Aquaculture as the Key to Sustainable Seafood
From small trout hatcheries to industrial-scale operations, aquaculture-based seafood production will make or break the planet.
Episode 29-Part 1
5/1/2025
Explore where government, corporate, and organization interests clash and align over fish production. And don’t forget the little people: Millions of consumers depend on small-scale fisheries for jobs and food. Wade into Part II of aquaculture with Jorden and Kimberly to consider the challenges of sustainably producing seafood, whether it’s farmed or wild-caught.
Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include
Why multiple sustainability standards and labels add to the complexities
How competition between NGOs hampers presenting a united front
How corporations like Cargill and Mowi dominate the aquaculture industry
Why small-scale fisheries are integral to the equation
How Global South countries attempt to balance economic growth with sustainable aquatic farming
Recommended Resources
The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch Guide to how and where to find sustainability-sourced seafood
The FAO’s 2024 Report on the aquaculture industry
Global aquaculture production statistics
Kimberly’s Substack newsletter post
Subak aquaculture system in Bali
Episode Transcript
Transcript
KIMBERLY
Welcome to part two of our Sustainable Planet Aquaculture episode. I'm political scientist Kimberly Weir and my co -host is Jordan Dye, a guy who knows an awful lot about sustainability issues. In part one, we talked about the viability of aquaculture as a sustainable supplement or potential replacement in some cases to wild -caught seafood. Not surprisingly, farming aquatic animals and plants runs into many of the same issues as domesticated agriculture and livestock farming. So any number of players are involved in the aquaculture industry. Jordan, are you a fan of farmed fish being from the Yukon and all? Is this an acceptable alternative if you're a salmon lover?
JORDEN
That's a loaded question. I will always say... You know, one off catching salmon in the wild out is going to always be better. And cooking it over a campfire is the best way. But when I'm in the city, you know, in Calgary and I'm buying fish, I will try to look for, you know, a more sustainable option and look and but looking into the company that's driving that. Because as we mentioned in episode one, all aquaculture is not created equally.
KIMBERLY
Yeah. And, you know, there are actually organizations, non -governmental organizations who have put together scorecards. For the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch is one that comes to mind that they put together scorecards for where your fish comes from, how to make the best choices for the fish that you're getting off of menu. You can download it on your, an app on your phone so that when you're in a restaurant, you can see, hey, like what's the, what's the going situation with this or that fish and whether or not it makes sense to be able to, to make this option, take this choice or not.
JORDEN
Yeah. And I think about we talked about another issues that we've covered on the show is just the diversity of players in the system, you know, from the countries, as you said, I think 67 percent of all aquaculture fish is produced in China. Right. So you have you have really dominant on the countryside and then you have international organizations and NGOs really playing around the edges, I think, on the pressure on the multinationals to really try to do this. You mentioned the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch standard. But there's at least, I think, at least five more that come to mind when you start looking into it. And then, you know, another 15 that we could probably go into. And this is one of my actual pet peeves with NGOs and sustainability issues is the diversity of standards. And I think that it's an area where, and we see this in renewable energy or in corporate standards and what I work with, I think we actually do a disservice and hurt ourselves by everybody having to try to come up with their own and wanting to have their branded thing. And A, it makes it harder to hold companies to account. because we can't even all agree on which standard we're going to use. And then it allows companies to game the system too, right? And find where can they fit on that. So in general, actually, no matter the issue, one of the things I'd really like to see is collapsing of the amount of standards. And as a first goal in any of these issues, working towards what is our unified standard and how can we apply that? I think that would allow us to actually start putting some leverage on the other players in the system.
KIMBERLY
Without question, that is one of the biggest problems, whether we're talking about intergovernmental organizations setting standards globally or non -governmental organizations trying to work to create standards to give people, the average person, recommendations. It is terrible. And I know from the international system that when you have sovereign countries, that's always going to interfere with setting these standards. And when you have corporations with huge vested interests, They want to say, oh, yes, we'll sign on to a protocol, but we still want to do our own thing. And the reason that this makes me so angry is because I love chocolate. And for me, the cacao industry and just the lack of standards and the boiling down for what the coffee industry and the coffee industry and others that try to get fair trade standardization. certification that the fair trade organization in itself split with the Fair Trade International and Fair Trade USA just because they couldn't agree on these standards. And this is just a horrible problem. And so when we talk about aquaculture versus wild caught fishing, you've got that same problem going on concomitantly with both of those, concomitantly with both of those, right? Because on the aquaculture side, You've got, well, who's setting the standards for those? For wild -caught fish, you've got organizations trying to set the standards for those. And everybody seems to be at odds.
JORDEN
Well, we often, you know, take shots, I think, a little bit at corporations, rightly so, and the incentives that are driving them. But I think people don't think about, at least on the NGO side, I know everybody's competing for the same money. Right. So having your branded and getting that to be the one is a way to attract dollars like the actual there's less of an incentive to partner and align because that just splits the funding. Right. And I think it's a sad side of the nonprofit world is that when you're fighting for dollars, it actually creates a weirdly more competitive environment that undercuts your overall mission.
KIMBERLY
Well, everybody is, whether it's your corporation and you want to I mean, think of how many corporations have basically. trademarked or whatever, whatever that, you know, specific guarantee registered, whatever their brand of apples or fish or whatever we're talking about, you're getting that very specific brand that's theirs and exclusively their right that they own. But it's the same for you've got intergovernmental organizations who are fighting for funds within, right? Everybody who's under the umbrella of the United Nations is all fighting for that same pot of money that's coming in into the UN as a whole, whether it's the FAO, which has a lot to do to try to advance the interests of the fishing industry, or we're talking about whether it's out of the World Bank.
JORDEN
You just hit an acronym. I don't know. Oh,
KIMBERLY
Oh, sorry. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so bad about this. The Food and Agriculture Organization. Oh,
JORDEN
OK. Yes. Right.
KIMBERLY
Right. And so the FAO, whether it's them or the World Bank, they're all fighting for the same funds, whether we're in non -governmental organizations. They're all fighting for money from who is going to see our flyer that we put out or our spot and give us money so that we can advance our interest. And so. You've got the corporations fighting for whoever's going to buy their stuff. And so across the board, then you've got countries who are vested, their vested interest is trying to increase their GDP and so protect their own citizens. And so everybody is sort of fighting at odds all the time when what we really need, and this goes back to what you talked about in the first episode, is just a holistic approach to aquaculture to wild farm fishing to cacao production coffee production a holistic approach that is going to be better for the planet because in in it just out of consequence it will be better for people on the planet yes and i think
JORDEN
and i think This gets into the funding issue, but one of the things I often wish is that, because what at least, so again, on the NGO side, what often happens is like these standards get created and then they go out to corporations to get signatories, right? Because that lends corporate legitimacy, which can feed in and you get more money and it drives a race to the bottom, especially amongst the biggest multinationals, right? And so if they have a large enough market share, you see the weakening of these standards down to what they'll accept. And one of my pet peeves is just wishing that regardless of companies can meet it or sign on to it, we could have the optimal standard, which we could judge everything else against. And knowing that it's not going to be there tomorrow, but at least then we have an objectively, this is the sustainable standard. A lot of times I think that we give people a false sense of. like security about what they're buying because they see that label, they see that trademark and think, oh, this must be good. I'm doing the right thing, not realizing that it was actually watered down over three rounds of negotiations to what, you know, a multinational they've never heard of. Or as I found out, Mitsubishi owning subsidiaries was willing to sign on to. And I think in the international government space, it's that lowest common denominator of the biggest country, right? That's driving a lot of that.
KIMBERLY
Yeah. And so when we talk about the countries, obviously they're a big actor when it comes to the situation with aquaculture. And it's the same with wild caught fishing, because for them, this is a heavily subsidized industry. A lot that goes into the ownership and ownership rights and fisheries management, whether again, whether it's marine or freshwater research and development. The infrastructure that's in place and available, global North countries are always going to have an advantage when it comes to these things because they have more money and also emerging economies because they are the up and coming. And these are industries that they know they're going to get a turnaround on their investment for, right? The good return on their investment. So it's not a surprise then that China is in fact the biggest when it comes to aquaculture. But we also have big players like Vietnam that has just, their growth has been, economic growth has been exponential in the last few decades. Norway has always been in the game because obviously where they're located and they're like, but also because their whole economy is built around all things, it seems like all things aquatic, you know, from the... deep from all of the natural resources, especially the petroleum, offshore petroleum, right, that they have gotten, but also the fishing and the same with Iceland, although they're not big so far as I know into the, not quite up there in the ranks, at least in terms of volume as these countries, but certainly the vested interest in their huge fishing, so much dependent, so much so that they, on their coins, they've got some fish. I'm not a fish eater, sorry. I think it's cod. Maybe it's a salmon. I don't know. It looks like a fish to me. But also Thailand. Thailand's been huge in the shrimping industry. And Indonesia and Malaysia is up there in Chile. These are all countries that they are all emerging economies and they all have a lot of money that they can throw at this. And so when we talk about the global aquaculture production, again, just to reiterate, we talked about in part one, we're talking about 130 plus billion tons of aquacultured fish. And then if you add in some more, then you've got another 40 million tons almost of algae and seaweed and so forth to support these industries or to be sold off on their own at 312 .8 billion US dollars. And that was 2022. And this is one of those weird ones where it was harder to get more recent statistics. There are a lot of episodes that we do, and it's like, I think it's from almost 2025. And this was actually, this data was from the FAO's 2024 report. So they were still, even they were a little behind. And with economic data, that's not surprising. Usually lag time of a year, that's quite acceptable. But this was really strange to be sort of that far behind in a 2024 report, I thought.
JORDEN
Yeah, most of the sources I was finding, the data was ranging from 2018 to 2022.
JORDEN
If the cutoff and slowdown was like around 2020, it would have made a little more sense to me. And I think after this episode, I'm going to keep digging in a little bit and see what is causing that drop down in data. Because to your point, Kimberly, most of these issues you can find like they're great watchdog groups, they're great NGOs putting it out and you can find it and you just can't with this. But one thing I want to go back to is actually the timeline of incentives. We were talking about multinationals there, countries, and then consumers. And so you think about countries, and especially emerging economies, are focusing on how do we get people out of poverty? How do we increase the living standards of our citizens, typically on an election cycle ranging from three to five years, depending on where you are?
KIMBERLY
Provided there are fair and free and fair elections.
JORDEN
But even, you know, one of the things I think that we take for granted in democracies is how even authoritarian regimes have to respond to public sentiment. Right. Oh, for sure. It goes back to the Roman bread and circuses. Right. We've known this for forever. You have to keep the people somewhat happy. But then you overlap corporations timeline and they are looking at, you know, a four month to 12 month kind of returns. But then also any major investment has to be paid off roughly within five years. That's the kind of average. I mean, it would be you're talking largest multinationals that might have an eight year horizon for paying something off. So that really drives lesser quality. Right. And you're going back to episode one when I was kind of talking about how you can build a multilayered system to produce the best result. That's not necessarily going to pay itself off quickly because the capital investment is so much more significant than just doing nearshore pens and all the problems. And if you're a developing country,
KIMBERLY
Oh, for sure. It goes if you're a developing country, you are very heavily, these countries are very heavily reliant on intergovernmental organizations to pick up the slack for them. And we're talking especially about those that aren't the emerging economies that do have more funding that's coming in from other sources to be able to go into these. These industries that sort of got them off the ground in the first place, but have allowed them to diversify their economy since then. But for most developing countries in the world, 132 countries in the world are still really heavily dependent on primary resources, natural resources, foods, fuels, fibers, water, all of those sorts of things. And so they're turning to the FAO for where do we get this money to... be able to get the startup funds really to or investment funds to not just be on a sustainable, in this case, an actual sustenance level of this that may not be sustainable. But so the FAO developed the food, the blue transformation roadmap as a way to toward achieving the sustainable development goals for the UN. This is all part and parcel of maximizing aquatic sources of nutrition for food security and eradicating poverty. And also like doing this in a sustainable way and bringing women also up to speed and giving them livelihoods and independence. And so there's a big incentive to invest and support aquaculture fisheries because as we talked about in the first episode, there are a lot of people who are settled around water sources. And here is a significant means of nutrition and potential income for people in developing countries in both urban and rural areas. Because this isn't just exclusive to anybody who's been in a developing country, even in the capital city. It's like people are living in an urban area, but it's still like half rural. And so you can see how these sort of things would be sort of mixed together where you would have people doing aquaculture in local streams in urban areas. And it gets to almost a vicious cycle of governmental capacity.
JORDEN
it gets to almost a vicious cycle of governmental capacity. Right. So when you're talking about a developing nation, even just trying to apply, if we could give them, you know, I mentioned I would love to see the maximal standard. Right. But even for some of the voluntary standards, enforcing it is one thing. I think, you know, most developed nation kind of we joke about bureaucracy in the slow. But we have a bureaucracy in a lot of cases to joke about, right? And it's just not there. But for those countries, actually seeing that investment and seeing those tax revenues is a way that can lead to that governmental capacity, but also that industry capture. It's a really vicious cycle.
KIMBERLY
And that is one of the biggest hurdles for developing countries is having enough tax money to have a task base to do anything to draw on. That's just... The statistics are just mind blowing. It's for a different podcast. When I say different podcast, usually I'm like, okay, my field is international relations. I'm talking like an international political economy podcast, not our sustainability one. But that's always where I'm sort of grounded, where my head goes is when we look at development issues. Because when we talk about sustainability, that's a lot of what we're talking about is development. How do we develop? particularly when we look at the overwhelming majorities of the countries in the world, how do we develop on a global scale in a more sustainable way? And so these countries are heavily dependent on organizations like World Fish Center, which is part of, I want to call it the CIGAR, but it's actually CGIAR and it's about agricultural resources and is very Global South specific. It's celebrating its 50th anniversary, this amazing organization that most people have never heard of. And they've been doing this World Fish Center. And one of its main objective is to, like one of its main things is how do we decrease the amount of fish that has been caught that goes to waste? Because again, that's another Global South huge problem is food waste on the Global South end doesn't come because people buy it and they just don't eat it or they go to a restaurant and it's too much. It's because they just don't have adequate storage and means to process. and to extend the shelf life of this. And in this case, you know, this fish is caught and it's just not used fast enough or they don't have, it's too hot and they don't, they can't put it in cold storage because they don't have electricity and so forth. And so the World Fish Center is trying to work toward that end. And when we look at, they cite 60 million people dependent on small scale fisheries and aquaculture, and they produce over 200 million tons of food. And 60 million people who work in these industries, like at the local level, in these developing countries, just in these small scale things. And so for them, they've got these active projects around the world really trying to do those things. And that's really what it's about for intergovernmental organizations and NGOs is to fill in those many, many gaps that are left by what governments can't fill in global South countries.
JORDEN
You know, and for me, I think we haven't really touched on the multinationals that are then really kind of going around to do this. One of the ones that surprised me most was seeing Cargill's name on the list.
KIMBERLY
I wasn't surprised at all. But why were you surprised? I'll tell you why I wasn't surprised if you tell me why you were.
JORDEN
were you surprised?
KIMBERLY
were you surprised? I'll tell you why I wasn't surprised if you tell me why you were.
JORDEN
Yeah, because Cargill's a big company in Alberta where I live. And it's typically we think of it as like feedlot and animal production. I don't know how to say this. It makes me sad that the economies of scale let companies look at what's a new industry we can pivot to do the same thing. Often, hey, one product we were using isn't as popular anymore. How do we grind up chicken to now feed the fish? And so I shouldn't be surprised. That's why I said it's a hard thing for me to say. I shouldn't in any way. But it was one of those sad moments of like, yeah, no, that's what's happening here.
KIMBERLY
And that was why I wasn't surprised at all because it's about aqua feed. When we talk about aquaculture, where does that feed come from? And as we talked about in the first part of the episode on aquaculture is that... These are animals that are being fed by other sources other than what they would catch in the wild. And so they need to be fed. It's like feeding fish into your fish tank at home. And it's really so many cases it ends up being factory farming. And so, of course, the same providers of factory farm food for livestock are going to be the same ones who are going to do it for the fish, right? So you've got Cargill and you've got Biomar, right? Who puts a little mar in their name to make sound like, oh, we're just for fish. But, you know. doing the same thing everybody else is yeah and and you know you think about it so much of this i think is is the image you see not lining up with what's actually happening right so i you know i think it would be easy for people to think well they're farming them in the ocean sure they're they're you know corralling them but water moves ocean moves and it's
JORDEN
the same thing everybody else is yeah and and you know you think about it so much of this i think is is the image you see not lining up with what's actually happening right so i you know i think it would be easy for people to think well they're farming them in the ocean sure they're they're you know corralling them but water moves ocean moves and it's Not that there's fish in a pen. It's the sheer amount of fish crammed in that pen. There is just them eating for an hour. There's a dead zone. And now you're like cramming that many fish into your fish tank.
KIMBERLY
you're like cramming that many fish into your fish tank. Like how many fish can you have in a fish tank before it just becomes overpopulated? And how well is that filtration system really going to work?
JORDEN
And that's one of the, you know, we often talk about that. weird incentives that drive things or the ethical issues and i think that's a great analogy for people to think about like would you really be okay with you know 50 fish for the average size fish tank at home because i don't know many people who would look at that and actually say that is healthy happy or something we should be doing to fish you know one thing i was surprised well i guess i shouldn't be surprised as i'm not a fish eater but
KIMBERLY
know one thing i was surprised well i guess i shouldn't be surprised as i'm not a fish eater but Just like the number of companies, big companies like Mowi, who I'd never heard of, but they're a humongous salmon producer or Nippon, Susan, Kaisha, the huge fish, you know, like producers that I'd never heard of. And yet they're multi -billion dollar businesses.
JORDEN
Yeah. Well, because they're selling down to the brands that we know. Right. Exactly. Right. It's that it's that concentrated upper supply chain diffused to how can we market it to you in 50 different ways. Right.
KIMBERLY
Exactly. Right.
JORDEN
I often think that it's funny. I as listeners will know, I think there are a lot of benefits to capitalism well regulated. And I think one of the downsides is taking the same thing and cutting it into 50 different ways and pretending that it's different and diffusing that again, because if. As a consumer, you're interacting with even just limiting down to five, six different brands of canned tuna. Your ability to put pressure, you think, is by switching to the next tuna brand and that final thing. They're all buying from the same multinational that's doing the actual fishing. And so your actual ability to make that, we often talk about that consumption choice, is diffused, right? It is split up and then you've got Nippon, but not one of us is actually buying from them.
KIMBERLY
Well, and as along those same lines, we have the same issue with the World Bank, right? Who for? Until they were really taken to task around the early 1990s to change their MO, it was all about how can we have economic growth as quickly as possible in any developing country. And that was always and exclusively the focus. And as we talked about in the first part of the episode, when you choose economics over sustainability, everybody's going to lose. Okay, in the short run, sure, you see great economic growth in some countries. And there are countries like Vietnam who were able to turn that around. And they moved from, well, coffee is something that we can grow fast, and they grow these cheap Arabica brands, and lots of people around the world can buy them. They also were having trouble competing in the cashew industry. So they switched to peppercorn, where they could totally outstrip most pepper that corn that comes out of india we see the same thing here now with with aquaculture that you've got you know like okay so in vietnam has been able to make huge amounts of money off of aquaculture in a way that a lot of other developing countries haven't but at what cost yeah well and that's exactly it going it's that timeline problem right it's the the short -term incentives drive so many bad choices but going back to my cod example i think that's
JORDEN
and that's exactly it going it's that timeline problem right it's the the short -term incentives drive so many bad choices but going back to my cod example i think that's Fishing for Canadians really will always come back to the cod example. And now salmon. We're seeing it on the Pacific. We're watching this happen again. It is just that we need a longer... For me, I would be happy even if we got to a two -generation thought process. Indigenous... Many Indigenous communities in Canada look at a seven generation kind of standard and seven generations back influence where you are now and seven generations forward is what you should plan for. And we're so far from that. I would love to see even just what my children are going to have to deal with as that kind of thought process. I think that alone would stop a lot of these. Well, sure, we can crank this out and we can drive this up for five years. But what's that going to really do?
KIMBERLY
Well, and you're talking about generations of people also to take into consideration is generations of fish. Because for that, you know, and that when we talk about aquaculture, the type of fish matters. Because when you talk about tuna, it's like easily two years to maturation before they can even start to spawn. And so much fishing is happening before they can even mature and reproduce. That's a huge issue with this. And so with the others, you know, like, I'm expecting, I'm not a fish expert here by any means, but the smaller the fish, the likelihood that it's going to be a shorter spawning time, right? And so when it comes to aquaculture, some fisheries are super well managed. The Alaskan salmon industry is actually considered one of the best farmed fish and farmed fishing aquaculture. infrastructures that's been put into place and very successful. Then you look at some of the others and, and especially the shrimp industry is just like kind of one of the nastiest ones that, that I'm surprised there are, I don't hear about more shrimp recalls and shrimp, shrimp. I don't know. I don't know if shrimp get E. coli, but you know, like the vegetable or whatever equivalent of, I always think of that as like, oh no, somebody grew spinach that got contaminated.
JORDEN
i like to point to is actually what's happened in british columbia it's canada's most western province on the yeah it's right by alaska yeah they started in response to a lot of pressure on the salmon populations and in a destruction of river systems destruction of forests and then overfishing it was seen that salmon aquaculture could be a great option of how can we you know continue the industry that we want and need but maybe reduce some of the impact and for the first decade it was it was not good it led to a lot of problems and interestingly enough it was actually the cultural and both from indigenous rights that's a big leader of this but also just more broadly the cultural love of kind of wild salmon and seeing that in the spawning that led to a lot of backlash and enough so that the government actually stepped in and said, we're pausing a lot of new approvals until we can see industry respond to this in a better way. The jury's still out on whether this will actually happen, but it gives me some hope that, you know, we can see with enough pressure, okay, we're not going to continue at any cost.
KIMBERLY
And I think it's kind of along the lines of what we talked about with avocados is this doesn't mean you should just give up salmon, right? This doesn't mean you should give up avocados because most people are just going to then say, well, that's just too militant an approach and I'm not going to, why should I bother to do anything? What's the point of living if I can't enjoy my avocados toast every once in a while? But this is where we say, okay, well, tilapia, carp, catfish, they require far less. like inputs for what you get in return versus like tuna or salmon or shrimp. And bivalves, they're great because they help to filter the water and they don't need extra food. They're getting their food just from being in that environment, right? So that having the holistic system in place is something that is win, win, win. And so this helps to reduce overcatching. It helps to reduce the putting pressure on the amount of feed and other resources that are necessary. But it's also something that's good because I lost my train of thought.
JORDEN
No, I was going to jump in and talk about I know I took some shots at the, you know, proliferation of standards. And I think that, you know, I hit the problems with that. Well, but for listeners, I would if there's a takeaway for you today when you're thinking about if, you know, you're like me and you do love fish to eat, I look for the Aquaculture Stewardship Council. I think that is probably when I was looking into this, both the best I could find, but also one of my things about it is it's not gatekeep. They're free standards that are widely available and already cover 13 types of fish. So, again, going to your point of it's not just, you know, oh, you have to either don't eat it or only eat this one thing. Because, again, I could I can already hear listeners. Well, have fun with that, Kimberly and Jordan. That sounds great for you. So, yeah, I would say look looking for reputable standards and then shifting to your consumption that way that rewards those producers who are following it also is a signal from the producers to that that standard setting body that this is working, which allows them to invest in more and grow that. And that's a positive feedback cycle that I think we can contribute to again with. If you're going to eat that fish anyways, okay, let's do that. But then how can we shift that so that you're having that positive feedback rather than a negative feedback cycle?
KIMBERLY
Well, and that's actually what I was thinking about at the time that lost my train of thought was that like, okay, so enough people clearly liked tilapia, that they were willing to substitute that. And there's a demand for that. Made me think about how lionfish became an invasive species, especially in the... the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic and the coast of the United States and people were just trying to figure out how do we get rid of this lionfish and so they started having like cooking contests like who can make the best recipe and catch contests like who can catch the most of them and so forth and really trying to redirect like okay we've got this resource that's run amok and causing all sorts of problems for us. Can we figure out a way to make this marketable? And that's going to be something else. So basically, it's another way to, hey, maybe it's something you'll actually enjoy. So why not open up your pal a little bit to try and experiment with some other things that will actually be more sustainable instead of just always going for the salmon every single time?
JORDEN
Exactly. And I think it's actually a great way about the level of interconnectedness. in food and cuisines right now in the world is that people are more open to trying things new than I think even you know 15 years ago seeing it you it was always like well this is exactly like the thing you want but slightly different right and now there's much more of a this is interesting this is new do you want to we want to try it and in some ways leaning into that and then highlighting new options is going to be something that can drive that cultural shift in it.
KIMBERLY
I think fusion food plays a lot into that. Obviously, the rise of social media with TikTok and people doing recipes and so forth and just more people traveling around the world, I think, is just open to people. And also just all that soft, soft cultural power. People way watching in the United States and around the world, presumably more Korean television shows into K -pop and into J -pop. And those things that weren't around before, and now we see, well, what are they eating? Okay, so now we've got, you know, Korean tacos. So we're mixing that together. I think that's part of it too. And I think that that's a really positive thing in the direction, the way that things could go in introducing new foods that because they came, you know, if we're talking about developing countries, like these are Mexican recipes, you know, from, they're like, you know, how many different ethnic groups in Mexico alone? And having all of those different types of cuisine within Mexico. But if people are eating rice and beans and whatever, you know, you've got some foundational things that are sustainable and have been sustainably produced for a really long time. Let's try some of those.
JORDEN
Exactly. And this is one of the things I found interesting about this was it's not always a go for the best aquaculture standard as your option. I think the one we've mentioned a lot today that is better wild caught is shrimp. At the end of the day, there's not a great shrimp aquaculture industry. And tying back into our mangrove episode, it's one of the drivers that we're seeing of cutting that down. So this one is a little bit more, I think, on the consumer to do that work and to think it through. But again. You can look at the types of fish you like to eat. That would be my first. If we're starting here today, what can you do sitting at home? Just think through in the last six months, year, what kind of fish you eat and cook. And then to look at, it's not hard to go and look at, okay, where is this coming from? What is better, aquaculture or wild caught? And that's, again, you know, put two hours into looking at that and then turn your brain off. I don't know,
KIMBERLY
don't know, Jordan. That's an awful lot to ask from the average person who's just trying to get together a grocery list and get a meal together and try to eat at home. And I sympathize with you because I, okay, so we think a lot of like, obviously, you know, like that is exactly the sort of thing that we both do. But knowing from years of teaching, my student is just saying, you know, Dr. Weird, there is no way like that's not going to happen in the real world. Michael, Michael's my reality checker to this day. Like, Kimberly, nobody is going to do that. What do you mean?
JORDEN
But I am betting on the self -selecting amazing audience we have to be in the small percentage who would do it. So that was less a general. Yes, I would love it if everybody did that now. But I do understand that, again, you can't you can't do that over everything. Right. But you can. But I mean, I don't know if I've said it on the show when I tried building a personal carbon calculator and finding everything a few years ago. That was a six month project for me on the side and it would need to be updated almost every year. Right. So that drops off. But no, but it's just if if seafood is something you love and you're listening to the show and have self -selected in, that would be my recommendation. Not only that,
KIMBERLY
only that, because also it's actually in your self -interest for both economic and sustainable reasons, sustainability reasons, too. do that legwork because the more demand there is for more sustainably produced, the price will go down. It will be around a lot longer. I mean, this is why seafood industry are part of industry associations that actually try to figure out how can we be more sustainable because they know they're going to lose their bumblebee tuna or their snow crab, whatever, if they don't try to conserve these resources that are out there. So we have like the Global Salmon Initiative that is a major coalition of salmon farming companies to say, okay, wild stocks, we might have an issue here. How can we turn this in and still have return on our investment? Also, we've got the International Salmon Farmers Association, which also then covers wild stocks. And the European Union has got theirs. And the United States, that's how I feel about the U .S. lately. Again, a different podcast. The U .S. has got their own and then also the regional corporations governing all sorts of varieties of different fish. And so this is like, OK, we know we need to do something about this or we're going to actually push these fish into extinction.
JORDEN
One hundred percent. And I think one of the pushbacks I often hear is, well, how do you why do you think this will work? Why do you think you can put the companies on? And I know even in our conversations, I think most listeners know that I'm a bit more systems and like that's what needs to be changed. And Kimberly, you know, a little bit more, I'd say on the like we both believe in both. So I'm talking general here. But the personal action, my answer is always because we see it on the negative side. Avocados 20 years ago were not eaten like they are today. And companies and industries saw that growth, saw the interest, and then made it widely available and then saw it boom. And it's that initial interest in growing it, leading to the larger supply to the boom. And I think that all we're saying here is that if you take that responsibility on yourself and can shift that consumption, that is giving the incentive to those industries to say, oh, hey, we have a consumer base over there that wants it. We will be rewarded for doing this. Because at the end of the day, going back to like why it is driving this, a lot of times you see them not take those actions because it's a risk. They don't know will be rewarded economically. Or at the end of the day, will I be fired a CEO because I made a massive investment and no one bought it?
KIMBERLY
But at the same time, by having that take off and suddenly become this popular thing, then we see these unsustainable practices happening. So it's kind of a catch 22. And I would disagree with you, actually. I am. Yes, I am the personal action, especially when it comes to me and myself and pushing it on me. But I am definitely a big picture person. Like, no question. I get I have to work my way down from the top down to try to figure out what's going on in the world and what's going to work.
JORDEN
You're fair. There's not the right way of saying it. Definitely. criticism just like no because even like when we talked about as i was saying it i was starting to hesitate something well kimberly's always the international government and the thing it's really hard like making the direct framing so no i i appreciate the the correction there and and you're right though is i can imagine a with all of these issues when we make the changes i can imagine a podcast in 10 years saying okay so problems we have now with this new thing because we pushed it that way even like when we talked about as i was saying it i was starting to hesitate something well kimberly's always the international government and the thing it's really hard like making the direct framing so no i i appreciate the the correction there and and you're right though is i can imagine a with all of these issues when we make the changes i can imagine a podcast in 10 years saying okay so problems we have now with this new thing because we pushed it that way
KIMBERLY
For sure. And I think so when it comes down to it, it's it's we run into the same problems as we talked about in the first part, the same problems with governing and institutions and countries interests and personal interests with aquaculture and seafood farming in with what we do with land based farming of any sort. And so it's about. How do we figure out, are we willing to do the legwork to figure out, invest the time to figure out what's the best option is? Because it's not always necessarily evident. And when it comes to seafood, how is it sourced? Because it's not just how it was sourced, but in some cases, actually wild caught is better for the environment than farmed. In other cases, it's not. And so then there's that additional layer on top of that. And then it's just a complicated thing because when it comes to tuna fishing, right? Line fishing is completely, totally fine. It's the best way that you can source tuna. But most companies are out there using these big, giant, like they're just big, giant nets that they suck up. They take up everything in the net with it. All of the additional seafood that is caught and sea turtles and everything else that they don't aren't actually harvesting just go out. They're dead. And so, you know, that becomes also this added layer of consideration. And so. At the end of the day, it's like everything else we talk about with sustainability. It's really complicated and very complex. And unfortunately, there's not a simple, straightforward answer to this.
JORDEN
No, but I'm actually, it was funny. Last week, I was talking with some people who had listened to our bag episode and they were telling me it was one of their favorite episodes that we've done because there wasn't a clear answer, but it broke down the trade -offs and they were able to sit down. And just make an active decision about what kind of bags they want to use. And knowing that they needed 50 kind of to 100 uses of that, you know, cotton bag made them gave them a clear standard. And I think for a lot of this, it's just being accepting with yourself that you're not going to do it all at once. And then picking something and making that the focus for now and not worrying about that next thing until you've got that and making it manageable. Right. It's about taking these as bite sized issues. So maybe it's not. looking at your entire seafood consumption, right? But it's saying, I really like salmon. So I'm going to look at salmon. I'm going to narrow it down. So it doesn't, and it doesn't feel so out of my control. It doesn't feel so sprawling. And then you can see that actual impact. And I think that's a great way to kind of approach sustainability issues.
KIMBERLY
And that is where I'm with you definitely on the personal action part, which is what can I do that allows me to stay sane in the process and yet make better choices? Or if I want to make a change in my life, and it's not I'm so if I'm beyond the low hanging fruit, okay, so I don't eat fish anymore. So okay, what's the next thing I mean, for most people, that's not a low hanging fruit, but for me is, you know, whatever, not an issue. So what can I do next? And, and I like I like your suggestion of just instead of trying to just deal with it all at once. Like maybe people who really want to make changes. Okay. What this month am I going to think about? What am I going to work on this month? And, and having that sort of roadmap in front of them and saying, okay, did this work or not? And okay, maybe it didn't. And maybe this just wasn't a change that I'm able to make. Okay. Well, there are other things I can do. It doesn't mean I'm a horrible person because I wasn't able to do this one thing.
JORDEN
Yep. No, and having, having grace. I think as we were talking here and I was reflecting, I think I think of you as the personal because I feel guilty sometimes. And I'll be honest with the audience. Well, no, I mean, you know, you and Michael do so much from my perspective and looking at it, do so much more that I haven't hit yet. Right. And I think that that that gap. And instead of feeling guilty about it, though, I, you know, especially as we're doing these episodes, I look at what's that next little thing. Right. And I think having some grace for yourself, both in terms of your overall impact, but also in comparison with others, like this is not it's not a zero sum game. And any little thing that you can add in and that slow improvement that really adds up over the course of your life.
KIMBERLY
It's always strange when people say, and Michael says that to me, oh, you do so much better than I, you're such a better person. I'm like, no, I'm not. It's just, you know, different things, different part in my map and my road life, whatever. But I think of it much more as a, when I see, the reason I ended up adopting a vegan diet was because I had a student who was a vegan and I had been reading about it for years. I'd been a vegetarian for a long time and reading about it, I'd been teaching about it, doing research on it. And it was just to the point where this woman was just like so much more like, I should be like her, you know, like, why can't I do this? I just need to make this one little change in my life. And that for me was a lot easier than actually the time making that shift from being a vegetarian to being a vegetarian from an omnivore. Just because I think for me, where I lived and at the time, my choices were so limited. It was really, really quite a commitment to make that change and have a well -rounded diet. But but I see I like to think of people who are doing things like, oh, like, I'd like to be more like that person because. you know, kind of aspire to that rather than feeling guilty because I'm not doing it. And maybe some of that guilt is the driving factor behind it. Yeah.
JORDEN
There's always a little bit involved. I really liked how you said that, though. It's a it's a building process, right? You had been teaching it. You had been looking at it for so long. And that I'm assuming so, like, correct me wrong here, but that actually probably that process took away some of the objections your brain would naturally throw up. Right. And that was like. I often feel it's sometimes an emotional response to some of these things, like a fear based, right? Like, oh, I can't do that or to make it so much worse. But taking that time, listening to podcasts like ours and others gives you that information to make you feel comfortable with that eventual switch, right?
KIMBERLY
Yeah, we hope so anyway. Yeah. So if you enjoyed our podcast episode, make sure you check out part one if you missed it on aquaculture. If not, then great. Thank you for listening. We hope that you will rate and review us and tell your friends about us. We're at splanetpod at gmail .com if you want to talk to us. We're on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube also. You'll find our show notes on splanetpod .com along with additional resources from today's episode, stuff on my Substack post. which is awesome. As I always say, someday you'll read it and you'll be convinced and say, oh yes, I do agree. That is awesome. So thanks for listening and have a sustainable day.
