Latest / How To Protect The Ocean / The Fish That Feed Your Fish: What Farmed Salmon Really Eat

Transcript

The Fish That Feed Your Fish: What Farmed Salmon Really Eat · How To Protect The Ocean

• 0:00
  The world's biggest salmon farming company was founded by a Norwegian family, and
• 0:04
  one member of that family now asks a question the industry probably hates:
• 0:08
  How can it be sustainable to take fish from poor countries, grind it up, ship
• 0:13
  it halfway across the world, and feed it to salmon for wealthy shoppers?
• 0:18
  Today, we answer him on this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
• 0:22
  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin.
• 0:23
  This is the podcast where you find out everything about the ocean, ocean news,
• 0:26
  ocean science, ocean conservation.
• 0:28
  We talk about the entire gambit, and we are here to inform you so that you have
• 0:31
  a little bit more of an understanding of what's happening in the ocean, so you
• 0:34
  can make better decisions for the ocean.
• 0:36
  So let's get into this week's episodes, which were all
• 0:39
  about fish feed and fish meal.
• 0:42
  We talked a lot about it in yesterday's episode.
• 0:44
  I did an interview with the Outlaw Ocean Project, and we talked to Maya, who
• 0:49
  is all about telling, this five-year story that they've been working on,
• 0:53
  all about the stuff that you don't hear about aquaculture and fish feed,
• 0:57
  and stuff that needs to be improved, and all the crimes that happened.
• 0:59
  So if you wanna listen to that after this episode, go ahead and do that.
• 1:02
  And hit that follow button, 'cause if you are interested in any of this
• 1:05
  and you eat farmed salmon, you wanna know little bit more about it, this
• 1:08
  is, the week you wanna listen to, cause this is gonna be some interesting
• 1:10
  things that you may not know about.
• 1:13
  So in these next four episodes that you're gonna see, we're gonna be talking
• 1:15
  about food that feeds farmed fish.
• 1:17
  We're gonna be following them from your plate back to the boat.
• 1:21
  That's what we're gonna be talking about.
• 1:22
  And today we're gonna talk about what farmed fish actually eat.
• 1:25
  Because a lot of these farmed fish are predators, and they eat other fish.
• 1:28
  And so it's good to know what they eat.
• 1:30
  so we're gonna talk a lot about that because, there's a lot of
• 1:32
  stuff that goes on with fish, like aquaculture in general, so farmed fish.
• 1:36
  So things like salmon out on the west coast of Canada and BC, there's a
• 1:39
  lot of controversy surrounding that.
• 1:41
  there are a lot of controversy surrounding, things that have happened
• 1:44
  in the past, how things have gotten better like now, today, and hopefully
• 1:48
  in the future, but still not perfect, and how we are relying more and
• 1:51
  more on farmed fish to eat like our seafood than we did in the past.
• 1:56
  So, And the idea around the whole thing is that We're taking
• 2:00
  pressure off wild fisheries.
• 2:02
  That's the whole idea behind it, and allowing people to fish.
• 2:06
  And people are making money off of this, which is not a problem for me.
• 2:09
  The idea is, are they doing it in a sustainable fashion?
• 2:12
  And what does that mean when it's sustainable?
• 2:14
  Are they not harming the ocean?
• 2:15
  Are they making sure they're not fishing over fish populations?
• 2:18
  Are they getting away with crimes like, pretty much against humanity?
• 2:22
  There's a lot of stuff that we're gonna be talking about today.
• 2:24
  So if you choose farmed fish and to do the right thing for the
• 2:27
  ocean, that choice, made sense with the information that you had.
• 2:31
  And a lot of times this information that we're gonna talk about this
• 2:33
  week and that we talked about yesterday wasn't really around.
• 2:36
  And now you're gonna hear the farmed fish eat wild fish and it
• 2:39
  feels pointless, and it isn't,
• 2:41
  By the end of this episode, you're gonna know which farmed seafood helps
• 2:44
  and which adds a lot more pressure.
• 2:46
  So, that's essentially what we're gonna do one of the things that's
• 2:49
  interesting, I told this story yesterday, but I'm gonna tell it again today.
• 2:52
  I went to the University of Guelph in the late '90s and early 2000s.
• 2:55
  I graduated in 2001, with a BSC.
• 2:57
  I took an aquaculture class, and my professor at the time said, like,
• 3:00
  fish farms were one day going to supply half the world's seafood.
• 3:04
  And at that time, I was like, "There's no way. That's a really big number." it does.
• 3:07
  He was right.
• 3:08
  And, nobody in the room really talked about what those fish would eat
• 3:11
  , they talked a little bit about, like, how they eat and stuff, but
• 3:13
  we didn't really know the cost of fish meal, that was gonna happen.
• 3:16
  So the big thing here is it's like, where it comes from and who's paying the price,
• 3:22
  now, the stories you're gonna hear and the information you're gonna hear, a lot
• 3:26
  of it is from the Outlaw Ocean Project.
• 3:28
  I scoured, I scoured the, website.
• 3:29
  I kinda took a couple stories to help really bring home what's happening.
• 3:33
  there's a company called Mowi, which is the largest farmed salmon company
• 3:36
  in the world, and it was founded by a Norwegian family named Mowinckel.
• 3:40
  And Frederick Mowinckel, from that same family, has become one of
• 3:44
  the industry's sharpest critics.
• 3:46
  In a January 2026 interview with The Outlaw Ocean Project,
• 3:49
  he asked a simple question.
• 3:51
  He said, "How can it be sustainable to take fish from the poor, grind it
• 3:54
  up, ship it halfway around the world, and feed it to salmon eaten by people
• 3:59
  who are pretty much better off than the people who would eat that fish?"
• 4:03
  and when someone whose family name is on the company asking that
• 4:07
  question, it deserves an answer, And so, the thing is, is like where
• 4:10
  do you find this type of answer?
• 4:12
  And The answer's really in the numbers, More than half of the seafood eaten
• 4:15
  worldwide now comes from fish farms.
• 4:17
  and about two-thirds of farmed seafood is the kind that gets fed, they're
• 4:21
  predators, so they need to be fed to grow.
• 4:24
  And much of that feed includes fish meal and fish oil.
• 4:27
  Now more than a fifth of all wild-caught fish ends up as feed.
• 4:32
  That's incredible, We think that fishing is just really, it's because of us.
• 4:34
  It's because we eat this.
• 4:35
  And yes, we do, but in an indirect way 'cause we're eating the farmed
• 4:38
  seafood that is coming out of this area.
• 4:41
  Now, so like what does a fish meal look like?
• 4:43
  It's got all these little pellets, right?
• 4:45
  And so fish meal's really, it's a dark yellow powder made by
• 4:48
  cooking and grinding small fish, so anchoveta, sardinella, herring.
• 4:53
  fish oil is the liquid version, and roughly 90% of fish turned into
• 4:58
  fish meal are fish people could eat.
• 5:00
  These are fish that people eat.
• 5:01
  Yet we're told that people don't eat this type of fish, but that's not true.
• 5:05
  Now investigators from the Ocean Outlaw, Project found at least half of the
• 5:09
  species landed by fish meal boats are classed as overexploited or even worse.
• 5:14
  Now these small fish feed everything else, so you got tuna, seabirds,
• 5:17
  whales, sharks, and people.
• 5:19
  And, that's really where it comes, like to bring it home, We eat these fish as well.
• 5:23
  And whether it's indirectly or directly, that's part of a lot of people's diets
• 5:28
  and for some of us who live in North America, but here in Canada too, sometimes
• 5:33
  it feels like it's a little too far away.
• 5:34
  Like, that's not something that's affected by us.
• 5:36
  But the way global fisheries works, we can look to Atlantic Canada.
• 5:40
  In 2022, the allowable catch of Atlantic herring in the Bay of Fundy
• 5:44
  and on the Scotia Shelf was cut by a third because, researchers figured out
• 5:47
  that, hey, the stock was in trouble.
• 5:49
  That same year, Canada closed its Atlantic mackerel fishery entirely
• 5:53
  after federal scientists put the species in the critical zone.
• 5:57
  And Oceana Canada said that the decade before, quotas had been set at 10
• 6:01
  times what scientists have advised.
• 6:03
  And we've seen that happen a lot of times before, especially
• 6:06
  the old school tuna industry.
• 6:08
  Now these are the same kinds of small oily fish that fish meal
• 6:11
  boats chase around the world.
• 6:13
  Everything that eats them pay the price.
• 6:15
  So small fish are easy to overlook until they're pretty much they're
• 6:18
  gone, Fish meal demands adds one more mouth, like competing for them.
• 6:23
  And it's already difficult for these fish and whales and sea turtles and
• 6:27
  sea birds, everything, to eat these animals, to find these animals.
• 6:31
  El Niños and climate change are changing where these animals are.
• 6:34
  The El Niño now that we're seeing right now, we're in a super El Niño.
• 6:37
  We're seeing it change the productivity of the major upwelling that happens
• 6:41
  in South America that drives a lot of fishing around the world.
• 6:45
  And so we are seeing, that drop as every year, and the fact that El
• 6:49
  Niños are happening more and more often, we're seeing less of a recovery
• 6:53
  between those events, and that could be a big problem in the future.
• 6:57
  Now, but the question really is, like, how many wild fish does one farmed salmon eat,
• 7:01
  like, how many are we really causing here?
• 7:03
  And scientists argue about this in the scientific journal.
• 7:06
  Some research say that the industry undercounts wild fish use.
• 7:10
  Others say the critics rely on old data from when feeds were more fish heavy.
• 7:15
  And either way, fish farming depends on wild fish, That's
• 7:18
  the part, like, nobody disputes.
• 7:20
  We know that this is a thing But just changing the feed is
• 7:24
  hard, And you wanna know why?
• 7:26
  Well, let's talk about why.
• 7:28
  In 2021, a French company called Winsect opened what it billed as the
• 7:32
  largest insect farm in the world.
• 7:34
  Now, inside a warehouse in the eastern France, trays of mealworm larvae were
• 7:39
  stacked about 60 feet high, and the plan was to grind them into protein powder
• 7:43
  and replace fish meal in animal feed.
• 7:46
  Now, investors put in more than a half a billion dollars, but by 2022, the
• 7:50
  company had lost more than $105 million.
• 7:54
  And in 2023, it pivoted to high-end pet food Now, fish farms use about three and a
• 7:59
  half million tons of fish meal every year.
• 8:01
  Even optimistic forecasts for insect protein reach a few hundred thousand tons.
• 8:06
  So alternatives, although they're in the mix and they're coming, and
• 8:10
  some will eventually help, feed can change, and Norway proves it.
• 8:14
  So we're seeing that it happens, but the fastest fix is already
• 8:17
  sitting at the seafood counter.
• 8:19
  In 1990, about 90% of what went into Norwegian salmon feed came from the sea.
• 8:24
  Now, something to know is salmon farming ran on fish meal and fish oil.
• 8:28
  Over 30 years, researchers swapped most of it out for plant ingredients.
• 8:31
  By 2020, marine ingredients were down to about 22% of the feed.
• 8:37
  Now, obviously that's real progress, but there is a catch.
• 8:40
  Over the same period, the industry grew enormously, and more than 90%
• 8:44
  of Norway's feed ingredients are now imported from all over the world.
• 8:48
  So investor analysts reported that five of the biggest salmon companies
• 8:52
  actually increased their total use of whole wild fish between 2020 and 2024.
• 8:57
  Now, less fish every pellet, but there's a lot more pellets.
• 9:01
  Is progress per fish, but the thing is there's more pressure overall,
• 9:07
  So keep that in your back pocket for tomorrow 'cause we're gonna
• 9:09
  discuss that in tomorrow's episode.
• 9:10
  Don't forget to follow this podcast because you don't
• 9:12
  wanna miss tomorrow's episode.
• 9:14
  But farmed seafood has a second family.
• 9:17
  It has mussels, oysters, and clams.
• 9:20
  They eat plankton straight out of the water and nobody feeds them
• 9:24
  anything, so they're a really good species to use as a farming species.
• 9:29
  And researchers at Cambridge estimate bivalve farming could cover the protein
• 9:33
  need of nearly a billion people.
• 9:36
  Now, since 2000, the share of farming that needs no feed, which is
• 9:40
  basically the bivalve farming, has dropped from about 40% to about 27%.
• 9:45
  So every bivalve meal pushes that back up.
• 9:49
  So the fact is that if we eat more farmed bivalves, so mussels, clams, and
• 9:54
  so forth, that will actually help us in decreasing the amount of wild fish
• 9:57
  that is used in fish farming, because if there's more fish farming of these
• 10:01
  bivalves, then we start to make a dent in what's happening in farmed fish.
• 10:07
  And more people, because there's more demand, will go towards farming bivalves
• 10:11
  like mussels, clams, and oysters, and less people will use… Well, 'cause
• 10:15
  there's a less demand for farmed fish.
• 10:17
  So that's something to look forward to, That's something that we can do
• 10:20
  as an act is look for more farmed bivalves than it is farmed fish.
• 10:24
  Now, tomorrow we're going to find out where those forage fish come from, so
• 10:27
  the sardines, the anchovies, and so forth, and whose dinner they used to be.
• 10:32
  We're gonna talk all about that in tomorrow's episode.
• 10:34
  And this week, what I want you to do as, as like sort of a call to action,
• 10:38
  'cause I like to have a call to action after every episode, is swap that
• 10:42
  one farmed salmon or shrimp meal for farmed mussels, oysters, or clams.
• 10:45
  That's the big thing here.
• 10:47
  And if you picture sort of like mussels, like a mussel like hanging in cold
• 10:50
  water, filtering the water clean while it grows, nobody has to be fed fish meal.
• 10:56
  Nobody went hungry for it.
• 10:57
  It doesn't affect anybody.
• 10:59
  You get a great meal full of protein.
• 11:02
  That's what I want you to think about.
• 11:03
  That's the big win, And some of the best seafood on earth asks nothing
• 11:09
  from the ocean except to be left alone.
• 11:11
  That's the big thing, And I think that's the big important message that we're
• 11:15
  driving home today, is that we need to understand that there is a need…
• 11:21
  Although we have a need for farmed seafood, it doesn't
• 11:24
  have to be farmed fish.
• 11:26
  And the less farmed fish we have, because there's been a big demand
• 11:29
  for it, that means the less forage fish we use, and better fishing in
• 11:33
  overall commercial fishing And the people who live around those fish, the
• 11:37
  forage fish, can eat it themselves, and can be, in, better off for that.
• 11:41
  So that's it for today's episode.
• 11:43
  I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
• 11:45
  hit me up.
• 11:45
  If you're listening to this on Spotify, hit me up in the comments section.
• 11:48
  I like to respond as soon as I can.
• 11:50
  And if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast
• 11:51
  app, go to the show notes.
• 11:53
  All my socials are in there.
• 11:54
  You can DM me.
• 11:55
  I would love to have that one-on-one conversation, 'cause this is the beginning
• 11:57
  of a conversation of what I'd like to do here, and talk about fisheries, and talk
• 12:00
  about the ocean, and talk about science.
• 12:02
  And I would love for you to continue that conversation with me, on my socials.
• 12:06
  so check that out in the show notes, and thank you so much.
• 12:09
  Don't forget to follow the podcast, subscribe wherever you need to.
• 12:12
  Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How
• 12:14
  to Protect the Ocean podcast.
• 12:15
  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin.
• 12:16
  Have a great day.
• 12:16
  We'll talk to you next time, and happy conservation.