Seattle Fish Co., a nearly century-old Denver outfit that supplies dozens of area retailers and restaurants from the Brown Palace to the Cheesecake Factory to Marczyk Fine Foods, brings in much of its fish, including wild tuna and farmed kam pachi, by air from Hawaii.

Boats in the Pacific use long lines to catch tuna, which are immediately placed in a slurry of crushed ice and salt water to keep the fish at a constant temperature: just at, but not below, the freezing point. Boats are typically at sea for several days before they arrive at the hectic, early-morning fish auction in Hawaii, where sharp-eyed buyers and brokers contracted by the Seattle Fish gather to inspect the catch for purchase.

"I know these guys well," Harry Mahleres, the company's director of purchasing, says of his buyers. "I have to trust them to get the best. It's a good-old-boy, manual system."