Spearfisher Valentine Thomas on Sustainable Seafood

So when did you start hunting? Because you're all about your whole message is like sustainability, right? And this is the knock on fishing, is that people have an idea that fishing is not sustainable. And Jordan Peterson actually talked about this yesterday and he said what they figured out is that if you take large blocks of the ocean and make them off limits to fishing, because all the fish live within 40 miles of the shore, most of the fish do. Instead of you take large blocks of these areas and designate them as off limits to fishing, then the fish grow and thrive in those areas and then they venture out into other areas and it's like, it helps, it's a win-win. Well actually that study was retracted in October. Damn it Jordan, you fucked up. Sorry Jordan. So basically it's what they call MPAs, which is marine protected areas. And there was the studies who came to the conclusion of the fact that if you increase by something like 4 or 5% the amount of marine protected areas, you would increase the fish stock by 20%. And the story was retracted because the doctor who was in charge of the study apparently the study, the result was, our other study was depending on the result of this one and it was a bunch of stuff that was just like kind of not okay at all. And like the other guy who called, there's a paper where there was her brother-in-law, so she broke a bunch of rules when it comes to kind of the scientist. The guy who wrote the paper was her brother-in-law? Yeah, there was like some weird things going on and so the story, the paper was retracted. The paper being retracted in the scientific industry is pretty intense. Here it is. A version of flawed MPA study implicates larger problems in MPA science. God damn it, Jordan. So they not only found that out, but they also found it out that basically she had vested interest in governmental policies. So there was also, there was a political meddling into all of this. Right. So she had a bias in what she was trying to achieve from that study. So this is also a pretty good website. I'm partnered with them and they're University of Washington and they talk about a lot of sustainable seafood and things like that. You partner with them? Yeah, we just build up a blog basically together to talk about sustainable seafood. People are interested in seafood, which is about six people in the world, but we're a great little community. People are interested in seafood. A lot of people are interested in seafood. So what is, what's the best way to keep ocean fish and ocean wildlife sustainable? It's such a complex topic. It's very, very complicated because there's a lot of assets to it, right? But it's just the thing that I tell people is tell me what you believe in and I'll tell you what to eat because there's not one answer. You know, you can think about protecting the ocean. You can think about carbon footprint. You can think about modern slavery. You can think about. Modern slavery. Oh, there's a lot of people who works on boats in different countries that are barely paid. Really? So if you're buying fish, you might be buying fish that was caught by slaves. Yes. So there was a big documentary called Fish. Okay. So just to clarify on that point though, is the conspiracy talk about that a lot. But you have a French accent and sometimes when you talk, it's fine. English is your second language. I only have one. You're better than me. When you say conspiracy, nobody knows what the fuck you're talking about. You might see conspiracy. It's a film. It's a documentary. Yes. Sea conspiracy. So it was a Netflix and they kind of portraits a pretty doom and gloom situation of fisheries around the world. And it's, there's about 80% of the seafood being consumed around the world that is still sustainable. There is issues. There was issues in third world countries and in remote places. The United States is the best country in the world when it comes to sustainable seafood. Really? It's about 99% of the seafood being consumed that's coming from the US that is sustainable. Oh, well that's good. So when you say sustainable, how did they do that? Are they doing that with offshore farms? Because I know they have some of those because I was in Hawaii and we were, shout out to my friends at Strike Zone. We were on a boat and we were catching these yellowfin tuna and this guy was telling me, one of the gentlemen that I was fishing with, that these fish are not even native to that area. That they were a part of like a farm. They have this enormous like kind of roped off area where they had left, like I don't know how they do it. They have like a large net or something like that. Enormous area. And they would feed these fish and they were using them for sushi. And they were capturing them so they live in the ocean. They would feed them little fish and shit like that and plump them up. And then a storm came and fucked up their net and then they got out into the ocean and we were catching them. And apparently there was one area where you could catch a lot of them and that's where we caught them. And I was like, this is really interesting because could they do this all the time? Like, is this a way to like reintroduce fish into the ocean? Because they behaved like, wow, fish. It's not like any other animal that you raise in captivity and they become domesticated. Fish just have that little robotic go eat kill like switch in their brain. You don't have to teach them how to do it. I mean, it's farming is like, it's a pretty touchy subject because there's good farming, there's bad farming, you know, same thing. Like things with animals. Yeah, but when you think about fish farming, it's the same thing as cattle. It's basically the exact same thing. So it is good way to raise it and it's bad way to raise it. And it's I think it's just about finding that species. Tuna's a bit tough because they're pelagic. So it means that they're migratory fish. Yeah, migratory. Yes. And so it's, you know, what they often do, especially with bluefin tuna, like tuna that have very high value is they're going to catch it in a wild and they're going to put it in a pan and go to fad them up, making sure like they're nice and chubby and then they can sell it too. How do they catch them in a net? Yeah. So the same is probably one of the, it accounts for a lot of, I think over 65% of the tuna catch around the world. It's a great way to catch tuna because it's basically you throw a net around a school of tuna. So there's very little bite catch because you just grab that school and then that's it. Okay. So you don't have to worry about dolphins. Yeah. So the problem becomes when you use what you call a fad. So fast is the fishing or grading device. And what it does is it creates like a little habitat normally it's like some stuff hanging and then you have the small fish, then the medium fish and the big fish and the predators around. So what did a lot of people do is they put those fads in the middle of nowhere, it creates an ecosystem, throw in gigantic sari nets around it, pick up everything. That's when the bite catch gets terrible. But per se when you're catching a school without fads, the bite catch is very, very low. So bite catch is what they call a collateral damage. So it's a bunch of fish that you don't want. What do they do with the fish that they don't want? Like what if they do that and they throw a net and they get like manta rays or something that they're not looking for? They throw them overboard. Most of the time they're dead. A lot of people try to say like, why don't we just keep the bite catch when it comes to fish? Obviously nobody wants to eat dolphin apart in other parts of the world. What parts of the world eat dolphin? Japan, I think. Do they eat dolphin? I think so. I know they kill them. That cove documentary is horrible. So you can buy it at the store. Really? Yes. I want to see dolphin meat on a shelf. Let me see that. That's like people meat. It's pretty intense. They're very, very smart.