Fresh and local are huge selling points for seafood, but when you buy fish or shellfish from local grocery stores and markets, are you getting what you’re paying for?
"People want Carolina shrimp. It’s that simple," said Doug Cross, co-owner of Pamlico Packing, which gets locally caught seafood to North Carolina plates.
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"Our shrimp, most of them, are caught in a more brackish environment in the Pamlico Sound, which is one of the best places in the world to grow a shrimp," Cross said.
But Cross’ competition is not just coming from other coastal fishermen. With demand for fresh and local, many sellers are cutting corners by getting their seafood from other countries. And in some cases, high-demand fish is being mislabeled.
In the past two years, two North Carolina-based crab meat companies admitted in federal court they were labeling crab as a U.S. product when a lot of the meat was foreign.
"I characterize it as fraud. The tricky thing is it’s not always clear who’s doing the fraud," said John Bruno, a marine ecology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Bruno, who teaches a seafood forensics class, is on a mission to make sure consumers get what they pay for.
"It’s economic fraud," he said. "You’re paying a lot more for something that’s misrepresented."
WRAL Investigates bought fish and shrimp marketed as fresh and local from grocery stores, seafood markets and even a sushi restaurant.
The samples were placed in test tubes for Bruno, who didn’t know what was what or where it had been bought. He then extracted a DNA sequence from each of the samples to see if they were what was advertised.
Of the five fish samples, the mahi mahi was correctly labeled at the store. The DNA signatures from the other fish, including both pieces of sushi, weren’t as clear and are still being tested.
The shrimp told a different story.
"Disappointing," Bruno said of those test results.
Three of the five samples had clear-cut results: They were all shrimp from the Pacific Ocean, despite being marketed as local.
The shrimp samples came from Capital Seafood, Earp’s and Saltwater Seafood, all in Raleigh. Store workers even assured WRAL the shrimp came from the coast when asked.
Bruno said his research shows they’re not alone in selling mismarked seafood.
"We’ve tested over 100 shrimp from vendors at the coast, across the Piedmont and in the mountains, and about a third of it is mislabeled," he said.
The owners of all three Raleigh markets said they do carry local shrimp, but keeping enough supply is a challenge, so they supplement stock with other options. Employees must have miscommunicated the shrimp origin the day it was bought, the owners said.
Over the past four years, Bruno said his team has sampled shrimp from those three markets a total of seven times. Only once was the shrimp from East Coast waters.
"It matters economically both to consumers and to the fishermen," he said, noting the mislabeling has a negative ripple effect.
He's now working with lawmakers to create a seafood labeling law to ensure there’s truth in advertising. He’s also starting a project to test seafood for local restaurants so they can be certified for correctly labeling seafood, even if it’s not from the North Carolina coast.
Until there’s a new seafood labeling law, Cross says buyers need to take precautions if they want local and fresh seafood.
"Wherever you’re buying the product, be very adamant, 'Where is this coming from?'" he said.
Cross agreed that it’s hard to meet buyer demand due to catch regulations and import pricing pressure, but he and Bruno called for tougher rules to protect consumers and local fishermen from mislabeling.
"It’s wrong. There’s no other way to put it," Cross said. "It hurts this entire industry. It puts a black eye on everybody who’s trying to do it the right way, who’s trying to promote North Carolina seafood."
Bruno said his research has shown the following sellers consistently label their seafood correctly:
- Tom Robinson’s Fish Market, Weaver Street Market and Cliff’s Meat Market, all in Carrboro
- Captain John’s Dockside, Lantern Restaurant, Hawthorne & Wood and Whole Foods all in Chapel Hill
- Saltbox Seafood Joint in Durham
- Locals Seafood, which has several markets in the Triangle