Sara Pozonsky doesn't look like a fishmonger.

	Robin Rombach, Post-Gazette Sara Pozonsky shows samples of salmon to Enrico's restaurant owner, left, Neil Tomer and chef Jason Sicher. Click photo for larger image. Graphic: What seafood is safe to eat Graphic: A salmon's journey

Armed with cell phone and laptop while seated in the dim afternoon light of Enrico's Ristorante in Shadyside, she resembles nothing more than an affluent soccer mom until the moment she pulls a large side of vacuum-packed wild sockeye salmon out of a chic green tote bag.

"Try it and see what you think," she tells Enrico's chef, Jason Sicher. "I can get you more within 24 to 36 hours of being caught. This," she says, tapping the fish package with a perfectly manicured fingernail, "is fresher than you'll get anywhere else."

Other Pittsburgh fish purveyors might disagree, but there's no question that Ms. Pozonsky, an Alaska native who lives in Washington County and runs her own wild-salmon wholesale and retail business out of her home, represents a sea change in the fish industry.

Even as pressure on the world's fish supply increases -- U.S. consumption in 2003 went up nearly a half pound per person from the year before -- consumers have an unprecedented range of choices.

Besides traditional sources like Giant Eagle or Shop 'n Save, or wholesalers with smaller retail outlets, such as Benkovitz and Wholey's in the Strip District, you can buy your tilapia or tuna steaks at Costco, Sam's Club, Whole Foods and high-end specialty wholesalers and retailers online, from Seafood.com to Ms. Pozonsky's www.WildAlaskanSalmonCompany.com.

Ms. Pozonsky might represent a tiny fraction of the local fish market, but she's busy nonetheless, and that's in part because she and her fellow wild salmon suppliers in Alaska are benefiting from some bad press that their biggest competitor -- the farmed salmon industry -- has received in recent years about contaminants in fish and pollution from salmon farms.

While farmed salmon sales plummeted, wild salmon quickly became chic to eat, even though it's much more expensive and available fresh only a few months out of the year.

The salmon wars are only the most visible example of the fish industry's ongoing identity crisis, however. And the American consumer is right in the middle, bombarded with conflicting information about fish's health benefits as well as warnings about possible contaminants in seafood and risks to health and the environment.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has announced its intentions to expand aquaculture dramatically over the next decade, allowing fish farms as far as 200 miles offshore. That's set the stage for another epic battle between the industry, who say such expansion is critical to meet the growing demand for fish such as salmon by consumers, and environmentalists, who say problems with current offshore fish farming need to be addressed first.

So what's a fish lover to do?

"I eat both farmed and wild salmon often," says Dr. Frank Hu of the Harvard School of Public Health, who says reports about wild salmon being healthier than the farmed varieties are overstated.

"We are certainly not telling people not to eat fish. ... We're telling them to eat less farmed salmon," countered David Carpenter of the University at Albany, N.Y., co-author of a much-contested 2004 study that found higher levels of PCBs, an industrial contaminant, in farmed salmon than in wild salmon.

Still confused? You have every reason to be.

For the most part, health experts say seafood is good for you. The American Heart Association and numerous nutritionists recommend eating two servings of fatty fish such as salmon and light tuna a week to prevent heart disease and combat obesity. Just last week, researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago reported that eating fish once a week was associated with slower cognitive decline in adults over 65.

Use caution

But in the same breath, scientists and nutritionists caution us not to eat certain types of fish too frequently because of the presence of mercury, PCBs, dioxins and other toxins. While most people aren't at risk of adverse effects from mercury by eating fish and shellfish, the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency issued joint guidelines for women of childbearing age, pregnant or nursing mothers and children under age 15 to steer clear of swordfish, shark, tilefish and mackerel, which have high levels of mercury -- and also happen to be among the most overfished. White albacore tuna should be limited to one meal a week because it contains more mercury than light tuna.

But there's confusion about mercury, too. While a number of studies have found that consumption of high levels of mercury by mothers can pose a risk of health problems in their offspring, a recent University of Rochester study of children in the Seychelles islands whose mothers ate lots of fish high in mercury showed no adverse effects.

"The studies are on both sides of the fence, but the science is not there yet," said Dr. Philip Davidson, author of the Seychelles study, who contends that the existing research on mercury is not conclusive about its risks. "If you are of childbearing age, you may want to think twice about eliminating fish from your diet, since fish contain micronutrients that are clearly beneficial to the offspring."

But these days, salmon wins, hands down, as the fish that most people are baffled about.

On the one hand, salmon is prized for its healthiness -- it's low in mercury, and loaded with Omega-3 fatty acids, which have been shown to protect against heart disease, stroke and Alzheimer's.

But then there's that 2004 study published in the journal Science which found PCBs -- which have been shown, in high concentrations, to cause cancer in animals -- in farmed salmon at higher levels than in wild-caught salmon and in any other kind of fish. Mr. Carpenter, the SUNY researcher, and his co-authors at Indiana University concluded that eating more than one meal of farm-raised salmon a month could slightly increase the risk of getting cancer later in life.

That prompted protests not just from the farmed salmon industry, but by many prominent epidemiologists and nutritionists, that the study was alarmist. Critics noted the PCB levels detected in farmed salmon were well within FDA's safety limits, while the study's authors had relied on much tougher -- and more controversial -- standards by the Environmental Protection Agency (to date, the agencies have not reconciled their differences).

Fishing industry critics also noted that PCB levels in the feed supplied to salmon have been lowered dramatically since the study was conducted, with greater ratios of vegetable matter to fish oil and fish meal, which are sources of PCBs.

While some of the PCB levels measured might be toxic to animals, "there are to my knowledge no known deaths or serious diseases in humans associated with current exposure of PCBs," said Dr. Joyce Nettleton, a nationally known expert in fish nutrition and author of one of the first books in the 1980s about the benefits of Omega-3 fatty acids. She noted that heart disease presents a far greater danger to Americans than the slight possibility they might get cancer from eating salmon with trace amounts of PCBs, which are found at the same levels in meat and dairy products as well.

"There is no question in my mind that the health benefits of eating salmon vastly outweigh the risks," she said.

Jury's still out

Others, however, cite the 2004 PCB study as a warning.

"There is not widespread agreement out there about the issue," said Jennifer Dianto, program manager for Seafood Watch, a well-known consumer education initiative at Monterey Bay Aquarium, which conducts extensive scientific research into seafood. "The potential human health risks of PCBs in salmon and other fish have not been rigorously examined, but that study, which involved two metric tons of farmed and wild salmon from around the world, tells us that further investigation is needed."

Farmed salmon presents other problems, too, Ms. Dianto and other environmentalists say, citing environmental degradation at farms in which thousands of fish are stocked in floating ocean pens, their waste creating water pollution and sterile "dead zones" in the ocean. Other problems include overuse of antibiotics and salmon escapes into the wild, especially in the Atlantic. There, farmed salmon can spread disease and breed with wild salmon, causing a kind of genetic pollution.

Supporters of aquaculture claim farming salmon relieves pressure on wild fish stocks, but studies by the Pew Charitable Trusts have shown that two to three pounds of feeder fish are required to produce one pound of farmed salmon. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration disputes those studies, however, claiming that just one pound of "feeder" fish is now required.

Currently, there's not much the U.S. can do to regulate salmon farming, since very little of it exists in this country except for a few farms off the coasts of Maine and Washington state. Most of the farmed salmon Americans eat, in fact, comes from overseas, 60 percent from Chile, 30 percent from Canada and about 5 percent from the U.S. and other sources.

Whole Foods gets most of its farmed salmon from Iceland, Ireland and the Shetland Islands, said Steve Parkes, a Whole Foods facility team leader in Gloucester, Mass., one of the company's three distribution centers. He says the company is satisfied that the growers are engaging in environmentally sound practices.

"The bottom line is that the husbandry has improved dramatically from even three to four years ago," he said.

Joe Benkovitz, president of Nordic Fisheries, handles Giant Eagle's seafood program, obtaining its farmed salmon from Chile. On a visit there several years ago to a farm operated by international giant Fjord Seafood, he said conditions were spotless.

"If I had gotten sick, I would have said don't take me to the hospital, take me to the salmon farm," he joked, adding more seriously that he believed that the industry has made "tremendous improvements" in the technology of harvesting salmon. His comments have been echoed by representatives of Chile's salmon farms, who note that fish pens are now placed in stronger currents to more effectively sweep away waste and that fish "escapes" into the wild have declined.

Some environmental groups remain skeptical.

"Both the laws and the enforcement of the laws dealing with environmental issues are not as well-developed in Chile as in other salmon-producing companies," says Michael Hirshfield, chief scientist at Oceana, an international ocean protection organization.

"Other countries have experienced growing pains," acknowledged NOAA spokeswoman Susan Buchanan, adding that problems overseas just highlight the need for expanded aquaculture in this country.

"The U.S. can capitalize on the mistakes made by other countries that have led to environmental problems," she said. "In filling increasing demand, we might as well grow the supply ourselves, rather than importing what might not be up to par with U.S. standards. We need to get into this game."