Superfoods Of The Sea, Why "Wild-Caught" Fish Are DIRTY, Fish Oil vs. Fish & More With Seatopia's James Arthur Smith

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Boundless Life Podcast, humans and fish and so many organisms are dependent on microalgae, this essential fatty acid, this DHA. That's why if we reflect back on the development of our prefrontal cortex and why there's so much DHA in our eyeballs and in the gray matter, it all comes back to this DHA. And that's why the oceans are so important, because we have this common relation. We've coexisted with access to this abundant resource. And when we stray from that, we frankly don't live as long and we have lower IQ levels. It's clear that not only in developmental phases and like a fetus, but also in babies and children, access to omega-3s in high concentration and bioavailable is directly affecting the IQ levels. And then there's a lot of studies on people just live longer and their hearts are healthier, and it all comes back to these little microalgae. It's crazy. These little microalgae are the source of us living healthy.

Welcome to The Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, and nutritionist, and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity, and beyond. Ben Greenfield: I know everybody's a fan of tasty fish. I should probably be swimming right now instead of walking on a treadmill while I record this podcast. But, either way, we're going to roll with this. My guest has been on the show before. It was a super popular episode when James Arthur Smith came on and we talked all about why wild-caught fish isn't necessarily better, which shocked a lot of people, the truth about farmed fish, how to get gourmet sushi and sashimi-grade fish in an easy way. And, James is a really, really incredible guy when it comes to a deep knowledge, I guess pun intended there, of all things from the ocean. He's a regenerative food systems entrepreneur. He's an ocean advocate. And, he founded this company that I've just been enamored with for 2 years now called Seatopia. And, Seatopia basically works with a bunch of really forward-thinking aquaculture farms to to bring you gourmet sashimi-grade fish that's been lab-tested for mercury and microplastics and omega-3 content and all those things that healthy consumers are concerned about these days when it comes to fish. And, I guess most importantly, it tastes like crack. So, James, welcome back to the show, man.

It's good to be here, Ben. It's good to be here. And yeah, our bodies respond when we give them what we need, right? That's the healthy response to the omega-3s, the fats, the selenium, the vitamin D. Yeah, we get to eat it raw, it's the best.

For the first podcast that you and I did, I'll put a link to it if folks go to the shownotes at BenGreenfieldLife.com/SeaTopia2, like SeaTopia, the number 2, S-E-A-T-O-P-I-A, SeaTopia2. By the way, that's an interesting name. Where'd you come up with that, the Seatopia moniker?

It's funny that the first iteration of like what we were thinking in names, it took a while, was Sea Change Collective and just too long of a name. But Seatopia was just this vision, sort of a utopic vision for our relationship to the blue planet. I mean, really, if you think about this planet, Earth is a misnomer. Because it's not mostly dirt, it's mostly water, right? It's just the surface alone is covered by 70% water. But you think about the volume of water that's on the planet. It's really our systems, our climate, our environment is mostly dictated by the oceans, not by dirt. And Seetopia is this vision for how do we balance the relationship of humans and Earth. And, we have to think about the oceans if we're going to live on this blue planet. And, yeah, Seetopia is that kind of vision of a utopic environment on this planet.

Sometimes I think about folks like Elon Musk and space exploration and wonder how much— I actually don't know if this is just myth or lore, the idea that we've barely even tapped into the surface of the ocean and explored that kind of like second planet on our own planet or the primary component of our own planet. Do you think there's a whole bunch in the ocean that we haven't yet discovered or do you think we should just be heading out towards Mars?

Undoubtedly, there's so much we still don't know. We barely have mapped the bathymetry of the ocean. There's so many species that we haven't discovered. There's so much potential for whether it's medicines or food production, the ocean is an incredibly untapped resource. We don't even fully comprehend the value that the ocean gives us on a daily basis. Like, every second breath comes from the ocean, from microalgae. You know, I saw this thing like some— but some like XPRIZE, like who could figure out how to sequester carbon. And it's like, Well, there's trees are really good at it, but even more like microalgae. And, and then we have like just whales, like the, the, the interaction of whales moving through the water column, consuming enormous quantities of krill and phytoplankton, going down deep and pooping and moving all that carbon. It is, it's an incredible service that they're providing that we take for granted because we're not valuing the externalities of life on this planet. This planet is dictated by the oceans. It is not just— it's really short-sighted. It's almost like flat earther kind of vision to call the planet Earth. We're wearing blinders every time that we don't appreciate the value of how the oceans move heat around the planet, how they move oxygen, how they feed billions of people on this planet. So anyway, yeah, I think that it's very short-sighted to be putting all these resources into Mars when we, when we're about to lose entire ecosystems in the ocean and we're disrupting critical systems, right? Like, it's all connected, you know, it's all connected. If we don't really value what's going on in the ocean, if we haven't thoroughly Appreciated, documented, witnessed what's going on in the deep ocean. You know, all right, you'll appreciate this, Ben. There is a Japanese comic called "SeaTopia." I'm not the only person who uses the term "SeaTopia." If you go to— if people who are like fans of Japanese anime, you look up "SeaTopia," there's this underwater world called SeaTopia where Godzilla actually comes from. So Godzilla was released by the SeaTopians to combat the earthlings that had started experimenting with nuclear bombs and things of that nature and that were disrupting this sort of Lumerian existence that the Cetopians had. And yeah, they lived in this utopic environment underwater, these alien-type experience, and they released Godzilla to put down the human ways of disrespecting the planet.

Ben Greenfield: That's super interesting. Or as my son say, "Godzira." The medicine piece you mentioned is kind of fascinating because obviously we tap into the Amazon where there are incredible medicines, although sustainability is of course an issue based on that. But, I actually don't know, do any medicines right now come from the ocean or have we discovered medicines in the ocean already?

Scott Nelson: Absolutely. Lots and lots and lots. There's from cancer research just to basic antioxidants. There's incredible resources that we still haven't completely— it's again, it's one of the reasons why like deep-sea mining is really dangerous. Like, there's this thing called deep-sea mining where people want to go and start mining the seafloor with large industrial systems. And, it's very potentially disruptive to these ecosystems that haven't been thoroughly studied yet. And, when it comes to medicines, that's potentially like you're losing the opportunity to unlock value. So deep sea vents that are releasing methane or releasing various hot gases from the core of the ocean create these very unique life systems, these ecosystems that are not dependent on oxygen or sunlight. And in these environments, you have very different biology and very different organisms that have untapped potential for medicines. And a lot have been discovered already from, from things that have been associated with extending for cancer prevention, but also just like incredible antioxidant production because you have these unique environments that organisms are living in some cases much longer than our living at the surface of the ocean in oxygen, in oxygen-rich environments. So, there's a lot there to explore.

Unlike me in Idaho, you're kind of on the edge of it all. I didn't mention this when I introduced you, but you're in Kauai. I think you live in Kauai.

Yes, yes. Yeah. We moved to Kauai recently. I lived here when I was a teenager and it's Yeah. Kauai is the sort of historical cradle of aquaculture. For over 1,000 years, there is this tradition of fish ponds or loko. And, these Hawaiian fish ponds were using principles that we call today extensive aquaculture to raise fish in small ponds or tide pools and then cultivate and grow them until they're large enough to harvest. Look at pre-Western influence in Hawaii, a lot of the islands had these very established fish production aquaculture communities. Pearl Harbor was such abundance of fish ponds that they would actually export fish to the other islands. And yeah, so it's a very important place from a context of the historical relevance of aquaculture. And for me to be here is really, really great because I feel a responsibility to help revive a lot of that tradition, to help restore some of that stuff, and to show my children as well, like, this is important. Like, I'm actually teaching my daughter to swim in a fish pond. Like, we go— like, she's 2 and a half, so it's very early days, but teaching her the basics of swimming, not in a pool, in the ocean, was very important to me. And it's so beautiful and connected to be doing it in this historically relevant place where aquaculture was practiced in these fish ponds and then taking her to the local taro fields and teaching her about the connection of soil and rivers and ocean and this interconnected stuff. It's really important for me to— I feel like that's my most important thing to do right now is teach this next generation to be good stewards and connected.

Ben Greenfield: Making me a little hungry talking about taro and fish. I go to Kona sometimes. I used to go there to compete in Ironman and now I'll occasionally pop in to do a bow hunt. And, there's a little what I call a poke bar downtown where they do these Hawaiian plates with purple potato mash and the pork and the leaves. I'm forgetting all the different Hawaiian names for these things. And then, the poke and I forget the name of the place, but it's a poke bar right downtown in Kailua-Kona. And, I just love Hawaiian food, man. It's amazing. I mean, not like the Rainbow Drive-Thru fried Styrofoam plates, but real authentic good fresh Hawaiian food. It's incredible.

Just anytime you have real connection to land, it makes a big difference, right? I think that's the biggest unlock is that hope that when you can get pork that was harvested from your local mountains, when you can get rice and taro and potatoes from your local farms, it's just going to be more vital. And then, we pair that with really healthy fish. The problem unfortunately is mercury in a lot of this fish. So, I love poke, but I've had to say no to a lot of the local poke places.

Yeah. Poke is like the higher up in the food chain, it's the tuna, right?

The higher, the bigger the fish, the more the mercury. It's just bioaccumulation, biomagnification. Yeah. I mean, we've tested so much fish and it's Unfortunately, even when we're all the way out here in the heart of the Pacific, you know, we're in this really cool place that you kind of would think is isolated from industrial pollution, but we are still connected to the larger gyres. And we are, you know, we experience here both microplastics and mercury and other contaminants from both Asia and from the United States. It's, it's all connected. You know, it's part of the reason why we're here also is because we do some work in Asia, we do work in North America. And like, so from a time zone perspective, it makes a lot of sense. But from a toxicity and exposure, it's just really enlightening to see when you lab test fish out here in the middle of Pacific, you can see microplastics that were traced to both North American pollution and Asian pollution. And Yeah, it's all connected. The term oceans has been sort of updated in the most recent literature. It's no longer considered plural, it's singular, it's ocean. It is a singular connected interconnected continuation of ocean current.

Ben Greenfield: How do you even do that? The microplastic and the metal testing, do you just take one fish from a farm and test that one fish or are you kind of scattering around it? Different fish? I mean, how does that actually work, the whole testing component from, you know, from you on the farm to direct-to-consumer?

Every farm has different feed. Every farm has different environmental exposures and thus different things that we want to test for. So, in some cases, we're testing for the presence of forever chemicals that have been known to be in those environments. In other cases, like in a land-based recirculating an aquaculture system, those tests aren't necessary. But essentially, every lot that we receive of fish, so if we buy a container of fish, we're going to take samples from that lot and send them to laboratories. And those tests are either going to— they're most likely going to test microplastics, they're going to test mercury and a handful of other heavy metals. They're going to test the omega-3s, omega-6s, omega-9s, selenium ratios, omegas to selenium, ratios of mercury to selenium and all the other nutrients whether that's vitamin D or protein, et cetera. So, yeah, we work with a handful of different laboratories and try to do that with every lot that comes in.

Ben Greenfield: Have you run into an issue where based on the increasing contamination of the ocean, a farm that used to be clean based on your guys' ongoing testing, you got to switch away from or drop them because they're no longer clean?

Unfortunately, it's generally less about environmental changes. What we've seen more directly impact, because a lot of the exposures are bioaccumulation, it has more to do with their diet. And if the fish were foraging their entire life, then yes, it would be. But in farming, what we're doing is even if the fish are in the ocean, like in Kona, there's an awesome farm, a kampachi farm in deep water. When you fly into Kona, when you like right, right, right next to the airport, you can see these offshore cages. Sometimes you see them because they're actually, they can be there. Sometimes they're at the surface when they're cleaning and harvesting, but they can be lowered so that they're completely submerged as well. But that farm is in the ocean, but they're not eating fish in the wild. They're being fed a controlled feed. So, the biggest impact on their fat tissues and protein levels and Um, the pre— and presence of microplastics comes through what they're eating. So if something in their feed is changed, that has a profound and very quick effect. Um, not to say that exposure in the wild doesn't have an effect, but the biggest fluctuation that we've tracked in our lab tests was when a farm changed the feed or the feed mill changed something. So I'll give you an example. We were working with a farm in Central America. That raises beautiful fish using anchoveta fish meal from Peru. And then, they decided to work with a closer source of fish meal produced from a local MSC-certified sustainably caught tuna fishery. But, tuna is expensive, so they're not feeding them tuna, they're feeding them the byproducts. So, what's left over after they sell the fillets is they would grind up the carcass and the scrapings.

Just like the bones and the fins and all that stuff that's left over after the meat's kind of scraped off.

Exactly. And, through the lens of sustainability, it's more circular because there's less waste and it's more local and it was sustainably caught and it's otherwise a waste stream. So, from a sustainability perspective, that sounds great. But, on the lab test to your point, the mercury levels when they went from anchovetas, which are way down here on the trophic level, to tuna, which are way up here, the mercury levels spiked to the point where our calculations for the recommended exposure or reference dose for a pregnant woman would be that she should not eat that on a daily basis. And thus we had to discontinue working with them. And when we sent them the, test results and we sent them our letter and everything and they were like, "Geez, we didn't actually realize the implication would be that significant. We would prefer to continue doing business with you. So, we're going to make some switch back as soon as possible." So, on the most recent broodstock run, they've started feeding them again on the low trophic diet. So, one of the cool things about testing is that we're giving information back to the farms and the feed mills in a much more timely manner than they even have done internally. So we're kind of changing the way people farm to be cleaner.

Yeah, that's cool. You can get almost like real-time feedback that quickly. With the fish feed, is that— is it, um, is it always just other fish, whether it's one of the farms that you work with or other farms that they're feeding the fish? Is that common, that it's just ground-up matter from a different fish?

It's super common, but it's not the gold standard. So, sort of the Seatopia gold standard is fish-free feed, not because fish aren't good for fish, but because fish is a finite resource.

That makes sense. But what's in the fish-free stuff?

Fish meal or krill meal work really well for fish because it's high in omega-3s and other micronutrients that fish need, but a lot of what the krill or the fish are getting their nutrients is from microalgae. So our favorite farm partners like Coletta Bay are raising fish without using fish meal and fish oil. They've done complete replacements to better feeds. So an example is microalgae being raised and grown in fermentation plants. The oil is extracted. And instead of using fish oil, using microalgae oil, because again, fish don't produce omega-3s, they get omega-3s through their diet.

Right. Kind of same as humans, which is why it's called an essential fatty acid, because we have to get it from our diet. We can't synthesize it ourselves.

Yeah. And we should actually pause just for a second and just reflect on that. Humans and fish and so many organisms are dependent on microalgae, this essential fatty acid, this DHA. That's why if we reflect back on the development of our prefrontal cortex and why there's so much DHA in our eyeballs and in the gray matter, it all comes back to this DHA. And that's why the oceans are so important, cuz we have this common relation. We've We've evolved, we've coexisted with access to this abundant resource. And when we stray from that, we frankly don't live as long and we have lower IQ levels. It's quantifiable when a pregnant mother is taking high doses of omega-3s in her diet that the child has a higher IQ level. It's like 7 points higher IQ level. If she's getting, I think it's over 300 milligrams a day of omega-3s. And then if you continue feeding that child a diet that has omega-3s, their IQ level goes up even higher. So it's, it's clear that not only in developmental phases and like a fetus, but also in babies and children, access to omega-3s in high concentration and bioavailable is directly affecting the IQ levels. And then, there's a lot of studies on people just live longer and their hearts are healthier. And, it all comes back to these little microalgae. It's crazy. These little microalgae are the source of us living healthy.

Yeah. I talk about that a little bit in my book, by the way, the idea of how the— well, secondarily oleic acid, the myelin sheaths that are used for nervous system propagation throughout the body basically depend on DHA and oleic acid for structure. DHA, which you already harped on, and oleic acid, as the name implies, being something that you might get from, say, olive oil. And, I was clued into a lot of this when my sons were born, when my wife was pregnant, when my sons were growing up. So, they were raised on a pantry full of— this was before I met you— a pantry full of Wild Planet sardines, anchovies, herring, mackerel, salmon, avocados, extra virgin olive oil, and basically a host of different DHA and oleic acid sources because I was aware of how much the mammalian brain is dependent on that stuff. But, it also kind of makes you worry about moms or young children consuming primarily plant-based diet unless they're including a bunch of of, say, algae in that diet, right?

Yeah. I mean, you can eat algae. I mean, some people like harp on us for like, well, why do you— you don't have to eat the fish at all, you know, that sort of vegan propaganda.

Fish tastes better than algae.

They do. I mean, I have like my kids actually, I've taught them, you know, when they're really young, you can kind of expose them to different things. But my kids actually ask for open-cell wall chlorella tablets as like candy. Like, I want more chlorella. They say it all the time. Like, I want chlorella.

There's that one gal, Katherine, she's got the Energybits Recoverybits company. I interviewed her back in the day and she's like, "Yeah, take a handful of them and swallow them." I actually like the flavor. I'll put them in a cup with some macadamia nuts and dark chocolate. Besides the teeth staining and having to get some chunks almost needing to floss afterwards, yeah, I love the taste of algae, but most people find it not as palatable as fish.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it, it's, it's, you start them young, but regardless, it is really healthy for kids. That said, not everybody wants to eat that, and that's definitely not as satisfying or satiating as eating a whole fish. And frankly, when we eat whole fish, it has a host of other nutrients and macronutrients, micronutrients. When we eat a piece, a slab of sushi, we're getting so much more and our bodies digest it in in a different way.

Do you ever get pushback from the, like, the everybody has parasites crowd?

Yeah. I mean, everybody does have parasites, but not all parasites are bad, right? Like, if you could call, like, the, the, your microbiome a parasite by definition, right? The FDA has a guideline for parasite destruction for consumption of sushi-grade seafood, and it applies to wild-caught seafood, and it has an exception for farm-raised seafood. And the And the reason is farmed seafood raised on a diet that doesn't have parasites isn't going to be accumulating parasites. So parasites get into fish because they're eating crustaceans or, or bottom feeding or eating some other dead organism.

So the feed matters, huh?

Feed matters. If you're ingesting live animals that have parasites in them, those tapeworms are going to go from one organism to the next, or the eggs from that are going to go one to the next. If you're feeding the fish a pelletized diet that was manufactured and steamed and pressed and it doesn't have living organisms in it, it's like you need to go to the, to the pet store, a premium pet store. You can get cheap, inexpensive pet feed, or you can get expensive pet feed that is organs and hearts and livers and all of that ground up. Either one of them is not going to have living parasites in it, but the nutrient levels are very different. So when we're working with farms to feed them a pelletized diet that doesn't have parasites in it, is the next basically manufactured through a GSO 1000 standard and is nutrient rich, the fish are going to be healthy. They're not going to have the parasites. That said, the FDA's guideline for parasite destruction while it's exempt to on needing to be applied to farm fish. Their process is as follows: fish like wild-caught fit— wild-caught salmon that will likely have parasites should be super frozen at -20 degrees for 7 days. That it— your home freezer doesn't go to -20 degrees, but when you expose it to extreme low temperatures and you hold it there, it will destroy any living parasites.

Yeah, that's what you guys do with your, with your flash freezing process, right?

That's what we do with all of our fish. And not only is it being fed a pelletized diet that doesn't have parasites, it's also being frozen per those guidelines because we want sushi-grade quality with the safest standards so that pregnant women can eat it, so that anybody can eat it, so that you get the benefits of bioavailable nutrients without concerns of heavy metals, microplastics, parasites, et cetera.

And you said negative— did you say -20 Celsius is the temperature?

They have a few different options. So, if you go -20, it's 7 days. If you go -10, I think it's 10 days. If you go 0, it's 30 days. But regardless, there's different temperatures that it needs to be exposed to. Actually, 0 might not even be close enough. I have to go and revisit it, but we use the lowest possible temperature with big blast freezing fans that pull moisture and heat away to freeze it as quickly as possible. We do it for a couple reasons. One, it's, it's safety, but two, the faster and colder fish is frozen, the, the smaller the ice crystals that form inside of that fish will be, and thus the better the texture will remain. When you eat fish at a sushi restaurant, undoubtedly it's been frozen if they're adhering to these guidelines so that people don't get sick. The reason it tastes great is 'cause it's not been frozen via traditional methods and it's not been defrosted with traditional methods. You, when you have frozen fish that you're gonna use for sushi, that you want that beautiful texture that you get at sushi bar, don't defrost it quickly under the sink. You defrost it slowly. And you defrost it in an environment that will wick moisture. Instead of defrosting it in a vacuum-sealed bag, you might wrap it in paper towels or something called tuna paper and defrost it slowly in the refrigerator. That way the ice crystals relax and you don't cut the muscle fibers of the fish. Fish have very delicate connective tissue and muscle fiber. You don't want it to be mushy because it just collapsed or, or became brittle, and you want it to not be sitting in a wet environment environment, wet cold fish smells like a fish market.

So, quick question here, quick clarifying question. When I get my monthly shipment from Seatopia, what I've been doing is I'll take out, let's say I want to do Ora King salmon, I'll take out the package from the freezer that arrived flash frozen, then I just put it in the refrigerator for 24 hours for a slow thaw in the refrigerator but it's still in the package. Are you saying that I could instead remove it from the package, wrap it in something like a paper towel, and let it thaw after being dried still wrapped in that paper towel in the fridge, something like that?

You'll have a better experience. It'll taste better. It's going to have better texture. It's not going to be sitting in— So, as the ice that's inside of fish because there's more water content in fish than there is in steak or meat because the environment that they live in, the the anatomy. As those water molecules defrost, it needs to go somewhere. And if it's just sitting in that bag, it's now sitting in this sort of petri dish environment. If it's just 24 hours, not a big deal, but it will be better if you wrap it in paper towels or tuna paper. That way, as it's defrosting in the refrigerator, it's, it's, there's a barrier to oxygen, but it's also wicking moisture away. And it's drying it. Drying it this way, it'll be drier when you're ready to use it. Whether you're trying to get crispy skin or you're just making sushi, it will be drier this way. If the paper towels or the tuna paper are wet, you change them. And this is something I learned from working with high-end sushi, uh, chefs. They do this when they take a big loin of tuna, they wrap it in tuna paper and they change those, uh, that paper once a day. When it gets soaked through, they change it out. And The idea here is you want the proteins to stay cold and dry, and if you do it correctly, it'll simply get drier and drier as opposed to getting stinky. And the, the reason why most fish markets and fish that people are used to in grocery stores is fishy is because it's in a cold, wet petri dish environment sitting on ice. That's not the optimal way to store your proteins.

Pretty nasty fish markets in Asia, or even like Pike's Market in, in Seattle. You definitely get that. I haven't experienced that as much with the Seatopia just letting it go for 24 hours in the fridge, but that's a good tip to dry it out first. I'm glad you mentioned crispy skin too, James, because I don't want to give people the impression that you have to do all of these cuts sashimi or sushi style because some people just— I mean, you know this, some people just don't like the texture. One of my favorite ways to do, for example, that king salmon is I'll take it out, thaw it in the fridge like I mentioned, and then I just line a baking pan with olive oil, go skin side down, put some salt. And these days, I don't know what you think about this, you might consider it to be a bastardization. I see that you've liked it when I've done it on Instagram, so maybe not, but I put mayonnaise on top of the fish. I use that Primal Kitchen, they got a chili lime mayo that's just bomb on top of the salmon. Everybody loves this recipe when they come over. And then, I just put it on broil for about 5, 6 minutes and then flip it for another 90 seconds or so to get the crispy skin side up. And, it's just like, oh, it's melt-in-your-mouth good. And, I do it just almost like a rare plus. So, you still get a little bit of that sashimi-grade texture in the middle, but you got the crispy crispy skin on the outside. So good, man.

Yeah, that's the jam. I love that contrast of crispy on the outside and moist on the inside. And, that's the great thing about sushi-grade fish is it gives you confidence that you can undercook without it being dangerous. When you go into cooking through the idea of I have to cook it to make sure it's safe, you're potentially losing a lot of the nutrients when you overcook it, right? But if you can keep it, you can cook for textural preference as opposed to just safety, you're gonna simply have a better experience. But the, the, the technique that you're doing with the mayonnaise, I'm not against it at all. It's actually a classic sort of French technique is to smother the exterior with mayo and then broil it. And they generally do it on like the, the skin side. And I, I've even worked with, um, I was working with this guy, Chef Josiah Citron, in San Diego— or excuse me, in Los Angeles— Michelin star chef. And he would do that with the whole fish before grilling it. And it gave it this, like, a little bit of a correct, like, a protective layer and barrier that when you put it on the grill, kind of, it would create that sort of crispy crust and not stick as much.

Yeah, I hadn't thought of putting it on the skin. That's actually a good idea. I'll try that the next time and see what the difference is. You know, you were talking about fish oil. I would love to hear your take on the whole fish oil controversy. I've commented on it before and said, "Yeah, fish oil, if it's gotten heated or pressurized or become oxidized or rancid in transportation or storage at your house, it's a super fragile oil and I wouldn't consume it. I would say that in that case, it'd be better to take no fish oil at all." Yet, there's a Harvard Health review that I saw recently that just shows a host of epidemiological data on the link between EPA/DHA consumption from fish oil as a supplement and reduction in cardiovascular risk. I'm just curious with you being in the fish industry what your take is on fish oil.

There's a couple of things. One, if simply taking fish oil was able to reduce inflammation the way that we expect it, then it would just be a solve for so many things. People continue taking it because it didn't completely solve everything. So, I think that it's not living up to its full potential. When you isolate the fish oil and try to develop a shelf-stable product, it is converted into the ethyl ester form. And frankly, it oftentimes smells a little rancid. And what does that mean? I mean, your body knows, your nose knows. If it smells a little funky, it's probably funky. When we eat fish, whole fish, the omega-3s are in this triglyceride form and our bodies are able to assimilate that. It's more bioavailable. Our liver doesn't have to go through this process of then converting it. So I think there's tremendous advantages to eating whole fish, eating the filets in to get your nutrients, right? Like you could, I'm not a big fan of supplementing when you can get the living food, right? Like, if you can't, right, if you can't have access to it, sure, that makes sense. It's probably better than not having it because these are essential fatty acids and there's a lot of value in them. But the most bioavailable form, the most digestive form, is going to be eating the fish directly, not trying to isolate those elements and then make it shelf-stable.

Yeah, fish and grass-fed, grass-finished beef, you know, and some eggs, you know, like pastured eggs. Those are always the go-tos, but I do take fish oil on days I don't eat fish. There are some manufacturers that will actually produce it in the triglyceride form and then package it with antioxidants. For example, at Kion, we use rosemary oil and we're using fish from— speak of Peru— Peruvian anchovy sources. So, we've got a pretty clean fish oil, but I don't fool myself into thinking that that's going to be a more bioavailable nutrient-dense source of omega-3 fatty acids compared to eating a big cut of salmon. I do have it on hand though for the days that I don't have fish.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. But, one of the cool things that we're doing with Seetopia is that when we lab test all of the fish, we also provide the nutrient density of omega-3s. So, every serving you can now see, one serving of this fish will give me how many milligrams of omega-3s, DHA, EPA. And when you have that data, you can know like, hey, I got 3,000 milligrams of omega-3s from eating this source of Seatopia today. And that arms you with a little bit more information. You know, you can talk to your functional medicine doctor, you can, you know, do your own data on like how much omega-3s are appropriate for you at that stage in life. You know, whether you're dealing with some sort of illness or you're pregnant or whatever it is, your intake levels are going to evolve. But, you can now at least think about the actual omega-3s per serving because it varies significantly by fish and by diet. And, eating a piece of wild mahi-mahi, for example, is not going to provide the same levels of omega-3s as something that was raised on this algae-rich diet. Super frozen and delivered to your door on dry ice with a temperature dot knowing that it was kept cold through the entire supply chain.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, your guys' shipping process is pretty dialed. The omega-3 content, I didn't know that. Is that on the package? Do I just need to look more carefully or is it on that QR code that you scan? Because I love the QR code because I can get a cut of fish like you mentioned kanpachi that I don't have a deep knowledge of how to prepare. I can scan the QR code and it'll take me to the recipes on your website with how to do it sashimi style or in some cases how to cook it. But, is the omega-3 information on the package or is it when you scan the QR code?

It depends on the product. So, we don't have our own packaging and processing facilities, we work with a handful of different ones. So, we are rolling it out on different ones. So, on some, it's already on the label, on some, it's on the website and you have to scan it. But, 6 months from now, it'll be on every single product is front and center, omega-3 per serving, microplastics, mercury levels, et cetera. Also selenium, vitamin D, all the protein per serving.

Ben Greenfield: Amazing. Okay. We didn't really talk too much about this because we talked about so much on our last podcast, but it's turkey hunting season right now in Idaho. So, I've been out with the bow a few times in the past week. And, even though I'm hunting wild turkey, if my only concern was cleanliness, nutrient composition, et cetera, I would go buy a turkey like a pastured turkey from US Wellness Meats or whatever because I know exactly what it's eaten. I don't know if the wild turkey I'm hunting has been eating glyphosate-ridden corn, on the neighbor's property. I don't know if it's eating some other herbicide pesticide-infused weed from a local farm. And so, that's just a good analogy here in terms of land hunting, turf hunting that sometimes wild isn't necessarily better. And I think you kind of touched on this earlier, but I think about this when I look at the plastic content I recently saw in wild-caught salmon from Whole Foods and it was through the roof, way out of limits. So, wild is not always— it sounds superior, it sounds very primal, but it's not always better.

Ben Greenfield: It's difficult to make generalizations, but one of the things that we've learned over, I guess, 5 years now of lab testing thousands of different analytes is that feed matters. And when you have controlled inputs in controlled environments with a specific intention to increase nutrient density and mitigate exposure to toxins, you have a much— we have a much better outcome than just catching fish from the wild where we also see undoubtedly increasing levels of microplastics, mercury, and PCBs and everything else that's in the ocean. It is not getting better yet. In most instances, we're continuing to pollute our rivers, our atmosphere, our oceans, and it bioaccumulating up the food chain. When you raise fish with the intention of producing super fish, superfoods that are clean and nutrient-dense, you just, you have a much better chance of predictably and consistently doing that in farms. That's one of the cool things about farming, right? Like you can, whether it's turkey or cattle, if you want to produce inexpensive cattle or turkey, you can just feed them GMO corn and subsidized soy and whatever other kind of inexpensive protein meal is available. And you'll produce something inexpensive, but you're only going to be able to sell it to people who only care about price. If people care about cleanliness, they care about what's in that animal, you're going to have to optimize your feed and your farming methods. And the same thing is happening in seafood. You can either, as you said, catch wild fish. And unfortunately, I don't condone eating most wild-caught fish anymore. I have a lot of friends who are commercial fishermen and recreational fishermen. And, I feel guilty or kind of awkward anytime I get offered. It's almost like out of respect, I'll have a bite, but I know enough to know that I'm not going to give that to my daughter.

You ever just go spearfishing though?

I have some really beautiful spearguns, beautiful hardwood with triple bands. And, we live in such a beautiful place. Yet today I like to shoot fish with a camera because there's also this evolving understanding and appreciation for these living creatures. Like, in the same way that I'm not gonna go and hunt a rhino, I now feel like we're at this tipping point where these apex trophy fish should probably continue procreating and creating more offspring. So I'm not going to go and shoot a big fish just for ego. I would rather figure out how to get— be really quiet and get really close to a big apex fish and take his photo with a fisheye lens. It requires a lot of the same skills. You gotta control your breath, you gotta control your noise, you gotta attract them or hide from them and get close because you still need to get close enough to get a shot in clear water with minimum focal distance.

Yeah. And, you still get all the joy and nature immersion and even the physiological benefits of say freediving when you do something like that.

Of course— Relatively safe.

—also not all spearfishing has to be trophy fishing though, right?

Yeah, for sure. And, there's a lot of smaller fish that have sustainable yields that are lower than the trophic levels that have less accumulation, et cetera. Also, that just feels like sport as opposed to really feeding myself because when I taste the fat content of our yellowtail or our branzino or sea bream, it's just so much more satiating than the low-fat content.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, I agree. It kind of comes back to eating wild venison versus really good even grass-fed, grass-finished beef. There's a definite difference in flavor except for maybe elk. Elk is pretty good even just a wild elk.

It's still amazing. Amazing. And, the venison in Hawaii are amazing too because they just have access to a really— the Axis deer have access to so much incredible environment and they're getting— it tastes, it's indicative of that environment. So, there's definitely that rule. Oysters are a great example of that. Oysters are mostly just relatively wild. I mean, most farmed oysters on the West Coast of the United States are a triploid version of an oyster. So, they don't reproduce in the wild. The spat are planted out and then they're grown, but it's a semi-wild experience. They're just filtering zooplankton phytoplankton in the wild, but I'll eat that because it's low trophic. That said, you got to be conscientious of what other things are they filtering and accumulating. And, in some environments, you don't want to be filtering and accumulating industrial pollutants.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, yeah. And, I do like that you guys have some different options with Seetopia like the scallops, for example. By the way, do you need to be more careful with scallops? I mean, like, do scallops tend to bioaccumulate things like toxins or plastics or metals more than even fish might?

It's not that they do more or less. They are definitely filter-feeding their entire life, but they are at that base trophic level, so it's not bioaccumulated. So, what eats a scallop is going to have a higher bioaccumulation of certain toxins that stay in the fat tissues. And then, what eats that organism that ate the scallop is gonna have an even higher bioaccumulation level. So it's, it's still because it's the bottom of the trophic level, it's not gonna have the same bioaccumulation. That said, if it's downstream from an environment that is polluting, you know, petrochemicals or forever chemicals from like a furniture plant or fire retardants, that's gonna show up in those, those organisms. So it's, it's important where those filter feeders are being raised and it's important to lab test it. If you don't have the lab test data, then you're kind of just taking a guess. Yeah.

And, be careful or get ready to do a lot of detox and sauna protocols, which I don't recommend. It's easier to eat clean.

It's easier to mitigate, yes. Yeah, exactly.

I'm sure you get pushback on talking about ocean sustainability and yet you're using cardboard and whatnot to ship fish around. How do you deal with that?

It's a great question. I mean, to say that you're doing sustainable seafood and yet you're shipping it on airplanes and packing it on styrofoam is sort of a paradox. Yeah, it's a paradox and it doesn't totally hold water. We don't use any styrofoam. All of our shipping is carbon neutral. Through carbon offsets. And we don't do any fresh distribution, everything is frozen. So, frozen logistics is much more efficient. So, we don't optimize— all of our supply chain is optimized for frozen container shipment on boats and then on 2-day ground shipping. And that reduces the sort of sustainable arc. We also are proactively restoring ecosystem. So, for example, last year we planted over 20,000 kelp. We had a kelp planting initiative where for every box sold, we were planting kelp in the ocean. So, we basically made a kelp forest which has other ecosystem services. So, Seatopia is not— we're not perfect, but compared to fresh seafood distribution that relies on airplanes and relies on Styrofoam because it's actually easier to distribute frozen seafood than it is fresh because fresh has to stay in this very specific and very tight temperature range. It can't be too cold, otherwise it'll freeze. It can't be too warm, otherwise it'll go rancid. And it has to get there very quickly. When we super freeze something and then we distribute it with dry ice, it's okay if it goes to -100 degrees with that dry ice. We just don't want it to be warm. So, we distribute in a manner that limits our ability to do things that have to stay fresh but is frankly just more sustainable, scalable, and authentic, I think. Ben Greenfield: Yeah.

What about the wrapping? But, the flash-frozen plastic-esque type of bag the fish come in, A, any concerns about microplastics in that? And then, B, I think in our last podcast, you said that that's fully biodegradable?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great question. So, proximity to an intact vacuum-sealed bag is not leaching microplastics into the fish. And, I can tell you this conclusively because we've lab-tested this 100 times or more. When we send our samples to the laboratory, we send it in the consumer packaged product. So, it is literally in that same vacuum-sealed bag. Microplastics are leaching from plastics that have started to decompose or breaking down or exposed to high temperatures or being exposed to rough surfaces. And then it would need to get into the fish. Maybe it's, it's better to go back to the idea of bioaccumulation. Microplastics are getting into fish. Because zooplankton are consuming or mistaking the microplastics for algae that they want to consume. And then, it's accumulating into that organism and then accumulating into the organism that eats it. Simply proximity to that microplastic is not resulting in it accumulating. So, If you simply set your fish on a perfectly new plastic cutting board, and I don't use plastic cutting boards, but just as an example. Yeah, we don't either.

We threw them all out.

Yeah, we use all wood and bamboo. But simply putting it there doesn't mean that you're getting microplastics into the fish. That said, if you started cutting on that plastic cutting board and making little chips, you might get with microplastics on the surface, but it's not in the fish, it's on the surface, right? It's a big difference. Proximity to plastic is not resulting in— another great example, some of the farms that we work with are raising fish in land-based recirculating aquaculture systems. So large tanks like aquariums that have plastic pipes and all this, they're in an environment where you have intact high-density plastic tubing. That tubing is not leaching plastic into the fish. It's possible that some microplastics are getting into that water system, but when we test that fish, there are not elevated levels of microplastics in that fish because microplastics are getting into fish and bioaccumulating through feed, not through proximity.

Yeah. I was talking with somebody recently about plastic forks. They're like, "You shouldn't use plastic fork." Well, if you're eating maybe, I don't know, super hot food off a plastic fork or using it to stir a hot cup of coffee, it's an issue. But eating your salad with a plastic fork, pun intended here, I guess you got a lot bigger fish to fry.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, if that plastic fork had a bunch of chips on it and you're you're chewing on it, sure, maybe different. But, you know, yeah, there's a reason why plastic is so ubiquitous in the world and industry because it works really well and it doesn't break down very easily. That's both the problem and the challenge is that it doesn't break down very easily. That said, we do use vacuum-sealed bags that use plastic and we've tested the product and there's not plastics in there. We also use vacuum-sealed bags, or we use pouches, like for the scallops and shrimp. They come in a pouch that is made out of a bio-based plastic that is also compostable or recyclable. When we first talked, our entire supply chain had no traditional petrochemical plastics. Unfortunately, the technology is still evolving and it didn't have the integrity under extreme cold temperatures to maintain its seal. And, what we found was that in very cold temperatures, the vacuum-sealed bags were losing their seal and just didn't have the integrity that traditional plastics do. So, we are continuing to get samples from these companies that are developing these biopolymers from cassava and from seaweed and a bunch of other sources because we will be able to figure this out.

I want a bag I can just eat my fish in like a burrito, dude.

Well, we gave it to you once upon a time. It just didn't keep the fish sealed in the freezer long enough. We do it with the scallops and with the shrimp because those fish are IQF frozen, meaning they're individually quick frozen with a glaze of saltwater. And that saltwater glaze is what protects it from oxygen, whereas the vacuum seals that protect from oxygen by simply pulling all the oxygen out of the bag first, those ones we're still using a traditional plastic because that's the only thing that we currently have found holds integrity for long-term storage in a freezer.

Ben Greenfield: Got it. The lion's share of my culinary expertise around seafood I've actually gotten from you over the past couple of years since I've been a Seatopia consumer. So, I'm just curious, fun question here, probably my last question, but let's say I come over to your house tonight and you're going to pull one of your cuts, one of your Seatopia cuts out and make me a meal. Tell me what your favorite go-to is right now and how you're going prepare it?

Man, I don't— I'm one of those guys that just likes things different all the time, so I continue to try new things. I like getting different, uh, uh, cookbooks just for different inspiration. I love going to the farmer's market and just randomly picking something out. We have this, this, um, this tradition with a couple of my friends called Stone Soup where everybody just brings ingredients and then on the fly we cook something. Um, it's just fun to try different things. That said, Last night, a friend came over and we cooked the barramundi. I— the barramundi is so different than all the other fish that we sell. Like, the branzino, for example, is from this beautiful farm with this beautiful story, and it cooks really easy. It's, it's so easy to love. The barramundi is a little harder to love because it's harder to perfect how you cook it, but the experience can be great when done right. And the reason why is barramundi has more connective tissue in the muscle fiber, and it tastes chewy unless you cook it well so that it becomes flaky. And traditionally, when you cook a piece of fish, you cook it quickly so that you don't burn out the fats, so that it doesn't get dry. And if you apply that technique to barramundi, you're gonna either burn the skin or it's not gonna cook thoroughly. When you use a piece of parchment paper, This is the unlock. What I did last night, I took out cast iron pan, parchment paper, olive oil. Actually, full story, I was holding one of my babies, she was asleep, the 9-month-old, and my buddy was like, "Hey, let me help you." And, I talked him through and he did it and it turned out great. So, cast iron pan, medium heat or medium-low, which is different than what I do for salmon or something I want to sear hard, medium-low. I take it, take out the parchment paper, cut it to the shape of the cast iron pan. So you cover the surface, a little bit of olive oil, let that warm up. Fish thoroughly dried, paper towels, really, really dry. Season with salt right before putting on there. Cause you don't want the salt to start pulling moisture up. You want it to just for flavor. Skin side down and let it cook relatively slowly until you start seeing browning all around the edges. The cool thing about parchment paper is the skin's not gonna stick to the pan and you're gonna be able to easily look at and see how crispy that is. And you just let it cook nice and slow and it starts to break down all the muscle fiber and then turn it over. And a second pan going at the same time, we just, uh, did some, uh, some greens. I think it was kale and fennel and did that in olive oil with a little bit of rice vinegar and sort of blanched that and then threw some— I think we had pine nuts on top of that for a little salad and it was fantastic. But, the process of using the parchment paper on the bermundi has been a huge unlock.

And, the parchment is going under it like you have the cast iron skillet and then the parchment is under the fish on the cast iron skillet?

Yep. The parchment is basically a surface between the skillet and the fish to ensure that the skin doesn't stick.

And, you're putting oil, are you putting oil on the parchment paper on the surface? On top of the parchment paper.

So, between the fish and the parchment paper, it has that that oil and it's so beautiful and so simple because it doesn't stick, the skin doesn't stick, and the cleanup afterwards is a cinch. So, the process, it works great with beramundi, it works great with branzino, it works great with anything.

This is going to happen this week. I'm going to send you a picture, dude. I might not be holding a baby, but no babies, no friends. I'm just going to go for it. It sounds incredible, dude. Um, as always, it's just, you know, you and I just talk, you know, so often it seems when I'm texting you some random question about how to cook a piece of fish or asking, you know, what's, what's a new cut you guys have at Seatopia. And yeah, you've just been so kind over the years, you know, bringing an inland Idaho boy up to speed on all things fish. So I really appreciate it. And for those of you listening in, if you want to try a Seatopia box for yourself. They got all sorts of options on their website. It's super fun. I'll link to it in the shownotes. And, we have discount codes for them too if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/Seatopia2, like Seatopia, the number 2. Listen to my first podcast also with James because there's even more culinary tips for fish in there and also a fascinating discussion. So, James, thank you so much for coming on the show again, man.

My pleasure, Ben. I really appreciate you being interested to understand how these food systems are evolving and really caring about how this affects our health. 'Cause when people start voting for better food systems, it has a profound impact, not just on human health, but on planetary health. And I really just believe, you know, wholeheartedly that we can vote with our forks in a way that is, that is really impactful. And we're seeing that, we're seeing that regenerative practices, regenerative aquaculture, regenerative agriculture can produce healthier foods for people and planet. And yeah, just really stoked that you care about this stuff. So, glad I can share good fish with you guys. And, and yeah, we're doing good by the ocean and I'm really proud of that.

Yeah, I love it. Well, folks, that's James Arthur, James Arthur Smith. Say that 10 times That was fast. From Seatopia, along with me signing out from BenGreenfieldLife.com, have an incredible week. To discover even more tips, tricks, hacks, and content to become the most complete boundless version of you, visit BenGreenfieldLife.com.

In compliance with the FTC guidelines, please assume the following about links and posts on this site. Most of the links going to products are often affiliate links, of which I receive a small commission from sales of certain items, but the price is the same for you. And sometimes I even get to share a unique and somewhat significant discount with you. In some cases, I might also be an investor in a company I mention. I'm the founder, for example, of Kion LLC, the makers of Kion-branded supplements and products, which I talk about quite a bit. Regardless of the relationship. If I post or talk about an affiliate link to a product, it is indeed something I personally use, support, and with full authenticity and transparency recommend in good conscience. I personally vet each and every product that I talk about. My first priority is providing valuable information and resources to you that help you positively optimize your mind, body, and spirit, and I'll only ever link to products or resources, affiliate or otherwise, that fit within this purpose. So there's your fancy legal disclaimer.