It happened the same way for years: The Alaska Airlines “salmon thirty salmon” lands at Sea-Tac each May and taxis toward the waiting crowd. An image of a 127-foot king salmon adorns the plane’s body; its cargo of Copper River salmon is less than 24 hours removed from the water. These are the very first fish of the earliest (and, to many, best) king run of the season. Television crews on the tarmac provide red carpet coverage of the semi-silly spectacle of pilots escorting a ceremonial fish off the plane like security for a dorsal-finned Taylor Swift. Handpicked chefs wait below to receive this prime piece of protein.

It’s Seattle’s version of the presidential turkey pardon: an impeccable PR tradition that underscores what an animal can represent. Officially, this largest species of Pacific salmon is known as Chinook, though you see it on menus mostly as king salmon. These days the wild king we eat mostly comes from Alaska. But this fish—and its annual journey from rivers to ocean and back again to spawn—matters deeply in Seattle. Kids take field trips to fish hatcheries. Families watch king salmon shimmy up the Ballard locks fish ladder. Some of us make a living as commercial fishers, pointing trollers toward Alaska during salmon season. Others are members of Pacific Northwest coast Indigenous tribes, which have celebrated salmon’s symbolic powers for generations. And, of course, we love to eat king salmon—the omega-rich prime rib of the sea. Only now, more people are wondering whether we should.

Conscientious seafood eating was once relatively simple. You chose wild-caught over the farmed stuff. But the salmon’s connection with another iconic Northwest animal complicates things. “I didn’t realize king salmon was still on menus here,” a visiting friend from California remarked over dinner one night in Ballard. He was referring to a recent New York Times article that laid out a quandary concerning the Northwest’s two most iconic animals. The southern residents, the Pacific Northwest’s pod of orcas (and an endangered species), feeds exclusively on king salmon. The fish’s population has trended downward since the 1970s; some king salmon stocks are on the endangered list themselves. These types of data points will easily dampen your appetite.

Various government agencies—Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, tribal co-managers, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the federal NOAA Fisheries—track populations and the health of individual salmon runs. These groups offer science-based guidance on which kings they deem sustainable, and how many to make available for fishing. Recovery for Chinook and for southern resident orcas are huge priorities in this process, says Raquel Crosier, who works in the WDFW agency’s fish program.

The government is unequivocal: if it’s being fished legally, it’s sustainable. Others feel strongly that humans should still forgo this historic delicacy to make sure another symbolic local animal has enough to eat.

“As long as there are delicious options to choose from, we will be fine,” says Renee Erickson. One of Seattle’s most eminent chefs decided to stop serving king salmon in 2018. That was the year the killer whale Tahlequah, a member of the southern resident pod, carried the body of her dead newborn calf for 17 days. This unprecedented display of maternal grief attracted international attention and more awareness of orca malnourishment. Erickson told the New York Times it spurred her to make a change. “A lot of it comes from what science and data you look at to make a decision,” she says. Ultimately, analysis from groups like Wild Fish Conservancy resonated with her more than assurances from state agencies.

I started speaking with local chefs, expecting I would write about how we’re likely to see less king salmon on our plates. Instead I found restaurant owners navigating the complicated and politically charged science of conservation and fisheries looking for the answer that feels right. And wow, that process is fraught.

At Seabird on Bainbridge Island, owner Brendan McGill sources much of his king salmon from tribal fisheries. In Washington, Native American tribes retain specific rights and privileges for salmon fishing. He likes the tribal system: put lots of fry into rivers via hatcheries; promote waterway health so salmon can make it safely to the ocean; then harvest only a small fraction to help grow the population.

“If all this stuff is true, it’s not just sustainable—it’s regenerative.” He realizes the “if” in that sentence is contentious. Some claim this system is rife with fraud and misreported numbers. “I know there’s plenty of margin for fuckery,” says McGill. But he believes in supporting “one of the last economic bastions the tribes have.” How we treat our waterways could make a bigger difference than the number of fish we pull out of them, he points out. “You could not serve fish and still end up with no fish.”

Menus at Duke’s Seafood locations haven’t included king “for, gosh, it has to be 20 years,” says founder Duke Moscrip. King may be his favorite fish to eat, but coho is the salmon you’ll find on the menu. Moscrip’s 50-year career includes regular visits to Alaskan fisheries; they do an admirable job being sustainable, he says, “but the real word is restoration.” One EPA estimate says the Puget Sound’s Chinook salmon population might be as low as 10 percent of what it once was. In other words, he wants to restore the number of king in the waters, not just sustain it. Dams on the lower Snake River are a bigger obstacle to wild salmon recovery, says Moscrip. “It’s very, very delicate. You have to be careful who you get into conversation with.”

Ray’s Boathouse, another longtime seafood destination, buys mostly from a single trusted fishing boat based out of Sitka and uses a nonprofit called Long Live the Kings as a sounding board for sourcing decisions. Ivar’s stopped serving king from the Salish Sea in 2018, says company president and CEO Bob Donegan, who sat on the Seattle Aquarium board and was familiar with the issue. “That’s the favorite orca food.” The 300,000 pounds of fish the company buys each year includes king from fisheries in Alaska. It’s the only state that has sustainable fisheries written into its constitution, he points out. A little “Orca Safe” icon on the Ivar’s menu exists to assure some diners, but to encourage others to ask what this means. “We try to make it really simple for people” to learn more, says Donegan. Though “simple” seldom applies when talking king salmon.

“You might make an enemy talking about this,” warns Taichi Kitamura, chef and co-owner of Sushi Kappo Tamura in Eastlake. He’s an avid sport fisher; as another chef put it to me, “that guy lives and breathes fish.” And Kitamura’s only half-joking about the enemy thing. He serves wild king sashimi in hopes diners will develop a passion for preserving it: “The best protection for king salmon is to share what king salmon has to offer.”

Like many chefs, he closely follows data from various government agencies. He also knows conservationists, sport anglers, and other groups that take issue with the premises underlying the science, or how those numbers get allocated. It’s a hard conversation to have, he allows. Context changes based on geography, on fishing methods—even the time of year. “The king salmon troll-caught in wintertime in southeast Alaska is completely different than the salmon that was caught in the Columbia River mouth in the fall.”

Victor Steinbrueck, who runs casual seafood restaurant Local Tide, grew up around his mother’s Native American art gallery, appreciating salmon as a symbol of abundance and regeneration. For chefs who do serve king, “it’s almost their duty to speak about the importance of it and why we are serving it,” he says. “That’s where restaurants fail.”

Smaller runs in recent years (and generally smaller fish) mean prices have shot up on the king salmon that does receive sustainable marks. Many restaurants have embraced the charms of sockeye salmon, which is more plentiful. Fisheries, in turn, have begun processing sockeye as carefully as they do king, since more pristine fish commands higher prices.

King salmon already symbolize plenty—tradition, livelihood, stewardship. But they’ve also become an emblem of the work chefs (and so many others) do to balance our values with our desires. Wherever diners fall on the issue of eating king salmon, the least we can do is ask to learn more. And maybe not order fish in a restaurant that can’t offer any answers.

Amid the complication, one salmon shortage remains uncontested: Alaska Airlines’ salmon thirty salmon plane has flown its final Copper River junket. The aircraft has a new livery, designed by an Alaskan Indigenous artist. It’s also a salmon, but presented in traditional Northwest Coast formline art. The plane’s Tlingit name, Xáat Kwáani, translates to “Salmon People.” Which, depending on how you look at it, is all of us.