Wild salmon in the NE?

I know nothing about your area and geography, but my first thought was Whole Foods, so I checked, and somewhere in NYC it seems they have Atlantic salmon fillets, fresh and frozen, and the fresh on sale at $16/lb., if I understand correctly. Here, they used to have whole sides of what swims on this coast, but I only go near fish for others, and don't know if that's still true.

Atlantic salmon is farmed.

Oh! Sorry. :)

"Atlantic salmon" is a marketing term and indeed it means farmed.

food, at least for Alaskan salmon, the commercial season is in the summer months. So right now is just before it fires up again and frozen supplies would be at their low point for the year. I agree that Whole Foods is a good source for fish. We buy fish there exclusively- fresh, previously frozen, and frozen, and are never disappointed. I can sometimes find local salmon where I am but again, that's during the summer months and commercial salmon fishing has not been at normal levels and indeed has been closed in some recent years.

Curious to ask, why no sockeye?

Have you checked Costco? They sell Pacific fillets (no farmed Pacific salmon) in individual portion freezer packs here, both king and sockeye. But I have no idea of the availability of that product in NY.

I’ll have to pay more attention this summer but I don’t think it's a seasonal issue here. I definitely bought farmwd unhappily last summer but I may not have looked hard enough. The supermarket that carried it in the past largely went out of business a few years back. As for the fish, I mainly just prefer the thicker flesh. Lower surface area ro juicy meat ratio.

Gardengal - wditing my response I had up briefly. I haven’t seen Costco’s frozen salmon, will look for that. Thanks!

gardengal, I've seen farmed salmon at Costco. Did I misunderstand what you said?

I like Norwegian farmed salmon once in awhile, it's very creamy. Just as something in the rotation. We get it only at Whole Foods.

Costco frozen salmon portions are farmed in Chili and Norway. Suposedly sustainably farmed. Used to be wild caught. I usually avoid farm raised seafood unless i know it is approved.

Chef Eric Ripert of LeBernadin uses some farmed seafood that he has visited and researched for sustainability reasons. I just don't know what/where. (caught a documentary about his reasons).

FreshDirect sells wild and farmed from various sources,

Sixty South has received a "Good Alternative" rating from Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch, along with being certified as "Farmed Responsibly" by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, who recognize Sixty South among just a handful of elite producers worldwide addressing the most pressing environmental and social impacts of aquaculture.

They also have NYState farmed Coho, on sale now at 13.99lb

Coho is one of the most versatile salmon when cooking, beloved for its delicate and mild, clean flavor. Local coho are sustainably raised in a land-based, 100% freshwater recirculating aquaculture system in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. These coho have the signature deep red-orange flesh color and bright silver skin just like those in the wild, and are never given antibiotics, growth hormones, or pesticides.

I've been purchasing from Pride of Bristol Bay for about ten years now

I was previously buying from Costco when they had wild-caught.

We have salmon nearly once a week or every 10 days or so. It is equal in price to Costco. At about 22$ a lb. Free shipping. Dry ice. Flash frozen. We like the small portions in thick cryo-vac. A 6-7ounce portion is perfect for us to split. A ten lb box is about 25 portions. I have a half dozen recipes we use in rotation.

When visiting our families i have a box shipped ahead so i can make a couple meals to share and they are left with some portions for their freezers as a gift.

Elmer - I assumed she meant that product is not farmed. I see they sell frozen wild portions online, but the reviews are sketchy. I’ll check what’s in the frozen section at my store.

Sleeve, you’ll have me ordering FreshDirect yet! That coho looks interesting. First off it gets top rating from seafood watch. The description makes them sound more tender than sockeye. I’ll have to order some. And tortillas! Thank you.

You might have a WildFork retail location near you.

The flash frozen technology the past 15+years has improved so much that i have been using them for the holidays. I think my first visit was x-mas 2022.

They gave me free delivery that first year so i just use that now unless i'm near my location in LIC.

I’ve been wondering what Wild Fork is, it comes up in all my searches. Now that I'm googling I see articles saying one is opening near me but I can't tell when. (edit - i see now you pictured one of those articles.) Look forward to trying a new option! LIC looks to be the closest now. Of course I could probably order but I really prefer stores.

I have started a photo file of meals for entertaining. Next event for a few friends is a boil-up that needs to be outdoors weather permitting...Memorial day weekend. If it is a stormy washout weekend, i will shift to a DimSum meal indoors and the boil-up will stay in the freezer for the 4th of July. Maine losterman are out again this week but prices will be high until late July. So a half lobster tail per person on the grill, crab legs, shrimp, mussels, clams and sausage is a feast. With potatoes, corn and cornbread.

(The smoked duck breast is excellent. The rack of lamb is the best we have had)

boil-up menu,

Local Costcos here carry both Pacific salmon - all of which is wild caught - and farmed salmon from various sources. I have eaten their wild caught frozen fillets I mentioned - my sister swears by them - many times and it is delicious.

Living in coastal WA state, frozen or "previously frozen" wild caught Pacific salmon is almost always available and also fresh much of the year as well.

When I lived in Allentown there were two local fish markets near me, but both struggled to stay afloat. I don't know if they had wild caught Pacific salmon, since it is so prohibitively expensive I don't get it often. When I have salmon, it is most usually either I am out to eat or it is salmon cakes made with the canned Pacific salmon, which is what I can afford. I have seen Pacific salmon occasionally in the fresh seafood section of our local grocery chain, but again, rarely buy it. They also sell it frozen. Not sure the price. 18 or 19 bucks a pound sticks in my mind . . . Atlantic salmon is sadly problematic. We get fresh caught coho here in season but it also has consumption limits on it . . . proof of why I became a conservationist particularly concerned with water pollution. My love of seafood and freshwater fishes was no small part of it!! You can't miss what you never knew . . .

Edited to add I have also bought fresh caught Icelandic or Norweigan or some type of European salmon. The problem with Atlantic fresh caught salmon is that so many of the major industrial areas of the Northeast have rivers dumping effulent into the ocean on the East Coast and salmon being atop a food chain accumulates the toxins. Farm raised has its own issues too, as it is pretty difficult to raise "clean" salmon as the above articles mention. If it's less expensive, it's probably pollution-associated in some way . . . However, there is room for innovation in aquaculture here!! Tilapia is an example of a fish that would not get much press if not for it being suitable for aquaculture.

" The problem with Atlantic fresh caught salmon...."

There is no Atlantic fresh caught salmon. None. Salmon referred to as "Atlantic salmon" is farm raised only.

The only commercial salmon fishing areas in North America are in the Pacific.

gardengal, what you describe as the availability of salmon in your area is not terribly different from what we see here farther south. One thing that is different (from my own experiences in your area, previously described and so need to restate), is that I suspect salmon as a food source is more deeply ensconced in regional cuisine and vibe in Washington than down here. Your area also being a Lower 48 gateway to Alaska may also contribute.

Salmon is always available here, it's in all the stores most of the time and usually on the menu of better restaurants. Many have wild caught in season. Some restaurants tend to stick to farmed, it's a more consistent product from one delivery to the next and not everyone cares.

This time of year, what's in the stores is farmed or wild caught frozen or previously frozen and then defrosted. Fresh supplies fire up again in the summer when fishing season opens, there as here.

^^^There’s one coming here to LI and I’m looking forward to it. It won’t be close enough for regular visits but I’m sure I’ll head there once in a while.

I buy mostly fresh King, which is available here pretty much year round. The winter caught Alaskan King is fabulous and my seafood store almost always can get some. Sometimes they get white King, which is some of the best salmon I've ever had. The color is different because of a genetic anomaly. It sells out fast, so sometimes it isn't available because of that.
They have also started carrying an organically farmed King salmon from BC which I tried. Not bad! Glad to see some are trying to provide a better farmed product. eta: leaving more of the wild salmon for the whales!
Organically farmed King salmon

I read about the Salish way of catching salmon this year. It has been reintroduced and has been growing. Apparently, the traditional way is much easier on the fisheries and the environment in general.

Interesting!

Presuming the "Salish" comment refers to a tribal practice, wouldn't something "easier on fisheries" simply mean it's less efficient?

NOAA and states manage the health of fish populations by regulating what can be caught, not how. If the allowed catch is 10 salmon, how does the method used affect the "fishery" (the salmon population in that location) ?

My bad, I got salmon and tuna mixed up, there is some wild caught Atlantic tuna on the market, it is bluefin tuna. Whether or not it has toxins depends on where it was caught.

My information on salmon conservation dates back to when I was teaching; it was a 20 years old, so my instant recall memory was foggy. Wild atlantic salmon are no longer fished for because they are a threatened species in some areas an endangered in others, in their native habitats. The concepts are the same 20 year later for fish farming, the concentration of pollution and the risks of gene mixing. The concepts are the same for tuna too, toxins in the wild waters. I just mixed up the fish species as to the problems they face.

The problem with farmed Atlantic salmon is the water quality, but not of the wild ocean. It's the quality of the water on the fish farms. Effluent from the farm ponds gets into the water cycle and is carried by rivers to the ocean and sometimes the water from the farms is even discharged directly into the ocean if it is near the farms. That releases toxins, but also sometimes farmed salmon eggs or fingerlings, which if they reach maturity can breed with wild salmon and change their genetics for the worse. Farmed salmon have the migration instinct suppressed by breeding, so their genetic code entering the wild gene pool endangers survival of wild salmon, that must migrate to survive. This was the data I delved into when teaching, studies on the prevalence of inbreeding between wild salmon and salmon farming escapees.

https://iu.pressbooks.pub/foodfiberfashionfa20/chapter/where-does-your-salmon-come-from/

Here's more about the genetic consequences of fish escaping from fish farms.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2302512-breeding-with-farmed-fish-is-changing-the-life-cycle-of-wild-salmon/

This was a recent disaster here in WA, when farmed Atlantic Salmon was released into the wild. I think they caught a lot of them but it resulted in changing the laws about what is allowed to be farmed here. Atlantic Salmon disaster (and other reasons to avoid eating farmed fish).

WA bans Atlantic Salmon Farms

olychick, I don't consider the NRDC an unbiased source. Its releases have a blatant and intentional bias. You and anyone else are welcome to take what they say and hug it tight but I think pushing it away to look for something more balanced and objective is a better choice.

The Washington "news" is not really recent, it happened more than 5 years ago (according to the piece you've included as a link)..

Ya know EF, some of us actually follow the scientific literature consistently. An isolated incident in a news article is an illustrative anecdote, often with an issues analysis to give context. A peer reviewed scientific study including genetic sequencing of population samples in the supporting data is not biased. I'm not going to post a literature review of 25 years of peer reviewed published scientific studies on salmon genetics, but they are out there if you are interested in delving further into this issue. It's not even an issue that has received little attention, it is a major thread of fisheries research, from past times to present. The technology available in the field of genetics has had a major impact on the field of biology since we first started using genetic sequencing as a research tool.

Just a quick little JSTOR search using (salmon +genetics) turned up ~15K articles.

Look, pinkmountain, I'm not blasé about issues related to fish farming. But reading about various incidents and concerns also doesn't lead to tears running down my cheek.

There are economic and demographic realities to deal with. When human existence passed the hunter/gatherer stage, food production first began to alter previously barren land. It hasn't stopped since.

Economics drive conduct. Chickens and egg-layers live and are processed what most reasonable people (myself included) consider to be horrendous conditions. BECAUSE people want the end products to be cheap. Boutique products with more gentle husbandry at significantly higher prices are not demanded by mass markets. The same parallels exist for most food production today.

Wild salmon was grossly overfished in Europe and so commercial salmon fishing is now banned. People want to eat salmon, so it's farmed there. It's still in its infancy as far as developing reasonable and environmentally more sensitive practices are concerned. Do you have an alternative? Who will pay for it?

A lot of shrimp farming is done in Third World countries with practices that produce a lot of polution. You know, some of them are countries that are indifferent about using ingredients that contain lead for child toys or prohibited adulterants for food and medicine products. Shrimp products from such places are inexpensive and greatly supplement the limited and managed wild catch for North America. What should be done about them? If the import of such products are banned, the cost of wild shrimp will skyrocket. Who wins, who loses?

l pinkmountain I read what you wrote and wondered if you know about this company? I previously referenced a Pacific Salmon farm on Vancouver Island using more environmentally friendly methods, but just saw this other farm mentioned in the last article I linked about farm raised Atlantic salmon in the PNW, They are using more environmentally friendly methods (which you surely know about, if not this specific company) to raise Atlantic salmon in the PNW. Not sure why they farm that instead of Pacific...the only Atlantic salmon I've ever had was farmed and inferior to the Pacific in my mind. But maybe some people prefer it.

https://kuterra.com/

The alternative is for consumers to stay up on the issues regarding the food that they eat, and also the alternative is for people to learn how to evaluate information, and even to read and understand and evaluate scientific studies. The alternative is for us to have excellent science and math and social studies education in our schools for our citizens. The alternative is for us to expand our research and technology horizons. And that's my field, so yes, I have decades of alternatives. As for fisheries, loving to eat fish and other seafood was one of the main reasons I went into ecology and natural resource management in the first place, back in 1980.

A much larger percentage of the population buys food daily than the percentage that has a STEM education. STEM educated people don't necessarily have more or better judgement or common sense on public issues than anyone else has. Sometimes, less. Don't wait for that to change.

Please suggest some specifics, not platitudes. What could or should be done tomorrow? Who will pay for it? It's unrealistic to expect human behavior to defy normal market forces, especially in cases (the majority of us) who are people who need to get buy on other than unlimited means.

Conduct or actions that are more environmentally thoughtful are more expensive and, for many, unaffordable.

Rather than talking like a doctrinaire Washington D or R who only has fixed ideas and no interest in middle ground compromises, what reasonable and possible steps should be taken to remedy what concerns you? Let's together do something tomorrow, what should that be?

I buy canned Pacific salmon most of the time. Limited selection in my small town.

EF, I have no interest in engaging you, I have zero confidence that I would learn anything constructive. I've never heard you say much of anything that isn't a platitude, apparently for your own amusement, but I could be wrong on that account. You just troll no matter what anyone says. You rattle off ridiculous insults to people you know virtually nothing about. That says it all for me.

If you want to learn more about the state and future of fish as food, here's an extensive footnoted 2020 report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. You could engage with the UN on any of the points there if you're so inclined to argue over a whole host of issues and policy suggestions. https://www.fao.org/3/ca9229en/ca9229en.pdf

" I've never heard you say much of anything that isn't a platitude, apparently for your own amusement, but I could be wrong on that account. "

Count on it.

I don't respect anything the UN says or does, you can enjoy that link without me. The UN is a toothless, mostly ineffectual organization in my view with few accomplishments in 130 years of existence. Imagine the US having a one-house legislature with a structure such that no representatives from other than small towns and rural areas were permitted. That's the UN - 190+ member nations, over half of which have a population of under 10 million people. My state has nearly 4x that. The little guys with mostly no direct skin in any geopolitical sense game are the majority. The UN gives them a chance to take a whack at the big guys then run away.

It is a place for talking. I'm not sure much comes from that. There's a point of view that the only thing worse than having the UN, would be not having the UN. Either way, little difference.

ps - There's a place in anyone's food preference list for canned salmon - salmon patties with bread crumbs and egg come to mind as a quick fix from a shelf stable product. Costco's salmon burgers are better. Canned salmon is no substitute for the real thing, whether fresh or frozen. It does use up the lesser types of the fish that otherwise don't have much of a commercial market.

Have you tried Wegmans? Fish department may just have Atlantic and Sockeye, but if you wander over to the sushi department, they usually have King Salmon. Price isn't cheap, but it's tasty. We like to lightly shallow poach it in sherry/marsala and butter. It comes skinned and deboned for sashimi (I buy the unsliced), but you could probably ask about something less prepped either from the sushi counter or seafood counter.

I haven't been to the ones in NYC, but as far as I can tell, most Wegmans are pretty similar other than shape.

No Wegman’s by me. There’ll be one close-ish but not close, within the year I believe. I realize I said NY metro area but that was to get area stores. I’m out on Long Island. I’d expect Citatella’s had it but that’s not near me either. Working through some steelhead trout, then will be back on my quest.

This is at my local Walmart in the frozen foods. I have also found at Publix.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Wild-Caught-Alaska-Sockeye-Salmon-Portions-0-70-1-15-lb-Tray-25g-Protein-per-4-oz-113-g-Serving/895031780?from=/search

Thanks - wild sockeye is plentiful here as well but not my preference.

Well, that is all I have ever seen, even when Publix has the never frozen in August? What salmon are you looking for?

ETA: This is the only one my husband likes. Made into patties and fried like a burger.

I don’t know all my salmons but a thick one like king salmon. Like I may have said upthread, I used to get it (at least periodically) at a supermarket that sadly no longer exists.

Chinook?

https://www.google.com/search?q=king+salmon&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

You will probably have to order it from a company on the west coast that processes and flash freeezes on the boat.That is how I buy my Key West pink shrimp, except I can buy those at Publix.

Unless you live right on the coast, whichever coast you need for the seafood you want, that is the freshest.

After learning about anisakid nematodes, I'd rather have frozen or canned wild-caught salmon than never frozen...

https://www.outdoorlife.com/fishing/worms-costco-salmon/

Apparently in other wild-caught fish as well. It's weird, I grew up fishing and cleaning, cooking - or not - our catch, but don't recollect encountering those worms.

It looks like chinook, king salmon, is endagered. You will have to search and just jump on buying it when available. Close eyes when price shows up. Splurge every once in a while.

Carol - I’ve found those worms in tuna several times, probably obly because the contrasting color makes them stand out. They’ve always looked dead so I’ve picked them out and pretended I didn’t see them. Yuck.

I’m still curious about those coho and will probably try those soon.

They're evidently perfectly safe to eat cooked - raw can cause some gastric distress tho, according to that linked article.

Some populations of Chinook salmon are endangered or threatened. The Chinook/King salmon that are sold in grocery stores are not from those populations.

US-caught Chinook salmon are sustainably caught and managed.

https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/chinook-salmon

New Zealand salmon runs are not big enough for commercial fishing, so Chinook salmon from New Zealand, such as Wegmans' King salmon, is farmed.

https://niwa.co.nz/freshwater/nzffd/NIWA-fish-atlas/fish-species/chinook_salmon