Fish fraud: What’s on menu often isn’t what’s on your plate

If you splurge on the sea bass or snapper, you may not always be getting what you pay for, even at the fanciest restaurants and upscale fish markets.

There’s something, well, fishy going on with certain favorite fish dishes, according to a new study from the conservation group Oceana.

DNA tests showed that about 21% of the fish researchers sampled was not what it was called on the label or menu. That’s despite nearly a decade of investigations, more regulations and Americans’ appetites growing beyond fish sticks and tuna surprise.

“Consumers are getting ripped off,” said Beth Lowell, Oceana’s deputy vice president. Lowell said this isn’t an isolated problem. Her organization tested more than 400 samples from 277 locations in 24 states and in the District of Columbia. Oceana did not name the markets, stores and restaurants where it purchased the samples.

Among the samples they tested, seafood was more frequently mislabeled in restaurants and at smaller markets than in larger grocery chains. One out of three stores and restaurants visited by the investigative team sold at least one mislabeled item.

Favorites like sea bass and snapper had some of the highest rates of mislabeling. Sea bass was mislabeled 55% of the time and snapper 42% of the time, Oceana’s tests showed. Often, instead of sea bass, they’d get giant perch or Nile tilapia, fish that should be less expensive and is considered lower quality. Dover sole they tested was actually walleye. Lavender jobfish had been substituted for high mercury content, this news has got to be frustrating, Lowell said.

“We need to do more to protect consumers,” Lowell said.

Oceana’s is not the only recent study to find fish fraud. In December, a New York state Attorney General’s Office investigation found that more than one in four samples, or 26.92% of the seafood they bought and tested was mislabeled. In that investigation, the problem was in virtually “every tested seafood category.”

New Yorkers who paid 35% extra for “wild” caught would be disappointed to learn that the investigation found it was often farm-raised. The fish substitutes were often cheaper.

“You have to imagine how complex seafood commerce is,” said Dan Distel, director and research professor at the Ocean Genome Legacy lab at the Northeastern University Marine Science Center. The lab performed the DNA work in the New York Investigation.

“A lot of mislabeling is probably intentional, sure,” he said. “There is also plenty that must be accidental or just the result of the ignorance of the rules.”

With so many species and with 80% of the fish Americans eat coming from international sources, labeling is complicated.

“In order to maintain accurate labeling, you have to track it from the fisherman, who is sometimes in remote locations or in the developing world. And then you track it through a variety of middlemen to the distributor, the store, to the high school kids stocking the shelves. There are a lot of places where things could go wrong,” Distel said.

Names of fish can also be confusing for people who sell them. Something sold as