Wild-caught Pacific salmon is more myth than reality on some Puget Sound restaurant menus, a study at the University of Washington Tacoma has found.

About 38 percent of samples from Tacoma-area restaurants showed a menu was promoting farm-raised Atlantic salmon as wild-caught Pacific salmon, or calling a coho a king. Grocery stores and fish markets got better scores, with only about 7 percent of store samples mislabeled.

"I'm shocked at the number of substitutions that we encountered," said Erica Cline, an assistant professor in the university's environmental program who was one of two biology instructors leading the study.

Cline wanted to give her students some hands-on experience using DNA to distinguish species and thought this project would make the learning more fun. She decided to look at salmon after another study conducted in New York City found many restaurants were serving farm-raised Atlantic salmon and saying it was the wild Pacific fish.