I would be highly suspicious of anything calling itself "wild" and "Atlantic" in the same breath. There is almost no wild Atlantic salmon fishery left in the United States and Canada. It's all farm raised. Occasionally you can find legitimately wild Atlantic catch in Scotland or Norway. But wild catch makes up less than 1% of all Atlantic salmon on the market.

So if you want wild salmon, start by looking for a Pacific label, a listed species, or a regional designation of some kind. That's still not a guarantee, but it narrows things down quite a bit.

For what it's worth, 90% of all salmon on the US market is farmed. So if you're at a restaurant or a BBQ and aren't sure what you're getting, you're probably getting farm-raised Atlantic salmon.

There are still some wild Atlantic salmon, if you don't mind a bit of a drive and hike.

A BBQ? That's farm raised catfish.

The meat looks significantly different when comparing wild pacific to atlantic.

But yes, shady fish distributors have been caught selling cheaper fish as the more expensive.

For me Atlantic vs Sockeye or Copper River Salmon. Atlantic is usually a faded pink orange color. It’s more like Arctic Char. Pacific Sockeye is extremely red.

Another fact, the only native Trout species in my state, Georgia, is Brook trout. They are actually closer to Arctic Char than trout or salmon.

Unless you caught it yourself, color is a particularly bad way to determine the kind of salmon you’re looking at; Fish farms feed their fish a steady diet of red dye to colorize their flesh: https://qz.com/358811/heres-why-your-farmed-salmon-has-color...

oh man, this just ruined my day. You can normally see the difference immediately by color between farm and wild raised.

At least they have to label it as color added now...

I trust some of the places I get my fish. Certainly not the big chains.

Copper River salmon isn't a species, it's acrually multiple kinds of pacific salmon with extra marketing and branding.

Kings, sockeyes and cohos. It's all caught in Prince William Sound near the mouth of the Copper River. I grew up fishing there. There is a lot of marketing, but I think it tastes way better than farmed or Atlantic salmon and just can't bring myself to eat that.

Not saying it isn’t good marketing. I can see a visible difference between Copper River salmon and salmon of the same species from somewhere else.

Ha, maybe that's why they say "Wild Caught" and not "Wild".

A caught fish could be wild, or from a hatchery. You can tell the difference since hatchery fish have a fin removed but I imagine it's easier to not differentiate when labelling.

Perhaps - if you live on the west coast and get "fresh wild caught Atlantic salmon" ;)

Locally sourced = bought from the supermarket down the road