Tucked within the vivid flesh of salmon and shrimp lies a compound that has quietly sustained the endurance of migrating birds and upstream-swimming fish for millennia — astaxanthin, a carotenoid antioxidant whose protective power dwarfs that of vitamin C by a factor of six thousand. Science is now catching up to what nature long understood: this pigment, first traced to lobsters by a Nobel laureate, may hold meaningful promise for human cardiovascular, skin, eye, and immune health. Yet as with many gifts drawn from the natural world, the distance between what is possible and what is practical