for a food still marketed as healthy and affordable.