Whose Dinner Becomes Fish Feed?

0:00 On a May morning in 2017, the people of Gunjur in The Gambia woke up to find their lagoon had turned red overnight. Imagine that, dead fish floating on the surface. Investigators traced it to a fish meal plant up the road. And today we're gonna be talking about whose dinner becomes fish feed, and what a village can do about it. We're gonna talk about that on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I am your host, Andrew Lewin. I'm a marine biologist and science communicator here to give you what's happening in the ocean, from ocean news, to ocean science, to ocean conservation. And this week we are discussing what farmed fish eat, and fish meal, and fish feed, whatever you would like to call it. Yesterday we talked a lot about, what farmed fish eat and how they eat wild fish.

0:41 The day before we talked to, Maya, who is from the Outlaw Ocean Project, and she talked all about their five-year investigation of fish meal, which spawned or inspired me to do this, to do these solo episodes this week, to really bring home and dive into a lot of the different aspects that they dove into. I'm gonna link to their website so that you can dive more into it if you wanna get more information. Very, very interesting study or investigative reporting, I should say, for five years. We don't see that a lot and it was really happy that they chose me to tell, their story, or one of the people to tell their story, or have them on the platform to tell their story. So it's really great to be able to be a part of that and for people to come in and start to ask questions and really give us information for us.

1:23 ' I didn't have this information. Nobody really had this information, so we're gonna dive into it. 'Cause the thing is, is like when we talk about eating seafood, we wanna do the right thing. and it's really difficult sometimes to do the right thing. We've talked about it on the podcast before with all the different apps that are doing, like there are people who are out there who are just scrounging for data on sustainable fishing or on the fisheries that are happening around the world. And they make decisions based on their criteria, which is fully transparent, to say, "Hey, how is this in terms of sustainability?" So that we can have a simple app to say, "Yeah, avoid this fish from this place and how it's caught, and go with this fish as an alternative," or seafood or whatever it is. Doesn't always have to be fish. As in yesterday's episode, I said, "Hey, eat more like farmed bivalves," 'cause we know they don't ea-eat fish meal, and we know you can control that more.

2:05 So if you wanna have like that knowledge that, yes, you wanna eat seafood, but you wanna eat the right way, you know bivalves are good because they're filter feeders. They don't eat fish meal, It's not to say that the others are wrong, it's just we just don't have a lot of information on it right now, as much as we need to. It'll be interesting to see how a lot of these apps, like these certification apps, will deal with everything that goes on. You know what I mean? Like all this new information and stuff that nobody knew about, you can only know by boarding the boats or talking to some of the fishers and stuff like that. the people who are involved in doing the certification don't always have access to everything in, I guess the food chain in terms of, the supply chains, I should say. And so that, becomes difficult, and they know that.

2:47 Like, it's not something that they don't say. They're scientists. This is what they do, and they work hard at what they do, and they give us a service that's really, really important for free. And, like for us for free anyway, we don't really have to pay for it. So, I guess, like, the thing right now is, like, as you go into these episodes that we're talking about, is really understand that nothing is perfect, and we wanna try and get to perfect, and we're always striving for perfection, but we're not always gonna be there. And the fact that The Outlaw Ocean Project came up with this study and was able to reveal what it was able to reveal will help change the future of the system. That's how it works, that's really how it works. So, really happy that they were able to tell us all about it and we're able to do these episodes. So, this is, really the key with farm fish and what they eat.

3:30 feed is the link, so we're gonna follow that, it's easy to feel that a problem in West Africa has nothing to do with salmon filet in Toronto, London, or Sydney, but that link of that fish meal really does help, and so we're gonna follow it today to kinda give you that guide, I spent years talking about upwelling on the coast, Peru and West Africa, where cold water rises and feeds both, like, wildlife and human communities that are local or even international. We know now that everything's global. And that's who this story is about, Is to make sure that we are understanding what is happening here, And so In Senegal and The Gambia, which is West Africa, small fish like sardinellas and bonga are everyday protein.

4:12 That's what they eat. And in The Gambia, more than 80% of the people rely on these small fish like bonga. In Senegal, fish supplies nearly half of all the protein. Some of the industry, of fish meal or any kind of other industry, they call these types of fish, these small oily types of fish, trash fish, as if nobody would miss them. it's really interesting because people do miss them when they're gone, when they're not given to them, or they're taken away somewhere else, or the supply, the wildlife supply is overfished. And I think this is where marketing comes in and, the ability to manipulate thoughts based on how they call a fish. I'm gonna just go into a little tangent here. In Antarctica, there is a fish called, the, Patagonia sea bass, and it's off the coast of Chile, but it's in Antarctica.

4:59 And this fish is kind of interesting. I'm gonna have to look it up as I record this because I think it's something that's really interesting the Patagonian sea bass is actually the Patagonian toothfish. and the reason why they call it sea bass, 'cause everybody loves sea bass. When you think of a sea bass, you think of this, like, slender, good-looking fish. it's almost like the influencers of what a supermodel or, I don't know what the equivalent for male models, but a model would be compared to, like, your average day person, Everybody's like, "Oh, yeah, this person looks like a supermodel." they're not gonna say, "This person looks like the everyday person." And so Patagonia toothfish are not by our, society's standards, a good-looking fish. They look a little scary.

5:39 They're very toothy, hence the toothfish. But when you call it sea bass, it's something different. it's attractive. It's something that you would like to see in a supermarket or a fish market on the ice, and you see the full fish, and you're like, "Oh, that's a beautiful fish. I would like to eat that fish." You see a Patagonia toothfish, actually what it looks like and not just the filet, and you're like, "Oh, yeah, no, that looks scary. I'm not sure if I wanna eat that." it's just based off looks. So marketing matters in this situation, which can be a little difficult. So I wanna talk a little bit about how people rely on this episode because I think it's important to make that connection in how people use these type of fish. Fatu Samba is a fish processor in Bargny, a coastal town outside of Dakar, Senegal. Now for years, women like her bought fish on the beach, then smoked it and dried it and sold it, and that's how sardinella reached family tables across the region, same process.

6:30 Probably not the same, like, not by Fatu, but by the same process. Now, in 2023, at 58 years old, she told reporters from The Outlaw Ocean Project what had changed, and she says, "Today, having three daily meals has become a problem," which has never happened to them before. She said, "We don't think about saving money. We think about our survival." In Senegal, prices for fresh and dried fish more than doubled between 2019 and 2025, and the number of women processing fish dropped from more than 300 to about 70 So, like, before these plants arrived, a full market was a natural break. If nobody could buy more fish, fishers stopped bringing it in, Fish meal plants buy, like, unlimited volumes.

7:10 They just buy as much as they can. And now there's a buyer for every last fish, and the plants outbid the women processors. So instead of having individuals on the beach who are essentially entrepreneurs supply these fish, they just go to the processing plants. And fishers will go right to the processing plants 'cause they might get a better price for them. So both species of sardinella in the region are now at risk of collapse because of all this. There's no such thing as unlimited fish. And according to a 2024 study in fishery science, this is what happened, they're just at risk of collapse. ' when you have plants who are shipping internationally and you have fishers who are bringing it… So these are local fishers who are making money from the plants. The plants, hire other people, they buy all the fish up, and they send it internationally.

7:56 It takes away from the local economy. Maybe not from the local fishers, but it takes away from the local economy. And because they're supplying a global market, they're gonna take as many fish as they can. They don't necessarily care about the local fish stocks. They are just there to make a buck. That's what they're there. They're making their profit. And when the fish is gone, they will leave the plants and they will just leave. That's business for a lot of people. Now, another story here is on October 22nd, 2022, a tanker called the Kibe pulled up into a place called Nouadhibou. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that properly, but it's a fishing hub of Mauritania, just north of Senegal, and it loaded tens of thousands of tons, tens of thousands of tons, I want to repeat that just to make sure we got it, of fish oil that comes from the sardinella and, from the bonga.

8:42 So then ship sailed more than 3,000 miles north to Norway, and the oil was headed for a company called Mowi, which is the world's biggest salmon farmer. And that's the company that I mentioned in yesterday's, opinion, where there was that one person who said, "Hey, we just can't keep doing this anymore." Now, a documentary crew traced that voyage of the 3,000 miles north, And about a year later, the Financial Times followed that same ship. Both linked the trade to rising sardinella prices, which were leaving local families unable to afford a traditional staple. Let's just think about that. are supplying fish and fish oil and fish meal for farmed salmon that will tend to go towards Western companies or developed countries, let's just say, countries that could afford the fish and that will eat salmon, farmed salmon, which is a lot of people.

9:27 the fish that are feeding those fish, you're taking it away from the local community who are eating it. Suppliers will call it trash fish, so they're like, "Nobody's eating this stuff." But nobody bothered to speak up and cared for it. I'm sure people have. I don't wanna say nobody, but like, the people who are shipping this out, they just don't really care. And obviously that's a problem, Now, a 2026 study in PNAS, a scientific journal, found that most of the fish meal traded internationally comes from countries where many people already struggle to get enough nutrition, Now keeping that catch at home could meet the nutrient needs for up to 31 million people. Now think about that. That ship, Key Bay, just took away food for 31 million people. So I want you to hold onto that and we'll come back at the end.

10:08 Now more than 9.5 million people worldwide live within a mile of a fish plant, and the smell comes mainly from a gas called Trimethylamine. at industrial levels, it can cause headaches, nausea, and irritation, and researchers also warn it can turn to nitrosamines, and that's a group of compounds that include probable human carcinogens. Now some plants have dumped wastewater into lagoons and onto beaches. This is where people are actively like they just end up being, and that's what turned Gunja's lagoon red. It's the fact that all this wastewater from these fish plants that are processing the fish oil, that are taking those fish away from the plants and away from that country of the people who depend on as food sources and that are struggling to meet their nutritional needs for three meals a day, then what they do is they take all the waste and that wastewater, and they dump it onto beaches and into the local lagoon.

10:58 This is an assumption, without the proper levels of filtration to properly treat that wastewater. I'm in Canada, if you're in the US, you have treatment plants that will treat that as much as possible and that will make it into as clean of wastewater as you can to dump it back in. It's not perfect, but it is much better than a lot of places. I assume in The Gambia, in Senegal, this isn't happening. This next story that I'm gonna talk about, I wanna just say that it involves people dying at sea. So it's a bit of a trigger warning here. Obviously I don't like talking about, but we have to talk about something like this, so when fish disappear and the jobs go with them, some people leave. They have to leave. They have to go find work. And researchers name collapsing fish stocks as one of the, factors amongst several, alongside climate change and economic hardship.

11:43 So researchers name collapsing fish stocks as one of the factors like, among the several that are. Like, along with climate change and economic, hardships. Now, this next story we're gonna talk about, again, here, this is where we're talking about some death at sea. Pape Demba Sy was a skilled fisher in Senegal, and he used, to bring sardinella to the women processors on the beach. And more often, he came home from day-long trips with empty nets because the fishers is overfished. And in 2006, he tried for the first time to cross the Atlantic by boat to Spain's Canary Islands, which is a set of islands just off of the coast of Africa. And he carried 50 euros and a photograph of his parents. He wanted to support his sick mother. Now he didn't make it. He was intercepted, or he was detained in Morocco or forced back when engines failed.

12:26 So he tried again and again, By 2011 he made nine attempts. And people started to call him Nine Times because that's what he was known for. And he told reporters he just, he'd keep trying. I am the hope of my family," he said. Now in 2025, about 1,900 people died on the Atlantic route to the Canary Islands, according to the fisheries rights group, Caminando Fronteres. 1,900 people died trying to cross that area Now in 2018, a fish meal plant opened up. . So the fact is that we're seeing poorer areas because they don't have access to food, they don't have the nutrition, they need help. They need medical help. They need nutrition. People are trying to leave to get a better life, to bring money back home to support their family because there's nothing else left.

13:09 And then you have these plants that are local within Senegal, within The Gambia, and they are putting out wastewater onto the beaches and local lagoons that are effectively turning the, water red. And people are swimming in these areas, and they're, obviously, like imagine Florida or even Lake Ontario having that kind of stuff. We wouldn't be standing for it. That'd be an emergency, a state of emergency. So you're having all these problems. I wanna take you back to the fish meal plant because how do people deal with this? And in 2018, a fish meal plant opened in Abene, which is a small town in southern Senegal. Almost immediately, residents noticed that heavy stench and a thick black smoke, and untreated wastewater ran into the rice fields and garden wells.

13:51 Within weeks, dead fish washed up on the beach. Was already starting to see this happen right as the fish plant starts to get started and built. Now the town organized. They said, " we're not gonna take this anymore." Youth groups and local activists ran protests and petitions, and they held outdoor screenings of a documentary about the fish meal industry. And so they're, educating themselves. They're spreading the word. The environment ministry oversaw the community vote, and more than 90% of the people opposed the plant. Six neighboring villages signed a joint statement, and in July 2018, which is, a few months later, three months after it opened, the government suspended the plant. Now, Abene had no special powers, This town. It used every tool that it had, and that worked.

14:32 That worked for them in this situation. Kayar, also in Senegal, banned wastewater discharges in January 2023, and the technology to control the stench actually exists. Like, people can get a hold of this. A Peruvian scientist built a trimethylamine monitor for a few hundred dollars. Now, the two biggest names in salmon feed, Skretting and Mowi, say they've avoided fish meal and fish oil from West Africa since 2023 because of these problems. Which is a year after that tanker sale, the Key Bay, that we discussed in this story. So when we start looking at everything that's happening, West Africa, the local people had depended on wild fish stocks, small wild fish stocks, sardinella, bonga.

15:12 like, they were staples in their meals, probably three meals a day oftentimes. start to get in these fish meal plants that are taking those fish, grinding them down to fish feed and fish oil, like into a powder and oil, and then sending them elsewhere, up to Norway and other places to provide fish feed for salmon farms, and I'm sure other farms as well around the world. Then people start to realize, " This isn't working for us." The stench, the wastewater that we see, or the fact that we don't have fish to feed on. We have to leave. We have to try and come back. People die going across the Atlantic. It's not an easy thing, and I'm not sure if you've ever seen the videos of people who are trying to get to the Canary Islands to Spain, but it's treacherous, and they're in small boats, and there are a lot of people in these boats, and a lot of people die.

15:54 As I mentioned, 1,900 in that one year. it's not for the faint of heart. and they're just doing it to survive. They're trying to get better work so they can send the money back to their families, and it's at no fault of their own. They're just in it because they have to be in it. And so what I want you to get out of this is that they found the problem. certain cities and certain villages stopped the fish plants from working the way they do. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done. it's not over. These are just small local stories, but these fish plants are all over, and as the Outlaw Ocean Project identified, there are a lot of problems. Sometimes these protests are not civil. There's a lot of civil unrest, and so it can get violent in certain situations. People can get hurt, but they're standing up for what they believe for their own survival, for their own nutrition, just to have three meals a day.

16:40 I think that's important to realize when we look at the way we have farmed fish. And this is not to say that the entire industry is awful. It needs to be cleaned up. There's no doubt about that, and we are always trying to work, because business people will be business people, and they are going to try and make as much money as possible. Some of them care, some of them don't, and, the ones that don't are the problem that we need to fix, and we need to put those regulations in, and we need to support these. So I guess what I'm saying is that we should be looking at it from a holistic perspective. your farmed salmon that you're eating on your plate at night, it's one meal to you But as that's happening, people are losing meals in Africa because of the fish feed that goes into fish to feed that salmon.

17:24 So I want you to think about that. Don't feel guilty. let's stand up to the people who are doing this. And the one thing you can do is just send an email. Imagine that. Send an email to the brand of the farmed salmon or shrimp you buy Like, if you have a specific company that you like 'cause you like that company or that, Costco or somewhere else, provides, send an email to Costco, send an email to the Marine Stewardship Council, send an email to Seafood Watch, say, "Hey, are you taking this into play when you do your, apps, your certification? 'Cause this is really important." And don't treat them as the enemy, treat them as an ally to be like, "Hey, I just want to know, do you guys know about this? How are you incorporating them?" But also the brands that you're buying from. like, tell us your process. like, are you using fish meal from Africa? If you're not, that's great.

18:04 Let us know. We wanna know. We're gonna continue to find out, but send that email. It's one email that you have to send. It's not very difficult. You can do that in two minutes, and that, one question, does your feed contain fish meal or fish oil from West Africa? Just from that one thing to do based off of this episode. If you can do that, that would be amazing. Because, the thing is, is, like, the village voted the plant that was polluting their area after three months. Like, they were able to do that. And then the tanker route that made the headlines is one of the companies that said they've closed that, they've shut that route down because of what was happening. the good news is the changes have been made. The bad news is there still need to be more changes, and so you can help by doing that. And when people at both ends of the supply chain speak up, like, one of the family members at Maui said, "Hey, we're not gonna do this anymore.

18:48 We need to look at this fish meal," that's when fish start staying home, and that's when people can survive at home, and that's when people, like the fishery stocks remain, and it helps the environment as well. So people in the environment, when we're trying to do conservation, it's all about managing people, and this is the way we manage people. And I wanna thank you so much. This is the end of the episode. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. let us know if you're listening to us on Spotify. There's a comment section. Let me know in the comments. If you're listening to this on your favorite podcast app, just hit me up. My socials are in the show notes. I'd love to hear from you. This is the start of a conversation. I'd love to continue that. There's no judgment when you contact me. as long as you're, polite about things. if you have a stance that's different from mine, I'm all good with that. that's no problem. I don't mind that. it's just how we go about that conversation, We keep the emotions out, and we have a nice conversation going back and forth.

19:31 I'd love that. And if you support the, and you wanna hear and you like the episode, let me know. I'd love to hear that too. That makes me feel good about the episode. I don't get to talk to people a lot, unless I'm in person with them and they're like, "Hey, I listen to your podcast." I love the feedback. Whether you like certain something, you want me to cover something, or, you don't like something, or you have a comment on the actual content of the episode, I would love to hear that 'cause that's one of the reasons why I started this podcast, 11 years ago, was to say, "Hey, let's have this conversation. I wanna have more conversations about this," because that's what I love to do. So anyway, thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time, and happy conservation.