Applying Population Genetics for Authentication of Marine Fish: The Case of Saithe (Pollachius virens)

The number of fishery products with quite detailed description of the origin is gaining. This trend is driven by the interest of consumers and the fight against illegal unregulated and unreported fisheries. Unfortunately, there is a lack of methods to proof this information experimentally beside the document based traceability assessments. For marine fishes population genetics is a promising strategy, but research is concentrated only on a few species. Saithe is a commercially important fish species. Despite that genetic knowledge is scarce regarding the specification of populations. For a comparative study cost and time effective strategies were tested: We found RAPD-PCR to be a useful method for low-budget research or prestudies. The adoption of microsatellites from closely related species turned out to be possible with limited success quota. Our results suggest a clustered structure of populations within the Northeast Atlantic, probably overlapping in the northern North Sea.