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What Your Farmed Salmon Ate: Inside a Five-Year Fishmeal Investigation · How To Protect The Ocean

• 0:00
  Is aquaculture the right way to move forward with sustainable seafood?
• 0:06
  That's what we're gonna be talking about on today's episode of the
• 0:08
  How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
• 0:10
  I have a little story for you.
• 0:11
  We have a, a guest on today, Maya Martin, who is from the, The Outlaw
• 0:15
  Ocean Project, and she's here to talk about a five-year investigation that
• 0:19
  she and her colleagues did on fish meal.
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  Now, fish meal is what feeds farmed fish.
• 0:26
  These fish are predators like salmon and so forth.
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  They're predators, they eat other fish, so they have basically this flour-type
• 0:32
  material called fish meal that they eat, and it's made up of a lot of forage
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  fish, so these oily fish called, like, salmon and anchovies and sardines, and
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  all these little fish that a lot of animals in the wild feed on, from, tuna,
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  to sharks, to whales, and, so forth.
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  It's a big industry, and it's also one of the things that a lot of animals feed
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  on, and it's, has to do with a lot of productivity, upwelling and so forth.
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  There's a lot that we're gonna be covering today.
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  But I wanted to talk a little bit about a story.
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  When I went to university in the late '90s, early 2000s, I, did my
• 1:05
  undergrad at University of Guelph in the Marine Fresh Water Biology, program.
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  I took a class called Aquaculture.
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  I didn't really know what aquaculture was, actually.
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  In fact, I thought it was, like, plants, like, underwater plants, it
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  kinda is, but also there's seafood that's in there, fish and mussels
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  and clams and all this kinda stuff.
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  And they were really promoting it back then as, like, the thing to do and,
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  the University of Guelph was doing research on it, how to do it right,
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  and all this kinda stuff, looking at sturgeons and everything like that.
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  And, I was still new to it and I hadn't realized how big it was, but I remember
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  them telling me, the professor telling me that at some point, aquaculture's gonna
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  feed, like, half the population, like, the seafood, like, it's gonna be, like,
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  50% of the seafood, and which it is now.
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  But the thing is, like, when you have farmed salmon or farmed fish, they eat
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  other fish like fish meal, and so that fish meal has to come from somewhere,
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  and that comes from wild stocks.
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  And how those wild stocks are fished as well as processed, in lies the biggest
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  problems, and this investigation, this five-year investigation by The Outlaw
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  Ocean Project, has really revealed a lot of nasty things that go on.
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  There's crimes and ethical concerns that people are just like, "Whoa, I did not
• 2:13
  know that this is actually happening." And so today we're gonna cover a lot of that.
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  Now, during this conversation, we're gonna be talking about
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  forced labor, fisheries slavery.
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  We're gonna talk a lot about crimes.
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  We're gonna talk about civil unrest and protests and a
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  lot of violence that goes on.
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  So I just kinda wanna warn you heads up, that this is a very serious episode.
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  We go on for quite a long time 'cause there's a lot of
• 2:34
  information to go through.
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  There are websites that I'm linking to in the show notes.
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  There's, foodforfeed.theoutlawocean.com, and then there's
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  baittoplate.theoutlawocean.com.
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  and there's a lot of information on there.
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  I highly recommend that you go through that either while you're listening
• 2:52
  to the episode or after the episode, because there's a ton of things.
• 2:56
  And you're not gonna get through it all in one 'cause there's so much information.
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  There's videos, there's all the transparencies down there.
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  There's the different websites.
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  There's the findings, the reporting, all that kind of stuff is out there.
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  and it's a worldwide thing.
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  and what Maya discusses today is just, it's surprising.
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  it's surprising and not surprising at the same time, but it's surprising
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  that in 2026 we're still dealing with forced labor, all these human rights
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  impacts, a lot of, unsustainable, practices, governments allowing these
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  to happen, enforcement not being done on regulations and things like that.
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  and it's a concern.
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  It has to be cleaned up.
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  I do think that if it can get cleaned up, I think we're in a better place,
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  but there's a lot of work to do, and there's a lot of things that we can do.
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  And we discuss it at the end of the interview where Maya talks about how
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  individuals like you and I can participate and work with other organizations to help.
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  So, this is, an interesting episode to say the least, but just a
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  warning, there's a lot of talk about violence and things that happen on,
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  the high seas and the open seas.
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  And so, just to give you a heads-up on that.
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  But here's the interview with Maya Martin.
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  Enjoy, and I'll talk to you after
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  hey, Maya.
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  Welcome to the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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  Are you ready to talk about The Outlaw Ocean Project?
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  Yes, absolutely.
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  Thank you for the opportunity.
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  All right.
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  I am so excited.
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  This is a huge, massive story that you guys have broken and
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  presented in front of all of us.
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  Before we get into it, just to tell folks, as you're listening to this,
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  if you're near a computer, there are links to the websites in the show notes.
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  I highly recommend that you kinda look at this while you listen to the episode
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  if you're able to do so, because it's so informative, but it's so interesting
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  in the way that it's presented.
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  As a communicator, I just love this kinda stuff.
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  And so I highly recommend that you kinda follow along, or after
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  the episode you check out, it's foodforfeed.theocean, theoutlawocean.com.
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  So we'll put that in the show notes so that people can follow along
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  either before or after or during.
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  and Maya, this is great.
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  We're gonna talk about fish meal, and we're gonna talk about the meal
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  that feeds the fish for farmed fish.
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  And this is something that doesn't get discussed a lot.
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  We've discussed it a little bit on the podcast with, somebody that
• 5:01
  you're familiar with as well, 'cause I believe she kind of informed
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  some of the things in this story.
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  Dr. Marine Cusa, who works for Oceana, she's been on the
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  podcast to talk about fish meal.
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  And she mentioned after the time I recorded, last time she was like, "You
• 5:13
  have to talk to the people You have to talk to Ian, and you have to talk
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  to Maya. Like, you have to talk to the people because once they break this
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  story, this is gonna be huge." Mm-hmm.
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  And so we're gonna get into what The Outlaw Ocean Project is and
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  what this whole thing about food for feed is, on today's episode.
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  But first, Maya, why don't you just let us know who you are and what you do?
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  So, my name is Maya Martin.
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  I am a deputy editor for The Outlaw Ocean Project, and I do a lot of
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  research and writing, and I run, some teams that are reporting.
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  I'm based in Atlanta, Georgia.
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  Right on.
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  Atlanta, Georgia, beautiful city.
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  I've never been, but I heard- Mm-hmm … best food probably in
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  the US, and, like, so entertaining.
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  I can't wait to go there.
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  But I have to ask, how did you get to this point in your career?
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  Were you always interested in, journalism or as an editor?
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  Or was it more of the writing and that passion that kinda drove you
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  to this place where you're at now?
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  yeah, I've always been interested in journalism ever since I was a teenager,
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  especially human rights journalism.
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  I was super interested in what people are capable of doing to other people.
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  Mm.
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  and yeah, right out of college, I ended up at The Outlaw Ocean Project,
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  and I've been here ever since.
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  Amazing.
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  So, this is, like, the first opportunity after university.
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  It's kind of interesting 'cause my next question was, like, how did you
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  choose or how did you get involved in a project about the ocean?
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  Mm-hmm.
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  But once you said you've always been interested in the human rights aspect of
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  just life in general, and like you said, that people can do some pretty nasty
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  things to people around the world, that kinda put two and two together ' cause
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  fisheries around the world has had some really horrific human rights, I'm gonna
• 6:56
  say infractions, but just, they've done some god-awful things to people, and
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  fishery slaves and everything like that that we've gone over on, this episode.
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  when you saw the opportunity to work with The Outlaw Ocean Project, did you
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  make that connection right off the bat?
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  Or you were just like, "I wonder what this is about," or how did
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  you find out about this project?
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  I really found out about it through getting employed as an intern
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  of Ian Urbina in 2019, which was actually the year that The
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  Outlaw Ocean Project was founded.
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  so going into that job interview, I had no idea- Right … of
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  what I was getting into.
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  but by the end of the summer, it became very clear.
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  And the human rights element was very clear because I think one of the
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  reasons why he founded the project was because people often only hear about
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  the ocean when some calamity strikes, like an oil spill or, an explosion.
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  and there's also, like, not a lot of journalism on the water, and people
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  often care more, or know more about, like, the marine species below the water.
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  But we are, equally as interested in what's happening on the ships
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  to people, because there's millions of people who work out there.
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  A hundred percent.
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  we don't hear stories about that- Mm-hmm … 'cause it's hard to get on the boats.
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  It's hard to find out what's happening.
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  And when you're talking to some of the people, they may not wanna talk.
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  Oftentimes, when we hear about these large ships, especially, like, trawling ships
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  and the ones that are catching, like, the sardines and the anchovies- Mm-hmm
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  they're, like, huge, like, processing plants on the water, we hear that and
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  we're like, "Ugh, corporations," like they're just greedy and all this.
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  But the people on the boat are fishers.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  They just wanna fish.
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  Oftentimes, they're coming from places in the Philippines, in Malaysia, maybe
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  from Thailand, and there's some pretty horrific things that happen, to the people
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  on those ships where they don't get to go back to their country when they want to.
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  Their passports get taken.
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  They get sick sometimes.
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  There have been stories of them, throwing people overboard because they can't work
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  as much and they're not getting fed.
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  it's a horrible situation.
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  Pretty much modern-day slavery.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Did you know about these types of infractions?
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  Did Ian prepare you?
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  did people prepare you for this type of stuff before you started the project?
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  I think we jumped right in, with like one of my first assignments was to find
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  footage of the boats, coming back, to shore and washing up on the shores of
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  Japan whenever, North Korean fishermen, they had engine troubles and like died, in
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  those boats and they came back to shore.
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  So like one of my first assignments- Wow … was finding footage of that.
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  So yeah, there wasn't like a lot of on-ramping.
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  but yeah, that quickly became clear that that was gonna be part of, part of my job.
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  Absolutely.
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  Now, before we get into the story-
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  and obviously we're kind of jumping a little bit, but, five years
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  is a long time for a story- Mm
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  these days to spend on, Obviously, it's one story that has many pieces to it,
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  and I'm sure there's many tangents to it.
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  But five years on, one story is, it's different to think about it
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  these days 'cause the way the news cycle works, it's just like one story
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  after another and after another.
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  And then when you look at politics these days, it seems like every
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  day is a news story 'cause some politician is saying something, and
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  that becomes like the headlines.
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  As a journalist and someone who's worked on the ocean, on "The Outlaw Ocean
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  Project," like for this five years, how important it is to have that amount of
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  time to spend on a story, to develop it, to research it, to move into places
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  where you could fully understand the entire, the full breadth of the story?
• 10:30
  Yeah, it's extremely important.
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  and it's something that is quite rare, and we are an organization that is
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  super lucky to have the opportunity to, spend that much time on one story.
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  So, in the past, whenever aquaculture and fish meal as issues were covered,
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  it was more in an isolated way.
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  Where you would hear about the salmon pens in the Atlantic Ocean, and the pollution
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  there, or you would hear about fish meal driving food insecurity in West Africa.
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  But these were, told as more isolated stories, and our mission with this
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  five-year project was to take on the entire industry at once and-
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  Right … to see what problems were happening in these various places and
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  how they were connected to each other.
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  so I think it's very important.
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  I think all topics should, get this much attention.
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  but we were very lucky.
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  Yeah.
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  I'm glad it was done.
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  and I'm glad you guys are working on this and getting the word out because,
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  not many people knew about it until I started to look into it with Marine
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  and she's told me about her research.
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  I was surprised.
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  surprised and not surprised at a certain point, but you're just surprised when
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  you first hear the information, 'cause as a Canadian, we hear about the
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  open pen Atlantic salmon farms in BC- Mm-hmm … which is a huge contentious
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  issue with the government of Canada, and if anybody's have seen, like, the
• 11:50
  Salmon People, or listen to the Salmon People podcast, like, you'll know what
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  happened there with indigenous rights and, and everything like that and the
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  government and how that all worked out.
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  But that was the extent of it.
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  We never really heard much about how these animals are fed in the farms.
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  Like, we hear about it and we hear, oh, fish feed and stuff.
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  Like, well, yeah, they're fish.
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  they eat other fish.
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  They're predators, and they're gonna need that at some point in
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  their lifetime as they're adults.
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  But we don't really know the full extent.
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  So, can you just kinda give us, like, how this story developed?
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  Like, where Ian was going with this as this is really, like,
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  one of the first stories coming out of the Outlaw Ocean Project.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  and why this story, in particular about fish meal and fish feed?
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  Um, yeah, so as you mentioned, in the 2010s, there was a lot of attention on
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  human rights abuses at sea, particularly Thai boats, and other huge industrial
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  ships and sea slavery and, Part of what Ian's series, "The Yellow Ocean" in The
• 12:49
  Times, found and other investigations by the AP and others found was that
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  there are a lot of concerns, tied to the fishing industry, and that's wild catch.
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  and so one of the ways that the industry, tried to address those problems and the
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  way that, yeah, the industry tried to address those problems is that it turned
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  to aquaculture, which is fish farming.
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  and that was also to address the sustainability problems, caused by
• 13:19
  fish, like such intense fishing pressure on the oceans, which has led to a
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  situation where over a third of, the world's fish stocks are overfished.
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  and so aquaculture was promoted as this alternative because, if you, can farm
• 13:33
  fish, you're not taking so many from the sea, and that was the idea behind it.
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  and as of 2022, more than half of all the seafood that's eaten,
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  has come from these fish farms.
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  but what we found is that there's like a problem with that easy solution,
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  which is that, most of the farmed fish are reliant on fish oil and fish meal.
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  And so far, a sustainable alternative that's, like
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  cost-effective has not emerged.
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  and so we wanted to take a look at, what was going into these fish farms,
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  and the problems that were tied to that because of course they're relying on
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  fish that was extracted from the water.
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  Right.
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  Right.
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  It's interesting because, now that fish, that fish farming is so big, it
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  supplies, as you mentioned, just over 51, I think it's 51% Mm-hmm … is
• 14:25
  the, the amount for the world.
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  It was sold as that way to take off like that pressure off of wild fish.
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  It says, okay- Mm-hmm … if we keep them, in a farm area, whether we like the
• 14:35
  open pens or not, like if we have them in here, we could supply people with food.
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  It'll allow our wild stocks to rebuild.
• 14:43
  Well, what did your reporting find is that, like, for that promise?
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  Is that what it does?
• 14:48
  I mean, you kinda mentioned it a little bit in terms of like the pressure.
• 14:51
  It doesn't seem like it's lifting off that pressure for certain types of wild stocks.
• 14:56
  Mm-hmm.
• 14:57
  yeah, so two-thirds of seafood that is farmed is of the type that is fed,
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  fish meal and fish oil to grow, faster.
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  And, the reason is because that those types of farmed fish, such as salmon,
• 15:13
  tilapia, sea bass, sea bream, they, need that kind of feed in order to grow
• 15:19
  and to have the kinds of nutrients that you would expect when you eat seafood.
• 15:23
  Right.
• 15:24
  and so we found that this industry is really driving a crisis.
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  yeah, it's really, exacerbating the crisis, of overfishing and, the types
• 15:34
  of seafood that aquaculture claim to be saving, such as forage fish
• 15:40
  like anchovetta and herring, sprat.
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  those are the types of fish that are, oh, and sardinella.
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  Those types of fish are targeted, to be fed to the farmed fish.
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  and we also did an assessment of all of the fisheries that are
• 15:55
  targeted by this industry, in the countries that we were studying.
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  and we found that over half of those fisheries were at places
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  where they were overexploited.
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  Mm. And so in a lot of ways, the aquaculture is making the problem worse.
• 16:12
  Interesting.
• 16:12
  it's kind of interesting because I think when we hear it'll take the pressures off
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  the wild fisheries, it's really- Mm. It'll take the pressure off maybe some of it
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  off of the salmon, the wild salmon stocks, not necessarily the food that feeds them.
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  And oftentimes that food is not necessarily where they would normally find
• 16:31
  that food, so the fish that are put into this fish meal are in other places, Can
• 16:37
  you talk a little bit about where some of the sources of the fish meal come from?
• 16:41
  yeah.
• 16:42
  So geographically, it comes from Southeast Asia, West Africa, and Peru.
• 16:47
  Peru is like a huge powerhouse, and then, also China is a huge producer of
• 16:52
  fish meal and fish oil, partly because it has such a huge aquaculture industry.
• 16:57
  and in those waters, what's being targeted are, like those forage
• 17:02
  fish like- Yeah … anchoveta, sardinella, and stuff like that.
• 17:06
  Interesting.
• 17:06
  Now, one of the things that we haven't really kind of gone through, fish meal.
• 17:09
  Can you just kind of describe what that looks like?
• 17:11
  Like in, like- Mm-hmm … like physically what that looks like or even just
• 17:14
  what it's made up of and how it's, how it's- Yeah … like put together.
• 17:18
  Fish meal is a flour that is made by taking lots of, fish and cooking it
• 17:25
  and pulverizing it into, this flour.
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  It can also take the form of pellets, once it's added into the feed.
• 17:32
  and then the liquid equivalent is fish oil, and that is often fed to salmon.
• 17:39
  Okay.
• 17:39
  Interesting.
• 17:40
  Going back to the sources of the, fish meal, like where we're getting these fish.
• 17:45
  Mm-hmm.
• 17:46
  Uh, a lot of places, Africa, Peru, Asia, like a lot of places in Asia.
• 17:52
  The team that, for the project uses like the phrase, which I hadn't heard
• 17:56
  of before, but it's food colonialism.
• 17:59
  Mm-hmm.
• 17:59
  Now, we've heard colonialism, obviously it's rampant within marine
• 18:02
  conservation, and it obviously needs to go, and there are people and
• 18:06
  organizations who are working to take that away, but unfortunately, just
• 18:08
  historically, we, continue to see it.
• 18:11
  From this perspective, what does it mean, and where did you see this type
• 18:16
  of action, like food colonialism, like most clearly throughout the project,
• 18:19
  like throughout your investigation?
• 18:21
  Yeah.
• 18:21
  So human rights, advocates, usually point to West Africa, as an example
• 18:27
  where food colonialism is, really tied to the fish meal and fish oil industry.
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  and historically, those types of forage fish that are just really small and
• 18:37
  oily, people have said that, have even called them trash fish- Mm-hmm … as
• 18:42
  if to, say that they are not eaten, like otherwise they would've just
• 18:46
  been wasted or stayed in the ocean.
• 18:48
  But that isn't entirely true.
• 18:50
  And, it's especially not true in West Africa because, over there, as we
• 18:55
  found in our investigation, people really rely on sardinellas, as one
• 19:00
  of the major sources of protein, particularly in Senegal and Gambia.
• 19:05
  they rely on it for food.
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  They also rely on it for their livelihoods.
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  so there's hundreds and maybe thousands of fishers and, processors on land who,
• 19:15
  are now sort of losing their jobs, because of the fish meal and fish oil industry
• 19:20
  decimating the waters around them.
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  and also, the industry has driven up the price of sardinella, where it's become
• 19:29
  inaccessible for your average buyer.
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  So people are essentially saying, like the companies that are fishing these
• 19:36
  sort of oily kind of what they call trash fish are saying that because
• 19:40
  they need it for the fish meal, but they're trying to kind of show the world
• 19:43
  that, hey, not many people eat this.
• 19:45
  But in a matter of fact, they do.
• 19:46
  like people are eating this all the time as part of their culture.
• 19:48
  It's part of what they feed on 'cause it's… Like I know Peru, I've just done
• 19:52
  a story about Peru and how important that upwelling is and how important
• 19:55
  that product, fish productivity is, especially with this new El Niño coming
• 19:59
  in and that disrupting it, and it's affecting their GDP to that point.
• 20:03
  So people are eating it.
• 20:04
  It's not just for the fish meals.
• 20:05
  People are eating it, but those companies are trying to kinda like
• 20:08
  work around it and say, "Hey, you know what? People aren't eating
• 20:10
  it." But that's obviously not true.
• 20:12
  And it's, kind of interesting how it's easy To spread that message
• 20:15
  around that people aren't eating these types of fish because- Mm-hmm
• 20:18
  They may not be appealing to some people in sort of the Global
• 20:20
  North where that would normally hear of these types of fish.
• 20:25
  It's easy to kind of like justify it and be like, "Well, nobody's eating it
• 20:27
  anyway. That's what they're telling us."
• 20:29
  But we have to go and dig through and make sure that, hey, no, like,
• 20:32
  people are eating this, and it's- Mm-hmm … it's an important aspect.
• 20:35
  How do we start dispelling that, that type of messaging from these companies?
• 20:40
  Someone like myself, who's a marine scientist, science communicator, you're
• 20:44
  a journalist, obviously is coming out with, The Outlaw Ocean Project.
• 20:46
  As a communicator, like, how do we start spreading that message
• 20:50
  that, hey, you know what?
• 20:50
  These fish are actually really good for you if people eat them.
• 20:53
  They're being taken away.
• 20:55
  yeah, that's a really good question.
• 20:56
  I think one way that we're trying to reach consumers in the Global North is through
• 21:03
  this tool we created called Bait to Plate.
• 21:05
  so when you hear about, food insecurity and other issues that are
• 21:09
  happening, like, out there in the Global South, it can seem really far
• 21:13
  away and not tied to you in any way.
• 21:16
  But, through Bait to Plate, we have mapped several relationships between,
• 21:22
  the fishmeal, plant that is taking the sardinella and other species
• 21:27
  all the way down to the farmed fish that ends up on your plate.
• 21:31
  and I think that is a way to empower the average consumer to
• 21:36
  know that, there were hidden costs that were tied to their farmed fish.
• 21:41
  so that's one way, one effort toward transparency that, we've been working
• 21:45
  on, but it is a good question.
• 21:47
  Yeah.
• 21:48
  And I'm glad you answered it that way because it really makes
• 21:51
  us focus on the supply chain-
• 21:53
  Mm-hmm
• 21:53
  of not just catching the fish, but how it gets from the ships to the plants,
• 21:57
  to the processors, to the mills, to the farms, to the importers, to
• 22:00
  the retailers, and to the agencies.
• 22:02
  and it's really well-documented on the Bait to Plate, website,
• 22:06
  which we'll link in the show notes.
• 22:08
  Can you talk a little bit, like walk us through like one supply chain- Mm-hmm
• 22:12
  end to end to just kind of show people what it goes through.
• 22:16
  I wanna talk a little bit about what happens in those plants that,
• 22:19
  the website really highlights.
• 22:21
  Just like the general kind
• 22:22
  of- Yeah
• 22:22
  … process.
• 22:23
  Yeah.
• 22:23
  Yeah.
• 22:23
  So usually it starts on the ships, and most of the ships that are catching, fish
• 22:29
  for fish meal are either trawlers or, purse seiners, which some scientists have
• 22:36
  said are, have like a high likelihood of bycatch, of catching other species
• 22:41
  that, they didn't mean to catch- Mm-hmm
• 22:43
  which just leads to, removing more marine life from the ocean unnecessarily.
• 22:48
  But those are the two main types of boats, catching fish meal and fish oil.
• 22:53
  And then there's also, sometimes it's created from like the offcuts of the heads
• 22:58
  and the, tails and, waste parts of the fish, which is actually more sustainable.
• 23:03
  But for those that target it, what happens is that either it'll be processed on the
• 23:08
  ship, in a huge factory trawler that's basically like the same as a factory
• 23:14
  on land, and then it's taken to shore, or sometimes it'll be transshipped to,
• 23:19
  another ship which takes it to shore.
• 23:22
  once it's gone shore, it is, taken to this fish meal processing plant which
• 23:27
  pulverizes it and cooks it, turns it into the fish meal or the fish oil.
• 23:32
  and then from there, it usually goes to a feed mill.
• 23:35
  It's added to other ingredients such as soy, or, yeah, other ingredients,
• 23:41
  and then it's turned into a pellet.
• 23:43
  And then that pellet is sold to the fish farm, where it's fed to the farmed fish.
• 23:49
  and then that farmed fish usually goes through some kind of processing itself
• 23:54
  at another processing plant, where it's turned into filets or, Mm-hmm
• 23:57
  different forms for the consumer.
• 23:59
  Then it goes to a wholesaler or a distributor, and then it ends up, at
• 24:03
  a restaurant or a grocery store or, it reaches the consumer in some other way.
• 24:08
  But it's a very, very long and complex supply chain.
• 24:12
  and sometimes hidden, sometimes you don't realize, where everything goes.
• 24:17
  Yeah.
• 24:17
  As a consumer, a lot of times we're not thinking of-- All we think of
• 24:20
  is, like, the ship that caught it, and then, like, a ship, And then
• 24:23
  all of a sudden it's in your store.
• 24:25
  Mm-hmm.
• 24:25
  That's kind of how a lot of people think.
• 24:27
  They don't really see how it, it all connects.
• 24:29
  And I'm sure some people will be surprised by how many stops it makes along the way.
• 24:34
  Like, from the baitfish that are getting caught for the fish meal
• 24:36
  to the, actual farmed salmon, let's just say, that gets to your area.
• 24:40
  Mm-hmm.
• 24:41
  On the website, you have all the different types of stops it could
• 24:45
  make within the supply chain.
• 24:46
  What really caught my eye was the amount of crimes or concerns that
• 24:52
  happen in each one of these stops, I guess, or parts of the supply chain.
• 24:59
  We're looking at, just as an example, they looked at, I guess, in the investigation,
• 25:03
  more than 30,000 ships with at least 3,800 crimes or concerns either aboard
• 25:08
  the ship or within the supply chains.
• 25:10
  And then it kinda goes with 370 plants with at least 900 crimes or concerns
• 25:16
  was this stuff that was witnessed or discussed by people who had gone through
• 25:20
  it or who had witnessed it themselves?
• 25:22
  Like, how did you get all this information and why are there
• 25:25
  so many crimes or concerns?
• 25:26
  And I guess what is a concern?
• 25:28
  What is categorized as a concern?
• 25:30
  Obviously, a crime is something illegal in that country, but what is
• 25:33
  a concern before we get into that?
• 25:34
  Yeah, yeah.
• 25:35
  A concern is something that is, not necessarily illegal, but it is a problem.
• 25:41
  So one example is that food insecurity.
• 25:45
  so we might categorize something as a concern when a plant is taking, a
• 25:51
  type, like a species of fish that is overexploited in the nearby waters,
• 25:57
  even if the government, is permissive and that is not, like illegal.
• 26:03
  Right.
• 26:03
  Um, another example is transshipment, which is, I think it's less common in
• 26:08
  fishmeal, but transshipment in general is whenever a fishing ship doesn't
• 26:13
  wanna return all the way to shore.
• 26:14
  So a more, logistical, like easier way to, transfer the catch back to shore is
• 26:21
  just to meet up with a, like refrigerated ship and- Yeah … transfer the catch
• 26:25
  to it, and it goes back to shore.
• 26:27
  that's another thing that isn't always illegal.
• 26:30
  it's definitely not illegal on the high seas, and in some countries it is
• 26:33
  legal, if you have permission to do it.
• 26:35
  But it is, a problem because it means that the crew is not getting to stop
• 26:41
  at port and, see like port inspectors who would otherwise catch, "Oh, you
• 26:46
  guys don't have enough like fresh vegetables," or, problems like that.
• 26:50
  So those are examples of what we would classify as a concern, even if
• 26:54
  it's not, like necessarily illegal.
• 26:56
  Okay.
• 26:57
  Okay who do you hope uses this website here, the Bait to Plate website?
• 27:02
  Mm-hmm.
• 27:02
  Like is it consumers?
• 27:03
  Is it retailers or regulators or other journalists?
• 27:06
  Like who is it designed for?
• 27:09
  I would say all of the above.
• 27:10
  we hope consumers will use it just to have greater awareness
• 27:13
  of what goes into farmed seafood.
• 27:16
  and we hope retailers will use it, to see like blind spots where they,
• 27:20
  somehow didn't see that their supplier was connected to these problems- and
• 27:25
  to encourage retailers to, do much firmer, stricter due diligence checks.
• 27:31
  Yeah.
• 27:32
  and we would also want regulators to look at, all these things that, are
• 27:36
  concerns, and why they're concerns and like how frequently they're happening.
• 27:40
  because that can influence the policy decisions that are made.
• 27:44
  Yeah … so it has a wide audience.
• 27:46
  Yep.
• 27:47
  Yeah, no, that's great.
• 27:47
  And I c- like I think it's kind of interesting 'cause you kinda alluded
• 27:50
  to it where- Mm-hmm … if there's a fishery that's already exploited-
• 27:54
  it's already being fished beyond the maximum that it could take, and the
• 27:59
  government in that area allows for the, the fishers who are doing this for the
• 28:04
  fish meal industry to continue to fish even though it's not sustainable at this
• 28:10
  point because they've overexploited it.
• 28:12
  Did you find that happens quite a bit in these countries?
• 28:15
  Like is it more of like they just come in like, "Yeah, we need this,"
• 28:18
  and government, I guess, gets money from it or they get, their
• 28:21
  fishers are employed because of it?
• 28:23
  Is that the pressure that they want to alleviate is to keep the fishing industry
• 28:27
  going- even though it's, exploited?
• 28:30
  yeah, I would say that is one of the reasons is, that governments, especially
• 28:35
  the governments of countries where fish meal and fish oil production is happening
• 28:39
  are eager for foreign investment, and so they're willing to look the other
• 28:43
  way when it comes to certain things.
• 28:45
  but it's also for practical reasons.
• 28:48
  so policing the ocean is very difficult for reasons I'm sure you can imagine.
• 28:53
  The ocean is huge and- Yeah … it's expensive to get out there.
• 28:57
  It's hard.
• 28:57
  Um, and so if you're a smaller country, a smaller coastal country,
• 29:02
  you're gonna struggle to have the resources to, have people tracking
• 29:06
  ships by satellite or- Mm-hmm
• 29:08
  Going out on the water to check on the ships that have turned
• 29:12
  their satellite transponders off.
• 29:14
  and so yeah, those are things that we've definitely documented, in
• 29:18
  a few places in the reporting.
• 29:20
  Interesting.
• 29:20
  Out of all these sort of links-
• 29:24
  Mm-hmm
• 29:24
  … what was the hardest link to prove that they were doing something?
• 29:27
  that wasn't they were either concerned or actually illegal.
• 29:31
  like was it hard to get into some of these places or how did
• 29:33
  you access some of these places?
• 29:35
  do you mean like crimes and concerns?
• 29:38
  Yeah.
• 29:38
  Yeah.
• 29:39
  There was some field research.
• 29:41
  We went into fish meal plants, in Senegal, Mauritania, Thailand, and
• 29:47
  talked to workers and, got information.
• 29:50
  but a lot of it was also just open source, research.
• 29:53
  So we would, like in Peru, we found this website that posts every time,
• 29:58
  the government has found that a ship was catching juvenile fish.
• 30:03
  Mm. Um, and we scraped those regulations and took a look.
• 30:07
  and we also searched, Facebook, Twitter, for any, protests and stuff like that.
• 30:14
  and yeah, we used the internet, to locate sources and there
• 30:20
  were at least 70 journalists who were involved in the project.
• 30:24
  many of them were interpreters who were able to go into foreign language
• 30:28
  websites and locate documents for us.
• 30:31
  Okay.
• 30:32
  Interesting.
• 30:33
  I'd like to talk about like the plants, some of these fish meal plants.
• 30:37
  I've never even thought about this, but I mean it makes sense, but can
• 30:40
  you describe Like the stench that someone would smell that lives beside
• 30:46
  an actual- Mm-hmm … processing plant in some of these countries?
• 30:49
  Yeah.
• 30:49
  if I remember correctly, we have a few people quoted in there who were neighbors
• 30:53
  of the plants and, some of the quotes were, "Smells like a dead dog," Or like,
• 30:58
  "My wife told me I had to shower before I could um- Oh … come back home after
• 31:02
  just walking through the neighborhood."
• 31:04
  That's not even working at the plant, this is just- Yeah … walking by it.
• 31:07
  Yeah.
• 31:08
  Um- Wow … and Ian, went to The Gambia in 2019, and was in the area of the fish
• 31:13
  meal plant, and he had to wash, like, all of his clothes, every night because
• 31:17
  the smell was just so overbearing.
• 31:20
  and smell is not something you would think of as- No … um, like a tangible
• 31:26
  harm, but it really is tangible because especially in The Gambia, it has driven
• 31:31
  tourism out of the city, of Gunjur.
• 31:34
  Because of
• 31:34
  the smell, it's just so
• 31:35
  gross.
• 31:35
  Yeah.
• 31:36
  Wow.
• 31:36
  Um, beach visitors, and it really affects, like, your quality of
• 31:41
  life if you're living around it.
• 31:43
  and not just that, but we also found that the stench of rotting
• 31:47
  fish, emits this chemical called trimethylamine or TMA, which some
• 31:52
  scientists have found is carcinogenic.
• 31:54
  And so- Oh … that is, like, a real, real harm, and that's why we, took a look
• 31:59
  at every plant in the investigation and, calculated how many people were living
• 32:05
  within a mile or within five miles of it.
• 32:08
  and that's something we published for each plant.
• 32:11
  Wow.
• 32:12
  that's insane to think about.
• 32:13
  I know, like, in the US there's Chemical Alley where people who are living beside
• 32:18
  chemical plants and, refineries, and, the chemicals, the carcinogens that come out
• 32:22
  of that and it's an awful, awful area.
• 32:24
  They can't move.
• 32:25
  Nobody wants to buy the places and things like that.
• 32:28
  You never really think about that from a fish meal plant.
• 32:30
  You would think they'd have better standards-
• 32:32
  Mm-hmm
• 32:32
  … to ensure that the smell doesn't get out, and I guess that's
• 32:35
  just the regulators, I assume.
• 32:37
  Is that what it is?
• 32:38
  It's like they're not making the effort to contain the smell if that's even possible?
• 32:45
  Yeah.
• 32:45
  a lot of countries we found had weak regulations or did not enforce the
• 32:51
  regulations, that were existing.
• 32:54
  so in wealthier countries, there are technologies that have been
• 32:59
  built, that can contain the smell, such as scrubbers or biofilters.
• 33:04
  but in poorer countries, they tend to not be used, because they are expensive.
• 33:11
  And- Yeah … if the government is not, enforcing the law,
• 33:14
  then, it just won't happen.
• 33:16
  Yeah.
• 33:17
  Unfortunately it makes sense from that- Yeah … perspective,
• 33:19
  but it can be terrible and, it could get people a little angry.
• 33:22
  and during this investigation, your team documented, was it something
• 33:26
  like at least 80 incidences of civil unrest tied to fish meal?
• 33:31
  Yes.
• 33:31
  Um, a lot of times, like in Peru, India, Senegal.
• 33:36
  what drove people to the streets around fish meal?
• 33:39
  Yeah, often it was the smell.
• 33:41
  Other complaints were, the effect on the local economy, or they found
• 33:47
  plants dumping wastewater into nearby fields which contaminated
• 33:53
  the water they were drinking.
• 33:54
  or there were some protests in Peru over fishers who were upset about the,
• 34:01
  price that had been set for anchovies.
• 34:04
  there were, yeah, a variety of reasons, but I think- Yeah … smell was one
• 34:08
  of the main themes- Yeah … that we saw emerging every time.
• 34:11
  And were these protests like civil protests, or did they get violent
• 34:16
  in terms of interactions with local police and other authorities?
• 34:21
  sometimes they did get violent.
• 34:22
  Oh … and one example is in India, there was a protest over a local
• 34:28
  fish meal plant and, there was some kind of clash with the police and
• 34:32
  someone threw a rock through one of the police car's- Oh … um, windows.
• 34:37
  but it just shows, like, how, upset-
• 34:40
  Yeah
• 34:40
  … people were, and rightly so.
• 34:43
  Well, I think especially the frustrating part is if they know there's, technology
• 34:46
  to be able to stop the smell- Yeah … and stop a lot of these mishaps.
• 34:50
  and it's not being used.
• 34:51
  I would be very frustrated as well to be like, "Well, why can't we use that?"
• 34:55
  Like, "Why can't you just pay for that?"
• 34:57
  Mm-hmm.
• 34:57
  They know the companies can pay for it.
• 34:58
  The companies just don't want to.
• 35:00
  Mm-hmm.
• 35:00
  Which goes to show they don't care about the local community, which is really,
• 35:03
  it's gross in a lot of different ways.
• 35:05
  One thing that was interesting when I did the research is that
• 35:08
  the fish meal production in West Africa was connected to immigration.
• 35:12
  Can you talk about how that connection works?
• 35:15
  Yeah.
• 35:16
  Um, so- Or migration,
• 35:17
  I should say.
• 35:18
  Yeah.
• 35:19
  what we were looking at especially was the migration route from West
• 35:23
  Africa to Spain's Canary Islands, which are, like a Spanish, owned
• 35:28
  islands that are in Northwest Africa.
• 35:31
  and there are several reasons why people are, attempting that migration
• 35:37
  route, which is extremely dangerous, and is I think 3,000 miles from
• 35:43
  Senegal to the Canary Islands.
• 35:45
  and one of the reasons, is climate change.
• 35:48
  that's a huge driver.
• 35:49
  It's causing, lands to, farmlands to no longer be farmable, and
• 35:53
  other, like, economic impacts.
• 35:56
  but another reason is overfishing.
• 35:59
  and that's overfishing partly by, Spanish and other European, huge,
• 36:05
  like, industrial ships that- Mm-hmm
• 36:06
  have been licensed to fish in those waters, for various things.
• 36:09
  but it's also connected to the fishmeal industry, which is largely
• 36:14
  supplied by, these artisanal fishers, in wooden canoes who, are supplying
• 36:20
  to the fishmeal industry because the fishmeal industry, pays more, than-
• 36:24
  Right … the processors onshore.
• 36:26
  but it's become so that there's a buyer for every fish, so there aren't
• 36:29
  a whole lot of, like, stops on it.
• 36:31
  And so that has driven, like an overfishing crisis where, fishers
• 36:36
  are now struggling to find work.
• 36:38
  and a lot of them are, as a result of that and other factors, getting
• 36:42
  into their wooden pirogues and attempting, this extremely dangerous
• 36:46
  journey to the Canary Islands-
• 36:48
  which claimed thousands, I think 3,000 lives in 2025.
• 36:52
  Dear God.
• 36:54
  That's insane.
• 36:55
  That is absolutely insane.
• 36:57
  Mm-hmm.
• 36:58
  Now, let's shift over to the fleet and the workers on the fleet.
• 37:03
  Mm. You guys, your reporters got to be on some ships.
• 37:06
  I think it was six voyages at sea.
• 37:08
  how did you arrange that?
• 37:10
  'Cause I can't imagine that these boats really wanted this information
• 37:13
  to get out for certain boats.
• 37:15
  Mm-hmm.
• 37:16
  so It's not that we, not necessarily that we, got on, like, the industrial vessels.
• 37:23
  Like, it's not like they were allowing us to get on.
• 37:25
  Yeah.
• 37:25
  But, usually what we did was embedded with, an NGO such as Sea Shepherd- Yeah
• 37:31
  which partners with local governments to police the waters around- that country.
• 37:36
  So in Gambia, that's one example where, Ian and, a couple of the other reporters
• 37:42
  were able to board, a Sea Shepherd vessel and go with, the Sea Shepherd staff
• 37:47
  as well as, people from the Gambian government, as they inspected ships.
• 37:51
  but it's tough and expensive.
• 37:54
  Yeah.
• 37:55
  But yeah.
• 37:57
  Yeah.
• 37:57
  and what did they see on those voyages?
• 38:00
  Like when they first step, you know- Mm-hmm … when they first
• 38:02
  boarded some of these vessels?
• 38:04
  Yeah.
• 38:04
  in Gambia, the situation of the deckhands was really insane.
• 38:12
  and so Ian, found that they were all four of them sleeping in this room
• 38:18
  that was right above the engine room, and so it was extremely hot and- Mm
• 38:22
  you could not stand up in there.
• 38:24
  It was like four people in this one small, very hot, cramped room.
• 38:29
  and they also found that, captains were not routinely keeping track of the
• 38:35
  amount of fish that were caught as was required by law, Right … in many cases.
• 38:41
  and, in the South China Sea, the reporters found that, overfishing is driving,
• 38:47
  scarcity, and scarcity breeds conflict.
• 38:49
  And so there were clashes that were witnessed between the Indonesian
• 38:55
  Coast Guard and the Vietnamese Coast Guard over, these fishermen
• 38:58
  who were fishing illegally.
• 39:00
  And, like, Indonesia was trying to arrest them, but Vietnam
• 39:03
  was not allowing it to happen.
• 39:05
  those are just a couple of- Yeah … examples.
• 39:07
  Yeah.
• 39:08
  Causing, like, some major national conflicts, yeah.
• 39:10
  Yeah.
• 39:10
  Or international conflicts.
• 39:12
  why does a, fleet with, uh, no, I guess what we'd, like, quote
• 39:15
  unquote, "license plate" matter to the average seafood eater?
• 39:18
  Like, why would I care if a fleet doesn't have, like, a documentation,
• 39:22
  I guess, or a license plate?
• 39:24
  that's a good question.
• 39:25
  So it is very important, As a transparency tool.
• 39:31
  and because the fishing industry is extremely opaque, and similar to how
• 39:38
  you need a car to have a license plate, so that you know who is committing
• 39:42
  a crime, I guess the same could be said of ships, which is like if you
• 39:46
  don't have a license plate- Yeah
• 39:47
  it makes it very difficult for, monitors and for, regulators to track, who
• 39:54
  is committing what crime or how much fish is being taken out of the water.
• 39:58
  So, anyone who cares about the oceans, should care about, what vessels are
• 40:02
  doing to obscure their identities.
• 40:06
  Mm-hmm.
• 40:06
  Yeah.
• 40:06
  now in 2018, more than 30 people, I think, were recorded as dying, and over 440,
• 40:12
  had been injured at fish meal plants.
• 40:14
  Mm-hmm.
• 40:15
  Like what are the main ways that people get hurt or even killed in this industry?
• 40:18
  Like why is it so dangerous?
• 40:20
  so fishing in general is extremely dangerous.
• 40:23
  You're doing it very far from shore.
• 40:25
  You might not have a doctor on board.
• 40:28
  and it is physical work.
• 40:30
  so in the fishing industry, we found cases, especially in Russia, we found a
• 40:37
  lot of cases of people, getting injured.
• 40:40
  We found one person who lost his arm because of an accident that happened- Mm
• 40:45
  … on the ship, involving a loose cable.
• 40:47
  and really this happens a lot, like people falling overboard and going missing.
• 40:52
  and at the plants themselves, what we found was often the cause of,
• 40:55
  accidents or deaths was that, as fish rots, it lets out ammonia and
• 41:00
  other chemicals that are dangerous.
• 41:02
  And so if you're in a room with rotting fish and it, doesn't have a lot of
• 41:07
  ventilation, we found that people have gotten injured or sometimes
• 41:11
  died, just from asphyxiation, Yeah
• 41:13
  because they were exposed to those chemicals.
• 41:15
  Wow.
• 41:16
  and then the
• 41:16
  plant- Stuff you wouldn't even think about too, right?
• 41:19
  Yeah.
• 41:20
  Jeez.
• 41:21
  is it true that fish meal can spontaneously combust?
• 41:25
  I saw that on the site.
• 41:26
  I was like, "Really?"
• 41:28
  Yeah.
• 41:28
  It's hard to believe, but, um- How does that happen?
• 41:30
  … it is true.
• 41:31
  I don't know that I can explain that very well, but, um- Yeah
• 41:34
  uh, something to do with, as it heats up, it, it can spontaneously combust and, we
• 41:40
  found that, like several fish meal ships over history have caught on fire because-
• 41:47
  Really?
• 41:47
  … um, of that issue.
• 41:50
  Wow.
• 41:51
  That's incredible.
• 41:52
  I never, thought about that.
• 41:54
  there's certain chemicals that the EU has banned.
• 41:56
  as they, they tend to be a little more stringent than, say, like the US.
• 41:59
  Mm-hmm.
• 41:59
  So I think there's one that's, I don't know if I'm pronouncing this, ethoxyquin-
• 42:03
  Mm-hmm
• 42:03
  … that was banned in 2017, but the US still allows it in some of the animal
• 42:07
  feeds, including aquaculture feeds.
• 42:10
  what did your review of FDA records find with respect to that chemical?
• 42:15
  so our review of FDA records found that, they're, ethoxyquin is making it into,
• 42:21
  animal feeds and therefore, the farmed fish that you eat at, alarming numbers.
• 42:28
  We looked at, I think 16,000 shipments and found that, several, I can't remember the
• 42:34
  exact number, but several, like ethoxyquin was very frequently making it- Mm-hmm
• 42:38
  into, US seafood imports.
• 42:41
  And that's, like do you know what it does to people?
• 42:43
  Like is that a toxin to people?
• 42:44
  Is that what it ends up being?
• 42:46
  so there has- A
• 42:47
  carcinogen?
• 42:47
  it has been, classified as a carcinogen.
• 42:50
  Okay.
• 42:50
  Um, so there hasn't been any, like documented evidence of harm to you
• 42:57
  if you eat the seafood that has eaten feed that has ethoxyquin in it.
• 43:02
  But, the EU and other governments have, obviously decided that the
• 43:06
  risk was high enough to ban it.
• 43:09
  So like it's just the difference I guess in terms of thresholds of
• 43:12
  the amount that- Yeah … that the EU would have and that the US and
• 43:15
  maybe other countries would have.
• 43:16
  I feel like that's often the case with the EU.
• 43:18
  The EU's a, like I said, a little bit more stricter with a lot of these things that
• 43:22
  are in their products and the US, even Canada are just like, "No, no, we'll allow
• 43:25
  that." And we're always surprised that, whoa, I can't believe you allowed that.
• 43:28
  But- Yeah.
• 43:28
  … um, yeah, that's interesting.
• 43:31
  your team compared, like, the marketing and certification claims
• 43:35
  against documented supplier problems.
• 43:38
  What does that gap look like when we look at these types of things?
• 43:41
  Yeah.
• 43:42
  so we looked at, about 500 seafood companies.
• 43:46
  so these are companies that are at the end of the chain that are actually, like,
• 43:49
  selling the seafood, with their brand, that you see in the supermarket- Okay
• 43:53
  or the restaurant.
• 43:54
  so we looked at about 500 of them, and we found, and these were 500 of the companies
• 44:00
  that make the strongest claims, saying their seafood was ethical and sustainable.
• 44:05
  and we found that over half of them somewhere in their supply chain
• 44:08
  were tied to some kind of crime or concern, so that was 250 companies.
• 44:14
  Dear God.
• 44:15
  So what does that say for these, like, certifications?
• 44:18
  Like, I think there's one stat in here that, out of the plants and
• 44:21
  the ships investigated, at least 80 held, Marine Trust certification.
• 44:26
  Mm-hmm.
• 44:26
  But virtually all of them had crimes or concerns in their supply chains.
• 44:31
  So when we talk about these certifications, as a consumer, like,
• 44:34
  what does that tell the consumer that they should be looking out for?
• 44:38
  Like, do they believe these certifications?
• 44:40
  'Cause we've seen other, like, seafood certifications, aquaculture as well as
• 44:43
  wild fisheries with the supply chains, like- Mm … the Marine Stewardship
• 44:46
  Council and things like that.
• 44:47
  Like, does this harm the certification process if the certification body is
• 44:53
  not investigating these more carefully?
• 44:56
  Yeah.
• 44:57
  So there are several certification programs for seafood, and for farmed
• 45:03
  seafood, and they are industry-led.
• 45:07
  And the idea was that they could reassure the consumer because, auditors
• 45:12
  and inspectors have been to, the fish farms usually and talked to workers,
• 45:18
  looked at, paperwork, and verified that the seafood was not connected
• 45:24
  to any of these types of problems.
• 45:26
  But what we found, and what many other, academics and advocates who've
• 45:31
  looked at this have found is that, there is a huge gap between what they
• 45:37
  are, the certifications claim to be reassuring consumers on and what,
• 45:41
  the reality is in supply chains.
• 45:43
  and so the reality is that for many of these certification programs, they
• 45:51
  look at, conditions on the farm and sometimes in the processing plant,
• 45:54
  but they rarely go beyond that.
• 45:57
  and it's partly logistical reasons like you can't, really go out on
• 46:01
  the ships and talk to workers- in their native language while the
• 46:06
  captain is gone, or at least that's what companies have struggled to do.
• 46:11
  but at the same time, even though they can't do that and often like the spot
• 46:15
  checks at factories are, announced and so there's no surprise there, it ends up just
• 46:21
  being like a paperwork checking exercise.
• 46:24
  and so it fails to, discover real problems.
• 46:28
  and so these certification programs at the end of the chain are making claims
• 46:33
  about the, quality of the seafood on the farms, but they're not looking further up.
• 46:38
  And so, consumers should be skeptical, and not go to these certification programs
• 46:43
  as, just like the end-all be-all of, knowing that the seafood is okay to eat.
• 46:49
  I know I mentioned one of the certification programs, Marine Trust.
• 46:53
  Did you guys look at, like, some of the popular consumer ones, Seafood
• 46:57
  Watch, Marine Stewardship Council, I think in Canada, Ocean Wise.
• 47:02
  Did you have a chance to look at those or talk to people within those?
• 47:05
  'Cause I know some scientists who work on that.
• 47:07
  they do a lot of data investigations.
• 47:09
  I don't know if they do as much investigation as The Ocean Outlaw Project
• 47:13
  or as some other people have done.
• 47:15
  But did you guys look at those types of certifications and was it the
• 47:18
  same kind of result where it's just like if you look deep enough, you
• 47:21
  could find these concerns or crimes?
• 47:24
  Yeah.
• 47:24
  With the Marine Stewardship Council, that, is not something we looked at
• 47:27
  specifically in this report, but- Right … we have checked, on that
• 47:32
  in other reports we've done, where we found that there were, factories
• 47:37
  producing seafood in China that were using state-sponsored forced labor, Mm
• 47:42
  where a certification program said that, they were not connected to abuses, but
• 47:47
  they were, like, further up in the chain.
• 47:50
  those others you mentioned, Seafood Watch, Seafood Watch, I think has
• 47:54
  acknowledged this themselves, but, they do a lot of great work in, saying, or,
• 48:01
  like, determining the sustainability of certain, types of fish, whether
• 48:05
  they're sustainable or not sustainable.
• 48:06
  But on the labor side, they haven't been able to- Right … really, monitor
• 48:11
  conditions in certain industries, and what labor abuses might be there.
• 48:15
  It's extremely difficult 'cause obviously they're hidden- They
• 48:17
  are … in a lot of places.
• 48:17
  I mean, look at the level of investigation that you guys went
• 48:19
  through to be able to uncover that.
• 48:22
  Mm-hmm.
• 48:22
  It's not surprising, I guess.
• 48:23
  They can only do so much in certain ways, and I think it's good for
• 48:26
  people to know that if they use it.
• 48:28
  It's not the fact that Seafood Watch knows of these crimes and are
• 48:32
  going, mind you, now they know, so I wonder now if that's gonna change.
• 48:36
  but do you have dialogue with like, people at the program to say, "Hey, look, here
• 48:39
  are the plants that, we have the names"?
• 48:42
  Do you supply that to them to help with their assessment?
• 48:46
  Oh, yeah.
• 48:47
  So every, certification program, every company, every group that's
• 48:51
  mentioned in our reporting-
• 48:53
  Yeah
• 48:53
  we reached out to them by email and said, This is what we found in your
• 48:57
  supply chain," or, "This is what we found with certified, companies." Mm-hmm.
• 49:02
  And we outlined all of that.
• 49:03
  and they were often, well, sometimes some groups were really open to engaging with
• 49:08
  that, and opened internal investigations.
• 49:11
  Others, didn't respond.
• 49:12
  Right.
• 49:12
  But we publish all of our interactions with those types of groups on our
• 49:16
  website- under the discussion page.
• 49:19
  So it's, like, full transparency for you guys.
• 49:21
  Like, this is what we found.
• 49:23
  This is who contacted us, who we had dialogue with, and the conversations
• 49:27
  that went through that, as long as it doesn't endanger somebody.
• 49:29
  is that the idea?
• 49:30
  Yeah.
• 49:31
  That's definitely the goal.
• 49:32
  Okay.
• 49:33
  that's great.
• 49:33
  I mean, it's obviously not great to see all the stuff that comes out of it, like
• 49:38
  all the really, really horrible stuff.
• 49:40
  Mm-hmm.
• 49:40
  But it's great to see how transparent this whole process is for you guys.
• 49:44
  Obviously, it's part of your journalism aspect, but you don't always see that,
• 49:48
  and it gives us a way to kind of look at this in a very easy fashion and
• 49:53
  make assessments on whether we wanna continue to eat certain seafoods
• 49:57
  based on whether this happens.
• 49:58
  And I find it'll be interesting to see- Programs like MSC and Seafood Watch and
• 50:03
  Ocean Wise take this information and whether they're gonna continue to support
• 50:07
  certain fisheries based off of these types of concerns to inform their users
• 50:11
  whether, this is, a good fishery or not.
• 50:13
  I know there's a lot of people who wanna eat the seafood, but if they know it's
• 50:16
  contributing to some really horrible things that are happening, like I know
• 50:19
  I wouldn't want to eat that fishery.
• 50:21
  Like, if it's sustainable, it's sustainable, but if there's other
• 50:24
  things going on, that needs to be cleaned up before, that happens.
• 50:27
  So it's really great that that's happening.
• 50:29
  Now there's, fish farms.
• 50:30
  I was very surprised at this one.
• 50:31
  There were fish farms in, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing this properly, Xingyang.
• 50:35
  Is that how you pronounce?
• 50:36
  Xingjiang.
• 50:37
  Xingjiang.
• 50:37
  So I'm, I'm sorry.
• 50:38
  Xingjiang.
• 50:39
  in the desert.
• 50:40
  That sounds kinda weird, like impossible.
• 50:43
  Why are there fish farms in the desert?
• 50:45
  I assume they're internal, like they're not open pen, they're just internal.
• 50:48
  Like, they're like in a factory.
• 50:50
  what's happening there?
• 50:51
  Why are they doing that in a desert?
• 50:53
  so this is what we found in, China.
• 50:55
  And, we looked back at the history and we discovered that, China is such a huge,
• 51:01
  like, seafood, power around the world.
• 51:04
  and so since I think the '80s, China has been, farming fish in its eastern
• 51:10
  shores, and, really intensively, and that has led to, some pollution, of course.
• 51:17
  And so the Chinese leaders, we found, said that, these eastern shores
• 51:23
  are very polluted and there's not much, like, growth we can do here.
• 51:28
  and so there was a coordinated effort to move fish farms to the desert-
• 51:33
  and particularly Xinjiang, which is, this province in northwestern
• 51:37
  China that is largely desert.
• 51:39
  but it is a place where, human rights abuses have been extremely
• 51:45
  prominent, Yeah … Turk, Uyghur, and other, Muslim ethnic minorities.
• 51:48
  And, so they moved aquaculture to that region, which is very
• 51:54
  interesting because it is the desert.
• 51:56
  Yeah.
• 51:57
  But they were able to, find a way to tap into the groundwaters under
• 52:02
  that desert and, bring the water up, and they- Mm … seeded it with
• 52:07
  certain microorganisms that, turned it into something akin to saltwater.
• 52:12
  and they- very successfully established, fish farms there.
• 52:15
  That we found, about 1,000 fish farms.
• 52:19
  Um- A thousand?
• 52:19
  Yeah.
• 52:20
  Holy cow.
• 52:21
  In that northwest region.
• 52:22
  And, in the desert, the Taklamakan Desert itself, we found 250.
• 52:28
  is this good for the communities around it?
• 52:30
  Like there's Tibetan communities, there's other communities around that.
• 52:33
  Like, is it affecting them in a positive way in terms of jobs or in a negative
• 52:37
  way in terms of, like, environmental disasters 'cause of pollution?
• 52:40
  it depends on who you ask.
• 52:43
  But it is certainly true that those are places where, human
• 52:50
  rights abuses are very prominent and, the population is surveilled.
• 52:54
  over a million people have been detained, and forced labor is so common that the US
• 53:00
  government has passed this law called the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which
• 53:06
  forbids any imports from that region.
• 53:09
  and so whether the people are, benefiting from it or not- Yeah … is hard to say.
• 53:15
  Yeah.
• 53:15
  It's,
• 53:15
  it's
• 53:16
  not-- I mean,
• 53:16
  obviously- Yeah … forced labor is forced labor.
• 53:18
  It's not-
• 53:19
  Yeah
• 53:20
  … it's a horrible thing.
• 53:21
  But, I have here in the, in, from the sites in my notes that, like
• 53:24
  from that region, like some of the seafood ends up in like US school
• 53:28
  cafeterias or military bases.
• 53:30
  So if the US have these laws, are they not able to detect that this is where
• 53:35
  some of the seafood's coming from?
• 53:36
  yeah.
• 53:37
  So the enforcement of these laws, especially when it comes
• 53:42
  to seafood, is very anemic.
• 53:45
  and we have this old number, from a study, I think in 2017, that,
• 53:51
  less than 1% of seafood imports to the United States were inspected.
• 53:56
  it's hard to say whether that number has changed or how- Mm-hmm
• 53:59
  but, yeah, seafood imports are an opaque place.
• 54:03
  Yeah
• 54:04
  … and there aren't many inspections going on.
• 54:07
  Hmm.
• 54:07
  That's interesting.
• 54:08
  Did you get pushback from like anybody?
• 54:10
  I mean, this investigation's obviously is gonna not make
• 54:13
  a lot of people happy- Mm-hmm
• 54:15
  that are working within this industry and that are getting
• 54:17
  called out for this type of stuff.
• 54:19
  did you get a lot of, critics or people who kind of came out against you?
• 54:23
  Did the people working, like your team, did they have like threats
• 54:26
  against you or anything like that?
• 54:27
  Like, what was the pushback?
• 54:31
  So the investigation came out last week.
• 54:34
  so I would say we're, waiting for more, more pushback.
• 54:37
  Yeah.
• 54:38
  but, we made an effort to reach out to every company and body that,
• 54:42
  Right … was in the investigation, and some of them did come back, strong.
• 54:46
  And we took their feedback whenever it was, plausible and used- Right
• 54:50
  it before we published.
• 54:51
  and I would also say that, people in some contexts, have really faced, like,
• 54:57
  pushback from their own governments.
• 54:59
  not necessarily us.
• 54:59
  But there was this one advocate in Mauritania who was posting about,
• 55:05
  Turkish ships that were fishing in this marine protected area.
• 55:08
  they were connected to fish meal.
• 55:10
  And then, like, the same day, the police showed up at his house and arrested him.
• 55:15
  Um- Oh, wow.
• 55:16
  So it is, like, a touchy subject- especially in some contexts.
• 55:20
  but the response so far, has been very positive and, yeah.
• 55:25
  Interesting.
• 55:27
  So I guess, like, when we look at all of this-
• 55:30
  Mm-hmm
• 55:30
  you in terms of, there's a lot of information on the site.
• 55:34
  I mean, you guys have done a wonderful investigation, transparency everywhere.
• 55:38
  how does someone who's listening to this who, wants to do better,
• 55:42
  wants to, like seafood, wants to make sure it's sustainable-
• 55:46
  Mm-hmm
• 55:46
  They have their certifications out there that say, "Yes, this is
• 55:48
  sustainable, this is not." When they're just trying to, like, digest all this
• 55:52
  information that we talked about today-
• 55:54
  Mm-hmm
• 55:55
  … it seems like there's a lot of negatives that have come out, and there needs to
• 55:58
  be a lot of, like, work to clean this up.
• 56:01
  Where do you suggest, like, an audience member who's listening
• 56:04
  to this, like, just begin?
• 56:05
  Like, where do they begin with all of this information to just kind of, like, digest
• 56:09
  it and then, like, put that into action?
• 56:12
  for digesting it, I would say, like, the landing page of the website offers
• 56:16
  a really big picture view of, everything that we did and, what we found, and
• 56:21
  also the findings page on the website.
• 56:23
  For how to be a sustainable seafood consumer, we published a follow-up
• 56:27
  piece in "The New York Times," that attempts to answer that question.
• 56:31
  And, the answer was, I mentioned before that two-thirds of aquaculture
• 56:36
  is the type that depends on fish meal and fish oil, but the other one-third
• 56:40
  is things like bivalves, which are mussels, and oysters and other types of
• 56:45
  species that, get food by filtering the water of, like, nutrients around them.
• 56:50
  and we view that as a much more sustainable form of aquaculture
• 56:54
  because it doesn't rely on feed.
• 56:56
  so people can eat that.
• 56:58
  and I would also recommend, like, locally caught seafood.
• 57:02
  if you can see it come in from the ocean, then it's a lot harder to hide,
• 57:06
  abuses- Right … in the supply chain.
• 57:08
  and another thing is just to ask yourself more broadly, how much is the world going
• 57:16
  to, give for us to consume, and how can we cut down on, the amount of resources we're
• 57:22
  taking with, our food, especially- Mm-hmm
• 57:24
  in the Global North?
• 57:26
  yeah.
• 57:27
  That's incredible.
• 57:28
  That's incredible.
• 57:29
  there's a lot of, good things.
• 57:30
  And I like that idea of what people could do and how people can, if they
• 57:34
  wanna eat seafood, there's certain ways.
• 57:35
  Looking at that one-third, I think that's really great.
• 57:38
  people wanna get more information, they can go to foodforfeed.theoce-
• 57:43
  theoutlawocean.com, and then you can go to thebaittoplate, uh, .the,
• 57:49
  theoutlawocean.com, which I'll put both the links in there in case
• 57:52
  people, just wanna click on something.
• 57:54
  Maya, this has been wonderful.
• 57:56
  I have one last question for you.
• 57:58
  personally, as someone who kinda like walked into this type of thing, obviously
• 58:04
  human rights is, a big passion of yours to make sure people are treated properly.
• 58:10
  Not having a lot of knowledge, pre-knowl- like knowledge of what
• 58:13
  was happening in the ocean on this.
• 58:16
  After five years, when you look at everything that you've witnessed and heard
• 58:20
  about from other people, from people on your team and things, like are you okay?
• 58:25
  You know what I mean?
• 58:25
  Like, there's some pretty, I'm sure some pretty horrible things that you had to
• 58:29
  see, looking at, ships where people have all died and they're kinda washing up.
• 58:33
  Like, how do you kinda like sift through this and mentally digest
• 58:39
  it and be okay as a human being?
• 58:42
  Hmm.
• 58:43
  that's a good question.
• 58:45
  I would say that I'm lucky because I can just close my computer and walk away.
• 58:50
  Right.
• 58:51
  Um, for the people who are, experiencing these things, it's a lot harder.
• 58:56
  And so I think I have the privilege of, seeing things through a
• 59:00
  computer screen and not, being- Mm-hmm … subject to them in real life.
• 59:04
  but I'm okay.
• 59:06
  Yeah.
• 59:06
  Well, I hope so, because, like, it's a tough thing to witness, obviously- Mm
• 59:10
  … and to see people, I'm sure you and your team have built up relationships with a
• 59:13
  lot of people who are even more affected by this, and we hope that they are okay.
• 59:17
  We hope that there's something that is done about this.
• 59:22
  I guess from that perspective, sorry, one more question, is like, does
• 59:26
  Ian and the team want to be done?
• 59:28
  Like, the final kinda overall thing, where does this project go from here?
• 59:33
  Mm-hmm.
• 59:34
  we think that retailers can take a harder look at their supply chains.
• 59:41
  retailers, wholesalers, distributors, anyone at any stage of the supply
• 59:46
  chain, we want them to think more.
• 59:50
  And as well, we want consumers to think more about how it is that- Mm-hmm
• 59:54
  … seafood has gotten to us so cheaply, and how there are hidden costs along the way.
• 1:00:00
  and we think that, as journalists who are outside of the company, us
• 1:00:07
  being able to find these crimes and concerns and, these, relationships
• 1:00:13
  in the supply chain, it was possible.
• 1:00:15
  And we think that as retailers, with all the information, all the trade data,
• 1:00:20
  and all the, paperwork, they should be able to do better and know when certain
• 1:00:25
  things have entered the supply chain.
• 1:00:28
  and governments, we think, need to do a better job as well with enforcing,
• 1:00:33
  the laws, especially import laws that the government has passed specifically
• 1:00:37
  to stop the import of goods tied to forced labor or unsustainable fishing.
• 1:00:43
  but those are, the main things that we- Mm-hmm … would want
• 1:00:47
  as outcomes of this reporting.
• 1:00:49
  Yeah.
• 1:00:49
  It is difficult, too, for people who are listening to this.
• 1:00:52
  I have a lot of listeners sort of in North America, in Australia-
• 1:00:55
  Mm … in the UK, and not in the countries necessarily that with a
• 1:00:59
  lot of these crimes happen, although sometimes we'd probably be surprised.
• 1:01:03
  and I guess to do that, are there any, nonprofit organizations that've
• 1:01:08
  been working with those governments to try and eliminate this type of forced
• 1:01:13
  labor that people can go and follow and support, in either in petitions or
• 1:01:19
  comment periods or anything like that?
• 1:01:21
  do you mean the organizations that are working with Western governments?
• 1:01:26
  Yeah, Western governments or even the governments in like Peru or
• 1:01:29
  anywhere in Africa, like where a lot of these things are happening.
• 1:01:33
  unless, are they happening also in like Western countries too,
• 1:01:36
  some of these illegal acts?
• 1:01:37
  not as we covered in our reporting, but- Right … Western consumers are
• 1:01:42
  often the beneficiaries of- Right
• 1:01:44
  what's going on in other countries.
• 1:01:45
  Yeah.
• 1:01:46
  there are several groups in each of those countries that
• 1:01:49
  are working on these issues.
• 1:01:51
  I would say Amnesty International, Greenpeace,
• 1:01:55
  there are several local groups.
• 1:01:57
  there are organizations, that are working on Uyghur human
• 1:02:00
  rights and human rights in China.
• 1:02:02
  there is Oceana.
• 1:02:04
  yeah, I don't know if I can, like recite them all, but-
• 1:02:06
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:06
  No, of course.
• 1:02:07
  I mean, that's a lot right off the bat- Mm-hmm … that people could do.
• 1:02:09
  And I'll link to them, and see if I can link to any of those
• 1:02:12
  programs, for those organizations.
• 1:02:13
  I appreciate that.
• 1:02:14
  And to be honest, I appreciate all the work that you and your team have
• 1:02:16
  done to give us this information.
• 1:02:18
  It's not easy to get.
• 1:02:20
  it's a lot to go through, and you guys have done it in such a great
• 1:02:23
  way to be able to present it to us.
• 1:02:24
  And I'm sure a lot of people are just gonna be like, "Oh my gosh,
• 1:02:26
  I did not expect this to happen."
• 1:02:29
  there to be so many, like crimes and/or concerns around
• 1:02:33
  all of this, entire industry.
• 1:02:35
  And then there's a lot.
• 1:02:36
  There's a lot in there.
• 1:02:37
  I highly recommend that people go in there.
• 1:02:38
  But Maya, thank you so much for you and Ian and the team for doing this.
• 1:02:42
  you're gonna be promoting it all, all over the place.
• 1:02:45
  Is there a next step to The Outlaw Ocean Project?
• 1:02:48
  Are you gonna continue with this type of topic or are you gonna move on
• 1:02:51
  to a different type of topic, that you're able to let us know about?
• 1:02:55
  yeah, We have a lot of plans.
• 1:02:57
  Um, and I also just remembered that in the methodology section of our website,
• 1:03:02
  we mention a lot of the, like groups that helped us or- Perfect … groups
• 1:03:06
  that were working on fishmeal and fish oil in those countries.
• 1:03:08
  There's like a country-by-country methodology memo.
• 1:03:11
  and we mention those groups there.
• 1:03:12
  But, what we're working on next, Several things.
• 1:03:15
  And one of them, we do mention like on our website, which is krill.
• 1:03:19
  Yeah … so krill is one thing that has been suggested as, a supplement
• 1:03:23
  that can be added to fish feed to make it like carry more, of certain,
• 1:03:29
  ingredients, that add nutrients.
• 1:03:31
  But, that is also a place where there's not a lot of like oversight happening.
• 1:03:36
  and these huge boats are going down to, the ocean around Antarctica and
• 1:03:41
  extracting krill from the waters.
• 1:03:43
  and we're very interested in like how that is impacting, the
• 1:03:47
  ecosystem and the whales, um- Mm-hmm
• 1:03:48
  that are reliant on the krill and are already, disappearing.
• 1:03:53
  so that is one next step of this reporting that we're hoping to get into.
• 1:03:57
  Very interesting, Maya.
• 1:03:58
  Thank you so much for joining us today and providing all this information.
• 1:04:02
  We went longer than normal, but that was done on purpose 'cause there's
• 1:04:04
  so much to go through and we really appreciate the work you've done.
• 1:04:07
  and we'd love to have you or any of your team members come back to discuss
• 1:04:10
  more on the next step and, how like the launch of this story has gone
• 1:04:15
  and what we can do more about it.
• 1:04:16
  But we appreciate you coming on today.
• 1:04:17
  Thank you so much.
• 1:04:18
  Thank you.
• 1:04:20
  You bet.
• 1:04:20
  Thank you, Maya, for joining us on today's episode of the How
• 1:04:23
  to Protect the Ocean podcast.
• 1:04:24
  Also just, like, for the work that you and your colleagues have done over
• 1:04:27
  the last five years to be able to tell us what is happening on the ocean.
• 1:04:32
  When we hear about seafood and sustainable seafood, we look at the data,
• 1:04:35
  we look at how the fish were fished.
• 1:04:36
  We don't talk about the people that are involved in that, the people on the boats.
• 1:04:40
  We don't talk about the people in the processing plants.
• 1:04:42
  And, there are fisheries, like this is for fish meal only.
• 1:04:45
  There are fisheries that have improved significantly in their supply chain.
• 1:04:51
  The Marine Stewardship Council follows that through the supply chain.
• 1:04:55
  Seafood Watch follows that through the supply chain.
• 1:04:57
  And I think this investigation will be good at accompanying those to ensure
• 1:05:00
  that everything is followed properly.
• 1:05:02
  To get this information, the people, the journalists on this project had to go at
• 1:05:06
  lengths to get this information, had to go through witnesses and key sources and
• 1:05:11
  so forth, sometimes putting themselves in danger to get this information for
• 1:05:15
  us to understand what's happening.
• 1:05:18
  So a lot of these certification processes don't have the ability to do that, and
• 1:05:21
  so they are going to probably, I assume, are gonna be looking at these, and
• 1:05:24
  it'll be interesting to see how things change in the future in terms of what
• 1:05:27
  is supported and what is not supported.
• 1:05:30
  But this is, a big investigation that doesn't happen a lot, for obvious reasons,
• 1:05:34
  and I'm glad that, it's fully transparent.
• 1:05:36
  it's very much very science-like, in terms of that transparency,
• 1:05:40
  and the people here are dedicated to just finding out the truth and
• 1:05:42
  working with companies to do better.
• 1:05:44
  And I think that's really important.
• 1:05:45
  So I'd love to hear what you think about this.
• 1:05:47
  hit me up if you're watching this or listening to this on Spotify,
• 1:05:51
  hit me up in the comments.
• 1:05:52
  If you're listening to this on your favorite podcast app, let
• 1:05:54
  me know what you think, because I would love to know what you think.
• 1:05:57
  DM me on Instagram, TikTok, wherever.
• 1:06:00
  All my social links are in the show notes as usual.
• 1:06:04
  And I wanna thank you, so much for joining me on today's episode, and
• 1:06:07
  obviously thank Maya, thank the team at The Outlaw Ocean Project.
• 1:06:11
  would love to have you back and talk more about this and other
• 1:06:13
  projects that you're following.
• 1:06:14
  And, I wanna thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the
• 1:06:17
  How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
• 1:06:18
  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin.
• 1:06:19
  Have a great day.
• 1:06:20
  We'll talk to you next time, and happy conservation.