The numbers
EPA + DHA per 3 oz cooked — the number people think they're buying fish for. Fifteen common species, best to worst. Some of the "healthy" ones are near the bottom.
| Species | EPA+DHA (g) |
|---|---|
| Salmon, Atlantic — farmed | 1.83 |
| Herring | 1.71 |
| Salmon, Atlantic — wild | 1.57 |
| Sardines, canned | 1.19 |
| Mackerel, Atlantic | 1.02 |
| Salmon, pink — canned | 0.91 |
| Trout, rainbow — wild | 0.84 |
| Sea bass | 0.65 |
| Oysters, eastern — wild | 0.53 |
| Shrimp | 0.24 |
| Tuna, canned light in water | 0.19 |
| Scallops | 0.15 |
| Cod, Pacific | 0.14 |
| Tilapia | 0.11 |
| Tuna, yellowfin | 0.10 |
The top of this list is small, oily, cold-water fish — salmon, herring, sardines, mackerel. The bottom is lean or shellfish — cod, tilapia, shrimp, scallops. Fat is where the omega-3s live, so a lean "white" fish is never going to be an omega-3 source, no matter how healthy it sounds.
1.83 g vs 1.57 g. Farmed Atlantic salmon is fattier, and the omega-3s ride in the fat. That doesn't make farmed "better" overall — the full comparison is here — but the common claim that wild has more omega-3 is simply wrong.
Tilapia and shrimp are among the lowest-mercury things you can buy, and they're at the bottom here. Safe and beneficial are two different questions.
The five swaps, the fish to limit, and the label traps — one page, all sourced.
The Fish Cheat Sheet →Omega-3 values — NIH Office of Dietary Supplements, sourced to USDA FoodData Central. EPA+DHA per 3 oz cooked.
These are single composite values; real content varies with season, diet and feed. USDA does not label most rows as farmed or wild — only Atlantic salmon, rainbow trout and eastern oysters carry that detail.
Herring photo: U.S. FDA (public domain).