BOSTON — The future of fish is looking a lot like… salami? And meatballs. And fried chicken. And breakfast sausage. And, of course, spareribs and burgers. This is America, after all.

Welcome to the era of surreptitious seafood, an industry gamble that overcoming Americans’ relative disinterest in the meat of the sea is all a matter of making fish look and taste less like, well, fish.

“Our Taiwanese magic is making tuna taste like fried chicken,” said Jack Chi, a spokesman for Tuna Fresh, a Taiwan-based company that sells tuna as fried “nuggets” and breaded chicken-tender-like strips. “We wanted to be able to engage in the U.S. market, and we found that fried foods are the way.”

Chi’s company was one of hundreds showcasing their products at the recent Seafood Expo North America in Boston. And among the sea of smoked salmons, scallops and all manner of crustaceans, one trend stood out: The seafood being pitched to the American market is looking less and less like seafood.

“It’s been a big trend for the last couple of years,” said Justin Rogers, a sales manager with SK Food Brands in Los Angeles. Among his company’s recent offerings: shrimp burgers, both slider-size and Whopper-worthy. “It makes it more palatable to people who aren’t big seafood fans. Especially with things like these sliders, it gives them an entry point.”

The fish-skeptical US palate

Americans have a notoriously limited appetite for seafood, consuming just about 19 pounds a year — a number that has budged only a bit in a century — most of it as shrimp and salmon. The global average is 45 pounds, while some

European countries clock in closer to 90 pounds. Iceland leads everyone with around 200 pounds per year.

Disguising seafood to appeal to Americans isn’t entirely new. After all, frozen fish sticks and McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish hardly scream catch of the day. But many of the newer products are an entirely different species. Or rather, are trying to be.

“It looks like a Slim Jim by design,” Harbor Bell Seafoods spokeswoman Holly Phillips said of the Seattle company’s salmon snack strips, available in smoked, lemon-pepper, mango and — curiously — original. “It doesn’t smell fishy. It doesn’t taste fishy.”

If an “original” salmon snack stick doesn’t taste fishy, what DOES it taste like? After a couple chewy bites, let’s go with Slim Jim adjacent and move on.

Taking a lesson from sushi

Part of sushi’s appeal is its blend of convenience and novelty, said Steve Markenson, vice president of research and insights for consumer marketing firm FMI. Some of the newer products may offer similar appeal, but he’s not convinced it will be enough.

“The non-seafood folks — which is about 40% of the population — I don’t know that this is really going to be appealing to them,” he said. “They’re not looking to necessarily add seafood into their diet.”

Seafood lovers aren’t a sure bet, either. That 10% of dedicated seafood shoppers want it for what it is, not cleverly disguised. “They love what they love about it,” Markenson said. “They might want it seasoned up a little, but they want that full-blown salmon.”

Oddly, the most likely audience may well be the one typically most averse to seafood — the very young, said Joshua Bickert, a seafood market reporter and analyst for Expana. “If you package it like hot dogs and hamburgers and chicken tenders, you maybe change that mindset at a younger age.”