August 18, 2026
By Lora Kelley
Sardines are having a moment. All over TikTok, posters embrace “sardinemaxxing” and “sardine girl summer,” raving about the nutritional benefits of the tasty and relatively sustainable snack. In 2022, Vogue wrote of “the tinned fish mania that has gripped the world.” Earlier this year, Wirecutter suggested that “Sardine’s PR team has been working overtime recently.”
But Coop members hoping to enjoy a sardine-fueled summer may be disappointed: The sardine supply has been hit by a global shortage.
Gillian Chi, one of the Coop’s buying and receiving coordinators, has observed demand for sardines rising among members over the past few years. As she told the Linewaiters’ Gazette, however, she first started noticing the effects of the shortage around late May and early June. Her team acted quickly to keep sardines on shelves—including by placing a special order with a supplier the Coop rarely works with. They also stocked up on shopper favorites while they could. “I stockpiled one hundred cases of Matiz and 75 cases of FishSnax, and dozens of cases of others,” Chi wrote in an email.
Based on conversations with vendors and news reports, Chi believes that the shortage owes to surging demand, overfishing, climate change and Morocco’s restrictions on exports. In January of this year, Morocco, one of the world’s key suppliers of sardines, announced that it would halt exports of frozen sardines; it did not say how long the pause would continue. Zakia Driouich, Morocco’s Secretary of State at the Ministry of Agriculture and the cabinet member in charge of its fisheries, announced the change to members of Morocco’s parliament, citing a “noticeable drop in supply.” Citing official data, Reuters reported that landings of sardines in Morocco dropped 46% in 2024, to 525,000 metric tons.
“Our standard markup does not fluctuate based on supply nor demand (nor anything else).”
Receiving Coordinator Gillian Chi
Coop suppliers have also explained the dearth of their product to shoppers. Fish Tales, for example, announced in June that its sardines were temporarily out of stock, noting that due to “changes in the ocean, such as rising water temperatures, the plankton in the sea also changes, and that is precisely the food sardines live on. If there is less food, sardines grow more slowly and simply fewer swim around.” The post reminded readers that the “special thing about fish is that it still comes from nature. It is one of the last products we do not ‘make’ ourselves, but which we harvest from the sea. And that comes with a caveat: sometimes the ocean simply gives less. At Sea Tales, that means only one thing: We never catch more than is responsible. Not even if the demand for sardines grows.”
As the sardine ban and the related shortage drag on, the Coop has seen some brands become unavailable, and has added some new brands. Bela, Bar Harbor, Crown Prince Brisling and King Oscar are not available, Chi said. Wild Planet has been in and out, and Mina, the most popular brand among Coop members, has slowly started to come back in stock. The new options added to shelves this summer include Matiz, Sea Tales, Season and FishSnax, the tinned fish line from José Andrés. Cento’s sardines were briefly available, and Safe Catch was put on Coop shelves before its stock, too, was depleted, Chi added.
Chi emphasized that, in spite of the dip in supply, the Coop would not alter the way it prices sardines—or any other goods—for shoppers. “Our standard markup does not fluctuate based on supply nor demand (nor anything else),” she noted. “Whatever we pay for a product, the markup is 25 percent.”
Indeed, part of the appeal of sardines is the range of price points: On a recent Wednesday, a single shelf of the Coop’s fish section featured colorful cans of Fishwife sardines for $6.49; tins of Crown Prince sardines in hot sauce for $1.52; and glass jars of Ortiz sardines for $11.03.
Though sardines have been hit especially hard lately, other popular types of fish have also seen challenges. Anchovies—which play a critical role in the global supply chain because they are a key ingredient in the fishmeal used in the $500 billion fish farming industry—are in short supply, too. The culprit for that shortage can reportedly be traced to warming waters in Peru due to El Niño. Bloomberg.com noted that, in the past year, prices for fishmeal have gone up by some 80% as production has decreased by as much as 40%. These fish food disruptions could trigger higher prices for other varieties of fish down the line.
For now, sardines are the most pressing tinned seafood concern for the Coop. But Chi said that her team is now keeping its eye on the global supply of another aqua creature: mackerel.
Lora Kelley is a freelance journalist in Brooklyn.