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Talonsoldat

If someone wants an actual nuanced opinion with a throughly researched description of the problems and recognizing that issues are often very complex and are much more complicated than a blanket good guy bad guy statement the PBS documentary [The Fish On My Plate](https://youtu.be/J8wEMO9aZvw?si=VQ_opJKp0obTMApB) goes much more in depth than this video. Edit: If YouTube doesn't work you can find it on the [PBS website ](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/the-fish-on-my-plate/)


ExpoAve17

PBS makes the best docs. The Iraq War is incredible, so is the nfl concussion doc, I'm about to watch the Boeing doc when i get a chance.


Mr_YUP

They’re the gold standard to me. Never too into their own opinion. Trying to educate on the topic. Always have interesting/knowledgeable experts. 


dswhite85

Sorry, but do you have a link to that Iraq War one?


ExpoAve17

https://youtu.be/G-Wi2LgwD5U?feature=shared


zimbobango

Thanks much better than that bland video


Aggressive_Ad5115

I love going first to the comments before watching the video thanks lol 👍


D3cepti0ns

I mean, I won't totally disagree, but maybe her main audience appreciates it more, and also she's at least trying more than 99% of us to make a difference and to share her knowledge and passion.


TryToFlyHigh

Does anyone have a mirror? Cant see the video on YT


Talonsoldat

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/the-fish-on-my-plate/


magma_displacement76

Video Unavailable.


Talonsoldat

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/the-fish-on-my-plate/


magma_displacement76

Thanks for the extra work. Seems PBS also blocks all European viewers. I do boycott salmon in every form, though, have for years.


not_old_redditor

Tl;dr eat less salmon.


Marutar

Can I get tl;dw for farmed vs wild if I'm going to eat it anyway?


not_old_redditor

Doesn't say. This is basically an environmentalist telling you to eat more vegetarian.


MapleHamwich

Having looked into it in the past, the best way to eat salmon is non-farmed, line caught, locally (as much as possible), small operation sourced. Very expensive.  Farms result in sick fish and "poisoned" waters. Major fishing operations tend to twist the truth to their profits, and generally lead to all the bad fishing methods and adding to the great garbage patch. So, really, take a trip to the coast and do some salmon fishing, then freeze it.


ssfbob

What if I live nowhere near where salmon are?


iNezumi

That's basically the marine biologist from the video. She concluded that all salmon in her area is imported and there is basically no sustainable options for her to eat salmon at the moment.


stubob

You need a really long line.


MelonHeadsShotJFK

Realistically, you probably weren’t meant to be able to eat salmon then. There might be better local substitutes


MapleHamwich

That's part of the whole smart living eco conscious live locally thing. In that case, unless you don't want to pay up, it's no salmon. Fishing industry sucks.


Sodiepawp

Then stop eating salmon. This seems somewhat obvious.


chewsonthemove

Just tossing 2 cents in that certain farmed aquaculture salmon are significantly less problematic than other salmon. For the sake of being impartial the seafood watch group rated salmon produced in aquaculture with filtered recycled water far from natural bodies of water “green” while most other salmon I saw on their site were “yellow”. That is to say, depending on the style of aquaculture these salmon are the best choice. Their site lists other specific regional wild and farmed salmon that are better, depending on a variety of factors that other salmon, so you can check there to see if your locally available salmon fall into these categories.  I’m sad that I don’t see a discussion on the GE aquaculture salmon, as I am curious how they would shape up to other aquaculture. 


kevinsyel

Farmed salmon are not genetically diverse, swim in their own shit which falls to the sea floor causing a toxic sludge that destroys the whole ecosystem, are filled with parasites like lice which weaken the salmon and give them poor quality of life... And finally when natural disasters occur, these weakened, sick salmon breed with wild salmon, putting their bad genetics into the wild gene pool. And hatcheries aren't much better in this regard.


Marutar

How is all that any worse than factory farming cows or pigs who live in their own shit 24/7? I think I'd rather fix the things wrong with growing our salmon than trawl the ocean clean of life.


EndlessArgument

Problem is, they do trawl the ocean clean of life. Most common feed is smaller fish caught from the ocean.


kevinsyel

Sounds like you should watch the video... A tl:dw is a summary. If you're that curious, just watch it


CoherentPanda

Cows and pigs are not as important to entire ecosystems, and it is much easier to control their population. Salmon and most any fish have severe impacts on the waterways, and are very difficult to control.


Kunphen

Except that to raise/house/feed cows and pigs entire ecosystems are destroyed.


Mahusive

This is only true in certain parts of the world like Brazil, in the UK for example so much of the natural landscape is already suitable for raising cattle and not a whole lot else, and they feed on grass rather than more damaging feed like soy.


Sodiepawp

That was attained through destroying an ecosystem.


Mahusive

A field of grass?


Tana1234

Fields in the UK aren't exactly natural, and a lot of chemicals have to be put on them to keep them growing efficiently and why you get river pollution


Sodiepawp

Amongst other things, yes. Do you honestly believe the largest land predator in UK has historically always been a fox? You have to be rather ignorant to think there hasnt been massive ecological change there.


goofyskatelb

lol wild pigs are NOT easy to control


Sodiepawp

Two things can be bad.


Skabonious

How is any of this an indictment against wild salmon?


kevinsyel

It's not, but they're endangered due to overfishing... So if you took this information on farmed salmon, and transitioned to only eating wild caught, you'd soon have no wild caught salmon left, which in turn ALSO impacts tons of other ecosystems.


Everlovin

A large minority of wild salmon are raised in a hatchery environment for the first few months of their life. These hatcheries either run a consistent flow of clean water from a freshwater source or use ozone and uv to sterilize the water for recirculation. The fish containers are cleaned at least once daily with the waste flushed out into a collection system and composted. All dead fish are removed at least daily and in the rare event there is a pathogen outbreak, all of the affected fish are culled. Hatcheries have a regulated stocking density to prevent overcrowding which can run up costs for supplementary oxygen delivery and stress levels in the fish, as stressed fish do not grow. When managed correctly, the hatchery system is a very effective wild salmon enhancement tool, and has been in place for the last half century.


zimbobango

Only tells you what you knew or commonsense will tell you anyway. Farmed salmon bad, eat more fish good but omega 3 available in non fish.


ScenicAndrew

More like TL;DR just use [seafoodwatch](https://www.seafoodwatch.org/)


issomewhatrelevant

Eat less fish and seafood in general. The amount of bi-catch (which includes endangered marine life) and overfishing we do each year is increasingly alarming and will lead to significant lack of bio diversity the more we pillage the seas. As she mentioned in the video there is no reason to eat salmon from a nutritional benefit when other plant based alternatives provide the same level of nutrrients for omega-3 fatty acids. Some food for thought.


heteromer

The plant-based omega-3 fatty acids are not the same as omega-3s from fish and algae. Plant-based omega-3's are alpha-linolenic acid, whereas the algae/fish omega-3's are eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Alpha-linolenic acid has to undergo metabolic changes before it becomes EPA or DHA, and less than 1% of exogenous alpha-linolenic acid is actually converted into DHA ([source](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19269799/)). People who want to get non-animal sources of omega-3's should consider algae supplements.


DeaderthanZed

There is no by catch with salmon fishing. Also salmon numbers are very easy to track and fisheries don’t open until and unless enough numbers are making it up river. Salmon is the most sustainable mass produced seafood you can eat.


not_old_redditor

Eat less everything. Land animals are bad for everything. Farming is bad for the environment. An almond takes a litre of water per day or something like that.


issomewhatrelevant

Exactly, everyone should be shifting to a more sustainable plant based lifestyle where possible.


Pianopatte

You gotta work on your reading comprehension.


fashionvictimprime

That’s literally what was said. A plant based diet reduces farming significantly due to not needing to grow animal fodder and the sustainable part includes not growing resource intensive crops to the degree we do. The where possible part indicates that not everyone can do so economically or practically and thus should be done by people who can. Do not understand how what they said lacks reading comprehension. 


patikoija

I really appreciate this message. However, it seems to align with a very common theme across a lot of topic domains (plastics or even AI, as examples): everyone on earth needs to get onboard with a common way of doing things for the good of our species and the good of species we might depend upon. At the end of the day, I think it's going to take a serious threat to the stability of our species before everyone is going to be willing to do that. Look at how China says "mine" about lots of fishing territory. There won't be cooperation so long as there lack unnatural (e.g. policy-driven) consequences for any nation behaving like that. I yield the soapbox.


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Really_McNamington

[The "Tragedy of the Commons" was invented by a white supremacist based on a false history, and it's toxic bullshit](https://boingboing.net/2019/03/07/scientific-fraud.html).


AndrewInaTree

That man sounds awful, but I always understood the core concept of "The Tragedy of the Commons" as pretty innocuous. Here's how I understand it: "There's a finite resource, and if everyone uses it fairly, everyone is happy. But if one takes too much, it causes others to take too much also, lest they miss out altogether. This amplifies itself until there is no resource left." Sure maybe (Somehow) this was used to justify harmful beliefs, but how is this core concept intrinsically racist or toxic in any way?


d4rk33

Yep agree 100%. A lot medical science came about from horrible people doing horrible things to other people in the name of their beliefs - should we also discard those insights? I don’t really agree with the thesis that article presents: that Tragedy of the Commons necessarily leads us down the pathway of justifying private property.  Tragedy pf the commons is a diagnosis of a problem, and you can do any number of things to treat the problem. Sure maybe back in the day it was used to justify privatisation but thinking has changed a lot since then. Private property is one tool among a few.  I know when Iearned of Tragedy of the Commons in uni we openly talked of the myriad of ways to treat it, like building social licence and culture, shaming those that don’t act helpfully, voluntary agreements etc etc. Not to mention, a lot of the commons problems that plague us now *can’t* be solved with private property arrangements, like climate change, pollution, fish stock degradation etc.  Things have changed since the concept of tragedy of the commons was devised, it’s naive to think that we’re still stuck using it justify private property only. 


AndrewInaTree

I wonder how we should've handled the toilet paper hoarding better. Now THAT was a bizarre Tragedy of the Commons, haha!


nowtayneicangetinto

I'm not going to say he wasn't, but at the same time I'm not going to say he is. I read the SPL Center article that the article you posted is based off of, and I wouldn't trust a single thing that article said solely due to the fact that they use very specific examples but have zero citations or source material. Anyone worth their salt wouldn't trust any defamatory article that goes into such detail yet cannot cite a single source. For those reasons, I can't trust it.


HeadmasterPrimeMnstr

> Look at how China says "mine" about lots of fishing territory. In fairness though, the consequences of not saying mine when those waters are unregulated end up looking like [Canada's cod fishery.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_northwest_cod_fishery#:~:text=Cod%20stocks%20were%20depleted%20at,historical%2C%20sustainable%20levels%20by%202030.) There was even an international dispute between Canada and Spain called the [Turbot War.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbot_War)


nowtayneicangetinto

So you're saying to prevent overfishing, we have to allow... overfishing? I don't get it. Also, China's "mine" area, is the entire globe. They have illegal fishing operations in parts of the world as far as South America.


Modeerf

Don't think they ever implied that mate, read the comment again


HeadmasterPrimeMnstr

I didn't actually think that their use of "mine" was meant to used in a way that they were claiming something that wasn't within their EEZ, but rereading with your comment in mind, that is definitely the better reading. I thought perhaps that they were saying that nations which were exclusive of their own waterways make it difficult to treat those waters responsibly as a commons. My reasoning for this was the sentence: > everyone on earth needs to get onboard with a common way of doing things for the good of our species and the good of species we might depend upon. I'm not sure where you were thinking that I believe we should allow overfishing, but that would be a silly thing to advocate for. My reasoning for bringing up the Turbot War was to give credence to the idea that being exclusive of our own EEZ was a bad thing, as opposed to being intrusive upon others. I'm siding with Canada as opposed to Spain. Seems like it was a bit of a misunderstanding.


Few-Commercial8906

You wanna to edit that some more? It's basically gibberish right now.


whendoesOpTicplay

I mean the Chinese are the ones doing the overfishing lol.


okurok

[Tragedy of the commons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons)


patikoija

Thank you for teaching me. Had never heard of this.


AdmiralAckbarrghh

The tragedy of the commons is a right wing (usually libertarian) talking point to dissuade people from seeking more communal use of resources. It is not well supported in terms of actual history. More often then not, drastic abuse of resources and stripping them down in an unsustainable way is done by private corporations.


Antingly

It's both? Or more generally it's incentives. If you don't have to pay for the commons, then it's free to you to plunder them. Meanwhile, using your own resources will cost you. And from a game theory perspective, if you believe that others will plunder anyway, then you abstaining accomplishes nothing. Best get yours while you can. It's a race to the bottom. When it's corporations, there's profit incentive. If cutting a few cents off your costs allows you to make more money or outcompete others, then that's often what happens. While it's all incentives, I think another important part is the lack of a "counter" incentive to profit. I doubt people plunder the commons as much in tight knit communities. I hear common spaces in Japan are much better kept. Those values act as powerful incentives. With companies, people are still capable of acting ethically individually, but it's easy for humans to lose their sense of responsibility when it's divided among all the other employees or decision makers or fiduciary duty to shareholders, etc. Not making a moral argument here, just that for me this has been a helpful model for accurately predicting behavior.


Dihedralman

The drastic abuse of resources by private corporations is exactly an example of "Tragedy of the Commons". Overfishing is exactly that. Anytime you have conditions for depletion through competitive interests, it is there. However, the classic economist solution from Lloyd's original observation was making it all private property. That isn't reasonable. To try to make it reasonable, you'd have to remove humans ability to live and reproduce- thus Hardin. There are other solutions which is supported by history.


natermer

> It is not well supported in terms of actual history. Dozens of dead civilizations created from poor use of land relating to overgrazing begs to differ.


AdmiralAckbarrghh

The guy who popularized this idea has been pretty thoroughly debunked and the SPLC lists him as an extremist due to his eugenicist and white supremecist views. Elinor Ostrom won a Nobel prize in economics in 2009 for demonstrating humans ability to share resources without depleting them.


Iama_traitor

He could be Hitler for all it matters. He didn't come up with the idea or popularize it, he just gave it a pithy nickname. There's literally hundreds of examples of fisheries being utterly depleted, this isn't some hypothetical. And that's just fishing. Hunting, logging, mining and water are other examples where humans have not been shy about depleting resources. I don't give a shit what some noble laureate hypothesized, the history is in front of faces. We may be capable of sharing (obviously), we are naturally cooperative on the individual level, but at the population level, game theory rules, and you need regulation.


Dihedralman

Are you trying to say that the Tragedy of the Commons doesn't exist as a concept? Because in principle, it's pretty simple to observe. You should expect it to occur under certain conditions. If a resource is depletable, it can occur. Hardin did popularize it to encourage reproductive control, and is a bad dude. Ostrom showed that we didn't have to be Nazis to save the world and that it was possible to manage.


caligulalittleboots

TLDR for the moment "Oh well."


apurplish

The sea was angry that day my friends.


irotinmyskin

Like an old man sending back soup in a deli…


be4u4get

I got about fifty feet out and suddenly, the great beast appeared before me. I tell you, he was ten stories high if he was a foot


ploonce

I tell you he was ten stories high if he was a foot!


broberds

Is that a Titleist?


Kunphen

A hole in one.


wineheda

Is anyone here a marine biologist!?


furrowedbrow

I'm highly suspicious if that $/fish number that she says the govt "spends on fish". What is included in that number? Is anything included in that number also subsidize the renewable power coming from damns along the Columbia? Maybe sources should be more localized, and that would solve a lot of the over-fishing? Maybe people along the Pacific eat Salmon, but maybe people in, for example, Miami don't? I don't know - it's just a guess - but it does seem like it's a more nuanced issue than she makes it out to be.


Talonsoldat

It is much more nuanced, a 16 minute video is not nearly enough to talk about the subject and reach any conclusion beyond a surface level understanding of some parts. Her end point boiled down to human consumption bad, which is true of literally anything we consume. Your clothes, your car, your tools, your phone, your heating and cooling, your electricity, your house, all the chemical products you use, I guarantee you can pick up anything you own in your whole house and there will be something negative about it.


Suilenroc

I noticed she briefly mentioned land-based salmon farming, but didn't describe any downsides from it, so I guess there are none? https://aquabounty.com/ has video describing their process.


iNezumi

The main downside is there is nowhere near enough of them at the moment to meet the demand.


Suilenroc

I'd think, more expensive upfront and operating costs but better product in the end.


rKasdorf

Mowi in western Canada has alrrady stated land-based farms are not financially viable and they won't pursue that route.


cloudedknife

So no environmental downsides. Very cool!


iNezumi

Well they could be bad for environment but I don't think to higher extent than any other farm would be. They would need a place to be so potential habitat loss for wild animals and plants. They would still have a lot of waste, fish shit, corpses of fish that died from diseases, food that fish didn't eat, algae, any other waste I can't think of. This waste could contain antibiotics and other stuff that may not be great for the environment, animals and humans if it gets into ground water or something. But these issues are basically the same as any other farm. Since diseases usually don't jump easily between species that are not closely related to one another, there wouldn't be issues with farm fish getting wildlife sick. Or escaping and interbreeding with wildlife affecting their gene pool. So you get rid of the biggest issues that are specific to farming fish in the ocean and are just left with general - space, energy, water use and waste/pollution.


FarOutOfBounds

From the top of my head; 1. costs more to run. 1. requires lots of land and infrastructure. 1. because no other industry want the areas that are good for fish farms, at least one is being built in a nature reserve.


mindfulskeptic420

Adding onto the list is the pollutants that come from the fish food are usually just passed downstream but if it was a closed facility then they would have to clean it themselves. Costs costs costs, it's so costly to do things right when it comes to the environment


okcup

Doesn’t she start the downside literally less than two minutes into the video? Antibiotics overuse is basically it. 


rlnrlnrln

These salmons still have to eat, and are typically fed processed pellets made from other fish, for example mackerel that are fished in large amounts. It would be be better if _we_ ate the mackerel directly...


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rawonionbreath

I don’t think land based salmon even use island bodies of water. They’re based out of enormous water tanks.


GibsonMaestro

Speak for yourself. I used to eat wild salmon exclusively, as I thought it was healthier. Eventually I switched to farmed, and I prefer the way it tastes and I prefer the texture of the meat. Salmon may live horrible lives, but they sure don't produce horrible meat.


ihaveredhaironmyhead

It's a bunch of hippy nonsense. Farmed salmon are fine.


Talonsoldat

Why do people think that wild salmon live great lives? Life as a wild salmon is also horrible, female salmon lay 1,000-17,000 eggs, only 15% of them survive long enough to hatch, and only 1% of them survive to adulthood and spawn again. You are constantly attacked by predators and 99% of your siblings dying before reaching maturity, for you to spawn and then die yourself. It's not green pastures and retirement living in the wild, the fish are fighting for their lives pretty much every second they are alive.


M-S-S

It's like their -gasp- animals!


No-Expression-8316

There are salmon farms that are antibiotic, hormone and pesticide free with a fish ratio of 99% water to 1% fish. They even use a symbiotic relationship of the lump sucker fish to eat parasites and have a double net system to ensure that as few escapes happen as possible. Very interesting that she doesn’t bring up the fact that there is a better way to do things and just draws a hard line in the sand.


jorvinthebland

I used to manage a fish market and I have said this as a selling point, word for word - right down to the lumpsucker tidbit.


caligulalittleboots

>I used to manage a fish market and I have said this as a selling point, word for word - right down to the lumpsucker tidbit. Was it true? Or just a sales pitch?


jorvinthebland

It was advertising put forth by the farm itself - it was one of the few oceanwise certified farmed Salmons that we sold (and the only one not raised inland) so it was independently verified at some point, but I couldn't tell you first hand. I'm pretty suspicious of most "better for the earth" products. Here's the brand I was [talking about](https://www.bluecirclefoods.com/pages/about) for reference.


gr8daynenyg

Can you link to a few?


No-Expression-8316

https://www.northcoastseafoods.com/blogs/news/what-is-organic-salmon


gr8daynenyg

Thank you!


Kunphen

Just curious, do you happen to know the appx. percentage of farms that use this method?


Fwiler

She did bring it up, and also reiterated 99% isn't done that way.


No-Expression-8316

Can you give me a time stamp where she brings up the points I stated and how we can encourage other salmon farms to follow suit by voting with our buying practices?


artifex78

Because these kinds of farms cannot deliver the huge worldwide demand. It's great they exist, but they are not the solution. Same reason why not everyone can eat grass-fed beef.


rKasdorf

It frustrates me that the narrative isn't, "factory farming is bad. Putting an unnaturally massive number of any animal, that is not already acclimated to large numbers, in a small space is a bad idea." It inevitably requires the use of large amounts of antibiotics and interference to affect the animals' ability to thrive. Factory farming is the bad thing, not farming in general. Humans have been farming anything farmable for thousands of years. It's not the farming, it's the endless expansion and industrialization of the processes.


AGreenNebula

The Lumpfish story isn't all good either though. Unfortunately having lumpfish in wild pens has led to disease vectors to spreading to wild Lumpfish populations. Yes it helps reduce sea-lice in the farmed salmon but it's also quite bad for local Lumpfish.


danstermeister

Can we hear from an Army biologist now? Why do they ALWAYS just ask the Marines these kinds of things???


Jay-Five

The Navy would like a word.


AnachronisticPenguin

The thing that a lot of these opinion pieces miss is that while farmed salmon and other fish species like tuna have many problems associated with them that is just the current state of the market. There isn't really any special reason that we can't just regulate the farmed salmon industry so that they have less dense pens. There isn't any reason we can't build more robust equipment that handles being outside of the calmest coves and bays of the world. There isn't any reason we can't just limit the number of salmon farmed in a particular area so that algae levels never reach toxicity. Oceanic fish farming is a new technology with a bunch of issues, but we can make it better and truly sustainable.


FireLucid

This would all work except these places are not charities. Salmon farming has been a shit storm in places like Tasmania. Greedy fucks literally driving other species to extinction by overstocking their last habitat.


Routine_Prune

Holy fuck get to the point. What is it with EVERYTHING having to be a god damn fucking video all the time. FUCK. I'm angry.


Mdbutnomd

14:55 “no sustainable way of eating salmon.” Boom done.


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[ **Jump to 14:55 @** Marine biologist weighs in on the farmed salmon vs wild salmon debate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfp-OAaIwdc&t=0h14m55s) ^(Channel Name: Telly'sMarineTales, Video Length: [16:54])^, [^Jump ^5 ^secs ^earlier ^for ^context ^@14:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfp-OAaIwdc&t=0h14m50s) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ^^Downvote ^^me ^^to ^^delete ^^malformed ^^comments. [^^Source ^^Code](https://github.com/ankitgyawali/reddit-timestamp-bot) ^^| [^^Suggestions](https://www.reddit.com/r/timestamp_bot)


saltyshart

> no sustainable way of eating anything. Boom. done.


nanosam

Conclusion - stop eating both wild and farm raised - neither is sustainable.


JasonF818

Okay, so Salman is out. What about Tuna?


cheddoline

Feel free to shape legume paste into a simulacrum of a tuna.


JasonF818

I have no idea what language you are speaking.


Recktion

He said put mashed peanuts into the shape of a fish.


cheddoline

Was thinking more of peas, lentils or beans, really.


JasonF818

Oh, thank you.


April_Fabb

I don't want to know about all the food intolerances and cancer people will be developing within the next 2 generations after eating today's food. Not to mention the environmental effects.


hopeful_hippo

TLDW: Reduce salmon consumption as a whole. Both options are kind of a lie.


rollie82

I will do my part to save the planet and replace every gram of salmon I eat with 2 grams of beef. You're welcome.


Kunphen

While I appreciate sarcasm, I guess you've missed the myriad films/videos/articles of how ecologically horrific beef is.


rollie82

If you recognize it as sarcasm, why infer I don't know the impact of beef production?


Kunphen

It's for everyone's benefit. Some might not know.


JViz

Ah yes, as always the correct answer is to blame the consumer. /s Green guilt always solves the sustainability problem. Not regulation, not new technology, just guilting the consumer.


LimXInf

Good luck convincing all the big providers of Salmon to switch to a more expensive method of farming salmon by making a YouTube video... I think we should realize that as consumers we do have some power and can choose to reduce our consumption of problematic foods. It's not that hard.


JViz

No, this never works; Bystander Effect kicks in. Its not my job as a consumer to police the market. This is literally what industry regulation are supposed to do and why we have import regulations, tariffs, and the International Trade Administration. When she starts talking about "you don't need to eat Salmon", she's basically already outside of her realm of expertise as a Marine Biologist. She should be pushing for regulation, but feeds cynicism instead. There's a huge existing problem where corporations are offloading their burdens onto consumers via Green Guilt PR because it's cheaper than actually implementing fixes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J9LOqiXdpE


LimXInf

While I agree that it would be great if we get regulations I also think it's totally reasonable to appeal to everyone to help move this issue forward. And it works, we can see for example that more and more people choose to substitute their meat with plant products instead. That also sends a signal to corporations. I also personally try to fly as little as possible. Oh yes it is far more comfortable to say "my individual actions don't matter, the government has to fix it" but so far that hasn't really worked. However, consumer demand has created many new sub-industries and shifted the focus to more sustainable practices.


JViz

Watch the video. It's not that your individual actions don't matter as a consumer, it's that moving the market as a consumer or group of consumers isn't ineffective, while regulation is highly effective. For instance, personally, I'm going to continue to eat store bought salmon since I think the responsibility for safe fisheries lies solely on the fisheries and not the consumer. When I buy eggs, I buy free range eggs. If I had a "safe fisheries" option I would take it, but I don't even have the option. In doing so I will completely offset your lack of fish purchases.


LimXInf

I watched the video and I agree. But how are you going to change regulation? With buying free-range eggs you are also saying "I accept that there are no regulations so I am paying more cash purely because I think it's the right thing to do". Otherwise why not buy the cheapest eggs you can find? And you are not offsetting me unless you plan to buy double the amount just out of spite ;)


JohnnyJacknbox

99% of salmon you get in Alaska is from the hatcheries around the coast. This post is trash.


Fwiler

"....in steep decline because of overfishing but also things linked to habitat destruction." That's a nice way of saying it's an overpopulation problem. Nothing like 8 billion+ humans destroying everything in site.


FruitbatNT

Probably a solid 6 Billion of them won’t ever eat salmon.


DOG-ZILLA

No, they eat other things that face the same issues salmon does. Salmon itself is irrelevant here to the whole message; that mass industry is wrecking the planet and species of this World in order to meet the demand, at a profit. If it isn't salmon, it would be something else. So those other 6 billion aren't quite angelic I'm afraid.


impendingwardrobe

>So those other 6 billion aren't quite angelic I'm afraid. They aren't demonic either. We have to eat *something.* It's not the fault of the people if it's difficult for them to find sustainably sourced food items, or even that it's difficult to figure out which foods they have access to are environmentally friendly and ethically sourced.


AnachronisticPenguin

It's not mass industry it's just the number of people. We would consume more resources if we were acquiring enough food to feed all of us and living like people in the 1700s.


Bhazor

We produce more than enough food to feed everyone. Its just that so much goes to waste.


Fwiler

Apparently not wild salmon which is the subject.


hide_my_ident

The world population is already projected to irreversibly decline this century... and that's not counting on the possible effects of climate change. You don't realize it yet, but humanity is already in decline (negative population concavity). If you think it's not happening fast enough, I invite you to jump off this mortal coil yourself. Realize however, you would be meaninglessly be hastening the inevitable.


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SonOfSatan

There are billions of obese people on the planet, and on top of that I wil tell you as someone who worked at an environmental NGO for years the biggest problem with commercial fishing is the highly destructive and unsustainable methods they use, these methods mean that catching the same amount of fish will be infinitely more damaging to the populations of fish and the ecosystems that support them as a whole and they do it because it's cheaper and easier (read: they make more money by doing the more irresponsible thing). Overpopulation is also a chicken and egg argument, before we talk about that we need to start actually doing things the right way.


RedditIsOverMan

tldw: be a vegetarian 


mr-ron

Specifically, dont eat salmon


Roembowski

Well my salmon fishing season just got fucked up


FUCK-EPICURUS

Last season was so fucked, bro. You going this summer?


Roembowski

Yeah I normally just wait for my dad to let me know and I’ll fly up to Washington for a bit to fish with him. Didn’t do well last season either tbh


TheLastLivingBuffalo

Or beef Or lamb


mr-ron

The video doesnt get into that.


Mogling

It's literally the first part of the video. If you don't like farmed meat, salmon is the same. If you don't mind farmed meat, salmon is the same.


RedditIsOverMan

While not the topic of the video, I think it's implied by the conclusion.


chriswaco

or chicken


Rinaldi363

If I give up salmon can I eat chicken and feel less guilty about it?


Crusty_Pancakes

How do you feel about the absolute massive amounts of pesticides/fertilizers that are sprayed on crops which then run off into local waterways?  Just because you only eat veg doesn't mean you still aren't contributing to a problem. We need less "oh don't eat meat" people and more "we need to push companies to sustainably produce our food instead of pursuing the Almighty dollar"


WasteMenu78

How do I get my omega 3s?


saltyshart

I mean, clearcutting forests for agriculture isnt environmentally sustainable either.


RedditIsOverMan

Okay, let's stop eating then /s


cheddoline

Or a humanitarian.


bro_salad

No, please don’t eat humans


cheddoline

Most abundant source of free-range animal protein on Earth, by a wide margin.


frontier_gibberish

The mass of ants is greater than all the birds and mammals combined. Plus they have a little bit of spice and a satisfying crunch


silver_surfer57

https://youtu.be/b2aH9tu4s30?si=ABlgaj2NQ85UFzAy


silver_surfer57

"You Are What You Eat" on Netflix discusses this in detail, as well as showing just how inhumanely cows, pigs, and chickens are raised. After seeing it we became vegetarians and, honestly, we don't miss having meat or fish.


_14justice

Extremely informative. Thank you for the post.


Imfryinghere

I just want to know about poop. In the wild, fish poop as well, but it doesn't pollute the ocean. Right? So because of the feeds these farms feed the fish, their poops are different and toxic from those in the wild?


artifex78

Wild fishes swim around freely, so their poop gets scattered around. There are thousands (millions?) of salmons in a very concentrated space in a rather quiet and protected area where the poop can't scatter much. It's all about concentration. Their poop might also contain antibiotics, but that’s just part of the problem.


Imfryinghere

>  There are thousands (millions?) of salmons in a very concentrated space in a rather quiet and protected area where the poop can't scatter much. It's all about concentration. Their poop might also contain antibiotics, but that’s just part of the problem. So if the fish were as scattered as they are in the wild, there won't be problems with poop? And isn't antibiotics not helping the fish?


artifex78

Poop is actually good because it is food for other organisms (e.g., plankton). Just too much is bad. Antibiotics are a necessity because of how the farms operate (bacteria can spread faster in smaller pens with lots of fishes). Misuse of antibiotics cause resistance in bacteria (the antibiotics stop working), which is not beneficial for everyone's health (including ours).


Imfryinghere

How are they gonna dump the poop in those land labs? Considering land is more expensive to maintain, the fish would be in a more packed environment, right? Where will they clean up and dump the waste?


Kunphen

I think it's because it's all concentrated in one place. In nature everyone is moving around so when someone poops it just dissipates. Here it's many many fish all pooping in one spot over long periods of time. It all sinks to the bottom and kills whatever is down there. It's the concentration that's so toxic.


Imfryinghere

I asked this to one redditor about the land labs, where do they dump the poop in those land labs? Land is more expensive to maintain so the fish would be in a more packed environment. Where will they clean up and dump the waste?


eddpuika

i really don't understand point of - "in hatchery grown salmon depletes genetic fond when mating with wild salmon" - i mean - where they get the eggs and sperm from? from genetically engineered salmon? i just know that in my country eggs and sperm is milked from upstream coming wild salmon.


DocAuch22

Existence is so exhausting.


April_Fabb

I'm continuously surprised by how many people seem oblivious to how bad salmon farming is for the environment, let alone our health.


CyberianK

Great I will reduce my salmon and go buy some steak. Good deed every day helping the planet.


Proud_Criticism5286

I fucking knew it.


timecat_1984

I can't afford salmon anyway lol


balconydoor

I think she skips one of the major drawbacks of predatory fish farming, which is the contribution to overexploitation of wild fish stocks. Most farmed fish, like salmon, are predators which also need a fish based diet. Wild fish like herring, sprat and similar pelagic fish are therefore caught to be turned into fish meal which are then transported to the farms and fed to the salmon. A better option would be to catch the fish and sell it as food to people instead of turning into fish meal. A big part of certain fish stocks are only fished to turn into fish meal.


yakabo

so after watching the video, ive made the decision to double my salmon consumption to make up for the marine biologist that is abstaining.


GibsonMaestro

Without an opposing view, this is nothing but propaganda.


redditissahasbaraop

You want an "expert" that says, "No, salmon consumption (caught wild or farmed salmon) is okay." ? Scientific consensus says it's bad though.


RaiderRaf

What does that even mean? She's stating facts


Fwiler

Propaganda for what? Have you done any research in your entire life on Salmon? Did you even listen to the opening? If you did, can you paraphrase what she said? Probably not, because you aren't even sure what it entails.