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Hakai Magazine is all about the coast, but other outlets sometimes share our fascination. Every week on Strand we round up our favorite coastal stories from around the web.

Global supermarkets selling shrimp peeled by slaves

by Margie Mason, Robin McDowell, Martha Mendoza, and Esther Htusan for The Associated Press

“U.S. customs records show the shrimp made its way into the supply chains of major U.S. food stores and retailers such as Wal-Mart, Kroger, Whole Foods, Dollar General and Petco, along with restaurants such as Red Lobster and Olive Garden.

It also entered the supply chains of some of America’s best-known seafood brands and pet foods, including Chicken of the Sea and Fancy Feast, which are sold in grocery stores from Safeway and Schnucks to Piggly Wiggly and Albertsons. AP reporters went to supermarkets in all 50 states and found shrimp products from supply chains tainted with forced labor.”

Why do rivers have deltas?

by Minute Earth

No more coasting

by Ivan Semeniuk for The Globe and Mail

“Once thought to have vanished with the dinosaurs, the glass sponge reefs of Hecate Strait number among the rarest and most incredible marine ecosystems on the planet. They top a long list of sites that conservationists say the federal government must prioritize as it launches a new effort to preserve Canada’s threatened ocean wilderness.”

Britain prunes silly laws on salmon handling and armor wearing

by Stephen Castle for The New York Times

“Thanks to centuries of legislating by Parliament, which bans the wearing of suits of armor in its chambers, Britain has accumulated many laws that nowadays seem irrelevant, and often absurd.

So voluminous and eccentric is Britain’s collective body of 44,000 pieces of primary legislation that it has a small team of officials whose sole task is to prune it.

Their work is not just a constitutional curiosity, but a bulwark against hundreds of years of lawmaking running out of control.”

Ancient ‘Loch Ness monster’ reptiles swam like penguins

by Will Dunham for Reuters

“The researchers conducted a series of computer simulations based on the anatomy of a plesiosaur from 180 million years ago called Meyerasaurus to find the most effective swimming strategy for this body design.

The method that produced the fastest forward speed was flapping the two front flippers up and down in an underwater flying motion similar to penguins and sea turtles.”