The True Home of Alaskan Salmon

The silver skin and pink flesh of a salmon may be labeled “Alaskan Wild” but researchers have found that the truth may be harder to label.

Conservation geneticist Gordon Luikart and research scientist Seth Smith at the University of Montana’s Montana Conservation Genetics Lab are using a quick genetic test to determine the probability of where individual salmon originate to better understand how large demand for salmon affects dwindling stocks.

And their early results raise real questions about how suppliers can and should label salmon. An initial study found that 10 percent of chinook salmon collected at grocery stores in 2014 came from threatened or endangered populations, including those from the Upper Columbia River, Willamette River and rivers in the Puget Sound.

The analysis found that since the fish swim long distances, the point where fish are caught is often less important than the place where the salmon are born.

Or put another way, the ‘Alaskan Salmon’ sticker at the fish counter could actually read, ’Columbia River salmon, by way of Alaska.’

The results raise new concerns about how to help stabilize salmon species, including: sockeye, pink, chinook, coho, chum, all of which are imperiled at least in some local populations. Chinook salmon in the Puget Sound and Strait of Georgia inside Vancouver Island, for example, have declined by 60 percent since 1984, according to the Pacific Salmon Commission.

Despite these problems the heavily regulated and monitored Alaskan salmon fishery has not seen the same problems and so wild-caught Alaskan Salmon are sold in grocery stores. But the research finds that while they may be caught in Alaska, many of the fish are not from Alaska.

And this is the problem. The true origin of a salmon is more important than the place of catch if the goal is to ensure the pressured species of salmon. Without knowing the source of the fish sustainable labels cannot inform better consumer choices.

And yet having the genetic facts about a fish complicates the decisions for fisheries manager tasked with ensuring fishing totals abide by international quotas set by the Pacific Salmon Commission. The commission restricts harvest amounts to ensure endangered populations aren’t being caught in large proportions.

Seeing Past the Label

A silver-backed salmon labeled as caught in Alaska might bring to mind a boundless ocean teeming with runs of the fish dodging icebergs and grizzly bears. But many of those fish spent a life eluding dams, warm water, and fishing nets on their journey to the ocean. But Smith, who grew up fishing for salmon in Washington State, says his testing paints a different picture. He runs the salmon tests in a small basement lab amid freezers crammed with genetic samples in Missoula, Mont.

Looking over his shoulder, he points out the places where fish came from versus where they were caught and where they’re bought. He’s part of a team that collect salmon samples from Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California. Most fish labeled as ‘wild-caught’ in the store will come to his lab.

Smith processes thousands of genetic samples that come to the lab each year. He deals in percentages and probabilities.

The 63 salmon samples tested in 2014 didn’t turn up any mislabeled species, a more common practice for verifying grocery store accuracy, but rather found that 55 percent of Alaskan caught chinook salmon were born in Oregon, California or Washington. Another 31 percent came from British Columbia. Only 14 percent were actually from Alaska.

Alaska chinook salmon sold on ice at the Good Food Store in Missoula, Mont. were actually fish born on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, the Fraser River in British Columbia, the Trask River in Northwest Oregon and a hatchery near Juneau, Alaska.

Genetic tests at fishing ports in Alaska compiled by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in 2013 had similar results, with West Vancouver Island and the Columbia making up a sizable proportion of fish. The two surveys, while troubling, do not mean there is a definite trend of catching non-Alaskan fish in Alaskan waters.

Season, year and harvest location can skew the smaller study of grocery store fish. Smith used the same microsatellites, DNA identifier sequences, used by Alaskan fisheries to determine what distinct population a salmon is from.

Wild salmon populations don’t broadly mix genes. Offspring spawn in the same tributaries year after year. So the birthplace of each fish sample is determined from data banks on salmon populations from California to Alaska which show unique gene traits.

Sometimes the results raise more questions than they answer. A few Alaskan-labeled salmon tested by Smith came from California and Oregon streams where many populations are endangered or in decline. Salmon from the Feather or Klamath Rivers in California are unlikely migrate up into Alaskan waters. It’s impossible to know how they were mislabeled as Alaskan salmon. Either they were caught in another place and mislabeled, or were a statistically rare visitor to Alaskan waters.

Alaska’s salmon fishery is considered ‘mixed stock’ meaning they are made up of salmon from many different places.

“The whole idea of a mixed stock fishery brings up some ethical questions. I don’t think [consumers] know what they are getting. We expect a certain number of fish to come from other waters according to the stock assessment. However, a certain number will come from populations that have never been in Southeast Alaska,” says Smith.

Finding Home

The idea of testing for species grew out of efforts to stop the illicit animal trade.

Nick Gayeski, who also collects samples for the project and is an aquatic ecologist at the Wild Fish Conservancy in Washington State, and his collaborators were inspired by a Stanford University species identification study of whale meat in Japan in the 1980s and 90s. In that research, Dr. Steve Palumbi ran DNA tests in a suitcase-sized mobile lab uncovering illegal catches of whale meat sold in Japan and other countries, including the United States.

The study led to widespread changes in monitoring of fisheries, including by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The FDA uses DNA testing on many international seafood imports.

Gayeski thought, “We can do that for chinook.”

He hopes the same kind of testing for salmon can lead to more sustainable fisheries and accountability as to where catches of salmon are harvested.

But that will mean a change to the current system. All commercial salmon catches in Alaskan waters are considered sustainable by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, since the state has an interest in seeing salmon survive into the future. To help ensure sustainability, the Marine Stewardship Council has stepped in.

The MSC is an independent non-profit certifying body that verifies fishery health and marks seafood products sold in stores with a ‘blue label’ to indicate sustainability. The organization charges a fee for the value added to carrying a certified sustainable label. The MSC and other similar organizations worldwide declare fish sustainable through guidelines modeled on the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s “Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries.”

The MSC began to certify the entire Alaska salmon fishery as sustainable in 2000, based on the returning number of fish and future projected harvest. Alaskan salmon were one of the first major fisheries certified under the program.

“Alaska wanted to certify everything,” says Gayeski, adding certification helps consumers make sustainable choices buying seafood.

The label itself, often indicating only “wild-caught Alaskan salmon” and the method of certification, does not fully tell where all fish come from and how harvest can affect distinct populations that are threatened or endangered.

It’s a problem that the MSC already knows about, says Gayeski, who points to an evaluation report from 2015 prepared for the Marine Stewardship Council by independent evaluator Intertek Fisheries Certification that acknowledges 96 percent of Southeast Alaskan salmon, which has few rivers itself, are not from Alaska.

To maintain Alaska’s sustainability rating the MSC defines fish born in other waters that migrate in swirls across the Pacific Coast as “inseparable or practically inseparable” or IPI catches from those born in Alaska.

This exception allows harvests to other populations that include a small amount of endangered or threatened salmon as sustainable salmon, according to MSC. Since fish cannot be separated without each individual fish genetically tested.

The MSC is trying to address the issue, says Jim Humphreys, a Global Fisheries Coordinator at MSC.“The salmon fisheries up and down the coast are inherently mixed in population,” says Humphreys. “We try to minimize the impacts endangered stocks” that are included in sustainably labeled harvests and the proportion of endangered salmon is tiny in comparison to overall harvest.

“We have a strict requirement that, if declared, IPI catches cannot exceed 5% of the total combined catches,” adds Dan Averill, Senior Fisheries Manager for MSC.

In addition to dealing with the verification of where the fish is caught, the MSC must also spend much of its efforts tracking what happens when the fish is caught. It traces all fish sold under certification through the harvest, processing, distribution and sale of a fish.

But a connection to the place a fish comes from in a grocery store and the health of populations is absent in labeling. The best way that consumers can ensure they aren’t harming a fish population is to make sustainable choices. But inaccurate labels make this choice less useful.

This has prompted seafood advocates to up the pressure on the organizations that govern labeling. In October 2015, the conservation and advocacy organization Oceana released a study of 87 salmon collected from December to March, finding that fish were mislabeled 20 percent of the time in grocery stores and 67 percent in restaurants. The highest incentive to mislabel is in the offseason when salmon stocks run low or are non-existent.

“Oceana is advocating for is full supply chain tracking of our seafood, from the time it was captured or harvested from a farm, through the whole supply chain,” says Kimberley Warner, a senior scientist at Oceana.

“That’s very promising research,” says Warner of the home stream data that pins a fish to place with genetic data. Traceability of fish caught from an endangered Washington State or Oregon salmon population would be valuable, especially throughout the supply chain, says Warner.

Warner would like to see descriptive labels that contain date and place of catch on labels and possibly ones that that include genetic data, home stream or harvest source in markets can help consumers make better seafood choices.

“Salmon is one of the few fish that are supposed to be sold by a species name, like chinook, sockeye or pink,” says Warner. “So, in the case of salmon, it benefits from having this very species specific labeling, and when we looked at grocery stores that sell under this country of origin labeling rule the mislabeling rates, regardless of season, were quite low because they were required to tell you what kind of salmon it was.”

Warner hopes that giving consumers this information on each label will allow consumers to connect fisheries from ‘boat to plate,’ since FDA country of origin labels usually require the place of processing or alteration to be indicated.

Overall, there are many reasons for seafood traceability. “We import 90 percent of our seafood,” says Warner. “Most of what we catch is exported for processing and then it comes back as an import of another country, rather than where it was caught.”

Reimported salmon crosses the ocean twice, being frozen, unfrozen, processed, refrozen, and then thawed once more before reaching a plate. It’s hard to track how much of seafood is reimported since altered or prepared products are harder to track.

For example, an Alaskan salmon filet found at Walmart with a “Made in China” label with a sustainable rating, adding to some of the confusion since country of origin rules require relabeling, when less costly processing is done overseas.

The work done by Smith and others in Montana isn’t any less contentious when compared to the struggle to track species within a supply chain. They have yet to turn up any species mislabeling, but found more than a few surprising home streams for Alaskan labeled salmon.

Smith’s own opinion is the most sustainable salmon to eat are those raised in hatcheries since harvest doesn’t take from a wild population that needs a rest. A large portion of salmon in samples come from hatcheries, which are by some seen as an unnatural surrogate for declining wild populations, but they are also the best chance for salmon to maintain both a healthy population and a commercial harvest.

Smith also hopes tests may allow for more accurate labeling in the future but he is quick to add that knowing where an individual fish came from is no help if it’s too late to put back in the ocean if it’s from an endangered or threatened population.

He sees value added for the already expensive fish in eventually having genetic tests on more fish, particularly as the cost of testing decreases and the technology becomes more portable.

Ultimately, the responsibility for ensuring salmon’s survival into the future rests on consumers getting the whole story on the salmon they purchase, and fisheries providing this information, be it species, place of catch or home stream from a genetic test.

Without DNA testing, consumers are fishing in the dark.