In Moderation
Providing health, nutrition and fitness advice in moderate amounts to help you live your best life.
Rob: Co-host of the podcast "In Moderation" and fitness enthusiast. Rob has a background in exercise science and is passionate about helping others achieve their health and fitness goals. He brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the show, providing valuable insights on topics such as calories, metabolism, and weight loss.
Liam: Co-host of the podcast "In Moderation" and new father. Liam has a background in nutrition and is dedicated to promoting a balanced and sustainable approach to health and wellness. With his witty and sarcastic style, Liam adds a unique flavor to the show, making it both informative and entertaining.
In Moderation
Bagpipes, Bites, and Bio: James Sibley on Scotland, Seafood, and Sustainable Aquaculture
Ever wondered if bagpipes were used in battle? Or what it's like to eat fish and chips in Scotland? Join us for a quirky and enlightening conversation as we kick things off with tales of kilts, Scottish culture, and a mysterious mustachioed content creator. Our guest, James Sibley, aka Sibley Aqua, takes us on a journey from his days as a genetic biology student at Northeastern University to becoming a social media influencer who’s all about seafood and sustainable protein.
Prepare to be fascinated as we explore the world of marine life and seafood. James shares his hands-on experiences, including working as a fishmonger during the pandemic and creating educational TikTok videos. We discuss model organisms like zebrafish and axolotls, their regenerative superpowers, and their importance in genetic studies. Listen as James unravels the complexities of salmon farming, dives into the role of astaxanthin, and addresses common concerns about sea lice, all while maintaining a lighthearted and engaging tone.
Finally, we dive into the intricacies of tilapia and shrimp farming, the best fish varieties for beginners, and the mercury debate in seafood. James offers invaluable insights into sustainable seafood production, the role of fish veterinarians, and important certifications like the Marine Stewardship Council. Plus, we sprinkle in some quirky UK salmon laws and a bizarre anecdote about fermented Greenland shark. This episode is packed with humor, education, and practical advice for seafood enthusiasts and curious minds alike. Don’t miss out on this comprehensive and entertaining journey through the world of aquaculture!
You can find James
https://www.tiktok.com/@sibleyaqua
https://www.instagram.com/sibleyaqua/
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Rob Tiktok
Rob Instagram
Liam Tiktok
Liam Instagram
I forget who he was, the mustache guy.
Speaker 2:He was, he was.
Speaker 1:Oh, just the personality behind him I was. It was what was? An hour forty five and it just blew by and I was like I got to get back to work.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he's. I knew. As soon as he started making content I was like, oh, I got to get this guy at the podcast because he's going to fucking make, he's going to, he's going to get a lot of gain to follow. He's going gonna blow up and yeah, he blew up I, I knew for the first video I was like yep for sure.
Speaker 2:But uh yeah and now he's going all in on it yeah, I mean fucking like when it's going like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, just do it like you know, yeah, but anyway, I guess we should talk some fish I'm happy to talk fish and chips. Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast episode.
Speaker 2:Oh it was 70 last week.
Speaker 3:No, it was 70 last week was. We had 69 two weeks ago. Now it's 71. Um, but what's? Hey, hey, james, what's your favorite fish and chips favorite um? The fried kind, okay, well, yeah, all right, right um I.
Speaker 1:I would pick it more on region and uh up in like the isle of sky up in scotland. That was the best fish and chips I've ever had how scotland.
Speaker 3:I want to go to scotland. It sounds, it sounds, I did. You see the loch ness monster. I know that's, that's scotland, right? I don't know, I don't know things loch ness, monster and chips.
Speaker 2:there we go, let's do it, oh God.
Speaker 3:It's very stringy.
Speaker 1:No, I love Scotland. I mean, I have a lot of family from there. It's kind of like that.
Speaker 2:I have a kilt that's coming down to the generations, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:I like it. Those things are expensive. I wanted one, but I'm not affording that. What's your opinion on the bagpipe as a musical instrument?
Speaker 1:I actually have a set that my parents got me when I was younger. My grandfather was a bagpiper no kidding, that's dope. However, I never got into it.
Speaker 3:Is it hard to play?
Speaker 2:It could have been the piper for our band.
Speaker 3:On a scale of 1 to 10,. How difficult is it to play the piper for our band on a scale of one to 10? How difficult is it to play the bagpipe?
Speaker 1:It makes absolutely no sense at all because it's I mean, I used to play the saxophone back in middle school, right?
Speaker 2:On a scale of one to 10,. It's a cue? No, it's not on the scale.
Speaker 3:I've always looked at him like I just don't know, like I couldn't tell you the first thing. Besides, like there's air and it makes this very, it makes a noise that is divisive. How about we just put it that way? I think either you really like the way to absolutely hate it.
Speaker 1:Well, back in the days they were for war, so it makes sense.
Speaker 3:I didn't even know that. Well, do you try and terrify your enemy with the worst sounding instrument you could get?
Speaker 2:Or what was exactly the scotsman?
Speaker 3:mud and put that in their ears and just let her wail scare me off. Oh gosh, that's funny. But anyway, besides bagpiping, what other people know you for james, maybe you should introduce yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my background okay, so I'm james sibley. I run the uh social media channels under Sibley Aqua and my own name, namely on TikTok and Instagram. I also do some stuff on LinkedIn that's more kind of directed the industry, and that industry is aquaculture. So the farming of fish, shellfish, bivalves, algaes, anything that's in the water if it's farmed, is under the aquaculture umbrella, and I began what I do online, kind of showing people what that is, a couple of years ago. But I've been doing seafood content for over four years. Seafood's kind of my whole thing, wearing a well on podcast. I can't see it, but it's a fish shirt, it's most of my dresser, and so I'm really passionate about this space. Right, I see it as kind of the future of sustainable protein.
Speaker 3:Okay, I was going to ask you what got you into seafood and fish.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I started out on social media just like posting stuff with my friends very rarely I was not somebody who even like scrolled on any of these platforms anything like posting stuff with my friends Very rarely. I was not somebody who even like scrolled on any of these platforms anything like that Right Up until the middle of college. So graduated last year out of Northeastern university right in Boston, um, I studied genetic biology, but what I found most interesting in those studies were all of the peculiar animals and stuff that we were looking at. So, for instance, zebrafish are a great model organism because they are one of the fastest living and, unfortunately, fast if you're gonna move across the pond, you better start calling them zebra.
Speaker 3:I'm working so much I gotta. I cannot describe to you in words how much I fucking hate that. Go ahead, james, you can keep going.
Speaker 1:No, liam's mentioning it. We can get into this. Sorry, rob is mentioning, but I can get into it later. I'm moving to Scotland Not to circle back on that quite yet, but I'll finish up my interest in fish and the likes Right. So you know zebrafish are great. They're the fastest living vertebrates, so it's a great.
Speaker 3:What's a typical life cycle or lifespan for a zebra?
Speaker 1:Half a year.
Speaker 3:So it puts mice to shame. Yes, because I know mice are generally to study because of that. But I don't know how long a mouse lives, but I know it's generally longer than that.
Speaker 2:It's like a lot of it's up until my cat gets years.
Speaker 1:It's like a lot of. It's like three years, yeah. So and this is true across the study of genetics we really look to other organisms for how they do it right. There's technically immortal things in the oceans and there's all sorts of regenerative things in the oceans and things like planaria, which are these kind of like flat worms, and you can cut them in half, and now there's two, or cut them in four pieces, and now there's four. They're just a great organism to study if you want to get into regeneration, serious injury recovery, medicines, some of the cutting edge stuff there. But I mean, I was sitting in class and the thing I was most interested in was the actual marine life itself. Right, it was. I just found these, everything from axolotls to these flat Axolotls are so cool.
Speaker 2:Like I don't know why. It's also like the best name ever.
Speaker 3:It's a great name, it's a great Try and spell that it's not a fish, it's an amphibian.
Speaker 1:It's an amphibian, but an amphibian. What is an excellent amphibian? But it's actually. It's kind of like a stunted amphibian because they are fully aquatic.
Speaker 3:Um, kind of interesting. It's like a tadpole with legs for their entire life. Yeah, they're super cool. I've wanted to get one by here. It's like tough to keep them alive and maintenance is a little bit more difficult they're very fragile organism.
Speaker 1:I actually I worked in a lab at northeastern where we had they had 600 um and they're a. They're very fragile organism. I actually I worked in a lab at northeastern where we had they had 600 um and they're a. They're a tool for genetic studies because their immune system is innately compromised, kind of not in a bad way necessarily, but in a way where you can take the arm off one and stick it on another and it just works. So you can do all these graftings and their their genes are really malleable is a way to put it, so you can make them.
Speaker 1:If you look up GFP, axolotl spell that, that's green fluorescent protein. They're glowing in the dark and we can use this to identify all sorts of phenotypes that we want to explore in these vertebrate organisms. But anyways, I digress. Uh, I was doing all this stuff with marine life but I didn't know that the ocean was really a path that I could pursue properly in the world and um, outside of being a true marine biologist. Um, but during covid I took a year off of school because YouTube school is. I love YouTube. I don't like watching lectures on YouTube.
Speaker 1:I end up on deep dives like the 15 worst tech products of the year. So that wasn't working. So I took the year off, kind of returned to my roots. I'm from a farm town in Massachusetts and I used to work the farms in the summers in high school and when COVID hit it was the middle of the winter. Couldn't exactly go to work the farms in the summers in high school and when COVID hit it was the middle of the winter, couldn't exactly go out to the farms or I'd just be sitting in the snow. So the next closest thing was a fishmonger job.
Speaker 1:I just picked up at night closing shifts at Whole Foods, working the fish counter, and I immediately fell in love with the space, for a number of reasons. I mean, first of all it's this hands-on work. You really see the fruits of your labor at the end of the day, not quite like seeing the fruits of your labor at the end of picking fruit on a farm, but it was really fascinating to me to see. You know, here's 70% of our world and we don't really know what's going on out there. But we drag nets and we put it up for sale. World, and we don't really know what's going on out there, but we drag nets and we put it up for sale, and I was immediately inundated with questions about everything about seafood.
Speaker 1:It's really one of the most foreign foods to most people, especially in the Western world away from the coasts Landlocked areas yeah, people don't really understand it a lot and that leads to a lot of misinformation going around and just general lack of knowledge and lack of confidence at the supermarket.
Speaker 3:Sorry, I didn't get that. We'll get into the things for sure. But yeah, so you got a discount at Whole Foods and you started shopping there, right?
Speaker 1:Gotcha. Oh no, I mean, I got a 20 percent discount, Still much more expensive than elsewhere.
Speaker 3:I was kind of actually curious how much it was, and was it worth it? Yes and no.
Speaker 1:Got it. Yeah, it was a great introduction, but I started making these TikToks there because it was the middle of COVID. My friends couldn't make fun of me for being on TikTok and it was a great outlet, a creative outlet, for me, right? I was recording stuff at work and talking about just basic seafood facts like hey, there's multiple species of salmon that you can run across in stores here's what that means. Or you buy oysters alive. Why is that right? Those are some of my first videos. They're awful. In my I would voice them over like on breaks or in my car.
Speaker 2:All our first videos are awful, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But people resonated with my enthusiasm and like my kind of approachable, scientific approach that's a sentence for you so it kind of started blowing up a bit. You know, I got up in like the 20, 30, 40,000 followers on TikTok which I was really proud of at the time. Whole Foods was not thrilled about that, right, for obvious reasons.
Speaker 3:Right, I'm in the attireire, I got the logo on me and really I don't know why they didn't like it I feel like that's just like advertised, like look at our fish and people like, oh, I'll go to whole foods and get a fit. I don't. I mean, I guess I don't know.
Speaker 1:Oh, that was my I I thought I was doing them nothing, but good, I guess it just. You know it wasn't clean, washed by them, you know it wasn't going for corporate all that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess so A lot of corporations. They don't want content on the Internet that they don't have control over.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my manager was like maybe don't film at work, just in case I'm like I'm not really doing anything. Like don't, I'm like all right, fine, that's cool, Whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I was facing this issue where, like, okay, I'm starting to gain some traction online. I don't really know what that means, tiktok's like new, but I'm really enjoying this. It's like suddenly the best parts of my day were filming at work and figuring out what it is. I can make a video on later, and I base it all on consumers' questions like my own interests, right, because I'm I was kind of like the front lines of the questions in the seafood world, so I really knew what people were interested in. Plus, I was new to it, right, I didn't grow up in like a fishing family or anything.
Speaker 1:I came in just interested in seafood. I didn't know much about it, so it was really kind of like, uh, starting from the top and working my way down, um, so I just I went out on a limb and said you know what, okay, if you don't want me to film, that's fine, I'm going to go find somebody who will let me film, okay. So I moved on to a local distributor in Boston just for seafood and that's really where things took off. That was Foley fish in Boston. They been around for over a hundred years and I worked for the Foley's kind of in this internship role where they didn't really understand what I did online too much, but they saw the benefits broadly.
Speaker 3:It doesn't matter and said you know what? Just yeah just do your thing right, be a young kid, whatever Internet, sure Got it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that creative freedom. Let me just run with it. That's when I shot up from like 40,000 followers up to like 300 and 350,000 on TikTok, and it's where I found my love of aquaculture right. So in the seafood realm, there's two ways to get your hands on seafood Well, three today, but the two big ones are wild caught and farm raised. And then there's cultivated meats, right so, like lab grown meats, fascinating.
Speaker 3:I was gonna ask like what's the? I only know those two ones.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, um, there are some companies like there's. There's some pretty cool ones out there doing it, but not quite commercially viable yet, but anyways, um, you know, working in this space, I got to see those end products from the fisheries and the farms hands-on. I just had so many questions about aquaculture. How does this work? We're farming the ocean. I really had no idea to what degree, what species, why. Why do we need to All of these things that I just started diving at? Do they have John Deere tractors? Some do.
Speaker 2:Some do, there we go. Now we know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, some of them are quite literally farming the ocean like that. So I kind of fell down that rabbit hole of aquaculture and that's when I started to get a lot of attention online, even more than just because I was making like seafood content, like a lot of people do, but nobody was talking about aquaculture the way I was. Right, I was interested in it, I was positive about the potentials of this space, but, by and large, aquaculture faces negativity online. Just the concept of farming in the ocean is too foreign to people and it's scary. And so that's when I really I doubled down. I said you know what I want to? I want to learn everything about this and I want to visit these farms. I want to see what's going on. I want to learn like what's in the feeds, all these things about pollutants, contaminants, what's true, what's not, where in the world this is happening, who it's affecting, and that's where I stand today.
Speaker 1:So now I'm on Instagram, tiktok, a few other platforms like that, making long form. Most of my videos are at least two minutes nowadays really highly edited content, all about educating on aquaculture. I just came back from my most recent visit was to Hawaii where they have an offshore, an offshore compachi farm. It's a uh, it's a tropical white fish in the area, delicious on for sashimi, um, so I was just eating that every day. Probably an entire fish a day, and it was fascinating right they?
Speaker 1:an offshore cage floating off the coast of the big island hawaii all right.
Speaker 3:I mean I would love to get into because I mean you see this stuff all the time like maybe give us like the top three misconceptions that you see all the time. You know that you see a lot of, I guess, and maybe just like, because I'm sure these are things you have to go over, you know again and again. So I just want to like kind of hit the bigger ones.
Speaker 1:I'm kind of curious, like your take what are, like, some of the biggest ones that you see a lot. Yeah, so I think I think both of I've followed both of you for a long time because we're in relatively similar spaces, um, but I think both of you picked up on my content when I made a video about astaxanthin. It wasn't my first, but it was definitely one that took off the most.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, yeah, um, astaxanthin is part of this conception that a lot of farmed fish is dyed in color um, so if you see a salmon in that pink color, you know the old people say like this, isn't it's real, quote, unquote real color, it's it's fed or it's dyed or it's what, it's something else, yeah you. You go ahead explain what it's um.
Speaker 1:The legislative landscape in the past 40 years has led to a lot of governments requiring a color added label when they used astaxanthin in the feed. Astaxanthin is uh carotenoid and it's it's found naturally in salmon. It's what gives all most marine carnivores, pelagic carnivores, that kind of pinkish orangey color, everything from lobsters to shrimp to all the salmonids right. Not just salmon itself, but rainbow trout, all sorts of other kinds of trout.
Speaker 2:As well as plenty of things on land. When you hear carotid, just think carrots.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly yeah, flamingos, flamingos. Yeah, so I was thinking of yeah, so it's the same thing in salmon and and with farms, but they can control the amount of astaxanthin that they are using. So they have these things. It's called a samofan kind of fun to look up, where they can choose the color of their salmon based on how much astaxanthin.
Speaker 3:It's like a low card where they give you a bunch of different colors and you're like offshoot pink. That's what I want or like exactly.
Speaker 1:No, it's like the farmers will be like I want, want 24. That's the color that I want.
Speaker 3:I was hoping they'd have cool names, like you know hot pink shorts, I don't know. Bubble gum pink yeah, I like that.
Speaker 1:And it's something that you know, kind of just got perpetuated as because you have to say color added in a lot of places. Right, and you know, just because it's a color and an additive in a feed doesn't make it a dye, it's actually an essential. Like it's not used in salmon feeds because it, you know, changes the color of the meat. It's used because it's part of their natural diet. Without it they are immunocompromised. Oh okay, so it's just as important as a host of other nutrients in their diets.
Speaker 3:Wild salmon will get it from their feed just from eating other small creatures and things like that Exactly, and the color varies quite greatly.
Speaker 1:You might see some sockeye salmon that's as bright red as can be, and there's even salmon that's white because they don't have a lot of astaxanthin or they have a genetic variation. Where they don't, it doesn't convert into that color. It's called ivory salmon. It's pretty interesting. It's pure white. Um, so farmers control it, so all of it is exactly the same color from any specific farm.
Speaker 3:Right. And so it is color added, but it's added with the thing that they would normally be getting and it's not some uh, I don't know plot to I, I don't know, there's always something, oh there is to answer everybody's question yes, if you ate enough carotenoids, you too would turn orange yeah, it's called because I mean carrot and neem here to neem I've looked this up between carrots.
Speaker 3:You know, if you eat enough carrots and sweet potatoes like your skin will turn like a orangish. But it happens more in like places where skin is thicker because it can build up joints and stuff so, like your palms or your hands, even your nose can turn a little bit.
Speaker 3:You know more orange before the other ones, so people will do it to try and get this, like you know, glow. I guess I don't know describe it like this suntanned look, but then it can kind of go sideways oh yeah, I mean, I take astaxanthin supplements from a um.
Speaker 1:It's produced by algae. So I visited this microalgae farm in uh, hawaii that grows them on land in these big cultivating pools and you know they sell them off as supplements and I just I like the concept right. Micrology supplement, sure, why not? If it can help me not look as translucent as I do, I'll give it a shot If it's good for salmon.
Speaker 3:It's good for me, like, why not? I want to look like a flamingo, they look super cool. Salmon it's good for me, like, why not? I like I want to look like a flamingo, they look super cool. My legs are about as thin as their legs. I mean, I'll give it that I usually stand on one. My calves, at least, are about as thin as a flamingos. I hear that on the internet, but any, really, uh, sometimes you just got to embrace it, but anyway, um, okay, so yeah, as is anthony. That's one you know I said because I I showed a video from yours because it was, you know, it was bobby in the grocery store, like this color's fake, buy my supplements instead. And I was like actually like, no, it's, it's cool, um, but uh, yeah, another one. I see all the time like I'm assuming this would be in the top three. It's just like farm-raised salmon has like what is it? Sea lice and a whole bunch of other dirty things. Like you know, I hear that all the time. Let's go with that one. What's up with the?
Speaker 3:sea lice and the farm fish.
Speaker 1:What's up with the sea lice? What's up, what's up? It's like I'm back in my comment section.
Speaker 3:Facebook warriors are like no, you have to get wild caught because farm race is filled with lice, OK, cool.
Speaker 1:So sea lice are a big issue. They are a macro parasite that latches on to not just salmon but a lot of different species of similar pelagic fish. Many species of salmon get affected by them. They're kind of like a tick, so both in size and in function they latch on. They just suck on the things they're found naturally all over and essentially there's a healthy amount which we deem is what we find in the natural world, places where we don't have a lot of human involvement at all. So there is a healthy balance between sea lice and salmonids, salmon family of fish and it makes perfect sense, right? All things in the balanced natural world have predators and parasites.
Speaker 3:So it's like all the sea lice went away. Do you think that would would that kind of throw off the what, what is it? You know the ecosystem or whatever, like we were, just like got rid of all sea lice.
Speaker 1:You think that, oh, absolutely oh, we can't do that. No, I mean, if we took the nuclear approach to everything, because I see that a lot- People are like this is bad, let's just get rid of it.
Speaker 1:And then you're like oh, that would actually cause X, y and Z and that would be a big problem. Yeah, so you can't really do it feasibly in a way that wouldn't be extremely destructive. So it's all about keeping lice levels at a healthy limit. Now, where that plays into farms is that farms, obviously you have a lot of salmon. You can have 50,000, 100,000 salmon in these sets of pens. It's all heavily regulated by government.
Speaker 3:How big would be a pen on average? How large are we talking here?
Speaker 1:Yeah, pen on average, how, how you know, like, how large are we talking here? Yeah, so they. They vary by species, by farm, but I was just up at some in newfoundland, uh, recently up in your, your territory, rob um, and they were 125 meters across by 25 meters down. Okay, um. So whatever that is in freedom units, I'm not really sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what I'm about to. Just hit Google Go ahead and that's that's.
Speaker 1:On the larger side, there are pens that are 100 meters, 80 meters across it. Really it all depends on the location. Sometimes it's better to have big pens or small pens. They can be squares.
Speaker 3:They can be circular.
Speaker 1:The depth is feet for any of our American listeners Freedom units. So that's kind of the size of pens we're talking here and they typically link them up so you'll have a big barge like semi-permanent barges that float out there and that's the feed barge. It's a live-in barge. Crew does like week or two-week cycles out there typically and they're working 24-7, then they come back and get a week off and they rotate like that. So they link up like 12, 15, 18 of these pens that they can feed.
Speaker 1:From this centralized barge. They can monitor everything right on the farm. If there's issues, they can deal with it in minutes. It's really the best way to go about it. So with this setup you can have and they typically do this in long fjords right, you've got really strong water currents in fjords and they're also protected from some of the harshest ocean storms. It's kind of a win-win, at least for fish farming. So you can have hundreds of thousands of salmon in there. They're schooling fish. The reason a lot of the farmed fish out there are schooling fish is because you can do this. You can use pens. It makes sense, as opposed to a lot of people say oh, why can't we farm like blue whales or sharks and release them.
Speaker 3:I've never heard that, but now that you're saying it, it just made me laugh.
Speaker 1:Why can't we?
Speaker 3:just farm blue whales it's. So come on.
Speaker 1:I've gotten that a few times. Yeah, maybe it made me laugh. I like the mindset, right. But so, circling on back on the sea life, so you have hundreds of thousands of fish here. That's not abnormal in these locations, right? Those fjords often lead up to rivers and that's where salmon wild salmon, will run. They'll head up those streams, they'll spawn, they'll die, and then the juveniles will. Their babies will come back out next season.
Speaker 1:Assuming they don't get eaten by a bear. Yeah, most of them get eaten. It's like less than 1% survive that and it's also like a less than 1% survival on the way up. The parents don't make it either. There are really because of that. They're a fragile species right to any sort of changes. So damming any sort of infrastructure on the waterway, the actual stream itself, that can physically prevent the salmon from moving up the waterways, it can have serious consequences Because suddenly these fish they return from the oceans and if only 1% made it before there was human involvement, they're not going to make it if there's a dam or if there's a road, things like that. So there are fragile species in that respect.
Speaker 1:Now, with farms, when the fish head out to the farms they're all salmon. They start on land-based facilities. We grow them in freshwater land-based hatcheries and then you move them out to the ocean so they all go out perfectly clean. That's something that the industry takes a lot of pride in and that's really important. They're not infected with sea lice from the start or any diseases. They're not bringing things out to the ocean. Everything that they get in the ocean in infections whether it be macro parasites like sea lice or viruses, anything like that bacteria they get from the ocean. In infections whether it be macro parasites like sea lice or viruses, anything like that bacteria they get from the ocean.
Speaker 1:So wild salmon swimming by or near the cages release sea lice into the farms, which then propagates sea lice within them. And then a lot of the controversy arises because now you have a pen with a lot of fish in it and if it gets sea lice to an unhealthy level, there's some studies that show that that can release back onto wild salmon. Now sea lice are not a death sentence to salmon. As I said, there's a healthy limit, right. So if you pull a salmon out of the water and there's three or four sea lice on it, that's not really a problem.
Speaker 1:But the problem is that people when they pull those wild salmon out and they have sea lice on them that's linked directly to farms. People look at that and say this is caused by the farm. A lot of those people have never gone fishing Now, yes, farms do and have propagated sea lice at unhealthy levels. It's a very new industry. Aquaculture has only really been around at this commercial level for 30 or 40 years and it's changing so fast that it's really hard to keep up with. So if you look up studies from the early 2000s, which are some of the most prominent ones online today, you'll see that there's a lot of people that are linking wild salmon die-offs and the mass losses at sea to the farms and those sea lice contaminations. But we move ahead 10, 15 years from those 2004, 2005 studies to, for instance, in 2017,. Norway did a huge study and found that, oh okay, this wasn't really the case. Those salmon were dying off because of all these other factors that influence this delicate species, and we can prove this because in areas where we've had farms before that they've been pulled, those wild runs have not recovered in some places, and then in others, where the farms have stayed, they have recovered completely or even up to unhealthy levels. We have unhealthy levels of certain species of salmon in certain parts of the world.
Speaker 1:So it's a really complex issue, right? The wild versus farms and how they're interacting with each other, and there isn't an easy answer of this one's. Better than that. This is causing that. Answer of this one's. Better than that, this is causing that. No, it's a natural ecosystem that we're trying our best not to touch, but we're still there and, unlike traditional land-based agriculture, where we kind of just took the plows and pushed every living thing out of the way. We don't do that in the ocean, right, we take these little. The actual footprint of a fish farm is many times smaller than what we see on land, so we're keeping nature around us and that has consequences, right? So the sea lice problem that leads into what I would deem as like the third biggest problem people have, or people claim to have, with aquaculture and fish farms, and that's the use of antibiotics.
Speaker 3:That's what I was just about to ask, because that's what I hear it's like. Oh, they have sea lice, so they're half antibiotics now they just pump them full of it. I hear that all the time.
Speaker 1:So first and foremost, antibiotics aren't really going to do much against sea lace.
Speaker 1:That's a macro I was just thinking that, yeah, and the whole thing of dumping pesticides in the water, what? So? You know you got to kind of read through the weeds on a lot of those sorts of comments and accusations. Now, in decades past there was a utilization of antibiotics to a degree that was unhealthy Not to people, that was never really the case but it was to a point where it was having. You know it was too much, you know it was going into the fish and coming out of the fish and impacting the ecosystems around it and that raises concerns of antibiotic resistance development and just generally. It's not healthy for the fish or any organism to just be that medicated. Now antibiotics have, in salmon and most species of farmed fish, gone away all but entirely. They're really expensive. So if the farms can do anything not to use them, they will. So with the introduction of vaccines we have fish vaccines and that's been doing incredible things to prevent bacterial infections and viral infections, but does it cause fish autism?
Speaker 3:I was just saying the fish autism is a huge problem. I was just thinking that it is.
Speaker 1:How bad is it when one guy came up with a terrible study and now, like everyone, just as soon as you hear vaccine, you're like it's causing fish autism.
Speaker 1:That's where everybody's I mean vaccines and fish have have propelled the industry to a new height of sustainability, right um? As well as what? Because a lot of um therapies are chemotherapies and that's to people out there that doesn't mean like fighting cancer, chemotherapy is just the use of essentially a chemical, right Um? There's also mechanical um treatments that that farms use nowadays. Things like if you take a fish that's in saltwater and has some sea lice on it and you put it in water with less salinity, it's it's more freshwater has some sea lice on it and you put it in water with less salinity it's more fresh water those sea lice don't survive, but the fish are fine. So that's a mechanical treatment. Other things like hydrogen peroxide. Very low levels of hydrogen peroxide can work wonders, as we know. We put hydrogen peroxide on our wounds and that helps. Same thing with aquatic species.
Speaker 2:And if none of those work, you bring in the fish chiropractors. The fish yeah you get the priests out, adjust their C1s, that's what it was.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we just did that's great.
Speaker 1:What I think is, like most it's not talked about enough is none of this happens, just willy-nilly right. The use of antibiotics is a last resort and whenever you have to use a chemotherapy like that, you need to get a fish veterinarian involved, and that's. Those are real people, real job. It's really cool. Fish vets, and it's highly regulated. Fish vets and it's it's highly regulated. It's as if you're going to the doctor, but arguably more intensive because they're diagnosing a population, not just one fish.
Speaker 1:People really don't realize that, yeah, you have to get the vet to actually prescribe that. Yeah, no, it's. If a fish is getting any kind of treatment, that's a prescription. That's. They brought the experts in the fish nerds.
Speaker 3:I think it's just easier for people, though. On like, especially social media, you just have to make it simple. Right, like you know, farm fish, bad wild fish, good, like that's something like that. And in reality, right like I don't, I don't. We wouldn't be able to sustain a full like if everyone just switched to eating wild fish. Like I, I don't, I don't, we wouldn't be able to sustain a full like if everyone just switched to eating wild fish like I. Correct me if I'm wrong here. That's, that's not possible. Like that's not it. That would be like everybody say, like oh, we just eat grass fed beef. Like we don't have enough resources to make that happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know I mean you're. You're spot on. We haven't, as a as humanity, entirely around the world, we haven't been catching more wild fish year over year for at least 30 years. All of the new seafood on the market to supply our population, our global population, comes from aquaculture. There's now more farmed seafood on the market than there is wild caught, and that's that's a good thing, because if we tried to take the same volume, we do Right.
Speaker 3:With Just out of the ocean. I think that would cause some problems. Yeah, it would be over.
Speaker 1:And there's some programs that people I don't talk about this much on my channel simply because I focus mainly on aquaculture and hatcheries are not I mean, they are aquaculture but it's not the end result is different, right? So, for instance, the West Coast of the US and Canada, as well as some other partnering countries in the Pacific Oceans, have massive hatchery programs where they raise salmon by the billions. I think last year it was all together in the Pacific it was over 5 billion fish were raised and released into the Pacific, and that is to support a couple of things. It helps keep our wild population strong, even in times when climate change is really affecting our oceans and those fish are struggling to get back out the streams. It keeps the numbers high. That's also what's artificially inflating our entire wild salmon fishery. For instance, on the East Coast, all we have are Atlantic salmon over here. That's not a commercial fishery, it's illegal. They are an endangered species. That's because we don't really know how to do a hatchery program for them with the success that we see with the Pacific species?
Speaker 1:Oh really, that's interesting. A hatchery program for them with the success that we see with the Pacific species? Oh really? So all of the wild caught salmon you're getting if you're in North America is coming from the West Coast, typically Alaska or British Columbia, and over 80% of that came from hatcheries to begin with. So even the whole wild caught thing is oh, wow, no, that's half farmed. They just let it go and then catch it back later, and that's not a bad thing. We need to be doing those sort of you know, hatch and release programs, and they do that beyond salmon. That's true for a lot of species, everything from seahorses for restoration to coral projects. There's a lot of coral restoration where they grow these polyps on land to get them up to these little coral nuggets and then go plant them in coral reefs that are struggling.
Speaker 2:A lot of fish are almost extinct here in Alberta because of overfishing. We have a lot the waters in Alberta like 50 years ago. Everything's like green, green, Everything's looking good. You go to today Red, red, red, red, red, red, red.
Speaker 3:Yeah, as a species, we are very good at going to a place and just obliterating the population of whatever it is we want to consume for food, like that's everything, like seals, you know, whatever. There's all you know it's historically humans come in, we kill everything.
Speaker 1:We destroy the population.
Speaker 3:We go, what else can we find? So at least farming. You know we're able to control this. You know a little bit.
Speaker 1:And oh, that's, that's our specialty. Is, you know, plowing it out, putting out a parking lot in a Walmart and then asking where everything went?
Speaker 3:Yep, oh man.
Speaker 1:Aquaculture and fisheries are really closely linked. One cannot function without the other, not just because the market demands so much seafood, but because they require each other. I mean, as I said, most of the West Coast relies on those hatcheries. Aquaculture also relies on wild fisheries. It's an important part to a carnivorous feed to have a portion of that feed be made up of wild-caught or pre-processed fish waste. By that I mean, you know, trimmings, leftovers.
Speaker 3:Now that you say that, can I just like divert a little bit, because I always hear a fucking like you shouldn't eat tilapia because it's the worst thing ever for you, because all they eat is pig shit. What's up? What's up with that? Like I and I know it's for the most part not really true, but like can we be out here a little bit with getting those?
Speaker 1:ads I get I don't know what company is because I scroll away immediately have you been getting those ads? I don't know what company it is because I scroll away immediately, but it's like we don't want you to think that feeding your dog, our food, is spoiling them and it's like this gourmet meal prepared for your dog of filet mignon and just like foraged vegetables.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I have, I'm not a dog person, so I don't get dog person.
Speaker 1:I I don't know it's inundating my feed, um, and it's that concept of it's a pelletized and dried feed, so it looks it. You know, most fish feeds and aquaculture feeds in general look just like fish food and a lot of it looks like dog food. That's the concept. It it is not right. Just because it's a conspicuous brown little pellets doesn't mean that it's not a nutritionally advanced little chunk of dog food. So tilapia are a fantastic species for aquaculture and the world more broadly, because they can really survive anything.
Speaker 3:So they're the bizarro world salmon and the world more broadly, because they can really survive anything. So they're the bizarro world salmon.
Speaker 1:They're very hardy. You can do backyard tilapia. You get a little 55-gallon drum and you can do backyard aquaculture.
Speaker 3:So that's why they're 50 cents a pound at the stores because they're like the cheapest fish because they can survive anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they eat a lot too. They're really I'd call them fugivores, but a lot of people would say they're kind of just scavengers, I guess. So the feeds can be varied so you can use really, really cheap leftovers from the agricultural industry, bits and pieces here and there. They find really creative ways to hit the nutritional requirements of the fish from industry excess. So we have soy coming out the wazoo Right. Great use for soys and livestock feeds.
Speaker 3:Gotcha. But so they're not just getting fish or sorry, pig poop, that's that. That's a little bit.
Speaker 1:I swear to God. I don't know how many times I've heard that.
Speaker 3:I hear it's always shit, like just tilapias just eat shit. And if you will, you I always oh, what was that? Thomas de laura or the fuck that guy's name is? You are what you eat. Ate is what he always says. And you're like tilapias eat shit. So do you want to eat shit? And I'm like that. There's a, there's a bunch of leaps here and I don't. I don't know if any of them connect, but like tilapia is okay, like, even if they were eating shit, I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't know if any of them connect, but like, here's the thing, right, it's like even if they were eating shit, I don't, I don't think that they are. Um, got to be honest with you, that seems like a really poor use of really strong manure. Um, but even if they were right, a lot of people look at shrimp as like the cockroaches of the sea. Um, they're reprocessing that and turning it into valuable proteins, fats and carbohydrates, exactly yeah, in their bodies. So you know, you are, what you eat only goes so far. You know, I could eat a bag of doritos for a week.
Speaker 2:I don't think that makes me doritos well, I mean by thomas de lauer's um logic. If I eat some lettuce that I grew in my garden using some manure as fertilizer, I'm also eating shit.
Speaker 3:Yes, no, that only applies to animals. Okay, Because there's rules or something. I don't know, man, but I heard that and I was just like that's a weird hill, because if you are what you eat, it's already weird. And then you just was like can I add another weird layer to this? Anyway, what's up with shrimp, though I like shrimp a lot, are we good? Is there anything we should know about?
Speaker 1:shrimp, yeah, so. So shrimp definitely have their issues too, and some of them are more egregious problems. A lot of shrimp comes in from countries where the transparency is not apparent and it is difficult to trace. This is a problem across seafood. If you're buying, for instance, red Snapper in the US, I believe there's a 60% chance that it's not Red Snapper, just because companies will take advantage of the fact that you don't know what a Red Snapper is or looks like or tastes like and it's a premium fish. Now that problem extends throughout the seafood chain because people want to turn a quick buck.
Speaker 1:Some of the more egregious problems with shrimp come from the countries where they have massive land-based farms. They plow out great swaths of land and this is places that are fragile and biodiverse in poor communities, so you'll see them in countries that are tropical, so you have these coastal rainforests that become shrimp farms. That is not good, and there's also some issues with the labor that goes into that shrimp farming. It's a labor-intensive industry in a country that doesn't have great labor laws. That's not true across the board. There are easy ways to trace your shrimp if you buy from the right people and the right processors, and there's countries where shrimp is farmed in very sustainable ways. The US is one of them and we have shrimp here. I actually I saw some shrimp farms in Saudi Arabia recently and that was a great utilization of completely barren desert. They weren't plowing rainforest, they were digging sand out of the way, I guess, and it was a minimally impactful way to go about it. So shrimp does have its issues. Absolutely. That does not mean avoid all shrimp, all farm shrimp.
Speaker 3:That means it's the shrimp calling. Hold on one second. You're talking shit about me. Hold on yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's one of those things. There isn't an easy answer to it. You really, that's what I meant. Channels are for right, it's like educate on it.
Speaker 3:Would you say to look for shrimp, maybe that's grown in the US or certain other areas? I mean, would you recommend looking for that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so obviously I don't expect anybody to know every farm. There are tens of thousands of companies farming in almost every country in the world.
Speaker 1:But just general like hey, maybe look for this. Yeah, so the things to look out for there are because that is a problem, right? Nobody could possibly know this there are third party companies that are essentially watchdog companies that offer certifications to companies, to farmers. So the ones to look out for in wild fisheries is MSC Marine Stewardship Council certification. It's a really laborious process to get and they're really thorough. It's expensive but it's a thorough process. Now for aquaculture. There's two that I would recommend looking out for Best Aquaculture Practices, bap and the Aquaculture Stewardship Council. A lot of acronyms coming out to here ASC.
Speaker 3:So you'll see those, well good, because those are long fucking things, I'm not going to remember them. So yeah, I need the BAP or whatever. I'm good yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, bap and ASC BAP. So if you look out for those check marks on, for instance, whole Foods, they require those sorts of things. Okay, they require those sorts of things. Okay, a lot of places do. A lot of restaurants will boast about it because it's a great achievement. To get, for instance, four-star BAP certification is incredibly difficult. There's only a few companies that can pull that off, so they are proud of it.
Speaker 2:Same thing with ASC certification. You know, what I'd like is some sushi restaurants that are certified to serve the fish they actually said they served I don't know if you guys have experienced this, but I've had a couple times order like salmon and at a sushi place and they come out with something it's like that's not salmon, that's tuna. Don't, don't try to cheat me I know my fish.
Speaker 3:What do you mean? Oh, I'm sure, like you were just talking about how, like red snap or whatever is always like if you don't know, you know, especially you know white people.
Speaker 1:It's like hey, here you go like this is this.
Speaker 3:Oh sure, yeah, this sounds good. I don't know. We'll just accept it.
Speaker 1:It's fine, it's all essentially especially with um, with sushi, you ever had escalar. It's delicious, honestly, it's so good it's a white fish.
Speaker 3:Can I ask you something? Let me ask you something, because you know a thing or two about fish. I've heard I might. What would you recommend? Because what I always hear from people is like I hate fish.
Speaker 3:I tell people like fish is great, like mono and polyunsaturated fats. We're eating a lot of land animals. I'm not saying like you have to cut out, but like maybe introduce some fish into your diet if you can, or just you know some sort of sea life. Um, what would you recommend for people who are like kind of I don't really know much about fish, like is there like more of a, a fish that doesn't taste so fishy, it's more bland just something for someone getting into fish. What would you recommend?
Speaker 1:yeah, a starter fish, yeah, that's starter.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's always fun starter fish.
Speaker 1:Starter fish, so I mean salmon's the most popular fish out there, at least where I am. It's not a starter fish, that's a. That's a relatively fishy fish. I love it yeah, it is really, especially if you leave the belly fat on oh yeah, um, but I wouldn't recommend that as like, if you're not, if you're a bit squeamish on the texture of the taste of fish, Because that's what most people see is salmon.
Speaker 3:They're like oh, I hate salmon, so I hate fish, but like there's other fish that aren't as fishy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so typically white fish tend to be milder. So by that I literally mean like the meat is white. It's kind of a classification of fish that aren't salmon or tuna, things like cod, haddock. That's a great way to start. Is that white? Is that a white fish? Tilapia is a white fish, a little more flavorful, I would say. Or, if you have a big budget, you could go all in on something like halibut. Right, that's more of a steak fish, it's a lot meatier, or mahi-mahi.
Speaker 3:I've had mahi-mahi. I like that one. That's a good one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's much firmer. A lot of people have issues with, like, the flakiness of fish and you're going to get flaky cod. That's the point.
Speaker 3:So if you want something, much fir writing this stuff down. Okay, steak fish, firmer fish, mahi mahi cod, flaky white, less pungent I'll clip this specific part out for you I'm gonna like yeah, we need just like this clip, because I always get people saying I don't know fish. I'm like, okay, what about you know? Um, okay, it's your heart. Yeah, exactly, I mean yeah, honestly, like I kind of go to the seafood section, I'm like I know salmon and I like that, so I'm gonna get that I don't really know much I know I don't like, like crabs and and lobsters and stuff.
Speaker 3:I don't like the, the shellfish. Besides shrimp I love shrimp but any other shellfish. Let me tell you something I have a a deep burning fish. Let me tell you something I have a a deep burning distaste for things like oysters and clams and and I guess I could do mussels they're I still don't. They're fine, they're fine, but like all those other ones, like especially oysters, I just I really I love to hate how I hate them.
Speaker 1:I don't like them I really don't, because, like like, shooting a raw oyster is a bit like a loogie, they're sea bookers that's what people call it. They're sea bookers.
Speaker 3:Okay, I don't. I mentioned in a video I don't like when I had a bunch of people stitch me and just feel like I like this is why they're good. You're getting the wrong oysters. Like I don't, like. I hate looking at them. They're like oh, if you fry them they're better. You could fry a boot and I'd probably eat it. Like you say, you fry anything, it's a lot better, but that doesn't make it good.
Speaker 1:Like I got to get you to a muscle farm because they walk or they have like little tongues and they got these like hairs. It's alien. That almost turned me off muscles.
Speaker 3:I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, yeah, I know You're really good.
Speaker 3:They're really good. They're like great for you. So they're like great for you. So like, if you like those things, you know scallops, I hate scallops too. Anyway, go.
Speaker 1:No, I mean the aquaculture of bivalves, you know. Aren't they one of the most sustainable like?
Speaker 3:things in terms of like farming an animal like bivalves, oh no it's like it's beneficial.
Speaker 1:It's one of the only kinds of farming that is truly beneficial, like that where you're, you're putting something in the water, you wait, it filters the water and then you pull it out right, yeah, because they filter the water, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen, like I don't know, at museums there's about that.
Speaker 3:They're like it takes this many I don't know oysters or whatever to filter. Which one's one of the best ones at filtering mussels? They all do it I have.
Speaker 1:They all do it, but oysters. I think they can do like 50 gallons a day. There's some time lapses on YouTube. They put them in a murky, muddy fish tank and then 12 hours later it's like you could drink it. See you eat what you ate.
Speaker 3:That's the problem though they're eating all this gross stuff and I feel like I'm eating this stuff. I don't like them, I don't like oysters, but if you do like, they're really good in general and they're healthy and clean things.
Speaker 1:So yeah, they're starting to find new ways to use them too. I just I saw at Trader Joe's recently they had canned oysters, so it's like a little oyster meat in olive oil which was new to me?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it out sounds so good and delicious and not gross at all. I can't, and like anchovies I'll stick to the canned tuna. Listen, I listen, I can't. I can do canned tuna. I can't. The people I know, I know anchovies and and and mackerel and all these these fish are really? They're fatty fish, omega-3s, yadaada, yada, yada. I don't like them. I just so it's okay to not like. Find a fish that you can actually do, cause those ones I just, I know they're cheap too, I get it.
Speaker 1:I get it. People tell me to eat them. I don't like them. Oh, I mean, if we were completely logical species like that, you know we wouldn't be eating anything.
Speaker 3:but you know, little rinky dink little tiny things in the ocean rats on land, oysters, and we'd be eating anchovies and cockroaches and crickets. I don't know oyster or cockroach I have to think I have to think for a second. It depends how the cockroach is cooked. Is it like fried? Are they both fried?
Speaker 2:because then I might go cock uh no, you're buying it in america, it's probably fried oh, I don't like any of it, but yeah, I'll find a.
Speaker 3:Find a fish or bivalve or what, the shellfish or whatever it is as I alluded to earlier.
Speaker 2:If if you're having some trouble with salmon, that darker, thinner flab underneath that's where really a lot of the fat fishy flavor is. You can cut that off, give it to your dog.
Speaker 1:Yeah, doing like taking salmon pulling all the bones, take the skin off, scrape all the dark meat off.
Speaker 3:It's basically like an uncrustable at that point, but it's healthy what's your favorite way to make a fish besides uncrustable lean them?
Speaker 1:just, uh, taking it just completely, wiping it. Um, yeah, I mean that that's like to everyone listening like, if you don't like fish, you've tried it before. There's a good chance it just wasn't cooked right. Fish, you can't treat it like chicken or something, you know. You can overdo chicken and it's still edible. You overdo some fish and it's a brick, it's cat food.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you really gotta watch that. Even it's just, it's bad cat food, it's bad there you go, it's bad cat food.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, if anybody like follows me or wants to look at my channels, you're not going to find, like, any cooking or recipes. Um, because I'm not a good cook. I, I just got out of college last year. Um, I do air fryers and microwaves and when I'm feeling really crazy.
Speaker 3:I get out the fry pan. That's pretty good I mean, that's all like. You know how long? How long are you cooking in the air fryer for like, like? What do you do? What are you doing? What are you doing?
Speaker 1:So I take, I take a serving of salmon which for me is like north of 16 ounces. Ok, so a pound of salmon for 25 for 15 minutes and that's like on the medium rare side. Yeah, OK.
Speaker 3:So I definitely need more on the rare side. Once it hits this point and I'm just like I can't even eat this. I give it to my dogs.
Speaker 2:The instant that you touch it with a fork, it should just lightly flake open on you, yeah, once it becomes all white and stuff.
Speaker 3:I don't even order it at a restaurant anymore, because I just don't trust it, unless it's like a really good seafood place that's known for their fish. If you're just at a restaurant and they're like oh, we also have this. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you guys are cooking the lamb and shit for most people and then you just throw fucking salmon in there at the same temperature and fucking time or whatever, and it's never, it's not good.
Speaker 1:That's restaurants I always go for, like a like a meaty fish, right tuna or swordfish or halibut or you know something that's got like you can treat it like a steak yeah I think mahi, mahi, that's a see.
Speaker 3:I remember the notes. That's a good one um would you say to like is there anything that you, just in general, would recommend to watch out for in terms of fish? I don't know, just like I don't know if a concern is the right word, but something maybe shy away from I don't well, yeah bones
Speaker 3:um well, I know with anchovies you can eat the bones. People keep telling me to eat anchovies. I that's keep coming back to this, but I don't like that. Would you recommend anything to just, uh, you know be aware of in terms of like fish? I guess I don't know yeah, I mean it's.
Speaker 1:It's similar to a lot of the land meats that's what I call them like chicken, pork, beef that people are more familiar with, right? So they know what free range or organic means when it comes to that. People don't know what BAP means when it comes to seafood or dolphin safe. Is this dolphin? Now, I don't know, it's not, I promise you. Friend of the sea, that's a really good certification. All these things that us in the industry we're really proud of and we know about doesn't really translate to most consumers, so I would look out for those sorts of certifications on, give us a clip that we can like, take this and then just post it.
Speaker 3:So what are all the certifications? You got a few seconds Give me, give me the certifications you got. A few seconds, give me give me the certifications.
Speaker 1:Oh, if you, if you go on some of those like premium uh seafood websites and you go to the bottom, um, it's like a dozen. It's just a big list, uh, which is great, but it's like who? What does that mean? You know? Who knows? So what it really comes down to is traceability, right, um, do you know where that fish came from? Whether it's wild caught or farmed, it's all about. If you know where it came from, then you can spend five minutes to figure out. Okay, this is from Norway and it's from one of the big salmon companies there. Let me check out their strategy. Go to their website, see their certifications. Oh, okay, I can trust that. So if you can just start to begin that traceability and the transparency train kind of help yourself know at least what country that fish came from or whatever it was, that's a great way to start to know that what you're getting is both good for you and good for the environment.
Speaker 1:Nowadays we're lucky in the US and Canada it can be difficult to get your hands on stuff that is going to be detrimental to your health in like one serving. So you can typically trust a lot of the larger retailers, even like small fishmongers who are kind of for their communities. And the USDA, the FDA and NOAA all work together to make sure that everything coming into this country is as traced as they can get it. So that kind of stuff has been overhauled year on year. So a lot of that wasn't true even five years ago but it is today. So you can really trust a lot of those. You know our government agencies. You don't have to be all like conspiracy theory about it. Crazy statement Fed.
Speaker 3:Fed and all this stuff. Usually it's a chiropractor calling me at that. I know we just had chiropractors on last week. Those ones are good, the rest of them, though, fuck them. Jesus. Yeah, practice on last week. Those ones are good.
Speaker 1:on the rest of them, though, fucking jesus, yeah, uh, no, I mean most seafood you can trust you know, um, what people really get like scared about is things like like the people who are like really concerned about sea lice and antibiotics they're more of that is a very small minority of people who know about those issues of the past and are raising them today. What I see most of the time with just everyday consumers is mercury, heavy metals. So you as an adult, need to make the decision on how comfortable you are with the levels of mercury in basically all of your food. Some people choose to live like hyper organically, and that's great. You know, grow your own stuff, do your own thing. Mercury is just out there. It's not just in farmed or wild seafood, it's not just in seafood, it's in everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you grow yourself Exactly. There's some really great government I keep saying government, uh but there's some really great resources out there that have like they break it down super easily all the popular kinds of fish and seafood, whether it's best choice, decent choice or like don't eat too much, kind of things. When it comes to mercury, I personally have done a lot of like deep research on this. The subject methylmercury in seafood um, and this is why I say people like, use your own judgment on this stuff. Uh, because there's a lot of evidence that methylmercury in seafood that has high selenium, which is most non-mammal things in the water, is not of concern to adults.
Speaker 3:If you want to learn more about this. We talked about this with Dr Sarah Ballantyne I don't know what episode that is 69, whatever. It is. Probably was 69. Probably was 69, whatever and we talked about this with her quite a bit and yeah, so that's the idea is that methylmercury is what is a problem in our system because it binds to selenium and we have all these selenium enzymes. But with fish, even like take tuna is one of the most classic examples that has enough selenium that the methylmercury is already bound to the selenium in the fish, so it's unlikely to cause any issues. But obviously there's risk with everything. But in terms like it, just the benefits outweigh the risks. You always have to look at cost benefit, right. Eating fish is beneficial for your health, so it's delicious and delicious.
Speaker 3:You don't have to. I mean, if you're a vegan, you don't want to eat any fish. I've heard that even vegans will. Sometimes some vegans will eat bivalves like they don't consider they're actually not even uh it's, it's a whole interesting. I fell down a rabbit hole one time, as you know that youtube thing you know you're talking about. Sometimes we're like so someone's saying like, oh yeah, you can eat mussels because they're not actually sentient. It's very, it's. It's interesting.
Speaker 3:I'm not an expert on all that but um, uh, yeah, it's, the benefit of eating fish just outweighs the small risk. So, unless you're eating like shark and like some type of like, uh, you know, some type of swordfish may have more methylmercury than selenium.
Speaker 1:Like could be potential, uh, but you probably you have to eat a lot of it and often so just just one of the original studies on methylmercury and seafood and kind of like the scare that came out of that. It was in the 80s and it was in the faroe Islands, norway way up north. That's where they still do pilot whales. They eat them pretty regularly and pilot whales are not fish. They do not have that same concentration of the same or more selenium than methylmercury in their systems. So they were experiencing some issues due to the high consumption of pilot whale. That makes sense. If you are eating pilot whale regularly, please stop, for more reasons than just mercury, but I don't think most of us are so most of us say you're eating tuna and salmon, not pilot whale todd I know you listening.
Speaker 3:He's just with a with just like shoveling pilot whale for the third time today into his mouth. Shut up. It's my favorite, oh gosh, ok, well, yeah, so find what fish you like, I guess. Right, and just you know, work it into your diet, don't overcook it and don't overthink it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, I never think about any of that stuff. I I mean at this point I like I know the retailers. I trust I go to them. I buy fish. I eat every day. Yeah, I try anything, I'll eat anything from the ocean just for the hell of it. Um, there's some really good, just for the hell of it seaweeds nice, there you go.
Speaker 3:What about that fish? That's deadly. What's the the, the puffer fish? Yeah the japanese have to. You know they like cut it, so it's it doesn't kill you, but it. Could you ever done that?
Speaker 1:uh, no, well, I'm still here. So yeah, um, not yet it's on the way I'm gonna do it.
Speaker 3:I hear there's like a couple restaurants in like new york city that still do it like they're perfect. They're trained by chefs in like japan or something to cut the fish perfectly, so they don't have any responsibility as a chef.
Speaker 2:It's not worth it probably have to sign a waiver before you eat there there's like insurance involved in that.
Speaker 3:If I have to sign a waiver to eat fish, I don't want to eat the fish I had, I'll tell you, the worst fish I ever had it.
Speaker 1:I was up in Iceland like eight years ago and there was this guy who catches Greenland shark and ferments it in this little stable out back. I got a tour of what he was doing and then I got to try some Fermented Greenland shark is abhorrent. It's one of the worst things.
Speaker 3:I'm sure the smell couldn't have been that great going into it so.
Speaker 1:So sharks. Sharks are like a really ancient species and you know, in a sense they pee through their skin, so they're. When they ferment, they just have this ammonia that's working its way out of it and it just the whole place reeks of piss. It's like you're at like a ball game and you go to the silos out back.
Speaker 3:And what's amazing is it's still better than oysters.
Speaker 1:We've got to get you out to this one guy in Iceland. That's where I got.
Speaker 1:Oh shit, but yeah. So I mean, that's my fish world. I don't want to keep you guys too long, but I do have some cool news and it's. I have been doing this whole content creating thing just around my work schedule. I burn all my PTO. Sometimes I can like get my girlfriend to come along and trips with me and it works out Right Because but you know, I've been doing it just as like a part-time thing, but at the end of this month I'm moving to Scotland, the Highlands actually, and I'm doing it full-time. I'm giving it a shot here and we'll see if I can pull it off. But I've been running the books, running the numbers and I'm just about maybe there. But it's worth a shot and I am trying to dive at this whole like aquaculture, education, seafood confidence and consumers thing full-time, because, uh, it it needs to be done.
Speaker 1:It really does.
Speaker 2:That's exciting, that's awesome, so tell people you know where can they so give people like all the things to let us know where to find you. We got to watch all this stuff that's going to be.
Speaker 1:I'll be like in and around Fort William. I'll be moving around a lot, not that most people won't know where that is. It's in between. It's under Lock, locky, does that help Definitely?
Speaker 3:I know exactly, I know exactly where that is.
Speaker 1:No, I'll be in like the middle of nowhere. But if you go, follow my channels tiktok and instagram it's the same thing, sibley aqua you can follow along with that, see how it goes. Um, I'm, I mean, I'm doing this kind of like, both independently and like with a lot of farms, because they're what I do. I have to. You know, I don't just sit around and make. I can't sit sit and like make content in my room, like Like I used to. I have to go places, right, um, I, I burn all my PTO on this all my free time. I'm in, like, if I have a free weekend, it's up in Maine, cause they got a lot of oysters, and if I can pull off like a few days off of work, I'll go to Mexico or Canada, whatever. I can talk somebody into letting me come see what they're doing. So it's kind of like a different style that way. Um, I wish I could do YouTube, but alas, not yet. That's hard.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:All the editing and never oh it's all my videos are vertical too.
Speaker 1:That's another problem.
Speaker 3:I know there's a lot of problems with YouTube, but I've thought about it many times and I still haven't gotten into it one day.
Speaker 2:That's kind of a one day thing. You know, one day when oakley actually lets you have some free time, holy shit that kid why? Is it so?
Speaker 3:about why, how, but anyway, um, yeah, so I mean. So those are the two places simply, simply aqua that people can find.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's me. I tried to get james sibley and I was even like dming, the guy who has it, and not even for sale, not that I. I was like I have like 200. I was in college, right, I was like you can have half of that I was like really desperate. But no luck from I guess og james sibley or sibley aqua.
Speaker 3:I mean that's good, that's good, well, all right. Well then, give us a fun fish fact to end with whatever you like, whatever's, because you talk about fish all the time are they all fun what are you?
Speaker 2:talking about unfun fish fact any, okay, any sort of.
Speaker 1:You want anyone that you want oh, this is a great question um fish. Fact, he's on the spot. I have so many it's.
Speaker 2:I'm like paralyzed by choice well, we're gonna hate it if it's not good, so there you go.
Speaker 3:I just want to.
Speaker 2:I know I'm working on it in moderation, we'll be right back as as James figures out what he's going to say what's interesting about fish Everything I've ever made content on.
Speaker 1:So, I guess I'm moving to the UK and I have to be careful because they have some rules around fish and walking around with it in public and it is illegal to walk around with salmon in a suspicious circumstance.
Speaker 3:And this is not just an outdated law, it has to say like it says suspicious circumstance.
Speaker 1:It says suspicious circumstances and it's not an outdated thing. Somebody was fined for this. Like last month, they had a salmon hidden up their sleeve. This is a real thing.
Speaker 3:Okay, so wait, is it just salmon or is it all fish? I'm sorry, Just salmon.
Speaker 1:Just salmon. You can be suspicious with anything else.
Speaker 3:Tilapia I could have one of those just sticking out of my pants, just like tail you could be as weird as you want, with no problem.
Speaker 1:But salmon though, they're on you, they're on you all right well, to our uk listeners, I want video of you doing some weird shit with salmon in the streets, just to see if there's a whole YouTube guys that do that.
Speaker 3:It depends on how many finds. If it's one or two, I could deal with that.
Speaker 1:I don't want to be his country. You just wrote yourself into a world of trouble.
Speaker 3:Somebody's going to really hit me up Like I did this weird thing with a fish and I totally got fined like immediately as soon as I stepped out of my house.
Speaker 2:The real question is why is somebody walking around with a salmon up their sleeve?
Speaker 3:why is the law in place? How did they get there?
Speaker 1:there's so many questions, well the law is less fun, but, um, it's like like the conservation laws, if somebody's walking around with it suspiciously, they probably caught it illegally. Okay, that? Kind of stuff it's more fun if you just leave it off, as suspicious salmon got it well.
Speaker 3:So if it's like hanging from a fishing pole, like a hook on a fishing pole, they're like I don't know about that. You probably caught that somewhere. You shouldn't have been, who knows?
Speaker 1:I I choose to picture people just pulling out salmon and dueling with them, dueling there's an awesome I forget what youtuber it is is a uk guy and he just walked around london with like a 20 pound fish trying to get fined, arrested or whatever.
Speaker 3:Interesting, great youtube I would pick a swordfish, because that seems dangerous like people would be like yeah yeah, although aren't they like 800 pounds, like our swordfish, like massive I can be.
Speaker 1:How big is the swordfish? I think the biggest one was 1500 pounds. Uh, most of them today are like 100, 200, those, those monsters don't exist anymore, okay all right, so I could carry like a hundred pound fish.
Speaker 3:I could carry like that would be a real that'd be a challenge, but I could do that. Imagine someone pulls out a salmon and do I pull out a swordfish boom don't bring a salmon to a swordfish fight like they always are darn straight.
Speaker 1:No, do bring a swordfish to a salmon fight as they do as they always say yes in the uk, of course, yeah, the classic british saying the classic pound swordfish, flopping out your pants oh gosh.
