Latest / How To Protect The Ocean / Shark Meat Fed To Students: Brazil's Hidden School Lunch Scandal

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Shark Meat Fed To Students: Brazil's Hidden School Lunch Scandal · How To Protect The Ocean

• 0:00
  What if the fish on your child's school lunch tray was endangered?
• 0:03
  Shark loaded with toxic chemicals.
• 0:06
  How would you feel about that?
• 0:07
  Well, that's been the topic of article series from Mongabay News where they
• 0:11
  uncovered thousands of tons of shark meat purchases in Brazil's public institutions.
• 0:17
  That's schools, that's elderly care, facilities and prisons.
• 0:22
  Something that is concerning is the amount of institutions we're
• 0:25
  looking at over 5,900 institutions where they're serving shark meat.
• 0:29
  This is something that is very concerning because some of the shark meat is angel
• 0:33
  sharks, which is an endangered species, and it's mislabeled as angel fish.
• 0:37
  So you think angel fish, like you go into an aquarium and you look at
• 0:41
  angel fish, you're like, oh, okay.
• 0:42
  Well, those are found on reefs and they're found in tropical areas, but we don't
• 0:45
  really know if they're endangered or not.
• 0:47
  Or there's some that are and some that aren't, but it's probably fine.
• 0:50
  No, this is Angel Sharks, not angel fish.
• 0:52
  Angel sharks.
• 0:53
  And they're being served at schools.
• 0:55
  Now we look at the public health perspective of it and you know,
• 0:58
  sharks are known to have elevated levels of mercury and arsenic.
• 1:03
  So there's a lot of problems with having, you know, shark as your lunch meal each
• 1:08
  and every day while you're at school.
• 1:10
  And we're gonna be talking about why this is so problematic and why things
• 1:14
  need to change and what these articles have actually sparked in Brazil.
• 1:18
  It definitely sparked a debate and we're gonna hear about it from Philip Jacobson,
• 1:22
  who is one of the journalists who covered this article, and he's here to talk
• 1:27
  about the process, how it all came to be, what he discovered during that time,
• 1:31
  and what the articles have done in Brazil in sparking this debate on this episode
• 1:35
  of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
• 1:37
  Let's start the show.
• 1:40
  Hey everybody.
• 1:40
  Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
• 1:43
  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin.
• 1:44
  This is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean,
• 1:47
  how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for
• 1:50
  a better ocean by taking action.
• 1:52
  On today's episode, we've got a special one for you.
• 1:53
  You know, normally I cover Mongabay news articles.
• 1:56
  I do that quite often.
• 1:57
  It's something that I really enjoy because Mongabay News puts out
• 2:00
  really great original articles, investigative reporting, beat reporting.
• 2:04
  It's just a lot of fun, entertaining, but also very knowledgeable.
• 2:07
  I'm learning things all the time, especially in places around the world
• 2:10
  where you don't hear about oceans, about wildlife, about forests and so forth,
• 2:14
  and it's something that's really great.
• 2:15
  Now, I am not being sponsored by Monga Bay.
• 2:18
  I literally just enjoy.
• 2:19
  Their articles, and I'm very honored to be able to have one of the
• 2:23
  journalists, Philip Jacobson, who was spearheaded this series of articles
• 2:27
  on the shark meat that's served in Brazilian public institutions.
• 2:31
  It really sparked a topic where he looked at the procurement
• 2:35
  announcements that were happening.
• 2:36
  They have to be public, they have to be transparent in Brazil, and
• 2:38
  he started going through them and started noticing specific patterns
• 2:41
  that were considered shark meat.
• 2:44
  You're gonna hear about that in the interview.
• 2:45
  How he discovered that and what he wanted and where that led him into revealing what
• 2:50
  was happening in these public institutions and how much shark meat is being
• 2:53
  consumed, and how non-transparent that part is, that procurement transparent,
• 2:58
  but not what sharks are being brought in, what sharks are being consumed, how
• 3:02
  they're being consumed and so forth.
• 3:03
  So there's a lot of things that we're gonna go through in this article in
• 3:07
  Philip Jacobson, who's a journalist at Mongabay News, who's based in Thailand,
• 3:11
  is joining us to be able to talk about.
• 3:12
  So here is the interview with Philip.
• 3:15
  Talking about shark meat in public institutions in Brazil.
• 3:18
  Enjoy the interview and I will talk to you after.
• 3:21
  Hey Philip, welcome to the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
• 3:23
  Are you ready to talk about shark meat in Brazilian kids lunches?
• 3:28
  This is kind of crazy.
• 3:29
  Are you ready to talk about that?
• 3:30
  I most certainly am.
• 3:31
  Thanks so much for having me.
• 3:33
  Uh, very happy to be here.
• 3:34
  I'm happy to have you here, Philip.
• 3:36
  Uh, this is something that, uh, I've been excited to have.
• 3:38
  'cause first of all, we're gonna find out in just a sec, but you are one of
• 3:42
  the journalists that work at Monga Bay.
• 3:44
  Monga Bay is one of my favorite, uh, in like internet sites that
• 3:48
  we have on environmental news.
• 3:50
  Uh, as I've told you right before, we recorded, uh, we cover it a lot
• 3:53
  here on the podcast and I, if, if anybody is on our newsletter, we
• 3:57
  see at least a one Monga Bay article pretty much five days a week.
• 4:01
  Uh, so it's always great to be able to have someone on in person.
• 4:05
  I think Eric Hoffner was the last one who was on here.
• 4:07
  Um, but it was, it was great to be able to have you on here.
• 4:10
  'cause we're gonna be talking about a specific story, actually,
• 4:12
  a series now, a three part story that has a, an interesting
• 4:16
  result from the first two parts.
• 4:18
  Um, 'cause I was just posted as, as we're recording today, just,
• 4:20
  just up today, um, on, you know, lunch meat, having shark meat.
• 4:25
  Really, it's, it's, it's, uh, kids are having shark meat for their lunches in
• 4:28
  Brazil, which is pretty much like, I feel like, you know, from North America.
• 4:32
  That sounds really out there, but there are kids programs that have fish in it
• 4:38
  because it's such a good protein source.
• 4:39
  Um, but this one is with shark meat in it and I think it's interesting
• 4:43
  of what that shark meat can do.
• 4:44
  Is it really safe?
• 4:45
  We're gonna find out all of that, um, with the story and how it
• 4:48
  developed, uh, and really go through that journalistic process, which I'm
• 4:52
  really excited about 'cause I'm very interested in that kind of stuff too.
• 4:54
  But before we begin with all that, Philip, why don't you just let us
• 4:57
  know who you are and what you do?
• 5:00
  Uh, yeah.
• 5:00
  Thanks a lot Andrew.
• 5:01
  Um, so I'm Philip Jacobson.
• 5:04
  Um, I'm an American journalist living in, currently based in
• 5:07
  Thailand, Chiang, my Thailand.
• 5:09
  And uh, I'm an editor and a reporter for Mongabay.
• 5:13
  Mongabay is a, it's an environmental news site.
• 5:17
  Um, I first joined in 2015.
• 5:20
  I was covering in Indonesia at the time.
• 5:22
  I lived there for quite some time.
• 5:24
  And um, back then it was maybe 20 people.
• 5:28
  Um, today it's, it's about 120 people, so, um, incredible.
• 5:32
  It's, uh, yeah, it's grown a lot.
• 5:34
  Uh, you don't see that a lot in, in journalism these days, but, um,
• 5:37
  manga Bay is a nonprofit, uh, news outlet, so we get a lot of, we got
• 5:40
  our funds from donor foundations, private donors, that sort of thing.
• 5:46
  Um, so yeah, we've got bureaus in, um, Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia,
• 5:53
  Indonesia, um, we have an Oceans Desk.
• 5:56
  Um, and so, yeah, so I, I embarked on this project.
• 6:02
  Uh, it was part of a, uh, a fellowship with the Pulitzer Center.
• 6:06
  Okay.
• 6:06
  Which is a big funder in the journalism space.
• 6:08
  And, uh, the project was, uh, to, uh, investigating the global shark trade.
• 6:12
  So that's where this all started.
• 6:15
  And that's, that's huge.
• 6:16
  Uh, like, I mean, that's not like a, a small problem, you know?
• 6:19
  And we know this is an international problem.
• 6:22
  It's some, it's something worldwide.
• 6:24
  From, from you as a journalist.
• 6:26
  Have you Al, had you always wanted to be an environmental journalist
• 6:29
  or even a journalist at all?
• 6:32
  Yeah, I mean, I came to it through, uh, through journalism.
• 6:34
  Um, okay.
• 6:35
  Not necessarily environmental journalism.
• 6:37
  Um, so I grew up in Chicago, um, LA and Chicago.
• 6:43
  And, uh, in, in my high school newspaper, I worked on the high school newspaper.
• 6:47
  I was editor in chief in my high school newspaper as a senior.
• 6:50
  It's like, is how, you know, a lot of journalists get their start, I guess.
• 6:53
  Yeah.
• 6:53
  Um, college, I, you know, I majored in journalism and then, uh, after graduation,
• 6:58
  I, uh, I was looking for, uh, looking for a job and, uh, I wanted to live abroad.
• 7:04
  Mm-hmm.
• 7:04
  So, uh, I found a job as a copy editor at the Jakarta Globe.
• 7:09
  Okay.
• 7:10
  Which is, uh, yeah, it's an English language paper in Jakarta, Indonesia.
• 7:15
  So, uh, I went there, had that job for a year, and then, you know,
• 7:19
  I was there as a copy editor.
• 7:21
  You're reading the, uh, the news every day.
• 7:24
  And, um, it's a great, uh, it's a great introduction to a country.
• 7:27
  As a journalist.
• 7:27
  You start to get a sense of the current events and the issues.
• 7:30
  And over the course of that year, I started to, you know, I started to think
• 7:33
  if I could, if I could learn the language and kind of get outta the capitol, um,
• 7:38
  you know, I could, there, there's so many stories to report and that's what I did.
• 7:42
  Um, spent a couple years freelancing.
• 7:44
  Um, had a part-time job with, uh, tempo Magazine, which is an Indonesian magazine.
• 7:49
  They do a lot of investigative work and, uh, at tempo I started
• 7:52
  doing some environmental stories.
• 7:54
  Um, Indonesia, it's got, you know, a ton of rainforest.
• 7:58
  Mm-hmm.
• 7:58
  A ton of biodiversity.
• 8:00
  They've also got a lot of industries that are, you know, causing
• 8:03
  deforestation and biodiversity loss.
• 8:05
  Things like the palm oil industry, pulp and paper
• 8:07
  industry, um, that sort of thing.
• 8:10
  So I covered that a bit of tempo.
• 8:11
  And then job at Mongabay opened up in 2015 and, uh, applied for
• 8:16
  it, ended up getting it, and yeah.
• 8:18
  Uh, ever since I've, uh, I've really enjoyed working in Manga Bay.
• 8:21
  It's a great place to work and, uh, you know, we have an opportunity
• 8:24
  to do, to do journalism like this.
• 8:26
  Mm-hmm.
• 8:26
  Um, so yeah, I'm, I'm proud of the story and, um, I'm excited to talk about it.
• 8:30
  It feels like it's such a unique experience to be able
• 8:32
  to do journalism abroad.
• 8:34
  You know, growing up in North America, like I live in Canada,
• 8:38
  you, you grew up in, in, in the States, there's this protection
• 8:42
  that is afforded to journalists.
• 8:44
  You know, if you work within North America, let's say, um, we've seen a
• 8:49
  lot of journalists, like, I think a lot of the journalists who cover war areas.
• 8:54
  Obviously there's danger in that and, and we've seen it, uh, recently in,
• 8:57
  in, in different areas around the world where journalists are, are getting hurt.
• 9:02
  And I know for con from a conservationist standpoint, scientists and
• 9:05
  conservationists who are doing work abroad in a lot of different countries,
• 9:09
  uh, whether it be in South America, central America, uh, Southeast Asia, I,
• 9:14
  you know, they don't have necessarily the protections that would be afforded
• 9:17
  to them in the, in Canada or the US if they work on specific, uh, areas.
• 9:21
  What's it like to work.
• 9:23
  As a journalist that's, that's originally from North America, to go over to
• 9:28
  places like Indonesia and Thailand to do the work that you were doing.
• 9:32
  'cause some of these stories that are, that are posted on
• 9:35
  Monga Bay are not necessarily like, oh, look at this country.
• 9:39
  They're doing a great job at fisheries, or they're doing a great job.
• 9:41
  Some of them are very investigative journalists, the journalism pieces,
• 9:45
  and, um, they can call out some things, you know, that, that they see, that you
• 9:50
  guys see as, as a problem and so forth.
• 9:52
  Are you ever worried in, in that case, or have you ever had
• 9:55
  any problems in those areas?
• 9:58
  Uh, you know, in terms of like, threats, threats to your, your
• 10:02
  personal, like personal safety?
• 10:06
  Yeah, so it's an interesting question.
• 10:08
  Um, you know, manga Bay operates in a lot of different contexts, so it's kind
• 10:12
  of different depending on the country.
• 10:14
  But, um, yeah, as you've, as you've, as you've noted, um, in
• 10:17
  some countries it's, it's certainly harder to operate than others.
• 10:20
  Um.
• 10:21
  If the dynamic can shift a bit, depending on if you're a foreign journalist or a
• 10:24
  national in that particular country, um, you know, foreigners can be deported.
• 10:30
  Mm-hmm.
• 10:30
  Um, but locals can be, you know, messed around with in, uh, in other ways.
• 10:35
  So, um, you know, sometimes you do an investigation, you know, a
• 10:39
  company might threaten to sue you.
• 10:41
  That's happened on stories I've worked on.
• 10:43
  Um, you know, I've never been threatened personally.
• 10:47
  Right.
• 10:47
  But, um, I did, um, I did spend a few days in prison once, uh, in Indonesia.
• 10:52
  So, um Oh, wow.
• 10:53
  Yeah.
• 10:54
  That's, uh, that back in 2020.
• 10:55
  That's been interesting.
• 10:56
  It was, it was very interesting.
• 10:58
  Most interesting experience I never wanna have again.
• 11:00
  Yes, yes, yes.
• 11:01
  Let's stay outta there.
• 11:03
  But it was very interesting and, um, you know, um, it's, um.
• 11:09
  You can often work with local journalists, um, in a, uh, in, in a, in an effective
• 11:14
  way, a foreigner and a local mm-hmm.
• 11:16
  Um, can often be a potent combination.
• 11:18
  Um, you know, I came to Southeast Asia working for an English language newspaper.
• 11:23
  That is a, uh, it's, it's a way that a lot of Western journalists
• 11:27
  get into foreign correspondence.
• 11:29
  Um, um, you know, there used to be, uh, two English language newspapers
• 11:32
  in Cambodia, um, publications in Myanmar, um, Indonesia, Thailand.
• 11:40
  So it's, it's a bit, some of those have folded in the past
• 11:43
  couple years, um, which is sad.
• 11:45
  Mm-hmm.
• 11:45
  Because a lot of the people I know who've, um, gone on to, to pretty
• 11:49
  impressive careers in, um, foreign correspondence got their start at
• 11:53
  places like the Cambodia Daily or the PanAm Pen Post, or the Jakarta Globe.
• 11:57
  Mm-hmm.
• 11:57
  Um, but, you know, certainly, uh, my friends who worked at the Cambodian
• 12:01
  publications who would often be a foreigner and a Cambodian journalist
• 12:04
  kind of working together, so, uh, gotcha.
• 12:06
  That, that can work pretty well.
• 12:08
  Um.
• 12:09
  And that's what we did in, um, in this story, uh, the Shark Meat story,
• 12:13
  uh, my colleague Carla Mendez, who's, uh, who's a really great Brazilian
• 12:16
  journalist based in Rio de Janeiro, we worked on this story together.
• 12:19
  Um, so, um, yeah, that was a new experience for me in Brazil.
• 12:23
  But, um, uh, I think it's, uh, you know, possible to operate there.
• 12:27
  So, yeah.
• 12:28
  No, that's good.
• 12:29
  That's good to hear.
• 12:30
  'cause you just never know.
• 12:30
  Right.
• 12:31
  And, and obviously we don't want, uh, we don't want anybody to get
• 12:34
  to get hurt and they wanna be able to do your job effectively.
• 12:37
  Uh, you know, and in this case, you're, you're protecting, uh, you
• 12:41
  know, people who are vulnerable kids.
• 12:42
  Right.
• 12:43
  Which is, which is really important.
• 12:45
  Before we get into this particular story, uh, something I've always
• 12:49
  been interested in is how.
• 12:52
  Do you develop these types of stories like on Monga Bay?
• 12:55
  Because there's something different about Monga Bay than
• 12:58
  your, your other news reports.
• 13:00
  I mean, one is very, it's all environmentally focused, right?
• 13:03
  It's so, it's whether it's, uh, forest like RA rainforests or, um,
• 13:08
  you know, uh, you know, shark meat or ocean focused or wildlife focused.
• 13:14
  It's, it's pretty much has an environmental, uh, topic or focus, right?
• 13:18
  Um, but it's, it's, it's just, there's, it's just unique.
• 13:22
  It's, these are original stories which are hard to come by, uh, these days.
• 13:27
  And, but they're deep, they're not just like.
• 13:30
  Oh, I'm gonna think of a topic and I'm gonna just write, you know, to
• 13:34
  be honest, I, I do that sometimes.
• 13:36
  Like, I'll read a Manga Bay news article and I'll be like, oh, I'm
• 13:39
  gonna use that as a basis to talk about another particular subject.
• 13:43
  But you guys, when you put a, a story together, this is not a story.
• 13:47
  You just think of that day and then write it.
• 13:48
  This is something, sometimes it could be months, if not years, uh, weeks,
• 13:53
  months, years in the making to, to try and make this what goes into a
• 13:56
  story that's published on Manga Bay.
• 13:58
  You've been there for quite some time over 10 years.
• 14:01
  What, what goes into that, that type of story?
• 14:04
  Sure.
• 14:04
  Um, well, we publish, um, we publish in different formats.
• 14:08
  So we publish, uh, short news, we publish articles, we publish
• 14:11
  longer features, and we publish investigations, videos, podcasts.
• 14:16
  Um, but what goes into it is, I mean, just like any, you know, newspaper that's
• 14:21
  worth our salt is, uh, you know, good old fashioned beat reporting, right?
• 14:25
  So we have reporters in these places.
• 14:28
  Um, who follow these issues for a period of time.
• 14:33
  Um, get to know the sources involved and, um, develop a certain amount of
• 14:39
  knowledge about the, about the issue.
• 14:40
  And, um, once you do that for a certain amount of time, um, you know, you start
• 14:45
  to see where the stories are, right?
• 14:46
  You start to, you know, a, a, a story that might not be published in the form
• 14:50
  of a, you know, an academic paper or a, or a press release or an NGO report.
• 14:54
  I mean, those things can be good to cover and we do cover those.
• 14:56
  But, uh, it's when you start to follow an issue for, um, for an extended period
• 15:01
  of time, um, and, and, and, and know the, the stakeholders, the people involved,
• 15:06
  that you start to see where the stories lie, um, that haven't been covered, that
• 15:10
  are, uh, you know, right to be told.
• 15:12
  So, um, you know, that's what we do at Manga Bay.
• 15:14
  Um, for example, um, on the Southeast Asia desk we have, um, four staff reporters.
• 15:21
  Um, there's two in Jakarta, there's two in, uh, Bangkok.
• 15:25
  We have, uh, two editors.
• 15:27
  We also have a network of freelancers who are pitching us stories, who
• 15:30
  we assign stories to sometimes.
• 15:32
  Um, and you know, we have our, kind of, our issues that that, that we cover.
• 15:37
  Um, same with our Africa desk or our Latin America Desk, or our Oceans
• 15:42
  Desk or our Wildlife Trade Desk.
• 15:45
  Um, so, um, you know, that's how we do it.
• 15:48
  Um, you know.
• 15:50
  Yeah.
• 15:51
  Yeah.
• 15:52
  I think it's, I think it's interesting.
• 15:53
  I I, I, I really like that, um, because, you know, putting all this stuff into a
• 15:58
  story and being able to collaborate with others and having that geographic sort
• 16:03
  of spatial extent is, is, is pretty key.
• 16:06
  'cause we don't hear a lot of stories within these areas.
• 16:08
  Um, and I think that's what makes it quite unique, um, which is great.
• 16:13
  Let's, let's get into to this story in particular.
• 16:16
  Um, you know, this is, you know, we're looking at fish for, for, uh,
• 16:22
  for lunches, for kids in Brazil.
• 16:24
  Um, you know, it's really shark meat.
• 16:26
  Uh, there's a lot that goes in with shark meat if, if they're, they're, um,
• 16:31
  they're fed to developing kids, you know, kids who are, who are still developing
• 16:35
  in their, in their growth and their brain growth and, and a lot of growth.
• 16:39
  That, and we know that there's a lot of stuff that, that is in,
• 16:42
  uh, shark meat that is not very good if you eat it too much.
• 16:45
  And so every day, that's sounds like a lot.
• 16:48
  So why don't you just talk a little bit about, um, how this story really
• 16:52
  began, uh, right from the beginning and then how it developed into this
• 16:55
  story, this three part series, it seems.
• 16:59
  Sure.
• 16:59
  So, so I did this story as part of a, as I mentioned, as part of a fellowship
• 17:06
  with the, uh, Pulitzer Center.
• 17:07
  And the, the thrust of that proposal was to, uh, investigate
• 17:11
  the global shark trade.
• 17:13
  So, uh, one of the topics that I was interested in looking at was
• 17:18
  the rise of the shark meat industry.
• 17:21
  Mm-hmm.
• 17:22
  Shark meat.
• 17:23
  So I think a lot of people know about shark fins.
• 17:26
  Yes.
• 17:27
  Shark fin soup in Asia, you know, the practice of shark thinning.
• 17:31
  Um, I'm sure your, your listeners are familiar, but, um Yep.
• 17:33
  We've covered it extensively.
• 17:35
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 17:36
  So, you know, you, you, you catch the shark, you cut off the fins,
• 17:38
  you throw the rest of the body back.
• 17:39
  So, um, yeah, I wanted to look at the shark meat industry, the shark
• 17:43
  meat trade, and um, Brazil is a top consumer and importer of shark meat,
• 17:52
  so it made sense to look at Brazil.
• 17:55
  Um, this is something, the fact that they're a top consumer and
• 17:58
  importer that's well documented.
• 17:59
  Um, you know, people who follow this issue know that.
• 18:03
  But, um, as I started to approach various conservationists, government people,
• 18:09
  et cetera, um, to talk about Brazil's shark me trade and learn more about
• 18:15
  it, um, you know, I started to, to hear about, um, government procurements.
• 18:20
  Is happening.
• 18:21
  And this is something, you know, I I, I'd see it, it had been mentioned in,
• 18:24
  in published studies and articles.
• 18:26
  Um, yeah.
• 18:27
  And my colleague Carla had interviewed somebody who mentioned it.
• 18:29
  Um, so it's not something that was completely hidden, but it
• 18:32
  was, it was never, it was never expounded on in any depth or length.
• 18:35
  It was always just kind of a, an offhanded mention in the middle of some
• 18:40
  study, in the middle of some articles.
• 18:41
  So, um, you know, I thought that that could be an interesting angle, right?
• 18:44
  I mean, if, if they're serving it in schools or hospitals and that
• 18:47
  kind of thing, but how do you, how do you show that this is happening?
• 18:50
  Mm-hmm.
• 18:51
  How do you approach this journalistically?
• 18:53
  Um, so as I, as I talked to, I talked to a few people who mentioned to me
• 18:58
  that Brazil has a transparency law.
• 19:02
  Brazil has a transparency law, which requires government agencies
• 19:06
  to publish procurement data, right?
• 19:10
  So if you're, if you're the education department and you know, city X,
• 19:17
  you know, you've gotta publish.
• 19:19
  All the calls for tender that you, that you issue.
• 19:22
  Right.
• 19:23
  If you're right, if you say, I want to buy, you know, a thousand pounds
• 19:27
  of chicken for, uh, the local hospital that goes on a website somewhere.
• 19:31
  Yeah.
• 19:31
  So, um, a few people mention, you know, hey, if you, if you, uh, if you have a
• 19:35
  lot of time on your hands, you know, you could probably, you know, hunt around
• 19:39
  some of these websites and, uh, you know, you, you'll find shark meat procurements.
• 19:44
  So, um, you know, because you had all that time start to think, well,
• 19:49
  you know, this is, do a year for this fellowship and, uh, you know.
• 19:52
  Yeah.
• 19:52
  Uh, so that's what we did basically.
• 19:54
  Yeah.
• 19:54
  Um, so that's what we did.
• 19:55
  That was kind of the premise of this investigation.
• 19:58
  So, um, you know, I, I had done a story like that before
• 20:03
  in Indonesia where you, um.
• 20:06
  You know, you go on a bunch of government websites and you build a database
• 20:09
  of, in that case it was court cases.
• 20:11
  Mm-hmm.
• 20:12
  That was a story about, uh, traditional farmers and on the island of Borneo
• 20:16
  getting criminally prosecuted for using fire to clear land.
• 20:19
  It's a big issue there.
• 20:20
  Caused a lot of air pollution.
• 20:21
  So, uh, yeah.
• 20:22
  You know, we went and we built a database of those, uh, those, those prosecutions.
• 20:26
  Uh, just, but, um, so this was, in a way it was similar.
• 20:29
  We thought, okay, let's, we can, we can build a database
• 20:32
  of shark meat procurements.
• 20:34
  Um, so it sounds straightforward, but, uh, there were a lot of,
• 20:38
  a lot of, uh, difficulties.
• 20:40
  Um, you know, it's not a lot of reasons why it's not so straightforward.
• 20:44
  One of which is that, um, there's no central, it's not like there's
• 20:47
  one website you can go on to find all the procurements in Brazil.
• 20:50
  Mm-hmm.
• 20:50
  Um, every state has its own.
• 20:54
  Transparency portal.
• 20:55
  Every city has its own transparency portal.
• 20:58
  Oh, there's a federal transparency portal.
• 20:59
  There's thousands of cities in Brazil.
• 21:01
  So it's like, how do you, how do you approach this?
• 21:04
  Um, so we thought, okay, let's, let's pick, you know, four states.
• 21:10
  Start there.
• 21:11
  Um, and so one of the authors of this story, one of the bylines on this story
• 21:15
  is, uh, my colleague King, he's the data editor at the Pulitzer Center.
• 21:20
  Um, so he, you know, I worked very closely with him to, uh, we tried to figure out
• 21:24
  a way to scrape these websites, right?
• 21:26
  Right.
• 21:26
  So he used his magical coding abilities to, uh, to build these bots that
• 21:32
  would go on these portals mm-hmm.
• 21:34
  And try to scrape, uh, shark meat procurement.
• 21:36
  So, um, so we did that for four states.
• 21:39
  It was the state of Sao Paulo Rio de Janeiro.
• 21:44
  And, um, what was the other one?
• 21:46
  Um, I think it was Parina.
• 21:48
  Um, and I'm, of course I'm mangling the pronunciations of some of those,
• 21:51
  but, um, so that's what we did.
• 21:53
  I mean, um, that's what we did and there was a lot of manual labor that
• 21:57
  was involved in there, you know, having to verify what the robots gave us.
• 22:01
  And, um, we also went on a lot of city municipal transparency portals
• 22:05
  to find more shark meat tenders.
• 22:07
  Um, so that's kind of in a nutshell.
• 22:09
  I can, I can go into more detail about, about that process.
• 22:12
  But, um, that was kind of the, the meat of the investigation.
• 22:15
  And then we, um, of course once we identified all these shark meat tenders,
• 22:21
  um, we, we sought to contact the, the agencies that were buying the shark
• 22:25
  meat, um, the public institutions that were receiving the shark meat, uh,
• 22:29
  the companies that were supplying the shark meat, um, all that kind of thing.
• 22:33
  Um, and you know, one of the reasons, uh, why it wasn't so
• 22:38
  straightforward is that shark meat in Brazil, um, it's not actually.
• 22:42
  Sold under the label Shark Meat.
• 22:45
  It's called something else.
• 22:46
  It's called, it has this generic label.
• 22:47
  It's called Caan.
• 22:49
  Um, so Caan is like, it's a, it's a, it's a common suffix in Portuguese.
• 22:54
  Okay.
• 22:55
  It's like in English it would be like, you know, ca like vacation or convocation.
• 23:01
  So it's just that, that ca you know, so, okay.
• 23:03
  So, so it's called, it's sold under the name Caan.
• 23:06
  And, and, um, because it's a suffix, like it, it becomes really
• 23:10
  hard to search these portals for Caan because you search cassan.
• 23:13
  It actually brings up anything with the word that, that has that in it.
• 23:17
  Right.
• 23:18
  It's, it's not a very, these aren't very sophisticated
• 23:19
  search platforms like Google.
• 23:21
  You can't ask, you generally can't ask them to.
• 23:23
  So that, that, that presented a whole host of issues we had to overcome.
• 23:27
  Um, oh man, that's a lot.
• 23:29
  That does mess it up.
• 23:30
  Yeah.
• 23:31
  So that's kinda the basics of how we approach the data gathering exercise.
• 23:36
  Now, further along into the story, do the children and, and rightfully the parents
• 23:43
  know that they're having shark meat?
• 23:47
  Uh, that's a good question.
• 23:49
  I think the answer is almost always no.
• 23:52
  Hmm.
• 23:52
  Um, people don't know that cassan is shark for the most part in Brazil.
• 23:57
  Right.
• 23:57
  Um, there's surveys that show that most people who buy cassan don't
• 24:01
  know that it's actually shark.
• 24:03
  Right.
• 24:03
  Um, and this is a common thing in, in fish.
• 24:06
  Yeah.
• 24:06
  Right?
• 24:06
  Yeah.
• 24:06
  Um, so it's not widely known.
• 24:11
  Um, you know, these packages don't have labels that say like, this is shark.
• 24:16
  The word for shark and Portuguese is uba, UBA, brown.
• 24:19
  Um, and that's typically not on the labels.
• 24:22
  There's typically not a species name or anything like that, so people don't know.
• 24:25
  Um, and so one of the people who was, uh.
• 24:28
  Featured in the article is, is a woman who, uh, her name is Solan Ami.
• 24:33
  And she, um, she's a, uh, an educator in a city that's in the
• 24:39
  Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area.
• 24:41
  And, um, she's also president of the Municipal School Feeding Council, which
• 24:47
  kind of has a role in, um, you know, the, the meal program for schools in that city.
• 24:51
  So she, she told us a story about how, um, maybe around four years ago, she noticed
• 24:57
  that kids, you know, weren't eating, um, the Caan, which was served every Monday.
• 25:03
  Um, and, you know, she started to look into it.
• 25:06
  And, and it was only when she went home and did some research that
• 25:09
  she realized that Cassan was shark.
• 25:11
  And she starts to, to read, you know, some of the, the studies out
• 25:14
  there that say shark meat, you know, tends to be high in heavy metals
• 25:18
  like mercury and arsenic, right?
• 25:20
  Because sharks are apex predators that bioaccumulate.
• 25:23
  Right.
• 25:23
  These substances and their, and their tissue.
• 25:25
  So, and she became concerned and so she, over the past few years has been
• 25:30
  trying to get the municipal education department in this, in this city to
• 25:35
  remove casa from, uh, the school meal program, replace it with a different fish.
• 25:40
  Um, you know, they want to be serving fish.
• 25:42
  Uh, there's an, there's a program in Brazil to get people to eat more fish.
• 25:45
  It's, it's seen as healthy and, you know, like the source
• 25:48
  of fish protein and all that.
• 25:49
  Yeah.
• 25:49
  Um, but she wanted 'em to stop serving Casa.
• 25:52
  Um, and to this day, she's been unable to do so.
• 25:55
  Um, you know, one thing that we, that we heard a lot from the, um,
• 25:59
  government officials that we talked to, um, the, the, the government
• 26:03
  nutritionists that draw up these menus, um, which inform these procurements
• 26:07
  is that shark meat is, is appealing because it, it doesn't have bones.
• 26:12
  Hmm.
• 26:12
  So, uh, yeah.
• 26:13
  So this boneless flesh is, uh, it's, it's appealing to people.
• 26:17
  In places like Brazil, um, who are quite often concerned with, uh,
• 26:21
  choking on bones, they're afraid that a kid's gonna choke on a bone,
• 26:24
  parents are gonna sue the school.
• 26:26
  Um, that kind of a thing.
• 26:28
  You know, kids can go to the hospital.
• 26:30
  So, I mean, for me, that was surprising.
• 26:31
  'cause I, you know, I grew up, I haven't really heard that in the us.
• 26:34
  I grew up eating fish.
• 26:35
  You know, bones was never like that kind of a concern.
• 26:38
  But in the reporting for this project, something I've heard from people in
• 26:41
  a lot of countries where maybe fish consumption isn't such a normal thing.
• 26:44
  People are, people are afraid of choking on bones.
• 26:46
  So that's a big reason for the appeal of serving sharks to kids, especially kids.
• 26:51
  Um, but as we know, heavy metals like mercury and arsenic can, can affect,
• 26:55
  uh, and they can affect anybody if you, if you eat enough of it.
• 26:58
  Yep.
• 26:59
  Um, according to the science.
• 27:00
  But, um, you know, kids, especially like the developing brains they can affect,
• 27:04
  um, those substances can affect developing brains even, even more and more quickly
• 27:09
  than, you know, somebody who eats it.
• 27:11
  X amount of times per week over the course of a lifetime.
• 27:13
  So, um, yeah, I think the famous case, I think the famous case out of that
• 27:16
  was, uh, an actor Jeremy Vin, who was in Entourage and many other, uh,
• 27:21
  shows and, and movies where I, I, I think he was like Scavo 'cause he just
• 27:26
  ate sushi every day for like decades.
• 27:30
  And when he went in to get his blood tested, they were like,
• 27:33
  we don't know how you're alive.
• 27:36
  'cause he had so much mercury in his, in his system and they had to like do
• 27:40
  almost like a, like a, i I, I don't know the term, but it was a, it was a
• 27:44
  blood transfusion that where they had to replace a lot of his blood because
• 27:47
  there was so much mercury and he was in the hospital for quite some time.
• 27:50
  Um, and, and so that's like one of the famous things and
• 27:53
  that's eating it every day.
• 27:54
  Obviously that's an extreme 'cause not everybody eats fish every day, but
• 27:58
  if you're having, if you're a child and you're eating it five times a
• 28:00
  day and you're developing, like what are the age groups of the children
• 28:03
  that are eating this, this meat?
• 28:06
  It's as young as it gets, man.
• 28:07
  It's um.
• 28:09
  Because the homelessness is part of the appeal.
• 28:11
  Yeah.
• 28:11
  Even younger.
• 28:12
  Younger, like early childhood education.
• 28:14
  Yeah.
• 28:15
  And yes, primary school, like kindergarten, first grade.
• 28:17
  Right.
• 28:18
  Um, you know, in our, in our, in our investigation, we, that was a
• 28:22
  question that we asked, like how, you know, I think we identified, um,
• 28:27
  5,900 institutions, like individual schools or hospitals that were listed
• 28:33
  as potential recipients of sharp meat in these tenders that we identified.
• 28:38
  Most of them were schools.
• 28:39
  Yeah.
• 28:40
  And we found at least a thousand, more than a thousand,
• 28:43
  um, early childhood schools.
• 28:47
  Interesting.
• 28:48
  Um, wow.
• 28:49
  So, yeah.
• 28:49
  I mean, not just small children, but also some elderly care centers.
• 28:54
  Yeah.
• 28:54
  Yeah.
• 28:55
  There was a, there was a, an agency in, in Rio de Janeiro that told us, um, they
• 29:00
  were, they were, they were buying shark meat for a, a shelter for disabled kids.
• 29:07
  Kids with intellectual disabilities, they, they saw it as, um, as, you know,
• 29:12
  as good for those, those kids because maybe they have a harder time chewing.
• 29:15
  So the boneless meat was, um, was seen as appealing for those kids just 'cause
• 29:21
  it was boneless meat at this point.
• 29:22
  Yeah.
• 29:22
  Like, that's major difference.
• 29:24
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 29:25
  Um, so, you know, it's, it's very widely adopted in Brazil.
• 29:30
  I mean, it's, you know, it's not just restaurants, it's not just supermarkets.
• 29:33
  And I, you know, I walked around, I was in Sao Paulo and I just wanted
• 29:37
  to see how wide widespread it was.
• 29:38
  I think I went to, I don't know, 25, 30 grocery stores, supermarkets,
• 29:44
  convenience stores, and I think almost all of 'em had shark meat on sale
• 29:48
  in the, in the frozen food section, sometimes in the fresh food section.
• 29:51
  So it's, yeah, Sao Pao is, is a place where it's very
• 29:54
  commonly, very commonly served.
• 29:56
  It's interesting 'cause Sao Paulo's, they have a lot of vegetarian restaurants.
• 29:59
  It's known for having like amazing vegan vegetarian food, but it's
• 30:02
  also, I suppose, known for having a lot of shark meat on offers.
• 30:05
  So.
• 30:06
  Interesting.
• 30:07
  I wonder if that's the case.
• 30:08
  Like if, if there are people who are mostly vegetarian but will take
• 30:12
  protein, a lot of the times it's, it's some sort of seafood or fish, right?
• 30:16
  Yeah.
• 30:17
  Yeah.
• 30:17
  That I've seen anecdotally.
• 30:18
  I don't know if that's like widely known, but people who are vegetarian
• 30:21
  who don't, are, aren't fully vegetarian, but they'll eat because a lot of people,
• 30:24
  like, I'm vegetarian, but I eat fish.
• 30:27
  You know, and, and so like, they still get the healthy, they get,
• 30:29
  they get the, the good proteins and the fatty acids and, and so forth.
• 30:33
  Uh, and, and the, the minerals and stuff.
• 30:35
  But I maybe that's, I wonder if that's a reason why as well.
• 30:38
  It's so popular there.
• 30:40
  Yeah.
• 30:40
  I wonder, you know, I don't know.
• 30:41
  I don't know where this term cassan comes from even, um, yeah.
• 30:44
  Why, why that took hold.
• 30:46
  Um, you know, I've heard various things, but nothing really solid.
• 30:50
  Um mm-hmm.
• 30:51
  Um, so yeah, it's an interesting question.
• 30:53
  Yeah.
• 30:54
  Yeah.
• 30:55
  Now, like when we talk about having, like, why, why are we worried about
• 30:59
  this story really like the, you know.
• 31:01
  People eat fish, people eat sharks.
• 31:03
  We know sometimes there's, there's fraud.
• 31:05
  But it sounds like, you know, there's like seafood fraud.
• 31:08
  But it sounds like, you know, people like the government is putting it up
• 31:11
  as procurement people are buying this.
• 31:13
  A lot of people know they're buying sharks.
• 31:15
  Uh, the kids may not know and the parents may not know they're eating sharks.
• 31:17
  But why is this, uh, let's, let's talk about like the, the issues
• 31:21
  like from a a public health perspective, why is this an issue?
• 31:25
  Yeah, sure.
• 31:26
  So, um, why are we concerned about, you know, thousands of tons of shark
• 31:31
  meat being bought by government agencies in a country like Brazil?
• 31:35
  Um, so there's really two sides of it.
• 31:37
  Um, one side is the public health side, which we touched on,
• 31:41
  can talk about that some more.
• 31:43
  Um, you know, the presence of heavy metals in these, in these fish.
• 31:46
  Um, the other side is sustainability, right?
• 31:49
  So sharks are, generally speaking, are declining across the world.
• 31:54
  You know, there was a study that that showed that shark abundance
• 31:58
  has declined by like 71%.
• 32:01
  Over the past 50 years.
• 32:03
  So, you know, sharks are being overfished, sharks are in trouble.
• 32:06
  Um, and, um, you know, shark meat is, um, is a growing industry.
• 32:14
  Mm-hmm.
• 32:14
  And that is driving the overfishing of sharks.
• 32:19
  So when you identify kind of this hidden driver of the shark meat industry in the
• 32:24
  form of widespread government procurements in, you know, one of the biggest countries
• 32:29
  in the world, which also by the way could be happening in other countries, other
• 32:33
  countries, governments, you know, I've heard could be procuring shark meat.
• 32:36
  Maybe not on the same scale as Brazil, but I've heard Portugal,
• 32:39
  I've heard some other places as well.
• 32:41
  Um, you know, that is, um, you know, an issue worth considering.
• 32:44
  Um, now look, I'm not gonna tell anybody, you know, you can
• 32:47
  never, ever eat shark, right?
• 32:48
  Mm-hmm.
• 32:48
  You know, people have been eating sharks since probably
• 32:50
  the beginning of human history.
• 32:52
  Right.
• 32:53
  Um, you know, we humans eat a lot of things.
• 32:55
  Um, you know, I'm from, I live for eight years in Indonesia.
• 32:59
  There's a place in Indonesia.
• 33:00
  Um, in the northern part of the island of Solei where they're
• 33:03
  known to eat just about anything.
• 33:04
  I think the, the saying there is if it, uh, if it, if it crawls, swims,
• 33:08
  flies, or walks, you know, we eat it.
• 33:09
  So, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna say nobody should ever reach shark.
• 33:14
  Uh, some people would say that.
• 33:15
  Um, yeah.
• 33:15
  But, um, you know, as a journalist, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna say that,
• 33:18
  but, um, you know, um, what's happened is, um, there's been a shift from this
• 33:22
  traditional shark meat consumption, right?
• 33:25
  Like, you know Yep.
• 33:26
  Tradition.
• 33:26
  The villages here and there, indigenous peoples here and there to what we
• 33:30
  have today, which is, which is this big industrial scale fishing of
• 33:35
  sharks and consumption of shark meat.
• 33:37
  So, um, you know, to the extent where you have hundreds of companies in Brazil
• 33:44
  that are involved in the distribution of shark meat, um, which we show in our
• 33:48
  investigation, I think we identified more somewhere between 200 and 250 companies
• 33:53
  that were supplying government agencies.
• 33:55
  Um.
• 33:56
  You know, that, that, that we, those are only the tenders
• 33:58
  that we, that we compiled.
• 33:59
  So, um, yeah.
• 34:00
  You know, this has become a massive global industry.
• 34:04
  Shark meat, I think is worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year according to
• 34:07
  the WWF study published in I think 2021.
• 34:11
  Um, so it's big business.
• 34:14
  Um, it's a massive industry and, um, you know, I think at the very least,
• 34:21
  um, you know what a lot of people will say is that there should, there
• 34:24
  should at the very least be clear labeling on these products, right?
• 34:27
  Yeah.
• 34:27
  So some of the nutritionists who put Cassan on the menu, they didn't
• 34:31
  even know that Cassan was shark.
• 34:33
  Mm-hmm.
• 34:33
  They didn't know about the toxicology.
• 34:35
  They don't study toxicology in Brazilian nutritionist school, and they didn't
• 34:39
  know about the sustainability issues.
• 34:41
  It was all news to them.
• 34:42
  So, um, I think at the very least, we should be making informed decisions about.
• 34:48
  These kinds of, these kinds of foods.
• 34:50
  Um, you know, maybe there is a way to sustainably fish shark and, and, you
• 34:55
  know, harvest their meat and, and serve their meat in public institutions.
• 34:59
  But, um, I think a prerequisite for that should certainly be, um, you
• 35:02
  know, clear labeling, um, at least, at least knowing what we're dealing with.
• 35:06
  Um, and that, by the way, is an issue in shark fishing more broadly.
• 35:09
  I mean, the data's not very good for some of these species.
• 35:11
  Like it's hard to don't really know the status of some of these
• 35:14
  species that we're fishing.
• 35:16
  Um, and you know, the blue shark is the species that is the most
• 35:19
  commonly traded in the world today.
• 35:21
  That's a big oceanic shark.
• 35:23
  Um, oh, I'm sorry.
• 35:25
  Did I?
• 35:26
  Nope.
• 35:27
  You're all good.
• 35:28
  Okay.
• 35:28
  I'm sorry I minimized my window.
• 35:29
  Um, but you're still good?
• 35:30
  No, you're all good.
• 35:30
  Okay.
• 35:31
  Yeah, yeah.
• 35:31
  So sorry about that.
• 35:32
  So the blue shark is, um, the most commonly traded species.
• 35:35
  Um, you know, it's, um, the industry will say that, you know, the industry
• 35:41
  will argue that it's possible to sustainably fish the blue shark.
• 35:45
  Um.
• 35:46
  Some conservationists will counter that, you know, the data on blue
• 35:50
  sharks isn't, that, isn't that good?
• 35:51
  We don't really know how, how they're doing.
• 35:54
  You know, we don't, we don't maybe have the data showing that they're
• 35:56
  not doing very good, but, but, uh, we also don't have data showing
• 36:01
  that they're doing really well.
• 36:02
  Yeah.
• 36:02
  So, um, we should maybe take the precautionary right approach.
• 36:06
  Um, so that's a debate that's happening right now in, you know,
• 36:09
  in the regional fisheries management organizations, the RFMOs, yeah.
• 36:13
  In, in national governments, national, um, settings like Brazil.
• 36:18
  I mean, sharks are really, I think at a crossroads right now globally in
• 36:22
  Brazil in a number of other countries.
• 36:24
  Spain, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and the RFMOs.
• 36:29
  You know, people are just, I think starting to realize that, that these
• 36:32
  big shark fishing industries exist where boats are not only catching
• 36:35
  sharks as bycatch, but are actually targeting sharks industrially.
• 36:39
  And this has been going on for, for a long time now, 20, 30 years.
• 36:43
  And it's been largely unregulated, right?
• 36:45
  Yeah.
• 36:46
  Um, there's no, in many, most places you can take as many blue sharks as a boat can
• 36:49
  go take as many blue sharks as they want.
• 36:50
  There's no rules for it.
• 36:51
  No.
• 36:52
  Um, it's not like tuna and swordfish.
• 36:53
  They're managed with quotas and seasons and gear and stuff like that.
• 36:59
  Sharks just by catch, right?
• 37:00
  So we, we can go take as many as we want.
• 37:03
  And now we're sitting here in 2025.
• 37:05
  Sharks have gone down by 71% the past 50 years.
• 37:09
  And, um, people are starting to wake up to this.
• 37:11
  Blue sharks are now on appendix two of Es.
• 37:14
  And, um, there are debates about can we fish sharks sustainably?
• 37:19
  What does that look like?
• 37:21
  Um, you know, how do we regulate it?
• 37:23
  Should we regulate it?
• 37:24
  That kind of thing.
• 37:25
  So, um, you know, it's rich, it's a rich vein.
• 37:27
  Um, and to add to that too, uh, you know, sharks are such a dynamic
• 37:32
  species or type of species because.
• 37:34
  You have a lot of different sharks.
• 37:36
  We have, we've identified now I think we've grown from 452, you know, over
• 37:40
  1200 sal ranks, you know, looking at sharks, skates, rays, and, and in kymera.
• 37:47
  But when you look at even like the blue shark, you know, some areas
• 37:50
  they're, they're well managed in that they have quotas and that they're,
• 37:54
  they're, look, you look at them and we know their population size.
• 37:58
  Even there, we don't have enough information.
• 38:01
  We only have some information.
• 38:02
  There's a lot of sharks, but we just don't have any information
• 38:04
  at all, and people are still catching them on a regular basis.
• 38:07
  You know, we get most of our information from the fishers who
• 38:10
  are fishing them because they're the ones who are catching them.
• 38:12
  Uh, I, I co-host another podcast called the Beyond Jaws podcast
• 38:15
  with Dr. David Ebert, and he's known as the Lost Shark Guy.
• 38:17
  He looks for a lot of these sharks who haven't been seen in a long time, and
• 38:20
  most of the time he finds them at the fish markets because that's where they go and
• 38:23
  talking to other fishermen and, and we, if we don't have the information on those
• 38:27
  species, how are we supposed to find them?
• 38:29
  Or even, how are we supposed to manage the species that we can find because
• 38:31
  we just, people are not looking at this type of species, which makes even more
• 38:36
  concerning when you're seeing, as you mentioned, over 5,000 institutions in
• 38:40
  Brazil who are ordering shark meat on a, on a regular basis to feed it to their.
• 38:46
  The, the people that they care for, whether it be students, whether it
• 38:49
  be elderly, whether it be, uh, you know, patients as in, in hospitals.
• 38:53
  It's, it's a very difficult thing to do.
• 38:55
  Uh, and if already looking at the, the, you know, degradation of, of shark
• 39:00
  populations around the world, which, which is really, you know, one of the
• 39:04
  things that I, one of the reasons why I want to have you on, you mentioned at the
• 39:06
  beginning, most people know about shark thinning, but, and, and the problems
• 39:10
  that, that, that thinning is producing.
• 39:12
  But a lot of times we ignore shark meat and just shark fishing in general.
• 39:17
  And there are some, and you can say, you may be able to argue, there
• 39:20
  are some, um, populations of, of species that are of shark that are
• 39:25
  well-managed, but those are in very small.
• 39:27
  Like those are in, uh, you know, very spotted.
• 39:30
  Uh, and I know there's some in the us but even then there's arguments
• 39:32
  that they're not, you know, as well managed everybody things.
• 39:35
  'cause never, it's never fully perfect.
• 39:38
  Um, but when you're not managing them and you're not looking at
• 39:40
  their numbers and you're not seeing how they're gonna do, and you're.
• 39:44
  You're selling this meat as like, as like, it's nothing like, it's
• 39:47
  like, it's like it's infinite.
• 39:49
  We know it's not infinite, and it scares the hell outta me from a, a
• 39:52
  conservation standpoint that we are not, you know, monitoring the this
• 39:57
  further or monitoring this more.
• 39:59
  Um, now when you first wrote this article, uh, it came in two parts, right?
• 40:05
  Was that the, i, was that the first, was that, was that the, the
• 40:07
  goal, was this gonna be two parts?
• 40:10
  Yeah.
• 40:11
  So the initial goal was just one story.
• 40:14
  Okay.
• 40:14
  One story about, yeah.
• 40:16
  Brazilian government procurements of shark meat.
• 40:20
  Um, so, but then something else emerged.
• 40:22
  So, um, as I'm going through these, these procurement portals, these
• 40:28
  websites where the government agencies are listing the, uh, the procurements
• 40:32
  and just kind of combing through them, searching for cassan, Cassan, Cassan.
• 40:36
  Mm-hmm.
• 40:36
  Um, I noticed that, um.
• 40:40
  In one state in Brazil, southernmost state, uh, Rio Grand do, um, which
• 40:45
  is on the border with Uruguay.
• 40:47
  It's got a big fishing industry.
• 40:49
  Um, eat a lot of seafood down there.
• 40:51
  Um, I was seeing tenders for, um, something else called, um,
• 40:57
  mmo, maybe it's pronounced Portuguese.
• 40:58
  So that's, um, translates as angel fish.
• 41:01
  Ah, angel fish.
• 41:03
  Angel fish.
• 41:03
  So I, you know, at first I didn't think much of it, but I started
• 41:07
  to see it and I was like, what is, what is this angel fish?
• 41:09
  I mean, 'cause you know the aquarium fish, right?
• 41:11
  Like the angel fish?
• 41:12
  Yeah, yeah.
• 41:13
  Like, do people, do people eat that?
• 41:14
  There's a lot of different names.
• 41:15
  Yeah.
• 41:16
  Yeah.
• 41:16
  I mean, so it's like, well, no, it can't be that.
• 41:18
  I mean, that's not, they're not, there's no industry that's producing angel fish,
• 41:23
  you know, for, for consumption like this, uh, on an industrial scale, right.
• 41:27
  It's just not done.
• 41:27
  So angel fish, um, you know, what could that be?
• 41:32
  So in one of these tenders, even though what they were, what they
• 41:35
  were asking for was angel fish.
• 41:38
  Uh, there was a supporting document that made clear that angel
• 41:42
  fish was actually angel Shark.
• 41:45
  Um, so that was very interesting.
• 41:48
  So, um, when you first saw, when you first saw like angel fish and then all
• 41:53
  of a sudden you realize that it's, it's not phish, it's like a type of shark.
• 41:58
  What was your reaction to that?
• 42:00
  At first I was like, it's this can't be asking for angel
• 42:03
  shark 'cause they're in danger.
• 42:04
  Right, right.
• 42:05
  That would just seem I, in Brazil, like it's, it's illegal to, um, I mean,
• 42:10
  you can't catch endangered species.
• 42:13
  You can't catch angel shark, even if they're dead.
• 42:15
  You have to throw it back.
• 42:16
  Yep.
• 42:17
  And you can't trade angel shark, um, unless there is an, there is
• 42:20
  an exemption that you can trade an endangered species if it is important.
• 42:26
  So, okay.
• 42:27
  Maybe there's a, you know, okay, that's, maybe it could be legal, but
• 42:30
  I mean, when I first saw this, I, I was kind of, I don't know, so I,
• 42:33
  I had to ask a bunch of people, um.
• 42:36
  And, um, but eventually it did become clear that no, this ano
• 42:40
  is a reference to Angel Shark.
• 42:43
  There was just a lot of evidence that we found.
• 42:44
  It's, it's, it's all it's explained in the article.
• 42:46
  Um mm-hmm.
• 42:47
  You know, one of the tenders, um, there was a supporting document that
• 42:50
  said, made clear that Ano was actually cas on Ho, which that is the official
• 42:56
  trade name for Angel Shark in Brazil.
• 42:59
  So the Ministry of Agriculture, um, you know, regulates the official
• 43:04
  trade names for like, food in Brazil.
• 43:06
  And so these species, these, these three species of angel shark that
• 43:10
  are native to Brazil, they have like official trade names and
• 43:12
  it's always casal anal something.
• 43:15
  Casal an ho something.
• 43:16
  Yeah, I'm, I'm totally mangled different.
• 43:18
  No, no, but I get it.
• 43:19
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 43:20
  So, okay.
• 43:21
  This is Casal Anjo, so this is Angel Shark.
• 43:23
  There's no doubt about it, at least in this tender.
• 43:25
  Um, you know, so we dug around a little bit.
• 43:28
  We found, um, you know, there was a document, um.
• 43:32
  I think it was some museum archive that showed Thato was a, a trade, a common
• 43:38
  name for Angel Shark in Rio Grand.
• 43:39
  Judo Sewell.
• 43:41
  Um, there was a, there was another thing that we found that um, I think,
• 43:46
  um, I'm gonna mangle this 'cause it's from memory, but it was something
• 43:50
  to, it was some government document that was kind of further indicating
• 43:53
  that Aho was actually Angel Shark.
• 43:54
  Okay.
• 43:55
  Um, you know, and, and comp, it's being sold openly.
• 43:58
  I mean, in, in restaurants, in markets in this state, pat Ho, and sometimes it is,
• 44:04
  um, and rarely it is sometimes it's called Casa an ho, like on, on the label, on
• 44:08
  the product and like a store or whatever.
• 44:10
  So, um, you know, so that kind of became clear.
• 44:13
  Okay.
• 44:14
  Ano is a reference to Angel Shark.
• 44:16
  Um, that doesn't mean that when they're procuring Piao, what they're
• 44:19
  getting is always Angel Shark.
• 44:21
  I mean, that was something that, you know, experts.
• 44:24
  I interviewed said it's like, you know, the suppliers could
• 44:27
  be supplying something else.
• 44:28
  It could be a different kind of shark, it could be guitar,
• 44:31
  fish, or something like that.
• 44:32
  Even with cassan, there could be endangered species.
• 44:35
  Yep.
• 44:35
  Getting into this supply chain as cassan.
• 44:38
  Yeah.
• 44:38
  We don't know.
• 44:38
  We don't know because it's just cassan, you know, ca it might be blue shark,
• 44:42
  which is legal, but it might be another species, which is not, I mean, unless
• 44:45
  you have a DNA sampler right then and there to, to, to like sample randomly
• 44:50
  the meat, you'll really never know.
• 44:52
  Right.
• 44:53
  Exactly.
• 44:54
  Yeah.
• 44:54
  So that's, I mean, there's been a lot of studies, um, in the past several
• 44:58
  years, uh, like genetic studies where they take some, a scientist will go
• 45:03
  take some meat that's being sold at the supermarket and they'll test to
• 45:06
  the, they'll do this genetic test to see what species it is, and quite often
• 45:10
  Caan is like hammerhead sharks or.
• 45:12
  Yeah, something like that.
• 45:13
  Yeah.
• 45:14
  So it's a common issue.
• 45:15
  Um, but to see Angel Sharks being kind of like openly procured, like this was
• 45:19
  very surprising, very, very surprising.
• 45:22
  Um, you know, so either it's being imported legally or it is being
• 45:26
  illegal caught in Brazil and then kind of longed to this supply chain.
• 45:29
  Mm-hmm.
• 45:30
  So, um, we don't know.
• 45:31
  We didn't, it was kind of beyond the scope of our investigation, but we learned from,
• 45:36
  um, Brazil's, uh, environment Agency.
• 45:38
  It's called Obama.
• 45:40
  Um, Obama, you know, they, they are, they're trying to crack down on the
• 45:44
  illegal angel shark trade, and they've actually asked the environment ministry
• 45:47
  to close that exemption that allows imported endangered species to be
• 45:51
  traded because it, it kind of creates an opportunity to launder this, um,
• 45:56
  yeah, illegally caught Brazilian Angel shark into these supply chains.
• 45:59
  Um, so, you know, it's, um, it's really hard to trace these supply chains,
• 46:05
  um, because, and we don't know the, we don't know the portion of it either.
• 46:08
  Like, we don't know the proportion of how much Angel shark was coming in.
• 46:13
  In this situation, right?
• 46:14
  Because it could have been under the Cassa name too, but we True dunno, right?
• 46:18
  That's that's definitely true.
• 46:19
  Yeah.
• 46:20
  So the, the import data is not always clear about that kind of stuff, right?
• 46:25
  Uh, it's not really, it's a shark is coming in, it's not
• 46:27
  usually not divided by species.
• 46:29
  Um, yeah.
• 46:31
  So it sounds like someone can do a, a PhD just on, on the, uh, translation
• 46:37
  and identification of the supply chain stuff that's coming through, you know,
• 46:42
  just imported into Brazil or probably any country where we don't know the actual
• 46:46
  names because it's not as if they're importing by name of species or just
• 46:50
  kind of like, it sounds like just a cat, like a, a random general category that
• 46:55
  people are importing these sharks under.
• 46:57
  And, and until we know different, we don't know if it's just all
• 47:00
  blue sharks or how much is angel, shark or anything like that.
• 47:03
  Right.
• 47:04
  Yep.
• 47:04
  Yep.
• 47:05
  The trade data is really tough to work with for that reason.
• 47:08
  I think every country does it differently.
• 47:10
  Yeah.
• 47:10
  Um, I'm not totally expert on, on all that trade data stuff, but
• 47:14
  there's a project right now at, uh, Dalhousie University in Canada.
• 47:17
  Yeah.
• 47:17
  Dalhousie.
• 47:18
  Yeah, yeah.
• 47:18
  Yeah.
• 47:19
  So they're trying to map out the global shark meat trade and um, you know, they've
• 47:23
  got their own methods for trying to Right.
• 47:25
  Work through these inconsistencies and the trade data.
• 47:27
  Yeah.
• 47:27
  Um, from country to country and, you know, entity to entity.
• 47:31
  So yeah, that'll be interesting when that comes out.
• 47:33
  Yeah.
• 47:33
  It'll little bit up the transparency for sure.
• 47:35
  I mean, that's something that's needed in all fisheries, especially
• 47:37
  shark fisheries, where we just don't have the information and, uh, being
• 47:41
  able to have this, uh, is, is great.
• 47:44
  But, uh, definitely surprising in this case.
• 47:48
  Um, now you did these first two articles.
• 47:50
  So the first one was on the, on the, uh, I just, so the revelation of, of
• 47:55
  the fact that these, these institutions, it's not, I kept saying schools, but it's
• 47:59
  not only schools, hospitals, and, and even jails to prisons as well, right?
• 48:04
  Like the, the people were reading sharks, um, on a, on a regular basis.
• 48:08
  Um, the second one was really identifying like how illegal angel shark captures were
• 48:14
  being used also in these school lunches.
• 48:16
  Um, there was a third one, uh, that was, that was, uh, published today
• 48:21
  as of this recording August 26th.
• 48:23
  Um, can you talk about what that was?
• 48:25
  It was a bit of a response letter to like, it's kind of like an update
• 48:28
  of, of what's been happening because of the first two articles, right?
• 48:32
  Yeah, exactly.
• 48:33
  So, uh, yeah, we just published this piece, uh, an hour ago.
• 48:36
  Uh, yeah, it's basically reaction story.
• 48:38
  Great time.
• 48:39
  Yeah.
• 48:40
  Yeah.
• 48:40
  No, I was glad to get it out before, before coming on here, but, uh.
• 48:44
  It's basically a reactions piece.
• 48:46
  Um, I mean, there's been, there's been some reaction in Brazil to the
• 48:50
  investigation that we published.
• 48:52
  Um, there's a, a member of the na uh, the National Parliament who,
• 48:56
  um, he, he's actually introduced a bill a couple years ago to ban
• 49:01
  federal procurements of shark meat.
• 49:03
  Our investigation was more focused on the state and municipal level.
• 49:06
  Okay.
• 49:06
  Which is, there's vastly more shark meat pro cameras at, at that level.
• 49:09
  We, uh, seemingly right.
• 49:10
  But, uh, so he, you know, he read the story and he said he was gonna
• 49:13
  call, call for a parliamentary hearing to discuss findings.
• 49:17
  Um, you know, some other government agencies responded, um, saying
• 49:22
  they'd look into some of this stuff.
• 49:23
  Um, you know, there's some industry, you know, commentary kind of pushing
• 49:28
  back against, um, some of the points that were raised in the article.
• 49:33
  Um, you know, mainly to do with the heavy metals aspect.
• 49:38
  Um, so, you know, we covered that.
• 49:39
  We covered the statements that they put out and, and what scientists are saying.
• 49:43
  I think it's a really interesting debate.
• 49:45
  Yeah.
• 49:45
  Um, you know, about the heavy metals issue, you know, I'm not a
• 49:48
  scientist, so, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm going to the scientists, to the
• 49:51
  industry people Yeah, of course.
• 49:52
  And trying to understand.
• 49:53
  Um, but, um, you know, the article that we put out is, is talks
• 49:58
  about arsenic is one of the ones that appears in sharks sometimes.
• 50:01
  Um, the first story that we put out talked a bit about Mercury is another common one.
• 50:06
  Um, so the industry, you know, will argue that, um, you know, these concerns
• 50:12
  about heavy metals are overblown.
• 50:13
  Um, yeah.
• 50:15
  You know, shark meat is really healthy because it has, you know, it's protein,
• 50:18
  Omega-3 fatty acids, that kind of thing.
• 50:21
  Um, you know, they'll say, they'll make various arguments about, about
• 50:25
  mercury and about arsenic, which are recounting in the articles.
• 50:29
  And, and we kind of go back and kind of present the debate.
• 50:32
  Um, so, you know.
• 50:35
  Um, I could get into some of that stuff here if you want, um, nuts
• 50:39
  and bolts of that, but that was, that's definitely, that's in the
• 50:41
  article that we just published.
• 50:43
  Um, there's also a Portuguese conservationist who she's quoted in
• 50:48
  the story saying that there's a lot of Portuguese government shark meat
• 50:51
  procurements, which I didn't know.
• 50:53
  Um mm-hmm.
• 50:54
  And, you know, there's a web, there's a transparency portal in Portugal
• 50:57
  where I guess you can go and you can search for, uh, shark meat procurement.
• 51:00
  So maybe that's something we should follow up on, or maybe, right.
• 51:03
  If there's a Portuguese journalist out there who wants to, wants to write
• 51:06
  about this, um, you know, we can, maybe we can work together or, or,
• 51:09
  you know, you can just do a story.
• 51:10
  I think, um, I think this is something that's bigger than just Brazil.
• 51:14
  Um, it's worth, it's worth asking.
• 51:18
  Um, to what extent are these government purchases, uh, driving
• 51:21
  the shark meat trade globally?
• 51:22
  Mm-hmm.
• 51:23
  Um, you know, it's, in a way it's like government subsidy subsidizing,
• 51:27
  uh, the shark meat trade.
• 51:30
  Um, yeah.
• 51:30
  And, you know, and, and you know, it's cheap.
• 51:32
  It's cheap meat.
• 51:32
  Um, the fins are expensive, the meat.
• 51:35
  Is cheap.
• 51:35
  Um, and that's, I think, the other part of the big appeal.
• 51:38
  The other big appeal besides the bone is, is, is the low price.
• 51:41
  So, um, yeah.
• 51:42
  How do you feed a mass amount of people with the cheapest meat ever?
• 51:45
  Yeah, exactly.
• 51:45
  Doesn't mean it's the best meat, but it's the cheapest meat.
• 51:48
  And if that works, that works for them.
• 51:50
  Right?
• 51:51
  Yeah.
• 51:51
  You know, um, we talked to the former mayor of a city in Sao
• 51:55
  Pao state, um, who was involved in some of these procurements.
• 51:58
  He's actually the head of Obama now, which is, uh, which is interesting.
• 52:01
  But when he was mayor in the 2010s, he signed off on some shark meat
• 52:05
  procurements and not just shark meat, also ray meat, um, for schools.
• 52:10
  Um, and I think maybe hospitals, shelters, I can't remember that particular city.
• 52:14
  But, um, he said that, um, you know, at the time he tried to push
• 52:19
  back against it, you know, do we really want to be serving shark?
• 52:22
  But the, the nutritionists who dropped the menus, um, you know, were basically
• 52:28
  like, you know, you're gonna tell me how to do my job kind of thing.
• 52:31
  Um.
• 52:32
  So, you know, it's, it's, it's interesting.
• 52:33
  So the way the system works is, um, it's government agencies in Brazil,
• 52:37
  they employ nutritionists who, um, drop the menus for food procurements, right?
• 52:44
  Mm-hmm.
• 52:44
  Basically design the procurements.
• 52:46
  And so it all goes back to the nutritionists.
• 52:49
  Um, and, um, there's thousands of nutritionists in Brazil and, um, you
• 52:55
  know, they don't know that that, that in a lot of cases, I mean, the ones we talked
• 52:59
  to, I can't say for all of 'em, but it seems like at least the ones we talked to
• 53:02
  seem to not know that Kessan was shark.
• 53:04
  Um, and to know about the heavy metals issues.
• 53:07
  So, um, interesting.
• 53:09
  I forgot what I was talking about for a sec. It was, uh, it was the mayor.
• 53:12
  Yeah, the mayor.
• 53:12
  Yeah.
• 53:13
  Yeah.
• 53:14
  Yeah.
• 53:15
  I, I, I feel like it, it, it's, it's interesting when,
• 53:17
  when all this develops, right?
• 53:19
  You, you do the first two articles, you get all this, this response.
• 53:22
  Did you expect this type of response from, from the, like, like a
• 53:27
  federal, you know, uh, a federal politician as well as industry?
• 53:33
  Because that means it must make a splash that mean it, most people
• 53:36
  must be reading this stuff, right?
• 53:38
  Yeah.
• 53:38
  I mean, you know, that's, that's always what you wanna see, right?
• 53:40
  As a journalist, you wanna, you wanna, you wanna know that it's being read
• 53:43
  and, you know, so I, I don't know if I ex, if I, if I was totally shocked
• 53:47
  to, to, to see this kind of response.
• 53:49
  I mean, I, I kind of knew going into this, that this was a big issue and,
• 53:53
  and, and just the scale of it, the fact that it's happening all over the country.
• 53:57
  Um, I mean, before we put out this story, um, there's really nothing on government
• 54:03
  procurements of shark meat anywhere.
• 54:04
  I, I hadn't found any report, any article, any study anywhere that was part of.
• 54:09
  When we're going into this, like, is this something we wanna spend a lot of time on?
• 54:12
  Because it could take some time, but that was part of the calculus for us, right.
• 54:15
  Um, so that, that kind of made it worth doing.
• 54:19
  And so I wasn't totally shocked to see, to see responses like that.
• 54:22
  Um, you know, it's a little unfortunate, I think to see kind of maybe some
• 54:26
  hostile responses from mm-hmm.
• 54:28
  Some quarters of the industry.
• 54:30
  Not totally surprising, right.
• 54:32
  But, um, you know, you try to engage in good faith, you try to, I interviewed,
• 54:35
  you know, I interviewed people on the fishing side, on the trading side, on
• 54:41
  the, um, you know, fishing to trading.
• 54:43
  Right.
• 54:43
  Um, people in like import export.
• 54:47
  Um, so I feel like I've got a pretty good understanding of the issues,
• 54:50
  of the arguments on both sides.
• 54:52
  Um, you know, it's something we definitely wanna keep covering,
• 54:54
  um, in Brazil and elsewhere.
• 54:57
  Um, you know, and hopefully it, it continues to be, you know.
• 55:03
  Relevant to, yeah.
• 55:04
  The debate that people are having in these places.
• 55:06
  I think, I mean, I think you've identified a lot, you know, in terms
• 55:09
  of, of what needs to be further done.
• 55:12
  I think we are looking at the transparency of a supply chain.
• 55:15
  You know, I, identifying these categories that things are being, uh,
• 55:20
  are being imported to, but there's no sort of manifesto on, on the,
• 55:27
  like, which species are being used?
• 55:28
  Is it all blue sharks?
• 55:30
  Is it not blue sharks?
• 55:31
  You know, a call for like, looking after the stock of where these,
• 55:35
  you know, we don't even know where these sharks are caught.
• 55:38
  We probably know it's the Atlantic, but we don't know where they're caught otherwise.
• 55:42
  Um, it almost seems to be like a, you know, DNA test needs to
• 55:45
  be done, uh, to find out the, the variety of different sharks.
• 55:48
  If there's a variety of different sharks, uh, different shark species that are
• 55:52
  being, that are being consumed on this.
• 55:53
  And, and if so, are they being managed?
• 55:56
  Are they not?
• 55:56
  What's their status?
• 55:57
  All this stuff.
• 55:58
  We know there's angel shark that's being used, and that's, you know,
• 56:01
  that's, that's already endangered.
• 56:03
  Um, so we're looking already at endangered species being, being, um,
• 56:07
  being procured and, and being eaten.
• 56:09
  And then there's also the safety aspect of, of the people who are consuming this.
• 56:13
  Some of them don't have a choice, actually neither, none
• 56:16
  of them really have a choice.
• 56:16
  It's just offered as part of the thing.
• 56:19
  And, and parents need to know about this as well for schools, um, you
• 56:22
  know, advocates for, for jails and, and, and looking after the elderly.
• 56:26
  Like their, their kids need to make sure that the people who are eating this stuff.
• 56:30
  Are gonna be safe, you know?
• 56:32
  And, and, and, uh, and I know there are studies out there that looking at
• 56:35
  the effects of, you know, increased arsenic and, and mercury in the
• 56:39
  body is not, is not good, especially from, um, from consuming seafood.
• 56:44
  Um, that's something that needs to be looked at.
• 56:46
  So there seems to be a lot of, of things that need to go on.
• 56:49
  And I know you've just posted the article, the, the follow up
• 56:52
  article, like the response article.
• 56:54
  Uh, you mentioned that, you know, something that to look into is, is looking
• 56:58
  into Portugal and, and their transparency portal and, and what's in there.
• 57:02
  Um, what would you think should the ne like the next step should be in developing
• 57:07
  this story in, in Brazil to like, are you, look, are you hoping that with the
• 57:13
  publication union co-authors with this publication, that there's gonna be some
• 57:17
  change or it's going to at least start, spark a debate that looks at, you know,
• 57:22
  whether the people of Brazil want this?
• 57:26
  Yeah, so there's a few ways it could go in Brazil.
• 57:28
  Um.
• 57:30
  So we have this bill that's been introduced, uh, by this National
• 57:35
  Parliament member that would ban federal procurements of shark meat.
• 57:38
  So we'll see what happens with that.
• 57:40
  Um, but shark meat procurements are happening at the state level.
• 57:45
  Mm-hmm.
• 57:45
  And at the municipal level.
• 57:47
  So Brazil has like 30, I think it's 26 or 36 states, um, thousands,
• 57:51
  like 5,000, 6,000 cities.
• 57:54
  Um, so you know, that's something that would have to
• 57:59
  get addressed by these mm-hmm.
• 58:01
  Different jurisdictions.
• 58:02
  So it doesn't necessarily mean banning shark meat procurements.
• 58:06
  Um, for example, the, the state of Parana, um, they passed a rule that any
• 58:15
  shark meat sold in the state has to be clearly labeled with the species name.
• 58:22
  So you can't just sell it as casa Right.
• 58:25
  In Parana, you have to sell it as a. You know, pre pka, if it's Blue Shark or, or
• 58:31
  whatever it is, squat, it's angel Shark.
• 58:33
  So, right.
• 58:34
  Um, you know, that's a transparency measure that could at least, if you're
• 58:38
  gonna sell it, at least enables the consumer to, um, understand what it
• 58:45
  is that they're buying and consuming.
• 58:48
  Mm-hmm.
• 58:48
  Mm-hmm.
• 58:49
  Um, so that's something that, you know, a lot of people we interviewed
• 58:52
  mentioned, um, as something that could or should be done.
• 58:57
  Um, um, um, um, yeah, so Power Now has done that.
• 59:03
  I mean, some, I think this the, you know, a couple years ago there was a, the Sao
• 59:09
  Pao city administration issued a tender for some huge amount of shark meat.
• 59:15
  I think it was like 650 tons of shark meat for schools across the state.
• 59:19
  That was actually, that actually made headlines at the time.
• 59:22
  Um, there was some civil society, uh, pushback against that.
• 59:27
  The NGOC Shepherd was, you know, raising a fuss about that.
• 59:31
  A lot of other, you know, concerned people were, were up in arms about it.
• 59:34
  There was some media coverage and that resulted in the city
• 59:38
  canceling the tender right.
• 59:40
  In that instance.
• 59:41
  So, um, you know, it does come to light in a city here or there, but, um, you know,
• 59:48
  I thought it was important to produce this article because it shows that it's
• 59:51
  not just one city here, one city there.
• 59:52
  It's really a nationwide thing.
• 59:54
  Yeah.
• 59:55
  Um, so, you know, we, we published the data along with the article.
• 59:59
  There's a spreadsheet of the thousand tenders that we found.
• 1:00:03
  Yeah.
• 1:00:03
  That took a long time to put together.
• 1:00:04
  The reason why we put the time into doing that was so if any local media
• 1:00:08
  in Brazil wanna follow this up, they can, you know, for writing for
• 1:00:13
  their, their city newspaper or their state newspaper, they can do that.
• 1:00:17
  And, you know, there's gonna be a lot of tenders out there that we didn't find.
• 1:00:20
  This wasn't a comprehensive, we didn't identify every tender
• 1:00:22
  that's ever been issued for sharky.
• 1:00:24
  A thousand of 'em is, I mean, there's gonna be a lot more than that.
• 1:00:26
  So, um, local journalists could follow up, maybe find some more
• 1:00:30
  tenders, um, if, if that's relevant to them and they wanna do that.
• 1:00:34
  Um, but I think it's something that could, you know, there, there's more to be done.
• 1:00:39
  Um, there's more to be reckoned with.
• 1:00:40
  There's also, on the phishing side, a debate happening in Brazil
• 1:00:45
  about whether like targeted blue shark fishing should be allowed.
• 1:00:51
  Um, that's a whole nother side of it.
• 1:00:53
  Yeah.
• 1:00:53
  Um, and that's not just happening in Brazil, it's happening in other countries.
• 1:00:56
  Yeah.
• 1:00:56
  As well.
• 1:00:56
  Yeah.
• 1:00:56
  So that's also really interesting.
• 1:00:58
  I, and, and, uh, I should say, and I know this is a feature article like
• 1:01:03
  the, the original one, it, it's.
• 1:01:05
  There's a lot of detail in this.
• 1:01:07
  Um, even one, I think you did like a, a, a, like a a dot matrix kind of anal
• 1:01:12
  like analysis or looking at like these bar graphs with the each dot representing
• 1:01:17
  one unique recipient on this thing.
• 1:01:19
  It's really cool to like scroll through.
• 1:01:21
  Um, so the article's really great.
• 1:01:22
  I highly recommend everybody who's listening to this to go read the article.
• 1:01:26
  'cause like there's so much information in this and, and we'll link to
• 1:01:28
  all three so that people can get, uh, can, can be able to, to read
• 1:01:33
  them all and go through them all.
• 1:01:35
  I think it's, I think it's something that's, that's.
• 1:01:37
  Needed.
• 1:01:38
  Um, and there's so many, it opens up so many doors to research, not only
• 1:01:43
  from a a journalist perspective, but I think also from a conservation
• 1:01:47
  and science perspective to really understand the shark meat market,
• 1:01:51
  uh, in internationally, not just, not just in Brazil, but internationally.
• 1:01:56
  Uh, so, so Philip, I wanna thank you so much for, for coming on the, on
• 1:01:59
  the show, uh, and, and sharing this with us, this important article.
• 1:02:04
  Um, once I started to read in this, I was like, this has to, that we, we have to
• 1:02:08
  have Phil on the show to talk about this.
• 1:02:10
  So I wanna thank you so much and I'd love to have you back on, not only to
• 1:02:13
  talk about this, but other articles that you've written, uh, related to the ocean.
• 1:02:17
  Thanks so much.
• 1:02:18
  It means a lot.
• 1:02:18
  Uh, you know, I got get, got that nice feedback and uh, really had
• 1:02:22
  a good time talking with you.
• 1:02:23
  And I'm, I'm, I'm happy to come on again.
• 1:02:25
  Awesome.
• 1:02:25
  Thank you.
• 1:02:27
  Thank you, Philip, for joining us on today's episode of the How
• 1:02:29
  to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
• 1:02:30
  It was so great to have you on.
• 1:02:32
  What a story, something that we don't realize even Philip mentioned.
• 1:02:36
  You know, we know a lot about thinning.
• 1:02:38
  We don't know a lot about how shark meat is being consumed in various countries,
• 1:02:42
  how non-transparent the supply chain is.
• 1:02:46
  When we look at sharks, you know, he mentioned there's a specific topic or
• 1:02:50
  name for shark meat that's coming in, but we don't know the actual species.
• 1:02:54
  Those aren't identified.
• 1:02:55
  We don't know if it's different species.
• 1:02:56
  We don't know if it's one single species and we don't know if there
• 1:02:59
  are many more endangered species and they're just like angel sharks.
• 1:03:01
  So there's a lot to be uncovered.
• 1:03:04
  There's a lot of work to do to make sure that these papers, these documents
• 1:03:08
  are more transparent, making sure that we understand what species is
• 1:03:11
  being caught, what species is being sold, is it allowed to be sold?
• 1:03:15
  There are a lot of regulations that need to happen.
• 1:03:17
  It seems like the federal government is on par with doing something about it.
• 1:03:21
  However, the state or regional governments as well as the local
• 1:03:25
  governments and municipal governments.
• 1:03:27
  Aren't really at that stage yet.
• 1:03:28
  And that's where a lot of the purchasing is happening according to Philip.
• 1:03:32
  And that is concerning.
• 1:03:33
  It's a lot more to manage.
• 1:03:34
  Whereas like if you have a federal law that says that this is how
• 1:03:37
  it's gonna be regulated, maybe it'll be easier to move down.
• 1:03:40
  I don't know what the political system is like in Brazil.
• 1:03:43
  I don't know how much the federal laws have influence on the state
• 1:03:47
  and local levels, but you know, they always could have some level.
• 1:03:50
  But it would be great to see some kind of regulation, some kind of transparency
• 1:03:54
  in those regulations or demand for transparency in those regulations.
• 1:03:57
  Even requirement, not even demand a requirement for transparency in those
• 1:04:01
  regulations to make sure that we know what species are being caught.
• 1:04:04
  That's the first thing, like information is key, monitoring is key.
• 1:04:07
  If we don't have that information, we cannot monitor, we cannot conserve.
• 1:04:11
  And that's a big part of that.
• 1:04:12
  As Philip mentioned, there's people at Del Housie University who are working on that.
• 1:04:16
  There are people all over the world who are working on it in different countries,
• 1:04:20
  and it seems like there's a lot of work to do, a great chance for people to do a
• 1:04:24
  PhD or a Master's degree on it or a master project on it because this is something
• 1:04:29
  that is necessary and it's something that hasn't really been done in certain areas
• 1:04:33
  before, and it's something that needs to be done just so that we can understand
• 1:04:37
  how these sharks are being consumed, how they're being shipped all over the
• 1:04:40
  world, how they're being caught, where they're going, all that kind of stuff.
• 1:04:43
  It's something that needs to be done and I'm glad that this article came out.
• 1:04:47
  I'm glad that we can look at it in the future.
• 1:04:50
  And I'm looking forward to seeing what happens.
• 1:04:52
  So thank you again to Phil to be able to come on the podcast and
• 1:04:55
  talk about this, and thank you, the audience member for listening.
• 1:04:58
  If you have any questions or comments, let us know in the YouTube comments below.
• 1:05:01
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• 1:05:04
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• 1:05:06
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• 1:05:07
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• 1:05:10
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• 1:05:13
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• 1:05:17
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• 1:05:18
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• 1:05:19
  I'd love to hear from you.
• 1:05:20
  But thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How
• 1:05:22
  to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
• 1:05:24
  I'm your host Angel and from the true nor strong and free, have a great day.
• 1:05:27
  We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.