I have lived in SE Alaska for 44 years. I live on a peninsula with a natural salmon stream at the head of the inner bight of my harbor. We used to have a native Pink and Chum run, Steelhead and a small run of Silvers, along with Dolly Varden Nd Cutthroat Trout. The bay used to be lively during the 70's, 80's and 90's with jumping salmon all summer long, as the various species had different timings for their runs. By 2005 the local salmon hatchery had started ramping up production and we were getting overrun with hatchery fish who were lost and trying to find someplace to spawn. They have almost completely wiped out all the native salmon. They forced a change in the timing of the Pinks that used to be first but now spawn later than the few chum who get in. There are literally no Silvers or Steelheads anymore and some Dollys. The bay used to be very alive with other sea creatures - Dungeness and King crabs, starfish of multiple species, clams, snails, sqid, Herring but now these populations are rare. No influx of life-giving salmon. The bears and eagles don't even get their share and have turned to alternative foods, often detrimental to the duck population. Also, commercial fishermen now stretch their nets almost fully across the whole span of Lynn canal so only a bare minimum of fish escape. I see Salmon hatcheries as a disaster
Thanks for this comment. This kind of information needs to be more widely appreciated; nothing happens in isolation in our world, we are all interconnected. Humans aren't the boss of all, we're just another member in the community of life, and we will either be that or we won't be, now or never.
Thanks very much for "the rest of the story" as we just came back from an Alaska cruise including a tour of the Ketchikan salmon hatchery. There we saw the massive influx of salmon coming to spawn upstream, caught and their eggs harvested and hatched. The young hatchlings were released again when they were 4-5 inches and were told they have a survival rate of 95% vs 2-3% hatched in the wild. Made sense to us, but we never heard of your side of the story. Thanks very much for relating your experiences!
Yes, and let's not ignore the fact that rising sea temperatures make an inhospitable environment for much of the marine life, as well. Just one more factor, among so many others. The earth is out of balance.
A salmon river runs through my front garden here in Ireland and the salmon runs are slightly better than they used to be. I'm an angler myself (mainly sea fishing) and practice catch and release with the vast majority of what I catch, even though I am a seafood lover, but I never could take to the taste of salmon. Atlantic mackerel, haddock and monkfish, are perhaps the tastiest fish going. That said, I happily support any conservation programmes that prioritise the health of aquatic ecologies.
I worked in the Scottish salmon industry for 21 years. We forged all of the paperwork with regard to anti parasite treatments and especially antibiotics. We routinely over medicated and overtreated in the last 6 months before point of processing. I've never eaten or allowed my family to eat farmed salmon or trout.
Your story is interesting, may I ask some questions as a concerned consumer? Why did they use more anti-parasitic & antibiotics than regulations dictated? Was it really necessary, or were they just being overly cautious not to lose the harvest? Was it all the time, or just during certain weather conditions, like in winter cold, or in times of lower rainfall, or they lost a pen fence so had to stock existing pens denser (or just overstocking pens to begin with)? How long ago did you leave the salmon industry? Do you think this is still happening today? Looking forward to your reply, thank you in advance! 3:52
@@deemelody2396 there are RUclips videos on the industry - it shows the horrible conditions the fish are in - it seems the companies are trying to get them to market anyway while fighting a losing battle with nature (cramming in too many fish in too little water, with diseases and deformations raging).
We lived by a small river in the 60's and 70's, where I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. All through my childhood, when the salmon were spawning, the quantity and variety of fish was mindboggling. We used to joke that you could walk on thier backs to cross the river without getting your feet wet. By 1978 the generations of returning salmon had been decimated by poor logging practices, so that during the peak of spawning season it was difficult to spot a battered old Humpy now and then in the amber waters. The bountiful rainbow assortment of various salmon species was gone. This event helped inform my world-view and turn me into a conservationist. Thank you for your good works.
I live on a river the northeastern USA, the very spot was once a treasured salmon fishery for the natives famed for its productivity in the pre-industrial times. Dams and pollution completely killed them off. The river has been cleaned up and fish ladders added, and they have tried to reintroduce salmon but it was not sustainable. The spawning grounds are just not there anymore and the water is warming too much.
I remember seeing wild salmon jumping up falls on the Penninsula…also, up until about 25 years ago, it was easy to buy wonderful quality salmon..now, the fish is so inferior…..the high quality fish costs a fortune…endangered species prices…..people that have moved to the NW have no idea what good salmon should look or taste like…..
I grew up in Western Oregon and have similar memories of the fall run. They did just kind of stop in the early 80s. It is beyond sad. You can still see it in Alaska, even that is down though.
Alaskan here, born and raised in the salmon industry. Here’s an option for you to not have to remove salmon from your diet all together. -Look for a cannery in an area of Alaska that isn’t supported with hatcheries and buy your fish from them directly. All canneries I know of offer direct sales to consumers or you can find a fishmonger in that same community and purchase from them. My biggest recommendation is Troll caught (not by trolls but Trollers 😅, that’s a fishing style and boat type) in southeast Alaska, Juneau to Ketchikan. They are individually caught and treated as prizes. Thank you for a very thoughtful and researched opinion.
Why not? He is referencing a cannery. The fish they sell has been canned. Easy to ship and much more tolerant of temperature variances (ie doesn't have to be kept cold or frozen). May cost a bit more, but if you really want Salmon...
@@jeanneganrude8549 Exactly. I used to eat canned salmon when I was a kid. As an adult, I've been eating the "uncanned" variety. I will never go back to canned salmon again. Also, canned food has a high sodium content, not good for someone like me who has hypertension.
lol realy you consider a troller better :d:d , i understand you wana keep your job and won't say how bad it is and ofc supper trollers are worse but , all the by chatch , all the smaller fish that dy inside the nets or other like dolphins or other surface breathers. not saying you are worse but def. equal bad
I worked in a marine oil (fish) refinery a number of years back in a technical role. I did some trials on omega 3 levels of off cuts from farmed salmon, which we intended to process for what we were hoping what would be omega 3 rich oil. Unfortunately, test results showed there was almost no omega 3. The reason was salmon were fed protein pallets rich in omega 6 rather than, as they would in the wild eat food rich in omega 3. When you are a salmon, there is nothing truer than the old saying, you are what you eat.
Feeding my farm with Rabbit and chicken manure from animals that have eaten a wider variety of plants grown and wild harvested sure makes vegetables, taste obviously superior to chemical fertilize food.
Yes, the type of feed matters for monogastric animals. However you can feed ruminants such as cattle and goats, grain pellets containing omega 6, and it will not increase total omega 6 fatty acid levels in the steer (to any meaningful degree). The fatty acid composition of the milk will not change that much either. So yeah, this is why your egg yolks and your bacon are extremely high in omega 6 compared to pasture raised, foraging animals. Same goes for the salmon. Try to get your eggs from a local who lets their hens forage for bugs and through compost.
I’ve worked with former fish farm workers in north Scotland & none of them would eat farmed salmon , they said pure poison & environmentally devastating 🏴
Yes but only as long as we kepo poisoning the lakes and building dams salmon was so common back then that uts literaly its role to die and feed things you just had to pick it up @@rusticbox9908
@@amyg.6441I already do treat salmon as a treat. It's already expensive when you have 6 adults (husband, self & 4 adult/student children) to feed! I'm shocked to hear about Scottish salmon fisheries and antibiotics treatments etc. 😮 I will now have to stop feeding this to my family but where to source natural omega's & efa's ?
As a marine biologist she said nothing about on what those salmon are fed with, as I believe a high portion is made up with tons of small fishes, thus depriving other marine creatures that feeds on them.
Sustainable, wild caught salmon are incredibly good. There wouldn't even be a discussion about it if the Norwegians hadn't tried to engineer an ocean predator into something that lives in a pen and eats catfood with a dye in it to color their flesh.
The sea floor in the sea lochs in Scotland are being destroyed underneath the cages. When the storms come, sometimes cages are damaged and the salmon escape. They often have lice and are weak and floppy as opposed to their wild counterparts. They then interbreed so the wild ones are being weakened. I lived on the shores of a loch in the NW Highlands of Scotland and saw the destruction first hand.
Just terrible when we get those darned weak and floppy fish..... Just kidding! I tend to agree that about the only solution is to reduce ocean product consumption as much as possible. The levels of global overfishing are past any model of sustainability ....
@@leroyrussell8766 Preserving environments, ecologies, and resources are the reasons I'm not excited about high immigration and the loss of abortion rights in the US. There are already far too many people in my opinion.
I have been aware of this farmed fish for sometime. So I too have stopped eating farmed salmon and any other fish that is farmed. At least in our markets, they confess that the fish is farmed, a hint to me to not buy. I did not know that wild salmon was not really wild in some instances. Thank you for that. You are performing a great service. Thank you
My cousin owns a fish processing plant and he told me never, never buy or eat farmed salmon. The Norwegian farmed salmon (that's most of what we get) swims in a large bay that is completely polluted. There is no way for fresh water to get in and the polluted water to get out. Its filled with fish waste from millions of fish. I will go with Cousin Arnie's recommendation.
Don’t know about where your cousin is but my grandson and I visited a salmon farm in Lofoten Norway this past summer. It seemed like a great way to produce a lot of good protein. Yes there is a lot of waste but it is dispersed rapidly. The water looked great. Good currents. I was impressed. Before going I was instinctively opposed
@@davidwoods358 The farms are a cage 50’ or so in diameter. The ocean currents refresh the water constantly and carry the waste away to be dispersed. I forgot how many salmon are raised in each cage but it was a lot. There is no odor.
There is no way that water flowing through nets with holes too small for salmon to fit through could carry smaller objects and detritus away from the spawning location.
I lived in British Columbia Canada and was into subsistence fishing for salmon. I met a local marine biologist who educated us about the destruction the salmon farms were causing. I never bought salmon from the store before that and now that I don't live close enough to fish locally, I don't buy salmon unless I travel to local fisherman or fish for it myself. It's pretty simple. There's no need to eat any food product that doesn't grow close to where you live.
That might be true in Canada but not, for example, in the UK or Japan, that is high population density countries where subsistence farming is not possible.
It's been more than 20 years since reading one of David Suzuki's books that I gave up Salmon entirely. I'm glad that BC is phasing out open pen farms, it can't happen fast enough, and I thank you so much for making this excellent video to share this information.
As a resident who lives in Victoria BC, I am very sad to see the effect that the salmon farms have on our Southern Resident Orcas, they are starving due to lack of salmon. The fish farms are a disaster, the conditions are horrendous, they are infested with sea lice, I can’t believe people eat those fish. Truly sickening.
A very interesting video. I had no idea about the re-stocking of "wild" fish. To be honest, you've hardly scratched the surface with this video. A huge issue is the source of feed for the fish farms. I've witnessed first-hand how the artisanal fishing communities of West Africa have been completely disrupted by the setting up of fishmeal and fish-oil processing plants designed to produce feed for fish farms. Traditionally, these fishing communities relied on the men to go out and fish in large dugout canoes, while mainly the women handled the onshore processing (salting, drying, etc) and sale of the fish to the local and regional communities. In The Gambia, for example, it has been the main source of protein for many years. Everybody got a piece of the action and the community got fed. Introduction of the fishmeal processing plants (many operated by Chinese companies) provides a virtually insatiable demand for the fish, driving down prices, leading to over-fishing and cutting out the on-shore indigenous processing industry. It's also become a divisive issue within the local community. They are also starting to see "fishing disruption 2.0" in which neighbouring states and the Chinese companies are deploying large trawlers to improve the efficiency of their fishing, adding further to depletion, and further marginalising the local industry. I read that it takes roughly 10kg of fish to produce 1kg of fishmeal, and 10kg of fishmeal to rear 1kg of farmed salmon; a 100:1 conversion ratio. Since we discovered this, two years ago, we haven't eaten any salmon in our household. We are fortunate to live in the UK where there are plenty of alternative indigenous sources of oily fish, such as mackerel and herring from the sea and brown trout from the rivers, as well as white fish such as haddock and cod. I think a large part of the problem is that a product that used to be a luxury and eaten on special occasions has now become a weekly staple, due to fish-farming practices driving down prices. People justify this on the basis that they are eating "higher quality'` food as we become more prosperous. This is nonsense. It's not higher quality food; it's mass-produced trash with a luxury halo around it.
You've brought up another great point which is that salmon are carnivores. From the point of view of energy and nutrient utilization, it's like eating a dog. Cultural issues aside, nobody could argue that eating a dog is more environmentally friendly than eating a herbivore such as, say, a goat.
I live in the Pacific Northwest in salmon country. We eat wild caught salmon about once per month. They have removed some of the dams in our region to improve salmon runs and are working to improve the streams for the salmon and to replant many of the native plants that existed in the region to restore the ecosystem. I am hopeful that things will improve.
PNW-er here as well, and grateful to our Democratic lands commissioner, governor, and Salish Sea tribes for shutting down the commercial salmon net-pen operations in Puget Sound.
I've lived a few years on an island in the Puget Sound. The figure presented at 13:33 of $250-650 of US taxpayer money spent per salmon that returns the the river is shocking to me, but it's not all for fisheries and human consumption. The story that's often told is that the salmon resotoration effort is to support the diet of local pods of Orca whales, who have very picky diets and only eat salmon, despite having other food sources available. But it seems even those efforts have failed, since they cannot solve the greater climate crisis, shipping industry pressure, whale watching, human development of the region in general, and Orca whale pod culture. I agree with the conclusion of the video here, but if I catch a salmon I'm definitely going to eat it!
Grocery fishmonger here. Always get excited when we receive fresh packs of Alaskan salmon during the summer. I really don’t like pushing the farmed stuff. Blue house salmon is one thing I can reccomend if you want to eat “happy fish”. NEVER EVER eat wild caught raw. Between that and cod I’ve seen loads of worms.
Yes, and there’s absolutely no reason to eat salmon or fish in general for health - it’s just pumping your system with persistent environmental toxins. You can get all three essential Omega-3’s from plants - ALA is a plant omega, and both DHA and EPA are in algal oil (where fish and krill get their omegas from, but without all the trawling, toxins, and ecosystem destruction.) I really love the NutriVeg plant based Omega-3 oils. The liquid ones come is delicious flavors and don’t cause the gross fish burps! As for protein, Stanford recently came out with a huge study debunking the myth that animal sources provide proteins that are in any way “superior” to plant sources for nutrients or bioavailability. In fact, the most bioavailable protein on the planet is spirulina. And people often don’t understand that animal tissues require much more energy for the body to break down to access the amino acid building blocks. The fact alone that people on plant based diets are the only dietary group in the western world with average BMI’s in the healthy range says a lot. We don’t need to be eating so many animals and our planet can’t sustain it. Nature functions with an abundance of plant-eaters & very few carnivores in the food chain because the laws of thermodynamics require this for sustainability. Having 8 billion humans eating animals flips this equation upside down and by the laws of physics is literally eating up our planet and its ecosystems alive.
The one misstatement I caught was that the omega fatty acids found in salmon can be found in plant sources. While true to a degree, nearly all omegas found in plants come in forms that the body must convert into the more desirable form the body needs, and it can only convert a rather small amount at a time. So yes, chow down on omega-3-rich plants. Just don't expect the body's natural conversion capability to come anywhere near the quantity that best benefits our bodies. It's really a biological back-up system for when animal sources are scarce. The situation is very similar to the complication of the various, slightly different molecules that we lump together as this or that vitamin, over-simplifying that the body prefers or expects certain versions more than others, therefore some being more bioavailable than others, and occasionally some forms that can be detrimental.
I thought the same exact same thing to myself, ALA vs epa/dha..She started out saying she sorted through all kinds of data and misinformation, but gave out misinformation herself.
This is true. Another aspect is the salmon we buy most of do not have the same nutrition quality as the wild thing. You get less of the "good" omega because they are not fed and live as they where meant to.
Bullshyt. for most people it's fish, for some people it's seeds. Salmon is just another great source. nothing singular though. plenty of other fish as well. You are taking generalities as absolutes.
@@erikred8217 No you are correct, but I think the argument is you can get the same omega-3 FA from plants and you can't. There are great alternatives to salmon, like mackerel, sardines, herring, tuna come to mind. Actually, mackerel provides twice as much Omega-3 than salmon. The issue is availability - mackerel isn't easy to find in grocery stores, you have the best chance near areas that fish like the US Gulf Coast. Herring is equally as good as salmon but again it's not easy to find in bulk. You can find it in cans like sardines or pickled but to find just raw herring for you to grill it yourself, good luck.
I live in New Zealand and the main source of salmon is farmed in hydro electric feeding canals. These drain the Southern Alps and are pure h2o which flows through the pens . I was a cook for most of my life ,here and mainly the States and Canada, the only farmed salmon I eat is this type of farmed fish . much healthier than semi-still fjord water or the onshore farms or the bays or "calm spots" in the ocean. A truly healthy farm needs a lot of water flowing through it to remove the poop and other dropped items.
@@andyman8630 they feed farmed salmon 'fish pellets'. A foodstuff that is about the size of the end of your finger. The composition has been researched by scientists as being the best for good health, and efficient growth rate. I can confirm that the water of South Island (NZ) freshwater salmon farms is about as good as it gets. It's off glaciers, and down the river to the salmon pens with nothing in between, it is pure water with no pollutants. So they are raised in a very clean environment. They also have sea-pen salmon cage farms at Stewart Island and Marlborough Sounds......... they are salt water farmed salmon and in strong enough tidal areas. Enough to keep the farm areas clean with fresh salt water. As far as I am aware, nothing in NZ including fish is routinely fed antibiotics or drugs. Our producers are very aware of the dangers, and particularly market sentiment. It is huge business here, inspected by various Govt Departments, and 'cowboys' or 'dodgy' operations don't make it. We also have introduced wild salmon here. They are from Canada and USA 100 plus years ago. They live in the southern rivers and lakes, do their salt water migration and return to spawn, beginning the next cycle.
Hello and thank you for taking up this topic. I fish commercially for salmon in Bristol Bay in Alaska. I am proud of being part of that fishery - since my family started fishing there in 1959. Our fishery has its challenges, but sustainability isn't one of them. The fishery is managed by biologists whose first priority is sustainability of the resource and second priority is the maximum benefit of Alaskans (which also benefits others). The biologists closely track the salmon return each season and allow the fleet to fish only if the return exceeds what is needed for sustainability. Our fishery has been certified sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council. Check it out! You might be surprised. You might even decide it's OK to eat salmon. Although the fact that you live in South Africa might make it less sustainable from your perspective because of the transportation burden, but as a fishery, I think we're doing pretty well. Your thoughts?
Does Bristol Bay sell in California? I'd love to buy if it's available. I buy the Brunswick sardines in a can at the grocery store. They're wonderful! Do you know if those are from a reputable source?
I've also read where some salmon farmers actually feed their farmed fish corn. Wild salmon eat blue-green algae. This goes to the nutritional aspect of farmed fish. Feed them corn and they lose their mega 3 fatty acid profile.
I am a Marine Biologist and work as a North Pacific Groundfish Observer in Alaska. I work with the actual wild caught salmon that is captured at sea along with other species. Even with the all the alternatives that you spoke about are true, the native populations across the board of the North pacific populations of salmon have all decreased by 20% this year. (this is public data) Meaning the Pink, King, sockeye, chums, and coho are all in such low number because of the high amount of fishing done last year, along with the accidental bycatch from different vessels that people often forget to mention. I really appreciate you making this video to spread awareness of this problem because now King (Chinook) Salmon is currently up for debate for the endangered species list. However, because the industry is so big I don't know how it will be handled by Alaska's fish and game. Even with the dwindling numbers, the bulk product price remains low but are sold at higher prices, smaller size, which is a whole other issue that I could get into. I could go on a rant forever on the problem with the alaska fishing industry for Salmon but the conclusion is all the same. We need to reduce out intake on the fish. Also a random tip, only native/wild salmon's are pink from their food intake, all other farmed and "sustainable" it's actually naturally white but are given specific feed to give their meet the color we all know.
@@StratosJfarmed fish are coloured using dyes, if they aren’t using coloured dyes then they are grey inside because they are rotting, avoid eating farmed fish
Thanks for doing the work Chantel! This was truly an amazing and thought provoking video. And well done for hitting almost a million views! Pretty sure it will get there soon.
Good solid reporting, articulate and well researched. One thing you didn't cover was what goes into the pellet feed of farmed salmon which could be a whole episode by itself.
Shame the research failed to mention the Omega 3 content of the salmon is derived from the algae and plankton they consume in the wild. Farmed depends on the feed they are given. If you're consuming salmon for Omega 3 then wild every time. Also wild salmon are a strong orange pink colour due to the zooplankton they consume, so you can tell if you're being conned when you get that pastel grey pink shite. The fact that contaminants will be far lower for wild caught is also another reason to stick two fingers up at farmed.
She is mistaken about being able to get all of your omega3 from plant sources. Your body has to convert that version into omega 3 and it is very inefficient, converting only 5-10 percent
Yes, she holds a biology degree and not a chemistry degree, nor is she an MD. This is a propaganda video at its finest. The left telling everyone else how to live.
@@EddieCensoredBioavailability is different if ingested from plant sources. Various plant molecules, lectins, oxalates, goitrogens, phytoestrogens, phytates, and tannins as well as dietary fibre may inhibit absorption. Fish oil still provides the best option for dietary supplementation, but even better, eat the entire oily fish!
@@EddieCensored no... dude, whatever is in the food can not always be absorbed into the system, bioavailability my man. Never mind the oxidative stress excessive glucose cycle produces, we where made to survive on meat and fat, sugars starches only as rare treats. But no we just had to go and cultivate the tasty carbs and fruits and entirely swap over to a glucose diet for the serfs, constantly hungry, obedient and docile.
@@mgntstr It's not because of the food, it's because of all of the poisons like Atrazine and shit israel has put into our food and water etcetera to kill us (non-jews) so they can be God's chosen and have the world to them selves. Our ancestors were healthy before they starting saying "iSRaEl iS OuR GrEaTeSt AlLy!".
Thanks for this video. Sadly you didn't join me to the cause because I'm already on board. I've stopped eating salmon since 2018 after I did a ski mountaineering trip on the top of a mountain along with a Norwegian lady. The photo of my profile was taken on the summit that day. That's what's written on my youtube profile: "3 mar 2018, Skolpan, Senja, Norway. After the Norwegian lady with whom I shared the ski mountaineering trip took a picture of me, I couldn't help to ask her again: "Yes, you said that you eat salmons, BUT do you eat THOSE salmons raised over there in the ocean in the round nets?" "Nope" she replied, "We eat only the wild ones that we catch with the fishing rod". "
Thank you for getting straight to the point early. You provided all the information I needed to make a definitive decision within the first minute and 50 seconds of the video. How refreshing. I watched the entire video twice and subscribed for that singular reason alone. You're a rarity. Thank you.
@@rhymeswithteeth You may be unaware of how rational people who possess legitimate disagreements with others go about addressing those differences in a public forum. Your comment suggests this, though you could simply have had a bad day. Either way the results are the same: you sound like a 15-year-old dilettante who has just mastered google but has yet to master rational discourse. Your first sentence is a truth claim. Support it with a direct quotation and time stamp of its location within the video. Your second sentence expresses disagreement with her _purported_ claim. Fine. _But the burden of proof is upon you to prove your claim of contention as YOU are the one making it_ , i.e. provide evidence to support your claim that " _She's WRONG._ "[sic] Otherwise there is zero reason to believe you, _or even to consider anything you said or will say in the future_ as you will have annihilated any and all credibility you might have had.
First 1min 50s you could draw the conclusion farm raised salmon is bad based on animal rights and health concerns. But after 2min 5s you could draw the conclusion farm raised salmon is good based on environmental concerns. I didn't watch the whole video. But I've listened to other people on this topic and agree it's complex and important
I only eat salmon which I catch myself in the open ocean. Since I am a terrible fisherman, that pretty much removes it from my diet. To me store bought , farmed or wild, never tastes fresh. The fish breeding I have seen uses fish swimming up the stream, the fry are released while still small. Some are flown to other rivers that no longer have salmon. Not sure why unless they were overfished. Often if we just left things alone fish populations might come back. But it sounds like in some rivers that is not true. It is important to re-establish habitat for natural egg laying to occur before planting baby salmon, then in future years no seeding is needed.
Omega 3 fatty acids There are 3 variants of Omega 3 fatty acids, ALA, EPA, and DHA. The plant form, ALA, is only about 5% usable by humans, and some people can't use it at all! The animal forms, EPA and DHA, are the essential bio-available forms for humans. Any nutritionist worth listening to knows this!
on a side note along that thought, I had a 'real' avocado' in Puerto Rico and didn't even recognize it as an avocado, not by looks nor by taste. Wow what a difference.
I still fish the Copper River and 100% of the fish i caught last year were wild (not hatchery - due to adipose fin). I even have the bumper sticker that says still doin' the wild thing! so its thriving out here. At least for now.
@@tylerspiegel3294 You are still part of the problem tho, if everybody was eating wild animals on a regular basis, these species would go extinct after only a few years. There is 8.1 billion humans living on Earth now. When I was born it was about half of that... Isn't that crazy? This number is growing exponentially. In 50 years we could easily be over 15 billion, and all these people are gonna need to be fed. Not only that but every 50 years we also get double pollution, double the plastic consumption, double the cars on the streets, etc...
I had read that farmed salmon does not even LOOK like wild salmon, unless the fish are fed (beta-caratine ?) as artificial coloring. This is because only the wild salmon eat the oceanic plankton, including krill, which is what imparts the 'salmon' color. Anybody else heard this ?
Salmond is my go-to fave fish, so I really appreciated hearing all of these points you share in this video. Thank you for the perspectives on farmed fish, kind of shocking but not surprising, I guess.
Just an ordinary consumer here. Chantel, thank you for exposing these so called 'sustainable' fish farms.They sound disgusting. You are right. We should give up farmed fish altogether.
Two further notes about farmed salmon: millions of tons of smaller species of fish are harvested to make fishmeal. 1) 90% of that harvest could be consumed directly instead of a 25% conversion to salmon by weight. 2) fishmeal also contains soy and grain that has been treated with fertilizers, pesticides, etc and they are concentrated into the salmon.
Yes and also considering the multi billion dollar weight loss industry we humans would do well to move more, eat less, and eat natural foods instead of "franken foods". Learn to read labels.
@@craigmilton9892 When farming rainbow trout the feed is very concentrated. Every 1 kg fed gives 1.1 kg growth in fish. I believe the reason you consider this impossible is because you are not counting in water weight. As the fish grows the percentage of water in the fish stays the same. Also the type of muscles in fish don't use much energy, so most of the food ingested is used for growth.
you are perfectly right we should all become vegan because most of fish and meat production is unethical, it make no sense to call meat and fish ethical.
I've talked to a person who has personally seen the destruction caused by salmon fish farms in Canada. His account of scuba diving beneath the farm enclosures, which is now considered trespassing by the fish farming corporations, was incredibly disturbing. In my mind, having a degree in Biology, fish farming is destroying the ecological web on a multi-species level that will slowly infiltrate other ocean harvesting occupations. If you look back in history of ocean fish harvesting, numerous populations have either been wiped out or reduced to nothing. It's all about money, nothing about sustainability.
Thinking about your statement, "considered trespassing"; those waters are federal jurisdiction and owned by every canadian as a taxpayer. Completely driven by greed. Every fish farm in Canada should be moved on land, the water filtered before returning to the ocean, and the wasted turned into compost. It's a no brainer - but the feds, as usual, are too stupid to realise they are contributing to the destruction of the ocean ecosystems while reducing fishing opportunities for recreational in the name of "protecting the species". Tell me in what reality this makes sense? LOL
People have to eat. Are you going to fish wild salmon? Soon there wil be none. There's too many people, that's the problem with ALL the environmental issues. Do you think plastic is the problem? No,its the QUANTITY of plastic. CO2? its the AMOUNT of CO2. etc, etc. Are you going to use organic farming to feed 8 billion? that will never work. If the population doesn't stop growing in the third world, we will have an extermination event within this generation. But people still want to believe the solution is to ban plastic.... and it's all going to be fine...
@@Cobalt1520 “There are too many people on Earth” That's the argument brought forth by Malthus, and the Earth's ’carrying capacity’ has been debated for centuries, with no clear conclusion. “If the population doesn't stop growing in the third world, we'll have an extinction event within this generation” The population in developing countries is plateauing, with access to education and contraception. So if you're advocating for culling, then it should start with those who are consuming the most resources and emitting the most, i.e. North America and Western Europe. Since you're so passionate about this issue, why don't you go first?
@@deus_ex_machina_ I don't know where you get your information, but you should investigate further. Those who are emitting the most are, BY FAR, countries in the Asian continent like China and India. the US is in second but with 13% of CO2 emissions, while china is 30% (one third of the total emissions), India is 7.6% and the first European country is Germany with only 1.8% (compare that with the rest). So all added the Asian countries represent the majority of emissions. As to me, we in Europe are in population deficit already, we need to have more children ASAP, on the contrary Africa and Asia need to stop having so many children.
If it is even more tragicomical if you have in mind how bright orange-red the meat is in a lot of wild salmon when they are able to consume crustaceans in the wild.
It's fair to say that there are plenty of social media influencers exposing abusive farming practices, yet there is a lack of people willing to do the hard work of installing corrective practices. there is too much applaud within the ingroup of criticism to support change.
I've seen an on shore organic salmon farm in BC, operating on saline well water. It was a caviar farm though. One thing I found out is that for any farmed carnivorous fish, such as trout, char, steelhead and salmon, it takes 2 pounds of protein to grow 1 pound of fish. Most of that protein is from wild caught fish thats turned into feed. Not a very good efficiency.
I'm from Hong Kong, i order Sockeye salmon from British Columbia Canada, the packaging says the salmon are Wild caught and all natural. I don't really have other better alternatives.
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Which omega source would be the most eco-friendly do you think? I know you mentioned seaweed but the production is not just there yet. Flax or Chia seeds sound nice but I think this is an option only for a limited portion of the population. Agriculture has problems of it own, including destroying marine ecosystems as you well know. Is it sardines and mackerel? Can wild population of these fishes meet the demand of humanity? It is my personal choice when I am in a country like Spain who has a wide range of fish on the table. It is impossible to get these fishes raw in most of the European countries even in the north...
I came into this video not wanting to like what I heard and wanting to disagree, but this was so thoughtful. I came away 100% agreeing with your choice and absolutely agree with the reasoning. Nicely done!
@@rhymeswithteeth I wondered how this is true? If you take the eggs from wild salmon and fertilise them with sperm of the same run, the genetics should be identical.
@@clarkgriswold-zr5sb How could a "marine biologist" be so dumb. As @georgevindo said, if - in a hatchery - you take eggs from a wild salmon and fertilize them with the sperm of a wild salmon, how could the resulting salmon be genetically different than wild salmon? The resulting salmon are NOT genetically different.
I live in the Pacific Northwest. I am also a marine biologist. Our federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans is in bed with the salmon farmers. That's why we still have salmon pens. I came to the conclusion, before I watched your video, that eating salmon, either wild-caught or, especially farmed, is not healthy for me or the salmon. I don't eat seafood at all anymore.
Alaska, California, Oregon, and finally Washington have all banned commercial net pens from operating in their marine waters. Although Cooke Aquaculture is trying to use a loophole to start farming steelhead, I don't think it'll be without a fight from tribal and environmental groups. What and where is the continued net pen salmon farming occurring in PNW marine waters?
Great diversified research. I live Canada, have followed the 'salmon' thing for decades. The diseases from farmed salmon that are now affecting wild salmon off BC coast is systemic. One of diseases affects muscles, therefore the heart, which in the end compromises wild salmon to get back to home range to breed. I read recently that our wild salmon historically used to push 100lb, now are 30-40lb avg. The testing of farmed salmon from multiple pens up and down BC coast several yrs ago, consistently from every pen, in the lab showcased nightmare scenario. Thx for all the extra data.
Chinook Salmon have always averaged that size, even decades ago the largest of the BC salmon were in the 50-70 lb range. The only exception that would have resulted in the reduction in very large Chinook (the ~100lb fish) in BC waters was the building of the Grand Coulee dam in WA state (on the Columbia river), because it wiped out the largest sub-species that spawned upstream from there in Canada. But that was 80 years ago now. That had nothing to do with fish farms.
I love eating salmon; for years I've watched the decline in their size, quality and numbers. Your reasoned conclusion is spot-on. A similar conclusion can also be applied to other wild fish. Even so, the idea of not eating salmon anymore nearly makes me cry. Dang.
I used to eat salmon almost exclusively... likely almost ALL I ate was farmed. THANKFULLY I've switched to sardines... after seeing this video I'm glad I did and will continue to use them as my primary source of Omega-3's and other shared benefits to salmon!! Great video!
Better yet to cut out the persistent environmental toxins in fish and just go straight to the source - algae oil. NutraVege plant Omega-3’s are my favorite, taste great, and involve no nasty fish burps, bi-catch, ecosystem destruction, or trawling. It’s worth a try & provide more consistent daily omega-3’s than random dietary fish consumption.
Also, fyi, sardines and many other fish lower down the food chain are now being severely over-fished and are at risk of population collapse - which in turn threatens countless species up the food chain. The fishing industry is essentially playing whack-a-mole with clobbering one fish species to collapse followed by the next. Switching fish consumption doesn’t solve the problem. So why consume them when we don’t need to? It’s time we give our oceans a break!
@@NewEarthAwakening Good thinking! I just get paranoid with supplements as for all we know, they could be placebo pills! Do you know 100% that your algae oil has the O3's that it says it does? At least with fish we know that it has to at least have some of the good stuff haha
So glad I watched this. I will never purchase farmed salmon again and reduce my consumption of wild salmon until I phase it out. The wild salmon issue you speak about is fraught with devastating futures. I am going to reduce salmon or not eat it and just go back to sardines. You are an amazing wealth of information.
Right up my alley. I love salmon, and being Norwegian I used to eat quite a lot of the famed stuff. Until about 5 years ago, I realized the impact on environment, other species, fish health, wild salmons etc. I still eat salmon, but only from land-based farms. Only moderate amounts are for sale, at a higher price than sea-based farmed salmon. But that is the price I gladly pay. In general, homo sapiens' tampering with nature leads to disaster in most cases. Caveat emptor!
I visited a local restaurant here in the Napa Valley, California and saw a salmon entree on their menu. I asked the waiter "Is your salmon fresh or farmed?" He replied, "it's both - it's fresh . . . from the farm."
Thank you, I think I can follow you in every argument being expressed in your summary at 14:32. I love Salmon as Sushi for example but I think I will at least be able to reduce my consumption drastically and even let it go for a long while. You did not have to convince me to do so with your video since I have always been a deep lover of the sea and its species every since I was a kid. Surely your way of talking to your viewers is very sympathetic and open and I am sure you get a lot of confirmation and positive feedback for your passionate work which I am looking forward to see more of in the future.
Thank you for this informative review. I have two other concerns about fish. 1. What are the health implications of the salmon growing/catching processes? Antibiotics, hormones in land farms, stresses etc. 2. Do wild caught sardines and mackerel have these environmental and health issues?
Thanks for your "deep dive" into this topic and excellent presentation. What an eye opener - and so sad! I hate to give up salmon, but I will seriously look at alternatives.
A few years ago I was going buy some wild caught salmon at a popular store in the US. They had many worms crawling out of them. I have always known that they were there but had never seen them.
There actually is a difference between getting omega-3s from fish and seaweed or getting them from various plants. The difference is that you won't get the 20-22 carbon fatty acids from flax, walnuts, etc. (their fatty acids will be 18 carbon long). This potentially matters because the chemistry that omega-3s (eicosanoid biosynthesis, etc.) starts out with these longer chains; and, though we do have the enzymes to add carbons a couple at a time, the conversion is extremely rate limited. Another question to ask might be whether that conversion step to the longer chain is rate limited for a reason and whether we actually need so much of the final product that we need these marine sources in the first place, but that's another kettle of fish (see what I did there?).
@@kshepard52 the writer is saying there is a low conversion from flax omega 3, Linoleic or alpha linoleic acid to DHA/EPA which is the omega 3 from fish, roughly speaking, its well known just search google conversion flax omega 3 to DHA, the type your brain feeds on, .... just avoid vegeable processed oils, raw sugars in products and eat tinned sardines, eat grass fed saturated fat and butter, yes cholesterol is actually good for you, every cell in your body and brain is made of cholesterol, watch videos on carnivore diets by dr schafee and dr Ekberg, learn about he cholesterol myth (low carb down under) all on youtube. you`ve been lied to by the american medical foundation and heart association for years.
@@kshepard52 I'm not a biologist but I stayed at a Holiday Inn last night (very clever marketing meme). Besides, our daughter is a geneticist/biologist and my wife and I have had more than one of those "what are these words?" reactions to papers for which she has asked for our editorial input on the grammar at least. But the experience has forced me to learn more of the jargon and has helped me in researching my own genome, so let me take a shot at this. Our bodies are amazing chemical factories, not only in how we break down and use food, but in how we can change unusable or less-usable chemicals into the ones we really need. However, like operating a chemical factory, those conversions come with a cost in energy and other chemicals. A good example is beta carotene. This is the plant form of vitamin A. In most cases, our bodies can change the plant form into several different forms of vitamin A that we need. However, besides the metabolic "cost" of doing so, the efficiency of this conversion can vary pretty wildly from person to person due to genetic differences (for instance, in the BCO1 gene which helps in this process), and those with poor conversion rates may be turning orange from the amount of beta carotene in their blood while still being vitamin A deficient. As someone experimenting with a whole foods, plant based diet this year, I've had to learn way more than planned in order to continue optimizing my nutrient intake, including where deviating from pure plant-based is wiser than trying to supplement the difference. One of these is eating two tins of high-quality sardines packed in olive oil a week as a rich source of more bioavailable (doesn't need conversion) omega 3's. BTW, the length of this post shows the value of the jargon associated with various fields. More words with less precision is the alternative.
@@WMHinsch Thank you for taking the time to explain this! I hope you've had better luck with the sardines than I have. Some brands are unbelievably gross but I finally settled on Wild Planet and began looking hard for decent recipes.
I think we're bad at converting the plant fatty acids because we got way more from terrestrial animals. The fatty acids in ruminants grazing on open, biodiverse pasture is far different from the modern grain fed cows.
@@kimberlyann1960 I am human and I have no god. And as I am human and have no god, I care about other humans. I care about the humans whose fish stocks are being depleted to make fish meal to feed the salmon in the farms, and I care about the humans who live in the coasts where we fish the other fish that "god" gave us to eat. God doesn't seem to care too much for anybody unable to have access to a supermarket where he can buy salmon. Not really a god I feel inclined to worship.
Beautifully presented, excellent information organization, and a high-integrity based decision, Telly. Thank you for sharing your research and evaluation.
Agree 100%. I've seen SO many other videos and documentaries on the same topic as well. Wanted to check yours out as well. I've stopped eating ocean and stream fish now, + shellfish. Last taste of a Fish Sandwich at Culvers convinced me it was not worth the taste or money and I don't miss it, don't need it, don't want it. Thank you.
Great post my friend. I truly appreciate this information and am ready, willing and able to forgo Salmon.... period. Very happy to have found your channel. Have a great weekend. Charmed
I agree with you 100%. I gave up on eating seafood years ago. We are overfishing the oceans and there are no good options as far as I can see, especially when you live far away from the oceans as I do. I'm listening to the podcast, Salmon Wars. It's a tragedy what we did to the indigenous people of the pacific northwest. These are the people who relied on this fish for centuries and we denied them of that heritage. Thanks for sharing your perspective.
I would encourage you to take a look at the real results of the Bolt decision in the 1970s, specifically for Washington State. The situation is that today, Natives can fish as much as desired, and public and commercial fishing is reduced to next to nothing. It is a proven fact that the Natives overfished Puget Sound when they realized they could sell their fish commercially, instead of solely take enough to feed their own tribes. Many of the Northwest tribes admit this as much, and lament their own greediness that decimated the salmon runs. When everyone in the industry works alongside the scientists to make sure the fish are not overfished, as the industry is run in Alaska, then everyone wins- everyone can share the heritage of salmon fishing and living off the plentiful land.
I am from Australia and until recently hubby and I ate a piece of salmon/week. The salmon is farmed from Tassie. Hubby saw an investigation into farmed salmon - what they are feeding them as well as the impact on the environment. As lovers of Tassie, we have been to the salmon farms and listened to the information given by the industry. However, concerns for both our health and the environment have caused us to stop buying salmon. It's sad cause we enjoyed it - but that's what we decided. However, we are heading to Alaska later this year and may be tempted to try a piece or two while ther - wild caught and not huge amounts.
No wild salmon here in Australia. In fact, sadly, one of the larger fish markets here in Merrickville Sydney, which stocks a huge number of fish only has a few wild caught with a majority being farm raised. It’s absolutely pathetic. I come from the Pacific Northwest and the one thing I truly miss the most is wild caught salmon.
From a Marine Biologist, we would like to know about the possibilities of toxicity of farmed salmon from synthetic dye/colour and dioxin in their deep sea food supply?....Please.
A significant extra cost but how about mandating a membrane under pens to capture 90% plus of excrement and leftover food? Pump it out of the bottom of conical shaped catchment, maybe once per week, dry it on shore and sell for fertilizer to offset costs. It would be excellent fertilizer.
It would be fertilizer, but not excellent. You are forgetting their food is man made, with bigger, better, faster growing built in. Antibiotics and growth hormones quite likely included.
its not from the dye, its from the food they get and the processes that make that food. The dye is likely a minor thing in the big picture. It covers for the fact that they are not eating wild krill, which naturally color the flesh with something called astaxanthin. The same thing that basically colors flamingoes. Domestic flamingoes are white because they dont eat the brine shrimp the wild ones eat.
@@spearsinspines And, for similar reasons, captive-bred Poison Arrow Frogs are harmless, because they are not consuming certain wild insects and bio-concentrating their toxins.
A very informative video thank you, I have stopped eating it a year or so ago. A friend of mine catches trout and smokes it himself, I find it very similar in flavour to smoked salmon. Any thoughts on trout being a viable alternative?
One thing that might be an alternative is "Stone-bass", a.k.a. "Meagre" (Argyrosomus regius). I had it at a restaurant near London, and was impressed by its firm textureand mild-but-meaty taste; had a read-up and it seems like a huge calciworm with fins - eats almost anything, and has a good conversion ratio to fish-flesh. Farmed in the Mediterranean, mostly, I believe.
Thank you for a clear and thoughtful summary of your three major points around the global consumption of Salmon. Very informative. I'll be followup your example.
Thank you! Great source of information and balanced view of all of pros & cons. I cook salmon occasionally when I entertain since I don’t eat beef nor chicken. I have been eating sardines for just myself, but I will look into seaweed. Could you please do a video on sardines and let us know if they are truly sustainable?
You confirmed what I strongly suspected so thank you. Atlantic salmon is farmed. I only eat the wild Pacific salmon that is sustainably harvested having the MSC seal.
A very thoughtful and evidence-based assessment of global salmon farming and the impact this industry has had on the environment... and in particular upon the salmon fish we consume in vast quantities. From your findings, it appears our solutions here have created greater problems than those they are intended to remedy. As a serious foodie and an Oregon fisherman in what was once thriving salmon country, your remarks have given me pause regarding my personal consumption of this marvelous fish. I trust your serious research efforts and your personal sincerity are appreciated by many. Regards, Dr. A
In the Pacific Northwest, all the major rivers are dammed and these hydroelectric dams provide for nearly all of the region's power without emitting any CO2 or leaving behind dangerous spent fuel. But the dams are bad for the fish. Fish ladders dont seem to solve the problem and neither do hatcheries. So what should be done? Wind and solar power can reduce the need for hydroelectric power but only hydro can provide a sort of battery of power for times when the wind doesnt blow and the clouds are heavy, blocking the sun. How to live in harmony with nature when every solution brings new challenges?
Why is spent nuclear fuel considered dangerous? Look up how many people have died as a result of spent fuel. It's absolutely not a threat at all. The stuff is encased in concrete casks which you can literally walk up and hug and it's completely safe. They are so strong that they have put them on trains and smash them in the walls and they don't leak. Nobody has ever died from spent fuel. Not one person has ever been harmed by the millions of packages of nuclear waste we've transported. Every single industry produces some sort of negative waste. 100% of them. Nuclear is actually the greenest by absolutely every metric, even including the fuel.
I used to know a zoology major who was being told by his professors that dams were inherently bad due to increased water temperature and that coal fired power plants were the way to go. Zoologists can have a rather bad case of tunnel vision. Contemporary lifestyles depend upon high energy production facilities located somewhere on the planet. There are limited ways to do this. Population collapse is the other alternative. Anyone want to volunteer for the Soylent Green program?
You can't get any of the DHA/EPA you need from any plant material except algae. The conversion from ALA to EPA/DHA cannot reach sufficient levels. Especially if you are on a plant based diet rich in linoleic acid. You don't need to eat fish, though. Fatty red meat, eggs, cheese also deliver EPA/DHA.
Linoleic (omega 6) and linolenic acid (omega 3) found in plants are said to be essential fatty acids but the conversion rate to DHA and EPA is not not very good. (omega 3 and omega 6 refers to the position of double bonds in fatty acid chain) I work in the edible oil industry and I have heard and read a lot about how eating linoleic acid and linolenic acid isn't sufficient to make enough DHA and EPA in our bodies. Then you wonder how we have all managed to survive without eating enough seafood.
See the videos below : - Farmed Norwegian Salmon World’s Most Toxic Food - Salmon Confidential, Documentary About Salmon Farms in Canada & Diseased Salmon
I am sorry to hear all this things about salmon because I consume salmon at least 4 to 5 times per week, but after this I will reduce consumption. Thank you for the video on this topic, these are things I allways wondered about and thanks everyone for such educating comments.
I worked putting up a fish hatchery in Alaska. The fish that are wild that ran up stream were not the same strain as the ones that were produced at the hatchery. Both are caught in the wild but not the same. That bothered me. Why wouldn’t they produce the the same fish that ran wild?
Why don't fruit and vegetable growers grow the same varieties that were found in the wild....because they select and improve the species to make it more commercially viable ie more disease resistance, faster growing, more temperature and water tolerance etc etc etc in order to keep prices down so consumers can afford to buy the product.
I agree with your comment that they should maintain the purity of the run. That would require a hatchery for every stream or segregating the eggs at the hatchery. Economically I don't see hatchery managers keeping all of the different runs separated.
Here on the west coast of Canada, farmed salmon are all Atlantic salmon, a species not normally found here. The reason they raise Atlantic salmon is all the information used for feeding and drugging them comes from Norway where all the companies do their research.. thus escaped Atlantic salmon interbreeding with our native species
Having spent 22 years as a marine biologist at Scripps Institute and California Academy of Sciences,working with Mahi Mahi and yellowtail jack I appreciate your presentation. Thank You.😊
Here are some tips to help your body more readily convert the ALA in vegetarian sources of Omega 3's into more useful EPA & DHA (the body can't use the ALA without converting it first): - reduce Omega 6 intake (competes with Omega 3 to break down into EPA & DHA) - reduce or eliminate alcohol (completely stuns the bio pathway for conversion) - consume more: Zinc, B6, B7, Magnesium & E (the body uses these nutrients during conversion) The only problem with plant based Omega 3's is that they exist as ALA which the body can't use without first converting it into EPA & DHA which is already present in the fish Omega 3's. Hope my tips help you level up your conversioN!
Thank you! Very good information. A question: Since hatchery salmon spawn in the streams in which they hatched, how do they genetically influence other salmon strains?
In my area not all hatcheries use eggs from the stream they are planted in. These fish then bread with native fish and change the genetics of the run. Some rivers have runs that no longer have native fish.
ya phil is correct thats why i think here in wv the stocked trout cant breed...unless some species that isnt native...but the stocked trout are picked for many reasons like can survive lower oxygen levels or just because theyre gold and look cool even thoe its basically albino
@@t9056My understanding is that trout need running water to spawn. Many of the planter trout are triploids. They don't breed and spend their life eating so grow faster and bigger making them better for put and take lakes.
All salmon and trout populations will have fish that "get lost" and spawn somewhere other than the place of their birth. Without that, the species would not have spread to so many rivers... at any rate, most wild spawners will find their birthplace, but they don't know that lost hatchery fish will be there too, so wild and hatchery will mate, polluting future generations with hatchery genes. Hatchery genes are bad because selection is geared towards rapid growth and survival in captivity, not the stressors that make a fish fit for survival in the wild.
If you're talking about the Great Lakes, check out the consumption advisories put out by your state's Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. Unfortunately a lot of residual pollution can accumulate in marine life, especially in their fat.
nobody eats great lakes salmon. Well I cant say nobody but I dont think it tastes well compared to sea faring salmon. Theres also reccomendations of how much you should eat and in some parts its not recommended, with larger fish being most contaminated in any area. I would doubt there are comparable omega 3's too due to land locked fish diet.
It is what the wild salmon feed on which makes them the healthiest food in the world. Farmed is commonly known to be SH#T food - that is very well researched and distributed on how bad these farms are. The red, wild salmon of Alaska cannot be compared to anything else. Unfortunately, it is the common, poor person who will be forced to eat food that is severely deprived of nutrients while the ppl who are telling us constantly how bad we are for the planet are flying in jet streams, limos, and flying in the most expensive meat, and fish in the world along the the most material goods like clothes and many mansions. It is WE who will die soon, because for them, we are parasites on this earth. Human life has no value anymore (think of the unlimited ways they have encouraged us to become sterile?) unless you are born to a certain few having wealth beyond imagining.
It's high in Nitrogen compounds and Phosphates, so, yes. But extracting it is nigh on impossible if you have a free-flow pen. In an enclosed, recirculated system, it's a lot easier. But that obviously costs a lot more cash moneys per unit of fish. And, don't forget that around half of the Phosphates are 'free' in the water column, while Nitrogen (as Nitrates) is likely even higher a percentage as free molecules. (A lot of the Nitrogen comes from the dissolved waste, excreted as Ammonia and converted by bacterial processes).
I asked a marine biologist this very question, and I got a very similar answer to what Andrew has said above. I do wonder if there should be more investment into making it viable.
Good info - thanks for covering the subject. So, let me get this straight. Over population, lack of water flow and geographic net movement are the root causes of the problem. No different to your chicken concentration camps picture reference. Maybe as someone who understands this better than most should look into what should change to make this actually work. How many fish in a given area and how often the nets should be moved. If that means I need to pay more for an ethically raised salmon I’ll do it.
Where do you get your omega-3s from then? They're probably destroyed by the intense heat used in canning fish. And plant omegas are very difficult to convert into the essential omega-3s, EPA and DHA. That leaves very few options (except for supplements).
There aren't really solid concrete researches to verify that plant sources are insufficient and that fish is required for sufficient omega3. I did a blood test on Omega3 and the reference ranges were all over the place and it would have been impossible to be in the normal range for one without being outside the normal range for the other. It's a similar thing with protein deficiency. Everyone is just guessing they are lacking protein / omega3 but there's no reliable test to verify this (maybe tests from omega3 supplement companies wanting you to buy their fish oil)
@@jys365 There's solid research showing conversion of plant omega-3s to the essential omega-3s (EPA, DHA) is extremely low in humans. And omega-3s function in cell membranes of the body, not the blood, so of course blood tests are going to be meaningless.
@@jeil5676 Are you talking about canned or fresh? Canned isn't a great option bcz of the issues I mentioned in my OP. And I've rarely, if ever, seen fresh sardines or mackerel in a seafood dept. (I did find sardines once, but they were ridiculously difficult to prepare and eat with all those tiny bones).
@@keppela1 Both fresh and canned. I think omega 3's survive canning. They are just cooked like you might do with any fish. Plain smoked sardines packed in olive oil is really delicious alone on toast. No butter needed. I get tins for $1 when they go on sale and eat a tin a week maybe. Fresh mackerel should be available almost everywhere, its very common but has a strong flavour not everyone loves, some do. They serve fresh sardines in like spain or sardinia all over mediteranean probably so you could look on youtube how to prepare and eat easily. They are supposed to be delicious fresh in like tapas and stuff.
I have just subscribed after watching your salmon video. Is there any fisheries management jurisdiction in the world which has not seen major negative impacts on wild salmon populations after salmon aquaculture implementation?
doesn't seem to be any negative effects caused to the wild salmon in New Zealand by salmon farms, which have been here for 30 plus years. There may be bad conditions for the wild fish from time to time, but they are mostly living seperately from the commercial farmed fish. The wild fish live in the rivers and lakes, and migrate annually, then return. The farmed fish stay in their cages at sea mainly. There are a couple of outfits with fresh water farms in fast flowing fresh water....... but they don't appear to have any negative affects on the local wild fisheries.
It is so utterly refreshing and just plain cool to for once see someone discuss protein from fish - it's benefits, without denigrating vegan sources as well (plant-based proteins). It's this sort of healthy, balanced approach that added massive merit to this video. New subscriber - based on that rare bit of integrity alone.
A biologist spoke at my local library about industrial pig farms and the ecological disaster it has caused. I feel like if you examine each food we eat en masse, you'll find the same problem. Seems like the long term solution is to have less kids.
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I have lived in SE Alaska for 44 years. I live on a peninsula with a natural salmon stream at the head of the inner bight of my harbor. We used to have a native Pink and Chum run, Steelhead and a small run of Silvers, along with Dolly Varden Nd Cutthroat Trout. The bay used to be lively during the 70's, 80's and 90's with jumping salmon all summer long, as the various species had different timings for their runs. By 2005 the local salmon hatchery had started ramping up production and we were getting overrun with hatchery fish who were lost and trying to find someplace to spawn. They have almost completely wiped out all the native salmon. They forced a change in the timing of the Pinks that used to be first but now spawn later than the few chum who get in. There are literally no Silvers or Steelheads anymore and some Dollys. The bay used to be very alive with other sea creatures - Dungeness and King crabs, starfish of multiple species, clams, snails, sqid, Herring but now these populations are rare. No influx of life-giving salmon. The bears and eagles don't even get their share and have turned to alternative foods, often detrimental to the duck population. Also, commercial fishermen now stretch their nets almost fully across the whole span of Lynn canal so only a bare minimum of fish escape. I see Salmon hatcheries as a disaster
Thanks for this comment. This kind of information needs to be more widely appreciated; nothing happens in isolation in our world, we are all interconnected. Humans aren't the boss of all, we're just another member in the community of life, and we will either be that or we won't be, now or never.
Thanks very much for "the rest of the story" as we just came back from an Alaska cruise including a tour of the Ketchikan salmon hatchery. There we saw the massive influx of salmon coming to spawn upstream, caught and their eggs harvested and hatched. The young hatchlings were released again when they were 4-5 inches and were told they have a survival rate of 95% vs 2-3% hatched in the wild. Made sense to us, but we never heard of your side of the story. Thanks very much for relating your experiences!
Yes, and let's not ignore the fact that rising sea temperatures make an inhospitable environment for much of the marine life, as well. Just one more factor, among so many others. The earth is out of balance.
Thank You for your info. Spread the word because I truly believe you always get the truth from the people that live in the area!
A salmon river runs through my front garden here in Ireland and the salmon runs are slightly better than they used to be. I'm an angler myself (mainly sea fishing) and practice catch and release with the vast majority of what I catch, even though I am a seafood lover, but I never could take to the taste of salmon. Atlantic mackerel, haddock and monkfish, are perhaps the tastiest fish going. That said, I happily support any conservation programmes that prioritise the health of aquatic ecologies.
I worked in the Scottish salmon industry for 21 years. We forged all of the paperwork with regard to anti parasite treatments and especially antibiotics. We routinely over medicated and overtreated in the last 6 months before point of processing. I've never eaten or allowed my family to eat farmed salmon or trout.
That is really SCARY to know its happening in a place like Scott
Your story is interesting, may I ask some questions as a concerned consumer?
Why did they use more anti-parasitic & antibiotics than regulations dictated? Was it really necessary, or were they just being overly cautious not to lose the harvest?
Was it all the time, or just during certain weather conditions, like in winter cold, or in times of lower rainfall, or they lost a pen fence so had to stock existing pens denser (or just overstocking pens to begin with)?
How long ago did you leave the salmon industry? Do you think this is still happening today?
Looking forward to your reply, thank you in advance! 3:52
@@deemelody2396 there are RUclips videos on the industry - it shows the horrible conditions the fish are in - it seems the companies are trying to get them to market anyway while fighting a losing battle with nature (cramming in too many fish in too little water, with diseases and deformations raging).
@gortnewton4765 Or rather whistle-blowing maybe?
Maybe the Norwegian farms are better than the Scottish ones?! 🤷🏾♂️
We lived by a small river in the 60's and 70's, where I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. All through my childhood, when the salmon were spawning, the quantity and variety of fish was mindboggling. We used to joke that you could walk on thier backs to cross the river without getting your feet wet. By 1978 the generations of returning salmon had been decimated by poor logging practices, so that during the peak of spawning season it was difficult to spot a battered old Humpy now and then in the amber waters. The bountiful rainbow assortment of various salmon species was gone. This event helped inform my world-view and turn me into a conservationist. Thank you for your good works.
I live on a river the northeastern USA, the very spot was once a treasured salmon fishery for the natives famed for its productivity in the pre-industrial times. Dams and pollution completely killed them off. The river has been cleaned up and fish ladders added, and they have tried to reintroduce salmon but it was not sustainable. The spawning grounds are just not there anymore and the water is warming too much.
Yes they levelled our natural bushland to build schools and houses...some species are a deficit to the planet 😊
I remember seeing wild salmon jumping up falls on the Penninsula…also, up until about 25 years ago, it was easy to buy wonderful quality salmon..now, the fish is so inferior…..the high quality fish costs a fortune…endangered species prices…..people that have moved to the NW have no idea what good salmon should look or taste like…..
@@jennifers6435 indeed...we used to catch whatever we needed...times have changed along with human dependencies on resources
I grew up in Western Oregon and have similar memories of the fall run. They did just kind of stop in the early 80s. It is beyond sad. You can still see it in Alaska, even that is down though.
I used to work in the salmon farming industry, I will never eat farm raised fish!
There is this pattern I am starting to notice: "I worked in X industry and I don't eat X anymore!"
What company? And what was your position? If you don't mind me asking
Really that bad?
why?
What did you see that was so bad?
Alaskan here, born and raised in the salmon industry.
Here’s an option for you to not have to remove salmon from your diet all together.
-Look for a cannery in an area of Alaska that isn’t supported with hatcheries and buy your fish from them directly. All canneries I know of offer direct sales to consumers or you can find a fishmonger in that same community and purchase from them. My biggest recommendation is Troll caught (not by trolls but Trollers 😅, that’s a fishing style and boat type) in southeast Alaska, Juneau to Ketchikan. They are individually caught and treated as prizes.
Thank you for a very thoughtful and researched opinion.
Well, not really an option if you live in South Africa, LOL
Why not? He is referencing a cannery. The fish they sell has been canned. Easy to ship and much more tolerant of temperature variances (ie doesn't have to be kept cold or frozen). May cost a bit more, but if you really want Salmon...
@@spannerturnerMWOBut … canned salmon is mushy and nothing like fresh. I don’t see that as an option.
@@jeanneganrude8549 Exactly. I used to eat canned salmon when I was a kid. As an adult, I've been eating the "uncanned" variety. I will never go back to canned salmon again. Also, canned food has a high sodium content, not good for someone like me who has hypertension.
lol realy you consider a troller better :d:d , i understand you wana keep your job and won't say how bad it is and ofc supper trollers are worse but , all the by chatch , all the smaller fish that dy inside the nets or other like dolphins or other surface breathers.
not saying you are worse but def. equal bad
I worked in a marine oil (fish) refinery a number of years back in a technical role.
I did some trials on omega 3 levels of off cuts from farmed salmon, which we intended to process for what we were hoping what would be omega 3 rich oil.
Unfortunately, test results showed there was almost no omega 3. The reason was salmon were fed protein pallets rich in omega 6 rather than, as they would in the wild eat food rich in omega 3.
When you are a salmon, there is nothing truer than the old saying, you are what you eat.
Feeding my farm with Rabbit and chicken manure from animals that have eaten a wider variety of plants grown and wild harvested sure makes vegetables, taste obviously superior to chemical fertilize food.
Wow. This alone may be the reason I stay away from farm-raised. There's no point in eating them. The Omega-3's are the primary selling point.
Yes, the type of feed matters for monogastric animals. However you can feed ruminants such as cattle and goats, grain pellets containing omega 6, and it will not increase total omega 6 fatty acid levels in the steer (to any meaningful degree). The fatty acid composition of the milk will not change that much either.
So yeah, this is why your egg yolks and your bacon are extremely high in omega 6 compared to pasture raised, foraging animals. Same goes for the salmon. Try to get your eggs from a local who lets their hens forage for bugs and through compost.
@@-whackd The old ways are the surviving ways, it is what got us to the present, the commercialized bullshit!
You are lying
I’ve worked with former fish farm workers in north Scotland & none of them would eat farmed salmon , they said pure poison & environmentally devastating 🏴
But if we only ate wild caught salmon, it'd cost more than caviar in six months.
In two years they be more rare than pandas. 😅
Yes but only as long as we kepo poisoning the lakes and building dams salmon was so common back then that uts literaly its role to die and feed things you just had to pick it up @@rusticbox9908
Please tell me is there any reputable companies to purchase salmon from?
@@rusticbox9908 I hear you. I feel we humans must stop overconsumption and treat salmon as a rarely consumed treat 😊
@@amyg.6441I already do treat salmon as a treat. It's already expensive when you have 6 adults (husband, self & 4 adult/student children) to feed! I'm shocked to hear about Scottish salmon fisheries and antibiotics treatments etc. 😮
I will now have to stop feeding this to my family but where to source natural omega's & efa's ?
We came to the same conclusion recently and have eliminated salmon from our diet completely.
Why did you also eliminate wild salmon?
As a marine biologist she said nothing about on what those salmon are fed with, as I believe a high portion is made up with tons of small fishes, thus depriving other marine creatures that feeds on them.
That is what I decided to do also.
Sustainable, wild caught salmon are incredibly good.
There wouldn't even be a discussion about it if the Norwegians hadn't tried to engineer an ocean predator into something that lives in a pen and eats catfood with a dye in it to color their flesh.
@@stingoh Wild caught salmon are often escaped farm salmon and just as hazardous.
The sea floor in the sea lochs in Scotland are being destroyed underneath the cages. When the storms come, sometimes cages are damaged and the salmon escape. They often have lice and are weak and floppy as opposed to their wild counterparts. They then interbreed so the wild ones are being weakened. I lived on the shores of a loch in the NW Highlands of Scotland and saw the destruction first hand.
Yep, it is sad how we think we are able to mess with nature and not pay a price.
we have company in Gairloch (the orange rhib :p ) and i agree 100%
Just terrible when we get those darned weak and floppy fish.....
Just kidding! I tend to agree that about the only solution is to reduce ocean product consumption as much as possible. The levels of global overfishing are past any model of sustainability ....
@@stevengill1736The only way to truly reduce consumption is to reduce the human population.
@@leroyrussell8766 Preserving environments, ecologies, and resources are the reasons I'm not excited about high immigration and the loss of abortion rights in the US. There are already far too many people in my opinion.
I have been aware of this farmed fish for sometime. So I too have stopped eating farmed salmon and any other fish that is farmed. At least in our markets, they confess that the fish is farmed, a hint to me to not buy. I did not know that wild salmon was not really wild in some instances. Thank you for that. You are performing a great service. Thank you
My cousin owns a fish processing plant and he told me never, never buy or eat farmed salmon. The Norwegian farmed salmon (that's most of what we get) swims in a large bay that is completely polluted. There is no way for fresh water to get in and the polluted water to get out. Its filled with fish waste from millions of fish. I will go with Cousin Arnie's recommendation.
And what was his financial interests?
Don’t know about where your cousin is but my grandson and I visited a salmon farm in Lofoten Norway this past summer. It seemed like a great way to produce a lot of good protein. Yes there is a lot of waste but it is dispersed rapidly. The water looked great. Good currents. I was impressed. Before going I was instinctively opposed
I'm 100% sure the farms don't drain, clean and refresh the water supplies, it'd be impossible.
@@davidwoods358 The farms are a cage 50’ or so in diameter. The ocean currents refresh the water constantly and carry the waste away to be dispersed. I forgot how many salmon are raised in each cage but it was a lot. There is no odor.
There is no way that water flowing through nets with holes too small for salmon to fit through could carry smaller objects and detritus away from the spawning location.
I lived in British Columbia Canada and was into subsistence fishing for salmon. I met a local marine biologist who educated us about the destruction the salmon farms were causing. I never bought salmon from the store before that and now that I don't live close enough to fish locally, I don't buy salmon unless I travel to local fisherman or fish for it myself. It's pretty simple. There's no need to eat any food product that doesn't grow close to where you live.
That might be true in Canada but not, for example, in the UK or Japan, that is high population density countries where subsistence farming is not possible.
It's been more than 20 years since reading one of David Suzuki's books that I gave up Salmon entirely. I'm glad that BC is phasing out open pen farms, it can't happen fast enough, and I thank you so much for making this excellent video to share this information.
I live in BC. I wonder: Are we truly phasing out fish farms?? What a sad situation overall.
As a resident who lives in Victoria BC, I am very sad to see the effect that the salmon farms have on our Southern Resident Orcas, they are starving due to lack of salmon. The fish farms are a disaster, the conditions are horrendous, they are infested with sea lice, I can’t believe people eat those fish. Truly sickening.
A very interesting video. I had no idea about the re-stocking of "wild" fish. To be honest, you've hardly scratched the surface with this video. A huge issue is the source of feed for the fish farms. I've witnessed first-hand how the artisanal fishing communities of West Africa have been completely disrupted by the setting up of fishmeal and fish-oil processing plants designed to produce feed for fish farms.
Traditionally, these fishing communities relied on the men to go out and fish in large dugout canoes, while mainly the women handled the onshore processing (salting, drying, etc) and sale of the fish to the local and regional communities. In The Gambia, for example, it has been the main source of protein for many years. Everybody got a piece of the action and the community got fed.
Introduction of the fishmeal processing plants (many operated by Chinese companies) provides a virtually insatiable demand for the fish, driving down prices, leading to over-fishing and cutting out the on-shore indigenous processing industry. It's also become a divisive issue within the local community. They are also starting to see "fishing disruption 2.0" in which neighbouring states and the Chinese companies are deploying large trawlers to improve the efficiency of their fishing, adding further to depletion, and further marginalising the local industry.
I read that it takes roughly 10kg of fish to produce 1kg of fishmeal, and 10kg of fishmeal to rear 1kg of farmed salmon; a 100:1 conversion ratio. Since we discovered this, two years ago, we haven't eaten any salmon in our household. We are fortunate to live in the UK where there are plenty of alternative indigenous sources of oily fish, such as mackerel and herring from the sea and brown trout from the rivers, as well as white fish such as haddock and cod.
I think a large part of the problem is that a product that used to be a luxury and eaten on special occasions has now become a weekly staple, due to fish-farming practices driving down prices. People justify this on the basis that they are eating "higher quality'` food as we become more prosperous. This is nonsense. It's not higher quality food; it's mass-produced trash with a luxury halo around it.
"mass-produced trash with a luxury halo around it." Well said!
yes thanks for that global economics lesson vvv
This is a load of crap.
It is the fish version of tree-hugging.
She needs to GET A REAL JOB. (Then come tell us about that stupid 'sustainability'.)
You've brought up another great point which is that salmon are carnivores. From the point of view of energy and nutrient utilization, it's like eating a dog. Cultural issues aside, nobody could argue that eating a dog is more environmentally friendly than eating a herbivore such as, say, a goat.
@@megabigblur Never really thought about that. Yes, it's essentially another link in the "processing" chain.
I live in the Pacific Northwest in salmon country. We eat wild caught salmon about once per month. They have removed some of the dams in our region to improve salmon runs and are working to improve the streams for the salmon and to replant many of the native plants that existed in the region to restore the ecosystem. I am hopeful that things will improve.
PNW-er here as well, and grateful to our Democratic lands commissioner, governor, and Salish Sea tribes for shutting down the commercial salmon net-pen operations in Puget Sound.
I've lived a few years on an island in the Puget Sound. The figure presented at 13:33 of $250-650 of US taxpayer money spent per salmon that returns the the river is shocking to me, but it's not all for fisheries and human consumption. The story that's often told is that the salmon resotoration effort is to support the diet of local pods of Orca whales, who have very picky diets and only eat salmon, despite having other food sources available. But it seems even those efforts have failed, since they cannot solve the greater climate crisis, shipping industry pressure, whale watching, human development of the region in general, and Orca whale pod culture. I agree with the conclusion of the video here, but if I catch a salmon I'm definitely going to eat it!
@@chazott F Jay Dinslee
Dumb,,enjoy the black outs , fish over people
Good to hear of this from Karengrice2303
Grocery fishmonger here. Always get excited when we receive fresh packs of Alaskan salmon during the summer. I really don’t like pushing the farmed stuff. Blue house salmon is one thing I can reccomend if you want to eat “happy fish”. NEVER EVER eat wild caught raw. Between that and cod I’ve seen loads of worms.
Retired Veterinarian here, I know real gross but if worms are in the flesh of meat or fish you eat you will digest it just like you digest the fish!
I'm from Norway. You'd never eat farmed salmon if you saw the destruction the farms wreak on the surrounding fjords with all the lice and parasites.
lices?
@@holasoyjose9683 Mices?
@@holasoyjose9683 just google Salmon louse
Seems to be OK with YOUR government.
Yes, and there’s absolutely no reason to eat salmon or fish in general for health - it’s just pumping your system with persistent environmental toxins. You can get all three essential Omega-3’s from plants - ALA is a plant omega, and both DHA and EPA are in algal oil (where fish and krill get their omegas from, but without all the trawling, toxins, and ecosystem destruction.) I really love the NutriVeg plant based Omega-3 oils. The liquid ones come is delicious flavors and don’t cause the gross fish burps!
As for protein, Stanford recently came out with a huge study debunking the myth that animal sources provide proteins that are in any way “superior” to plant sources for nutrients or bioavailability. In fact, the most bioavailable protein on the planet is spirulina. And people often don’t understand that animal tissues require much more energy for the body to break down to access the amino acid building blocks. The fact alone that people on plant based diets are the only dietary group in the western world with average BMI’s in the healthy range says a lot. We don’t need to be eating so many animals and our planet can’t sustain it. Nature functions with an abundance of plant-eaters & very few carnivores in the food chain because the laws of thermodynamics require this for sustainability. Having 8 billion humans eating animals flips this equation upside down and by the laws of physics is literally eating up our planet and its ecosystems alive.
I asked my my local supermarket lady " Is this salmon wild?" she replied " well, it's not happy".
😂😂
"It's a real party animal"
😂
The best comment today!😂😂
I guess the lady was absolutely right.
LOL😂❤
The one misstatement I caught was that the omega fatty acids found in salmon can be found in plant sources. While true to a degree, nearly all omegas found in plants come in forms that the body must convert into the more desirable form the body needs, and it can only convert a rather small amount at a time. So yes, chow down on omega-3-rich plants. Just don't expect the body's natural conversion capability to come anywhere near the quantity that best benefits our bodies. It's really a biological back-up system for when animal sources are scarce. The situation is very similar to the complication of the various, slightly different molecules that we lump together as this or that vitamin, over-simplifying that the body prefers or expects certain versions more than others, therefore some being more bioavailable than others, and occasionally some forms that can be detrimental.
I thought the same exact same thing to myself, ALA vs epa/dha..She started out saying she sorted through all kinds of data and misinformation, but gave out misinformation herself.
This is true. Another aspect is the salmon we buy most of do not have the same nutrition quality as the wild thing. You get less of the "good" omega because they are not fed and live as they where meant to.
Krill oil omega 3
Bullshyt. for most people it's fish, for some people it's seeds. Salmon is just another great source. nothing singular though. plenty of other fish as well. You are taking generalities as absolutes.
@@erikred8217 No you are correct, but I think the argument is you can get the same omega-3 FA from plants and you can't. There are great alternatives to salmon, like mackerel, sardines, herring, tuna come to mind. Actually, mackerel provides twice as much Omega-3 than salmon. The issue is availability - mackerel isn't easy to find in grocery stores, you have the best chance near areas that fish like the US Gulf Coast. Herring is equally as good as salmon but again it's not easy to find in bulk. You can find it in cans like sardines or pickled but to find just raw herring for you to grill it yourself, good luck.
My financial advisor says "Don't invest and forget" . . . Now, nutritionally, I must also "Don't eat and ignore" . . . Life used to be so simple.
I live in New Zealand and the main source of salmon is farmed in hydro electric feeding canals. These drain the Southern Alps and are pure h2o which flows through the pens . I was a cook for most of my life ,here and mainly the States and Canada, the only farmed salmon I eat is this type of farmed fish . much healthier than semi-still fjord water or the onshore farms or the bays or "calm spots" in the ocean. A truly healthy farm needs a lot of water flowing through it to remove the poop and other dropped items.
Sounds cool. How is a salmon that usually spends most of its life in seawater able to be raised in freshwater?
@@Xalta_Sailorsalmon can live in both fresh and salt water... have a peek
more importantly is what the fish are fed
@@andyman8630 they feed farmed salmon 'fish pellets'. A foodstuff that is about the size of the end of your finger. The composition has been researched by scientists as being the best for good health, and efficient growth rate. I can confirm that the water of South Island (NZ) freshwater salmon farms is about as good as it gets. It's off glaciers, and down the river to the salmon pens with nothing in between, it is pure water with no pollutants. So they are raised in a very clean environment. They also have sea-pen salmon cage farms at Stewart Island and Marlborough Sounds......... they are salt water farmed salmon and in strong enough tidal areas. Enough to keep the farm areas clean with fresh salt water.
As far as I am aware, nothing in NZ including fish is routinely fed antibiotics or drugs.
Our producers are very aware of the dangers, and particularly market sentiment. It is huge business here, inspected by various Govt Departments, and 'cowboys' or 'dodgy' operations don't make it.
We also have introduced wild salmon here. They are from Canada and USA 100 plus years ago. They live in the southern rivers and lakes, do their salt water migration and return to spawn, beginning the next cycle.
And where does all that poop go?
Hello and thank you for taking up this topic. I fish commercially for salmon in Bristol Bay in Alaska. I am proud of being part of that fishery - since my family started fishing there in 1959. Our fishery has its challenges, but sustainability isn't one of them. The fishery is managed by biologists whose first priority is sustainability of the resource and second priority is the maximum benefit of Alaskans (which also benefits others). The biologists closely track the salmon return each season and allow the fleet to fish only if the return exceeds what is needed for sustainability. Our fishery has been certified sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council. Check it out! You might be surprised. You might even decide it's OK to eat salmon. Although the fact that you live in South Africa might make it less sustainable from your perspective because of the transportation burden, but as a fishery, I think we're doing pretty well. Your thoughts?
Great comment.
Glad to hear that's the case. Just gotta keep the Chinese ravagers out.
Does Bristol Bay sell in California? I'd love to buy if it's available. I buy the Brunswick sardines in a can at the grocery store. They're wonderful! Do you know if those are from a reputable source?
the very nature of the MSC’s model, with fisheries paying to be certified, poses a conflict of interest.
@@mzahra1 the customers are the ones who have to pay. and they mostly are hypocrites.
I've also read where some salmon farmers actually feed their farmed fish corn. Wild salmon eat blue-green algae. This goes to the nutritional aspect of farmed fish. Feed them corn and they lose their mega 3 fatty acid profile.
So the farm fish gets corn and coloring to turn their flesh pink
nd color the flesh so it looks like real salmon
Your food is only as healthy as the food they eat!!!
@@swissmaid I don't know of anyone who died from eating corn., and some species of algae are deadly poisonous.
Farmed salmon have no omaga 3 at all. 😂
I am a Marine Biologist and work as a North Pacific Groundfish Observer in Alaska. I work with the actual wild caught salmon that is captured at sea along with other species. Even with the all the alternatives that you spoke about are true, the native populations across the board of the North pacific populations of salmon have all decreased by 20% this year. (this is public data) Meaning the Pink, King, sockeye, chums, and coho are all in such low number because of the high amount of fishing done last year, along with the accidental bycatch from different vessels that people often forget to mention. I really appreciate you making this video to spread awareness of this problem because now King (Chinook) Salmon is currently up for debate for the endangered species list. However, because the industry is so big I don't know how it will be handled by Alaska's fish and game. Even with the dwindling numbers, the bulk product price remains low but are sold at higher prices, smaller size, which is a whole other issue that I could get into.
I could go on a rant forever on the problem with the alaska fishing industry for Salmon but the conclusion is all the same. We need to reduce out intake on the fish.
Also a random tip, only native/wild salmon's are pink from their food intake, all other farmed and "sustainable" it's actually naturally white but are given specific feed to give their meet the color we all know.
So natural fish are pink because of what they eat, but farm raised fish are pink because of what they eat. Got it.
Cod fish.
@@StratosJfarmed fish are coloured using dyes, if they aren’t using coloured dyes then they are grey inside because they are rotting, avoid eating farmed fish
Sometimes wild caught kings will be white.
Thanks for doing the work Chantel!
This was truly an amazing and thought provoking video.
And well done for hitting almost a million views! Pretty sure it will get there soon.
Good solid reporting, articulate and well researched. One thing you didn't cover was what goes into the pellet feed of farmed salmon which could be a whole episode by itself.
Shame the research failed to mention the Omega 3 content of the salmon is derived from the algae and plankton they consume in the wild. Farmed depends on the feed they are given.
If you're consuming salmon for Omega 3 then wild every time.
Also wild salmon are a strong orange pink colour due to the zooplankton they consume, so you can tell if you're being conned when you get that pastel grey pink shite.
The fact that contaminants will be far lower for wild caught is also another reason to stick two fingers up at farmed.
you arent what you eat. Whatever youre eating has ate (before it got to your plate) is what you are (eating). - Dr. Oz@@doctormarazanvose4373
@@doctormarazanvose4373 show some respect to the researcher. I am sure she knows that, but don't expect to cover every thing in few minutes.,
@@syedmohiuddin296 and I quote the OP "good solid reporting."
Show some respect to someone who expanded on the subject giving further insight perhaps.
This is a load of crap.
It is the fish version of tree-hugging.
She needs to GET A REAL JOB. (Then come tell us about that stupid 'sustainability'.)
She is mistaken about being able to get all of your omega3 from plant sources. Your body has to convert that version into omega 3 and it is very inefficient, converting only 5-10 percent
Yes, she holds a biology degree and not a chemistry degree, nor is she an MD. This is a propaganda video at its finest. The left telling everyone else how to live.
@@EddieCensoredBioavailability is different if ingested from plant sources. Various plant molecules, lectins, oxalates, goitrogens, phytoestrogens, phytates, and tannins as well as dietary fibre may inhibit absorption. Fish oil still provides the best option for dietary supplementation, but even better, eat the entire oily fish!
@@EddieCensored no... dude, whatever is in the food can not always be absorbed into the system, bioavailability my man. Never mind the oxidative stress excessive glucose cycle produces, we where made to survive on meat and fat, sugars starches only as rare treats. But no we just had to go and cultivate the tasty carbs and fruits and entirely swap over to a glucose diet for the serfs, constantly hungry, obedient and docile.
Well that's easy. Adjust the amount you ingest to allow for anticipated absorption rates and carry on.
@@mgntstr It's not because of the food, it's because of all of the poisons like Atrazine and shit israel has put into our food and water etcetera to kill us (non-jews) so they can be God's chosen and have the world to them selves. Our ancestors were healthy before they starting saying "iSRaEl iS OuR GrEaTeSt AlLy!".
Thanks for this video. Sadly you didn't join me to the cause because I'm already on board. I've stopped eating salmon since 2018 after I did a ski mountaineering trip on the top of a mountain along with a Norwegian lady. The photo of my profile was taken on the summit that day. That's what's written on my youtube profile:
"3 mar 2018, Skolpan, Senja, Norway.
After the Norwegian lady with whom I shared the ski mountaineering trip took a picture of me, I couldn't help to ask her again: "Yes, you said that you eat salmons, BUT do you eat THOSE salmons raised over there in the ocean in the round nets?"
"Nope" she replied, "We eat only the wild ones that we catch with the fishing rod". "
Thank you for getting straight to the point early. You provided all the information I needed to make a definitive decision within the first minute and 50 seconds of the video. How refreshing. I watched the entire video twice and subscribed for that singular reason alone.
You're a rarity. Thank you.
A "marine biologist" says hatchery salmon (as apposed to farmed salmon) are genetically different from "wild" salmon. She's WRONG.
@@rhymeswithteeth You may be unaware of how rational people who possess legitimate disagreements with others go about addressing those differences in a public forum. Your comment suggests this, though you could simply have had a bad day. Either way the results are the same: you sound like a 15-year-old dilettante who has just mastered google but has yet to master rational discourse.
Your first sentence is a truth claim. Support it with a direct quotation and time stamp of its location within the video.
Your second sentence expresses disagreement with her _purported_ claim. Fine. _But the burden of proof is upon you to prove your claim of contention as YOU are the one making it_ , i.e. provide evidence to support your claim that " _She's WRONG._ "[sic] Otherwise there is zero reason to believe you, _or even to consider anything you said or will say in the future_ as you will have annihilated any and all credibility you might have had.
@@zippitydoodah5693 LOL!!! Well put, wabbit! That made my day. I couldn't have said it better myself!
First 1min 50s you could draw the conclusion farm raised salmon is bad based on animal rights and health concerns. But after 2min 5s you could draw the conclusion farm raised salmon is good based on environmental concerns. I didn't watch the whole video. But I've listened to other people on this topic and agree it's complex and important
@@bubblebobble9654 LOL! Thanks for that demonstration of flawed reasoning. Worth the chuckle.
I only eat salmon which I catch myself in the open ocean. Since I am a terrible fisherman, that pretty much removes it from my diet. To me store bought , farmed or wild, never tastes fresh. The fish breeding I have seen uses fish swimming up the stream, the fry are released while still small. Some are flown to other rivers that no longer have salmon. Not sure why unless they were overfished. Often if we just left things alone fish populations might come back. But it sounds like in some rivers that is not true. It is important to re-establish habitat for natural egg laying to occur before planting baby salmon, then in future years no seeding is needed.
Rivers are changing as we enter another interglacial period. The environment will change weather humans exist or not. It's the way the world works.
@@maxwellblackwell5045 "weather"? I will pardon the pun🤣👍🏻✌🏻
Very good video. Thank you. I respect your opinion and advice. Please keep your wonderful videos coming.
Omega 3 fatty acids
There are 3 variants of Omega 3 fatty acids, ALA, EPA, and DHA. The plant form, ALA, is only about 5% usable by humans, and some people can't use it at all! The animal forms, EPA and DHA, are the essential bio-available forms for humans. Any nutritionist worth listening to knows this!
Thank you for taking the time to do the research and share the info. It’s been enlightening!!
A "marine biologist" says hatchery salmon (as apposed to farmed salmon) are genetically different from "wild" salmon. She's WRONG.
@@rhymeswithteethBut she’s kinda hot tho.
@@jtatepdx Yeah, well, I won't argue that. haha
I was raised in Alaska and have eaten lots of (then) wild salmon. This store stuff does not even taste good and we don't eat it. Glad to find out why.
on a side note along that thought, I had a 'real' avocado' in Puerto Rico and didn't even recognize it as an avocado, not by looks nor by taste. Wow what a difference.
I can very easily tell the difference in B.C too. The farmed salmon tastes terrible, wild caught salmon is delicious.
I still fish the Copper River and 100% of the fish i caught last year were wild (not hatchery - due to adipose fin). I even have the bumper sticker that says still doin' the wild thing! so its thriving out here. At least for now.
@@tylerspiegel3294 You are still part of the problem tho, if everybody was eating wild animals on a regular basis, these species would go extinct after only a few years. There is 8.1 billion humans living on Earth now. When I was born it was about half of that... Isn't that crazy? This number is growing exponentially. In 50 years we could easily be over 15 billion, and all these people are gonna need to be fed. Not only that but every 50 years we also get double pollution, double the plastic consumption, double the cars on the streets, etc...
I had read that farmed salmon does not even LOOK like wild salmon, unless the fish are fed (beta-caratine ?) as artificial coloring. This is because only the wild salmon eat the oceanic plankton, including krill, which is what imparts the 'salmon' color. Anybody else heard this ?
Salmond is my go-to fave fish, so I really appreciated hearing all of these points you share in this video. Thank you for the perspectives on farmed fish, kind of shocking but not surprising, I guess.
But, you are supposed to eat less!!!!
You might need to think of the implications of continuing to eat salmon.
Just an ordinary consumer here. Chantel, thank you for exposing these so called 'sustainable' fish farms.They sound disgusting.
You are right. We should give up farmed fish altogether.
Two further notes about farmed salmon: millions of tons of smaller species of fish are harvested to make fishmeal. 1) 90% of that harvest could be consumed directly instead of a 25% conversion to salmon by weight. 2) fishmeal also contains soy and grain that has been treated with fertilizers, pesticides, etc and they are concentrated into the salmon.
@@craigmilton9892Gee thanks
@@craigmilton9892 pretty sure it's not 25%. almost 1-to-1.
Yes and also considering the multi billion dollar weight loss industry we humans would do well to move more, eat less, and eat natural foods instead of "franken foods". Learn to read labels.
@@craigmilton9892 When farming rainbow trout the feed is very concentrated. Every 1 kg fed gives 1.1 kg growth in fish. I believe the reason you consider this impossible is because you are not counting in water weight. As the fish grows the percentage of water in the fish stays the same. Also the type of muscles in fish don't use much energy, so most of the food ingested is used for growth.
you are perfectly right we should all become vegan because most of fish and meat production is unethical, it make no sense to call meat and fish ethical.
Thank you so much for providing this - I wasn't aware of all those background occurrences.
I've talked to a person who has personally seen the destruction caused by salmon fish farms in Canada. His account of scuba diving beneath the farm enclosures, which is now considered trespassing by the fish farming corporations, was incredibly disturbing. In my mind, having a degree in Biology, fish farming is destroying the ecological web on a multi-species level that will slowly infiltrate other ocean harvesting occupations. If you look back in history of ocean fish harvesting, numerous populations have either been wiped out or reduced to nothing. It's all about money, nothing about sustainability.
Thinking about your statement, "considered trespassing"; those waters are federal jurisdiction and owned by every canadian as a taxpayer. Completely driven by greed. Every fish farm in Canada should be moved on land, the water filtered before returning to the ocean, and the wasted turned into compost. It's a no brainer - but the feds, as usual, are too stupid to realise they are contributing to the destruction of the ocean ecosystems while reducing fishing opportunities for recreational in the name of "protecting the species". Tell me in what reality this makes sense? LOL
Same in Australia’s southern waters & all over the world.
People have to eat. Are you going to fish wild salmon? Soon there wil be none. There's too many people, that's the problem with ALL the environmental issues. Do you think plastic is the problem? No,its the QUANTITY of plastic. CO2? its the AMOUNT of CO2. etc, etc. Are you going to use organic farming to feed 8 billion? that will never work. If the population doesn't stop growing in the third world, we will have an extermination event within this generation. But people still want to believe the solution is to ban plastic.... and it's all going to be fine...
@@Cobalt1520
“There are too many people on Earth”
That's the argument brought forth by Malthus, and the Earth's ’carrying capacity’ has been debated for centuries, with no clear conclusion.
“If the population doesn't stop growing in the third world, we'll have an extinction event within this generation”
The population in developing countries is plateauing, with access to education and contraception. So if you're advocating for culling, then it should start with those who are consuming the most resources and emitting the most, i.e. North America and Western Europe.
Since you're so passionate about this issue, why don't you go first?
@@deus_ex_machina_ I don't know where you get your information, but you should investigate further. Those who are emitting the most are, BY FAR, countries in the Asian continent like China and India. the US is in second but with 13% of CO2 emissions, while china is 30% (one third of the total emissions), India is 7.6% and the first European country is Germany with only 1.8% (compare that with the rest). So all added the Asian countries represent the majority of emissions. As to me, we in Europe are in population deficit already, we need to have more children ASAP, on the contrary Africa and Asia need to stop having so many children.
I’m really curious what you think about the new hype for Omega 3 fish oil.
"Hey, Salmon, we named a color after you!"
"Wow, cool! Is it silvery like my skin?"
IT'S PINK LIKE YOUR FLESH. SALMON FOR THE SALMON THRONE.
😂
If it is even more tragicomical if you have in mind how bright orange-red the meat is in a lot of wild salmon when they are able to consume crustaceans in the wild.
WE NEED NOT YOUR WILD-CAUGHT SALMON. OUR INDUSTRIAL LIVES ALLOW ONLY THE PINK OF FACTORY-FARMED FLESH BOUGHT FROM THE GROCERY STORE
It's fair to say that there are plenty of social media influencers exposing abusive farming practices, yet there is a lack of people willing to do the hard work of installing corrective practices. there is too much applaud within the ingroup of criticism to support change.
I've seen an on shore organic salmon farm in BC, operating on saline well water. It was a caviar farm though. One thing I found out is that for any farmed carnivorous fish, such as trout, char, steelhead and salmon, it takes 2 pounds of protein to grow 1 pound of fish. Most of that protein is from wild caught fish thats turned into feed. Not a very good efficiency.
For the most part, we only eat sockeye salmon from Alaska, which is not available year round. So we only eat it, for a small part of the year.
I'm from Hong Kong, i order Sockeye salmon from British Columbia Canada, the packaging says the salmon are Wild caught and all natural. I don't really have other better alternatives.
Which omega source would be the most eco-friendly do you think? I know you mentioned seaweed but the production is not just there yet. Flax or Chia seeds sound nice but I think this is an option only for a limited portion of the population. Agriculture has problems of it own, including destroying marine ecosystems as you well know. Is it sardines and mackerel? Can wild population of these fishes meet the demand of humanity? It is my personal choice when I am in a country like Spain who has a wide range of fish on the table. It is impossible to get these fishes raw in most of the European countries even in the north...
I came into this video not wanting to like what I heard and wanting to disagree, but this was so thoughtful. I came away 100% agreeing with your choice and absolutely agree with the reasoning.
Nicely done!
But she said that hatchery produced salmon are genetically different than "wild salmon".
@@rhymeswithteeth So?
@@rhymeswithteeth I wondered how this is true? If you take the eggs from wild salmon and fertilise them with sperm of the same run, the genetics should be identical.
@@georgevindo Zackery!
@@clarkgriswold-zr5sb How could a "marine biologist" be so dumb. As @georgevindo said, if - in a hatchery - you take eggs from a wild salmon and fertilize them with the sperm of a wild salmon, how could the resulting salmon be genetically different than wild salmon? The resulting salmon are NOT genetically different.
I live in the Pacific Northwest. I am also a marine biologist. Our federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans is in bed with the salmon farmers. That's why we still have salmon pens. I came to the conclusion, before I watched your video, that eating salmon, either wild-caught or, especially farmed, is not healthy for me or the salmon. I don't eat seafood at all anymore.
Why is wild-caught salmon not healthy?
Alaska, California, Oregon, and finally Washington have all banned commercial net pens from operating in their marine waters. Although Cooke Aquaculture is trying to use a loophole to start farming steelhead, I don't think it'll be without a fight from tribal and environmental groups. What and where is the continued net pen salmon farming occurring in PNW marine waters?
@@beemo9 Because it's been poisoned!!!
Really? No seafood at all? It's that bad huh? Yeah I often think of the little canned sardines I eat, do they contain plastics?
" is not healthy for me or the salmon" - Yeah, eating salmon is definitely not healthy for the salmon ;-)
Great diversified research. I live Canada, have followed the 'salmon' thing for decades. The diseases from farmed salmon that are now affecting wild salmon off BC coast is systemic. One of diseases affects muscles, therefore the heart, which in the end compromises wild salmon to get back to home range to breed. I read recently that our wild salmon historically used to push 100lb, now are 30-40lb avg. The testing of farmed salmon from multiple pens up and down BC coast several yrs ago, consistently from every pen, in the lab showcased nightmare scenario. Thx for all the extra data.
Salmon is a generic name to variety of species, of very different size - which one you are talking about ?
Chinook Salmon have always averaged that size, even decades ago the largest of the BC salmon were in the 50-70 lb range. The only exception that would have resulted in the reduction in very large Chinook (the ~100lb fish) in BC waters was the building of the Grand Coulee dam in WA state (on the Columbia river), because it wiped out the largest sub-species that spawned upstream from there in Canada. But that was 80 years ago now. That had nothing to do with fish farms.
I love eating salmon; for years I've watched the decline in their size, quality and numbers. Your reasoned conclusion is spot-on. A similar conclusion can also be applied to other wild fish. Even so, the idea of not eating salmon anymore nearly makes me cry. Dang.
I used to eat salmon almost exclusively... likely almost ALL I ate was farmed. THANKFULLY I've switched to sardines... after seeing this video I'm glad I did and will continue to use them as my primary source of Omega-3's and other shared benefits to salmon!!
Great video!
Good idea.
Better yet to cut out the persistent environmental toxins in fish and just go straight to the source - algae oil. NutraVege plant Omega-3’s are my favorite, taste great, and involve no nasty fish burps, bi-catch, ecosystem destruction, or trawling. It’s worth a try & provide more consistent daily omega-3’s than random dietary fish consumption.
Also, fyi, sardines and many other fish lower down the food chain are now being severely over-fished and are at risk of population collapse - which in turn threatens countless species up the food chain. The fishing industry is essentially playing whack-a-mole with clobbering one fish species to collapse followed by the next. Switching fish consumption doesn’t solve the problem. So why consume them when we don’t need to? It’s time we give our oceans a break!
@@NewEarthAwakening Good thinking! I just get paranoid with supplements as for all we know, they could be placebo pills! Do you know 100% that your algae oil has the O3's that it says it does? At least with fish we know that it has to at least have some of the good stuff haha
Newearth...we need omegas from fish to thrive. Plant sources are proven inferior.
So glad I watched this. I will never purchase farmed salmon again and reduce my consumption of wild salmon until I phase it out. The wild salmon issue you speak about is fraught with devastating futures. I am going to reduce salmon or not eat it and just go back to sardines. You are an amazing wealth of information.
Right up my alley. I love salmon, and being Norwegian I used to eat quite a lot of the famed stuff. Until about 5 years ago, I realized the impact on environment, other species, fish health, wild salmons etc. I still eat salmon, but only from land-based farms. Only moderate amounts are for sale, at a higher price than sea-based farmed salmon. But that is the price I gladly pay. In general, homo sapiens' tampering with nature leads to disaster in most cases. Caveat emptor!
I visited a local restaurant here in the Napa Valley, California and saw a salmon entree on their menu. I asked the waiter "Is your salmon fresh or farmed?" He replied, "it's both - it's fresh . . . from the farm."
“Wild or farmed?” would be the correct question.
Was he wrong ? 😅
Wild caught is the terminology on lables.
A true salesman, that’s how their minds work and how the world is destroyed. Lies all the way!
I think he found the loophole in your question :).
Thank you, I think I can follow you in every argument being expressed in your summary at 14:32. I love Salmon as Sushi for example but I think I will at least be able to reduce my consumption drastically and even let it go for a long while. You did not have to convince me to do so with your video since I have always been a deep lover of the sea and its species every since I was a kid. Surely your way of talking to your viewers is very sympathetic and open and I am sure you get a lot of confirmation and positive feedback for your passionate work which I am looking forward to see more of in the future.
Thank you for this informative review. I have two other concerns about fish. 1. What are the health implications of the salmon growing/catching processes? Antibiotics, hormones in land farms, stresses etc. 2. Do wild caught sardines and mackerel have these environmental and health issues?
Thanks for your "deep dive" into this topic and excellent presentation. What an eye opener - and so sad! I hate to give up salmon, but I will seriously look at alternatives.
Aside from the cruelty inflicted upon the penned salmon, the health risks alone should be a red flag. CAFO's are NEVER a good idea.
Thank you for bringing up the animal welfare issue, I haven't noticed any other commenters mentioning this.
Thank you for your research. I'm glad someone is out there to speak for them.
A few years ago I was going buy some wild caught salmon at a popular store in the US. They had many worms crawling out of them. I have always known that they were there but had never seen them.
IF they come from the great lakes, they never see the ocean and will be wormy. Don't eat lake salmon raw...ever.
@@hunter24seven why are they more wormy? saltwater kills the worms?
@@hunter24seven
There actually is a difference between getting omega-3s from fish and seaweed or getting them from various plants. The difference is that you won't get the 20-22 carbon fatty acids from flax, walnuts, etc. (their fatty acids will be 18 carbon long). This potentially matters because the chemistry that omega-3s (eicosanoid biosynthesis, etc.) starts out with these longer chains; and, though we do have the enzymes to add carbons a couple at a time, the conversion is extremely rate limited.
Another question to ask might be whether that conversion step to the longer chain is rate limited for a reason and whether we actually need so much of the final product that we need these marine sources in the first place, but that's another kettle of fish (see what I did there?).
That last phrase was the only thing I understood.
@@kshepard52 the writer is saying there is a low conversion from flax omega 3, Linoleic or alpha linoleic acid to DHA/EPA which is the omega 3 from fish, roughly speaking, its well known just search google conversion flax omega 3 to DHA, the type your brain feeds on, .... just avoid vegeable processed oils, raw sugars in products and eat tinned sardines, eat grass fed saturated fat and butter, yes cholesterol is actually good for you, every cell in your body and brain is made of cholesterol, watch videos on carnivore diets by dr schafee and dr Ekberg, learn about he cholesterol myth (low carb down under) all on youtube. you`ve been lied to by the american medical foundation and heart association for years.
@@kshepard52 I'm not a biologist but I stayed at a Holiday Inn last night (very clever marketing meme). Besides, our daughter is a geneticist/biologist and my wife and I have had more than one of those "what are these words?" reactions to papers for which she has asked for our editorial input on the grammar at least. But the experience has forced me to learn more of the jargon and has helped me in researching my own genome, so let me take a shot at this.
Our bodies are amazing chemical factories, not only in how we break down and use food, but in how we can change unusable or less-usable chemicals into the ones we really need. However, like operating a chemical factory, those conversions come with a cost in energy and other chemicals.
A good example is beta carotene. This is the plant form of vitamin A. In most cases, our bodies can change the plant form into several different forms of vitamin A that we need. However, besides the metabolic "cost" of doing so, the efficiency of this conversion can vary pretty wildly from person to person due to genetic differences (for instance, in the BCO1 gene which helps in this process), and those with poor conversion rates may be turning orange from the amount of beta carotene in their blood while still being vitamin A deficient.
As someone experimenting with a whole foods, plant based diet this year, I've had to learn way more than planned in order to continue optimizing my nutrient intake, including where deviating from pure plant-based is wiser than trying to supplement the difference. One of these is eating two tins of high-quality sardines packed in olive oil a week as a rich source of more bioavailable (doesn't need conversion) omega 3's.
BTW, the length of this post shows the value of the jargon associated with various fields. More words with less precision is the alternative.
@@WMHinsch Thank you for taking the time to explain this!
I hope you've had better luck with the sardines than I have. Some brands are unbelievably gross but I finally settled on Wild Planet and began looking hard for decent recipes.
I think we're bad at converting the plant fatty acids because we got way more from terrestrial animals. The fatty acids in ruminants grazing on open, biodiverse pasture is far different from the modern grain fed cows.
Thank you Telly for all this content, much appreciated!
Would Soylent Green be a viable alternative?
🤣🤣🤣 BWAHAHAHA!!!
For sure 😆
In a planet of 9 billion large mammals, for sure! I'm happy to be recycled after I die, yumyum!
Free range, grass fed?
Charlton Heston's finest hour . . .
Thanks for your careful analysis. I agree with your conclusions -- we should stop eating salmon, and hope that others do the same.
Go for it. I will not stop. I will not gorge myself, but I am human and God gave me salmon.
@@kimberlyann1960 I am human and I have no god. And as I am human and have no god, I care about other humans. I care about the humans whose fish stocks are being depleted to make fish meal to feed the salmon in the farms, and I care about the humans who live in the coasts where we fish the other fish that "god" gave us to eat.
God doesn't seem to care too much for anybody unable to have access to a supermarket where he can buy salmon. Not really a god I feel inclined to worship.
you should get the full story rather than relying on one impassioned opinion.
Thank you for a very informative video. What fish do you consider safe and sustainable and are still part of your diet ?
Bugs~
Fish is some of most toxic garbage you can possibly consume as a human.
@@core3673 Bugs are actually bad food convertors. Just eat plants.
What are the best fish alternatives in the supermarket that are sustainable?
Beautifully presented, excellent information organization, and a high-integrity based decision, Telly. Thank you for sharing your research and evaluation.
Agree 100%. I've seen SO many other videos and documentaries on the same topic as well. Wanted to check yours out as well. I've stopped eating ocean and stream fish now, + shellfish. Last taste of a Fish Sandwich at Culvers convinced me it was not worth the taste or money and I don't miss it, don't need it, don't want it. Thank you.
Great post my friend. I truly appreciate this information and am ready, willing and able to forgo Salmon.... period. Very happy to have found your channel. Have a great weekend. Charmed
Make sure to tell everyone all about it that's the vegan way.
I am ready, willing, and able to continue enjoying salmon a couple of times per week.
What about bio accumulated radionucleides in wild Pacific Salmon?
I agree with you 100%. I gave up on eating seafood years ago. We are overfishing the oceans and there are no good options as far as I can see, especially when you live far away from the oceans as I do. I'm listening to the podcast, Salmon Wars. It's a tragedy what we did to the indigenous people of the pacific northwest. These are the people who relied on this fish for centuries and we denied them of that heritage. Thanks for sharing your perspective.
I would encourage you to take a look at the real results of the Bolt decision in the 1970s, specifically for Washington State. The situation is that today, Natives can fish as much as desired, and public and commercial fishing is reduced to next to nothing. It is a proven fact that the Natives overfished Puget Sound when they realized they could sell their fish commercially, instead of solely take enough to feed their own tribes. Many of the Northwest tribes admit this as much, and lament their own greediness that decimated the salmon runs. When everyone in the industry works alongside the scientists to make sure the fish are not overfished, as the industry is run in Alaska, then everyone wins- everyone can share the heritage of salmon fishing and living off the plentiful land.
It's making them reliant on the Fed $$$ that is killing them.
I am from Australia and until recently hubby and I ate a piece of salmon/week. The salmon is farmed from Tassie. Hubby saw an investigation into farmed salmon - what they are feeding them as well as the impact on the environment. As lovers of Tassie, we have been to the salmon farms and listened to the information given by the industry. However, concerns for both our health and the environment have caused us to stop buying salmon. It's sad cause we enjoyed it - but that's what we decided. However, we are heading to Alaska later this year and may be tempted to try a piece or two while ther - wild caught and not huge amounts.
Look for wild caught BC salmon.....lots of canned sockeye out there.
Australia is one of the most abundant fisheries in the world. I am sure there are local species caught by local people that you could eat instead
@@oxskillxoPlenty of fish - but not plenty of wild caught salmon.
No wild salmon here in Australia. In fact, sadly, one of the larger fish markets here in Merrickville Sydney, which stocks a huge number of fish only has a few wild caught with a majority being farm raised. It’s absolutely pathetic. I come from the Pacific Northwest and the one thing I truly miss the most is wild caught salmon.
From a Marine Biologist, we would like to know about the possibilities of toxicity of farmed salmon from synthetic dye/colour and dioxin in their deep sea food supply?....Please.
thats the big secret. no one knows what they get.....
A significant extra cost but how about mandating a membrane under pens to capture 90% plus of excrement and leftover food? Pump it out of the bottom of conical shaped catchment, maybe once per week, dry it on shore and sell for fertilizer to offset costs. It would be excellent fertilizer.
It would be fertilizer, but not excellent. You are forgetting their food is man made, with bigger, better, faster growing built in. Antibiotics and growth hormones quite likely included.
its not from the dye, its from the food they get and the processes that make that food. The dye is likely a minor thing in the big picture. It covers for the fact that they are not eating wild krill, which naturally color the flesh with something called astaxanthin. The same thing that basically colors flamingoes. Domestic flamingoes are white because they dont eat the brine shrimp the wild ones eat.
@@spearsinspines And, for similar reasons, captive-bred Poison Arrow Frogs are harmless, because they are not consuming certain wild insects and bio-concentrating
their toxins.
What about trout fish? Can you do a video on that type of fish? It's similar in Omega's to salmon!
sardines are one of the best and they are not farm raised 🙂
And cheaper in the smoked version (at least in France)
Trout are actually ‘salmonids’. Same family, and have the same kinds of omegas, maybe not in the same quantities
@@non9886 and are way less contaminated
@@MMK86 yeah, i said one of the best. also from this point of view, as small not predatory fish...
Very informative video with really good production. Thank you for making this and taking the time to inform the public about it.
A very informative video thank you, I have stopped eating it a year or so ago.
A friend of mine catches trout and smokes it himself, I find it very similar in flavour to smoked salmon. Any thoughts on trout being a viable alternative?
One thing that might be an alternative is "Stone-bass", a.k.a. "Meagre" (Argyrosomus regius). I had it at a restaurant near London, and was impressed by its firm textureand mild-but-meaty taste; had a read-up and it seems like a huge calciworm with fins - eats almost anything, and has a good conversion ratio to fish-flesh. Farmed in the Mediterranean, mostly, I believe.
Thank you for a clear and thoughtful summary of your three major points around the global consumption of Salmon. Very informative. I'll be followup your example.
This is a fantastic presentation on an important topic. Thank you for your work in educating the public! Subscribed!
Thank you! Great source of information and balanced view of all of pros & cons. I cook salmon occasionally when I entertain since I don’t eat beef nor chicken. I have been eating sardines for just myself, but I will look into seaweed. Could you please do a video on sardines and let us know if they are truly sustainable?
You confirmed what I strongly suspected so thank you. Atlantic salmon is farmed. I only eat the wild Pacific salmon that is sustainably harvested having the MSC seal.
A very thoughtful and evidence-based assessment of global salmon farming and the impact this industry has had on the environment... and in particular upon the salmon fish we consume in vast quantities. From your findings, it appears our solutions here have created greater problems than those they are intended to remedy. As a serious foodie and an Oregon fisherman in what was once thriving salmon country, your remarks have given me pause regarding my personal consumption of this marvelous fish. I trust your serious research efforts and your personal sincerity are appreciated by many. Regards, Dr. A
In the Pacific Northwest, all the major rivers are dammed and these hydroelectric dams provide for nearly all of the region's power without emitting any CO2 or leaving behind dangerous spent fuel. But the dams are bad for the fish. Fish ladders dont seem to solve the problem and neither do hatcheries.
So what should be done? Wind and solar power can reduce the need for hydroelectric power but only hydro can provide a sort of battery of power for times when the wind doesnt blow and the clouds are heavy, blocking the sun.
How to live in harmony with nature when every solution brings new challenges?
Why is spent nuclear fuel considered dangerous? Look up how many people have died as a result of spent fuel. It's absolutely not a threat at all. The stuff is encased in concrete casks which you can literally walk up and hug and it's completely safe. They are so strong that they have put them on trains and smash them in the walls and they don't leak. Nobody has ever died from spent fuel. Not one person has ever been harmed by the millions of packages of nuclear waste we've transported. Every single industry produces some sort of negative waste. 100% of them. Nuclear is actually the greenest by absolutely every metric, even including the fuel.
There are way more free flowing rivers than dammed ones in the northwest probably 200 to 1
Burn fossil fuels.
I used to know a zoology major who was being told by his professors that dams were inherently bad due to increased water temperature and that coal fired power plants were the way to go. Zoologists can have a rather bad case of tunnel vision. Contemporary lifestyles depend upon high energy production facilities located somewhere on the planet. There are limited ways to do this. Population collapse is the other alternative. Anyone want to volunteer for the Soylent Green program?
Nuclear
You can't get any of the DHA/EPA you need from any plant material except algae. The conversion from ALA to EPA/DHA cannot reach sufficient levels. Especially if you are on a plant based diet rich in linoleic acid. You don't need to eat fish, though. Fatty red meat, eggs, cheese also deliver EPA/DHA.
Can I get sufficient DHA/EPA from fatty red meat, eggs and cheese ?
Yes. Maybe. Will it be optimal levels? Maybe not. But be sure it's all organic and mostly grass/natural fed animals.
*except algae* Then I'll eat plenty of algae. Thanks for the tip.
@@okrimiksnajleb9635 human meat also rich source of omega-3
Linoleic (omega 6) and linolenic acid (omega 3) found in plants are said to be essential fatty acids but the conversion rate to DHA and EPA is not not very good. (omega 3 and omega 6 refers to the position of double bonds in fatty acid chain) I work in the edible oil industry and I have heard and read a lot about how eating linoleic acid and linolenic acid isn't sufficient to make enough DHA and EPA in our bodies. Then you wonder how we have all managed to survive without eating enough seafood.
See the videos below :
- Farmed Norwegian Salmon World’s Most Toxic Food
- Salmon Confidential, Documentary About Salmon Farms in Canada & Diseased Salmon
A farmed fish in Norway has less toxics than any wild fish in the baltic sea....
I am sorry to hear all this things about salmon because I consume salmon at least 4 to 5 times per week, but after this I will reduce consumption. Thank you for the video on this topic, these are things I allways wondered about and thanks everyone for such educating comments.
An excellent, challenging video but I'm afraid the elimination of salmon from modern diets is one of the last things I can imagine ever catching on.
I worked putting up a fish hatchery in Alaska. The fish that are wild that ran up stream were not the same strain as the ones that were produced at the hatchery. Both are caught in the wild but not the same. That bothered me. Why wouldn’t they produce the the same fish that ran wild?
Why don't fruit and vegetable growers grow the same varieties that were found in the wild....because they select and improve the species to make it more commercially viable ie more disease resistance, faster growing, more temperature and water tolerance etc etc etc in order to keep prices down so consumers can afford to buy the product.
@@steviewonder8624 - In short = Business decisions. More product, more marketing, more sales, more gross revenue
I agree with your comment that they should maintain the purity of the run. That would require a hatchery for every stream or segregating the eggs at the hatchery. Economically I don't see hatchery managers keeping all of the different runs separated.
That is weird
Here on the west coast of Canada, farmed salmon are all Atlantic salmon, a species not normally found here. The reason they raise Atlantic salmon is all the information used for feeding and drugging them comes from Norway where all the companies do their research.. thus escaped Atlantic salmon interbreeding with our native species
Having spent 22 years as a marine biologist at Scripps Institute and California Academy of Sciences,working with Mahi Mahi and yellowtail jack I appreciate your presentation. Thank You.😊
But what about the part where she said that hatchery salmon are genetically different than "wild salmon"?
I am still alive at 65 not had fish in like 23 years I think for the reasons you all talked about. very informative video thank you. Alberta Canada.
As a fellow marine biologist, I have a question. "Was it a Titleist?"
@TheTussman LOL, why don't you have more upvotes?
It is an American brand of golf ball.@@erikarommel
@@finance7120 Ever watch "The Marine Biologist" from Seinfeld?
The sea was angry that day my friends lol
@@kelliott7864 Like an old lady sending back soup in a deli.
Thank you. I've been saying this for years. Unfortunately, no one wants to hear it. There are too many of us, and we are eating up the world.
Here are some tips to help your body more readily convert the ALA in vegetarian sources of Omega 3's into more useful EPA & DHA (the body can't use the ALA without converting it first):
- reduce Omega 6 intake (competes with Omega 3 to break down into EPA & DHA)
- reduce or eliminate alcohol (completely stuns the bio pathway for conversion)
- consume more: Zinc, B6, B7, Magnesium & E (the body uses these nutrients during conversion)
The only problem with plant based Omega 3's is that they exist as ALA which the body can't use without first converting it into EPA & DHA which is already present in the fish Omega 3's. Hope my tips help you level up your conversioN!
Fantasticly enlightening talk , thank you for your hard work & sharing it ! I will never it salmon again !!
Thank you! Very good information.
A question: Since hatchery salmon spawn in the streams in which they hatched, how do they genetically influence other salmon strains?
yes
In my area not all hatcheries use eggs from the stream they are planted in. These fish then bread with native fish and change the genetics of the run. Some rivers have runs that no longer have native fish.
ya phil is correct thats why i think here in wv the stocked trout cant breed...unless some species that isnt native...but the stocked trout are picked for many reasons like can survive lower oxygen levels or just because theyre gold and look cool even thoe its basically albino
@@t9056My understanding is that trout need running water to spawn. Many of the planter trout are triploids. They don't breed and spend their life eating so grow faster and bigger making them better for put and take lakes.
All salmon and trout populations will have fish that "get lost" and spawn somewhere other than the place of their birth. Without that, the species would not have spread to so many rivers... at any rate, most wild spawners will find their birthplace, but they don't know that lost hatchery fish will be there too, so wild and hatchery will mate, polluting future generations with hatchery genes. Hatchery genes are bad because selection is geared towards rapid growth and survival in captivity, not the stressors that make a fish fit for survival in the wild.
I live in Michigan. Could you comment on lake salmon, trout and white fish?
she would have no idea of the fish you catch and eat in Michigan.
If you're talking about the Great Lakes, check out the consumption advisories put out by your state's Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. Unfortunately a lot of residual pollution can accumulate in marine life, especially in their fat.
nobody eats great lakes salmon. Well I cant say nobody but I dont think it tastes well compared to sea faring salmon. Theres also reccomendations of how much you should eat and in some parts its not recommended, with larger fish being most contaminated in any area. I would doubt there are comparable omega 3's too due to land locked fish diet.
It is what the wild salmon feed on which makes them the healthiest food in the world. Farmed is commonly known to be SH#T food - that is very well researched and distributed on how bad these farms are. The red, wild salmon of Alaska cannot be compared to anything else. Unfortunately, it is the common, poor person who will be forced to eat food that is severely deprived of nutrients while the ppl who are telling us constantly how bad we are for the planet are flying in jet streams, limos, and flying in the most expensive meat, and fish in the world along the the most material goods like clothes and many mansions.
It is WE who will die soon, because for them, we are parasites on this earth. Human life has no value anymore (think of the unlimited ways they have encouraged us to become sterile?) unless you are born to a certain few having wealth beyond imagining.
I love your honesty. There are so many other species that are suffering the same fate. Such a hard problem to solve....especially for meat eaters!
could you make soil fertilizer out of the fish poop?
It's high in Nitrogen compounds and Phosphates, so, yes.
But extracting it is nigh on impossible if you have a free-flow pen. In an enclosed, recirculated system, it's a lot easier. But that obviously costs a lot more cash moneys per unit of fish. And, don't forget that around half of the Phosphates are 'free' in the water column, while Nitrogen (as Nitrates) is likely even higher a percentage as free molecules. (A lot of the Nitrogen comes from the dissolved waste, excreted as Ammonia and converted by bacterial processes).
I asked a marine biologist this very question, and I got a very similar answer to what Andrew has said above.
I do wonder if there should be more investment into making it viable.
Good info - thanks for covering the subject. So, let me get this straight. Over population, lack of water flow and geographic net movement are the root causes of the problem. No different to your chicken concentration camps picture reference. Maybe as someone who understands this better than most should look into what should change to make this actually work. How many fish in a given area and how often the nets should be moved.
If that means I need to pay more for an ethically raised salmon I’ll do it.
Trout farms do it. How do you collect it out in the ocean?
If that fish is heavily treated with antibiotics wouldn't that be in their poop as well?
Where do you get your omega-3s from then? They're probably destroyed by the intense heat used in canning fish. And plant omegas are very difficult to convert into the essential omega-3s, EPA and DHA. That leaves very few options (except for supplements).
There aren't really solid concrete researches to verify that plant sources are insufficient and that fish is required for sufficient omega3.
I did a blood test on Omega3 and the reference ranges were all over the place and it would have been impossible to be in the normal range for one without being outside the normal range for the other.
It's a similar thing with protein deficiency.
Everyone is just guessing they are lacking protein / omega3 but there's no reliable test to verify this (maybe tests from omega3 supplement companies wanting you to buy their fish oil)
sardines, mackerel, most oily fish I would think.
@@jys365 There's solid research showing conversion of plant omega-3s to the essential omega-3s (EPA, DHA) is extremely low in humans. And omega-3s function in cell membranes of the body, not the blood, so of course blood tests are going to be meaningless.
@@jeil5676 Are you talking about canned or fresh? Canned isn't a great option bcz of the issues I mentioned in my OP. And I've rarely, if ever, seen fresh sardines or mackerel in a seafood dept. (I did find sardines once, but they were ridiculously difficult to prepare and eat with all those tiny bones).
@@keppela1 Both fresh and canned. I think omega 3's survive canning. They are just cooked like you might do with any fish. Plain smoked sardines packed in olive oil is really delicious alone on toast. No butter needed. I get tins for $1 when they go on sale and eat a tin a week maybe. Fresh mackerel should be available almost everywhere, its very common but has a strong flavour not everyone loves, some do. They serve fresh sardines in like spain or sardinia all over mediteranean probably so you could look on youtube how to prepare and eat easily. They are supposed to be delicious fresh in like tapas and stuff.
I have just subscribed after watching your salmon video.
Is there any fisheries management jurisdiction in the world which has not seen major negative impacts on wild salmon populations after salmon aquaculture implementation?
doesn't seem to be any negative effects caused to the wild salmon in New Zealand by salmon farms, which have been here for 30 plus years. There may be bad conditions for the wild fish from time to time, but they are mostly living seperately from the commercial farmed fish. The wild fish live in the rivers and lakes, and migrate annually, then return. The farmed fish stay in their cages at sea mainly. There are a couple of outfits with fresh water farms in fast flowing fresh water....... but they don't appear to have any negative affects on the local wild fisheries.
It is so utterly refreshing and just plain cool to for once see someone discuss protein from fish - it's benefits, without denigrating vegan sources as well (plant-based proteins). It's this sort of healthy, balanced approach that added massive merit to this video. New subscriber - based on that rare bit of integrity alone.
A biologist spoke at my local library about industrial pig farms and the ecological disaster it has caused. I feel like if you examine each food we eat en masse, you'll find the same problem. Seems like the long term solution is to have less kids.
My father always said, "Overpopulation is the problem. Everything else is just a symptom."
Can't say I disagree.
Or go vegan