Bethany Jean Clement: ‘Wild’ salmon isn’t wild at 1 out of 3 Seattle sushi spots, study finds

At one-third of Seattle sushi restaurants, the fish sold as wild salmon was actually farmed, according to recent testing by researchers at Seattle Pacific University.

A study published Wednesday showed that 32.3% of purportedly wild salmon gathered from 52 Seattle sushi places proved to be farmed salmon. The study, entitled “Fishy Business in Seattle,” also subjected salmon sold as wild at 67 local grocery stores to genetic testing – here, all the fish labeled wild was, in fact, so.

The obvious question: Was the wild salmon nigiri at your favorite Seattle spot included in the study, and if so, was it determined to be cheaper, farmed salmon? Unfortunately for curious sushi consumers, SPU researchers declined to provide specific names of establishments.

According to professor Tracie Delgado, Ph.D., the purpose of the study, published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, “was not to identify which individual vendors were mislabeling salmon; rather, we wanted to see how widespread salmon mislabeling was across Seattle.”

Furthermore, the sushi restaurants themselves may not be to blame for misrepresentation of salmon, which could occur at multiple points “upstream in the supply chain,” as Delgado put it – at the level of processing, distribution, wholesale, etc.

“We did not want to identify individual vendors and suggest that they were pervasively or dishonestly mislabeling samples,” Delgado said.

A study map divided by City Council districts shows that researchers gathered samples from sushi restaurants and grocery stores throughout Seattle. Restaurants were selected at random, Delgado said, with price points represented from low-budget to high-end – “$” to “$$$$,” based on Google ratings, with most in the “$$,” or moderate, price range. Prices for individual salmon nigiri or rolls ranged from $2.49 to $17.50, with four additional salmon samples obtained from multicourse sushi menus priced at $85 and up.

After multiple studies showed seafood mislabeling in Washington, a state law was passed in 2013 requiring that fish and shellfish be properly identified by common name when sold, further specifying that salmon must be identified as wild-caught Pacific salmon or farm-raised Atlantic.

However, monitoring and enforcement have been scant since.

In an isolated example from 2017, the state Attorney General’s Office leveled fines totaling $5,500 against one sushi restaurant in Seattle and one in Bellevue following an investigation that found escolar sold as tuna/albacore and tilapia sold as red snapper. A spokesperson for the attorney general said investigations pertaining to the law are initiated only following referral from a county prosecutor or the governor and that the 2017 cases were brought under the state’s Consumer Protection Act.

For the SPU study, conducted from 2022 through 2023, researchers took salmon from sushi restaurants in to-go containers to their cars or home, then donned gloves and transferred the fish to test tubes. They sometimes posed as regular patrons and in other instances requested samples for their biology class, Delgado said.

Sometimes, during the process of obtaining a sample and verbally verifying the salmon name, the restaurant staff “grew suspicious,” occasionally refusing to provide a sample whether free or paid. “In the case where a researcher was asked to leave, a different researcher would sometimes come back later to the same establishment and just purchase as a regular patron,” Delgado detailed.

“Fishy Business in Seattle” notes that salmon is the most frequently consumed finfish nationwide, asserting that mislabeling “not only financially hurt(s) the customer but can also negatively impact fishers, seafood distributors, retailers, and ecosystems.” Mislabeling means that accurate supply chain tracking is compromised, while legal wild salmon fisheries and conservation efforts are complicated. And, clearly, consumers seeking out wild salmon due to environmental or other concerns with farmed salmon are foiled by mislabeling.

What can a sushi restaurant patron do? Delgado suggests inquiring about vendors and any “quality control process that confirms salmon identification.” Restaurants themselves can buy salmon whole, confirming that it is, in fact, wild via identifying characteristics, or can have supplied salmon tested periodically for labeling accuracy by a resource such as NOAA’s Seafood Inspection Program.