Noted on Costco.
can I handle the truth? What’s your take on Foppen hot smoked salmon?

Low-brow (and mostly unprocessed food) eater, never heard of it before.

A quick look up is, at least their pacific salmon is wild=caught MSC-certified (for all its worth). Atlantic salmon is Norway farmed and ASC cerfified again (whatever that means). Fish farms are notorious for disease and destroying the sea bed underneath (not much different from consistently dumping raw, untreated sewage onto the same seabed - something my local big city has been doing for decades but have finally almost completed a sewage treatment plant))..

I fully appreciate the moral argument against consuming it, but am unable to resist making a single one pound purchase each year to cook with my mom because we really like it. I try to convince myself that the fisheries use a considerable portion of the windfall in order to ensure that the stock remains sustainable.

maybe China gets better wild quality; either way zero judgment - I appreciate knowing all of this stuff.
Costco sea bass is not cheap; it’s more than the frozen wild salmon. Think it’s $15 a pound. So price is a factor for me.

I can't recall eating it in China during the past 15 years. My mom lives in Florida, and we special order it from one of the few local fish markets. Yes, it's crazy expensive, but we figure we can justify buying it once per year.

ah, got it. Well I won’t buy it and that offsets you buying it especially since Costco sells a 2-pound package.

Costco also sells Chilean sea bass fresh when in season. They have it now and you don't have to buy 2 lbs. I almost bought some this past week because like Moondog, I only treat myself to it about once a year and I know it will be gone soon but I already had meals planned for the week so didn't.

I guess one good thing about catfish and it oft-used trade name basa, and probably tilapia too, is that they feed on vegetative matter so don't need to be fed other fish.

Some don't like the taste of these fish but that may be how they're treated pre-harvest (or to put it directly, killed). They should be put in clear water so the muck that causes the taste is purged from their system. I know carp is treated like that (or should be) so the muddy flavour goes away and I understand most Asian countries do the same. Maybe not so in the U.S. (big producer of catfish/basa since at least a few species are native).

Similarly, oysters in France are taken to inland settling ponds before harvest (not killed in this case but packaged for shipment to retailer/consumer). That has the benefit of letting the oyster purge themselves of various natural toxins. I know that isn't done for the local oysters where I am (got Norovirus just over 3 years ago and have not gone back to eating raw oysters since).

I've gotten food poisoning from raw oysters 3 times, all from fancy restaurants in Asia. My dad has the same sensitivities, but told me all is usually good if we stick with large seafood chains like Legal Seafoods because their purchase volumes make testing financially viable. I've never had any problems with French oysters from standalone restaurants though.

As it is raw seafood, anyone can get food poisoning as I have done multiple times in the past with Oysters, Clams, Sushi, and even Rare Hamburgers. So far, nothing serious enough that I needed to be hospitalized, but I enjoy the foods too much to stop unless told by one of my doctors to do so.

In my case, it was an oyster (purchased directly from the producer) that has found renown and a market worldwide (even in France). Unfortunately the body of water where the oysters are cultivated reportedly have a lot of households with faulty septic tanks.with no one (or at least a majority) willing to pay for a municipal sewage treatment system.

The raw oyster talk is freaky - I get raw oysters at some sf places where the oysters are from certain places and I’ve yet to suffer.
maybe as we age, raw oysters become more challenging??

Maybe not. There were numerous reported cases that year (2016-17) though I haven't heard of any the past couple of seasons (used to be no months w/o an "r" but September has been added to the no list).. Right now, I don't live close to the oyster source (3 h drive) so I haven't indulged since.

When I got ill, I still had a dozen live oysters I had just bought the previous day or two.. They got a reprieve. I managed to make it to a park and threw them back into the sea (same body of water the came from just a hundred or so Km further south). The area there is permanently closed to shellfish harvesting due to past industrial pollution.

I have read and I feel like I comprehend the idea that fresh unfrozen fish at a supermarket (esp Costco) was previously frozen and then converted to refrigerated packaging.
I’m on a break from buying frozen wild salmon and today chose these refrigerated wild fish for $5.99/lb - how best to freeze? Do I freeze now or AFTER I open the package for my first cooking?
i hope it is safe to freeze. This is still much less than the $12.99/lb I paid in the past at a regular supermarket butcher counter.

If you’re going to freeze it, freeze it on the day of purchase, ideally immediately when you get back from the store. It doesn’t matter whether you freeze it in the store package or break it into whatever multiples of portions work for your mealplans and freeze it in your own bags. But freeze it quickly.