Latest / How To Protect The Ocean / What's behind your canned tuna? The shocking truth supermarkets never tell you

Transcript

What's behind your canned tuna? The shocking truth supermarkets never tell you · How To Protect The Ocean

• 0:00
  What's behind your canned tuna?
• 0:02
  Now think about this.
• 0:03
  You open a can of tuna for lunch.
• 0:05
  It seems cheap, safe and simple.
• 0:06
  I mean, we all know it has high protein, great for fatty acids and low fats,
• 0:11
  so it's a really good healthy meal.
• 0:13
  But behind many of the supermarket tuna brands, there are hidden stories of
• 0:18
  human exploitation, environmental damage,
• 0:20
  and supply chains that stretch far out to sea.
• 0:24
  Today we're gonna answer the question, what's behind your tuna?
• 0:28
  We're gonna go over a Financial Times article that was done, an investigative
• 0:32
  report that was done on the tuna industry and the human costs, as
• 0:35
  well as the environmental costs, and of course, the supply change costs.
• 0:39
  We're gonna talk about that on today's episode of the How
• 0:41
  to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
• 0:42
  Let's start the show.
• 0:45
  Hey everybody.
• 0:46
  Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
• 0:49
  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, marine biologist and science communicator, and
• 0:53
  I'm here to tell you what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for
• 0:55
  the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action.
• 1:00
  And on today's episode, we're gonna be talking about what is
• 1:04
  behind your supermarket tuna.
• 1:06
  The tuna that you buy, you may buy on a regular basis, you may not.
• 1:09
  If you're on a health kick and you wanna pump up that protein for, you
• 1:13
  know, not as many calories and you don't want to have chicken all the time.
• 1:15
  Seafood is a great option, especially when it's sustainable.
• 1:18
  But the problem is we just don't think about what goes behind catching that
• 1:23
  fish and that supply chain and who's catching that fish, what they go through.
• 1:27
  So we're gonna talk all about that.
• 1:29
  Before we do though, something else we don't talk a lot about is seagrasses.
• 1:33
  Now I know if you've listened to this podcast before.
• 1:35
  You've heard me talk about sea grasses, a coastal habitat
• 1:37
  that is huge for biodiversity.
• 1:39
  Also to help reduce climate change by absorbing carbon
• 1:43
  dioxide on a regular basis.
• 1:45
  It is such a huge absorber, like a carbon sink we call it, of carbon
• 1:50
  dioxide and greenhouse gases.
• 1:51
  Something that is very important to our coastal systems, not only for
• 1:55
  reducing climate change, but because of it adds a lot of biodiversity.
• 1:59
  It nurtures young fish and invertebrates so they can go off to other habitats.
• 2:03
  It's such an important seagrass or such an important coastal habitat
• 2:07
  that we don't talk about that much, which is boggles my mind.
• 2:10
  Talk a lot about coral reefs, not a lot about seagrasses.
• 2:12
  So what I am doing, I am putting a crowdfunding campaign
• 2:15
  together to talk about seagrass.
• 2:17
  It's gonna be a podcast called The Seagrass Effect.
• 2:20
  If you go to speak up for blue.com/seagrass, you'll be able to
• 2:24
  help and donate to support the launch and the maintenance of that podcast.
• 2:29
  You can pretty much donate whatever you would like.
• 2:31
  It's with Balean.
• 2:32
  We've teamed up with the Balean Foundation to be able to put together
• 2:36
  these ocean projects, and it's really helpful to get your help
• 2:39
  and get your backing behind that.
• 2:41
  Go to speak up for blue.com/seagrass.
• 2:44
  Now let's talk about the story that opened the door.
• 2:48
  So the Financial Times ran this investigation into a supermarket
• 2:51
  tuna and their supply chains.
• 2:53
  So not just looking at like, Hey, these are the different brands
• 2:55
  and they're sustainable or not.
• 2:57
  It's actually going back and looking at the brands and almost reverse
• 3:00
  engineering how the fish gets into the can and into the supermarket.
• 3:03
  So where are all the middle people?
• 3:05
  Where are all the businesses involved?
• 3:07
  Who's catching it?
• 3:08
  How are they being caught?
• 3:09
  What's happening to the people who are catching it, the fishermen,
• 3:12
  the fishers who are catching them?
• 3:13
  How far out to sea do they have to go?
• 3:15
  Are they observed a lot?
• 3:17
  Are they monitored?
• 3:18
  What's going on?
• 3:19
  They talk all about that.
• 3:20
  But this report focused on a single fisherman named Deby Putra Bunanda.
• 3:26
  Now, he spent seven months at sea catching tuna that was destined for retail shelves.
• 3:31
  But when he returned home after that seven months, he could barely walk
• 3:35
  more than a few steps at a time, and he had difficulty speaking.
• 3:39
  What the heck went on?
• 3:41
  Now, the story highlights the harsh working conditions
• 3:44
  on some of the tuna fleets.
• 3:45
  So like the long deployments without any kind of returning to port, because they go
• 3:49
  so far, minimal oversight of the working conditions and the people's health.
• 3:54
  They also talked about a lot of dangerous labor practices.
• 3:57
  Now, if anybody has watched Deadliest Catch, we've learned about one
• 4:00
  of the most dangerous, if not the dangerous jobs in North America.
• 4:05
  It's usually the crab fishery in Alaska.
• 4:07
  Why?
• 4:08
  Because being out in Alaska on the sea sucks sometimes.
• 4:11
  It's beautiful, but it sucks sometimes.
• 4:13
  There are massive ways.
• 4:14
  You're looking at the Eastern Pacific North Pacific Ocean.
• 4:17
  It's cold.
• 4:18
  There are a lot of waves.
• 4:19
  The weather can turn at any point in time and it can be very dangerous.
• 4:23
  A lot of people lose their lives during that.
• 4:25
  Even in the show, the Deadliest Catch, people have lost their lives over time.
• 4:28
  It is not an easy job, folks.
• 4:30
  It is not an easy job.
• 4:31
  So tuna fishing out in the Indian Ocean or out in the Pacific, on
• 4:35
  the other side of the world for us that live in North America, it
• 4:37
  is a very dangerous job as well.
• 4:39
  But also what happens is these fish are not just found along the coastlines
• 4:43
  of your favorite countries or the countries these people live in.
• 4:45
  What happens is you end up getting on the boat, you go out and you
• 4:49
  don't come back for a long time.
• 4:51
  Six, seven months, sometimes a year, sometimes more than a year.
• 4:54
  And when that happens, you start to get people being like, well, hold on a second.
• 4:58
  How are people being treated while they're out there for so long?
• 5:02
  I'll be honest.
• 5:03
  I go out on ships like in North America when I've been out on ships to do
• 5:06
  marine mammal observing or trawling or doing, you go out for a couple weeks.
• 5:10
  Maybe a month, maybe a couple months.
• 5:12
  I think the most I've really been out is like seven weeks, eight weeks.
• 5:15
  And that was 'cause we got stuck out there 'cause of bad weather and we
• 5:17
  had to do a ship to ship transfer.
• 5:19
  When you think about going out for seven months or even like more than a
• 5:23
  year or more than that, and you're only on a boat, you're not in the port and
• 5:26
  sometimes you can't go to different ports because of immigration rules and
• 5:29
  stuff 'cause it's a different country.
• 5:30
  You start to get complicated and then when people are out at sea all this
• 5:33
  time, you can get away with a lot.
• 5:35
  You can get away with a lot 'cause not many people are on there, on the
• 5:39
  boats to monitor working conditions to monitoring what fish are there.
• 5:42
  Now we do have fisheries observers that are on them in some regional management
• 5:45
  areas, but that's not all the time.
• 5:48
  And that's not everywhere in the world.
• 5:50
  So what's behind canned tuna the human cost?
• 5:53
  That's what we're gonna discuss in this section.
• 5:56
  Because of the long distance fishery in this industry.
• 5:59
  It's far away.
• 5:59
  Law enforcement can't be there, and public scrutiny is not there to call people out.
• 6:04
  If somebody's got a camera on their phone and trying to send it back
• 6:07
  home, you can't always do that.
• 6:08
  There's probably no signal out there.
• 6:10
  So NGO investigations and Human Rights groups have documented forced labor.
• 6:14
  We know there are fishery slaves out there.
• 6:16
  It continues to happen.
• 6:17
  There's withheld wages, unsafe conditions and exploitation of
• 6:20
  migrant fishers in some tuna fleets.
• 6:22
  And especially what they do is they'll kind of bring you on board, especially in
• 6:26
  people like in Malaysia, the Philippines, where you're not getting paid as much.
• 6:30
  They come on board.
• 6:31
  They go on for a long time.
• 6:32
  They get their passports taken away.
• 6:34
  Say, Hey, you know what?
• 6:35
  We got a safe here.
• 6:35
  We're gonna hold onto it.
• 6:36
  They don't give it back, especially if they go to different
• 6:39
  ports, if they come back.
• 6:40
  If they get sick, they're not treated properly.
• 6:43
  Some are even thrown overboard if they can't perform.
• 6:45
  It's a very, very harsh condition.
• 6:47
  It is the modern day slavery that we see today, unfortunately,
• 6:51
  and it continues to go on.
• 6:53
  So these supply chains that include tuna ends up in major supermarkets.
• 6:57
  So we're eating and supporting the companies that are supporting
• 7:01
  these fishery slaves, these harsh work conditions, these areas
• 7:04
  where like occupational health and safety is not at the forefront.
• 7:07
  If you go on a boat like a Norwegian boat or you go on like anywhere in Europe
• 7:11
  or you go on places in Canada or the US, occupational health and safety is
• 7:15
  at the top, like safety is at the top of the list in terms of what you need to
• 7:19
  know and what you need to be trained on.
• 7:20
  In other places around the world where there are long deployments and they're far
• 7:24
  away from the coast, there's no monitoring and there's nobody on the board to say,
• 7:28
  Hey, you know what, you can't do that.
• 7:29
  Or, that's is unsafe.
• 7:30
  This is unsafe.
• 7:30
  It could be very hectic, it could be sad, it could be very stressful for a lot of
• 7:34
  people and it could end up in death.
• 7:37
  But what this story does is it connects like the labor force of
• 7:41
  tuna with ocean sustainability.
• 7:43
  So the abuse of workers in destructive fishing practices often appear together.
• 7:47
  So when you see lack of monitoring of like how many fish are taken or where
• 7:52
  they're taken from, or have they been properly processed and documented.
• 7:56
  Well, that's the same thing that happens with humans.
• 7:58
  Usually they're hand in hand fishery slaves and stuff.
• 8:00
  If you're gonna do one thing illegal, you're gonna do the other thing illegal
• 8:03
  so that you can actually probably identify some of those boats right
• 8:06
  off the bat just by their problems with environmental sustainability.
• 8:10
  But this is not just an environmental problem.
• 8:12
  Tuna fishing is not just an environmental problem.
• 8:14
  It is also a people problem, and it has to be solved.
• 8:18
  This is something that the transparency behind who is getting your fish, who's
• 8:23
  catching your fish is a huge thing.
• 8:25
  And to be honest, there are a lot of new popup kind of shops, not popup,
• 8:30
  but they've shops that have popped up online where in Europe and North America.
• 8:33
  We've documented this here on the podcast before where you can actually get a
• 8:37
  picture and find out who caught your fish and their families and their generation.
• 8:41
  And you get their whole story behind it.
• 8:43
  It connects the consumer to the fisher.
• 8:46
  Which is really cool because you can see that there's not that many middle
• 8:50
  people or middle companies or middlemen, what they call it in the middle to
• 8:54
  like take away that transparency.
• 8:56
  And it's harder to track when you have more people involved.
• 8:58
  So that's something that's really interesting.
• 9:00
  Now there is of course the environmental side, like the bycatch, dark fleets,
• 9:04
  and supply chain opacity, which is something that's a huge part.
• 9:08
  We're going to discuss it in this section.
• 9:10
  So tuna caught for cheap retail products often come with like huge environmental,
• 9:15
  like from industrial fishing of course that uses high impact gear, like FAD, so
• 9:20
  Fish Aggregating Devices, which, we've had people from the International Seafood
• 9:25
  Sustainability Foundation on the podcast to talk about fish aggregation devices
• 9:29
  and how they've improved over that time.
• 9:31
  But there are still some that are being used that are not good for sustainability.
• 9:35
  They can increase the catch of non-targeted species, including
• 9:38
  sharks, sea turtles, dolphins, sea birds, and juvenile tuna.
• 9:41
  Now, of course, like I said, this is from the past.
• 9:43
  The newer ones that are being tested and that have been discussed on
• 9:46
  this podcast before are better, but they still come with some caveats,
• 9:49
  so you have to be careful of that.
• 9:51
  Now, of course, some vessels stay at sea for long periods.
• 9:53
  So transshipping tuna at sea, there's less transparency involved there.
• 9:57
  Because it really comes up to the people who, like I have fisheries observers who
• 10:00
  are on these trans shipping boats that receive all the goods from the catches
• 10:04
  and the boats that catch the fish.
• 10:05
  Sometimes they come in and they don't even know what these fish are because
• 10:08
  they've already been processed.
• 10:09
  They've chopped the heads off, chopped the fins off, chopped the tails off.
• 10:12
  Obviously they were dead before that, hopefully.
• 10:13
  And then they bring 'em on board.
• 10:14
  But sometimes it's difficult to tell between a tuna and a shark.
• 10:17
  It really is when you process all the meat and everything.
• 10:20
  Even when you have observers on these transhippers, it's really difficult
• 10:23
  to kind of catch and watch and monitor all these fish accurately.
• 10:26
  So there's a lot of ethical and ecological practices that
• 10:28
  can be called into question.
• 10:30
  But even when the companies say, like for marketing, they say, Hey, look,
• 10:34
  this has been responsibly sourced, that doesn't always mean they have.
• 10:37
  And there's a lot of greenwashing out there, or blue washing,
• 10:40
  whatever you want to call it.
• 10:41
  That happens with these marketing pieces on the actual label of the canned tuna.
• 10:46
  So it is something that, you know, has to be monitored and has to be caught.
• 10:50
  We'll talk about that in the next session.
• 10:51
  So that when we think of tuna, we think of food.
• 10:53
  Like that's always the thing we think about.
• 10:55
  We don't think about everything behind that.
• 10:56
  We rarely think of the ecosystems.
• 10:59
  The protected species and the fishing technology that's used.
• 11:02
  And so now what I hope to get out of this video for you is to really
• 11:07
  start thinking about how it's caught.
• 11:08
  And I know it's not fun because all you wanna do is eat that delicious tuna.
• 11:12
  It's very good and it's very good for you.
• 11:14
  And some people really, really like it.
• 11:15
  But it's also something that you have to think about is
• 11:17
  like, is this the right company?
• 11:20
  Is this the right certification, which we're gonna talk about now.
• 11:23
  We're gonna talk about certifications and solutions, promising ideas
• 11:26
  with complications, of course.
• 11:27
  Now certifications have come out.
• 11:29
  You have the Marine Stewardship Council.
• 11:31
  You have the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation who works
• 11:33
  with scientists and major tuna companies to improve gear, reduced bycatch.
• 11:37
  And track stock health.
• 11:39
  You have a number of different ones.
• 11:40
  You have Seafood Watch.
• 11:41
  There are a number of different programs out there, apps that help
• 11:45
  you track what's the right seafood, where they're caught and so forth.
• 11:48
  So those are all important.
• 11:50
  So these organizations have improved transparency 'cause like, say something
• 11:53
  like the Marine Stewardship Council, what they want to do is they want
• 11:56
  to take, I think they have over 400 fisheries, probably more than that,
• 11:59
  where they actually look at where it's caught and the whole supply
• 12:01
  chain, all the way up to retail.
• 12:03
  They check everything and they check every part of it.
• 12:06
  You have to go through a certification process to be able to be certified and
• 12:09
  put that on your label to say, Hey, I'm MSC certified to be able to do that.
• 12:13
  So I think, you know, having that, having the ISSF, the International Seafood
• 12:17
  Sustainability Foundation who've, we've had the president on the podcast before.
• 12:22
  They focus more on ecological sustainability than labor protections, but
• 12:26
  they're still very interested in reducing those and making sure that those companies
• 12:31
  and those supply chains that they support do not have any of that in their system,
• 12:35
  obviously in their whole supply chain.
• 12:37
  'cause that's obviously not bad.
• 12:38
  So the certification doesn't always guarantee like ethical working
• 12:42
  conditions and/or low environmental harm.
• 12:44
  That's one of the problems with these certifications.
• 12:47
  And it's not to say that these certifications are worth nothing.
• 12:50
  They're worth a lot because they do make the process more transparent.
• 12:54
  But they may also uncover a lot of things that aren't very good.
• 12:57
  I'd have to have somebody on from the Marine Stewardship Council to find
• 13:00
  out how they vet each of their people.
• 13:02
  It's been a while since I've had them on.
• 13:03
  But they do have some really good sustainable fisheries, and they
• 13:06
  do monitor those supply chains.
• 13:08
  However, there needs to be more progress, especially when we look at the labor
• 13:12
  practices of some of these boats.
• 13:14
  And some of these companies may not know, or they don't do enough due diligence
• 13:17
  to know what's happening on these boats, how long these boats are out there, and
• 13:21
  what they do, all that kind of stuff.
• 13:22
  So that needs to change.
• 13:24
  We do know this.
• 13:25
  This investigation plus a plethora of other investigations, not only from
• 13:29
  a journalistic standpoint, but also a science standpoint and labor law
• 13:32
  and just human rights standpoint.
• 13:34
  We know this goes on and it needs to be improved, definitely improved.
• 13:38
  So even though there's real progress and real pressure to
• 13:40
  do better, there's also a lot of greenwashing and gaps in an oversight.
• 13:44
  So, consumers need to understand both of these.
• 13:48
  However, when you do something like the big consumer question,
• 13:51
  what are the better choices?
• 13:53
  There are some more sustainable tune options available.
• 13:56
  So look for MSC Blue label because you will get the better option.
• 14:00
  It's not the best option, but it's the better option.
• 14:02
  Choose products, that say, caught by pole and line or troll caught,
• 14:07
  like T-R-O-L-L caught because those methods reduce a lot of bycatch.
• 14:12
  When you're just looking at pole and line, it's just literally
• 14:14
  a fishing pole in a line.
• 14:15
  Or a troll caught, it's like you're trolling along and you're catching them.
• 14:18
  Brands like Safe Catch, Clover Leaf, which is MSC certified products, and
• 14:23
  then great value MSC certified tuna have better transparency standards.
• 14:27
  But the best takeaway is bigger than the sticker or the logo.
• 14:30
  That's really something to think about.
• 14:32
  You have to ask yourself where your seafood came from.
• 14:35
  Ask how it was caught and ask who caught it and whether they were treated fairly.
• 14:41
  Now you're gonna ask this at the supermarket and nobody's gonna know.
• 14:44
  The more we ask, the better the companies get at being more transparent.
• 14:50
  Because like a lot of times I've done it before.
• 14:52
  I've gone to my supermarket, I've ordered seafood and I'm like, Hey,
• 14:54
  do you know how this was caught?
• 14:55
  Where it was caught and who caught it?
• 14:57
  And like the 16, 17-year-old behind the counter is like, I don't know man.
• 15:01
  Like just, do you want it or not?
• 15:02
  Like they don't care.
• 15:03
  They're just there to earn their minimum wage.
• 15:06
  And like especially with a student, there are some, I should say, there
• 15:09
  are some like managers and stuff that really take it to heart and will do it.
• 15:13
  And there are some fishing markets that will look at everything.
• 15:16
  And so those are the ones you wanna support.
• 15:18
  If they're not like that, don't support those supermarkets.
• 15:20
  Make them say what it is and make them like, look at what it is and make better
• 15:25
  decisions when they do their purchases.
• 15:27
  Right.
• 15:27
  This is a story about literally everyday choices that you
• 15:31
  make at the grocery store.
• 15:32
  Tuna is one of the most consumed fish in the world because of its health
• 15:36
  attributes, I guess you call it.
• 15:38
  But this means that consumers have power in the type of tuna that we consume.
• 15:43
  And so it is important that we demand better.
• 15:47
  It is important that we follow up with Marine Stewardship Council, ask questions.
• 15:51
  ISSF, ask questions.
• 15:53
  Your supermarket, ask questions.
• 15:56
  This is where it starts to begin.
• 15:58
  The movement begins for better transparency and a lot more due diligence
• 16:03
  where you get your global seafood.
• 16:06
  That's really what it comes down to.
• 16:07
  So the next time you pick up a can of tuna, think about the hands that caught
• 16:11
  it, like the people that caught it, the methods that pulled it from the sea.
• 16:15
  And then you know what systems you want to support is really what it comes down to.
• 16:19
  Sustainable seafood is not only about protecting marine life,
• 16:22
  it's about protecting people too, because people catch 'em.
• 16:24
  And there's a lot of people who are mistreated in trying to catch food for you
• 16:28
  so that you can have this can of seafood once a day or once every other day or once
• 16:32
  a week or however often you consume it.
• 16:34
  Don't consume tuna more than once a week, by the way.
• 16:36
  It's not very good with the mercury content.
• 16:39
  So I think that's the big takeaway message is when you start to eat
• 16:42
  any kind of seafood, any kind of meal, really, any kind of meat
• 16:45
  or vegetable, just ask yourself.
• 16:48
  Where does it come from?
• 16:49
  Who caught it and how it was caught?
• 16:51
  Those are the big questions you should ask when you're looking at your tuna and
• 16:54
  any other types of fisheries that you eat or any type of seafood that you eat.
• 16:57
  It's very important.
• 16:58
  That's it for today's episode.
• 16:59
  If you have any questions or comments, please put it down in the comments down
• 17:04
  below if you're watching this on YouTube.
• 17:05
  And if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast app, I am so excited.
• 17:08
  I've got this new service that I'm trying out.
• 17:10
  I would love to hear from you.
• 17:11
  You can leave a message or a voicemail, or leave a rating and review.
• 17:15
  But if you go to speak up for blue.com/feedback, you can leave
• 17:21
  me a message and a question.
• 17:22
  It just go to me, it doesn't go to the public.
• 17:25
  If you have a question or something you want me to cover or you have like
• 17:28
  feedback for me, I would love to hear it.
• 17:30
  Go Speak up for blue.com/feedback.
• 17:34
  All one word feedback.
• 17:35
  I wanna thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the
• 17:38
  How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
• 17:40
  I'm your host Andrew Lewin from the True North Strong and free.
• 17:42
  Have a great day.
• 17:43
  We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.