Uncovering a sea of deception

By Nicole Dergosits, Stony Brook University Graduate Student

My mother likes to eat crab and used to order California rolls when she was in the mood for sushi. A few years ago when we were eating at a sushi restaurant, I told her that California rolls are not often made with real crab meat. The expression on her face appeared surprised, then it turned into disappointment. As my mother looked down at her possibly fake crab sushi with dissatisfaction, I explained to her that imitation crab,  known as surimi, is most likely used instead of real crab meat in California rolls and other crab dishes. Surimi is significantly lower in nutritional value but it is much cheaper than real crab. Even though the definition of California roll does include crab and imitation crab, restaurants usually don’t reveal which one is being served. I have been to several restaurants in various areas of New York, and I have never seen “imitation crab” in any of the descriptions on the menu for items such as crab rangoons, crab cakes, or sushi. I have seen “imitation crab” listed on store-bought sushi and in fine print on a frozen package of crab cakes, although the exact ingredients of the imitation crab are seldom revealed. Surimi can be made out of many different things such as; pollock fish with fillers and flavorings like starch, sugar, egg whites, and crab flavoring. Surimi is also used to make fish sticks and other breaded fish products according to Business Insider. If you order something with imitation crab or something described as white fish, you don’t know if you’re eating pollock, cod, haddock, or even baby shark meat.

Seafood shoppers and restaurant patrons regularly don’t know what they are really buying and eating. We often do not know where the seafood came from either. Unfortunately, the lack of information given to consumers is frequently intentional. Seafood fraud is real, and it is becoming a global problem. According to FishWatch, types of seafood fraud can also include seafood substitution, short-weighting, and mislabeling. FishWatch is maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency responsible, along with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for handling seafood fraud. In 2019, the environmental group Oceana collected over 400 seafood samples from 250 locations including restaurants, large grocery stores, and smaller markets in 24 states and the District of Columbia to determine the validity of seafood labels compared to FDA guidelines. The findings showed that 21 percent of the fish tested were wrongfully labeled and one out of three establishments visited sold at least one item of mislabeled seafood. The investigation also concluded that the seafood was mislabeled more often at restaurants and smaller markets than at larger chain grocery stores. The “bait and switch” is actually not the most common kind of seafood fraud.  Seafood short-weighting happens more often; processors misrepresent the weight of the seafood, often intentionally, by overglazing, soaking, and breading. Processors are expected to add ice or a preservative to keep seafood fresh but some of them add excess ice (overglazing), or additives (soaking), and include that weight with the net weight of the seafood, which is considered fraud according to FishWatch. Beware if you buy frozen seafood since there can be a lot more ice or preservative than necessary in the package. 

It was dismaying for me to learn about the deception around commercial seafood labeling and processing. If someone asked me a few years ago if I ever ate shark meat, I would have replied with disgust; “of course not!” However, if someone asked me that question today, I would have to say; “I wouldn’t intentionally choose to eat shark meat.” Shark meat is not very popular here in the United States, but you can find it in some restaurants. A  NY Daily News article listed four different popular restaurants in New York City which proudly sell shark dishes. The article also mentioned Louis Rozzo, who is a seafood expert and purveyor for trendy Manhattan restaurants. Rozzo said that dogfish, a type of shark, is generally used in fish tacos because it is cheap and arrives at the restaurant gutted and without head or tail. Despite some restaurants openly serving shark meat, not all restaurants are transparent. Whenever I see fish tacos on the menu, I do not usually see the name of the fish being served. Sometimes the dish description just says white fish. That could mean a lot of different things. But don’t you—don’t we all—want to know what we are being served?

As determined by SharkAllies, a non-profit organization dedicated to shark conservation, some of us may have eaten shark meat without knowing it. Shark meat tends to be sold as a more expensive fish such as grouper or swordfish so the distributor gets more profit. Shark meat also tends to be sold under misleading labels and names, like flake, sea ham, imitation crab, and whitefish. For instance, SharkAllies tells us it was common for “Rock Salmon” —which is really spiny dogfish— to be used in fish and chips.

© Image by Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Thankfully, the NOAA and FDA have done a lot to help combat the issue of seafood fraud. NOAA scientists have been using advanced molecular genetics tools to analyze samples and accurately identify species for the past 20 years. The FDA has been working with the Smithsonian Institution, and they developed a regulatory database of DNA sequences for hundreds of popular seafood species. According to the FDA, this library is also available to the public and outside laboratories and the FDA uses DNA testing when inspecting seafood suppliers. However, seafood fraud is still an ongoing problem since government agencies cannot monitor the entire market. Private labs are starting to conduct seafood DNA testing as well, which is a step in the right direction. 

Furthermore, we need to push for traceability requirements that will trace the seafood from the boat all the way to the consumer’s plate. My mother should be able to know when she is eating real crab or imitation crab and we all have the right to know exactly what we are eating and where the product came from. You can help fight seafood deception by reporting any suspected fraudulent activities on the NOAA Enforcement Hotline at (800) 853-1964.