RedHanded - ShortHand: Fish Fraud

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

‘Anal seepage’ is one of the many potential risks to the consumer due to seafood fraud, a multi-layered conspiracy that goes as deep as the Mariana Trench.The stats speak for themselves: if you’re in the UK, there’s a 55% chance that the fish you’re eating has been deliberately mislabeled. In the US, 120 samples of ‘Red Snapper’ were tested, and only 7 turned out to be the real thing.Clearly there’s something fishy going on.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / InstagramSources and more available on redhandedpodcast.com

Hello. Hello. I don't know what hello is in fish. Blu-flop-flop. Exactly. Could you, Suriti Barlet, tell the difference between a cod and a pollock? I think so. Really? Yeah. What about an Asian catfish or a red snapper? Definitely.

Really? I watch a lot of river monsters. You know what? That's so true. I watch a lot of fishing shows. And I also eat a lot of fish. Yes, you do eat more fish than anybody I know, actually. That's why I was so horrified when I heard about this When I heard about this I was like

Are you fucking kidding me? So no, I take my fish very seriously Yeah, I think I The only differentiation I would ever have to make Is in a chip shop When we were kids and we were like, oh no Like you shouldn't order cod because they're endangered

So then everyone started eating haddock But I just believed Mr. Hing That's his actual name Oh, what was that? Mr. Hing's chip shop. It's in Chesham. Oh, okay, I see. I see. Do you prefer, now if you go to a chip shop, are you getting cold or haddock? I'm not getting fish.

You're not getting fish? No, I'm getting a battered sausage or I'm getting a pie. I mean, and I eat the pie with my hands like an apple. What pie? Depends. When I was younger, I would go chicken and mushroom, which defeats the whole point of fish and chip Fridays because it's meat, but, you know. Whatever.

It's not my fault. Jesus. Exactly. No, I do go Haddock and this is quite sad because I don't eat fish and chips often. You're at the seaside, you have to get fish and chips. If I go to seaside, I'm not eating anything else. Don't even fucking start with me. But the other day I was just like having an absolute crazy craving for fish and chips. And this is a bit sad. But the one in Waltham Stowe, Orffords, which is good, they deliver to my house. So I was like, we'll just order it from there because I can't be bothered to go outside because it's like fucking snowing. And the fishing ship shop in our area only takes cash. And I was like, I don't even know where my debit card is. So I ordered it from there. And they actually do like just grilled haddock with no batter on it. And I was like, do you know what? I actually just crave the chips more. So I just got that a big vat of curry sauce because what is the point of eating fish and chips if you don't have curry sauce?

It's gross. I think that's because you went to University of the Midlands. Maybe. But like I would never have fish and chips in a pub because they never have curry sauce. No, I wouldn't either really. But anyway, what are we on about? What the fuck are we talking about? Well, if you are like me and you don't know your fish,

and you think that they all look the same, then you, like me, are a fish racist. Except they do also look quite similar. The truth is that the average consumer cannot tell the difference between one fish and another fish, especially when they've been skinned and filleted and they all look the same. Because, as Mark Twain once said, we are all alike on the inside.

And that is especially true for fish. According to a Guardian seascape analysis of more than 9,000 seafood studies, if you're in the UK and you're chowing down on a bit of marine munch, there is a 55% chance that you are not eating the fish you think you are. I am outraged by that. That's outrageous because different, like, different... The same amount of British Pakistanis married to their first cousins. All outrageous, any statistic that's 55%.

I'm outraged. Absolutely outraged. Like, are we fucking serious? Because my reason for the outrage is the fact that different fish have different nutritional things that you're eating them for, right? And also, they vary massively in price, which is obviously what this whole fucking episode is going to be about. But that is crazy. That's... I'm upset.

I'm upset. So, who's behind this marine mendacity? It's time to get to the bottom of the conspiracy deeper than the mass. Mariana Trench, this is the shorthand. According to a lady named Max Valentine, which is a fucking fantastic. Cracking name. A side-diss with the non-profit Oceana, not the club in Birmingham, or maybe elsewhere as well. Oh, Oceanas are everywhere.

One in Wofford? They're most certainly as one in Watford. Does it have a stand that sell sausages, though? Maybe. It's right to us. Tell us if that's true. And she's basically the one. that brought to light, fish fraud or seafood fraud, which is one of the most common fraud schemes

that the average consumer is likely to come into contact with. And it takes place to varying degrees. The most basic and probably the most common form of fraud is mislabeling. This is when a seafood is labelled as higher quality or more attractive than it actually is. And this pisses me right off. For instance, a farmed fish being passed off as wild or line caught. And apparently this is incredibly common in salmon. I am furious because basically, like, you know, they recommend that you should eat like

three portions of oily fish in a week, like with sardines, mackerel and salmon being like the top tier contenders. And luckily for me, I know not everybody likes sardines. And I wouldn't say they're my favorite fish, but I can get on board with them once a week. Macral and salmon. Fucking love it. And I purposely, I don't bind like buying organic for everything or line court or wild. or everything for like that.

If I buy me, I try buy high welfare and salmon. They specifically say you should buy wild salmon if you can afford to, because farmed salmon is basically like apparently not very good for you. So the fact that they are putting up the price and then charging you for farmed salmon is pretty fucking despicable. Now Atlantic salmon, the cheapest and most widely sold salmon,

can vary hugely in price, depending on whether it's farmed or caught in the wild. In the UK you could buy a cheap farmed Atlantic salmon so we're talking a whole salmon for about £50, maybe even less if it's purchased in bulk. A line caught wild salmon, however, could be more than four times as much. However, to the average consumer,

it's pretty difficult to tell the difference. Some of you might be thinking that fish are pretty stupid. They are practically vegetables, so who really cares if they're farmed? Well, for starters, there is a legitimate taste and texture difference between wild and farmed fish, presumably because the wild can swim more, so they're more muscular. And actually, I do prefer the texture of farmed salmon. I, yeah, I bought the fanciest salmon in whole foods once, and I was like, this is not as nice. There's also a type of salmon that's called like Kita salmon, which is like really firm. And you feel like you've overcooked it, but you haven't.

It's just the texture of it is like less fatty and more like lean. Whereas I'm like, but I'm eating it for the fat because you're eating it for the amegas. Yeah, and farmed fish don't have to hunt or swim for their food. So they are more likely to be fatty and less muscular. Even when we went to that salmon farm in New Zealand, I didn't think it was very nice. It wasn't very nice. Had such fucking good reviews. It wasn't very nice at all.

The salmon were fun to feed though. They were. They were wild. So when it comes to salmon, farmed fish have like fatty white marbling and paler flesh, which is most noticeable before the salmon is cooked. Taste-wise, it means that wild salmon is stronger and richer, whereas farmed salmon is fattier and more buttery and just nicer to eat. On top of this, because farmed fish are raised in incredibly close proximity,

illnesses are pretty common. As a result, almost all farmed fish are fed antibiotics, which are present in their flesh even after they've been processed. Those aren't destroyed during the cooking process or the smoking process or whatever. So a common way that sellers try to mislead consumers, especially in the US, is to label the fish as raised in the wild, which actually means a fish raised in a farm in its natural habitat, aka the sea. So it lived in captivity in a nicer location.

That's all that free range means with chickens. It just means they don't have like, they are not in a specific cage. They're still in a cage. They're just got some mates. Yeah. Anyway, companies also commonly use carbon dioxide to bring out the orange color in salmon, which is banned in the EU. The second form of seafood fraud is substitution.

This is taking one fish which is very expensive and substituting it with another practically indistinguishable fish that is significantly cheaper. And a common culprit is scallops. In Germany a study showed the 48% of the king scallops they tested were actually the far less desirable Japanese scallop, which are part of the same family but are completely different species and are farmed extensively in Japan. Worse still another study by Oceana found that some criminals had been. cutting out circular plucks of white fish and passing them off a scallops by injecting them with a saline solution to make them look even more plump. I do think I like a scallop.

I think I would be able to tell the difference between actual scallop and round bit of fish. I think if you can't tell the difference between a scallop and a round bit of fish, then I don't think you should get ripped off, but I have less concern about it because you still maybe hopefully enjoyed it. Another area in which this sort of like trickery of substitution takes place a lot is caviar. True caviar, which is the eggs or row of the sturgeon family, is one of the most expensive foods on the planet, and an attractive prospect, therefore, to fraudsters.

Roughly 85% of wild sturgeon species are listed as endangered, and two-thirds are critically endangered. As a result, almost all true caviar on the market comes from farmed sturgeon. And because they take around a decade to come to maturity, the overheads of sturgeon farming are incredibly high, and so caviar remains very expensive. Naturally, an obvious substitute for true caviar

is the row of another fish, commonly lumpfish, capelin or flying fish, which is then dyed black to recreate the look of proper true caviar. Most of these substitutes are a substantial downgrade and are far crunchier than the creamy texture people associate with the real thing. More disturbingly, some imitation caviar has been made using sturgeon guts, which are formed into round balls and passed off as the real thing. Jesus.

However, by far and away, the OG, the Don, the king of all substituted fish is the Red Snapper. I'm surprised by that. I feel like that's not. I wouldn't say the Red Snapper is a particularly common feature. on menus in the UK. Yeah, in America, I definitely. But here, I don't know. How common is it?

I don't know. Well, doesn't matter because Red Snapper is essentially the fish fraudsters dream. It's an incredibly expensive fish, known for its rich, nutty flavor, but it also has white flesh. And that means it's incredibly easy to substitute with a much cheaper fish like Pollock or Asian catfish. A study in 2018 found that nearly 70% of fish. fish sold in the UK as Red Snapper was actually a much cheaper substitute. Wow. I'm shocked. I need a good fishmonger. And then you can just go see it, hole, and know what you're picking. Maybe.

In the US, they tested 120 different samples that had been sold as Red Snapper, and only seven were the real thing. Wow. That's bonkers. So, we've made our point. Lots of the fish that you are eating. Maybe you're eating it right now isn't really what you think it is. Why don't you ask it? But how and why has this been allowed to happen? The truth is that the majority of seafood fraud takes place long before the fish reaches the consumer.

In fact, it often takes place before the fish have even reached dry land. Today, industrial fishing takes place in deep international waters. hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles away from any watchful eyes, apart from the deadliest catch. And the vast majority of these trawlers process their fish before they get to shore. This means that by the time a fish arrives at the docks, it's been gutted, filleted, and frozen into a block with hundreds of other fish. It's then offloaded, labeled as whatever the trawler says it is,

and sold at wholesale fish markets. As we've already said, especially with generic white fish like Pollock, Snapper and Cod, they all basically look the same once they're filleted, let's alone once they're frozen into an enormous icy cube. And because the vast majority of fish isn't sold as fresh, by the time it's ground up into fish fingers or breaded or battered down the local chippy, who's going to tell the difference? There is literally no motivation for trawlers to label their catches correctly. Combine this with how incredibly overfished highly prized,

fish have become, and the motivation is obvious. In the UK, fishermen refer to wild cod as unicorns and bars of silver, because they know they're so incredibly rare. Pollock, on the other hand, are everywhere, and when they're covered in batter, nobody can tell the difference. And to honest, I find cod is the most boring fish ever. I don't think I've eaten cod in my living memory. It's so bland. I literally could not care less about cod. No, not here for it. So, So trick me all you want. The motivation to mislabel fish is even higher when you take into account something called bycatch. Bycatch is the fish that gets caught in the trawlers net that isn't the target species.

Until recently, nets and boats were smaller and trawlers could target specific areas and even specific shoals of fish. So they would mostly catch what they were aiming for. That all changed in the 70s when trawlers got bigger and the nets got wider and deeper. and as a result bycatch increased, and fishing vessels began hauling in nets of fish that they didn't want. And this left them with two choices. Chuck it all back into the sea, or get creative. Option one is obviously the simplest,

but chucking it all back does cause a problem of its own. For a start, a lot of the fish die before they even leave the net, so it's not very sustainable and it causes havoc in the ecosystem. And secondly, from a purely financial viewpoint, you are chucking potential earnings back into the sea. We don't like doing that. No. That doesn't mean it never happens, though.

In their business inside a documentary that we watched, there's footage of a trawler on the coast of Gabon that got raided by local authorities. The trawler was aiming to catch shrimp, but the crew were using a net that's links were far too small. So for every shrimp they were bringing in, they were also catching hundreds, if not thousands of other fish. which they were then searching through to find the elusive shrimps

and then kicking the rest back into the sea. And this is not an exaggeration. There is a shot where they have a bucket that has maybe like five or six shrimp in it and they're tipping skip loads of fish back into the sea. Not the most efficient process. So that leaves option two. Flog your bycatch off to the consumers, which in itself gives you two options.

You can either, A, pass off your bycatch as, the fish that you were originally aiming for, or B, try to convince the consumer that the buycatch is actually a prized fish in its own right. Both options regularly happen with butterfish. Real name is Eskola. Eskola was originally a bycatch from deep sea fishing for tuna. But when trawlers started dragging it up by the ton, they decided to give it a cheeky rebrand. The name Butterfish comes from the buttery taste and texture. that the fish has when it's cooked. Unfortunately, this buttery taste and texture comes from a waxy oil within the flesh

that, if consumed in large quantities, can in humans lead to anal seabage. Oh my God. As a result, Escola was banned in Japan, and it must come with a warning label in the EU. Worryingly, however, Eskola is often used as a substitute for expensive tuna, as its buttery texture and rich flavour do make a convincing luxury alternative, especially for sushi. Anal seapage? I've never heard of it. I don't want to know.

Oh my God. So all that is a bit scary. On a good day, you're eating a fish that's not quite as premium as you thought it was. But on a bad day, you're eating an entirely different fish, and on a really, really bad day, you've got anal seapage. So what are you going to do about it? Well, despite seafood fraud being a huge issue, governments aren't really doing a huge amount to crack down on it. As we said, a large amount of fishing takes place on international waters, which means that in theory every nation is responsible for keeping an eye on it.

And as we said before, if something is everybody's responsibility, then it's also kind of nobody's responsibility. The truth is that right now the burden is on the consumer to ask questions. This isn't an ideal solution, but there are some. ways that you can be savvy about the seafood that you snaffle. The first tip that we saw all over the internet is to try to buy fresh fish and support your local fishermen. The vast majority of seafood fraud is committed hundreds of miles away out at sea by unlicensed and unregulated trawlers. But if you buy your fish from the local fishmonger and they got their fish from the local fishing

boat, there's a very good chance that you are getting what you pay for. On top of that, If you can see the fish with your own eyes, you can make sure that it's the species of fish that you were looking for if you can tell fish apart, which I can't, even when they've got their clothes on. Failing that, at least try to get your fish with the skin on and your seafood's still in its shell. Even if it's from your local supermarket, you can still tell if your red snapper is real if it has red skin. Now when it comes to eating out, the golden rule is if it seems too good to be true, then I probably would. probably is. If your local restaurant is selling lobster ravioli for the same price as a burger and chips, you need to try and question how and why. And also, like, can we just get over lobster? It's just not even that nice and it's so difficult to eat. It's such a pointless thing.

Stabs you in the hands. I couldn't kill us. No, cod and lobster, fuck off. If you are, however, not like us, insist on eating lobster, but you're getting a very good price, and it's almost guaranteed that they have substituted that lobster for crayfish or crab. The same goes for snapper and bluefin tuna. These are incredibly expensive fish. A single red snapper can sell for several hundred pounds. And a single bluefin tuna once sold in Japan for the equivalent of a million pounds. So if you're being offered snapper for a steel, raise an eyebrow,

especially if they serve it without the skin. As for tuna, the same applies. If your local budget sushi bar is serving rich and buttery bluefin tuna for less than you'd pay for a California roll, it's probably not bluefin. Best case, it's just regular tuna, not bluefin. Worst case, it's that anal seepage escal. Luckily, in small sushi portions, it shouldn't be enough to cause the dreaded seapage.

But the too good to be true rule also applies to seasons and locations. Red Snapper is only in season between summer and autumn and is fished mostly in the Gulf of Mexico. Scallop season varies from country to country, but is generally November to May. And if your seafood is being served out of season, it's either for. frozen, or it just is not the real deal. The reality is that seafood fraud is complicated and there is no single solution. For all the hate we've thrown up corrupt big fishing, we also have to take some responsibility ourselves. A significant part of the reason that seafood fraud is so rife,

especially in the West, is because of our incredibly narrow palettes. Asian catfish isn't a substitute in Thailand, it's the star of the show. Yet here in the UK, we predominantly eat just a handful of the world. of species of fish. We turn our noses up at a fish and chip shop that we're selling Pollock instead of cod, despite the fact that they have come from the same family and they taste basically the same. The only difference is that one has been fish into almost oblivion. So if you take one thing from this episode, it's you don't have to stick to cod or salmon or tuna. There are plenty more fish in the sea. Yes, I would highly recommend tin sardines. And have you done the little cat

setting them on fire thing? What? So you open a tin of sardines. I haven't done it, but it's on my list. I think they have to be in oil. So, like, ones that are in olive oil or whatever. You put some spices on it, and you put a piece of kitchen roll, dry kitchen roll over the top, and then you set it on fire.

And it, like, smokes them and crisps them. And then you can just, like, put them in some tacos or whatever and have yourself a little smoked sardine fish taco situation. And you had a tin of sardines for, like, ATP. That's true. Very, very savvy. And very good for you. if it's really fucking sardines. Well, there you have it.

Well, I am going to seep out of my bladder because I'm going to piss myself. So that's it. We'll call it there. So eat some other fish. Try the little sardine thing. I solemnly swear to try and eat more fish. Wonderful.

Just stay away from those escalars. And we will see you next time for another short hat. Go-bye. Bye.