Joe Rogan on Overfishing

What in the fuck is that? $5,000 a pound. Japan's king of tuna! Is that racist? Is that racist? The way I said it, it seemed racist. The first tuna auction of the year, at Tokyo's new fish market, set a record price. More than $3 million for a giant bluefin tuna, a critically endangered species. Yeah, see that's where you gotta go, man. Is it critically endangered? And if it is so, should you really be cutting that fucker up? Yeah, I don't know about that. When I was in Hawaii, we caught some yellowtail. My youngest daughter loves fishing, so I went out with her and we went on this boat and we were actually jigging, there's like this shelf and this big drop-off and these yellowtails hang out there. We caught a gang of them. And one of the things they were saying was that the big island had a farm where they were farming yellowtail. They had this gigantic, sort of netted-in area where the fish couldn't leave and they were trapped in this area. But then this storm came and broke down all the nets and the fish escaped. And now they're everywhere. And you're catching them. We caught like six or seven of them and they're fucking big, like 10 pounds and you're fighting them on a light spinning rod. So it's like, pfft, like really awesome, awesome time. But they were unbelievably delicious. But these are non-native. They brought them over there and released them. They better start doing that with other fish. They really should set up these fish farms and just release these motherfuckers out into the ocean. Because they're just taking nets and pulling them across the bottom of the forest. It's not even, it's like such a... There's something to be said about going out and catching the fish, like you're saying, rather than taking a net and just scooping everything up in its path. Everything, turtles, dolphins, whatever the fuck is there, everything gets jacked. And the problem is, you know, there's... Who knows how many countries have boats that are doing that? And they're all operating in international water and I don't know what the fucking laws are, but they're just pulling what... And they, you know the other thing they do that's fucked up? When they're done, a lot of times they cut the net loose and they just leave it in the ocean. They just drop the net to the bottom of the ocean. It's funny, they have the regulations for like hunting, but they don't have it like in the ocean, you know? It's because nobody owns it. You only own like a certain amount of your shore, like say from Malibu out. I don't know how much the United States owns, but we only own a certain amount and then it becomes international waters. International waters is like kind of anybody could be out there. It's weird. I mean, it makes sense, but there's no... I don't think there's any... I think if you have a boat, you could just kind of go anywhere that's international water. Just no regulations. Here, what is? What parts of the ocean are considered international water? Territorial waters or territorial seas defined by a 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. It's a belt of coastal waters extending at most 12 nautical miles from the baseline, usually the mean low water mark of the coastal state. So 12 miles. So 12 miles out or 13.8 miles? Yeah, nautical miles. Oh, nautical miles is different, huh? Interesting. Why is it different? How weird is that? Nautical miles is different than regular miles? The fuck? Get it together. Don't call it a mile then, you fucks. Imagine, hey buddy, I'll meet you at 12 miles. All right, 12 nautical miles and the guy's a mile and a 0.8 away from you. Although stores use the label sushi grade fish, there is no official standards for using this label. The only regulation is that parasitic fish such as salmon should be frozen to kill any parasites before being consumed raw. The best ones are assigned grade one, which is usually what would be sold as sushi grade. But what about sashimi grade is what he said. It's the same thing? Yeah, that's why I looked up and that's what popped up. You're not supposed to eat salmon raw, apparently. Salmon is a freshwater fish and salmon, it can fuck you up. I wish you could pull a tuna out of the water. Right out of the ocean. Yeah, I have a buddy of mine who went tuna fishing off of San Diego. They caught a tuna and they sliced it up and ate it right there on the boat, right after they pulled it out of the water. That I haven't done, but that to me would be the best eating right out of the water. I mean, I just hope they don't wait until there's nothing left before they start doing something to save them. It just doesn't seem like, I mean, if you're taking a fish and you're buying it for $3 million, it's almost like a scene in a movie, right? That's like the end. This was one of the last tuna. Look, they bought it for $3 million and everybody's smiling and they're cutting it up. It's like, hunting regulations are critical, but you know what the population is. It's very, the fish and wildlife departments have all these different methods they use, whether it's using reports from hunters, whether it's they fly over with airplanes and helicopters and things along those lines. Whatever they use, they have a bunch of different ways that they can determine what the population is, then they determine the population of predators, how many animals are lost, how many animals are shot during any hunting season, and then they determine how many tags can be divvied out. So like say if you live in an area, there might be 500 tags available, but there might be like 2,000 hunters that are applying for those tags. So most people are not going to get it. It's a very smart way. They've really got it down to a science, and because of that, there's more white-tailed deer in this country than even when Columbus landed. They've got a really good system. If they could figure something out for the ocean. The problem is you don't have to get everybody to cooperate. They can't even get Japan to stop killing whales. There's certain Japanese folks who they have this really sneaky thing they do, and there's this conservation group called the Sea Shepherds, and they catch these fucking people all the time. But what they basically do is they say, we're a research boat, and they use a research boat and go slaughter whales and then sell the whales, but they pretend that it's research. But if they kill a whale, certain countries still value parts of whales. They make things with it. What the fuck do they make with whales? I think they make some perfumes, like what? But people are still killing whales. It gets weird when things are smart. That's when it gets weird. Something as smart as a fucking whale. Yeah, I mean, in these countries, they're using, like you said, parts of the fish for... They put it on their mantle. They got like a, I don't know, a tooth or what have you from a whale or a shark or whatever it is. Well, that's the big thing with rhinos. These guys cut the rhino horns off and they drink it like in a tea and it's supposed to make your dick hard. See, this is what I'm talking about. You know these things. I mean, I don't know how the hell you remember all this stuff. I've just forgot the mileage off the coast. 13.8 nautical miles. 13.8 miles, 12 nautical miles. 1.8 difference at 12 miles. Who knows how long you get to 500 miles out? You got to do the math. It's crazy. It's stupid. Yeah, I don't know how to remember these things. It's a fucking screwy brain. I wish I had your memory, Joe. That's what I'm saying. It's not the best, I'm telling you. There's a lot of shit that I don't remember. I just remember things that are interesting. It's an odd sense of memory. But the rhino horn thing is kind of sad because it doesn't even work. Especially in this day and age where people can get Viagra, it works. But there's something about it, I think, in some Asian cultures where it's considered like a sign of wealth. You drive a Rolls Royce, you drink rhino tea. This guy's a baller. He doesn't give a fuck. He drinks rhino tea. Oh, man, the guy's drinking rhino tea. What a guy. But there's something about that. Yeah, I want to eat an extinct animal. I want to bring a woolly mammoth back to life and shoot it in the head. There's some people that are like that. They want to be the ultimate conqueror. I want to eat a whale dick. There's people that are like that.