How To Protect The Ocean
SUFB 098: Tuna Species Profile
Tuna species are one of the most sought after seafood meals on the planet. Tuna is also becoming one of the most overfished species on the planet. I take the time to introduce you to the species and let you know about some of the seafood precautions you should take before you eat it, or avoid it.
Support the Podcast:
http://www.speakupforblue.com/patreon
Shop for the Ocean:
http://www.speakupforblue.com/shop
10 Ocean Tips to Conserve the Ocean:
http://www.speakupforblue.com/wordpress/sufb_optinpdf
Show Notes:
http://www.speakupforblue.com/session98
Welcome to the speaker for blue podcast session 98 today is species Tuesday. And we are going to be talking about one of the most sought after seafood species in the world, the tuna species. We're going to talk about all different types of tuna. It's going to be a quick episode, but I want to give you a breakdown more of an introduction because I want to do a more in depth story on seafood and so forth. But right now let's just introduce you to the tuna species. Welcome to the speak up for blue podcast, helping you get involved in ocean conservation. And now here's your host. He just discovered periscope and might be slightly addicted. Andrew Lewin. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another exciting episode of the speak up for blue podcast. Your voice for the ocean. I am your host, Andrew Lewin, founder speak up for blue.com. I'm a marine ecologist and self proclaimed ocean printer. That's right. Everything I do in my business as an entrepreneur, I do it to protect the ocean. Uh, and welcome back to another episode. It's species Tuesday episode 98. We are two episodes away from my 100th episode produced here on speaker for blue podcast. And I just want to thank you guys. Um, this is really a week where I thank you guys for listening. I really appreciate it. A lot of people have given me some great feedback in terms of how they're using the podcast in their classrooms, some teachers using in their classrooms. Some people are using it to add something extra to their lives, uh, such as adding more recycling to their lives and recycling more and doing a pretty good effort at doing so to going a little bit above and beyond, you know, what they normally do and they're actually going ahead and doing it. So really appreciate you guys giving me feedback. You can always send us feedback. You can just go, uh, to speak up for blue.com page and just click on the contact and just send me why you love the podcast so much. It's always great to hear. Um, and if not, what I can do to improve what you'd like to hear, I would always love to hear, I'm a scientist. I'm used to criticism. So you can be harsh, this, um, but if you like what you hear, then you want to see more, um, topics or different topics or a specific topic, just let me know. And, uh, I will gladly, gladly help as much as I can. So today, before we get into the episode, we're going to talk about tuna species today, uh, but what I'd like to do first is thank our Patreon contributors, our people who support the speak up for blue podcast through speak up for blue.com forward slash Patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N. Uh, that is Claire and Chris Jeffert. Thank you very much. Um, Judith, well, Dr. Judith Weiss, who was the first guest on this episode are on the See We Come For Blue podcast, uh, as well as Judy and Ron. So thank you very much. I really appreciate your support. If you want to support and love what you hear about ocean conservation, uh, and you want to support us getting further reach and going in more in depth on episodes, you can do so at speakupforblue.com forward slash Patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N. And you can just make a specific level of support. There are different levels of support. Um, you can really support as much as you want or as little as you want. I think the minimum is a dollar, um, but it goes per month. So just keep that in mind when you, when, if you are choosing to support, keep that in mind when you support. Okay. Well, let's get back into the episode. Speak up for blue species Tuesdays. We're going to talk about the tuna species. Uh, and I want to talk mainly, it's going to be a broad introduction of the tuna species. There are a lot of species, um, and, uh, they are sought after for seafood industry. And that's really what when we talk about, when we talk about, um, you know, other animals that are top predators, we talk about other animals that are iconic species, uh, and that are beautiful. And people just have this wonderful way about them where they love it. Um, they, you know, you see, uh, tuna just being talked about as food, as seafood, because it is one of the most sought after seafood species in the world. Um, but there are some really cool aspects of it. One, the way it's built, it is built, uh, it's, it's sleek, it's powerful. It's made for speed. It's got a torpedo shaped body, um, streamlined, uh, as it moves through water and it has special swinging muscles to enable them to cruise the ocean highways as great with great efficiency. Um, the Atlantic bluefin tuna can reach up to 10 feet in length and weigh as much as 1500 pounds. That's more than a horse people more than a horse. I mean, this is just fantastic. Um, I mean, just the fact that you get a fish that big, um, you know, obviously we know the whale sharks are the biggest fish in the world, but for a tuna species to get that big is just amazing. And if you've seen some of these pictures of people who've caught, uh, tuna species that are that size or close to that size, they can go for hundreds of thousands of dollars. So very expensive. They're, they're worth a lot of money, uh, for fishermen as well, uh, you know, in the seafood industry itself. So, you know, that, but they also have specialized body shaped fins and scales that enable them to this be some species of tuna to swim up to 43 miles per hour. That is insane. That's like 60 kilometers an hour for all my non-imperial friends. Uh, I mean, that's just like, if you think about that speed of a 1500 pound. Tuna swimming, 43 miles an hour, I didn't getting in the way of that. You wouldn't want to do that. Imagine not even when you just seen one of them do it, but seeing hundreds of them do it at the same time. They are schooling species. So that would be kind of cool. Um, but they also migrate quite a bit. Some tuna are born in the Gulf of Mexico and then they cross the entire Atlantic ocean to feed on the coast off the coast of Europe. And then they swim all the way back to the Gulf of Mexico again to breed. That is a long way. You know, if you've ever flown across the Atlantic, you know, it's about eight hours before you land, six hours sometimes. Uh, but the fact that it's actually, you know, that they actually go there and back through a lifetime is just phenomenal. Um, these are extraordinary animals and, um, unfortunately they are integral to, um, the diet of millions. And they are one of the most commercially valuable fish on the market. Now the more, the majority of the market is made up of four species, a skipjack yellow, the skipjack yellowfin, big guy in Albuquerque or tuna, as, uh, methods of catching up to have improved over the years, the conservation and management of tuna has not evolved as quickly. So of course, as usual with species, you're having the technology to catch the fish go up and improve and become more efficient and more cost effective, but the fact that the management of these species has not caught up to that, the conservation and management, uh, if you want a good movie to watch and really get a good feel for the tuna fishing industry, watch, um, along the line. I believe, let me just double check that. I believe it's called a long lines narrated by Ted, uh, Ted Danson. Um, or is that the end of the line? Let me just see. I think it's a long line. Uh, no. Let's just see here. Sorry. Anyway, uh, at the, is that the other? No, I think it's a long line. Sorry for the delay. Anyway, um, whatever it is, I'm going to put the link up to it. Uh, and we're going to think, and it's essentially, uh, it's essentially a documentary on the tuna fishing industry and just, and fisheries in general. It's narrated by, oh, maybe it's on the line. Nope, not walking line. Nope, that's not it. Anyway, I'll put the, as I record this, you can see how prepared I am today. As I record this, I will actually find the video, the trailer, and I will put it up there. It's on Netflix if you ever want to watch it. Um, but it's a very good movie that gives you a breakdown of the tuna fishing industry and how it's managed. And one of the things I'll never forget and they follow sort of, they have this chart, this, this, this graph is bar graph where, uh, you know, it sets the amount of the amount of tons per year, the quota should be set by scientists. And it was like 15,000 tons or something like that. Then the, the, the scientists gave that information to the policymakers. The policymakers go to the, uh, for the, this is all for the European union, the policies, the policy makers go to the European union, they go to the state codes and they say, okay, we're going to up it to 30,000 because we're such good people, so 30,000 tons for that year. And then by the end, the negotiations, it was 60,000. That was actually set as the quota. And it was just a powerful graphic. Cause it just goes to show that science gives you the basics. The science that they gave was say, this is the minimum population. This is the minimum quota that you can hit, or in the maximum core that you can hit if you want this species to be sustainable. If you want this species to actually last for more than 50 years. And then so then the policy makers right away, they double it. The politicians it is. And then those politicians get that doubled because the stakeholders want more. Yet it's not that means it's four times that likely that this, this population will not be sustainable. So watch the movie, really get a handle for who is responsible. Cause it comes down to a major corporation that you wouldn't believe. Uh, and how it's happened and just how little science goes into it. And that's a, it's really interesting because we're going to talk tomorrow. We're going to, I've got an interview coming out. It's going to be published up for with Dr. Chris Parsons. And we talk about the whale hunt. And there's something about the science in there that is disappointing. Uh, when we talk about science and when we make science as it gets transferred over into policy or into rules and regulations. And it's very disappointing to hear what has happened over the last little bit for more, for commercial, uh, and, and patriotic purposes, I guess you can say, but you can watch that tomorrow, uh, that'll be episode 99. So, um, you know, it's, it's just an interesting, it's an interesting story. How this tuna industry grew so much. I mean, we see it everywhere. We eat it in our sushi. Um, you know, when you go to a nice seafood restaurant, if you get a tuna steak, very expensive, it tastes very good, of course, but it's very expensive. Now there's also some consequences that if you eat too much tuna, tuna known to have a high mercury level in them, uh, beyond what we can handle if we eat too much tuna. So we have to be careful on how we really preserve these species, how we conserve them and how we consume them. Because sometimes it may not actually be healthy. It's definitely not healthy for their, for their, um, uh, for the, for the populations of tuna, even though they're found all over the world, they're found between the latitudes of 40 degrees and 45 degrees. They're found a lot of tropical places all over the world. We recently did a paper on them, uh, on, on species, on, uh, research Thursdays, about two nine in the, in the South Pacific. But, you know, it's, we don't know much about. I mean, we don't know how to conserve them. We know what to do. We know how we need to do it, but we don't do it. And it's frustrating as hell. I'll be honest and we need to do better. We honestly need to do better. I would go as far. I'm a big seafood lover and, and, and we know I, we're having, we're brainstorming here at Speaker for Blue, a nice story on the seafood industry and what we're discovering about the seafood industry in the last little bit. And we're going to really put a touch on what we need to do to preserve those species, uh, and what we need to do in our seafood industry to preserve the seafood. That's being consumed and it could go as far as not eating seafood or a particular species of seafood. Um, but until then, uh, I want to, I want to point you to, uh, the seafood watch app, uh, in the ocean wise program. Seafood watch is a program that's run out of Monterey Bay Aquarium. It's got a great app on Android and on iOS users for iOS users. And it is essentially an app that we're, a lot of work goes, we get to put into it, where you can look up a species from a specific part of the country and they'll tell you, or a specific part of the world and it'll tell you what to eat, what to avoid. So it says, okay, you would avoid, uh, Mediterranean tuna, tuna caught in the Mediterranean because it's not caught stanably, but you can have tuna caught off the Atlantic coast if it's not by long line and it's dolphin safe. The, the trouble with this is it's so specific that when you go to a restaurant or a grocery store, in my, in my cases and sort of my experience, that the people behind the counter just don't know where this stuff was caught. If you think about a grocery store, you're probably getting a teenager in there who doesn't know much about the species that he's not supposed to know much about the species and, you know, cause the bosses are telling them they may not even know where it's caught, but they're just no told to sell it before it goes back. You know, that's really what they want to do. Uh, there are some places that pride themselves on catching, uh, sustainably caught fish only and only selling that type of seafood. However, we, how, how are we supposed to back it up? You know, there are some fish markets in the last little bit who have been told or have been found that they're not selling the right fish, whether they know it or not, genetic testing has shown that they, they're mislabeling fish. Um, and it's, it's not the same type of fish. In fact, it's actually a fish that can be, uh, that is very, that was highly, uh, sought after or highly caught, uh, overfished, um, and, you know, we're further destroying that population without even knowing it. So there's a lot of problems in the seafood, actually, I would like to put that into a story and find out and get to the bottom of this. And we're going to have, um, somebody here at speaker for blue has the time to do that to make sure we do a perfect one. Uh, however, in the meantime, I just want to introduce you to the species, um, look at the size, um, what it, you know, the importance of it in terms of the diet. And I think it's, uh, it's a pretty good, you know, it's, it's a pretty good, um, uh, introduction to seafood, you know, we really need to know more about the, uh, seafood industry. So, uh, and, and I think this is one way of doing it. So you're going to hear a lot more about this in 2016. It's because it's what we do. We try and get to the bottom of things that we don't know about to help you make better decisions. Uh, so, and it, I may not always be right. The seafood watch app is probably the best thing right now. Um, it may not be the, the only thing, but it's probably the best thing right now. And they do a damn good job of making sure they're accurate. So I appreciate all the people at Monterey Bay and the seafood watch program who are doing their work in there. Um, I think we should all be thankful that there's an app that we can actually make and form more informed decisions based on that. So, um, anyway, that's the end of the episode today. Uh, if again, if you want to support the Speaker for Blue podcast, you can do so at www.speakerforblue.com/patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N. The reason why I ask for this, uh, for this support, um, is really, there's not a lot of ways to make money, um, and, and make a livelihood doing podcasting, especially for ocean conservation industry. Um, but I like to do it. And, uh, the equipment's expensive. They're trying to, the marketing's expensive. It takes a while to get up and get going, but we are making progress. And what's nice about this is the fact that I get to talk about this every day, not only from a personal level and on a professional level, but people are using this information in their classrooms. Teachers are using in the, in their classrooms. People are, um, using it for their daily lives. And that was the purpose. The purpose is to get you informed, raise awareness in, for the ocean issues that are going around and inspire you to act on solutions that we provide, or that are just out there, but you may not know up. And that's what we do. That's what I do here at Speak Up for Blitz, what Nathan does. That's what Kate does. We all, we're all here to do our best to make, make you aware of what's going on and how we can all work together to try and reduce our impact and eventually eliminate our impact. So thank you very much for listening. I really appreciate again, if you want to support us on Patreon, you can do so at SpeakUpForBlue.com/patreon really appreciate it. That's the end of our episode today. You've been listening to Speak Up for Blue Podcast. I am your host, Andrew Lewin. From all of us here, it's the Speak Up for Blue team. Thank you very much. Have a great Tuesday. We'll see you tomorrow for an interview with Dr. Chris Parsons on wailing. He's going to give us the lowdown on what happens on the IWC. What happens to wailing the interaction of different countries. It's going to be amazing. My mind was blown. So we will talk to you tomorrow on that episode 99 of the Speak Up for Blue Podcast. Happy Conservation. [Music]