Since humans are over-farming salmon and cod, the new, alternative fish “need great salesmen, because attempts to market them come with a small margin of error”:
The simplest way to make a fish catch on – that speaks much strongly to our unadventurous tendencies — is just to call it salmon. That may well be why spiny dogfish, called “rock salmon” in England and “little salmon” in France, works so well for Europe. The salmon trick seems to work for just about anything: When it appears on his menus, [seafood chef Rick] Moonan tells his staff to refer to Arctic char as “salmon lite,” and what he calls steelhead salmon is actually trout.
Regardless of how salmon-y these alternatives are, we need them, because demand for the pink fish far outpaces what wild populations are able to supply. Customers who have learned to turn their noses up at farmed salmon, said [seafood shop director Davis] Herron, have been known to insist upon purchasing the wild variety year-round, relying, when it’s out of season, on wild cuts that, as he puts it, “taste like shit.”
The Dish 