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Whose Dinner Becomes Fish Feed? · How To Protect The Ocean

• 0:00
  On a May morning in 2017, the people of Gunjur in The Gambia woke up to find
• 0:04
  their lagoon had turned red overnight.
• 0:07
  Imagine that, dead fish floating on the surface.
• 0:10
  Investigators traced it to a fish meal plant up the road.
• 0:13
  And today we're gonna be talking about whose dinner becomes fish feed,
• 0:15
  and what a village can do about it.
• 0:18
  We're gonna talk about that on today's episode of the How
• 0:20
  to Protect the Ocean podcast.
• 0:21
  I am your host, Andrew Lewin.
• 0:22
  I'm a marine biologist and science communicator here to give you what's
• 0:25
  happening in the ocean, from ocean news, to ocean science, to ocean conservation.
• 0:30
  And this week we are discussing what farmed fish eat, and fish meal, and fish
• 0:34
  feed, whatever you would like to call it.
• 0:36
  Yesterday we talked a lot about, what farmed fish eat
• 0:39
  and how they eat wild fish.
• 0:41
  The day before we talked to, Maya, who is from the Outlaw Ocean Project, and
• 0:46
  she talked all about their five-year investigation of fish meal, which spawned
• 0:50
  or inspired me to do this, to do these solo episodes this week, to really
• 0:55
  bring home and dive into a lot of the different aspects that they dove into.
• 0:58
  I'm gonna link to their website so that you can dive more into it
• 1:02
  if you wanna get more information.
• 1:03
  Very, very interesting study or investigative reporting,
• 1:07
  I should say, for five years.
• 1:08
  We don't see that a lot and it was really happy that they chose me to
• 1:11
  tell, their story, or one of the people to tell their story, or have them
• 1:15
  on the platform to tell their story.
• 1:16
  So it's really great to be able to be a part of that and for people to
• 1:19
  come in and start to ask questions and really give us information for us.
• 1:23
  ' I didn't have this information.
• 1:24
  Nobody really had this information, so we're gonna dive into it.
• 1:27
  'Cause the thing is, is like when we talk about eating seafood,
• 1:30
  we wanna do the right thing.
• 1:31
  and it's really difficult sometimes to do the right thing.
• 1:33
  We've talked about it on the podcast before with all the different apps that
• 1:36
  are doing, like there are people who are out there who are just scrounging for data
• 1:39
  on sustainable fishing or on the fisheries that are happening around the world.
• 1:42
  And they make decisions based on their criteria, which is fully transparent,
• 1:46
  to say, "Hey, how is this in terms of sustainability?" So that we can have a
• 1:50
  simple app to say, "Yeah, avoid this fish from this place and how it's caught, and
• 1:54
  go with this fish as an alternative," or seafood or whatever it is.
• 1:57
  Doesn't always have to be fish.
• 1:58
  As in yesterday's episode, I said, "Hey, eat more like farmed bivalves," 'cause
• 2:02
  we know they don't ea-eat fish meal, and we know you can control that more.
• 2:05
  So if you wanna have like that knowledge that, yes, you wanna eat seafood, but you
• 2:09
  wanna eat the right way, you know bivalves are good because they're filter feeders.
• 2:12
  They don't eat fish meal, It's not to say that the others are wrong, it's just
• 2:16
  we just don't have a lot of information on it right now, as much as we need to.
• 2:19
  It'll be interesting to see how a lot of these apps, like these certification apps,
• 2:24
  will deal with everything that goes on.
• 2:27
  You know what I mean?
• 2:27
  Like all this new information and stuff that nobody knew about, you can only
• 2:31
  know by boarding the boats or talking to some of the fishers and stuff like that.
• 2:35
  the people who are involved in doing the certification don't always have access to
• 2:40
  everything in, I guess the food chain in terms of, the supply chains, I should say.
• 2:45
  And so that, becomes difficult, and they know that.
• 2:47
  Like, it's not something that they don't say.
• 2:49
  They're scientists.
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  This is what they do, and they work hard at what they do, and
• 2:51
  they give us a service that's really, really important for free.
• 2:55
  And, like for us for free anyway, we don't really have to pay for it.
• 2:58
  So, I guess, like, the thing right now is, like, as you go into these episodes
• 3:00
  that we're talking about, is really understand that nothing is perfect, and
• 3:05
  we wanna try and get to perfect, and we're always striving for perfection,
• 3:08
  but we're not always gonna be there.
• 3:10
  And the fact that The Outlaw Ocean Project came up with this study and was able to
• 3:15
  reveal what it was able to reveal will help change the future of the system.
• 3:20
  That's how it works, that's really how it works.
• 3:21
  So, really happy that they were able to tell us all about it and
• 3:24
  we're able to do these episodes.
• 3:26
  So, this is, really the key with farm fish and what they eat.
• 3:30
  feed is the link, so we're gonna follow that, it's easy to feel that a problem in
• 3:35
  West Africa has nothing to do with salmon filet in Toronto, London, or Sydney,
• 3:40
  but that link of that fish meal really does help, and so we're gonna follow
• 3:43
  it today to kinda give you that guide, I spent years talking about upwelling
• 3:48
  on the coast, Peru and West Africa, where cold water rises and feeds both,
• 3:52
  like, wildlife and human communities that are local or even international.
• 3:56
  We know now that everything's global.
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  And that's who this story is about, Is to make sure that we are understanding
• 4:02
  what is happening here, And so In Senegal and The Gambia, which is West
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  Africa, small fish like sardinellas and bonga are everyday protein.
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  That's what they eat.
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  And in The Gambia, more than 80% of the people rely on
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  these small fish like bonga.
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  In Senegal, fish supplies nearly half of all the protein.
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  Some of the industry, of fish meal or any kind of other industry, they
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  call these types of fish, these small oily types of fish, trash
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  fish, as if nobody would miss them.
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  it's really interesting because people do miss them when they're gone, when
• 4:35
  they're not given to them, or they're taken away somewhere else, or the supply,
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  the wildlife supply is overfished.
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  And I think this is where marketing comes in and, the ability to manipulate
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  thoughts based on how they call a fish.
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  I'm gonna just go into a little tangent here.
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  In Antarctica, there is a fish called, the, Patagonia sea bass, and it's off the
• 4:57
  coast of Chile, but it's in Antarctica.
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  And this fish is kind of interesting.
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  I'm gonna have to look it up as I record this because I think it's something that's
• 5:05
  really interesting the Patagonian sea bass is actually the Patagonian toothfish.
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  and the reason why they call it sea bass, 'cause everybody loves sea bass.
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  When you think of a sea bass, you think of this, like, slender, good-looking fish.
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  it's almost like the influencers of what a supermodel or, I don't know what
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  the equivalent for male models, but a model would be compared to, like, your
• 5:25
  average day person, Everybody's like, "Oh, yeah, this person looks like a
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  supermodel." they're not gonna say, "This person looks like the everyday person."
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  And so Patagonia toothfish are not by our, society's standards, a good-looking fish.
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  They look a little scary.
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  They're very toothy, hence the toothfish.
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  But when you call it sea bass, it's something different.
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  it's attractive.
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  It's something that you would like to see in a supermarket or a fish market on
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  the ice, and you see the full fish, and you're like, "Oh, that's a beautiful fish.
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  I would like to eat that fish." You see a Patagonia toothfish,
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  actually what it looks like and not just the filet, and you're like,
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  "Oh, yeah, no, that looks scary.
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  I'm not sure if I wanna eat that." it's just based off looks.
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  So marketing matters in this situation, which can be a little difficult.
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  So I wanna talk a little bit about how people rely on this episode
• 6:09
  because I think it's important to make that connection in how
• 6:11
  people use these type of fish.
• 6:13
  Fatu Samba is a fish processor in Bargny, a coastal town outside of Dakar, Senegal.
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  Now for years, women like her bought fish on the beach, then smoked it
• 6:24
  and dried it and sold it, and that's how sardinella reached family tables
• 6:27
  across the region, same process.
• 6:30
  Probably not the same, like, not by Fatu, but by the same process.
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  Now, in 2023, at 58 years old, she told reporters from The Outlaw Ocean
• 6:38
  Project what had changed, and she says, "Today, having three daily
• 6:42
  meals has become a problem," which has never happened to them before.
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  She said, "We don't think about saving money.
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  We think about our survival." In Senegal, prices for fresh and dried fish more
• 6:52
  than doubled between 2019 and 2025, and the number of women processing fish
• 6:56
  dropped from more than 300 to about 70 So, like, before these plants arrived,
• 7:02
  a full market was a natural break.
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  If nobody could buy more fish, fishers stopped bringing it in, Fish meal
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  plants buy, like, unlimited volumes.
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  They just buy as much as they can.
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  And now there's a buyer for every last fish, and the plants
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  outbid the women processors.
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  So instead of having individuals on the beach who are essentially
• 7:21
  entrepreneurs supply these fish, they just go to the processing plants.
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  And fishers will go right to the processing plants 'cause they
• 7:28
  might get a better price for them.
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  So both species of sardinella in the region are now at risk
• 7:33
  of collapse because of all this.
• 7:34
  There's no such thing as unlimited fish.
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  And according to a 2024 study in fishery science, this is what happened,
• 7:40
  they're just at risk of collapse.
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  ' when you have plants who are shipping internationally and you
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  have fishers who are bringing it… So these are local fishers who
• 7:48
  are making money from the plants.
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  The plants, hire other people, they buy all the fish up, and
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  they send it internationally.
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  It takes away from the local economy.
• 7:58
  Maybe not from the local fishers, but it takes away from the local economy.
• 8:01
  And because they're supplying a global market, they're gonna
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  take as many fish as they can.
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  They don't necessarily care about the local fish stocks.
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  They are just there to make a buck.
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  That's what they're there.
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  They're making their profit.
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  And when the fish is gone, they will leave the plants and they will just leave.
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  That's business for a lot of people.
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  Now, another story here is on October 22nd, 2022, a tanker called the Kibe
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  pulled up into a place called Nouadhibou.
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  I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that properly, but it's a fishing hub of
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  Mauritania, just north of Senegal, and it loaded tens of thousands of tons,
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  tens of thousands of tons, I want to repeat that just to make sure we
• 8:38
  got it, of fish oil that comes from the sardinella and, from the bonga.
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  So then ship sailed more than 3,000 miles north to Norway, and the oil was
• 8:47
  headed for a company called Mowi, which is the world's biggest salmon farmer.
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  And that's the company that I mentioned in yesterday's, opinion, where there
• 8:54
  was that one person who said, "Hey, we just can't keep doing this anymore."
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  Now, a documentary crew traced that voyage of the 3,000 miles north,
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  And about a year later, the Financial Times followed that same ship.
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  Both linked the trade to rising sardinella prices, which were leaving local families
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  unable to afford a traditional staple.
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  Let's just think about that.
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  are supplying fish and fish oil and fish meal for farmed salmon that will
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  tend to go towards Western companies or developed countries, let's just
• 9:22
  say, countries that could afford the fish and that will eat salmon, farmed
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  salmon, which is a lot of people.
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  the fish that are feeding those fish, you're taking it away from the
• 9:30
  local community who are eating it.
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  Suppliers will call it trash fish, so they're like, "Nobody's eating
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  this stuff." But nobody bothered to speak up and cared for it.
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  I'm sure people have.
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  I don't wanna say nobody, but like, the people who are shipping this
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  out, they just don't really care.
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  And obviously that's a problem, Now, a 2026 study in PNAS, a scientific
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  journal, found that most of the fish meal traded internationally comes from
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  countries where many people already struggle to get enough nutrition,
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  Now keeping that catch at home could meet the nutrient needs
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  for up to 31 million people.
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  Now think about that.
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  That ship, Key Bay, just took away food for 31 million people.
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  So I want you to hold onto that and we'll come back at the end.
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  Now more than 9.5 million people worldwide live within a mile of a
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  fish plant, and the smell comes mainly from a gas called Trimethylamine.
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  at industrial levels, it can cause headaches, nausea, and irritation,
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  and researchers also warn it can turn to nitrosamines, and that's
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  a group of compounds that include probable human carcinogens.
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  Now some plants have dumped wastewater into lagoons and onto beaches.
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  This is where people are actively like they just end up being, and
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  that's what turned Gunja's lagoon red.
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  It's the fact that all this wastewater from these fish plants that are processing
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  the fish oil, that are taking those fish away from the plants and away
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  from that country of the people who depend on as food sources and that are
• 10:49
  struggling to meet their nutritional needs for three meals a day, then what
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  they do is they take all the waste and that wastewater, and they dump it onto
• 10:56
  beaches and into the local lagoon.
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  This is an assumption, without the proper levels of filtration
• 11:02
  to properly treat that wastewater.
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  I'm in Canada, if you're in the US, you have treatment plants that will
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  treat that as much as possible and that will make it into as clean of
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  wastewater as you can to dump it back in.
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  It's not perfect, but it is much better than a lot of places.
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  I assume in The Gambia, in Senegal, this isn't happening.
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  This next story that I'm gonna talk about, I wanna just say that
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  it involves people dying at sea.
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  So it's a bit of a trigger warning here.
• 11:26
  Obviously I don't like talking about, but we have to talk about something like
• 11:29
  this, so when fish disappear and the jobs go with them, some people leave.
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  They have to leave.
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  They have to go find work.
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  And researchers name collapsing fish stocks as one of the, factors
• 11:39
  amongst several, alongside climate change and economic hardship.
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  So researchers name collapsing fish stocks as one of the factors
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  like, among the several that are.
• 11:48
  Like, along with climate change and economic, hardships.
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  Now, this next story we're gonna talk about, again, here, this is where
• 11:54
  we're talking about some death at sea.
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  Pape Demba Sy was a skilled fisher in Senegal, and he used, to bring sardinella
• 12:00
  to the women processors on the beach.
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  And more often, he came home from day-long trips with empty nets
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  because the fishers is overfished.
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  And in 2006, he tried for the first time to cross the Atlantic by boat to
• 12:12
  Spain's Canary Islands, which is a set of islands just off of the coast of Africa.
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  And he carried 50 euros and a photograph of his parents.
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  He wanted to support his sick mother.
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  Now he didn't make it.
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  He was intercepted, or he was detained in Morocco or forced
• 12:25
  back when engines failed.
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  So he tried again and again,
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  By 2011 he made nine attempts.
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  And people started to call him Nine Times because that's what he was known for.
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  And he told reporters he just, he'd keep trying.
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  I am the hope of my family," he said.
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  Now in 2025, about 1,900 people died on the Atlantic route to the Canary
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  Islands, according to the fisheries rights group, Caminando Fronteres.
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  1,900 people died trying to cross that area Now in 2018,
• 12:52
  a fish meal plant opened up.
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  . So the fact is that we're seeing poorer areas because they don't
• 12:56
  have access to food, they don't have the nutrition, they need help.
• 12:59
  They need medical help.
• 13:01
  They need nutrition.
• 13:02
  People are trying to leave to get a better life, to bring money
• 13:06
  back home to support their family because there's nothing else left.
• 13:09
  And then you have these plants that are local within Senegal, within The Gambia,
• 13:14
  and they are putting out wastewater onto the beaches and local lagoons that
• 13:19
  are effectively turning the, water red.
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  And people are swimming in these areas, and they're, obviously,
• 13:24
  like imagine Florida or even Lake Ontario having that kind of stuff.
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  We wouldn't be standing for it.
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  That'd be an emergency, a state of emergency.
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  So you're having all these problems.
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  I wanna take you back to the fish meal plant because how
• 13:37
  do people deal with this?
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  And in 2018, a fish meal plant opened in Abene, which is a
• 13:41
  small town in southern Senegal.
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  Almost immediately, residents noticed that heavy stench and a thick black
• 13:47
  smoke, and untreated wastewater ran into the rice fields and garden wells.
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  Within weeks, dead fish washed up on the beach.
• 13:54
  Was already starting to see this happen right as the fish plant
• 13:57
  starts to get started and built.
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  Now the town organized.
• 13:59
  They said, " we're not gonna take this anymore." Youth groups and local
• 14:02
  activists ran protests and petitions, and they held outdoor screenings of a
• 14:06
  documentary about the fish meal industry.
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  And so they're, educating themselves.
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  They're spreading the word.
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  The environment ministry oversaw the community vote, and more than
• 14:14
  90% of the people opposed the plant.
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  Six neighboring villages signed a joint statement, and in July
• 14:20
  2018, which is, a few months later, three months after it opened, the
• 14:25
  government suspended the plant.
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  Now, Abene had no special powers, This town.
• 14:29
  It used every tool that it had, and that worked.
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  That worked for them in this situation.
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  Kayar, also in Senegal, banned wastewater discharges in January
• 14:38
  2023, and the technology to control the stench actually exists.
• 14:42
  Like, people can get a hold of this.
• 14:44
  A Peruvian scientist built a trimethylamine monitor
• 14:48
  for a few hundred dollars.
• 14:49
  Now, the two biggest names in salmon feed, Skretting and Mowi, say they've avoided
• 14:53
  fish meal and fish oil from West Africa since 2023 because of these problems.
• 14:58
  Which is a year after that tanker sale, the Key Bay, that
• 15:00
  we discussed in this story.
• 15:02
  So when we start looking at everything that's happening, West Africa, the local
• 15:06
  people had depended on wild fish stocks, small wild fish stocks, sardinella, bonga.
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  like, they were staples in their meals, probably three meals a day oftentimes.
• 15:17
  start to get in these fish meal plants that are taking those fish, grinding
• 15:21
  them down to fish feed and fish oil, like into a powder and oil, and then
• 15:25
  sending them elsewhere, up to Norway and other places to provide fish
• 15:29
  feed for salmon farms, and I'm sure other farms as well around the world.
• 15:33
  Then people start to realize, " This isn't working for us." The stench, the
• 15:37
  wastewater that we see, or the fact that we don't have fish to feed on.
• 15:40
  We have to leave.
• 15:42
  We have to try and come back.
• 15:42
  People die going across the Atlantic.
• 15:44
  It's not an easy thing, and I'm not sure if you've ever seen the videos
• 15:46
  of people who are trying to get to the Canary Islands to Spain, but it's
• 15:50
  treacherous, and they're in small boats, and there are a lot of people in
• 15:52
  these boats, and a lot of people die.
• 15:54
  As I mentioned, 1,900 in that one year.
• 15:56
  it's not for the faint of heart.
• 15:57
  and they're just doing it to survive.
• 15:58
  They're trying to get better work so they can send the money back to their families,
• 16:02
  and it's at no fault of their own.
• 16:04
  They're just in it because they have to be in it.
• 16:08
  And so what I want you to get out of this is that they found the problem.
• 16:12
  certain cities and certain villages stopped the fish plants
• 16:16
  from working the way they do.
• 16:17
  There's still a lot of work that needs to be done.
• 16:19
  it's not over.
• 16:20
  These are just small local stories, but these fish plants are all over,
• 16:24
  and as the Outlaw Ocean Project identified, there are a lot of problems.
• 16:27
  Sometimes these protests are not civil.
• 16:29
  There's a lot of civil unrest, and so it can get violent in certain situations.
• 16:33
  People can get hurt, but they're standing up for what they believe for their
• 16:36
  own survival, for their own nutrition, just to have three meals a day.
• 16:40
  I think that's important to realize when we look at the way we have farmed fish.
• 16:46
  And this is not to say that the entire industry is awful.
• 16:48
  It needs to be cleaned up.
• 16:50
  There's no doubt about that, and we are always trying to work, because
• 16:52
  business people will be business people, and they are going to try
• 16:55
  and make as much money as possible.
• 16:57
  Some of them care, some of them don't, and, the ones that don't are
• 17:01
  the problem that we need to fix, and we need to put those regulations
• 17:03
  in, and we need to support these.
• 17:05
  So I guess what I'm saying is that we should be looking at
• 17:08
  it from a holistic perspective.
• 17:11
  your farmed salmon that you're eating on your plate at night, it's one meal to you
• 17:16
  But as that's happening, people are losing meals in Africa because of the fish feed
• 17:21
  that goes into fish to feed that salmon.
• 17:24
  So I want you to think about that.
• 17:25
  Don't feel guilty.
• 17:27
  let's stand up to the people who are doing this.
• 17:29
  And the one thing you can do is just send an email.
• 17:32
  Imagine that.
• 17:33
  Send an email to the brand of the farmed salmon or shrimp you buy Like, if you
• 17:37
  have a specific company that you like 'cause you like that company or that,
• 17:40
  Costco or somewhere else, provides, send an email to Costco, send an email
• 17:44
  to the Marine Stewardship Council, send an email to Seafood Watch, say, "Hey,
• 17:48
  are you taking this into play when you do your, apps, your certification?
• 17:51
  'Cause this is really important." And don't treat them as the enemy, treat them
• 17:54
  as an ally to be like, "Hey, I just want to know, do you guys know about this?
• 17:57
  How are you incorporating them?" But also the brands that you're buying from.
• 18:00
  like, tell us your process.
• 18:01
  like, are you using fish meal from Africa?
• 18:03
  If you're not, that's great.
• 18:04
  Let us know.
• 18:05
  We wanna know.
• 18:06
  We're gonna continue to find out, but send that email.
• 18:08
  It's one email that you have to send.
• 18:09
  It's not very difficult.
• 18:10
  You can do that in two minutes, and that, one question, does your feed contain
• 18:14
  fish meal or fish oil from West Africa?
• 18:16
  Just from that one thing to do based off of this episode.
• 18:19
  If you can do that, that would be amazing.
• 18:22
  Because, the thing is, is, like, the village voted the plant that was
• 18:25
  polluting their area after three months.
• 18:26
  Like, they were able to do that.
• 18:28
  And then the tanker route that made the headlines is one of the
• 18:30
  companies that said they've closed that, they've shut that route down
• 18:33
  because of what was happening.
• 18:35
  the good news is the changes have been made.
• 18:37
  The bad news is there still need to be more changes, and
• 18:40
  so you can help by doing that.
• 18:42
  And when people at both ends of the supply chain speak up, like, one
• 18:45
  of the family members at Maui said, "Hey, we're not gonna do this anymore.
• 18:48
  We need to look at this fish meal," that's when fish start staying home,
• 18:51
  and that's when people can survive at home, and that's when people,
• 18:54
  like the fishery stocks remain, and it helps the environment as well.
• 18:58
  So people in the environment, when we're trying to do conservation,
• 19:00
  it's all about managing people, and this is the way we manage people.
• 19:03
  And I wanna thank you so much.
• 19:04
  This is the end of the episode.
• 19:05
  I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
• 19:06
  let us know if you're listening to us on Spotify.
• 19:08
  There's a comment section.
• 19:09
  Let me know in the comments.
• 19:11
  If you're listening to this on your favorite podcast app, just hit me up.
• 19:13
  My socials are in the show notes.
• 19:15
  I'd love to hear from you.
• 19:16
  This is the start of a conversation.
• 19:17
  I'd love to continue that.
• 19:18
  There's no judgment when you contact me.
• 19:20
  as long as you're, polite about things.
• 19:22
  if you have a stance that's different from mine, I'm all good with that.
• 19:25
  that's no problem.
• 19:25
  I don't mind that.
• 19:26
  it's just how we go about that conversation, We keep the
• 19:28
  emotions out, and we have a nice conversation going back and forth.
• 19:31
  I'd love that.
• 19:31
  And if you support the, and you wanna hear and you like the episode, let me know.
• 19:34
  I'd love to hear that too.
• 19:35
  That makes me feel good about the episode.
• 19:37
  I don't get to talk to people a lot, unless I'm in person with them and they're
• 19:40
  like, "Hey, I listen to your podcast."
• 19:42
  I love the feedback.
• 19:43
  Whether you like certain something, you want me to cover something, or,
• 19:46
  you don't like something, or you have a comment on the actual content of the
• 19:49
  episode, I would love to hear that 'cause that's one of the reasons why I started
• 19:52
  this podcast, 11 years ago, was to say, "Hey, let's have this conversation.
• 19:56
  I wanna have more conversations about this," because that's what I love to do.
• 19:59
  So anyway, thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the
• 20:01
  How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
• 20:03
  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin.
• 20:03
  Have a great day.
• 20:04
  We'll talk to you next time, and happy conservation.