Fish feed in aquaculture, understanding what goes into feeding farmed fish

0:00 I've talked about aquaculture before on this podcast, but I've never really talked about what farm fish actually eat. It turns out that the fish feed is far more complicated than I ever imagined, and in this episode, I'm joined by a friend of mine and marine biologist Marine Cusa, who's uncovering the hidden ingredients inside fishmeal and fish oil. Today we explore the complexities of how the food we give to farm fish connects to wild fisheries, local communities in West Africa, and even the health of Penguins in Antarctica. We're gonna talk about all that on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. Let's start the show.

0:40 Hey everybody. Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you could speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. On today's episode, we're gonna be talking about something that I don't normally talk about and that's aquaculture, but aquaculture where we're talking about the food that we feed. The fish that are being aquacultured. So it's the food that is being given to eat by the fish that we farm in aquaculture. It's a subject matter that I don't get to talk about often because I don't know a lot of people within this area, but Dr. Marine Cusa, who's a good friend of mine and a marine biologist and a Pew Marine fellow is actually here to talk about that because she heard the podcast, she's been listening to the podcast for a long time last time we got together, she's like, Andrew, we've got to talk about this.

1:24 And that's what we're here to talk about. And a lot of things is to bring up topics that you don't normally get to hear about. And I think that's really important. Speaking of which, as you know, I've been crowdfunding for a podcast on seagrass, a little bit different from aquaculture, but on sea grass so that we can talk about seagrass research, conservation and restoration all in one podcast, and connect researchers together who are doing research, and might be a little disconnected from each other just because of geography and just because not everybody can talk to everybody. We're trying to bring the community together. We're trying to bring out just the topics that are very important to seagrass and a podcast called The Seagrass Effect is gonna be started once this crowdfunding campaign reaches its goal of 15,000 euro.

2:07 You can fund, help fund this podcast because the one thing that I believe is that podcast is for the people and it's for you, the audience member who wants to hear about seagrasses, who wants to hear about conservation and research of topics that you never really hear happen in the ocean on a regular basis. And that's what we're gonna be doing with sea grass. So if you go to speak up for blue.com. Slash seagrass, that's speak up for blue.com/seagrass and you can donate to my project through the Balean platform. It is hundred percent safe. It is great. It's a new organization that just launched and we launched our program and I can't wait to get this podcast started. And if you do end up donating, please reach out to me.

2:47 I'd love to hear from you. And let me know why you donated and what you're looking forward to. So thank you so much for that. Let's get into our show, Dr. Marine Cusa is here. We've talked about doing a podcast together. We actually have done a podcast 'cause she's back. We did a podcast on Seaspiracy, and talking about how bad that movie was for understanding fisheries and the true things that are happening to fisheries that are causing overfishing, that are causing fisheries, slaves, and so forth. And, not thinking or listening to what was in that awful, awful movie, but she's here today to talk about fish feed, fish meal, and fish oil. Those are very different things, which she explains in this podcast, and it really helps take away the complexities of what this actually is what this feeding fish for aquaculture actually is.

3:29 And I know aquaculture is a controversial topic, but this is something that we need to talk about because just like in wild fisheries, there's a lack of transparency within the whole fish feed business and we need to find out what actually make up this fish feed, this fish meal, this fish oil, and also where they're coming from and how it's affecting the local communities of where that fish population is being fished, how that's affecting the local communities. And we're gonna find out all that on today's episode with Marine. So here's the interview with Marine Cusa. Enjoy and I'll talk to you after. Thank you Marine for joining us on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. This was a lot of fun. I really like when we can talk about a topic where somebody knows so much about that topic as Marine does, and be able to just break it down for me as well as for you and just to be like, Hey, this is what's happening.

4:18 It's a very interesting story where there's a lot of like dips and curves of what's happening and how people are getting around and how people just don't know what's in the fish feed that actually feed the aquaculture fish that we eventually eat and how it's affecting local populations where they get the fish that make up the fish feed. That's right. I will not say that again because I have no idea if I'd be able to do that that quickly. But that's what's really happening and I just love how there are people like Marine who are following this, who are doing research on this, who are looking at genetic testing just to find out what fish are in a lot of the fish feed. And we're gonna find out the results because we're gonna be doing a series of this and following Marine's research throughout her time doing it. Being able to understand the industry of fish feed in the present and in the future.

5:01 So this is gonna be really great to really unravel. I'm looking forward to it. Did I ever think I was gonna do an episode on this podcast when I started this 10 years ago about fish meal or fish feed or fish oil? absolutely not. I did never thought of that. But now it's interesting. It's interesting because a storyteller as great as Marine is here to tell this story, but she's also here to research it, do genetic testing and find out the proportions as well as what type of fish are in this fish food. So that's very, very exciting. If you have any questions or comments on this, please let me know in the comments below. That's, if you're watching this on YouTube. If you're listening to this through your audio podcast, all you have to do is go to how to protect the Ocean on Instagram that's at How to Protect the Ocean. DM me or you can email me by going to Speak up for blue.com/contact.

5:42 Fill out the form and it goes right to my personal email. I'll answer you as soon as I can. I wanna thank Marine in for joining us and giving us all that information. Thank you for joining us and listening and for supporting the podcast. And don't forget if you go speak up for blue.com/you can support the launching of a new podcast called The Seagrass Effect. All things Seagrass. Conservation research and restoration. I can't wait to bring that to you. Until next time, I wanna thank you for joining me on this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin from the True North Strong and Free. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.