Patterns and implications of seafood substitution

Red Snapper, or Lutjanus campechanus, is found in offshore waters around coral reefs and rocky outcroppings and is one of the most economically important fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico, with greater total landings and higher prices than any other snapper species. In 1996, the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council and the US Secretary of Commerce determined that L. campechanus was grossly overfished, requiring strict management measures to restore stocks to sustainable levels. Such conditions have created an economic climate favorable for “seafood substitution,” where less valuable species are mislabeled and sold under the names of more expensive ones. Although defrauding of consumers is one obvious consequence of these substitutions, mislabeling of overexploited species also creates the false impression for consumers that threatened species are actually plentiful in the sea.

To investigate patterns of seafood substitution in the US, students in my class in Molecular Ecology used molecular genetic methods to discriminate fish sold as “Red Snapper” in the US. We found that >75% of fish sold under the name Red Snapper (the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's legally designated common name for Lutjanus campechanus) are in fact other species. Even though our sample size was small, the margin of error for our estimate is small enough (17%) that we can be confident that the frequency of mislabeling falls somewhere between 60 and 94%. Several news organizations have repeated the study and have found the same result with Red Snapper as well as other species.

Recent public opinion surveys, such as the influential report by The Ocean Project (1999), indicate that a large segment of the U.S. public regards the world's oceans as containing a limitless supply of fish. Seafood mislabeling of the magnitude that we have found in Red Snapper may be an important contributing factor to the public perception that the supply of marine species is keeping up with ever increasing human demands.

Learn more about this research in the news at:

USA Today
Science News
 NPR's Talk of the Nation

Related publications:

Marko, P. B., S. C. Lee, A. M. Rice, J. M. Gramling, T. M. Fitzhenry, J. S. McAlistar, G. R. Harper, A. L. Moran. 2004. Mislabeling in a depleted reef fish. Nature 430:309. [PDF]