 good morning good morning can you see us hi can you hear us yes good morning this is a good morning can you see us well hello hi thank you to you good good with our Bureau of the functions environment yeah Marine conservation wonderful she's our yeah it's new I'm only in here since February but yeah congratulations we can leave your stuff over here in the other room to whatever is more comfortable that's off camera thank you I'm just gonna run upstairs and get one thing and Barbara is here to you this is set up for you you're going to be in this space right now we have the video up so that people who are coming in have something to watch so we're going to exchange that out and this is where the text is going to be questions from well we don't know how many folks we know that Korea Port Mores be in Wellington will be there but we don't know how many other but what will happen is I'll take this unless you want to just blur it out a question I'll take the questions and put them into the phone your teleprompter okay and so they'll be on spring for you to read if you see some questions that you really like just go right ahead and take over one of us will be over here following your words so we won't lose you go in any direction you want okay and we'll try to come back to where you left off in the script oh wow thanks the only the only real read you have is beginning everything else is this more interactive yeah yeah and so are you only choosing questions that are like I've just been more involved in the oceans conferencing where we haven't chosen any questions other than those that are already okay you mean yeah I didn't know there had to be sort of right vetting as they were coming through that you were doing over there okay and just selected for a great question because we put it on the screen okay but anything that you put up on the screen is okay to to read or not necessary okay we'll let you be the final judge okay you probably know more about I'm not sure but I'll try to choose wisely I know that Sarah's pretty up on ocean yeah a bit so the literal questions just come up in in here here okay and I have some questions that I just wanted to double check with you before we start just to make sure that I understood from the call the other day which questions you were kind of most excited about focus on or combine just because of the way we love the script from from these guys it looks like these were sort of just topics you had mentioned at some point yeah that was more in response to an email what topics yeah what do you think would be good to include okay and then but you liked this as sort of a starting question the what do you see as the major challenges facing health our ocean today like that as a starting point and then did you have any issues with these or ones that you were saying we wanted to combine or just flow American corner American Center in Korea are you there hello American Center in Korea hello American Center in Korea are you there hi anybody there hello American Center in Korea hello hello hello is anybody there hello is anybody there welcome back good morning could you send us the embed code please oh you sent to my email okay let me check all afternoon they driving me crazy absolutely we would insist there is a delay yeah you're gonna hear the audio you'll hear through this oh if they come in with the question yeah oh great only Korea okay we'll be we'll come together okay they're going to send questions through the chat okay not live only Korea will send questions and Wellington will send also okay can you and I talk about what these questions mean yeah curious curious about what made you bring two keywords sustainable and secretive connection yeah and there's obviously some something that after that I don't it is not translating no I mean it might just sort of be a more general like why are you focusing on and I don't think we don't have to answer all of these questions that have already been typed up either right we would ask though that if you ask any of the questions from the Korean students from their school that I don't pronounce their name they assured me that no matter how bad you mess it up they're gonna be very great let's practice the first one see one long be one long be one long see one long be one long be one long be one young be Hi, can you hear me? Hi, Korea, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you well. Okay, good. I can hear you too. Sounds great. Would you like to use a microphone when we have any commenters? Yes, please. I think we'll need the microphone. Okay, we'll use our microphone then. Okay. Would you like to say good morning and welcome to our students this morning? Good morning, students. How are you? How are you? You can't see me today because I'm not on camera. There's a chair in the desk. There you go. Fine, we are online and also is on the broadcast. Okay, we're broadcast. Yeah, we are monitoring from behind. We are monitoring our program from behind. The other computer. This is what they have different views. Yeah, that's fine. Are we muted too, or are we live? Are we muted? Oh my, you can not do that. You can not do that. They're smart. Harder than they are. I'm sure all the students are sweet. I move the, what's it called? So that it's, because I'm not. When I talk to these guys, it's not part of the program. They don't like, they don't, they don't, I don't know if that interested in them. Great. Well, good morning and good afternoon to all of our colleagues around the world, and back here in Washington. A special welcome to our viewers in Seoul and Wellington and Port Morrisby. Welcome to our program. My name is Allison Fleming and I'm here with the Department of State. I work for the Office of Marine Conservation in the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs. And with the help of the Bureau of International Information Program, we're happy to welcome you to this interactive speaker program. Over the next hour, you'll hear from our special guest, Barton Siever, on topics affecting our oceans across the globe. Let me remind you that this session is being reported and will be made available following the conclusion of this program via our archives. If you're viewing us live, we encourage everyone to take part in this conversation and please use the chat box you'll find on your screen if you'd like to ask any questions. There will be time during our program for interactive questions and answers. So with that, our speaker today is Barton Siever. Barton is currently Director of Harvard University's Healthy and Sustainable Food Program, and he will talk about his enduring relationship with seafood and his journey from acclaimed executive chef to healthy oceans advocate. He will address how he believes chefs can help restore the ocean, talk about his passion for educating people about seafood, and he'll answer your questions on topics from fisheries to education to how what is on your plate matters to the rest of the world. So I could read Barton's lengthy resume of qualification, but more simply, what you should know is that he possesses one of the keenest points of view on the connection between the seafood that we eat and our environment. And a conversation with him is inevitably very thought-provoking. So with that, welcome Barton, and thank you for joining us. I'm thrilled to be here. I'm really thrilled to have the audience well join us, and especially to the young culinary students at Sukumiyung University, women's university, I hope I got that pronunciation right. Forgive me if I didn't, but always a pleasure to talk to young chefs and others that are passionate about the ocean. I've really come to the oceans through a very personal narrative. When I was a young boy, I got to spend a lot of my summers down on a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay, a river here near my hometown of Washington D.C. And there I would spend my entire day as fishing. I'd pull out giant crabs, and every third cast of my line, a giant fish would come back, and it was a bounty with which I was so fluent. It was such a familiar experience to me, and years on, I became a chef, and when I was writing my menus, I really realized that it was a very personal narrative, that my menu was a story about me, about my experiences, and what I wanted to convey to my guests. And so I picked up the phone and I called my fish purveyor, and I said, hey, I want blue crabs, I want oysters, I want blue fish, I want all the fish that I was so familiar with as a child. And the answer that I got was, well, sorry kid, we ate all of those, what else do you want? And it was a very startling realization that I think the guiding hand of natural selection in our world is quite firmly holding a fork, and the way that we eat largely describes how this world is used. And especially when it comes to the oceans, we've used them in inappropriate ways. We've taken too many of the fish out of the sea. Fortunately though, the oceans are incredibly resilient. They have the ability to rebound into robust economies, into robust, resilient ecosystems that can continue to provide not only jobs, not only healthful food for us, but also to continue to provide the basic fundamental ecosystem services that we all rely on. The oceans, as many people know, 70% of our planet is covered in water. The ocean produces 50% of all of the air that we breathe. The ocean is responsible for all of our weather patterns, our climate, the rain, everything that supports life on this planet begins in the ocean. And yet we have a relationship now with the ocean that is abusive. We've created economies that are based more on volume than they are on value. And we are not utilizing the oceans for their highest and best purpose, which to my opinion is to enable thriving and resilient human communities. And this is the way that I really look at sustainability, is how do we use natural resources to best sustain people. And some of the issues that we face while we're trying to create these systems. For example, in the oceans we have a lot of illegal, unregulated and under reported fisheries. It's estimated that almost 40% of all of the fish taken out of the ocean are never accounted for. And so we don't even in some ways know what damage we're doing to the oceans. Other issues that we have is that about 30% of all of the seafood that we catch is used for what are called reduction fisheries. Meaning they're milled down, cooked into oil and to fish meal. That fish meal goes to feed pigs and chickens and farmed salmon. The oil goes into moisturizers. It goes into linoleum tiles. It goes to pharmaceuticals. And yet that's 30% of all of the fish we're taking out of the ocean. And that fish could be better utilized to directly feed people. We live in a world where too many people are hungry. And yet one of our most abundant natural resources we're not using to feed people. And so that leads me to another sort of driver of our relationship with the ocean which is the economics of our relationship with it. We have set up the economies of fishery to be based on volume and not on quality, and not on the quality of life that they provide. Here in America we're very fortunate. We're very blessed. We have great blessing to be able to choose what we eat. And yet even though we have hundreds, literally hundreds of species available to us in this country, we choose to eat only 10. 10 species make up 95% of the seafood consumption in this country. And what that's created is a demand-based economy. When our recipe says cod, because cod is our favorite fish, what we then do is we demand of the oceans that it provide cod. Instead what we should be doing is asking of the oceans what they can provide sustainably for us. When that net comes back onto the boat, sure there might be cod in it, but Pollock and Haddock and Haake and Cusk and Ling and Monk and Skate and Dog and Wolf and Raid, I could go on. These are all delicious fish. Come on over to my house. I'll convince you it's the most delicious thing you've ever had. And all the students there at Supreme Union University, I bet you could do some amazing things with it as well. But the problem is we're so focused on a commodity relationship with fisheries that we forget to really explore and to celebrate the entire bounty of what the oceans can provide for us. Now there's also a lot of hope that we have for the oceans. As I had mentioned, the ocean ecosystems are incredibly resilient. When fish stocks, meaning the populations of a given fish, are given a break from fishing, they rebound incredibly quickly. One of the examples of this is with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that we had here just a few years back. The fishing had stopped for about a year. And when they started fishing again, there were more fish than anyone could ever remember because these species are so resilient. And so there's great hope in this if we can create economic systems, if we can create cultural expectations of what we hope to take from the ocean, that allow for these ocean ecosystems to be as resilient as they are. One other thing about seafood that most people don't understand is how important it is to the human diet. Now I'm here talking to such an international audience. In America we don't eat very much seafood. We eat about 15 pounds of seafood per person per year. In other countries, especially in Asia, that number jumps to almost 100 pounds of seafood per person per year. And in many parts of the world, seafood is actually in fact the only or the major source of protein. Two billion people on this planet rely on the ocean solely for the majority of their food. And so when we talk about the health of fisheries, when we talk about the health of ocean ecosystems, we're really talking about the health of our human populations. We rely on the oceans to sustain us, which is precisely why we're having this conversation today about how we can all act together to sustain the oceans. This is really not just an environmental problem. This is also an economic problem and a social problem and one of food security looking forward for generation. Absolutely. The oceans are really a strategic food reserve, one that continues to produce, one that really allows for us to continue to find that balance in our life between healthy economies. I think that the estimate is almost one in ten people on this planet are supported either directly by a job on the ocean or a family member who is employed by a marine ecosystem. And so it is very significant, but there are also some very significant threats to the ocean that are not caused by our quest for food. The greatest threat facing our oceans is actually nothing to do with seafood at all, but rather with global climate change. The acidification of the oceans is a result of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The oceans act as a sink for carbon dioxide, absorbing it from the atmosphere. And as we, through our enterprise, put so much CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the ocean absorbs more of them. The more carbon dioxide in the ocean, the more acidic the water becomes. And this is a major problem because much of the food chain within the ocean is based on tiny little plankton, diatomaceous little animals, zooplankton, microscopic forms of life, plants that we never see, but form the entire basis of the food chain. Now these plants and animals are dependent upon a very sort of narrow, particular chemistry, a very narrow band of circumstances. And when the oceans become more acidic, these tiny creatures are not able to calcify their shells to create the exoskeletons, to form literally the bones of their bodies. And it just simply takes more energy to live. More energy to live, and then less this lower life span, and less lower bioproductivity in the oceans. And so a lot of the choices that we make in all aspects of our lives from where we get our energy from, how we use energy, how we choose to travel, and especially how we choose to eat are really all factors that impact the ocean in ways that ultimately impact human health. And so since you've explained for us sort of how connected sustainable seafood choices are to our house and to our economy, can you tell us a little bit more about what simply what does it mean to be sustainable and what are some choices that we have across the world that varies from location to location? What are some choices that we can make that would be more sustainable when we talk about seafood? Sure. I think sustainable has multiple definitions, and we really struggled I think as a global community to really understand what that means. The Bruntland Commission, which was a commission started by the UN to look at the global implications of declining resources, came up with a definition that resources that are used prudently today and that will be available for future generations as well. That basic principle is take only what you need and leave the rest for those who come after us. So with that basic understanding, sustainability has been pursued in many different ways. In America and in Europe, we have a lot of scientific organizations that study very particular fish stocks and the health of those species and basically do sort of an economic analysis of them saying, well there are X number of fish, we can take Y number of fish in order for them to be healthy. And this is fisheries regulation, but it's also become consumer decision processes. So that is one way we define sustainable. Can that resource supply our current demand while ensuring demand in the future? But sustainability means something different in other communities. There are, as I said, 2 billion people on this planet that sustain themselves solely through seafood. So when we talk about sustainability, we have to talk about their ability to feed themselves. So here in the US, and in fact you've been involved in these efforts, we have many of these different sort of guiding principles or cards or websites that consumers can use to influence their choices of what types of fish are good choices to make. If you're living in a place that does not have those same kind of cards and information and guidance readily available, what are some maybe very general principles that we could explain to our audience here that would allow them to start making sustainable choices or to at least raise the awareness about the need for sustainable choices regarding seafood in their local communities? Are there some really general principles like what types of food to eat or where on the food chain are smaller fish, better than bigger fish, what are some general takeaways? Well, I think one of the most important things that we can do is to buy our seafood or to procure our seafood from sources that we know so that we can trace that seafood. When you know where your seafood is coming from, you have some impact over the practices of that harvest. If the seafood just arrives in a plastic box and you don't even know what country, you don't even know what ocean it came from. You don't know if it's legal or legally caught. How is your ethic, how is your desire for sustainable seafood ever going to travel back to the point of production? So if you know where your fish is coming from, preferably if you're buying it directly from a fisherman, you, the consumer, have a lot of power in that you can communicate your desire for sustainable oceans directly to the people that are providing for your table. I think on a more general basis, when we look at the choices available to us, as you mentioned smaller fish, bigger fish, the smaller species are generally more sustainable. I say smaller species, not smaller fish. Don't go out and eat all the baby fish please. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying eat fish that are biologically smaller. The way that I look at it is really with the diving board. Well, think about the marine trophic scales, the food chain in the ocean is a diving board. All the way down here at the bottom, you've got the phytoplankton, the zooplankton, those little diatomaceous things that we were talking about earlier, the basis of the food chain. Next step up, you've got oysters, clams, mussels, sardines, anchovies, filter feeders, fish that swim through or mollusks that filter the water to remove those nutrients. Next you have your sort of second-order predators, mackerels, your small fish, snappers, your reef fish, parrotfish, things like this. All the way at the very end you've got tunas, sharks, marlins, these big charismatic species that we so love. And as culinaryians, it's just that's what we want to put on the plate. Big fun species. It looks great on a plate. But if you think about the diving board, go back to this analogy. What happens if you jump at the base of a diving board? Not much. It's not going to move. The system absorbs the shock. What happens if you jump at the very end? It'll spring off into the pool. You make the biggest splash you possibly can. And that's what we've been doing is our preference for seafood has actually gone further and further out to the point where 100 years ago, we ate these things. We ate the fish that swam towards us. Hey, if you're hungry, just wait until low tide. Go out and get some oysters. But now we have global fisheries. We're able with factory trawlers and freezer ships to chase fish all over the globe, large charismatic migratory species. So what we've been doing in the ocean is hammering, hammering, hammering away at the part of that ecosystem which is most susceptible to our impact. So the further down the chain you eat, paring, sardines, anchovies, oysters, clams, mussels, the more inherently resilient the system is and the more inherently able the system is to provide that for us. And what's funny is these fish over here, they actually happen to be the healthiest fish for us. They have the highest levels of omega-3s, selenium, magnesium, all these other nutrients that we look to fish for in our diet. They have high levels of calcium and vitamin E, all these great things that help us, these people thrive. Just haven't been the palatable ones yet, in the marketable ones. Yeah, because it takes a little bit of work or it's just not seen as sexy enough. And I think especially speaking to the uncullinarians in the audience, that's one of the real opportunities that chefs have. We can drive popularity. We can drive trends. We put sardines on a plate in this country and all of a sudden, oh my god, everybody wants sardines. It's cool. Why? Well, because I said so. As an executive chef, this is cool. So we really have the power as consumers to drive these trends. And so oftentimes when we think about sustainable seafood, it's all about, well, how is it produced? Well, it's also about what are the expectations that drive the market that produced it for us. So if we're going to the market saying, I want mussels and clams and oysters and sardines, well, that's what the system will then go after. And so we have the opportunity to really ask of the system to provide us more inherently sustainable products. So Barton, you've just made a lot of really excellent points. I want to ask you a few different questions following up on some of those points. And let's go back first to what you were saying about creating relationships with the people that you get your food from and really knowing where your food is coming from. Is this something you've done as a chef? And can you tell us some of your personal stories about have you made relationships with the fishermen or where do you look for those sources of information so that you know what food you're ordering for your restaurants and then providing for your consumers and your customers? Well, in my restaurants, we dealt very directly with the producers and very infrequently did we really use a middleman. And so I had 13 different fishermen who worked for my restaurants and I would get text messages or emails and said, hey, it went out fishing today and I caught this. And I'd text back and I'd say, great, swing on by. And then I'd write my menu and okay, there it was. We'll serve this today. And A, what that did is it allowed the fishermen the greatest profit instead of selling the fish into a commodity market and this highly perishable product then being transferred all about and trying to find a market for it. These guys went out fishing knowing I would buy it and knowing that I would pay them top dollar for it. And so they were able to make a better living off catching less fish and my guests at the restaurant got a better quality product. I mean, they were getting fish that was 18 hours old, just fresh out of the water. And they can feel good about those choices that they're making. They know that you're providing good information and that you know where your fish is coming from and they can trust your judgment for that when they make a decision about ordering from your menu. Yeah, and part of that was we were selling stories and as much as our servers would go to the tables and say, well, tonight here are our specials for the day and this is what's on offer. They'd go to the table and say, hey, our buddy Jim from Chesapeakey just came in today with his blue fish. Oh my God, it's so super fresh, it's fabulous. Tonight we've got it with a basil walnut pesto, a potato and zucchini cake seared up crisp on the flat top so it's a nice crunchy top to it. The blue fish been wood grilled over a smoky, sultry, smoldering fire with a little bit of apple wood in there. Delicious. How can you say no to that? And so we took something, just a product and we could have just put it on a menu. Here you go, read the menu, decide what you want or we could really bring life to it and we could really extend the purpose of eating. We could make it fun and entertaining and so we gained so much more value from that fish because of that, guests walk out of their restaurant really feeling as though they had participated in an experience and that they'd invested in their community. And so since we do have quite a few culinary students with us this evening, I'm sure this is something that they will face in their career. Do you think that those choices regarding which fish to serve and where to source your fish from, making those kind of sustainable choices, is that something that the chef should be responsible for or the consumer? I think we probably all need to make the choices but as a chef yourself, what do you think, where does that burden lie? I think the burden lies throughout the chain. I think fishermen must be responsible to fish sustainably. Their jobs are on the line because of it. I think chefs have a responsibility to ask questions, if nothing else. We don't always understand what is sustainable or not sustainable but if we ask questions then we're at least presenting that we care. Even if you get an answer and you don't know what to do with that information, it still shows that we care and it still demands that there be some accountability within the system. And I think one thing that consumers can really add to this is flexibility. When as I was saying earlier with cod, in America we tend species, so much more is available because we should be willing to eat whatever the ocean provides. That when we cast a line into the ocean and we reel it back, we don't know what's coming. But I think we have a moral responsibility to eat whatever does. That if we take from the ocean, we should be willing to eat. And so that means when you walk into a restaurant, walk in with an open mind. When you walk into a retailer, simply ask what's the best fish you have? What's the catch of the day? Just that mentality alone begins to ask the ocean what it can provide rather than say, I need salmon. That's what we like to eat here, so that's what I would like to order. And that actually relates to one of our questions that we got from one of our students. Let me just see. So from Hee Ryong Kim, from Sukun Young Women's University in Seoul, one of their questions was regarding this sort of changing of opinion, and when we just want salmon, we want salmon. How can we shift our way of thinking to be more open to these different types of fish? And so they had mentioned that we can really change people's way of thinking for environmental issues, including ad campaigns and public relations campaigns. What other ways or methods do you suggest that we could use to change people's minds and make them more open to trying some of these other fish, maybe those that are further back along the diving board that are lower on the food chain and maybe haven't always been the top choice for people to bring into their homes or to order in restaurants, but how can we start making those more exciting and maybe that even includes the specific recipes that you want to share. Well, one of the great joys of culinary is that you create your own recipes. It is so personal. But I think it really does come down to the culinary creativity, that you have to put some effort into it. You can't just let the fish sell itself. You really have to sell the dish. Make it your own. Don't just put the fish out there and hope that somebody wants it. Put your passion into it. Put your creativity into it. Draw upon your experiences a new flavor combination that you're really excited about pairing new ingredients. If you, the chef, are excited about it, guess what? The wait staff is going to get excited about it. Your guests are going to get excited about it. And then they're going to tell their friends about it and they're going to get excited about it. And so it's really about personalizing this. If sustainability is only a narrative about the environment, then we're not emotionally connected to it. If it's about us, my story, my health, if it's about these things that we hold so dear, then we begin to really connect to it. And we begin to really open up the windows of opportunity to further engage in sustainable practices. That's great. So one of the other points you had made earlier was also regarding economics. And I know this is something that you've been very involved in. And one of our other questions was thinking about the economics of sustainable choices. And of course, this issue will vary widely across different places, across the globe. And here in the US, you mentioned we have a lot of different choices of what types of sustainable seafood we can choose from. If we're... One of the questions was regarding price and the price of sustainability. If we're constantly choosing a new type of fish and we're trying to expand our range of diet and put less pressure on fewer species of fish and think more broadly, how will that affect the price? And how can we make choices that are sustainable yet are affordable when the sort of pressures governing food choices in different countries across the globe will vary immensely? Yeah. Unsustainable seafood is very expensive simply because everybody wants it. That's why it's unsustainable. Yeah. The companies that are currently underutilized or are undervalued are necessarily cheaper because they're not finding their market. Now, one point about that though is there aren't just tons more fish in the sea. It's not like we're already catching these fish. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 90% of all global fisheries are fully exploited, over exploited. So we're already taking about as much fish out of the ocean as we can but we're not using it as best we can. You were saying fish meal and reduction, fisheries. Precisely. One great example of this is the Peruvian anchovetta. This is the world's largest single species fishery. It represents 10% to 15% of the entire global catch every year. 10% to 15% of the entire catch out of one country. 98% of that fishery never feeds a human being. 98% goes to reduction at 6 cents per pound US. 6 cents. Imagine how many people you could feed. A pound of anchovies would feed three, four people the portion of protein they need for six cents. All right. I'd be willing to pay a couple dollars for that. So it's not necessarily that if we begin to diversify demand products are going to become inaccessibly expensive but rather what we will do is we will equalize the value of seafood because right now we have some seafood that is exorbitantly expensive because it's in such high demand and we have seafood that is not valuable because we're not willing to eat it. Because it's not valuable you have to catch so much more of it in order to make it worth more money. In order to make the payments on your boat. And so simply I think that's where it's more of an opportunity than it is a danger that if we diversify this demand then we actually create greater value for what we're already taking. And it's really just shifts in the market that will create more value for the fish that are actually ecologically and environmentally easier and better. And I've heard this phrase that has changed your fish meal into a meal of fish. That's a good one. One easy way to remember that. So let's see if we have any other questions here. What are our other questions? How about contamination? Sure. We've got a question from forgive me I'll try and get this pronunciation right. Yu Jiong-Yoh from Syracuse University and you had written in that the ocean seemed to be getting polluted globally and affecting a lot of the seafood through contamination and toxicity. To find a substitute for these contaminated species you know is there one sort of supply chain or a certain area that seems to be worse or better? Yeah. And this is a very difficult question because the sources of toxicity that do accumulate in fish, in beef, in pork even in some vegetables these are caused by global sources. You know it's really non-point source most of the time. Coal-fired power plants in India, in China, in America are producing methylmercury that ends up all over the world. Polar bears are being found with high levels of mercury. There are no coal-fired power plants anywhere near polar bears but it's making their way up there. So part of the whole one of the wonderful things about sustainability, health and economics that we've been talking about is that the very large species that are costly to the ocean that are costly economically well they've also been in the ocean a lot longer than these smaller species and so they accumulate more of these toxins. So if you're doing the right thing economically by eating some of these smaller species lower on the food chain you're doing the right thing sort of you're providing opportunities for fishermen, you're doing the right thing for the health and you're doing the right thing for the environment. And so there really are in sustainability all these win-win-win situations that all come together. Now that being said from my work in public health toxicity concerns in seafood specifically are not often seen in a cost-benefit analysis. And what I mean by that is especially in America and in Europe there's been a lot of studies and a lot of media coverage about methylmercury and its effect on young women nursing and pregnant mothers and there's been really a very negative health impact because of this. Methylmercury is bad. It does have some effect on developmental progress but the bottom line is that the omega-3 is present in that seafood is actually far better for you than the mercury is bad. And there's ways to absolutely minimize your exposure to mercury eating herring and sardines, mackerel anchovies but we also when making any decision it's important to look at the entire scope of information because if we get so scared of methylmercury or PCB sometimes we deny ourselves the opportunity to gain the important health benefits that are also associated. But also along that sort of the diet and health thing the most sustainable thing that we can do is eat mostly fruits, grains, greens, nuts and vegetables and that's one of the other trends that I really see a lot of hope in. And then some of the chefs I think really have a lot of power to do. To influence people's opinions and want some desires when they're eating out. Well, just looking at how restaurants design their plates you know we put the protein right in the center and the protein gets a sauce and a vegetable accompaniment. It's a very protein centric culture much the world over. Even if you read menus especially in Europe and in America you see that it starts off with the fish, halibut in big, bold font. Artichokes and bearazule with braised carrots and a coriander cream sauce in small font $28 in big, bold font that is though all that matters is the protein and the price and yet as all of us chefs know what makes cooking fun that's all the things in the fine prints that's where creativity comes in that's where my personality is shown on the plate that's what actually makes the dish delicious and so I think there's a real opportunity for chefs to really reverse this trend of the protein centric culture and to really begin to celebrate what makes us as artists and as craftsmen unique but also to really celebrate what best sustains the environment and the people in it. Wonderful, so you've had such a varied and unique career that has touched upon economics, human health public health, sustainable fisheries being an executive chef can you tell us some more personal experiences with how you've developed a relationship with food and how you've decided to make such a focus of your career be on promoting sustainable choices what are some experiences that have really galvanized that interest for you? I've always been interested in food simply because when I was growing up we had family dinner together 360 three nights a year this was where we became a family around the dinner table it was so important to us and it was the foundation of the community that was my family if I wanted to have dinner with my friends well, fine, they're invited over we're usually eating the fish that you caught, those crabs I live downtown DC most of my life my parents were both very good cooks they enjoyed cooking it was part of their it was the best part of their day they got to stop their busy lives and just slow down and touch and feel and there's something very elemental about cooking and food that they really enjoyed and so it was that fluency in food and that joy that I got from food that caused me to really explore how food integrated into my life and I first became a chef and as a chef I realized that we're really dealing with a global community and so I took off I went to Europe and ended up bouncing around all over Europe and cooked in a little mission-starred restaurant in Spain and then ended up in Africa by accident I literally ended up I got on the wrong boat I was supposed to go to another town in Spain and I ended up in Morocco oh well and I ended up staying there for six months, seven months and got a job, I started working as a fisherman on a small little boat and it was such an amazing experience for me because I'd always been fluent in food but I'd always been fluent in the bounty food in my life I had been fortunate I always had enough food and the choice of what food to eat and all of a sudden I was living in I was working alongside and I was part of a community that was casting their nets to catch dinner and not dollars and I realized then that food food systems, sustainability this is a humanitarian issue and I got involved in this and then advanced my career with National Geographic where I've been working as an explorer because I realized that what we are trying to sustain is not necessarily the oceans we are trying to sustain ourselves we are trying to create communities where children have the opportunity to get an education because they are well fed to thrive in school to then become thriving adults and members of their community and that's what's at stake but that's also the beautiful power of food is that it enables everything that we do and so to pay attention to food to honor it, to genuflect to it and to really think about it meditate on it when we are so fortunate to have it was really the driver of my interest and what's led me to really look at the human community through the lens of food and to look at our behaviors to ensure that we continue to have food and that's actually very related to a question that we've just received from Port Morsby and they are wondering about what is the connection or relationship between environmental resiliency and human health just define for us a little bit what environmental resiliency is first and then describe its connection to human health environmental resiliency is the ability for natural systems to operate in concert with each other and for species to express their own biological capabilities basically it's the ability of cod to make more cod it's the ability of birds to migrate through across fields and find food along their paths it's the ability of nature to maintain a natural state that being said nature is always in flux and so to think that there is a solid baseline that nature is a static the health of nature is a static definition is incorrect and when it comes to sustainability that can sometimes be a problem because we are trying to get to this one definition when in fact the definition is always changing so when nature is allowed to behave like nature it is resilient when humans are allowed to when we have all that we need to thrive then we are resilient we are resilient to disease we are resilient to economic and political stresses because the foundations of our community and so I think environmental resiliency leaving parts of nature whole intact as sort of a reserve directly relates to human health and that it maintains the working order the natural order by which we came to be and that we are so dependent on and that we are wholly dependent on yeah so is that a complicated enough answer for you that was sort of a large hey cover the whole globe there but that was a great question thank you following up on that related question also from almost one third of the globe live, survive and earn income from marine resources so what will happen if the life cycle is broken or destroyed so if that environmental resiliency is tampered with or becomes destabilized what will happen to us as humans what will happen to the fish we depend upon nothing pretty you know it's I don't want to get into building any scenarios but the bottom line is people will suffer people will suffer greatly and I think we part of sustainability is a moral responsibility we have to each other as neighbors, as global citizens to ensure that we all are able to thrive and succeed and so I think it's an important point to answer the question quite simply what's going to happen if the ocean ecosystems collapse human communities will collapse and you can extrapolate all that that means in many different ways but I think it's very important to acknowledge that when we are talking about sustaining ocean ecosystems we're about sustaining human systems that rely on them and that there is a moral imperative to take care of each other by taking care of the oceans by taking care of our food systems and our natural world and I think since we do have such a personal relationship and personal responsibility towards sustaining the oceans and making these good choices and one of the very helpful examples I think you have from your own career is that creating relationships with the people that supply your food is very helpful for understanding from and knowing that you're making good choices and as a chef you have a lot of opportunity to make those kind of choices and to connect with the providers of the food and in fact you've even had the chance to go and be a fisherman at times in your life for people that may live in the middle of a country and are not close to the coast or perhaps they are but they're not going to go to pop restaurants and they can expect their chef to have made these decisions for them how are there possibilities for them to connect with the people that supply their food what kind of questions can they ask and how should they kind of make those efforts to become greater more closely connected to their food source I think there's great opportunity to do so by connecting to your heritage one of the great joys in my life is cooking recipes from my grandmother from both sides of my family there's heritage in that there is a connection to my past not necessarily to the producers but to where I came from which is as much important as where the food became that we come from and I think by creating that connection if you come from a culture where there's a staple diet and you celebrate that by cooking recipes that reflect that then you are creating those pathways back to those producers even if you don't know them personally or interact with them you're interacting with generations old systems of connectivity that do bring us into direct contact with with that which has always sustained that family or that region and I think that's a wonderful way to participate in that and are those recipes that you have from your grandmother are those very different than what we're used to seeing in today's restaurant are there more sardines and anchovies and less salmon or what are some of the differences that you see from two to three generations ago and some of the recipes we're used to seeing today my grandmother both my grandparents on both sides grew up in very hard times and there's a lot of utility in the food that you don't see in restaurants now where you walk in and you have 20 different proteins on a menu they had one protein that would last for multiple days and so there was a lot of these recipes were really meant to get the absolute highest and best use out of every bit of food that they had and so they were fun dishes and it was home sometimes it's like where's Waldo trying to find where the pork ended up and whether it be the baked beans a great New England tradition where a lot of my family is from flavored with the salt pork the day before it was ham and farm eggs for breakfast whatever it was there was a continuity to the food that reflected the seasons reflected availability and reflected an absolute necessity of utilization every last bit of it to be very resourceful and utilitarian and so there was a lot less variety there was a lot more and a lot more repetition of dishes because well hey if you got dried beans then dried beans it is and you know they got very creative in ways that they could adding a little spice here or there but it's very different than the way that most chefs these days think because we have access to anything you know in South Korea if you want to get Yooka root from Costa Rica you can do that to make some fun little cassava mash or something for an interesting fusion plate that simply didn't exist in the recipes that are part of our heritage and some of our viewers are actually wondering more about sort of your initial connections to cooking and to seafood and it sounds like maybe your family through your dinners and also your grandmother through these recipes had a lot of connection to guiding and directing your career aspirations and path that you've taken but they're wondering just what are some more stories about the factors that have led you to make the choices you have in your career are there any other aspects that you'd like to share with our audience today I think I mentioned a few of them just the the joy that we get from eating the togetherness, the communion I mean what's the best way to win a girl's heart cook or dinner or vice versa you know whatever you know there's food brings us together it creates relationships it creates intimacy in ways that interactions in contemporary culture often don't allow for and you really developed a relationship not just to food and to your family but also to the environment from a young age and I think that's maybe something that we often hear as being a really central shaping force for many people that feel very connected to the environment as having experiences at a young age that they realize all of the interconnectedness and dependency that the environment and people and human health all have to one another and I think that's something that's really sort of interwoven all the different aspects of your career as varied as it has been from economics to ocean health to public health and being in the kitchen well it's also a sense of honor a sense of responsibility when I was a restaurant chef all chefs want to put forward the best plate of food that they possibly can that's what we're trying to do we're competing for business we have to put forward the best plate of food and I realized that and recognized very early on I had a responsibility to my guests to serve them safe food I had a responsibility to them to serve them delicious food and they were coming to my restaurant spending their very hard earned money to come to my house to really enjoy themselves to let loose and to be entertained I had a responsibility to sustain their health to provide for them healthy foods that empowered them and I began to realize that as much as I had a responsibility to my guests in order to sustain my business I had a responsibility to the producers who were showing up at my back door no producers no food no restaurant no guests there was a real sense of continuity of continuum that I developed and that's what I got I think really interested in sustainability and one of the key principles of sustainability for me is that we're not just trying to sustain the oceans we're trying to sustain also the people who work on the oceans to provide food for our tables and I think we owe equal responsibility I mean this is a noble profession fishing and all too often I think fishermen get blamed if overfishing is the problem but underfishing is the solution no that's not really the way it is better fishing is the solution better use of the fish that they catch is the solution so I just I think it's very important that we those management measures we can take and those decisions and awareness that we can all have as consumers or providers any step in that change you know sail the oceans at great danger to I think very nobly provide food for our tables we owe them a great debt of honor and so I think that there is much a part of what we're trying to sustain us and this is also somewhat related to a question we just got from from Korea while you felt it was a very great honor to be able to provide these different meals for people that were coming to your restaurant to choose your restaurant and you would provide for them did you have a favorite sustainable seafood dish that you would prepare the question the question of all questions but I really like oysters oysters are my favorite thing in the world cold raw oyster briny sweet shucked as though the top shell just magically flew off here's this living breathing quivering little delicious thing sitting in a shell just waiting for you to sort it down and it's so pure and it's like the ocean punching you in the face and it's so brilliant it's such a wonderful experience and it's an experience that is so inherently rooted to a place I mean how often do you actually get to taste a place you know go to a farm and pick up a handful of dirt but we go to the ocean and pick up a handful of oysters wow that's pretty cool that's always been my favorite thing because it is so evocative and it is so so connected and reminiscent of exactly where it's come from the environment participatory everything yeah oysters I actually think it's our patriotic duty these many farm raised oysters as we possibly can the only thing I recommend outright over consumption of it's a farm raised shellfish I think it's not sustainable seafood it's actually restorative seafood in that it adds to the quality of the environment it adds to the quality of life for those people who work upon those waters and it adds to the quality of your life too certainly adds to the quality of my life and if you're a proponent of serving raw oysters it's an easy dish to prepare you don't have to do much for that an oyster must be shucked right there's two ways to shuck an oyster right way and the wrong way there's nothing in between so we would have to come here for a demonstration anytime so we'll just close with one last question from Port Morrisby and this really kind of wraps up a lot of the different elements we've discussed here today but since we have the unique opportunity to have you here as an executive chef for sustainable oceans how will our choices for diets and menus help to restore our relationship with the ocean, the land, and with each other that's a real a real philosophical question it is and it's a I think we find our place in the systems of this world in our quest for food the way we eat describes how this world is used describes how we are able to thrive and the way that we eat describes how we define ourselves as neighbors within a global community and I think how we eat describes how we feel about and respect all of those who share this big beautiful and mostly blue planet with us and I think it's it's both a responsibility it's an honor and luckily it's delicious that's a great answer thank you Barton well with that we'll wrap it up and we hope that everyone who tuned in today found this very educational and informative I know I did and just a reminder that today's session was recorded and it will be distributed in the next couple of days for public viewing online so with that thank you again Barton and thank you to all of you who tuned in thanks so much for joining good morning and good evening take care I'm done sorry I totally didn't have any questions I won't point there in the middle oh gosh we both are awesome I'm very sorry about that that was a really great spot I was quite tired and the other newscaster we have another story I'm back to the field oh hi Karina that's the black in the cooking can you see them waving they have your face on it I saw