After scanning the menu at Rappa’s seafood restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey, Geoff Shester settles on sand dabs. Ashley Blacow goes with king salmon, and I opt for local Pacific cod.
The waiter looks confused when we all request sauce on the side. We don’t prefer it that way, but eating is secondary for this fish. Primarily it’s for science.
Once the waiter’s out of view, we discreetly shear off chunks of our lunch and slide them into plastic baggies. Shester and Blacow’s employer, Oceana (which has its California office on Monterey’s Heritage Harbor), is DNA-testing fish samples like this to see if they’re really the same species we think we’re buying.
Two of the three, we would learn later, are not.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Monterey County Weekly
