When people go to the seafood counter at the grocery store, they face a barrage of concerns: Does the fish contain high mercury levels? Has it been imported from countries where seafood is regularly injected with preservatives, colorants, or antibiotics to extend shelf life or enhance appearance? Was the fish grown in a lab?
Does it come from a farm where fish breed in crowded, unsanitary containers, leading to a massive reduction in nutritional value? And even if the fish is wild-caught, has it ingested toxic residue from geoengineering practices — or worse, radioactive contamination like the recent shrimp scare?
“Fish shopping? Not easy,” says BlazeTV host Nicole Shanahan, who’s a seafood lover.
To help fellow seafood enthusiasts navigate the tricky terrain of buying quality fish and other seafood and to help them understand just how corrupt the global fishing industry is, Nicole invited her friend Miles Wallace to the “Back to the People” podcast.
Wallace, she says, is what you call “a real fisherman.” That means he “owns the company, owns the boat, drives the boat, jumps in the water, gets the fish, kills the fish, brings everything to shore, and delivers it to packaging,” she says.
“From your perspective, how should somebody navigate the grocery store?” she asks.
The most surefire method to purchasing quality seafood, says Wallace, is to avoid the grocery stores entirely. Ideally, “find a reputable fisherman and order a big ol’ supply of fish and have them vacuum-seal it [and] flash-freeze it,” he advises.
If that’s not feasible, “you could go second- or third-party” and “order your fish from somebody like Santa Barbara Fish Market or Get Hooked,” both of which will ship quality seafood to your door.
Wallace praises the Trump administration for recognizing the escalating issues in the global seafood industry and taking measures to counteract it. He points to President Trump’s recent decision to deny Pebble Mine a key permit in order to protect Bristol Bay’s salmon fishery, which is fished predominantly by family-owned fishing companies and independent small-boat fishermen, who harvest the region’s wild sockeye salmon sustainably.
It’s these family-owned fishing businesses that are the key to obtaining seafood that is both safe for the environment and safe for human consumption.
“For the government to look at its domestic fishing industry and just say, ‘I’m going to back the family-owned fishing businesses’ — that is a win for literally everybody,” says Nicole. “It is a win for the environmentalists; it’s a win for the government; it’s a win for the consumer; it’s a win for our ocean ecosystem.”
To hear Miles and Nicole dive into other aquatic subjects, including why our sea kelp forests are collapsing, watch the episode above.
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