Dr Bryce Stewart 0:06
Music. Like most Aussies, my summer holidays were at the beach from a very early age, well, pretty much from birth, I think, and I just absolutely loved it. And according to my dad, when I was five years old, we were coming home from one of our summer beach holidays, and I was crying in the back of the car, and he said, What’s wrong with you? Bryce, you know, cheer up. We’ve had a great holiday. And I said, but I just, I just want to, like, stay by the beach all the time. When I grow up, I want to be a professional holiday man. And my dad’s like, Hmm, that’s not really a thing, but you could become a marine biologist. And like, you know, I’m only five years old, or what’s that? We didn’t have Google in those days, so, you know, I asked him, he said, like Jacques Cousteau. So basically, from then on, that was it. I was hooked. And then, fortuitously, when a few years later, was only eight, my dad decided we needed a bit of adventure in our lives, and so the family was moved to Papua, New Guinea. And in preparation for that, the whole family got face mask and sorkle for Christmas, and we went down in southern Australia, a beautiful place called Wilson’s promontory, and we stuck our heads under the water for the first time with with a mask. And I can still picture that first image underwater. I think all I saw was a bit of kelp and, you know, a bit of sand and whatever. But it just was like it opened up this whole new world that I don’t think you know exists until you see it for yourself. And then, yeah, of course. We moved to Papua New Guinea. Started off because I was still quite young, doing lots of snorkelling, and then eventually learnt to scuba dive when I was 13. And again, you know, the reefs, coral reefs up there, they’re still amazing, but they were probably even more amazing in those days. So I was really set up well, and I certainly have a lot to thank my parents, for you know, enabling my fascination with the ocean and taking it forward from there.

Hannah Stitfall 2:17
This is Ocean’s life underwater, the series exploring our oceans and the fascinating life within them. I’m Hannah sitfall. I’m a zoologist, wildlife filmmaker and broadcaster, and I’m bringing you along as I learn everything I can about our watery planet. Over 3 billion people around the world eat seafood regularly. That may even be you listening to this podcast right now. But when was the last time you really thought about the journey that fish takes from ocean to plate, and does the label on the packaging tell you the full story? Let’s find

Caroline Bennett 2:56
out. And you thought, okay, great. All we have to do is change the world and we’ll have all that fish stocks back, if only it were that

Speaker 1 3:02
easy, lab grown seafood. So this is a piece of fish that tastes and is almost chemically the same as an actual piece of fish. But it’s not. It doesn’t come from a fish.

Hannah Stitfall 3:14
This is oceans life and water

today, I’m speaking to Dr Bryce Stewart, a marine ecologist and fisheries biologist whose research aims to find sustainable solutions that balance the need of fisheries with the need for marine conservation. So hello, Bryce. It’s lovely for you to join us here today, can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do? Yeah,

Speaker 1 3:45
sure. So yeah, I’m Dr Bryce Stewart. I’m a senior research fellow at the Marine Biological Association and also an associate professor at the University of Plymouth as well. And I’ve been, I’m a marine biologist, I guess that’s fundamentally what I do, and I’ve been doing research into marine biology and particularly fisheries and marine conservation, for over 30 years now, the time has flown by, because you know this, for me was a dream from an early age, and and I’ve had a lot of fun doing it,

Hannah Stitfall 4:14
and from your initial love of the oceans and fascination With it, you’ve gone on to become a fisheries expert. I mean, how did that come about? Yeah,

Speaker 1 4:24
so I always liked going fishing myself, you know, to catch something for the table, although I’m not a great fisherman, so that didn’t always happen. But as well as loving the ocean, I also had that interest in fishing and fisheries, and I like to eat seafood. So when I was sort of deciding, okay, I want to study marine biology. And in fact, to begin with, I studied Zoology at my undergraduate degree, because a lot of people said to me, you’ll never get a job as a marine biologist. It’s like wanting to be an astronaut, basically. And so they said, Look, do something more general to keep your options open. And. I did. But in the third year, the final year of that first degree, I was taken on by a guy called Greg Jenkins, who was a fisheries expert, and I did a project with him, and I realised that’s what I wanted to specialise in, although I do do other stuff, but yeah, most of my work is centred around fish and shellfish and fisheries biology and also, increasingly, how we can better manage fisheries and look after the environment as well. So, yeah, I do a lot of work on marine protected areas as well these days. And

Hannah Stitfall 5:34
how much do we rely on fishing worldwide?

Speaker 1 5:39
Yeah, it’s a good question. So fishing, I guess, is split up into marine and fresh water in terms of the fish that’s produced from fishing, most of it comes from marine fisheries. It’s roughly about 80 million tonnes a year from the oceans, which sounds like an awful lot, and it is, but overall is very important. So it’s estimated that about 3 billion people in the world get 20% of their protein from fish, so it’s a very significant part of our diet. And

Hannah Stitfall 6:11
how have our consumption trends changed towards seafood here?

Speaker 1 6:18
I mean, in recent years, I think they’ve been relatively stable. But if you go back in time, British people would have eaten much more local fish, so things like herring and mackerel and other shellfish and things like that would have been much more popular, you know. So you think about kippers, which became a very sort of popular way of eating herring, but you don’t see them very much these days. And if you mention a Kipper, a lot of people go, Oh,

Hannah Stitfall 6:47
my grandpa always used to have kippers. Grandma and Grandpa in Essex, they’d always have kippers exactly,

Speaker 1 6:53
you know. But like, you mentioned them to a lot of people, and they go, oh yeah, kippers, gosh, they’re pretty smelly, aren’t they? You know, I made the mistake once I got some kippers when I was staying in a caravan. And while I was out for a day or so, somebody disconnected the power to my caravan. Oh, and when I came back, I couldn’t sleep inside it for a couple of days. So I’ve actually never eaten kippers. I’m not selling them very well, but I did. I didn’t enjoy eating them. But, you know, I’m, I’m somebody, I guess, who is a seafood lover and does like a variety, but I’m a bit in the exception in that way.

Hannah Stitfall 7:33
And when we think of fishing, we might imagine a huge boat that’s hauling a net out into sea, or somebody on their own just casting a line into the water. But there’s, there’s lots of different types of fishing, isn’t there?

Speaker 1 7:47
Yeah, absolutely. So there is an enormous range, like you say it can start with one person with a hand line, right up to a super trawler, you know, which could be several 100 metres, so, like four or 500 foot long, even, and everything in between. So there’s not you people often like to categorise things into different types of fishing, you know, industrial versus artisanal or or super trawlers versus other boats. But it’s actually quite difficult, because it’s like, just, where do you draw the line? But yeah, there are lots of different methods. For example, like you say, you can start with just a hook and line. Then you can use things like traps or pots to catch species such as crabs and lobsters. You have gill nets, which are fixed nets that are put either on the seabed or or floating on the surface, which rely on the fish swimming into them, then you’ve got things like trawlers, which, again, are nets that can be towed behind a boat, and they can either be up in the water for more what we call pelagic species. So this might be herring or mackerel, or they can be down on the seabed, and that’s where you would catch things like Codd and Haddock, for example. And I guess another method is dredging. So this is what’s used for scallops in this part of the world where these are sort of a bit more heavy duty things that are designed to sort of pick the scallops out of the seabed.

Hannah Stitfall 9:14
And how do super trawlers impact local fishing communities?

Speaker 1 9:20
Yeah. I mean, I think in the UK, again, despite what you sometimes see in the media there, probably, well, it varies. A lot depends on the species. If we take the case of the mackerel, probably not very much, because the fisheries are operating far offshore in northern Scotland, where, you know, small boats are just not able to operate. This is areas which get extreme weather conditions. Other places like they do, sometimes operate in the English Channel or off the south west coast of the UK as well, and they are affecting coastal stocks. But it all depends on how well they’re being managed and if they are. Regulated, and they’re, you know, they’re allowed to catch a certain amount of the fish, then that’s technically okay, but it depends what else they’re catching. So some of them have real issues with cetacean by catcher whales, the dolphins, for example, and that’s clearly, you know, not a great thing at all. So we don’t want those fisheries going on anywhere, really, unless they can find ways not to catch those threatened species.

Hannah Stitfall 10:25
And can you tell us about some of the sustainable fishing practices?

Speaker 1 10:31
Yeah, it’s a really interesting one, right? So sustainability depends on two things. One is about how much you affecting the number of fish in the sea, and so that’s the first thing, right? Are you only removing so many that they’re still able to sort of breed and and produce infinitely into the future? Fish has the potential to be the ultimate renewable resource, right? If we only harvest them at a sustainable level, they’ll continue on into the future, indefinitely, and provide a lot of, you know, valuable food source, but also important livelihoods in areas where, often there’s not many other alternatives, and in some countries, absolutely, really important, important for culture and history and Even tourism. You know, like a lot of our little coastal fishing villages around the UK, would not look the same if we didn’t have a fishing industry. So there’s, there’s that side of things, but then the other side is how the fish are caught. And so we talk about low impact versus higher impact. So low impact would be somebody maybe fishing with a hook on line or fishing with traps, for example, pots, where they’re just catching a few fish and they’re not damaging the sea bed and they’re not catching other species. But obviously, then you can have other activities, you know, like very large bottom toed trawl nets or scallop dredging, which can have a significant impact on the seabed, and in catching the species thereafter, they can actually damage a lot of other species at the same time.

Hannah Stitfall 12:12
Now, we’re quite often told that eating seafood isn’t sustainable. What are your thoughts around this? Yeah.

Speaker 1 12:19
I mean, if you look at the official figures, I do hear that phrase going around, but if you look at the official figures from the United Nations, that are about 63% of the world’s fisheries are being fished sustainably. That’s in terms of number of fisheries. If you look at it by weight, it’s about 79% but that does mean that roughly a third of fish stocks are being fished unsustainably, and unfortunately, that number has been going up over the last, you know, several decades. So despite a lot of improvements in the way that fisheries are managed, you know, we are still seeing this degradation in the general health of fish stocks, and that’s that’s actually a challenge with seafood, is to know where it’s coming from and how it was caught. And you can take advantage of things like eco labels, like the Marine Stewardship Council, or advice on what seafood you should be eating. So in the UK, we have the Marine Conservation Society good fish Guide, which you know, is on an app these days, and I think that’s the best way forward to look for these guides that you know tell you what the best choices are, because somebody else has done a lot of work to advise what’s coming through those schemes. So

Hannah Stitfall 13:39
we’re hearing increasingly more about fish farming. Could you tell us what fish farming is? Yeah,

Speaker 1 13:46
sure. So again, fish farming represents a huge variety of activities. The one that people think about in this country is salmon, even if they know that salmon is farmed. I mean, so salmon is the most popular fish in the UK to eat Atlantic salmon. If you go to a supermarket, it will be farmed salmon. I mean, getting wild caught salmon these days is is a really high end specialist thing to do. Personally, I wouldn’t recommend. The wild populations of salmon are in a very precarious state. So farm salmon mostly actually put in these, what they call pens in the ocean. So they’re like, great, big round nets, and they sort of float at the top and then at the bottom they’re closed in. The salmon are, you know, bred in a hatchery, normally on land, and then put into these nets, and they’re fed for a couple of years to grow up to the size that that people want to eat them at. That’s one type of fish farming. It’s quite labour intensive, because you need to put these structures in the water, you need to give them a lot of food. You need to treat them for diseases and parasites. But then we have other types, like um. Shellfish farming, like for oysters and mussels and clams, which is actually completely different. Again, you might need some structures. You might need long lines or floating cages and things, but shellfish you don’t need to feed, because they just take their food from the water and you don’t need to treat them with anything. So that’s a much lower impact type of farming, and then you even farm seaweed. So what’s becoming increasingly popular is to farm kelp, for example, which is some seaweed provides food sources, but some of it can be used in in other industries as well. So there’s a huge range of different types, and they all contribute to fish farming?

Hannah Stitfall 15:41
Is it a sustainable solution? Yeah, that’s, you know,

Speaker 1 15:45
another good question. So there’s one school of thought that says, Well, okay, we’ve, you know, we can use fish farming to replace or, or at least fill the gap that wild fisheries are not able to fill anymore, because, of course, we’ve got a growing human population, right? You know, in my lifetime, I think, which is a little while, half century, the human population is more than doubled, and it’s still going. And where will it level out at nine or 10 billion? We shall see. So there’s been this increasing demand on the ocean for more food people also have, in general, become more affluent and eaten more meat based products, including fish. So what we’ve seen to replace the fact that wild fisheries can’t fill that gap anymore is this incredible growth of aquaculture. In the 1970s it was really a very small industry. And now, like I say, it provides half of the of the fish in the world. Some of that, quite a lot, comes actually, from fresh water, some from marine is it sustainable? I think it depends on how it’s done. So, you know, some of it, I think, is very sustainable. I mean, like, if you take the case of farming shellfish like mussels and clams and oysters, as I said before, you don’t need to feed them. But more than that, they actually clean the water, and they sequester carbon into their shells as they’re growing. So they’re helping, doing their little bit for climate change, and they’re very nutritious. So that’s a very positive sort of way of farming seafood. If we take salmon farming, you know, I’m much less of a fan of that, because you have to feed salmon, other fish to grow, and they have improved. In the past, you needed to basically feed a salmon about if you wanted a salmon to grow by a kilogramme, you had to feed it three kilogrammes of fish food, and most fish food was coming from other fish, things like anchovies off the coast of Peru, used to be the main source of salmon feed. That has improved, but it’s still an issue. But then you’ve got issues like the fact that because the fish are all in close proximity, you need to treat them for diseases and parasites, and in doing that, often, that’s done with antibiotics or other chemicals which can leach into the environment affect other species. The waste from the fish as well, goes down into the sea bed and can actually be quite toxic. And then you’ve got issues like these salmon in the farms do escape and and can cause issues by interbreeding with the wild fish, because the farmed ones have a very small genetic pool. Basically, they’re kind of all the same, because they’re all bred from the one brood stock. So that’s messing up with biology. And I guess there’s probably more issues. But another one to mention is, is welfare. So, you know, a salmon is a miraculous fish that would normally, you know, sort of do this incredible migrations up into streams, rivers to breed and then, and then, you know, once the hatch go back out and sort of span in huge areas. And in this situation, they’re all packed in their 1000s in these tiny little nets. And if you see footage of this, you often see a lot of injuries and deformities and things like this. So, yeah, I’m not a fan of of the salmon industry for those reasons, and also because, you know, if we take the industry in Scotland, it has been told it needs to improve the way it does things. There’s been parliamentary inquiries into this, and they haven’t listened to them. They’re continuing to grow the industry without addressing these issues. So, you know, no one’s perfect, but you should at least try to improve, and that doesn’t seem to be the case very much. So do

Hannah Stitfall 19:53
you think we’re going to be seeing more fish farming coming up in the next few years?

Speaker 1 19:59
Yeah. I think, to be honest, despite what I’ve said, I think it’s inevitable because of that growing human population, and it looks like we have basically reached capacity in terms of wild fisheries. Even if we managed everything as well as possible, we probably couldn’t take much more out of the ocean in terms of fish sustainably. And so we do need, we do need aquaculture or fish farming to fill that need, but it needs to be done properly. You know, it needs to be done with respect for the environment and and that’s where there’s work to do. I mean, I would like to see more farming of shellfish, like I said, because that’s a much more benign way of doing things. Something else that people talk about as a good solution is multi trophic aquaculture, which sounds quite complicated, but this is where you you might have a fish farm or a seafood farm that’s growing various different species at the same time. So there might be fish, but then you also might have seaweed, which is using the nutrients in the water, that from the excess food, from the waste from the fish. Also you have shellfish, for example, suspended underneath the fish cages. Then you could have sea urchins on the on the sea bed as well, which is sort of mopping up the waste on the bottom. I think that sort of approach really has a lot of mileage as well. That would be good. I mean, it’s happening, but we need more of it.

Hannah Stitfall 21:30
That’s almost like wild fish farming. Yeah, as I was saying

Speaker 1 21:34
that was thinking, this is quite ironic. What we’re talking about is recreating a wild setting. Yeah. I think the difference is that we can, within reason, maximise survival and production of things more than we could in the wild. So people often talk about fisheries management, thinking that we’re managing the fish. We’re not managing the fish, right? I’ve been here for hundreds of millions of years. We’re managing the people, the human activities. But in agriculture, it’s different. So you are actually managing you’re deciding how much to feed things, what you’re going to treat them with. If you take the case of, say, I don’t know, farming scallops, which is often done in these nets underwater, you’re actually protecting them from predators by doing that. So it’s a bit like if you think about farming on land, you know, we’ve taken what were once wild animals and we’ve worked out ways to make them more productive. I’m not saying there’s not issues with that, but that’s kind of the same idea with with fish farming. So, yeah, but the best, the best examples, are where you actually make it more natural, rather than less natural. You got to get that balance right.

Hannah Stitfall 22:48
I mean, is there going to cover time, where it is going to be we just need to eat less fish, or is that not a solution?

Speaker 1 22:58
I think it definitely can be a solution where you have that choice. You know, if people don’t want to eat fish, that’s absolutely their right, their you know, their free choice. And, you know, I guess that’s more popular in some places than others. You might have a variety of reasons for doing that. There are other countries where that’s not an option. And like I take Seychelles, because I’ve done some work there. Beautiful part of the world, these spectacular, mountainous islands. There’s no land for very little land for farming. So they absolutely rely on the sea for their food. So for them, and there are many other countries and places around the world like that, you know, you can’t the alternative is to import, you know, which is sadly happening, farm chicken from Brazil. Like that’s the second most popular thing to eat in, say, shells half a world away. So that’s not really a solution. So I think, you know, it’s a case by case basis. I guess the other thing that may or may not emerge is lab grown seafood. So there’s a lot of, you know, experimentation going into this. So this is a piece of fish that tastes and is almost chemically the same as an actual piece of fish, but it’s not, it doesn’t come from a fish, you know, and the technology is there to do this, I can see that you’re not entirely impressed.

Hannah Stitfall 24:23
I don’t know how I feel about that. For ice from artist, I know, and

Speaker 1 24:27
I think you’re right. Like, if we take the case of farmed salmon going back a few decades, when it was first on the scene, people didn’t want to eat it because they were like, it’s not natural. But then they’ve grown to like it, and they’ve grown to forget about some of the issues. No, I don’t want to eat a lab grown piece of fish, either, but maybe it’s not going to be the solution at the moment, it’s very intensive thing to do. It’s probably exorbitantly expensive. I think they need a lot of energy to do it. So. There’s issues with climate change and all the rest, but it’s possible it might be part of the solution in the future. It supplies some seafood, but definitely not all. Now,

Hannah Stitfall 25:11
a lot of people could feel quite disconnected about where their food comes from. How are you communicating quite complex facts to a wider audience.

Speaker 1 25:22
Yeah, I mean, I guess I’m, I’m doing podcasts like this one, but I do, I do make quite an effort to get involved with doing media and social media, and, you know, doing my best to, I guess, clarify some of these issues and encourage people, for example, to eat more diverse range of species, but also to know where their fish comes from and how it’s caught. You know, you could say that about many things. I think we are generally disconnected with with our food in particular, but also probably our clothes and, you know, many other products for that matter. Yeah, I do see it as my role to try and do my bit. You know, in days gone by, scientists were supposed to just stick to the lab or the, you know, their field work, and just write in very dry ways. About Yes, well, we found this and this was statistically significant, and not really have opinions about what it means for the world, but I’ve never been a fan of that, because we are I’m in a privileged position, you know, as I said, I’ve had 30 odd years working on the ocean, working on marine issues, but some of my work actually has real implications, you know, not just for the health of the ocean, but also for people’s livelihoods. And so I think it’s really important to communicate that as well as you can. And you know, if we can educate people better about where their seafood comes from and how they make more sustainable choices, then that’s ultimately going to benefit everyone and the ocean at the same time.

Hannah Stitfall 26:58
And what are your hopes for the future of sustainable fishing. I mean,

Speaker 1 27:02
I would love a thriving ocean, and, you know, thriving livelihoods as well connected to that ocean, which are not just fishing, but also other things like tourism, educational opportunities, etc, etc. There’s this sort of emerging idea of blue mind. That’s that I think people can understand when it’s explained to them, that being in on next to the ocean is really beneficial for your mental health. And if you are somebody who who either is a fisherman or a snorkel or a scuba diver, but even a surfer, if you see marine life thriving marine life when you’re out there, then it’s going to be it’s good for you, you know, it’s good for your state of mind. Somebody said to me the other day, if you see a dolphin and it doesn’t make you smile, then you know something wrong with you. You know, it’s always a good day when you see a dolphin, right? They just make us happy for some reason. I mean, they’re just cool creatures, and so let’s have more of them, you know, let’s try and get back at least part of the way to how things used to be. But we’ve got to tackle, you know? We’ve got to make fisheries more sustainable, but we’ve also got to tackle some of the other issues, like climate change and pollution and invasive species and other things like that.

Hannah Stitfall 28:22
Well, Bryce, thank you very much. That’s all we got time for today. It’s been fascinating talking to you. Thank you.

Dr Bryce Stewart 28:30
It’s been my pleasure. Thanks for having me on the programme.

Hannah Stitfall 28:38
Thank you so much to Bryce for speaking to me today. We are nine episodes into this series, so by now, you should all be following us over on our social channels. We’re at oceans pod, but if you’re not, now is the perfect time. Don’t forget that this series, we’re also offering listeners access to some very special bonus content. If you want to get an exclusive look behind the scenes. Head over to action.greenpeace.org.uk. Forward slash oceans. Dash podcast. This podcast doesn’t just explore how blue planet’s breathtaking beauty, but also exposes the dangers that threatens it. To find out more about Greenpeace’s work to protect the oceans and how you can support go to greenpeace.org, forward slash oceans.

We’ve been learning a lot about how broken the seafood system is but what’s actually being done to fix it? One organisation committed to change can be found in Plymouth. Soul of discretion is a collective of small scale fishers dedicated to sourcing fish and shellfish with minimal damage to the marine environment. And here to tell us more. More is their founder, Caroline Bennett, and she joins us from her restaurant Moshi.

Caroline Bennett 30:09
So my name’s Caroline Bennett. I started Britain’s first conveyor belt sushi restaurant back in 1994 in Liverpool Street Station in London, and that was really the beginning of my journey into understanding the responsibilities somebody owning a restaurant has on their procurement policies and how they they get their fish. And doesn’t end with a fish, of course, but being sushi, the fish were the most important part, and it was probably about 1997 so we’ve been open for about three, four years, when we first started feeling the effects of declining fish stocks with the Bluefin Tuna. And I remember sort of saying to my chefs, guys call ourselves a Japanese restaurant, we haven’t even got Toro this magnificent belly of the Bluefin on the menu. And they’re going, Yeah, well, we did try and get it, but we just just couldn’t find it wasn’t there. So things led to me looking into it, and I got through to this amazing marine biologist called Carl Safina in Monterey Bay Aquarium. I phoned him from the fax machine, because that was the only means of communication back in those days. And I said, Carl, you probably don’t hear from any restaurateurs, but I’m hoping you can help me. I’m really struggling. How can I find a good supply of bluefin tuna? I own a sushi restaurant, you see, and there was this, like pregnant pause. And he goes, now, Caroline, you wouldn’t put rhinoceros on your menu, would you? I was like, oh, so the penny dropped eventually. But even then, it was like, what would you mean? It was so disconnected. I think people’s business livelihoods and restaurants with the influence of the impact they were having on a wider and marine environment. So that was the beginning of the journey, and flipping out because it been a long one. And you know, whilst we might be probably better than, I’d say, any other sushi restaurant in London, except there are a few vegan ones, they are off the scale wonderful. I would still not say we’re sustainable, you know, and we could argue that point 100 times, couldn’t we? Whose definition of sustainable Do you want to use? But we’re doing as much as we can in the context of what we’re doing. And I think for restaurateurs over that period, so over that 30 years, amazing examples like St John’s that have nose to tail eating, and they’ll just sit there and ripe, swipe things off the board when they’ve run out through them, through Hugh Fernley, whittingstall, Jamie Oliver, Rick Stein, all these amazing chefs, they’ve really helped shape the supply chain to restaurants, if you really care. Not the same for people sat at home trying to figure out how to buy fish. And so it was really with wanting to fill that gap that I set solar discretion up in 2016 So solar discretion, essentially is a fishmonger at its very basis. It’s a community interest company owned by the fishing community that land to it. We work exclusively with the under 10 metre vessels. So they’re the ones that the government define as small scale. They have a relatively low impact on the marine environment. The fishers are paid a fair price for their fish, so demand and supply doesn’t dictate what prices they get. We give them a fair price and on every single pack. If you’re sat at home wondering how and where your fish was caught, we trace back to the vessel, and we give them method of catch. So how it was caught is really important, rather than necessarily what it is. The biggest problems in the fishing industry, as I saw them when I sort of started on this journey, was clearly stocks declining. And I think one of the things that again, it was watching things in videos and things from Greenpeace, actually, at that time when I think Blue Planet series with Attenborough said, you know, we’ve come out. We’ve saved the whales. Greenpeace have done it. They’ve put moratoriums on fishing for iconic species such as the whale. When the world comes together, things can change. So that was 25 years ago, and you thought, okay, great. All we have to do is change the world, and we’ll have all our fish stocks back. If only it were that easy. So I think the first census was, the was the extraordinary decline in stocks. And even in the short time I have been a fishmonger, I’ve only been doing this since 2016 and yet there’s, there’s a precipitous decline in stocks that the inshore small scale fishers can get, and a lot of this is because of larger vessels fishing close up to the six nautical mile limit and hoovering up with incredibly efficient, incredibly productive and energy Intense vessels. But they’re able to hoover up massive quantities of fish in a short space of time. And it’s, you know, it’s the riches for the few and livelihoods for the many that I think soul of discretion is really trying to focus on whilst I came into it as an environmentalist, I also recognise. That without supporting the low impact fishers within that when the time comes that industrial fishing is no longer efficient because of, I don’t know, there aren’t enough stocks to take in one swoop, or the carbon emissions and the fuel use is just so great, or the sea beds are so damaged, there’s nothing left, whatever it is. And we also, okay, yeah, great. Let’s go back to the small scale vessels. Then they might not be there unless we protect them. So it’s that social aspect as well that I think is really important. So Seoul is essentially different because it buys exclusively from the low impact small scale vessels. I don’t still know of anyone else that’s doing exclusively that. And of course, that’s not always easy. When the weather’s blowing a gale and the small scale vessels, sometimes they won’t get out for weeks on end, two, three weeks on end. So we will take their fish, we fill it, it, we process it into, usually 300 gramme packs of fish, skin on but no bones ready for a family to sit at home, open a packet and just put under the grill for a really nutritious supper in 10 minutes. That’s all it takes to cook. But the only way that works is because, of course, people want to eat every day, not once in a blue moon when the fishes have landed, is that we blast freeze anything that we’ve not sold within 24 hours. So if we get the fish, we’ve not sold it by the end of the day, it gets blast frozen it sits in our freezer, and that is the only way that we can honestly say we are able to supply 365 days a year from the exclusively under 10 metre vessels. If you didn’t freeze, then you’d have to accept large gaps in your supply chain, and that’s probably from a supply issue the biggest factor so freezing, but locking in that freshness. You know, it’s locked in. We’re not selling a fish that’s 10 days old. Its quality is locked in. And I think I’ve mentioned the fair price paid to the fishes, although I am beginning to think twice about that, I’m not that. I’m thinking twice, but my goodness, in the again, in the short time I’ve been down in Plymouth, the prices of fish have just gone higher and higher and higher and higher to the point where I’m beginning to feel sorry for local people. Plymouth is not a rich city, and you know, can they afford to eat their own local fish? For the most part, they can’t. So fair prices are fishers. They’ll always know what they’re going to get. It’s one thing, and I think the traceability back to the boat is the other really key thing that we we highlight against any other supplier, so you will know exactly where your fish came from, with the vessel name, but also the method of catch. So it’ll tell you if it was line caught, if it was trawled, if it was Gill netted, if it was potted. It’ll give you that information. I think it’s a lot harder for the small scale guys now than even it was 10 years ago. And some of them must be thinking, well, perhaps it’s time to hang in the fishing gear and go and work on a bigger vessel. I suspect what keeps them there is the very nature of the job. By their very nature. There people that want to go out to sea, largely by themselves long time, but for long periods of time. It suits them. You know, it’s a beautiful day job if the weather’s turning out amazingly. But they are having to become far more clever about how they’re fishing. So they’re having to vary the locations of where they’re fishing. But they’re also becoming much more diverse in their fishing methods. So perhaps they’d be using tangle nets for a couple of months, and then they go to pots for another couple of months, and then they go to Line catching for other periods of the year. And in the past, they’d have been masters of probably one, possibly two methods of catch, and now they have to be much more au fait with a larger array of fishing techniques, and they probably have to push the weather as well. So when they really should be looking at those waves and saying, it would be so much safer for me to stay in, they’re thinking, Okay, well, I’ve not made enough to cover the rent this month. I’ve got to go out to sea. And they push weather where really they shouldn’t. So there’s a real danger aspect to what they do as well. I would love to say that all small scale fishers are inherently in it for protection of the environment. I mean, ultimately, they’re hunters and gatherers, and they’re the last wild catch on the planet, and they need to make a living from it. Nonetheless, there’s no shadow of doubt that they have a far keener sense of the environment that they’re working in than a paid labourer might on a on a larger vessel, that that’s, that’s what they do. That’s just in their very nature, of the of the work that they’ve got to do to protect themselves, as well as the fish. You know, they’ve got to be aware of their natural environment. But I think what has changed of late is that they were and again, Greenpeace paid a part in this, didn’t they by saying at some point, was it 10 years ago, even quite a while back, that not all fishing is the same, and I think there was a point where fishing was given such a bad name that they were feeling down at heart, they were feeling tarnished by the same brush. As the industrial fishers that are pillaging our stocks and raping our seas, and I think there is more outlook now for them to be seen as a distinct and separate entity. And that’s really why soul of discretion is there to see, to give to give them a voice, to give them a platform, to let the consumer understand that I hate using the word consumer. Why did I use the word consumer? People? We are people to let people know that they are fishing from vessels with a lower impact to the marine environment. Gives them a sense of pride. And I think when we first show them our labels with bass line caught by Willie and Bill on Kirsty Lynn, and they see their name on the label. There’s a sense of pride in that. I think I’d like to think that they also, therefore will take care of the fish a bit more, because if they know their name is being put to it, then they don’t want to be selling a fish that’s sub quality. So there’s a sense of pride, I think that the industry could really benefit from, and that’s something that soul is really seeking to do, give them a voice, give them a name, give them a purpose. It’s hard to be hopeful. It really, really is. But I just feel if you don’t follow, if I ignored my gut instinct to do something, if you can’t change even a little bit in your own corner of your own planet and your own world, then what hope do you have of anybody else ever changing anything for you? So for me, it’s, it’s more of a personal journey than change the world. Guys, you know, that’s up to everybody else, but it’s living with yourself. I think that counts you.

Hannah Stitfall 41:45
We’ve heard about the supply chains in the UK. But what about further afield? Are other countries making the same mistakes that we are? Let’s find out from Dr Ali ubar the oceans lead for Greenpeace Africa.

Dr. Aliou Ba 42:02
My name is Dr Ali UBA. I’m the oceans campaign lead for Greenpeace Africa. Here in Africa, we are working mainly in West Africa, tackling all the issue that the ocean are facing, including communities that also rely on the oceans. Today, I’m joining from Senegal Dhaka. That is the capital of Senegal. That is a coastal area of Senegal, like the most western area of Africa, I can say so it’s the capital. It’s most of the population is around this area, and there is, like, lot of activity, including fisheries. Fisheries is something that is very important for Senegal and mainly for Dakar. Senegal. There is lot of coastal communities also that live here that also we are working with through Greenpeace to support and try to make the life better in Senegal. We have around 700 kilometre of course, and all around this coastal area, there is lot of villages that have like coastal communities. And all these coastal communities rely on the ocean through fisheries and also like activities related to oceans. So the people that rely on the ocean are around 600,000 people that rely on the ocean in Senegal. As you know, the oceans are very important for the planet because of the impact on the climate, but also on the food security, the fact that it provides food for people. But the oceans are facing this lot of threat. As you can see, there’s lot of overfishing. Most of the fisheries are over exploited at this moment. There is also biodiversity destruction, like marine ecosystem restriction, there is lot of destructive industries that are operating inside our oceans that is like a big threat on the climate, but also on communities that rely on these fisheries, on this ocean to feed themselves and feed their communities. So the oceans at this moment are under threat, we can say it like that, most of the fisheries are over exploited in West African countries, mainly in Senegal. So you know, the most important fisheries for the local communities are the small, pelagic fish. That is very important because of the accessibility and the prices, but now this fishery is over exploited. People like fishermen are not able now to have enough fish to maintain the activity sustainable. So they cannot pay like all the like expenses that they do before going fishing, and they do not. Have also enough fish to feed the market, the local market, the fishing communities use, like a lot of min for example, through the campaign that we are doing, we give them facts and figures and evidences. So they use these facts and figures and evidences to do advocacy to the government to protect more the fisheries and the oceans, and protect also them, but they also use all the ways. For example, they do they they own surveillance. You know, to alert to do alert to the government, because we also done some capacity building on surveillance at sea. They use tools to do the surveillance. And they also have, like lot of conflict at sea between small scale fishing and industrial fishing, because there is some industrial fishing that do not respect the limit of where they can fish. We work with most of the fishing communities in Senegal, but also in Mauritania, in the Gambia, and mainly in Senegal, we work with the community leaders, like the people that are fighting for fisheries sustainability. And as example, we created very impactful coalition that include like communities from different area in Senegal. They are doing, at this moment, an advocacy to call for sustainable fishing. So this kind of like initiative that we done as Greenpeace is something that we plan to replicate in other countries. So they are going to doing a Senegal tour, the coastal tour, to meet all the community leaders, like all the communities along the coastal area, to do like what we call capacity building, but also to let them know to advocate for sustainable fishing. And this work is also combination with a lobbying that they are also doing. They also meet authorities, give them, for example, what we call memorandum and statements around how we should manage our oceans to be sustainable. So this is, like the work that we are doing with communities. They just like, finished to, like, last two weeks. I’m optimistic. I think that at this moment work with communities, because before, the communities was not very vocal. At this moment, we have, like the most vocal communities in West Africa around fisheries policies, around sustainability of fishing that is relatively very good. We was also able to make sign the new Senegalese government a charter for sustainable fishing that is also relatively very good, and that’s why, at this moment, they are trying to push to change policies to be more transparent. For example, I can give you an example. This year they publish the list of fishing vessel that operate in Senegal that was like five years demand that was pending, and we also push these authorities for more transparency. Also to stop the fishing agreement between Senegal and European Union. This is also something that was done. So we think that we are on the right path. So we can continue to put the pressure, continue to alert them to see how the changes can be like, how we can achieve the way to have sustainable fishing for communities in West Africa.

Hannah Stitfall 48:34
Next week, we’re breaking down the complexities of marine politics, and we’ll be sharing our hopes for the future of the oceans. You

Megan Randles 48:42
have to have hope, and you have to continue to doing it, and you have to continue to try and engage as much as possible, because if you don’t have hope, then nothing is going to change. And we live in a democracy, and they are supposed to represent us, and if they don’t listen to us, then we make them listen to

Hannah Stitfall 49:02
us the This episode was brought to you by Greenpeace and crowd network. It is hosted by me, wildlife filmmaker and broadcaster Hannah stitful. It is produced by Vicky Wright, Catalina Noguera, Robert Wallace, George Sampson, Kate Stevens, Steve Jones and Christina irivnak. Sound design is by Crawford Blair. The music we use is from our partners, BMG Production Music. The team at Greenpeace is James Hansen, Alex Yale, Genet, Mayer, Marta of charik, Flora, havesi, Becky, Malone and Alice Lloyd Hunter. Archive courtesy of Greenpeace, thanks for listening. See you next week. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai