Where will your fish come from in a climate stressed world? | EP 8

And as waters get warmer and the weather gets more unpredictable, how can the world better protected seafood supplies? What does it mean when businesses talk about sustainable seafood and what are the biggest problems we face? And how do we do better with me to dive deeper into the issues as Chester Gun? The responsible seafood Program officer at WWF Singapore. Hi Chester welcome hi judy. Thanks for having me. So, was there a particular moment that inspired you to

get involved in tackling the issue of sustainability and seafood? Yeah, that's a good question actually. I've always been interested in marine conservation has always been my main interest in terms of my educational background. My background as a marine scientist.

I was trained in environmental science, I have a Master's in oceanography, but specifically on seafood, I was taking opportunities as it came before I joined up W. F. I was doing research for Shark and Ray supply chain looking at Singapore, trying to figure out where it's coming from. But with that particular study on shark and ray, there's actually one image

that kept sticking in mind. A huge part of that was having interviews with your web market stall owners of your fishery merchants and the first few times I went down to the porch. I remember very clearly, still in my head right now, having this conversation with an old uncle about his stock and right next to me was a massive power of stingray carcasses up to my mid tie, maybe 203 100 portions. And only then it really struck me the enormity of

what I'm working with. This is a small country we have, right, Our consumption is about 22 kg of seafood per capita. It's not even compared to Korea like 70 plus kg per capita. And just like on a daily basis, this amount from one store for domestic consumption. So if you just multiply, that just feels like the oceans are definitely trouble at some point here. Exactly like you said, you know that

Singapore is a seafood loving nation. Yet over 90% of the seafood are actually imported from overseas. Could you perhaps walk us through how fish or seafood get on their plates? Is it a lot different from other forms of food supplies, like meat or vegetable? Well, we do go through the same agrifood cultural systems. We largely import from the region. I think about good, 60% are coming from Thailand Vietnam Malaysia Indonesia. It could be either wild caught or farm Indonesia is

the second largest exporter of seafood in the world. Singapore is just getting that from these areas and going through the fishery ports, going to the web markets or directly imported to your retailers and restaurants and that's how it gets to your plate. We do have a domestic sector for agriculture, we don't really have a significant one for wild caught fisheries. So most of our domestic production is from the agriculture side. About 110 c based farms adding land based farms will

be 100 and 30 140. But like you said, the production volumes at this point in time are still very small. Although with the Singapore Food Agency, 30 by 30 go, there's a lot more push to expand that to three, More than five years ago. I think it's 2016 to be exact report by WWF revealed that 75% of the seafood consumed in Singapore is unsustainable and they're irresponsibly fished

or farmed. Can you tell me a little bit about the difference between a sustainable farm and one that's not okay when it comes to sustainability, there's a common misconception that we just look at species, it helps to really boil it down to species is easier as a piece of knowledge for consumers. But unfortunate fact is that when you're looking at city of seafood, it includes the production methods.

So in terms of wild caught fisheries is how it's being caught, whether it's using devices that increases bycatch or decreases bycatch, which is catching non targeted species, which is obviously not some something that we want. The production method is important. But also the location itself because fish stocks of the same species could differ widely in the health three different areas.

So when we look at systemic or seafood is a combination of these factors, how it's produced in farms, Whether you are taking into account whether you're mitigating environmental impacts, whether in mitigating social impacts and that could differ on farm to farm level. So looking at species specifically is a little bit too general. That's the lens we need to look at even as a consumer when I'm looking for stable products, I need to consider these other factors. Okay, so has the situation

improved since then? It's hard to tell. There's one huge challenge that we face in Singapore. That's data. So data transparency with one problem, we need to know this metrics, but unfortunately it is not just a Singapore based issue regionally, there is this opacity in the data supply chain. That awareness is also missing because that data is missing. Singaporeans are born and raised in Singapore at seafood my

whole life. Unfortunately I'm one of those who wouldn't be able to tell, especially if it's in a fill a form and I didn't buy it myself what species it is. So that's the same kind of problem that consumers face. You don't know what you're eating half the time. No, it's fish and then you're just eating it. Our national food to spell curry fish head sambal stingray woven into our identity. But unfortunately on the consumers and because of the lack of data that we have awareness is

just a big issue. So if I just want to know where is it from, If you look at the label, you could say product of Malaysia, but it doesn't tell you whether it's well caught or farmed. It doesn't tell you whether it's just imported from Malaysia, but it could possibly be landed in Indonesia and then send that. So you don't actually know the particular fish stock it's from or the farm that it's coming from.

When I was talking to wet markets, store owners was asked them why they don't have this information, Why maybe they know the country. But even then it's a 50% chance. They say, oh, I don't know India Malaysia likely that's coming from, but they are not certain about it. There's no credentials, there is no proof behind that and ask them. Do you not ask these questions? Is

this is not your concern? And for them, most common response I get, which really drove it home is that the customers don't ask if the customers don't ask, why would I want to possibly jeopardize this business relationship, it doesn't give me any profit margin, there's nothing gained on my part is extra. But what we see is some optimistic signs that there is a push from the business side from the consumer side in having

more interest. So customers asking and collectively if we do have a consumer base that's asking these questions then it starts sending that signal up the chain so the situation will improve, interesting given Singapore is highly dependent on imports for its food requirements, but you certainly have very vulnerable to fluctuations and food supply prices and food safety. Tell us about what W W. F. S. G. Is doing to ensure sustainable supply and market demand for responsible seafood.

Yeah, that's a great question. What we're trying to do to forge a more responsible seafood future for Singapore, we'll tackle in the supply side, Seafood work is complex. You need to look at different details. There's so many species, there's so many products processing involved. Supply chains are very fragmented and very different. As I mentioned, these sf. A 30 by 30 goal includes a huge planned expansion of the local agriculture sector so that we can get a 30%

of Singapore's nutritional needs on that front. We try to work with the local farms in order to expand their capacity and ensure that while they're expanding this sector is done with sustainability principles in mind. So this could be, for example, we facilitate that move through what we call agricultural improvement projects or A I. P. S. For short A. I. P. S.

Not a new initiative network. Marine conservation organizations across the world are working on A. I. P. S. Because they're very general catchall phrase that look at how to improve the farm and for WWF we use this project to work closely with them to look at various aspects like fish feed, fish health, energy use on the farm, what the impact is on surrounding ecosystems and to help them become more

environmentally and socially responsible. And with the benchmark it uses the aquaculture stewardship council standard which is the S. C. Certification itself. So we try to prepare them because this is a rigorous, globally recognized standard. It has very strong and very detailed metrics on how to move towards responsibility really producing. So we use that certification as a benchmark. We develop a gap on where their current practices are

to those standards. We help them develop an improvement plan that is specific to the farm itself. To bridge that gap. And throughout this whole process is very collaborative effort, A very close partnership where we provide expertise, we provide assistance, we do progress monitoring so that we are sure as well because we are an NGO when we looking at conservation we are sure that the farm is moving to a sustainability for those of us who are

not so familiar with aqua farming in Singapore perhaps. Can you tell us how many are out there what kinds of species are grown domestically and blood volumes. Yes, we actually just completed a study. I will need to look at it again, fully familiarized myself with the actual volumes but we have around 100 and 10 C based farms.

We have also up and coming farms on land. They're using RS systems recently spoke to a farm that is trying to farm salmon cohort of species in the tropical climate like Singapore and that's possible because of these closed containment systems, it's actively growing is a very fluctuating ecosystem. So, but we have largely in Singapore produced barramundi so that your agency best we produce coral trout. We have shrimp farms in Singapore, there are quite a few different species,

But they're mostly locally consumed. So part of our study that we did recently was to look at how they were selling their products and which sectors about 3%. We're going to exports and a lot we're going to your retailers, your restaurants, so that's the current state of fun. But it's going to change drastically in the next 10 years with the plans that the Singapore government has in the

way it's being restructured agriculture sector. So what I'm saying might be completely obsolete in a couple of years. Yeah, but if we look at right now, rising inflation from feed to fuel, is that having any impact on local fish farms? Yes, definitely. The fish farms need input, right? They need farm, they need seed stock to grow out

and be able to sell it as well. So rising inflation, all cost considerations for them, which is why to help them move to sustainability, especially for smaller farms, they need that support either from industry or from government to try and transition to practices more sustainable, but for them causes a huge factor. They are competing not just locally, highly competitive market, competing with agriculture farms that are obviously with cheaper inputs from Malaysia

from Indonesia. So it's a highly competitive environment because they recognize the need for it. And recently we had a workshop with agriculture farmers in Singapore. They talk about water quality, how it's affecting you. They know environmentally they need to consider these things. It's just that cost considerations is still a key factor for them. Survival is still a key factor for them.

in Indonesia. It doesn't account for some underground realities and we live in a region where a lot of those communities are like that. So just saying stop eating fish and what's the alternative? That's difficult to answer amongst most of the mainstream meat products, fish in general, it is actually more resource efficient. The feed conversion ratio and this term is used to see like how much feed you have to put in to gain like one kg of animal weight. Feed conversion

ratio is the lowest. So on some level actually, fish is a better protein, but it needs to be consuming moderation. It needs to have these considerations or whether it's impacting the ocean health, whether it's impacting social communities need to know the local context of where you are consuming in Singapore. We do have a little bit more choice. So we do look at moderation in diet, we also look at plant based diets is something that pushes Yeah, moderation.

That's hard to define. Right? Is there a limit to the amount of fish we should eat per week? Keep the oceans replenished maybe once a week. Does that sound about right? Yeah, It's hard to put a number like you say, what I was looking at is more less excessively eating, for example, your seafood buffets or one of those where you're just basically getting more and more lobster just for the sake of it and spending.

So that's what I was looking at. So not so much quantity of how much you eat a week, but just knowing that are you consuming just for the sake of consuming at some point. So that's what I mean by moderation. Okay, so if we are to consume seafood, are there some other species that are at risk of becoming unsustainable? That we should think twice about before eating? What are the preferred sort of eating choice would you say? Yeah, that's why I said we focus on certified products

because looking at species level is kind of problematic. I could be telling you, yes, you can eat this particular muscle, but perhaps if it's sourced from this different area, it actually causes a lot more problems than some other areas. So you need to know the other metrics before you can make decisions based on what you can consume. But there are a couple more broad based ones that are just threatened worldwide and obviously should

avoid one example being your shark and ray species. Ru CN just last year released a huge reassessment of their red list where they're looking at the assessment of the species at the global level how threatened it is basically. So there are different categories to that being no concern to critically endangered or even extinct and what they found was for sharks and rays, we had roughly one third of the species of sharks and rays currently in danger of extinction. And that's the second

highest animal group behind amphibians. And then the second thing is in the critically endangered portion. We had a tripling of the number of species and a lot of that in race species. So shocked, scared a lot of attention generally. And that's a good thing in some way, even though we still see a decline but raised, especially in Singapore we do consume, but a bit of race, they get a lot less attention. They're not commonly consumed in other countries.

They also something that we don't know as much information about. So these are species you should just avoid at all costs at this point in time. So there are certain things that you can avoid completely, but just looking at species itself is not sufficient. You need to know how it's called, how it's farmed. Okay Chester. So before I let you go, what do you think the next 10 to 20 years of aquaculture production might

look like? Well the composition farmed species, do you think it'll shift globally within the next two years it's going to be aquaculture and the expansion because of fish stocks that we have and how we're already almost at the maximum limit of fishing that it's going to be aquaculture producing at the global level in Singapore, it's still a

little bit fluid. I can't really say for sure the next 20 years it has a lot of focus on high tech farming and also obviously on more profitable products for your luxury items. But there are farms that I've spoken to. They want to cater to the local market as well. So your wet markets, they want to funnel to the basic consumer

rather than your hotels and restaurants. Your bigger markets, it could change quite a bit, there could be more fish that you see that you're buying for the wet markets for the farms in Singapore, but it really depends at this point in time. I know the the government also wants to push for domestic consumption, right? So there is a factor that they also want more species that are consumed locally right now that is the case, but it's also more for the higher end markets. So

there could be a shift for consumers. One of the key things we really can do is start to create the bus collectively we have purchasing power, we vote with our wallets, so not just supporting companies that are investing sustainability, have robust activity policies, but also certified products, right? Certified products, They have gone through the whole process, they are being ordered that the certification scheme does everything for you.

It looks at the metrics, you don't even have to bother about that if you need to know and they ensure that the products with that label actually came from

the fishery or the farm itself. So certified products. So M. S. C. S. C. Products, you look at them and you use that if you can afford it of course support because there's sometimes there's a gap because the lack of supply in the local sphere, so that's why WWF wants to create more certified farms in our local culture sector, because with the logistics change, it might also be comparable in price and easier for them for consumers to take it up by using our wallet to buy

like certified products in supporting that. But also asking questions, sustain the information is key to us making smart purchasing decisions that we want to know that And why I say that as well as we did a study in Singapore and essential last year, looking at the consumer base in Singapore, looking at how they view sustainability.

It was not just on seafood is generally on sustainability across a wide various sectors, but what we found was that not only 41% of them identified themselves as devoted to the environment and that's pretty strong term, but 75% said they want to behave more sustainably, they just like the avenues and options. So there is this gap between current behavior and where they seem to the attitudes to sustainability and so bridging that gap could really help to build

momentum to transforming the whole seafood industry. Alright Chester, thank you very much for your time. It's been so insightful. Thanks so much julie as well. That's great chatting with you special. Thanks to my guest and thanks to all of you for tuning in, we hope you enjoyed this episode. Do remember to subscribe and like this podcast so, you know, when a new episode drops, you can find CNN's climate

and sustainability coverage online at CNN dot asia. The team behind this podcast is Audrey one Jacqueline chan Danieli and Christina robert, and I'm julie you signing off.