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OUTDOOR JOURNAL Don't believe what you read on seafood menus Comment By Mark Freeman Mail Tribune Follow @@MTwriterFreeman MailTribune.com By Mark Freeman Mail Tribune Follow @@MTwriterFreeman Posted Feb. 26, 2016 at 2:00 AM Updated Feb 26, 2016 at 10:52 AM By Mark Freeman Mail Tribune Follow @@MTwriterFreeman Posted Feb. 26, 2016 at 2:00 AM Updated Feb 26, 2016 at 10:52 AM » Social News ASHLAND — I never imagined that a little bar food Saturday inside an Ashland dinner house would come with a floor show that broke barriers in both comedy and biology. The house chef was buttering up the patrons next to us about his menu and just how incredible his suppliers are, especially when it comes to his salmon. The restaurant's salmon supplier, according to the chef, is a marine biologist in British Columbia who feeds his salmon all-organic fish food that is so good the salmon just stay there. They are so captivated by the organic feed, the chef went on, that they don't even need to be penned. "They're just there, in the ocean, not in a pen," he says. "I don't know why you would even call it farmed, because they're not." His story is complete fantasy. The concept of a fish-whisperer feeding the same salmon in an ocean cove for three years until he rounds them up for sale to restaurants is more than just the dumbest bastardization to date of how salmon are grossly mislabeled to the largely uninformed dining public. It also won't be the last. The only way this blathering will disappear from restaurants and grocery-store fish counters is for consumers to know when to call B.S. on the terms inappropriately used to make their fish seem better than it is or even something it's not. The most improperly used menu term associated with salmon is "wild." Wild means the salmon is the progeny of naturally spawning salmon. It is meant to differentiate them from salmon raised in pens on fish farms, and those bred and fed in hatcheries before they are released as smolts to head to sea with their wild half-brethren, where together they feed commercial fisheries that, in turn, feed you. Salmon labeled as wild are typically caught in the "wild," meaning the ocean. Maybe they should use the term "free range" for fish caught in the ocean without incorrectly asserting that their parents either hooked up in a gravel riffle or had their eggs and milt mixed for them in a 5-gallon bucket like they do at hatcheries. And don't for a minute think hatchery-raised salmon and pen-raised salmon are remotely interchangeable. Though they're both bucket-spawners, any commonalities stop there. For instance, spring chinook released from Cole Rivers Hatchery into the Rogue River are as small as 1-1/4 ounces. They make up for their coddled birth by swimming 157 miles to the ocean, avoiding predators and eating real salmon food. When one is caught by a commercial fisherman as a typical 18-pound chinook, 99.6 percent of its body mass came from natural food. Studies show their genes may be messed up, but a chinook of hatchery origin caught in the ocean as an adult is indiscernible to your palate from one born in the gravel. A chinook that spent its life in a pen eating, essentially, cat food and dye to turn its meat red wouldn't know the difference between a krill and a cantaloupe. Grocery stores also are notorious for using salmon names interchangeably. Fish labeled as "king salmon" are supposed to be what we in Oregon call chinook. The term "king" is common in Washington, Canada and Alaska, while chinook dominates in Oregon and California. Then there's coho, which also are known as silver salmon. A totally different species. A store in Ashland a few years ago was selling what it calls "wild Rogue King salmon," but that was terribly misleading on so many levels. It was not a wild king or a wild chinook. It wasn't even wild-caught. They were fillets of excess Rogue spring chinook salmon caught in the Cole Rivers Hatchery collection pond and sold to a seafood company that, in turn, processed and sold them locally. It doesn't mean they're not tasty or not from the Rogue. They're just not wild-caught. And it's not just salmon that get fake IDs. Take "Pacific snapper," which you see advertised daily on local restaurant menus and store fish cases. No such thing. Most likely they are the same black rockfish recreational anglers catch on charterboats. As for the Ashland restaurant episode, the supplier likely is another run-of-the-mill British Columbia operation raising non-native Atlantic salmon in floating pens. Even the salmon svengali spin couldn't make that sound like it's worth $24 a pop. Reach Mail Tribune reporter Mark Freeman at 541-776-4470 or [email protected] . Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MTwriterFreeman . By Mark Freeman Mail Tribune Follow @@MTwriterFreeman MailTribune.com By Mark Freeman Mail Tribune Follow @@MTwriterFreeman Posted Feb. 26, 2016 at 2:00 AM Updated Feb 26, 2016 at 10:52 AM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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