Excerpt from a YouTube interview (Ben Greenfield) discussing the ocean’s untapped biological and nutritional potential, hazards from pollution (mercury, microplastics) via bioaccumulation/biomagnification, and the central role of DHA from marine microalgae in human brain and eye development. Speakers emphasize feed/source matters for contaminants and parasites when consuming whole fish versus processed fish oil.
Chapters
You don't even fully comprehend the value that the ocean gives us on a daily basis.
Do you think there's like 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. Like we barely have mapped the symmetry of the ocean. There's so many species that we haven't discovered. There's so many, so much potential for. Whether it's medicines or food production, the ocean is an incredibly untapped resource. The bigger the fish, the more the mercury. Right? It's just bioaccumulation, biomagnification. We've tested so much fish, and unfortunately, even when we're all the way out here in the heart of the Pacific that you kind of would think is isolated from industrial pollution, but we are still connected to the larger gyres we experience here. Both microplastics and mercury and other contaminants from both Asia and from the United States. It's all connected. Parasites get into fish because they're eating crustaceans or bottom feeding or eating some other dead organism.
So the feed matters.
Feed matters if you're ingesting live animals that have parasites in them. 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.
