Welcome to the Speak Up For Blue Podcast, session 141. What's up everybody? Happy Monday. Today we are going to dive in to the seafood industry. And I titled this podcast episode "Is the Seafood Industry in Trouble?" Because it is riddled with problems. And we're going to go through the problems, we're going to go through some of the solutions, and whether they're adequate solutions that consumers can make to allow consumers to make an informed decision. And that's what we're going to cover today on the Speak Up For Blue Podcast. In today's episode, stay tuned. Welcome to the Speak Up For Blue Podcast, helping you get involved in ocean conservation. And now, here's your host, he still puts his hands in the air because he doesn't care, Andrew Lewin. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the Speak Up For Blue Podcast, your voice for the ocean. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, founder of SpeakUpForBlue.com, marine ecologist and self-proclaimed ocean printer. And that's what I do here. I am an entrepreneur whose mission, personal mission and business mission is to protect the ocean and to provide people with information. That's what we do here at this podcast. We provide people with a ton of information on what to use, what tips to use to live for a better ocean, make you aware of some ocean news that's happening around the world, introduce you to people who are doing some fantastic work in the ocean conservation industry and talk. Just start that conversation of ocean conservation with people who don't normally have the conversation because it's amazing what people do. Case in point, I have a great friend of mine who I work at with. He came to me and he said he wants to change his ways to make a better life, a better world and make an example for his children. He wants to make that better role model and he came to it. I didn't convince him. He just came to me and asked, "Hey, I need to talk to you about what we need to do." And I just think that's great. These are people who are conscious of the environment but don't really understand what they do in their world that can make changes. They know they can make changes but they just don't know where to begin. It's interesting. A lot of people when they first talk, they talk about, sorry, this is a little bit of a tangent. I'm going off tangent here before we get into the seafood industry podcast episode, but I just want to talk about this quickly. But we often think that when we have to do something, we have to do it all the way, 100%. We have to be in and we have to do everything the right way. Well, sometimes we're not set up to be that way. For instance, people think that, "Oh, well, the biggest things that we need to do is we need to reduce emissions, so I'm just going to go out and I'm going to get a fully electric car." That's great. If you can afford it, awesome. Go do it. I can't afford it. I wish I could, but I can't afford it. It makes it difficult for people to, once they see that, be like, "Well, it's just not affordable," and they just abandon the entire process. Don't do that. Start with the small things first, change your life slowly, and then, hey, look, Tesla just came out with a car that's going to be starting at $35,000, and your next car could be that car once it's freely available. The more companies will start following in Tesla's footsteps by making an entirely electric car, and maybe that's what we're going to be running off of in the future. But just right now, if you buy a Tesla, I don't even know where it starts. Probably 100 grand or so, and it just moves up from there, and then you have to put in charging stations, and this and that, and it becomes a huge expense. If you can afford it, and you want to do it, that's fantastic, but if you can't afford it, holy cow, what do you do? You go for the lesser models, the hybrid models, and even those are crazy expensive, because you want a nice car, you want something that will fit your lifestyle, your family, what you want in a car, and so forth. These things are massive purchases. A car is a massive purchase, and that's something that could just derail somebody from living for a better ocean, so you want to make sure you start off small, start off with something little and move into this, and today, we're going to talk about one of those things. See how I tied that in there? Today, we're going to talk about one of those small items, and that's really seafood. We eat seafood all the time, and why do we eat seafood? Not just because it's tasty, and some people just love it, I mean, that's one of the reasons, but it's actually healthy for you. Holy cow, it's high in protein, it's high in good fat, the omega-3 fatty acids, it's amazing, and for some, it's really, it's their main part of their diet, and that is key to a lot of places, a lot of developing countries rely on seafood, so most of the stuff is consumed in developing countries, and I think 50% of a lot of important things coming into the States is from developing countries. Now we're going to get into the statistics, and we're going to get into the problems in a second, but seafood is one of those things that is considered in the Western world at least, where I live, and that I'm very familiar with, and I believe Europe as well. Seafood is a nice thing to have, it's something that's of a luxury, right? You go out, you're willing to pay a little bit more for some seafood if you're going out to a restaurant or something like that, you make a nice seafood dinner at home, you're going to get lobster, you're going to get mussels, and it's amazing. If you live on the coast, it could be very cheap, when I lived in Halifax doing my masters out there, my girlfriend, who's my wife at the time, my girlfriend at the time, we would go out, we have friends come over, we go to the supermarket and, or the fish market and say, hey, or seafood market, I guess, well, we want lobsters, and the lobster's like $6.99 per pound, you know, so we get a pound and a quarter lobster each, we would get a couple pounds of mussels, we would get some real smoked salmon, and, and then that was it. We would go home and have a feast, and it was awesome, and it was for like 40 bucks for the four of us. You go to a restaurant, and that's what your minimum, what you're paying for the lobster in itself, and we had a great meal, so it is cheaper to eat there, and what was nice about that supermarket or that fish or seafood market is, you know, I got to talk to the people who were in that industry there, in the seafood industry, they would be able to tell me where the seafood came from. Lobster is very local, right, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, PEI, Newfoundland, they fish for lobsters, that lobster, lobster is a big fishery there. Mussels are either aquacultured or they're wild caught, most of them are aquacultured now. So they know, you know, the particular place where they come from scallops, and Halifax, Digby scallops are probably one of the biggest scallops you've ever seen, and they're tasty, and they're great because you know where they're coming from, and you know they're following regulations, you hope they're following regulations, and we're going to get into that as well. So you know, you know, when I went to those fish markets or seafood markets, I'd say, I knew where everything was coming from, because it was a smaller seafood market, and the people who were there, not only had they been fishermen before, but they knew the fishermen where they caught all their stuff, it was really great. They knew the supply train, the supply train, and that's what we're going to get into a little bit as well. So you know, I talked about getting seafood at, you know, when I lived in the coast, I got them at fish markets and they were very in tune to where the fish was caught. I live in Ontario now. I like to eat seafood, but I find it more and more difficult now to eat seafood where I'm in Ontario, because where I get the seafood, I get them at the grocery store. I don't know a lot about the seafood markets here. I get them at the grocery store. They don't know much about where the fish are coming from. Of course, now to their defense, they put someone behind there, behind the counter that may be paid minimum wage and not educated on where the fish is coming from. So they don't say it. They just like, I don't know. So for the last year and a half, I go up there, I ask, hey, you know, is this wild caught salmon or cultured salmon, so forth and so forth, and they say, I don't know. They said, well, if you don't know, then I can't buy it from you, because I can't, you know, in good conscience, make that decision, then take a chance that I'm, you know, eating something that's not caught sustainably, or that's not, you know, in the eat right kind of thing of one of the apps that I have, which again, I'll talk about in this episode. And they're like, okay, that's fine. They don't care because there's no invested interest in selling it because they know everybody else will buy it because they're not as informed. And I'm not saying that I'm better than everybody else. I'm just saying it's something that matters to me, and it's something that I take to heart. So lately I haven't had a lot of seafood. When I go to a restaurant, I ask, where is your seafood coming from? And if you go to, usually if you go to the nicer restaurants, they'll know exactly where it comes from. In fact, a lot of them will only sell local seafood because they know exactly where it came from. They know the actual fishermen, fisher women, fisher people who caught it, right? So they know that. So, you know, it's there are a lot of problems. We're going to talk about a lot of the problems and a lot of it has to do with just the massive, how massive the industry has gotten, how globalized the industry has gotten. And you know, we're going to get into it right now. We're going to start talking about that. But the sources essentially are fish, seafood markets, grocery stores, restaurants. And we have also people go right directly to the boats when they come in. So they go to the fishing people and they say, "Hey, what do you got for sale?" Right. And we're going to talk about that as well. So what I want to get into first is really what happened when, you know, what's the differences between now and back say 40 or 50 years ago. And my parents were about my age, they, you know, they were, and younger, they would be able to go to a seafood market, talk to the vendor and say, "Hey, you know, I'd like to get tuna or I'd like to get something." And at that point in time, fishing was okay. You know, we didn't know much about how much we were fishing out of the ocean. People considered, you know, you didn't really have to worry too much about it. A lot of the fishermen that were there were local that would supply the local vendors and they would, you know, the retailers and then they would put together things. They would sell it and so they knew where the fish were caught, they knew them personally, the fishermen personally, they knew the customers personally and there was that great relationship. There was that trust. We could typically trust the retailers. This is all before globalization. You know, the vendors knew the suppliers personally and could vouch for them, you know, and vouch for how the fish were caught and where they were caught, you know, exactly where it was coming from. And it was actually a lot of people who love seafood want to know. It's a bit of a pride thing, especially people who are really into it. It is a huge pride thing and they want to focus on that, right? They want to focus on that. Restaurants would even focus on serving more local seafood because that's what was available and that they would be, I went to a wine tasting tour a few years ago. I would say maybe six years ago, maybe not a few, maybe a little more than a few years ago. It's all the time, it's just kind of going into one. Anyway, we went to, it was Niagara, you know, the Niagara strip over here is just wonderful in Southern Ontario for wines. I'm not a huge wine person. I went to this tour, it was a French 30th birthday. She was really into wines and we decided to go there and it was great because you learn a lot. You learn a lot about wines, how they're made, but the grapes, but the soil and everything like that. At the end of the day, we had a lot of wine. We go to dinner. It was in a place that had like ice wines and champagne and so forth. I think it was, I think it was, I'm going to say the name "Peller Estates" I think is what it was. It was one of the bigger states, beautiful place, beautiful winery. We sit down for a multiple course dinner. I can't even tell you how much I was, like I said, I had a lot of wine by that point. But what was interesting is we actually got to go into the kitchen. Part of the package that we bought, we got to go into the kitchen and talk to the head chef. He was talking about, not only, they paired an ice wine or champagne with every course. He would talk about how he paired it so that the soil, the grape, and the food was all together. It could all taste similar. What I found interesting was that I think I believe we had, I don't even remember the fish that we had, we had a particular type of fish. I'm being honest here, I had a lot of wine, okay? We had a fish and the reason why we had that particular fish, it was either Pickerel or Lake Troup, Pickerel or Troup, I'm not sure, it was Pickerel or Troup. But it was localized and he said the reason why he chose that is because the tastes are from the same area, the fish is from the same area as the wine and that complimented the wine because the soils were similar, the water was similar, and the climate was similar and it actually made it for a better experience. Now, like I said, I don't know a lot about wines and I'm not really huge into like being a foodie or anything like that. But the meal was fantastic and just knowing that the chef would actually think about that saying, "Hey, we're going to go local," he even mentioned, he's like, "I don't know." He picked usually local seafood or I guess local fish because it was fresh water. Because of the fact that it didn't have to travel very far, it was less emissions in that whole supply chain, he knew the people who caught the fish and it would supply it to the restaurant and it was just, he knew everything about the process and he took pride in that because it lowered his, the business's climate footprint on a climate change footprint on the world and that was important to him. And he wanted something natural and he wanted something that would fit because that was important to him. Just knowing that made the meal better, right? And the meal was amazing. I mean, he was one of, he was a great chef on TV, that kind of thing. And it was just, it was amazing. It was really, really amazing. It was because I knew all the stuff, I knew all the stuff that went behind the meal and the fact that the chef knew so much about it, that's when I ate it. Ever since then, it's kind of tainted my taste buds or tainted my thought process because when I go to a restaurant that may be a chain restaurant and I ask the waiter or waitress and I say, "Hey, where's this fish coming from? I'd like to know more about this fish." And they have no idea. I say, "Well, I can't order it in good conscious because of that," right? Because we were able to, back then, they were able to trust the vendors and I was able to trust the chef that he knew exactly where it came from because I know if I asked, at that Peler Estates dinner, if I asked where, what was the name of the person, where did they from, he would be able to tell me because he knew it personally and I trusted that. And my parents back when they were my age and even younger, they could trust their retailer. And I think that trust is getting compromised now, is compromised now because of globalization. There are a lot of problems in the seafood industry because of globalization. Now, companies are not just trying to feed a local population. They're trying to feed everybody. They're trying to catch as many fish as possible and supply retailers that are all over the place. That personal relationship is gone from the process because it's gotten so big that how can you maintain a personal relationship with everybody, right? How can a person who's being paid minimum wage in a supermarket know the person who fished out the fish and know whether it was fished out sustainably or some harmful practices, right? So, most of the time and it's been documented time and time again, overfishing is a problem. A lot of the fish that are fished right now are overfished. And there are certain areas that are highly regulated. A lot of the developed countries are highly regulated. A lot of the underdeveloped countries where most of the imports come from, 50% of the imports come from over 50% of the imports that come into the US and to Western countries are from developing countries where the regulations aren't as strict. And again, the supply chain is just not known. Now, over the years, back in the '50s and '40s and '50s, fish were plentiful. It was easy to catch and you didn't have to worry about anything. Now, and of course, the techniques weren't as good as they are today. Now we've gotten so much better in the technique to catch. The nets are bigger, there's different sizes to target different fish. The catch rate is high, the effort is getting higher, but at one point it was perfect in what the effort to catch a fish wasn't as hard or wasn't as long. The gear can be very, very destructive. If you look at something like a troll net, an autoboard troll net where you have two boards on either side of the net, and you have this big net that basically encompasses these two boards. The two boards lead it. The boards sink the net to a specific depth, usually on the bottom. So what happens is this is a dredge, basically. The otter boards are so heavy and kind of sharp at the front. What they do is they just dig all that dirt up, all that habitat. So if it's a sponge reef or coral reef or anything that's down there that provides a lot of space, like so seagrasses, everything that provides space where the fish can hide is gone, decimated. And all the fish that are in those areas that are hiding are thrown into that net. Now some that are smaller can maybe get through the net and they're fine, but the big ones, the ones that people want, all out of the bottom fish, the hadic, the halibut, the cod, I know a lot more about the Canadian seafood industry than any others, but those are the major ones that are getting trawled. They can't get away. They're too big. All the smaller ones are fine and all the pelagic fish or a lot of the pelagic fish can slip through the nets because they want larger mesh sizes to look smaller ones go through, but they really want the big fish. But when the big fish are all in there, other fish get caught. There's a lot of bycatch, meaning fish that aren't targeted. So when a trawled net goes down, you have fish that are in there that are targeted. They want those to sell, but then other fish get caught. Like if you're swimming down there and then it comes through, you're getting caught in that net, right? We saw it in the movie Nemo. For those of you who have seen it, I think a lot of people have seen it. At the end of the movie, Nemo has, or Dory gets swept up in this trawled net and she can't get out and everybody else can't get out. It wasn't until Nemo and his dad, or I think Nemo was in there too, Nemo and his dad actually came and helped and freed them. But that's what a trawled net looks like. That's the destructiveness of what happens in a trawled. The fishermen get what they want. They get a lot of their targeted species that are left, but the habitat is gone. So all the species that didn't get caught that were like the halibut, the hadic, and the cod that didn't get caught would disperse and that area would be barren until it grows up again, which could take a long time, depending on what the habitat was made from and where the sources are coming from, right? You decimate a habitat of seagrass. You need more seagrasses to come into that area to populate it and then it has to grow and then the other fish have to discover it or other species have to discover it to come in and hide and use it to its ability. That takes time. The trawled comes through again, boom, decimated, and then the whole process happens again. To a point where fish will just stop going there, this won't be there or there's not going to be enough time for the seagrass or habitat to grow back or establish itself. So you have a lot of problems with this industry, just on the fishing gear itself and how destructive it can get. And the other gear that's really, well, I mean, there's a lot of nets. So there's gill nets that get essentially just floated in the water column and fish just swim into it and then they come back and they get caught and then the fishermen come back and just take it up. A lot of fish marine mammals, sea turtles get caught in those areas. They die because especially the mammals or the shark dies, the mammals die, the large fish die, marine mammals, sea turtles, the air breathers die basically because they can't get to the surface in time to breathe, right? They just essentially drown. So there's a lot of bycatch and a lot of these gears are very destructive for fishing. Another one is long lining where a line gets put out with a bunch of hooks and bait on it and it gets thrown for kilometers and kilometers and kilometers and kilometers. The fishermen wait, they come back a couple days, they collect, and then whatever's on the hook, they're hoping tuna, swordfish, some kind of, you know, some kind of finfish are on there, big fish get taken out, but also dolphins, sharks, sea turtles, marine mammals get hooked on there, right? And they're not used. They just get discarded. They're not used. They're not allowed to be brought back. So they just get discarded. So a lot of bycatch, a lot of animals that are not targeted get hooked on those lines and essentially just, they're just wasted, they just die. And now there are ways and instead there are ways to get around this gear that can actually get around it and be a little bit more sustainable and more ocean friendly and it can be used. It may not get as high of a yield, meaning it may not get as many fish caught. And that means the fishermen make less money because of the way that everything is priced, everything is priced at a certain price. If you come in and you say, it took me a longer time, I got less fish, so I need to charge, you know, more to make the same amount of money, a lot of vendors, a lot of middle, the middle people, the process plants won't take it because it's too expensive. And people aren't willing to pay that much on the retail side. So there's a lot of problems with that. If you, in the fishing industry, if you, if you catch less, you make less money and you can't afford to stay in business. So there's a lot of problems in there. And there are, you know, there's subsidies that, that the government will give fishermen to help them out. However, the subsidies don't have any kind of, they, they seem like they don't have any kind of regulation and the enforcement, there's little enforcement to make the people change, to make the industry change into something that's more sustainable. There's just the, you can enforce the high seas, you can enforce the seas. It's very difficult. Let's try to do it and they do, they use satellite and they use other means, the boats and coast guards and whatnot, but it's very difficult to do it. So you get that problem, the overfishing problem, the actual fit, the actual process of actually catching the fish, you have a problem, huge problems there. Then you have the whole globalization problems where the supply chain has gone from a personal relationship to, with one or two suppliers, I guess, or Fisher and their fishing fleets, to a vast, you know, number of people or number of companies that are involved and the relationships are fewer or they're not as strong, meaning they become faceless. You know, the suppliers become faceless and they, they're from all over the world, okay? The, some of the figures, over 75% of seafood in the U.S. is imported. 2009 figures that are 5.5 billion pounds valued at 14.8 billion dollars. The largest imported product is shrimp, mostly from Thailand and, or Ecuador. And tuna is second, freshwater fish fillets are third. So there's a lot of stuff that's being imported and you would think that they know where those fish are coming from, right? What the supply chain is, how it's caught, how it's processed and how it's brought over. You would think that they would know that, but they don't. They don't know that. And to be honest, the supply chain is riddled with huge, huge problems. And so some of the, some of the problems are they have, uh, what is it here? I, I, we have, sorry, I have some notes here that I'm looking at. Um, so sorry, I'm looking here. There's one stat said that a lot of the countries where the, the stuff is brought in have child labor problems, right? Where child labors are used on these big factory boats to process the fish. I mean, imagine if you were using, you were eating fish that you, where you knew that was a problem. Would you eat that fish again? Probably not. But you don't know because they don't under, they don't know where this coming from, right? You have mislabeling problems. If you get a bunch of fillets of, of some type of fish that's white, think about how many fish that are white and you get some type of fillets and you don't know what it's from. You know, you just trust that the suppliers putting in the right label, but they're not. There was a study by Oceania a few years ago, I believe it was 2014 where they did a number of genetic tests on, uh, product that was put out in, uh, fish markets, very popular fish markets in New York, Toronto and major cities. They notice that 39% of the seafood in New York city was mislabeled. Southern California, 50 LA, Los Angeles, 55% was mislabeled. Miami 31% was mislabeled, Boston 48%. Boston, that's a 50/50 chance that you have the right seafood that you're eating. And in fact, what a lot of the things that Oceania found was the stuff, some of the stuff that was being replaced was actually a fish that actually had cancer causing agents in it. So not only you're eating, uh, see for say you ordered tuna and you think it's tuna, it's not tuna, it's something else and it's another, it's a different type of fish that has cancer causing agents. So not only you think you're eating healthy, but you're not eating the right fish, you're not eating tuna and you paid for it and then you're eating something like this lesser value, but it actually is unhealthy for you and you, and you're eating it. We've all done it. I bet you we've all done it, uh, but 50/50, you know, in Southern, in LA and in Boston, 30% in Miami and 39% of seafood in, in, uh, in New York city. These are major ports, you know, where you don't have, you know, you trust these people, you trust the vendors and, and for some way, like the retailers and for some reason, I feel bad for the retailers because they don't know, but they don't know their supply chain. They don't know to go back and, and say, okay, where's this food coming from? If they do, it takes a lot more effort and when they find out it's unsustainable and they, to look at a supply chain that's more sustainable, it's more expensive. Are people willing to pay that money on the retail side? That is the question that really comes into play. Are you willing to pay more for it and are you willing to say no to cheaper food, cheaper seafood where you don't know the supply chain, right? If you don't know the supply chain, the way I see it now is if I don't know the supply chain, I assume that is unsustainable because the, the, the companies that come out and say, this is sustainable, then I can say, okay, yeah, it's sustainable. What's your supply chain? They're transparent. They tell you, I know it's sustainable, right? But even, you know, one of the things that triggered this, this research that we did here at Speak Up For Blue, just to research the seafood industry and come to tell you about this episode is there was a, a scientist, a fishery scientist in, in North Carolina that went to a Whole Foods and Whole Foods is, it has been very adamant about providing sustainable seafood and he found mislabeled product. Even the, the, the, the supply, even the supermarket chains that say they, that pride themselves on being sustainable are not sustainable. It's a massive problem we have here. How do you trust what you're eating? How? You know, it, it becomes very difficult to do that. You know, fishing has become more of a factory processed industry, you know, than feeding what is necessary or feeding what is natural or what's sustainable. You know, that's what we have. That's the, the major problem we have. You know, if you've ever seen the, the movie Along the Line, it's a movie narrated by Ted Danson. It's all about long lining and fit and over fishing. And one of the, the, and if you've heard this podcast before, you've heard me tell this story. So I apologize for repeating it, but for the people who haven't, this is very interesting. The thing that always pops out that I always remember about that episode or that documentary was the tuna industry. They really went in the Mediterranean tuna industry and the European tuna industry. And you know, one of the processes was, you know, setting the quotas and negotiating with the fishing industry of saying the quotas that you have to negotiate for that. That was one of the things that stood out for me. It's like, Oh, you have to negotiate for that. So they had scientists come up with, you know, run a bunch of models based on the data that they had and set what their quota would be. So basically the quota is, this is how many fish you can catch to make sure that this fishery or that that population of tuna will survive for years to come and you won't have a problem with it running out and going extinct. So they set it at 15,000 tons. Let's just say, I think it was 15,000 tons. Let's just say that. So the number 15 was in there and it was, I think it was 15,000 tons. So the European Union council who was in charge of that looked at that and said, okay, well, that's going to be a little tough to negotiate with that, with the fishing industry. So we're just going to up it to 30,000 tons per year. It's like, okay, so the scientists gave it at 15,000 tons to say this is the maximum you can get before you see the population dwindle. And then the council or the politicians or whoever is involved said, okay, we're going to double it. We're going to double it. So there's, it's going to go twice. It's going to dwindle twice as fast, right? Then they go to the negotiation table with the fishing industry and then the results come out is it's, okay, we're going to set the quota at 60,000 tons per year. That's four times the amount, the original amount where it said this is the maximum amount that you can get without hurting the population. So now there's four times faster that this population is going to go extinct. And this happens every year because they go through this negotiation every year. They don't listen to the science and they kind of continue on. Same thing happened in Canada, you know, I'm not blaming just the European Union in the Canada early nineties, the, there was a moratorium on cod fishing announced in the, in 1992, in, in Newfoundland along the east coast, wherever, you know, cod was caught on the east coast. And I'm just going to say it collapsed the economies of Newfoundland collapsed. It was a huge thing. There's also, there's a video on YouTube where there's fishermen attacking the minister of fisheries that's located in Newfoundland or the local MP. They, they actually, you know, charged the office physically because they were so pissed. And the worst part was where scientists were telling them, we're tracking the data in the 70s and 80s. And they were telling them that, look, you can't set the quota this high. It's going to go, it's going to, the population is going to go down to the point where we're not going to be able to catch anything. The politicians knew it, the Canadian politicians knew it, but they didn't say anything. They decided to say, no, no, we need to appease our industry. Why? I don't know. Maybe for votes. I don't know. But they appeased them and look what happened because the cod fishery is still not recovered to anywhere close to what it was. You know, there's, there's stories, anecdotal stories where you could take back in like the 1800s, you could take a bucket, just offshore of Newfoundland, put it in the water and catch three or four, fill that bucket with cod. That's how plentiful it was. And now it's a moratorium because we can barely find it. And they haven't even come close to the recovery that we expected. And there's been a moratorium on, there's been very, it's very highly regulated. I don't know if it's a moratorium, but it's a very highly regulated cod fishery in specific areas. But it's not even close to what it used to be, right? And that's what happens is you get these politicians who are trying to appease the lobby because they're, they can get voted back in again. You know, and this is the way it works, but then you're destroying the environment and destroying a local economy. And it's not the industry that pays for it because they're globalized now, if a local economy in Newfoundland collapses, that's fine because then we'll just go over to Thailand or, or Ecuador, where it's actually cheaper to, to get the product and bring it over. You know, process it and bring it over. You know, just that thought process, the, the social implications of that. You're, you're collapsing a, a local, a local economy, moving it to somewhere cheaper, allowing unregulated fishing to happen in another part of the world, allowing the processing to happen in an unregulated area, like, probably a less regulated country. So child labor, problems arise, you know, the work environment, bad work environment arises, but it's cheaper. You take the product, finally processed, put it on these massive ships and supply ships and then have them come over to the, to the Western country where you collapse the local economy and have them pay for the food. Your, that, that process, that transportation just contributes to climate change. It's more, it makes the product more expensive, a lot, probably a lot of it's wasted, if it's not kept properly. And all that just because you don't want to go for unregulated fishery or you want to, you don't want to make it a sustainable fishery. In the movie along the line, they talk about the one company who's in charge of catching a lot of the, where a lot of the product of, of tunico. It's Mitsubishi, a car company, it's a corporation that owns, probably a fortune 500 corporation, I guess now, and it owns a bunch of things. And one of it is it flash freezes these, these tuna for 20 years from now, because they know that the tuna aren't going to be around in 20 years. And when they sell them, it's going to be at a premium price. Can you believe that? That's disgusting, absolutely disgusting, just for a little bit more money. That's why I'll never have a Mitsubishi, ever. This is how these greedy corporations work. And if you talk to any local fishermen, I had the, the, the great opportunity in my masters when I was in Halifax to, uh, we, we, we contracted out some of the local fishing boats to go out and do, uh, some, some field work. And I got to know them. And these are the local guys. And they were saying the problem that's a, a rise that arose from there is that now they have, they can, you can transfer quotas. So what you can do now is if you're in an area, you have like, the way, especially in Canada and in the US as well, is you have the fishing zones and the quotas are set up by those zones. So there's licenses, quota licenses for each zone or a certain number. So what people were allowed to do is businessmen who had nothing to do with fishing were allowed to go in and buy all the quotas out and resell them to the fishermen. So they bought them at a premium price, reselled them at a higher price. And then during that process, the person who owned the licenses that would rent out the, the licenses to the fishermen. So you're making the fishermen pay more money for the licenses, even though they're doing all the work. Then that person who owned the licenses would go to say a higher company, like a seafood company and say, I will make sure that all my licenses get sold to you. All the fish that come out of those licenses gets sold to you at this rate and stays at this rate. They get a cut the, the seafood company gets a bit of a discount, but the fishermen, the local fishermen pays the price because at the salad, they have to sell at that area. If they don't, the person won't rent out the license. And then they're out of luck that generations and generations and generations of fishermen are screwed. That's transferable quotas for you. That's what was a good idea for some, for, for the government to do. And they do it in the US and Canada. I don't know if they do it in other places, but I'm sure it happens. It's just a way to make money for people who don't know anything about fishing. It's just, it really is disgusting. And I know this is a depressing, this is a depressing podcast, but this is where the seafood industry is right now. There's a lot of problems. Right. And the most recent problem is the mislabeling. That's, that's the most recent problem that, you know, the study that Oceana came out with, that really made it, that really popularized it. And it made me scared to even buy any kind of seafood because I have no idea where they're coming from. I have no idea if it's right. I mean, how do you have like genetic test kits? No. I don't even know if those are available yet. I wish there is that because I would just go to every one of like, Oh, I'll just stick a genetic test and every single one and check that, make sure my local supermarket is doing its job. Right. So it's, it's a very difficult problem. But there are some solutions to the, to the seafood industry. And you know, there's a couple of, there are a number of programs out there. I want to highlight two, two that I know I'm fairly familiar with because I use them. They're apps on your phone or you can go on the internet or you can get a hard copy of them. Seafood watch is very popular app on my phone that I use. And every time I go for sushi or every time I go to grab seafood in a restaurant or a grocery store, which is not often anymore. I go and I look and I say, I look at the app and I ask them, where is this caught? And because what happens on the seafood watch app, they have a number of, they have a list of fish. You can look for seafood or like general seafood or sushi and you have a list of fish. And then you say, okay, which ones are, you know, which, they'll tell you which ones you should avoid, which ones you should be cautious of, and which ones are okay. And it tells you where they're caught and how they're caught. So there could be some salmon that are wild caught that are good in some areas, if they're caught in those areas. If not, you should do aquaculture. So you know, you, you, and I haven't even talked about the aquaculture industry yet. But anyway, we'll leave that to another issue. I'd actually like to get an expert on it in the aquaculture industry. Because you have those, you know, you have that app that tells you whether you should avoid, go for it, or be cautious about it. And then they give you alternatives to that fish or that, that piece of seafood. And I think it's great. It's, it's wonderful. Only problem with it is, is when you ask the person who's involved, this, the restaurant, the supermarket, the fish market or seafood market, they don't know. When they don't know where the fish comes from, do you still buy? Is this something that I, you know, you have, as a consumer, you have that choice? Do I make the informed decision or do I just kind of go for it and hope for the best? Because if they don't know, like I said before, I assume that it's unsustainable, right? Even if it is, I assume it's unsustainable because they need to learn the supermarkets, the seafood markets, and, you know, the, the restaurants need to learn that they need to know, they need to be informed of their supply chain and they need to tell people their supply chain. And in my opinion, in my humble opinion, the way the seafood industry is right now is that we should avoid seafood if they don't tell us. Now I know a lot of people will say just avoid seafood in general, just become vegan. There's a lot of other different alternatives that you can do. And I'm fine with it. If you want to do that, I'm fine with it. I have no problem with it. I'm not going to judge. I'm not going to judge either way. If you like seafood, you like seafood. I'm not going to judge either way, but what I'd like you to do, if you do like seafood and like me, is you make an informed decision, you'd be prepared to say no, I'm not going to have that because I don't know that area. You know, I don't, I don't, I don't know if I'm getting something that's sustainable or not. And I know it kind of opens up everything. Well, what about chicken? What about beef? What about pork? All the other meats that are involved, chicken, eggs and all that kind of stuff, if it's organic, if there's hormones injected into it, water injected into it, all that kind of stuff. And to be honest, I'm working on it. You know, I like my meat. That's where I get most of my protein. Although I've learned to get protein from beans and other vegetables. But I like my meat and I believe that there's ways to do it. You can go to local farmers and buy like a year supply of vacuum sealed meat that is organic and that there's no hormones in it, there are no medicines in it and whatnot. You can do that, you know, and that's an alternative that I'm looking into. But it opens up like the whole food industry is so globalized and so processed, even when you think you're eating whole foods, you're not and it's just, it becomes a little depressing. But anyway, there are places where you can go that know the supply chain and seafood watch has an option on the app to look in for, to type in a restaurant or even type in a city that where they have restaurants where other people have approved of things. You know, so if somebody else went to a restaurant and the seafood restaurant was on point and they knew everything where the suppliers were and they told you and how it was caught and where it was caught, somebody will put it into the seafood watch app and say, this is a great place. And then other people can review and say, yes, it is a great place or no, it's not a great place. So you can look that up. Ocean Wise is another program that I'm familiar with and it's, I believe it's largely Canadian. It works off, it works similar to seafood watch, except I think they don't go with alternatives, I think they just say, yay or nay. They're very, they're very cautious. They're a little bit more conservative in terms of the seafood you get. But what they do too is they really focus on the restaurants and suppliers, retailers, restaurants and seafood markets and grocery stores that have an ocean wise program. If you join that program, if the retailer joins that program, they get on the site and they get, you know, they get publicized and they get advertised as a site that is ocean wise. And then it's, it supplies a sustainable product, it knows a supply chain, it has to meet a bunch of criteria, it has to prove that it meets a bunch of criteria. This is a voluntary program, which I think should become mandatory for any place. However, this is a voluntary program, but the people who do join it are involved because they're, they're ethically involved. They want to provide seafood that is sustainable, that is ethical, it meets both economic so, are all economic social and environmental concerns and people can enjoy their meal. And I think these, these programs are better, you know, there aren't, there isn't a lot of, you know, in our research, we didn't find a lot of information on, you know, how to get to know the supply chain or how this, how businesses can do that. And I think that is definitely a need to know, we always talk about, well, what's the environmental implications? But also what is, you know, you got to look at the, what are the, the social implications and cultural implications of going to a developed country or developing country to outsource your seafood product and how the people are treated there, how the fishermen are treated there. If they treat our fishermen like that in developed countries, the way they do with the transferring of quotas and screwing them over that way, then what about, and, and collapsing local economies because of, because fish are not there anymore because they're forcing people to fish down the food web, well, what are the other alternatives? You know, how are they going to, how are they going to treat people in developing countries? I mean, that just doesn't make sense. So those are the things we have to, we have to think about and we have to worry about. We need to look at the social and economical and environmental concerns of the seafood industry. And to be honest, I don't know what's next. You know, do we all come around with little genetic testers to test your seafood? I think that's probably the best way to make sure it's the right seafood. And then once you know it's the right seafood, you have to know how it's caught and where it is caught. You know, should we make these, these programs like Ocean Wise and Seafood Watch mandatory for every business that wants to sell seafood? Is that what we do? To make sure that we don't over fish, to make sure that it comes from sustainable sources? And then how do you know it comes from sustainable sources? Is it, you know, is it enforced at the docks? Is it enforced on the ships? I don't know, you know? It becomes a huge, this industry is just littered with problems, huge problems. And then of course you've got the health of the fish that are just unnaturally healthy or unhealthy now. You know, you got larger predatory fish that are, that are full of mercury, you know, they're saying people, they're saying telling people it's good not to eat seafood more than once a week because of, because of mercury problems. It's just, man, it's just, it's, it's like, why would you even, even think about eating seafood this day? And I'm, I'm saying this as a frustration as a scientist, as a conservationist and as someone who likes to eat seafood, right? So you have to ask yourself, you know, you know, going back to the beginning where I talk about doing little things to change the way you, you live your life, to live for a better ocean is with the seafood industries, what do you do? Do you eat seafood? Do you wait and only eat seafood from good places and only go there and recommend other people to go there? There are a lot of, a lot of questions there. And I would like to hear from you about this. I hope this episode wasn't too depressing for you, but I want to hear from you. Your concerns about the seafood industry, do you even worry about it? Do you even ask about it or will you ask now about this kind of thing? In the links in the show notes at speakupforblue.com/session141, we're going to put a bunch of links to the apps, to some of the articles that I talk about, some of the information that I talk about, we're going to put all those in the show notes so you can, you know, make your own opinion, read and make your own opinion out of this kind of stuff. But I mean, that's the whole point of Speak Up For Blue is really to inform you of what's going on. And the seafood industry is something I've wanted to dive into for a long time because I know there's so many problems. And now with this mislabeling or not knowing what the fish it is, and the, like the retailer not knowing what fish it is, let alone the consumer, it is a huge, huge problem. Huge problem. You know, and it doesn't make the industry any more attractive to, you know, buy seafood from. So yeah, I guess that's the problem, the problems with the seafood industry and my question to you is, is it in trouble? I think it is. And I think there's a lot of things that can need to be fixed, but there's a lot of greedy people out there and I don't know if they're willing to fix it. So we have to really bog down and make sure that things are fine. But anyway, I'd love to hear from you, comment on the show notes, speakupforblue.com/session141. I'd love to hear your opinion on this. I'd love to hear what you do if you are a seafood eater and what you do to make sure that you eat only sustainable seafood. If you're a vegan or a vegetarian, you know, I'd love to hear why you became that, you know, that kind of lifestyle, do you have difficulty eating, finding protein or fatty acids? Because if you talk about, you know, there's pills for that, I know there's a lot of problems with fish oils, pills and whatnot, taking it from actual fish and that's a big problem to a lot of problems, a lot of problems, but I'd love to hear from you guys. I'd love to hear from all the speakup for blue community. That's what we're here to do. I'd love to hear from you guys and what your opinions are on all this. So I just want to say thank you for listening. I hope this wasn't too depressing, but I hope it gave you the information that you need to talk about seafood and sushi and all the different types of the way you consume seafood. And I'd love to hear back from you guys, but you've been listening to Speakup for Blue Podcast. I really want to thank you for listening. I am your host, Andrew Lewin. Happy Monday. I hope you have a great week. We'll see you on Wednesday on the podcast. Quick announcement. It's April. I've been live, relaunched the YouTube channel. If you go to youtube.com/speakupforblue, I've relaunched my YouTube channel. I'm providing tidbits of information every day in April because it's Veda. It's vlog every day in April month. And I'm doing that every day. Short videos. I'm going to try and keep it. Definitely under five minutes. I'm going to try and keep it to two minutes, but it's kind of a fun thing to do. It's ocean news, things that are happening around the industry, but just in a very short version, one story a day, and I wanted you to check it out, so I'll put that in the resources as well. But thank you very, very much for listening. I really appreciate it. Have a great week and happy conservation. Bye.
