Too Early to Swim: The Rise, Stall, and Future of Alternative Seafood
A look at how early plant-based seafood brands struggled to scale, whether cultivated startups can succeed where others sank, and what it will take for alternative seafood to go mainstream.
Expo West, 2018.
I was walking through a crowded aisle, having just made my way through a blur of booths offering plant-based burgers, chickpea snacks, and fizzy wellness tonics, when a friend from the food industry waved me over to a booth with ocean-themed branding. “You’ve got to try this,” he said. “It’s plant-based tuna.
The company was Good Catch, and they were dishing out samples of their plant-based tuna alternative. I was skeptical but curious because I'd tried dozens of plant-based foods in the past hour alone. Some incredible, some that should never have left the R&D lab.
I took a bite, and the texture was shockingly good. Flaky, light, with that familiar mouthfeel that’s hard to fake. The taste wasn’t a perfect tuna match, but it was close enough to stop me in my tracks. “This is amazing,” I remember thinking. “I’d eat this all the time.” In that moment, it felt like plant-based seafood was about to have its breakout.
And then, crickets. For years.
While plant-based burgers became more mainstream on fast food menus and oat milk colonized coffee shops nationwide, plant-based seafood just... treaded water. What happened? And more importantly, when might that change?
The pioneers who came too early
The plant-based seafood space has been swimming upstream from the beginning. Many early innovators made impressive products, but they couldn’t scale fast enough to survive. As funding dried up and runway ran out, even the most promising brands struggled to stay afloat.
Good Catch Foods arrived with what seemed like perfect timing. The company was founded by an all-star team consisting of chefs Chad and Derek Sarno, and impact investor Chris Kerr. With early momentum and a strong mission, they launched in Whole Foods nationwide. What made them particularly interesting was their strategic partnership with Bumble Bee Foods in March 2020, the first major seafood company to partner with a plant-based brand. Despite securing over $26 million in additional funding in 2021, consumer adoption remained tepid. Good Catch was acquired by Wicked Kitchen in 2022, which itself was acquired by Ahimsa Companies in 2024.
New Wave Foods, founded in 2015 by marine conservationist Dominique Barnes and materials scientist Michelle Wolf, set out to reinvent shrimp using seaweed and plant proteins. Backed by Tyson Ventures in 2019 and a subsequent $18 million Series A in 2021 , they began scaling through Dot Foods to enter foodservice nationwide. Despite these high-profile partnerships and early media buzz, they shut down operations in 2023, citing unsustainable cash burn and a fundamental market mismatch.
Ocean Hugger Foods, co-founded by David Benzaquen and Certified Master Chef James Corwell, took a different approach by creating "Ahimi," a tomato-based "tuna" sashimi. In November 2017, Ahimi debuted at Whole Foods Market sushi counters in New York and Los Angeles, later expanding to 40 locations across 10 states. The product earned Ocean Hugger Foods a Whole Foods Market Supplier Award for Outstanding Innovation. When COVID hit and wiped out the foodservice channel overnight, Ocean Hugger was forced to cease operations.
Other notable attempts included Sophie's Kitchen (founded 2010), Loma Linda's TUNO (launched 2018), and products from established brands Gardein and Quorn.
These pioneers weren't necessarily making bad products; they just arrived too early to a market that wasn't asking for what they were selling.
Why seafood alternatives struggled when plant-based burgers and milk thrived
There are several key factors at play:
Seafood isn't red meat
The push to replace beef stemmed from widespread concerns about its links to heart disease, cancer risk, and climate impact. In contrast, fish like salmon and tuna are still seen as health-positive. They’re rich in omega-3s, lean in saturated fat, and widely recommended for heart health.
The cultural push to replace beef with plant-based alternatives simply didn't extend to seafood. There wasn't the same motivation to switch. While health-conscious consumers might eagerly swap a beef burger for an Impossible or Beyond patty, they saw no reason to trade their "heart-healthy" salmon for a “processed” alternative. Consumers also associate seafood with freshness and quality, and many frozen or packaged alternatives struggle to deliver on those expectations, making the leap feel even less compelling.
The smell, the taste, the niche
Let's be honest, seafood is already divisive in its original form. Many people who happily eat other meats don't like fish at all. So the target audience for plant-based seafood faced a double challenge:
Many vegans and vegetarians never liked seafood to begin with, so they weren't clamoring for alternatives.
Pescatarians and flexitarians who actually enjoyed seafood weren't motivated to swap their occasional salmon or tuna for a plant-based version.
This created a uniquely narrow target market that was far smaller than the audience for plant-based beef or chicken. Without massive demand or a breakthrough product to increase sales volume, unit economics remained tough. Without scale, margins stayed thin, distribution costs stayed high, and retail velocity never reached escape velocity.
No flagship moment
Every successful plant-based category has had its breakthrough moment:
These weren't just product launches, they were cultural moments that thrust plant-based foods into the mainstream conversation.
Plant-based seafood never had its equivalent watershed moment. I saw this firsthand through my work at Plantega. When we partnered with Good Catch to launch the "Filet-No-Fish" sandwich in our locations throughout New York City in 2022, we had high hopes. Despite the majority of Plantega's customers being flexitarians, the sandwich didn't achieve widespread success because even these open-minded consumers simply weren't drawn to seafood alternatives. Our customers were consistently gravitating toward the beef and chicken alternatives on our menu, and the Filet-No-Fish didn't perform as well despite being a really good sandwich. It ended up developing a loyal following amongst vegans and vegetarians, a microcosm of the broader industry trend where plant-based seafood appeals primarily to those already committed to plant-based eating rather than the flexitarians who drive category growth.
Without that mainstream breakthrough, the category remained a niche within a niche, sold primarily to already-converted vegans and vegetarians rather than reaching the all-important flexitarian consumer.
The next wave: new approaches to plant-based seafood
While the first generation of plant-based seafood companies struggled to find their footing, the category remains active with innovative approaches. A new generation of startups is taking novel approaches to creating more convincing seafood alternatives.
Oshi, formerly known as Plantish, which raised $12.45 million in seed funding, is using 3D printing to create whole-cut salmon fillets. Aqua Cultured Foods is pioneering fungi-based fermentation to create whole-cut seafood with realistic nutritional and sensory profiles. Mind Blown by The Plant Based Seafood Co., founded by a mother-daughter team with over 20 years of seafood industry experience, has brought plant-based shrimp, scallops, and crab cakes to 80 Wegmans locations. The ISH Company is prioritizing foodservice, where 65% of U.S. seafood consumption happens. Konscious Foods, launched by Yves Potvin (founder of Yves Veggie Cuisine and Gardein), is focused on ready-to-eat sushi, onigiri, and poke bowls, and recently expanded to hundreds of grocery stores across North America. These companies take different technical paths, but all aim to match the taste, texture, and nutrition of real seafood while targeting flexitarian consumers through premium channels.
Yet despite their innovations, they face the same core challenge as their predecessors: convincing people that seafood alternatives are truly worth the switch.
Cultivated seafood making quiet progress
In contrast, cultivated seafood companies may have the most promising path forward.
BlueNalu, based in San Diego, has emerged as a frontrunner in the cultivated seafood space, focusing on bluefin tuna toro (a highly prized and overfished species). The company has raised over $84 million, including a $33.5 million Series B round announced in September 2023.
In February 2024, it became the first cultivated seafood company to join the National Fisheries Institute, the leading U.S. seafood trade association. CEO Lou Cooperhouse has positioned BlueNalu to focus on high-value species like toro, which can sell for over $100 a pound, making the economics more viable even at small scale. The company plans to launch its product in San Diego, citing the city’s health-conscious and sustainability-oriented population.
Wildtype, based in San Francisco, is developing sushi-grade cultivated salmon. In 2022, it raised $100 million in a Series B round led by L Catterton, with participation from Leonardo DiCaprio, Bezos Expeditions, Cargill, Temasek, S2G Ventures, and others. The company has built a pilot production facility and has been conducting tasting events across the U.S. It plans to launch in restaurants like Snowfox and Pokéworks pending regulatory approval.
Other startups making progress include Finless Foods (tuna and mahi-mahi), Hong Kong’s Avant Meats (fish maw and fillets), and Germany’s BLUU Seafood, which opened a pilot plant in Hamburg and expects regulatory approval in Singapore by mid-2025. Shiok Meats and Umami Bioworks merged in late 2024 to open a pilot facility in Malaysia focused on cultivated crustaceans.
The science behind these ventures is impressive, but challenges remain around scaling production and navigating the regulatory landscape. That said, the potential environmental and sustainability benefits are enormous, especially for premium fish species that have been severely depleted from the wild.
When might the tide turn?
What would it take for seafood alternatives—whether plant-based or cell-cultured—to finally break through?
Environmental urgency becomes personal: Despite some positive trends, the world's oceans remain under unprecedented stress. As of March 2025, the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation reported that 88% of global tuna catch now comes from stocks at “healthy” abundance levels, a modest 2% improvement from 2024. However, 10% of stocks remain overfished, including Mediterranean albacore and Pacific bluefin tuna, which continue to face pressure from unsustainable practices.
If fish stocks collapse more dramatically or ocean warming triggers more visible ecosystem damage (caused by jellyfish blooms, coral die-offs, or species migration), it could lead to a policy-led or panic-induced shift toward alternatives. The question is whether consumers will care enough about ocean health to change their eating habits before it’s too late.
Microplastic fear goes mainstream: Concerns about seafood contamination, including mercury, microplastics, and PCBs, have long circulated in scientific circles. But they’re now edging closer to the mainstream. A 2024 study by Portland State University found microplastic contamination in 99% of tested seafood samples, including shrimp, oysters, and tuna. Additional research has found microplastics present not just in the food chain but in human blood, lungs, and even the brain. Scientists are increasingly raising alarms about potential long-term health impacts.
While TikTok isn’t yet saturated with seafood-specific microplastic content, interest is growing, particularly among wellness influencers and food safety accounts, many of whom are starting to ask: “Do you really want to eat that sushi?”
One killer product changes everything: Sometimes, it just takes one breakthrough. The plant-based burger boom didn’t happen because of incremental improvements, it was Impossible and Beyond showing up in places like Burger King and blowing people’s minds. That kind of “wow” moment hasn’t happened for seafood alternatives yet.
But if a cultivated bluefin toro launches that’s indistinguishable from traditional sushi. Or if someone cracks the code on a plant-based fish stick that kids actually prefer to the original, the conversation could shift overnight.
Institutions drive adoption first: While individual consumers may hesitate, large institutional buyers, such as cruise lines, hospital systems, university dining halls, corporate cafeterias, could lead the way. These buyers increasingly prioritize sustainability, supply chain resilience, and ESG reporting. all of which alternative seafood can help address.
If foodservice providers start incorporating alt-seafood at scale, it could generate the production volume needed to lower costs and normalize consumer exposure. And from there, maybe even a flagship moment.
They weren't wrong, just early
Let's go back to that moment at Expo West. That sample of plant-based tuna. That fleeting thought that seafood alternatives were about to take off.
The products didn't fail because the ideas were fundamentally flawed. They failed because the market wasn't ready and the timing was off. And in food innovation, being right too soon can be just as fatal as being wrong.
For plant-based and cultivated seafood, momentum may finally be building. The combination of technological progress, environmental urgency, and evolving consumer values could create the right conditions for a category that has long struggled to break through.
When it happens, it won't be a surprise to those who've been watching all along. It will simply be the inevitable result of persistence meeting opportunity, and innovation finally finding its moment.