Fish is great food, but for folks who don’t have a close understanding of the issues related to commercial fishing, deciding which fish to eat can be a little confusing.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program is the definitive source of information on which fish you can feel good about eating. In this article we’re going to focus on two particular types of fish that might seem similar but actually couldn’t be more different in terms of suitability for your belly.
Thanks to our friends at the Native Fish Society and the Wild Fish Conservancy for their help with today’s lesson.
Why You Should Eat Wild Salmon
The vast majority of wild salmon on the market in the US comes from Alaska. Wild Alaskan salmon comes from a well-managed, productive and consistent fishery that is by no means in decline. Wild Alaskan salmon is really healthy and it tastes great. Eating wild salmon also happens to support an important industry close to home.
Wild salmon are also an alternative in the market to farmed salmon, which create all sorts of problems, the worst of which is an explosion in sea lice populations that do damage to wild fish. Farmed salmon are not as good for you as wild salmon, and they definitely don’t taste as good.
Wild salmon is great food, largely harvested and processed in the US and it comes from a healthy, well-managed fishery. That’s why you should eat wild salmon.
Why You Shouldn’t Eat Wild Steelhead
Steelhead are also anadromous fish from the Pacific Northwest, and you can sometimes buy wild ones to eat. Plus, everyone says you should eat ‘local foods’, so when you see ‘Wild Hoh River Steelhead’ on the menu at a restaurant in Seattle, you should order it, right? Heck no!
Issues and politics around conservation of wild steelhead vary considerably depending on which fishery you’re talking about, so here we’re really going to have to speak generally to keep things short and sweet.
It’s pretty simple – most wild steelhead stocks in the Northwest are in shambles relative to historical levels, but since none of us were around in 1920 to actually see how many more steelhead our rivers supported we have no real basis for comparison, and even anglers tend to forget how productive our rivers should truly be.
Watersheds that once supported tens of thousands of wild steelhead now only see a few thousand, yet for political, economic and social reasons, harvest is still allowed even though these rivers are consistently not meeting their escapement goals. It’s a giant understatement to say that wild steelhead do not represent a sustainable harvest fishery. Some awfully strange nuances in regulations allow wild steelhead to be sold in certain situations, but we say you should not support that market. We need to focus on rebuilding stocks of wild steelhead for ourselves and for future generations – we just shouldn’t be eating them.
Buy the wild salmon instead!
Wild salmon being netted are at the same time killing wild steelhead that are in the same nets……kind of a double standard..
You’re right. It’s confusing. Thanks for trying to make things more clear.
I am curious to know if the food industry uses the term “wild” the same way we as fishermen do, or if they are simply using that word as a label for fish that weren’t raised in a fish farm. In other words, could these fish on the menu be largely hatchery fish that the food industry calls “wild” because they think that word helps sell more fish?
Also, as the previous commenter pointed out, if wild steelhead are by-catch from salmon netting, what should be done with them after they are caught, as it is likely that they will die anyway?
BTW, I would assume that they aren’t netting salmon in the Hoh. Or are they?
Definitely agree wild salmon taste a whole lot better than farmed.
Over here on the east side of the Atlantic the Salmon that come into the local rivers are well sought after although now a days there is a huge concern over numbers and catch and release is now preferred over killing.
However every angler has the right to keep a few for the pot each season and those are prized protein slabs of food. I have eaten farmed salmon as well and there is no comparison to the taste and as you say the farmed version is prone to harvest disease which effects their wild cousins and causing problems on yearly returns.
Couldn’t agree with you more Mark. Thanks for reading!
This article seems like its pushing a political agenda… The wild steel head you buy from the store are in fact caught while salmon netting(or whitefish netting in the great lakes) and have a high chance of mortality if released anyways.
The opinion stated here on the salmon fisheries not being on decline is directly contradicting fish and wildlife officials… The steelhead populations are drastically down not from fisheries but from the fact that every single river in the USA has been dammed for electricity, disregarding the blatant ecological impacts of the Trout’s biological needs to feed properly and reproduce.
Steelhead are healthier to eat than salmon as they accumulate less toxins than salmon. They have a more diverse diet than salmon, leading to a greater diversity of nutrition in the meat. They also have a higher content of omega 3 fatty acids. The only down side is it has slightly less protein content.
If you can catch these guys in the wild, they generally taste better than salmon and don’t tend to turn out as dry if cooked by amateurs, while at the same time not turning out too oily. Don’t get me wrong I eat alot of salmon aswell but look forward much more to eating their sleeker cousins.
I am passionate about this because I’ve been educated on the matter. Wild Steelhead are the superior tablefare when compared side by side to Wild Salmon.
It’s great that you are getting ideas from this paragraph as
well as from our discussion made at this time.
Derek, you are incorrect on most of your statements. Wild steelhead on the west coast that are sold to markets are almost entirely caught in tribal gillnets, and this occurs on some rivers where steelhead are not meeting escapement or are even at the brink of extinction. They’re specifically targeted by gillnets in rivers on the Olympic peninsula of WA, and are killed as chum fishery bycatch in the Skeena, Fraser, and ocean fisheries near the Dean River. The tribes will have the privilege of fishing these runs into extinction because the liberal politicians in these areas are not willing to protect the fish because that would be bad optics to their base. The Canadian government refused to list Thompson steelhead as endangered even though there are only 80 fish left when the run used to be in the thousands, and they even censored and rewrote all the recommendations from their fisheries biologists saying the tribal chum fisheries must stop. It’s very sad. The least we can do is not purchase wild steelhead and advise others not to as well.
This give me more info but still not what I was hoping for. We like the taste, texture of steelhead over salmon and I will buy wild salmon over farmed but have always tried to avoid farmed fish but can only find farmed steelhead, not knowing why. Now I know, really wish could get wild steelhead, maybe someday if the numbers ever get back.