Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to Seafood Matters. Thank you for
joining us again. My guest today is James Sibley, all
the way from New York. James is an online influencer
with followers on his social media platform into the many
hundreds of thousands. Now I have to say, James is
just a little bit different what we've got here, and
if you were to look at these videos on his platforms,
you'll understand what I mean. We've got a real live
action man to speak to. So Hi James, Welcome to
the Seafood Matters and thanks for coming along.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me on, Jim, I'm excited to be here.
I've been a listener for some time when I have
a lot of time on planes, so it's always good
to have some podcasts queued up for that. And yeah,
well I do definitely least sensationalize the adventure of it
a bit as would come with the job. Right there
is it is all real, right, I mean, I'm I'm
running around on boats, planes, helicopters, whatever we need to
to get out into the farms, underwater recording in all
mediums there to get this stuff out there. And by farms,
I mean aquaculture, right, So my focus in media is aquaculture,
not explicitly, right. I do work with ranches. I am
starting to work more with fisheries and expand that scope.
But for over five years now I've really been focused
in on the world of farming diseas.
Speaker 1: Brilliant, brilliant and can you tell our listeners your background
on how you your journey led to the media.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course. So I don't think anybody intends to
be a fishfluencer or a full time aquaculture social media person.
That sort of just evolved over the years here, sometimes
against my will. I studied genetics at university in Boston,
and I kind of fell into the world of seafood.
I did not grow up in this. I grew up
in traditional land agriculture. I fell into seafood during COVID
so during the pandemic, university shut down and I needed
something to do. If you remember, that was the dead
of winter in that hit, so the farms were under
a foot of snow. But I knew food production, right,
I've been doing it since I was legally allowed to work.
I was working the farms, so I picked up a
job as a fishmonger retail fishmonger at Whole Foods. That
was what I did during at least the first half
of shutdown, and I found it fascinating. I knew nothing
about seafood going into that job, which you know, I've
learned is actually a huge problem globally that fishmongers don't
know what they're doing or selling, no fault of their own,
that just is the way of the world. But I
took of interest in the biology behind it. Right, So
I'm selling this fish, these shellfish, these crustaceans, whatever it
might be that was.
Speaker 1: In front of me.
Speaker 2: What is it? Where's it coming from? Because customers are
asking me this stuff, you know, like where's this salmon from?
Why are those you know? I can you shut those
oysters for me? And I have to say no, and
I don't know why. So I start to look into
why all of this is the case, as many of
us do in seafood, and it's just this fascinating rabbit hole.
You start to discover farmed versus wild, versus ranched versus
now cultivated. Right, we now have lab grown meats on
the market, all of these different avenues that lead us
to where we are. And I just you know fell
into that. I think that's fascinating. I wanted to dive
into the biology of it, especially farming. I have a
farming background, so the fact that we could farm the
seas totally new to me. I did not know that
aquaculture existed until I was twenty twenty one. Most Americans don't.
It's just not present at all in any part of
our lives. So I wanted to figure out what this
was all about. I started talking about it online, not
for any other reason than it was lockdown. It was
really not a lot to do. University was down. I
needed to create it out with right. So that was
TikTok for me, and I just had a personality on
there very quickly that, you know, very nerdy, very professional
in a sense, but also very personable that people really
engaged with. They liked the way I talked about seafood
at the counter as a fishmoker, and that very quickly
took off on that one platform, TikTok. It took some
time to build it into the sort of cross platform
business that it is today, but that's where it started.
It was at the whole food's counter.
Speaker 1: And where was the jams that was.
Speaker 2: In Boston, Boston, Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: Oh, I've any seafood city as well, very much.
Speaker 2: Historically a huge producer as well. Now it's a large
importer and processor.
Speaker 1: Still Yeah, it's Regal Seafood still live.
Speaker 2: They're an icon. Yeah, they're they're holding out that there's
a lot of Boston's changing quickly and a lot of
the piers are being scrapped for you know, glass skyscrapers,
but that there is still a strong presence there. Regal
is there North Coast Seafoods. I used to work for
Foley Fish actually, which is over a fourth generation staple
in Boston, going back well over one hundred years, buying
everything all over the world and you know, getting it
out to people that need it in the Boston area.
Speaker 1: Fantastic. And what's that a moment when you realize social
media could become more powerful than traditional communications.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So my background wasn't communication, right, I didn't study
this stuff. I didn't know that I had an interest
in it. I've always been a talker, so maybe there
were inklings. But when I started making videos online and
getting you know, millions of viewers into what I was doing,
it became evident to me that seafood has a serious
problem with what consumers think of it and how the
seafood industry communicates with itself. Because I was getting questions
from consumers that didn't make any sense as somebody who
was starting to learn about this stuff in more detail,
but I was also getting questions from the industry from
seafood not just farmers, fishers, policymakers all over the world
bringing things to me that didn't make sense. I started
to learn about the sort of opposition that has been
growing around the world against certain kinds of aquaculture and
certain kinds of fisheries. And when I look into the
science of it, a lot of it doesn't hold. It's
highly regional. It really depends on where you are. That
story never reached to people that matter, right, and that
was having real world implications. I was starting to learn.
People would message me saying, hey, my farm shut down
because of policies made two thousand miles away talking about
Canada here like do you have any contacts of another
country I can move to to continue what I do,
And I'm like, what have I gotten myself into? What
is this? So I had to learn, like hands on,
I needed to get on these farms. Up until this point,
I was talking about aquaculture and fisheries as a fishmonger,
as a processor a bit from a distance.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I had the products in my hands, but I didn't
see the process. So I had to get on a
plane with all my stuff and I moved. I moved
to Scotland actually for a year, to get hands on
in one of the world's largest salmon farming regions. It
also has a strong presence in things like muscles. Right,
so I go to Sheefland to see like the UK's
largest muscle producing region, which is you know about those
islands up north with only a couple tens of thousands
of people. That was where I really discovered that media
is incredibly important to seafood. I might be biased on that,
but my opinion on it is, you know, you can
build it, but they won't come anymore.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You can put out environmental reports and quarterly reports and
sustainability reports and all of this, but it doesn't matter
if no one's reading it, and policymakers don't make decisions
about what you do and how you're regulated, and if
you can even operate based on the report you put out,
it's based on the sentiment of their constituents, so reaching
them is just as important reaching those few in the
industry who actually run these places.
Speaker 1: I am fascinated with the fact that where you mentioned
where you've been, I've done an enormous amount of business
over the years with both Orkney and Shetland. I love
the people. In fact, when I had a seafood restaurant
for a while and it's just in the north, very
far north as you can go on the mainland, there
would be fairies to the islands and just say people
were in the restaurant and they were going on the
fairies to the islands, and I would say, I knew
I was catching them out, and I would say, you
want to know the best part Oh yeah, oh yeah,
we want to know they were. It would pick people
thinking I was going to tell them where to go
to see a a rice view, and I would say, well,
the best part are the people.
Speaker 2: It is. So I went for Uphilla Yah. That was
my first time in Shetland. That was something different. I'll
never forget that.
Speaker 1: Another thing I'm sure you'll go with when you work
with people and your feared with them, You've got a friend,
but a friend we are Shelterer, an Arcadian. You've got
a friend for life.
Speaker 2: That was one of the things I loved about in
Northern Aisles is there's still at least three people that
keep in contact with and I've only been to working
in Shetland once and it was over a year ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it. That's it. What first pushed you to
start creating content online?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great question, right because now it's my world.
But for a long time it wasn't. And I actually
fought it for some time because you know, when I'm
sitting there racking up American University degree bills and I'm
making tiktoks, I just I don't see how the two
meld well. So for a long time I just did
it as a hobby and on the side for fun
where I could on weekends on you know, it's like that.
But I really found that I got pushed into it
more than I pursued it. What I mean by that
is I very quickly learned that if I wanted to
really dig my teeth into aquaculture and all of seafood,
I needed to leave the US for a period of time.
It's not here we are a major buyer that's it,
and that's been the case for quite some time. It
doesn't look like it's changing anytime soon. So I started
to experiment with how I could get out of the
country and get paid to learn about aquaculture out of university,
like right in the field, and I would apply to
different jobs in field positions as environmental part of environmental
teams and fish health teams. None of that stuck. What
they wanted me to do instead was to come film.
So that started in Newfoundland, Canada, slowly worked its way
over to the West coast of Canada, Hawaii and then
eventually up into Scotland. So I had a point where
I was trying to continuing to try and find ways
just out of university for how I can enter the
aquaculture world as an American who didn't study this specifically,
I needed to flank it, if that makes sense right.
And the opportunity presented itself to come to Scotland to
showcase all of aquaculture there right, everything going on from
east to west and north to its called Stirling south
from south, but really there as a as a region
as an aquaculture powerhouse and a potential future for this
this space that's what I went there to do, right,
And that was the first time I took it on
full time. I committed to doing this as maybe not
a full career, but at least at that point I knew, Okay,
I'll be doing this as many hours as I kind
of week for the next year at least.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting listening to your gyms when I'm picking
up is because here's me talking to an influencer in
your social media and but in your conversation you keep
coming back to aquaculture. It's almost, you know, you would
people may be a mudgin and I don't know you
have maybe had this before, but people made the mudge
and that you have, you're and social media, you're an
influence said, and you take it to people like aquaculture
and that. But it's almost like the opposite.
Speaker 2: That absolutely is the opposite. Yeah, I did not. This
was not the track that I thought i'd be on
five years ago. Right. My interest is is aquaculture and
you know, responsible fisheries for the future, Like what does
that actually look like? You know, because we're all bogged
down with all this jargon and the buzzwords. We CEO
of sustainability and friends of the sea. Look, we got
this nice check mark. What does that mean, you know,
not a whole lot if we don't dig into it
and look at what it takes. That's where my interest is.
What's what became of that was my social media presence
as an influencer.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So I didn't start this because I wanted to build
a following or because I was an online personality to
begin with. That became the the sort of outlet for it.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I'm learning all this stuff on the ground, and this
is the best way for me to learn it. So
it's cyclical, Right. I can get to further and further places,
more remote areas by doing this, and by doing this,
I then get to even better places to learn more.
So I do it because of that, because it's learning right,
and not just for me, but for my audience. That's
why people follow me. Right, I'm an educator as much
as I am an influencer. It's the way the world
these days.
Speaker 1: If you ask me, I know you're not asking me,
but what I would say what I feel? Unhere in
your James, you got to communicate it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is that's better than fishfluencer. I'll give you that.
Speaker 1: No, but twenty year to ten for your enthusiasm, You're
obviously enjoy what you do, and my goodness, does that
not make any job easier. I don't know.
Speaker 2: What I do wouldn't be possible if it weren't, right.
It's I cycle between what I try to keep is
like nine to five hours when I'm home, but when
I'm on when I'm not filming, right, And this can
be for anywhere from weeks two months, it's twenty four
to seven. Right. These are eighteen hour days, seven days
a week minimum. So I have to love what I do.
It is expensive, it is time consuming, it bad for
my back, and it's not always kind, if that makes sense, right.
So the realm of seafood is a volatile place on
the Internet, and it is something that is actually you know,
a few times turned me off of this when I
was getting started, right, I was like, all right, well,
why am I going to wake up and just read
all this terrible stuff only to then go about my
day doing a different job because this is my hobby.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: For a few I've had moments where it's it's been
difficult to be in the space that I am as
somebody who wants to highlight the good and not bash
the bad.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It's an ideal I chose many years ago and I
stand by, but it brings with it a lot of
criticism and scrutiny from anonymous folks who are willing to
say whatever they want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the modern tree is of the way
of progress organically, Yeah, I would.
Speaker 2: I mean I haven't. I've never paid a cent to
promote my stuff. It doesn't make sense to me, and
I'm not trying to build a brand. I'm just as
you said, I'm a communicator, so if people want to listen,
then they all might stick around. That's what I try
and do. I try and make videos that are engaging
enough that people will stick around and learn something. That's
why I've flocked to short form videos over the past
better part of a decade, really is because I can
pack enough information into a couple of minutes to three
minutes that somebody who watches that through will walk away
with and be more confident in maybe intrigued by the
seafoo they're eating or around them. Then I would be
able to if I was doing a much much longer video.
I mean this in sense of how many people I
can reach I've had three hundred million viewers in the
past five years, and that's because I do a lot
on short form video. I'm expanding into longer form pieces,
but it is it is time consuming to make a
nationwide this is seafood and aquaculture in this region thirty
minute documentary. That's a huge undertaking and it's only something
I'm starting to tackle now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and would you you know you talk about places
in New York you've been in bossed and in that
do you think that would shape the way you communicate
and tell your stories.
Speaker 2: That's interesting because you know there's the I do speak
with a bit of that accent, right, you might be
able to pick up I got like a New England
twanged what I say. But I also have sort of
been I spend half my time on the road and
a half or five years largely like Scotland's been a
big piece of it, but all over Europe, Australia, New Zealand.
I was down in the Falklands a couple of weeks
or a couple of months ago. That was a different
one for me all over the world. So that tends
to lean into how I build content more for any
given specific area, Like I'm writing my scripts for Australia
right now, and I'm having a lot of fun with
it because I kept a list of all the different
sayings they had that I heard as I went through
as it was there for a month, and I'm trying
to incorporate that into my talk right of you hanging
it and we're frothing and all. There's a slewth of them,
but I really try and lean into where I am.
No doubt the whole Bostonian side of it comes through
at times. It definitely was a stick I had at
the beginning my first like three four hundred videos. I
feel like fifty percent of them i'd say wicked. It's
a pretty Bostonian thing. But I'm trying to open it
up more. I don't want to have an American feel
to it, if that makes.
Speaker 1: Sense, Okay, yeah, yes, for no other.
Speaker 2: Reason than the places I am are. I'm not really
showing off the States, not for lack of trying, right.
I have done some successful projects here Stateside, but aquaculture
and fisheries in the US are fragmented and they're underfunded,
and they're really facing an alcohol battle one that media
is desperately needed for, but it's also concurrently difficult to support.
Speaker 1: I totally get that. I would say, the job you
do and the message you put out the whole seafood,
the industry and the world needs what you do. I
command you for it, and I you know, I've been
all my life and the seafood industry and various shapes
and forms, but my goodness, it needs up message from
people like yourself. So I think it's all the end
what you do.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it. I mean, it's to me, it's an experiment.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Every year I look at it and say, what am
I going to do different? How far can I push
it this year? And I haven't found a ceiling yet.
Until I do. This is the best thing I can
do for seafood. You know, I can push change, maybe
indirectly at times and from and from Afar, but I
can push change in a lot of people's minds, and
that that's what I want to keep doing.
Speaker 1: You know, that is where I can have the thing
that comes close to me loud and clear, and I
have to say, I love the thought of it. You
just the way. I'm not saying you would do it physically,
but you would just come into the room and just
punch in the nose and say, right, I'm here, let's go.
Speaker 2: You should see me at the conferences. That's exactly what
I do. No, I mean, it's this is I don't know.
I try and figure out how I got here, but
where I am is. I think this is like the
coolest stuff effort, and I think that this can save
our oceans and our food systems if we do it right.
And we're not in a lot of places for a
number of reasons. So let's figure out what's working and
push that everywhere. You know, get this stuff, get this
ball rolling with enthusiasm and support, because you know, just
fear mongering and bashing that's all we ever see nowadays.
It doesn't work. I don't click like I might read
a headline. It's like, oh, you know, some terrible thing happens. Yeah,
it happens every twenty seconds, and I see it on
CNN all the time.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: What I want is to stick around, like stick around
for a little bit longer because something genuinely interested me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I'll fully get that. And yeah it's unfortunate, yes,
more so we make a little bit on the aquaculture,
but on the wild fishing. They're hard up against environmentalists. Now.
One of the things that really sticks with me. I
don't know if you even I'm sure you would have
seen it over there. The David attonbra did a film
and it was so much against wild catching, and the
environmentalists were on with them. And I did a mini
series and that my podcasts about it, and I did
interviews to me all sides of it, fishery scientists, fishermen,
fishing leaders, of all sides of it. And I did
some of the big NGOs, environmental NGOs, and I could
put my hand up and say I should have maybe
done my homework better. That what really got me I
discovered afterwards James told me downright lies and I didn't
appreciate that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe you're referencing that was that bottom trolling
video that came out from the Attinburg. Very bright. Yeah,
I saw that for months.
Speaker 1: And to this day I still feel like contacting them
and saying, look, I invite you back talk about that
again and explain why what you said and why you
said it, and it's not true and it would maybe
sound to people, oh this is terrible. W fishermen are
getting my way away. And that's why I feel, you know,
the message you're getting across is real. It's real, and
you're showing people that when you're on site and places
like that, and whether I just thought a lot of
people see polished content online but they never see the
difficult behaved it so tough. Was the early stages of
that for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And when I first started making videos, they were
very simple, rudimentary, you know, the kind of stuff you
might be used to from like early day, short form
video on your phone. I would record it on my
phone while I was on the clock as a vishmonger, right,
maybe do a quick edit on my phone, voicing it
over in the car, and then throw it up online.
And that was it. They were you know, I wasn't
double checking things. Sometimes I was wrong about what I
was saying. You could hear trucks like backing up in
the background. The audio is terrible. That was just what
I That's all I could do when I started, and
that actually worked pretty well. Because I had this it
was super human.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: People followed me because it was me, not because I
was making good videos, but because what I was saying
resonated with them was challenging was upgrading that to what
I do now. I no longer just film with a phone.
It's no longer just me involved in what I do.
I have a whole team around me, and we're we're
producing longer and longer content that requires exponentially more work.
And I don't know how to do. I didn't know
how to do any of that, right. I was not
taught this stuff in school. I didn't Again, I didn't
study graphic design, video editing, filmmaking, none of it. Right,
So I've just been learning as I go trial and enter. Right,
I come back from my shoots and I'm like, Wow,
my audio on my oxcred disconnected and I lost all
the audio. So now I need to go buy an
oxcord that locks into my camera. Things like that they
just pick up on the job. That's definitely been the
most difficult job. Is the most difficult part of my
role there is bringing it up to a new level
that I needed to be at to achieve what I'm
trying to do. By the end of this year. I
have a very ambitious plan for twenty twenty six that
I'm starting to realize, and it is requiring significant investments,
not just you know, with money and resources, but with time,
you know, to learn this stuff. I need to buying
film cameras, in with cameras, and I have to figure
out how those work. Having grown up on point and shoots,
it has been a long, uphill battle to get that
to work. But I love it, right. That's the thing
is every piece of this I find interesting. I love
the tech behind it behind you know, making content and
videos and what actually goes into if I want people
like I start to analyze it. Right, So I'm like, okay,
last video, people stuck around on average for thirty two seconds,
but one in three skips, so they actually stuck around
for about a minute twenty minute thirty So where can
I see where they're engaging with that? Okay, everyone seems
to like the video around thirty percent of the way
into it, So how can I build that video second
by second to fit when people are most engaged, so
that they walk away with the one sentence, the five
word phrase, the single word that I need them to do.
That's where I'm really kind of putting a lot of
effort right now, is really analyzing this stuff to see. Okay,
you know, it's great to get a million views on
a video and have that be watched for tens of
thousands of hours. But I want people to walk away
having remembered something that they'll pick up in six months,
a year, two years down the road. They'll see a
fish on a market or on the menually. Oh of course, yeah,
I remember this bit about that, see Scottish salmon on
the menu, and remember that they saw a few videos
on my channels from that a while ago. That's really
where I'm trying to hone what I do.
Speaker 1: One of the things that comes across bitter for you,
and because the kind of person you are and you
appreciate obviously you're a people's person as well from the
vibes I get. But whereas some people may be going
to along to an office and meet a man and
a wait court, you're you're going out on sites and
meeting the guys that are harms on and you know
the people doing the work. And that's must you an
insight and the subject before you do anything with videos
or anything.
Speaker 2: That's one of the core foundations of what I do,
Jim is I, with some very few exceptions, I need
to be on site. I need to film what I'm
going to talk about. I need to learn from the
farmers right, not just for four hours. I want to
be there for weeks. I want to go to the
pubs with them. I want to get it at five
in the morning and grown with them. On the two hours.
I want to be out in the storms, in the rain.
I want to understand what they're doing, how they get
the history of it, who these people are. I want
to hear their life struggles and stories because I'm talking
about their livelihoods, right, I'm portraying that world, and I
don't take that lightly. I want to do it as
I learn how it is right. I want to do
these farmers justice and really learn the complexity and nuance
of what it is they're doing. Because no matter what,
as a communicator in the modern world, I need to
make cuts. I can't use all of the footage I film.
I actually only use about one and a half to
one percent, So no matter what's information is being cut out,
it's being slimmed down. And I need to make those
cuts right. And I've learned that the only way that
I can do that confidently is if I've really spent
a lot of time out on site right with the
fish with the shrimp, with the seaweed. It's been all
sorts of things. But it doesn't matter really the context
of the seafood. It matters more who I'm with and
how long I'm there with them?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the stage. You ever dooted yourself or wondered
where you were going.
Speaker 2: Every day? It's I mean, social media influencer for seafood
and aquaculture is not really a drop down on a
LinkedIn career page. I'm going at this alone. At least,
I'm the one taking on the risk for my future
with this. My costs are not zero, right, a lot
of people might think, or at least I means. It
used to be close to zero with film with my phone,
but nowadays it's this is a real business I'm running,
and it needs significant revenue year on year, and it
is not stable. This is incredibly volatile work. I can
go ninety one hundred and twenty days doing nothing but
spending money, and real money because I'm often on flights
to the other end of the world. Right, I've flown
over sixty thousand miles this year alone. It's only been
six months. It racks up quick, right, So I often
question what I do because it is very volatile and
month to month at times like that. However, I wouldn't
change it for the world. If this all collapses in
the next six twelve months, if it collapses tomorrow, that's life, right.
I learned so much so far being hands on with
these farmers and fishermen all over the world. There was
no better way for me to do this where I
am in my life, right, I would not have had
the opportunities I had so far if I were not
a seafood influencer, it wouldn't have happened, right, So I
wouldn't change any of it. And you know, I want
to keep this going as long as I can. But
at the end of the day, the experience alone has
just been it really has changed my life. Right. This
is not something I thought I would ever do.
Speaker 1: That's good that you've realized and taking a business like
approach to it, because you've got to if it's running
a business, you've got to run a business, not just
think it's a hobby.
Speaker 2: Important balance I need to walk is the second money
is involved, then farmers and governments and everybody they start
to nitpick what you're doing right, And the important part
about what I do is that is authentic and that
it is my perspective. So in monetizing what I do,
I had this upfiel about a bit of a struggle
where how do I do that right? How do I
keep my own personal brand in full transparency, authenticity and
get paid to do that? Right? That's talking about I
need to be a journalist right. What I've learned is
I don't. What I end up doing nowadays is my
ultimate goal, right, is to showcase what's working, where I
think the future is going right, where there is excitement
in seafood and aquaculture, not fear. That's what I chase
and part of when I work with companies or farmers, fishermen,
it's oftentimes governments, regional or federal that when I work
with them, a condition always is I can walk away
at any time. I'm under no obligation to make anything
and everything like I will work with you to make
sure my faction figures are right. But this is my voice,
in my narrative, and at the end of the day,
it's my say on what I say. That has proved
to be a very effective screening model. It was not
the intent, but what what comes of that is only
the best and the brightest in seafood and aquaculture are
willing to sign on to things like that, right if
they don't have things to hide. That's that's how we've
been operating for a few years. It's it's actually it's
been a great way to find those regions of the world,
those companies, those people that are doing things exceptionally.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was at a point where you sort of
realized that it came to you. It's become me bigger.
Just I say that interests or anything like that.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty four, I was actually a salmon trader.
I sold salmon on the spot market for MOE. That
was my first job at a university. And I had
on my wall a bunch of sticky notes with all
of my paid time off, my six days vacation leave,
federal holidays, the works. And what I ended up doing was, Yeah,
I had this nine to five and I was working.
I wasn't, you know, breaking record sales and selling salmon,
but I was getting the job done. I found myself
playing around with every single day of free time I
had weekends, everything, to see how I could be like, Okay,
I have an opportunity to go to Hawaii for five
days to film on this fish farm, this seahorse hatchery
and this micro LG growout center. How can I make
that happen, you know, moving pto in six days around. Oh,
here's one in Saudi Arabia, here's one in Canada, Mexico.
These were all happening. Well, I had a full time job.
And what happened was it became evident to everyone I
was working with, myself included that you know, I was
just doing what needed to be done for work and
then immediately getting on a plane going somewhere and filming,
and it was something had to give. And what was
great was always said, Okay, like we see you doing
all this stuff. You know this is actually pretty cool.
So come to Scotland where we actually have farms to
farms new us. Come to Scotland and just do this
stuff full time. So they actually gave me the opportunity
to do that, and not just with them either, right,
this was with the entire Scottish ecosystem. I don't think
I would have been thought that I could do it
full time on my own had I not had that
bit in Scotland that was supported by MOE and salmon
Scotland right, the trader organization of the country. That's what
gave me the confidence to do it on my own. Right.
That was a great starting point. But where it I
won't say that it fell short, But what I will
say is where I hit a wall was I wanted
to start doing this in different countries and different species
with a bigger like an actual crew, not just myself.
You know that. That was the second stage. Okay, this
works independently, How can I push it so that I
can have a team because I need one?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: What I do nowadays does not work on my own.
It's it would just it's just too much workload. So
that was something I set up after I came back
from Scotland. I had proof of concept. I could put
it all on an Excel shoot and say, okay, I've
got you know this, this runway here to bring on
these people, give it a shot, see how it might work.
It didn't always work right my shoot in New Zealand,
for instance, I ended up bringing my dad, who's a
great videographer and worked for free because I couldn't finance it.
Speaker 1: But it.
Speaker 2: Was not an easy or stable path up to where
it is now. But you know, it really was Scotland
as a proof of concept and ever since then, I've
I've just been pushing it a bit by bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's busted it. How hard does it know? To
stand out on lane when everybody's chasing views, likes and attention.
Speaker 2: That's incredibly difficult. It's I mean, I don't know the formula.
Nobody does. What I do is I inadvertently selected a
niche that virtually no one else is in. Now, that
is not easy. It's pretty easy to you know, come
up with a list of things that you don't see
much of online. In my case, that's what's working in
seafood right. It is much more difficult to get a
significant audience to stick around for that, and then you
also learn all of the reasons that people aren't doing
that right. In my case, I have a aquaculture specifically
is one of the most difficult sort of industries in
the world to make stable content, and it is expensive
to reach. It is intentionally in remote areas of the
world that are often in pretty poor weather. Farmers do
not make a lot of Like, yes, I understand that,
you know, the big giant companies in the world make
a lot of money altogether, but individual farms and regions
are not like profitable giants like Amazon are, So you know,
the marketing budgets are very very limited, and getting to
these places is quite expensive. I don't just mean, you know,
physically getting myself there, but getting permissions. Working on farms
with livestock is far more difficult than sitting at home
getting sensed products to review, and then the equipment's cost. Right,
aquaculture is underwater, so I need an underwater camera and
I need a new one as they come out and
as they degrade through time, my drones get beat up
pretty quickly, my aerial drones. The ocean is not kind
to that on drone number four at the moment, So
it gets expensive in that way. Right, So choosing a
niche that people don't tend to make videos in is
smart because there is not a lot of competition. But
there's a reason people aren't doing it. So my recommendation
to those you know, if you're interested in doing it right,
is you know, figure out why people aren't doing it,
and if those are hurdles you are willing to overcome. Right,
For me, it's a mix of I sacrifice a lot
for my personal life for this. I'm on the road
half the time.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: If I didn't live with my partner, I couldn't even
own a plant. Right, That is the level of responsibility
I can have at the moment. It's a plant, actually three,
it's pretty cool, but you know it has to fit
my lifestyle in how I want to sort of move
over that for the next few years. My point was
that it is difficult to stand out online. It really is.
You need to be consistent. You need to be perseverant. Right,
You need to do this for years, and you can't expect,
you know, your fame overnight on this stuff. I've been
doing it for five years and I haven't found either.
It has to be because you love it. You don't
have to love video editing. I don't really. You don't
have to love every aspect of it, but you need
to love what you're talking about. You need to be
doing it for an intrinsic reason. That isn't I want
to build a brand. I want followers, I want likes
because you're not always going to get it and.
Speaker 1: Have all goodithms change creativity for the worst, do you feel?
Speaker 2: For the worst remains to be seen? But they have
categorically changed how all content creation is done, especially with
the introduction of feeds for you pages and the list
scrolling opportunities. When we moved on from here are the
videos and photos that the people you follow posted to,
Here's what the algorithm thinks is most likely to keep
you around. Yeah, that changed everything, right. Who my followers
are and how many of them have matters less and
less every day because the algorithm, while it starts with
your followers, so it's good to have a community, will
very quickly just push it out to the world. It's
how we see all the time. You know, somebody who's
never made a video puts out something funny and it
gets one hundred million views. They feed on virality like that.
So it can be dangerous in the sense that, especially
in the seafood world, misinformation spreads very fast. Right, it's
shock and awe, it's headlines, it's share this with all
your friends. You got sushi woods last week, because now
it's going to kill you. That is not as good
as a story about this new Omega three rich diet
that they're trialing using algae oils. That doesn't go viral.
What I try to do is maybe find a little
bit of a balance. I don't need to reach the world.
I don't want to. I want to reach a very
specific set of people who have interest in seafood in
in the regions I'm operating and in the regions where
that's being sold, right, I want to hit all the
stakeholders like that. So I try to find a middle
of ground of I need to be funny, I need
to be quick. My edits need to be strong. I
need to keep people around right every few seconds with
a little more dopamine, but all the while having that
story rolling behind.
Speaker 1: Going back to what I was saying, that lit bit
the environmentalists, I've seen the use here or no. When
the environmentalists do that, a lie is halfway around the
world before the tooth gets his boots on. Yep.
Speaker 2: That it frustrates me, in especially in aquaculture, because things
will take off right and you have, as a farmer,
I don't know, six twelve hours to make a dent
in that the second that it needs approval chains and
it has to you know, like, oh, let's write a
four page letter about this, you know, condemning the falsehoods
and explaining the reality you've lost them because nobody cares
a week later, but the damage is done.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It's a lot of times I have a feeling that
we need to fight fire with fire. Sometimes. I don't
mean just make stuff up, I mean be quick. Right,
if you have a mass mortality event, get out there
and tell people why it happened, right, be the ones
to break that story. Don't let it come out in
like those required monthly reports for Then those with vested
interests elsewhere can just run with it.
Speaker 1: Do you feel content creator's no spend too much time
trying to please platforms instead of audiences.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially especially when that's their main source of income. Right.
There's no such thing as free media, not anymore. Money's
coming in somewhere. So if it's not evidence that if
a video is sponsored or that it is in partnership
with somebody, than it is you, the viewer, who are
paying that content creator. And they do that like that.
That strategy is a popular one, probably the most popular.
Getting paid for views. Right, if you get ten million
views on a ten minute YouTube video, you can make
a lot of money. That's five figures. So content creators
do everything they can to get as much viewership on
longer content like that or even shorter content. If we're
talking hundreds of millions of views, that can all amount
to real money, and they will do everything they can
to hit those marks. Right, They're running a business, they
all are, even if it's just side business. For some
of us, it's our entire livelihood, Right, I need to
pay rent, I need to pay cost of living, I
need to hopefully say, for retirement, all of that on
the back of TikTok, Instagram, YouTube LinkedIn. It's a different
world like that. The problem with chasing the algorithms becomes
we get people who you know that they figure out
how to gain it in a sense, So there are
YouTubers out there making tens of millions of dollars a
month on really not providing all that much to the
world in my opinion, you know, just just really getting
after people's attention spans and clicking on you know, colorful headlines.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's authenticity still rewarded on lay. The otis controversy,
know the fuss is to growth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, controversy is definitely a great way to get a
lot of views really quickly. Does that mean anything, I'd
argue less and less right, especially in this this AI
where we live in. People know that I those who
follow me and have for some time, know that I
am a creator who speaks how I feel. I'm truthful
about what I'm saying, and I'm a real human being.
I'm putting real human hours into everything I do. They
reward me for that.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: People appreciate that nowadays more and more is this is
a real person talking about a real interest they have.
You know, not everyone sees me that way, but the
majority do. And that's why they follow me. Right, they
follow me. They're not following information about aquaculture sporadically around
the world. I take the narrative where I want it,
and that authenticity I think is really important for me.
I would definitely I would say that it is for
many creators who put their face behind what they do.
You need to be proud of what you're doing. Is
it the most effective way to get a ton of
views immediately maybe make quick money? No, I would say
not right. I could have an AI bought and write
up one hundred horrible eats in five minutes and put
them all out automatically and probably make a lot of
money until I get caught that that doesn't interest me,
So we are seeing a bit of a split between
what I would call real creators and those content farms,
you know, farming algorithms, farming money.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Have you ever felt pleasure to become more extreme,
more outspoken, simply to stay visible at times?
Speaker 2: Early on, yes, I did. I definitely did. That was
when I it was you know, I had n't built
a business model around you know, I have built what
I do not to rely on the income I get
from platforms, right, I don't. My My make or break
is not whether or not a video gets a million views.
That's that's not how I built what I do, and
that is why I don't feel that pressure much anymore.
But early on, yes, absolutely, it's it pulls a bit
at all times. You know, I can't just ramble on
about whatever I want for thirty minutes. I need to
build a structured story. And I still do that absolutely.
I'm doing it more and more nowadays, really honing in
how I want that story to flow. I don't picture
that is like playing into an algorithm, because I'm not
doing it specifically for that. It's more of like how
can I how can I write a novel? How can
I make a back of the book? Be like a
fascinating story. That's what I'm trying to do nowadays.
Speaker 1: It's quite fuscinating. It must be pretty tight. I mean
as well keep me thinking it all number night, doing
that everything.
Speaker 2: It can be. Yeah, but it's it's also a privilege.
This is this is a coveted job nowadays, right, being
an influencer, a content career. So it is worth the time,
investment and the scattered chaos that comes with it. I
say scattered, but it is, it's pretty regular.
Speaker 1: I like the comment you made their gyms. Time is
an investment, definitely, absolutely it is. You have to running businesses.
We've got to know that and gotten other days when
you think you're right, it's your business. You're the man.
So okay, it's not costing too much because I'm doing
it myself, so it's not costing me cost in anything,
you're the most expensive to that business. You have to
think that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, it's and that's not going to change
anytime soon.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's I struggle with whether or not I see myself
as a business or you know, a communicator or a
voice in the space. But I'm starting to come around
to the fact that I can probably be all of
that at once without it being too conflicting. Right. It's
oftentimes I get stuck in this dichotomy of you're either
with the seafood industry or you're against it, just because
that's our bubble, that's what we see. And I have
to remind myself frequently that we are on two ends
of a bell curve. The vast majority of people are
apathetic to this or just don't know anything about seafood.
Why would they if they live in an inland states.
Many people have never even been to the coasts, let
alone know what's going on out in the water, or
they can't see it, right. I like to remind myself
that at the end of the day, what I'm trying
to do is bring more people from this zone of
I don't know and why should I even know?
Speaker 1: Too?
Speaker 2: This is interesting, right, and we can support this in
the right ways. You know, there is a future in
this everyone innately in my I say this total type
of earlier. But you know, we often see the benefits
of agriculture, especially in the States. We're very prideful of
our our our ranches or cattle ranches. All of our
produce are our wheat and grain. They're huge, huge industries,
they're huge farms, and they have an impact on the environment, absolutely,
But often that trade off is understood just innately, like
we get you don't go after farmers. Yeah, you can
go after their practice sometimes, but at the end of
the day, we need them right and that I don't
feel like that feeling has made its way into seafood.
Yet I see so many, so many calls to just
say stop eating fish, you know, just don't don't touch
the ocean, and that is just not the reality that
a lot of the world lives in. Nor is it
the future we should go after.
Speaker 1: Social media can look glamorous, I suppose from the outside,
but how mentally draining is it really.
Speaker 2: I'll give you one example I had so in twenty
twenty five, I had seventeen thousand comments. I feel obligated
to read as many as I can, because it is
implied that if I leave a comment there, that if
a comment is on my video, right that I it's
there for a reason. You know, somebody said this to
me and I accepted that that was said and left
it there. That is a really difficult part of what
I do, because when a video goes viral. It's not
always in the right ways. Right. I've had videos go
to like thirty million views for great reasons, right, and
a lot of the comments there are great or just
neutral people tagging their friends whatever. I have had other
videos get tens of millions of views in the wrong way,
not my intention. In Scotland, I made a video about
new autonomous or not semi autonomous robots helping to vaccinate
smaltz faster salmon smelts right eighteen thousand an hour, really
impressive stuff with far more precision than people can do
by hand. That ended up on the wrong side of
Twitter with the with a crowd that is not a
fan of vaccination of any kind. And there's nothing I
can do about that, right. I can control the comments
in my section, right, Like when I put a video
out there, do I lete a lot of comments? Know
only when it's like vulgar or just it if it
doesn't contribute anything and it's just screaming, that provides nothing, Right.
But when my stuff gets taken and I wake up
and it's on like some like fringe news outlets from
the South about how all of our fish are being
you know, micro chift, I don't know what to do
about that. There's nothing I can do about that. The
old in the video, it's out of my control. So
that kind of stuff is challenging, right, I'm always thinking
about that of like where could this go wrong? Because
that was a wake up call to me, right of
you know, just all the good influence I can have,
I can have this very quickly have the exact opposite.
So it is it can be challenging to make sure
that I'm doing my best to prevent that from happening.
That's a very straining. Part of it is like not
working with those who follow me, the community around me,
but understanding that there's always going to be people that
are going to come after me for this stuff. It
doesn't matter what I'm talking about. Right in the world
of seafood, there is always a vocal group there that
can be a little uninged at times. In college, I
had somebody show up at my apartment after a video
I made on while to capture patagony toothfish. That was scary.
I've had I've seen everything written under the sun, but
you know, people have like hacked into my email and
stuff into my Facebook and things that just happened when
people get really invested in taking someone down. Yeah, that's
probably a very The most straining part of it is,
you know, dealing with detraction and not healthy distractors. Right,
this is I'm totally open criticism. This is the kind
of stuff that's.
Speaker 1: Out of control, that's ouda hand, and it must be
incredibly difficult to deal with it. But like negativity, and
that's kind of criticism.
Speaker 2: It can be. Yeah, especially when I'm not on when
I'm away from the fishers and farmers for a while.
Right when I start to when it's been three or
four months and i haven't been out on these sites,
and all I'm seeing is like I'm spending all this
time editing and all this and all that and putting
a lot of work into this. And then somebody tells me, like,
you know, I put all that work in and then
they say, you know, farm Sanman is poison or you
know you'll drain our oceans by twenty forty eight. You
didn't even watch what I put out there, and you're
just you know, it can get to you after a while.
What always brings you back is getting out on sites,
getting out on boats, you know, seeing this stuff firsthand,
seeing the lives that are impacted by it. Right, that
that always re lights a fire for me, and it's
something I always look forward to. It's just getting back
in the field.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Have you had online attack or trolling ever genuinely
affect Yeah.
Speaker 2: There was a learning curve to dealing with just the
fact that I was a growing online persona right when
I hit like a quarter million followers in TikTok. But
there was enough engagement there that I could spend all
day staring at my phone, reloading it every thirty seconds
to see if there was a new comment or somebody
made a video about me or whatever. And I did
you know, I got addicted to knowing what was being
said about me or said to me. For some time.
That was not good, right, and it led to burnout.
I'd have like a month where my whole world was TikTok,
like it was university, fishmongering, editing stuff, looking at it
all that was it. That's all I'd do, And then
I obviously would burn out. I hit a point where
like this is insane. I'm done, I put my phone down,
I delete TikTok, I delete it, and I'm just I
walk away and then I come back a month later
and do it all again. And that cycle happened a
few times. What I had to learn to do was
to compartmentalize it. Right. Nowadays, I just separate what is
to me work from life.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: If I'm if I have a video that's going crazy
and not in a good way, it doesn't happen much, right,
It's my engagement is largely positive. You do focus on
the negative sometimes, you know. When that happens, I hit
like five or six o'clock, I'm done. You know, I'm
not looking at my phone again. I don't care. I
don't care it's calling me. We're done. And that has
been a really healthy tabilizing piece to it is really
getting offline.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: As important as the Internet is and social media is
for this stuff, it has its limits. Right, You've got
to ground yourself back in reality.
Speaker 1: It must be difficult with what you do with the
videos and things to have peer successful and tried to
promote something positive when there's all this maybe effects of
some of the things going on behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it is at times, right, the benefit being
I when I'm filming on sites, right, I am in
my element. I'm that is where I want to be.
I am happy as a clam right, So it comes
across very organically that you know, I'm an enthusiastic, upbeat,
really into this kind of stuff in the video from
those areas, so that that definitely helps helps play into
it too. But you know, I just because there's detractors
and negativity and all of that online doesn't mean there's
also not the other side of it, right. As I said,
majority of the engagement I get is positive, right, And
it means the world to me when a farmer reaches
out to me independently to say that, like to thank
me for doing this and that they wish they could
do this themselves, or that this had been done before.
You know, that means a lot more to me than
you know, focusing on to Trey actors, because it's like,
that's ultimately what I'm trying to do.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: My goal here is to take those people doing this
right and put what they're doing on a pedestal. And
if I have to be the filter between them and
anonymity on the Internet, I'm happy to take it.
Speaker 1: Yep. I'll tell you a good one to keep in
mind as well. It's one used across here a lot.
A guy that told me this, and I have a huge
he's not with us any longer, unfortunately, but a huge
respect for them. So I'll put it in your context
for you to use some of that guys when they
come up with negativity and different things behind the scene.
As this guy says, remember, I'm sure it'll be a
sane you know, well, it'll be the same over there.
Mind over, matat have you heard that before?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what comes.
Speaker 1: He says, mind over, you don't mind, and they don't
made that.
Speaker 2: I haven't heard. That's good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's enjoying about what I should get that on
the wall. Yeah, get that in the wall quickly. Oh
I suppose how lonely can build in an online presence
actually become Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's it's different, right, it's you know what I do
is not a typical influencers route. Most the most painless
way to build an online business as an influencer is
to review products, uh, do make up tutorials, talk about
your life in a very flashy way, all of this
stuff sitting in front of a camera in your road. Right.
You do it from you do it from home, and
that is the business model. That's the opposite of what
I do. Right, So I'm intentionally getting myself out there,
talking to new people all the time in new countries.
I'm in the thick of it by design, so that
that does keep me, you know, connected to the real
world instead of being like a little gremlin stuck in
my apartment making videos. But you know, it is fifty
to fifty, I go. I got both extremes, so you know,
you can definitely build it in a way where it's
not lonely at all. Absolutely not. I wouldn't consider this
a lonely Like what I do is not. I meet
more people than I would in any other capacity in
the seafood world as far as I know. And I
also get my downtime. You know, where I'm it's just
me and me and New York with my partner, and
it's quieter, which has its moments as well.
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. Do you think audiences some things forget there's
a real human being behind the content, especially with what
you're doing.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I mean I forget that when I watch other
people's stuff, Right, I'll find myself like watching a video
and be like, oh, like, well, like why does he
have to do this? Why did you have to do that.
Why did they have to do this? And in the
video like I'll stop pitching this product or I see
in the background like this is annoying. And then I realized, like, oh,
they're also running a business the same exact same thing
I'm doing. I need to understand and appreciate that more so. Yeah,
I mean, like I forget that people are people sometimes
online too. I think we all do. And I think
that's where a lot of the hatred comes from on
the internet. But you know, when I actually decided I
was going to go out this, go on LinkedIn and
commit to what I'm doing as a business and a
career and something I could be proud of and public about.
For a long time, no one knew I was making tiktoks,
at least like in my real world circle family, friends
and not wasn't nothing. When I committed to it, I
had to choose am I going to be the face
of this? Is this going to be built around me
as a human being? Or am I going to do
this as a brand as something I'm removed from that
I run but I'm not in it, you know, And
I chose the former for a few reasons, but that
you know, I wanted to have the human connection because
that's what I felt seafood and aquaculture missed a lot
of times, was just somebody sitting down and talking about
it how it is right, and not reading reports or
watching a conference.
Speaker 1: That.
Speaker 2: You know, I want people to have that personal connection
with me. It isn't up. You know, it's not always successful,
I will say, you know, it depends some some series
have more success than others with that. You know, like
how personal can I be? But that's always a goal
is to like really try and connect with the viewer.
I want them to feel like I'm talking to them right,
or that I'm experiencing and learning about this stuff with them,
because that's how I learn, right. If I'm out on
the farm, that's the best way for me to learn
there does not contend with the research papers, the write ups,
the websites, none of it even comes close. So if
I can even just for a little bit, take that
viewer along with me, if they can be there on
the farm with me for two minutes, that's great. That's
what I want to do. Right Again, not always achievable,
but that is kind of the bar I'm shooting for.
Speaker 1: Well, the end that's good, really good that you obviously
hobbled it well. Even when there's negativity, you hamble it well.
I'm pleased to hear that. Looking back, No, you must
feel the struggle was worth it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's as I said earlier. I wouldn't change it
for the world. It has been. I'm an adventurous kind
of person, right, I always wanted to see the world
and to meet new people, and not just like sitting
at a resort, you know, sip and pinic Lotte is like,
I want to be in the thick of it. I
want to learn, I want to move there, right, and
this has been a way for me to do that.
All the challenges that come along with it, the volatility,
and you know that that's normal for entrepreneurship, and so
the fact that my entrepreneurial route is not stuck behind
code and it's not stuck in a warehouse. It is
in part out on the edge of the world is
you know, a privilege that I can't express how grateful
I am to have, right, And Yeah, at times did
I want to change things up, Yeah, but I would
never ever give us that experience I've had so far.
Speaker 1: Good. I'm so as the same goes. Is that behind
that confidence and that behaved you what you know, I've
talk to you to document any filmmaking rather than simply
making short form content.
Speaker 2: Yes, so that that is where I'm going with it.
Not in fault. I'm not saying, okay, goodbye to my
short form platforms. Moving on to documentary style pieces, I've
always wanted to be able to have longer discussions dive
into deeper topics. I can't talk about sea lice in
two minutes. Is too complicated, right, I've tried, but you
cannot build the nuance of the history of its involvement
in salmon farming, the difference between species and in regions
around the world, and how we've been treating it, how
that's been evolving. Right, You can't get into all of
that in a short I need time, and that's true
for a lot of topics. More and more so, what
I've been doing over the last year here is building
less single videos and more a series. So New Zealand,
for instance, was nine two and a half three minutes shorts.
In a series, it's effectively a twenty minute documentary, just
split up right after that. I've been doing things like
British Columbia, the Falklands, Australia is in the works. Now,
that's a huge one where I filmed with that intention. Yes,
I'm going to build a series on social media, but
I'm also going to make the full documentary. I have
all the footage I film with the intent of this
can be for an iPhone or this can be for
a tablet or a TV. All at the same time
tense where a lot of my business expense has been
going is I need equipment that can do that. But
I digress. You know, I want to be able to
get this information in front of people, however they want
to digest it. If they prefer, you know, sort of
informally sitting on their phones, they want captions on it,
they want to be able to speed up through it,
which a lot of people do, then yeah, I want
to I will be accommodating to that and build a
series that they can do that in. I also want
to put a full documentary online for the people who
are willing to say that's cool. I'm going to go
make popcorn and get the whole family and we're going
to sit down and watch Australian seafood for the next
thirty forty five minutes. Right, I want to be a
to be where people need me to be, you know,
depending on what they're willing to digest. That's up to them, right.
But I'm really quite confident on the future of this
in longer form pieces. That medium is not going away
anytime soon. Yeah, short form video took off, but it
didn't really draw away from long form content either. And again,
there's so many pieces to this that I want to
be able to do in a longer format. And you know,
not just because I can't talk about nuanced pieces, but
it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for me
to try to do a national campaign, right, this is
all of aquaculture in say Vietnam. I can't do that
in a short video for a number of reasons. Right,
It's like, I need to be there for a long time.
It's going to cost me a lot to be there.
I need to bring people in. This needs to be
proper film production and not a short form video.
Speaker 1: Are people still willing to set and absorb long forms
the retail in or has attention spun and become an issue.
Speaker 2: That's something I can't speak to yet. I don't have
enough long form videos out that I can say, here's
what this looks like. Talk to me in a year,
and I might, but not at the moment. I'm hoping
that they're still willing to stick around. I know I do.
I personally watch multi air YouTube videos all the time.
Sometimes I listen to them more than watch.
Speaker 1: But pointstance, well, I would say you're obviously getting good
at it because watching the videos on your platforms that
I what I what I've watched. I would never want
to leave them without seeing them through because it was
what I would I would be worried to what I
was going to mess because they're pretty exciting and interesting.
Speaker 2: Which which drew you in. If you don't mind me asking.
Speaker 1: For the Baja Oca farm you know in Mexico.
Speaker 2: Mmm, that was it. That was an amazing one to shoot.
It was the first time I ever flew in a helicopter.
Speaker 1: Well that's why I said at the start about the
auction man, because I'm seeing you and a helicopter and
then I'm seeing you diving.
Speaker 2: That was all in one day too. That was good fun.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, what on earth are we gonna get this?
Have this man doing that? You're gonna fly itself.
Speaker 2: To know though, I am that my my Baja Firms
videos were very well received at the time and it's
been Yeah, it's been almost two years since I was there,
so it's good to know that's still a relevant piece.
Speaker 1: Oh see, I didn't realize it was that long. And
what would you say makes a powerful documentary in your opinion?
Speaker 2: Yeah, powerful documentary to me, it needs to be built, right.
I've tried to adapt, let's say, the series I make
for short form socials. So if you watch the baja
Acal Farms piece, that it was a four part series
on baja Acal farms, right, so maybe like a ten
eleven minute documentary in total. That does not mean that
I made a ten eleven minute documentary and then split
it up into quarters. That's not how social media works.
They have to be purpose built for each platform, right unfortunately,
which means it's a lot more work for me. But
you know, building what I'm trying to do in documentaries
from the sort of foundation that I have in short form,
I've found that I need to be far slower, right,
and I can be far more implicit. When I'm making
short form videos. I need to tell it how it
is is immediately. I need to speak quickly. I need
to get to the point right away, and then you know,
maybe even start with it. You know, salmon farming in
British Columbia is facing problems. Here's why. If I were
going to make a documentary about that, I would talk
about the history of salmon farming in British Columbia, why
they use a different species that our native, work through
some of the problems historically to current, and then hit
him with the climax of and this is the problem right,
here's the disconnect. I need to build it more like
a five part act in a documentary, then a two
minute back of the book read. That's been a bit
of an up bill learning curve. I We'll say it's
different the first time, Like the first few times I'd
tried writing these longer form pieces. I'd then go to
my team and my editors and they'd say, Wow, that's horrible.
We are not doing this. It's been a road, but
we have some in the pipeline now that are going
to be really cool. Stay tuned for Australia. That one
is as pushing the boundaries of even what we can
do right now, and it'll show.
Speaker 1: Exciting. And so what documentaries are you or project are
you most proud of? The why?
Speaker 2: That's a good question. You know, Scotland I'm very proud
of because to me, it proved what I can what
I do. Worse, it proved that I can keep people
around consistently on this topic. It was the first time
I said, okay, I'm doing a year in Scotland and
this is all about aquaculture. Here we go. I got
fifty million views on Scottish salmon in one year. That
had never been done. And I was really proud about that, right,
I was, Okay, there's I don't know if anyone even
thought about this before, but here's the bar. That was
really cool coming out of that. You know, I don't
make videos nearly as quickly, Right, I'm not going to
have fifty million views in twenty twenty six. It's not
going to happen. I'm changing up the strategy a little, right,
I'd rather those views count far far more toward how
long did people stick around? And what's the impact? Right,
I'd rather have half the viewership and twice the impact,
even if it all kind of comes out the same.
So that's what I'm really proud about doing now is
turning what Scotland proved into these sorts of longer and longer,
larger projects right with one key focus. New Zealand to me,
was a proof of concept for that. I went to
New Zealand in October twenty twenty five and did a
road trip starting the top of the South Island, did
two full laps of the islands'bout four or five thousand
kilometers in the road there and actually made it a
linear story instead of it just being one off. So so
here's this Scottish farm, here's this Scottish shellfish, you know,
here's this Scottish research center, here's Sam's. New Zealand was
okay for the next month, I'm in New Zealand and
you were going to follow this journey every couple days
as we started Nelson and work away to the salmon
farms and the Marlbiole sounds and down to the oysters
and those green shell muscles that everyone loves. A very
linear trip. That is the sort of second evolution that
I'm really proud of is actually being able to put
that like build it linearly because it's not filmed that way.
You know, I jump around all over the place. If
I actually followed the story of how I was on
a road trip in New Zealand, it would be chaos. So,
you know, putting that into a nice I've started here,
here's a little circular road trip, you know, turning it
into that something I'm very proud of recently. The Falklands
recently I'm quite proud of because they have no aquaculture,
and my whole purpose for being there was to talk
about it, right, so I had to film an island
that had no aquaculture. The first time I ever did
is right, I saw a fishing boat in the distance.
That was it for my world. That's all I The
rest I had to get creative with and see how
I could bring a story together on what the future
could be, not on what it is right now. That
was the different one for me.
Speaker 1: And was that because the layout there was no deep
water or shelters water or was there any other reason
why the Falklands, but.
Speaker 2: They just don't have it right now. They only have
thirty five hundred people. It's a very small little island.
So as of yes, they just have have no aquaculture.
Even their fisheries are almost majority overseas so they're they're
very there's actually very little involvement on shore for it. Yes,
it's the biggest part of the economy, but it's actually
not a huge part of daily life.
Speaker 1: I think they actually make more money out of trading
licenses to foreign boats than fishing themselves. Well they were
for a while.
Speaker 2: Yes, that that is true, and it's but one of
the reasons they're interested in Yeah, yeah, yeah, I will
say that was I never had squid that good.
Speaker 1: I hope to see good. Back to the question you
asked me about the films I watched and I said
the ones in Baha. It's as you started talking about
the other I watched the ones doing the west coast
of Scotland and up in the Shetlands, so I've seen
them as well. And your references to Appelli, which is
great festival up there.
Speaker 2: That was I specifically times Shetlands to be there for ya,
because it was not a good filming time of year, right,
probably the worst to film out on the water up there.
But you can't not do.
Speaker 1: That, right, Did you have the cult done?
Speaker 2: I did not know I was. I was the American
outsider there, so I've played the part somebody did give
me an axe at one point. So that was I
had that for like five minutes.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, you get start of the way. Have you
ever started following me in that story? Ended up changing
your own opinion during the process.
Speaker 2: While I'm filming. Absolutely, When I'm editing, it's by the
time I get home, I know what I want to say, right,
But when I'm out in the field, yeah, absolutely, my
opinions change on on what I'm looking at and what
I think the importance of it is.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: When I say I work with you know, innovators and
leaders in the space, it doesn't mean you know that
doesn't just mean this is an incredibly profitable company or
this company is carbon negative for you know, metrics like that,
That's not all I'm looking for. I'm often looking for
more qualitative pieces to how they operate in what they do,
like ethos behind it. Right, are they operating successfully in
an incredibly challenging environment? If so, why and how right?
How does that play in? An example of that would
be recently for me, would be Tasmania. Right, that's some
of the warmest water that salmon are farmed in the world,
and they can only do it because they've selectively bred
those fish to do it for the last last twenty years, right,
that was it was challenging, right to get there and
to continue. They're not done. So I found it very
interesting when I was there to just focus in on that, like,
why why are we doing this? Why are we putting
so much time into figuring this out? And what you
come to realize is, well, if they can have domestic
production to supply their own Australian demand, right, that will
put them in a very unique position in their corner
of the world, where otherwise they'd be flying this stuff
in from the other side of the planet in bulk,
kind of like the US does. And they don't want
to do that. They want to be secure in their
food production. And I thought that that was a very
like I did not think that that was going to
be a part of it when I was there, but
that turned into a really important piece of the Tasmanian
puzzle for me.
Speaker 1: Excellent, Now, if you're going to be doing more business
in Australia you left, you know, they shorten everything in Australia,
so you worked in Tasmania, you wan to TAZZI.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm working all that into my scripts as the
best I can. I bought into Kubra so that that
helped me out on the in Western Australia, out in
the red Sands.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, they're they're might I've saying that because
our youngest son, he moved out to Australia twenty five
years ago. He was going to backpack around Australia for
a year. He was going to go to New Zealand
for a year, and then he was going to come
back home through Asia for a year. So what was
his trip? He contacted an old school friend who is
he knew was living in Sydney, and he moved out there,
got a bed until he got organized, and he's married
with two children. He's never left sen.
Speaker 2: You know, I met a lot of people in Australia
with a similar story, even a few Scots. Seems like
a bit of a popular, popular plan to do that
whole loop and then you get lost along the way.
I gotta be honest that we're parts of that. We're
part of parts of my Australia tripe. Where I was
questioning what I'm doing in New York City. It's like
I should be in this coastal town by the Great
Barrier Reef. This is where I belong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a wonderful country.
Speaker 2: It is beautiful.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you find difficulty is stay imbalanced and objective
when covered in controversial topics?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely absolutely I do. Right, I have pressure from
both sides of me on that. Sometimes. You know, it's like,
do I commit a lot of time to talking about
why farm salmon is not dyed the color it is,
why that's it's a feat ingredients and where that comes from.
Do I commit a lot of time to that because
consumers in America listed as a top concern? Or do
I basically ignore it because the farmers don't even think
about it, that that is not a subject that they
consider and they'd rather we focus on what they're actually
facing day to day.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So sometimes the disconnect between consumers and the seafood industry
are so great that they can't even come at the
same table on this stuff. Right, That can be a
bit challenging sometimes at the end of the day, I'm
not unbiased. I'm not a journalist, right. I work with
fish farmers, I work with aquaculturists around the world, ranchers
and fishers, Right, those are my people. So when push
comes to shove, I will often side with them on
subjects that I really am passionate about. I also consider
myself an environmentalist and a biologist. Right, I am a biologist,
So to me, it's about balance. Right, There's no reason
I can't have vested interests while also supporting it intrinsically.
Do people agree with that? Not one hundred percent? You
know I do. I do sometimes get questioned about that.
My response to that is, Okay, if I don't do
it this way, it's not going to be done at all.
There there are no fishers or farmers that will let
me go out on their boats. If my intention is
to get as many views as I can so that
I can profit as much as I can off of
what they do, it's parasitic. And it would also require
me to be quite sensationalist in what I do. So
it's not a you know, pick a poison situation. I
don't consider it that. It's just the reality of operating,
you know, a business online is there is no such
thing as like an unbiased view of anything. I don't
think that it hurts what I do because I'm there
to tell a greater story, and that is quite obvious.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Just because I was brought there doesn't mean that what
I'm showing and telling isn't fascinating, true and interesting, and
that that's something I truly believe in.
Speaker 1: Would you say there's going on from that? Would you
say there's things that businesses don't or misunderstand about social
media marketing?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely, it's It's a challenge I've faced since the
moment I turned this into a business.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: The corruptx of social media is somebody's making money off
of the time that you're committing to watching that somebody
is It's the same as every other form of media. Right,
Nothing is free in this world. And many, many, to
the majority of the folks that I reach out to
me might want to work with me, want me to
come visit what they do, believe that what I do
I do for free for fun, And you know that
that is a big disconnect with large parts of the
of you know, fisheries and aquaculture. Is I love what
I do, but it's also a business, and it you know,
there are influencers that will come out and do these
sorts of things for free. Absolutely, right, It's important that
when they work with folks like that that they keep
in mind that they're not doing it for free, they're
doing it for someone else, right, and who knows what
the intention? Like, I often tell to groups, if you,
if I were to do this for free, right, I
need to sell enough products or subscriptions or coaching classes
in the middle of this to cover costs. So this
would be this would not be a video about out
your boat or your farm or your fish. This would
be seventy percent video about that and thirty percent me
selling products. That is something that I would love for
the sector to get more comfortable with. Is what I
do is it's no different than comms and marketing budgets, right.
It factors very, very seamlessly into those areas. And it's
also not right for everyone, absolutely not right. What I
do relies on strong visuals, great stories, right. That is
often not the case for let's say, a lot of
new tech startups in the aquaculture space. They don't have
long stories, they don't have something to show off. They
might have a little box with a camera in it
that does a lot of interesting things. Technically, does that
fit a national campaign? Probably not right. So it's it's
important to understand when social media is right for you
and when.
Speaker 1: It isn't, Yeah, that's a good view, that's that's excellent.
How does about reading into what you've said there? As
well as when it comes to some businesses, you're feeling
like you're either telling them, we're feeling like it you're
in the way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know it's this is not a DGA anybody,
it's it's just it's the way, the way of the world, right,
because anybody can go post anything on Instagram for free,
you know, it's it. It takes a bit of work
to show some why when I do it, it's different.
And then it costs money, not just to enough for that,
not just then pay me to put it up, but
to produce it. Right, nowadays, my expenses are pretty significance.
When I need videographers, editors and a full team around
me to build these projects. It all kind of comes
to a head at those sorts of meetings where it's
like this this is our idea, or like they come
to me and this is what we want to do,
and I have to sort of bring it back down
to earth or maybe propose something bigger. Right, say, this
is a great idea, Maybe let's explore this. I love
what you do. But this is one two minute video, right,
I need to do something more substantial. Let's make this
a national campaign. Let's get six other businesses involved, right,
six other fishers, farmers and researchers all across the country
to be a part of this. Then we're talking about
something that's big enough that it's worth you know, me
committing what could be two three, four months of my
life to it, as well as contracting in a bunch
of people.
Speaker 1: But what's probably normal and life? Would I be right
in seeing James that you find the deal professionals who
do the dal bayst they'll be the easiest to deal with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hasn't that been interesting? It's it's not what I expected.
But yeah, my most successful projects, the project that keep
me going, are the ones that sometimes can be done
in it like square away in a day. And to
me it's I think it's just a mutual understanding. You know,
you get on a call to somebody, and you meet
somebody and you know pretty quick if they're on the
same page as you are, not, especially for me, like
when I have to explain what I do and then
it becomes a discussion of like oh I thought TikTok
was getting banned in the US, and it goes down
a different road, right, then, I'm very I understand that
this is not you know, perhaps they see what I
do in a different light, but to those who see
what I do the way I do, right, that this
is an important piece of maintaining a growing future on
the seas that becomes much easier conversation.
Speaker 1: And would I even see in a mudgin anyway? This
is my imagination that what you do on your phone
maid and your route from the job with the people,
that will give you a stronger card and better able
to build a thrust with people, because I just don't
know how you could build that trust just bud Lane
to the Yeah.
Speaker 2: In a way, my rolling feed of productions is a
bit of a portfolio.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think just the longevity with which I've been doing
this and the amount of productions I've done lends to
the credibility of what I do. It's something that makes
it very difficult to take anything any any content creation.
If you want to be a content creator, to jump
from this is fun to I want to commit to
this full time. Making that jump requires that credibility, right.
I put thousands of hours into this before it became
even reasonable to approach full time thousands, right, multiple years
of my life, like it took three years. I'm doing
this with every possible free, free moment. I had to
get to a point where it turned into something different,
and that honestly wasn't even the intention. I just loved
what I was doing, and when the opportunity came that
it's like, okay, you can do this, but now full time, okay,
you know, thumbs a word, let's do it. That wasn't
the intention. And there is a bit of luck and
timing to it all, absolutely, but you can't just commit
to it immediately right like right when you start up.
Speaker 1: I would say the fact that what you said there
you love what you do, and I would say the
good buck to it I mentioned earlier little bit. The
professionals and the people that are good at it, they'll
pick that up. I would say, that's your best selling point.
Do you think I would say enthusiasm when your passion
all lot of things.
Speaker 2: You know, It's it's funny you say that, because I've
been more and more trying to pitch what I do
is it's like a narrative, right, It's like a first
person narrative. I mean, like, let me come like we're
not going to show off. We are going to show off,
like like what's cool about what you're doing? But more
so when we're going to show it off through my discovery,
like I'm more and more I like to include bits
and pieces in my videos of me being like WHOA,
like it was crazy. Tons of that in recent films
I've been doing where there's one in Australia where they
have a giant drone the size of me that they
use to scare off birds, right, since it's sort of
like an eco friendly way to I see ego friendly.
They're not culling, so that's good, you know, And it's
just you stand under this giant drone with speakers on
it an incredible weird experience.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Bits like that in a too, where I'm really trying
to make it just you know, enthusiasm through and through.
Speaker 1: It's infectious. We can pick it up and when you're
on the site and working with people, and that's just
what you mentioned earlier. It's a pame investment and that's
a big part of getting a relationship and working close
with people. I think that's just gold.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as I said, there's no better way to learn.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I spent two years reading reviews in aquaculture and all
these little all these pieces too familiar with myself with
the biology of aquaculture. But then you get out there
on sites, and I mean you learn more in twenty
four hours than you do three months staring at a screen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, would you see consistency is more important than talent
on lane?
Speaker 2: No, No, absolutely not. From personal experience, I can be
quite inconsistent with my uploads. It is definitely good to
be consistent. But if what you do draws people in
and they actually they're following you and not just a
general I like seafood, then that is far more important.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Some of the best creators I follow may post once
every six months or a year. There's one called h
bomber Guy on YouTube. He hasn't posted a YouTube video
in almost two years, and he's still my favorite YouTuber
and I will watch the next video but the moment
it comes out, and that's because he's a talented guy.
Speaker 1: I thought that it was all about getting the the source.
Will media platforms, they'll tell you that to get more
people follow and all this get more called the more regularly.
Speaker 2: It's it's absolutely good. I mean to build up your metrics. Yeah,
you know, it's I don't. I don't gain any significant
amount of followers when I'm not posting regularly, like right now,
I've just wrapped up my British Columbia series and my
Faultlin series and my Australia one is not going to
be ready for at least a month, so you know,
I'm not going to see any growth of my channels
in this time. But to me, that matters less than
are people excited when it does eventually come around. You know,
I'd rather put the time in to do it right.
And you know, when I first started this, I could
make two videos a day on a lunch break. But
the quality of like what I'm going for now has changed,
you know, and it takes takes real time does and that's.
Speaker 1: Gone Small not independent could eat or still compete Or
are the large platforms no limited by large personalities and corporations?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely, Like small small creators are sort
of the lifeblood of these platforms, especially when the for
you page is everything people scroll or everyone what everyone's
looking at. It's it's how you can scroll endlessly. It's
because for every big creator doing big doing a big project,
there's a thousand other people who put stuff out every
thirty six hours. However, right, it's I mean, I would
even consider myself a small creator on some platforms, right
TikTok I have probably closer to half a million followers there,
so that puts me about a mid to large creator there.
But places like Facebook, I only have thirty forty thousand
followers over there. I'm new to Facebook, actually I never
had it for a while. I'm a small creator there,
and I sometimes see more engagement on a Facebook post
than I do on a TikTok Post's the way these
algorithms work nowadays. It really how many followers you have
is only an indicator of how long you've been there
and how consistent what you've been producing has been. Not
just in like, not necessarily are you posting every week?
But am I for many years now and go to
seafood guy and TikTok. Yeah. On Facebook, nobody knows me,
so it's sort of building reputation. It takes time.
Speaker 1: Because you're backroomed an interest. You've also touched on seafood
unsustainability discussions. Do you think social media has helped or damaged,
like understand both seafood industries.
Speaker 2: M it's a good question.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Oftentimes the core of what I do is around sustainability.
I often don't like to use the word sustainability because
what does that even mean. You know, it's different everywhere,
for everything and from every viewpoint, so it's kind of meaningless.
It's like all natural greats, so it has carbon in it,
like all food. You know, my sort of exposure to
sustainability online has not been good, I will say, right,
it's what I see is not constructive. Awareness is being
raised about real issues, and it is being bastardized into
quick shakunnaw monetization schemes. And subscribe to our newsletters because
you'll he'll hear first about the atrocities of this. That
is not productive, and often that turns into just misinformation, right,
and that is incredibly destructive. By and large, has it
helped sustainability across the board depends where you are. You
talk to Vancouver Island and Discovery Islands in the West
Coast of Canada, no social media costs them their entire
aquaculture sector thousands of jobs, billions of dollars, mostly in
first nation areas they hate it like as they should.
They hate that. That's the case. However, places like New Zealand,
social media has helped bring their brand, the New Zealand
King Salmon up to never before seen you know, prices
on the market and demand for what they do. Because
what they do, they built a really strong story around
the sustainability of it and have other people retelling that story,
so they would say that it's fantastic for it, right.
The discussions of sustainability have really been beneficial to them.
It is dependent on where you are on both sides
of the spectrum there. It goes extreme both ways.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, our complex industry has been reduced into simplistic
slogans on laid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean absolutely. I don't think that's anything new, though,
would you. I feel like it's happened since if you're
limited to you know, a few sentences in the print,
that's the same thing. It's with the monetization of it online.
It can get ugly right where it just spirals out
of control with quick one liners. But I don't think
that that's new. It's not going away anytime soon. It's
not something I dabble in either. I don't really. I
tend to push my videos as long as I can,
which is not what the platforms recommend, but it's what
I need to do to cover the topics I want to,
So that takes precedent.
Speaker 1: But you're also giving your clients, your customers value for money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it depends on how they view value, right. People shouldn't.
People shouldn't want to bring me on board if they
want to get ten million views, because that doesn't make like, okay, great,
that's pretty easy to do. If you just throw the
most shocking thing together, you can think of how does
that benefit you?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: I want to work with people who are more interested
in how long can we get people to watch this stuff?
That's really the metric I'm most interested in, Right.
Speaker 1: Is.
Speaker 2: You know, I'd rather have you know, twenty thousand viewers
that stuck around for a minute a minute and a
half on average than a million views on a fish
flopping around that was funny for two seconds. It really
depends on what's what people's outcomes or with what they're
looking to get out of it. What I look to
get out of it is is that view time?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: How long can I get people to stick around?
Speaker 1: Yeah? But another good measure of that, JAMS is some
of your customers of skin your back to pull my
gam that's a good measure that you're doing. You're doing
the job right, that is.
Speaker 2: It's it's interesting because what I do, like, let's say,
like I just wrapped up New Zealand six months ago
and I had the whole series was this is aquaculture
in New Zealand. I don't think I should go back
in the next year, you know, that wouldn't make any sense.
Part two should be different, bigger, bowlder, better in a
lot of ways, but just different, and that would take
a lot of time, like revisit it in a year
or two. That's how I would view that. And that's
typically what I do. I don't circle back on places
in the same year unless I'm doing some different kind
of work than the projects I build publicly right now.
But yes, I do hope to return this, especially some
of those and there have been some very very unique
projects that I want to follow up on because things
have changed, right in just a few years.
Speaker 1: When you started going and getting into it, did you
ever do you ever think back, did you ever imagine
that come a day you'd be having a conversation like
we'd having. Just know, I wrapped up New Zealand, a
British Columbia about Shetland, Scotland, Australia. It's a jog going
to be lessoned. You know.
Speaker 2: When I moved to Scotland, I very quickly realized that
I didn't know where anything was in the world as
the ignorant American I am. So I memorized every country
and every territory in every flag in the world pretty
quickly on moving to Scotland so that I could be
not the ignorant American in the room on the on
this the geography subject. And no, I mean I never
I never thought that this would be where it would
take Again. I always wanted to do something that was global.
Boston's a small city and you you know I did
twenty four years there, so twenty three year yeah, stuff
like that. Enough time. I wanted to get out see
what's out there?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Is there room on lane anymore for balanced discussion
without outbridge?
Speaker 2: I think podcasts are actually a really good platform for that.
You know, you can sit down for a long long
time and people might actually stick around. I think it's
the most important thing there right is how long do
you have of somebody's attention that's going to determine whether
or not you can have a nuanced and balanced conversation
or not if you're stuck to headlines, you know, one
liners that are going to stick in the algorithm. No,
you can't have that conversation. But you know, even short
form video platforms like I can get a lot of
information into two three minutes. Right, I'm talking a script
here that's multiple pages long, a fast talker, so it
comes across quick. But you know that's a lot. And yeah,
you can have a you can have a balanced, a
nuanced discussion there in that amount of time, with the
right topic and the right framing. The back and forth
just isn't there in that medium, right. The problem with
that approach sometimes is I put out like a really
interesting balanced argument on let's say, the use of wellboats
in salmon farming. Right, they have their upsides, they have
their downsides. Here's my experience having bet on half a
dozen in Scotland in the last three months, and then
somebody comments, yeah, what about the seabed? So then I
go out onto a farm out in the island, muck
send down robots to go look at the seabed, take samples,
bring it up, make a whole video about it, and
then somebody's like, yeah, what about the wellboats? Right, So
the back and forth can be one side when it's
a video versus a commenter. I think the best way
to have those kinds of discussions is both people got
to be on camera, right, You've got to have a conversation.
If you want to have a new balanced discussion, they
both got to be talking. Yeah, It's something I've tried
to do sometimes, but unfortunately, with the content I produce,
my detractors are not willing.
Speaker 1: To do that. So that is what it is. Does anything.
What are you about the future of social media? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Absolutely right. To me, it's a medium for the dissemination
of information that is not what it is to a
lot of people, right, And it can be a dangerous
place for your psyche for the next generation. Right. The
damage that social media can have can be significant.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It's one of those things where I view it as
a tool and that can be for better or for worse.
And unfortunately, it seems like the money is and where
it's worse right now, By and large, you know, I
don't think that was the case five years ago, and
maybe five years from now it won't be the case.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Maybe it comes and goes and waves and troughs, but
it is not always a force for good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you think younger creators understand the emotional cost of
living publicly on lane? No?
Speaker 2: Absolutely not. It's I didn't and I wouldn't even say
that I'm like a public figure. And I am in
very very niche circles about fish. That's not a public
figure in the common sense. So no, I would say
that people are not. It's it changes pretty quickly. I
would say, I do have friends in the influential world
who are They have many, many millions of followers across
the board, right that this is a seven figure business
for them, and it's not all sunshine and roses, you know,
when you are a public like when you were that public?
You know, I think it depends on how public you
want to be. I'm happy to be myself, right. I
am James Sibley online that anybody can find me, find
my LinkedIn, my email, whatever, but not anything beyond that.
No one knows where I live. You know, I go
to great lengths to maintain my ability to say Okay,
I'm turning my phone off, and that's that. That's not
the case for a lot of creator's paths in the
influencial world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's success on laying changed you personally, I.
Speaker 2: Don't think so. I wouldn't necessarily say that I found
I guess I have found some success online. But you know,
it's not this sort of like Unicorn story. It works
for now. That's where it stands. It hasn't changed who
I am.
Speaker 1: I do this.
Speaker 2: I do this because I for two real reasons.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It started because I wanted to learn more about, you know,
what goes on in food production at sea. It's something
I had no idea about. And you know, selfishly that's
still a piece of it. I still want to get
out there and learn these things all the time. But
now I have the added piece of I'm starting to
understand everything from geopolitics to you know, production and manufacturing
and processing in different regions of the world, and how
all of this works with major importers, major exporters. That
that is kind of coming into into it more and
more these days, where it's I'm able to view it
beyond just this is a learning experience for me. This
is a sort of another piece in that puzzle that
I'm building. Right, I'll never understand all of all of aquaculture,
all of seafood, absolutely not, nobody can. But I'd like
to get as close as I can, as close as
e when the possible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And what I'm gonna ask you with that, where
do you see your journey going next? It's a good question.
Speaker 2: Hopefully somewhere warm now I am. I'm really enjoying this
almost more more of this storytelling side where I, yes,
I do the aquaculture and the you know, this is
how production happens, and this is why this is uniquely
you know, successful in this area. And it's this strategy
that like the technical pieces, Yes, I it's something I've
grown accustomed to doing. I've done it eight hundred times.
What I'm really enjoying now is incorporating that into more
of a story about place and people, right you know, Australia.
I I mean, very very clear efforts to get out
of the film wilderness scenery. Have have cookouts on the
barbie where we brought out vegamites and they gave me
a full spoonful and it was terrible, and really trying
to ground, the innovation and the successes of these ultimately
farmers in the people in who they are and the
place that they're from. Kind of building a bit beyond
the technical into more of an emotional piece of it
as well. That's something I'm building into more and more
this year. It's it should make for easier viewing across
the board and hopefully you know it's not you know,
you walk away from it, maybe having a laugh or
something too, as well as learning about these pieces along
the way.
Speaker 1: Your engine your way closer than with the Aussies as well.
When you talk about Barbie.
Speaker 2: Well that's what it was. We had We had a
we had prawns in the barbie. Many it's a bear
on the barbie can go Barbie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great scene in Australia through another pron
of the Barbie.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, just you know, having if if I'm able
to build in that seem the sense of having fun
with it in a more approachable way, then sometimes I
can bring in pieces that aren't aquaculture. I want to
expand more into fisheries, even other forms of food production.
Right when I was in for instance, New Zealand filming,
I did mussels, oysters and salmon, all in the Marlborough Sound.
It's a very famous part of the South Island of
New Zealand also and most critically famous for its wine. Right,
they had huge, sprawling vineyards that I didn't touch because
that wasn't in scope. It's not what I do. I
don't think there's a reason that I can't bring pieces
like that in when when we're talking about food production
and food security and coastal communities, right, it is not
just one piece, it's all of them, right, especially.
Speaker 1: When it's.
Speaker 2: Sort of large scale food production like this. It's never
just in evacuum.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And if you could see one thing about social
media tomato, what would be feeling?
Speaker 2: That's a great question, you know. I really wish that
we could bring back some of the I don't know
if I'm just reminiscing on old times or whatnot, but
you focus on the for you page I think has
been detrimental overall. I'd love to see overturn, not in fult,
but in part to a place where you choose the
topics and the people you want to see when you
open these apps, right, it's your friends, it's your family,
but it's also creators you follow topics are interested in,
and it's not just an algorithm feeding you. The fact
that it's called a fee isn't that kind of dystopian?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: I don't want to just be fed things staring at pixels.
I want it to be curated, yes.
Speaker 1: But to.
Speaker 2: Not to that the nth degree, because then I wouldn't
have to fight as hard to stand out amongst everybody
trying to make a quick buck and all the sensationalism,
because things would be split into categories and that is
actually coming into fruition. And so for instance, on TikTok,
I am in the STEM program, you know, Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics,
which means I'm a science creator. They put me in
my own category, which is pretty cool, right, so my
stuff people can choose. I either want to just see
what the world has to offer me, or I want
to only look at things that may be educational, like
I maybe that's a healthier thing to do. That's the concept,
and I'm a creator for that. I'd love to see
that across the board, you know. I think that would
be a good way to bring bring rain in some
of the problems that social media's having, you know, addictions
to our phones, anxiety and depression, just a sort of
rolling envy that never goes away. Those sorts of issues
can be curved with programs like that.
Speaker 1: Okay, a good back to the different parts of the
world you've been an Do you have any favorites?
Speaker 2: That's a great question.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Everywhere is different, but that that's kind of a boring answer,
isn't that some of the most some of the most interesting.
I can give you. Well, Scotland holds a special place
in my heart because my grandmother's from Aberdeen and she
was like that was her whole identity.
Speaker 1: It was pretty cool.
Speaker 2: And I lived there for a year and I very
very nearly stayed, you know, fifty one forty nine was
the only reason I came back when I weighed the
pros and cons. So I love Scotland. But there's there
have been some interesting places I've visited for aquaculture, right
I ended up. I went to Riod, Saudi Arabia for
three days, didn't sleep a wink, just delusionally up for
the whole time, running around the city. That was pretty interesting.
I knew nothing about going into that. That was something different.
The Falklands as well, are quite an interesting place to
film in, not just because of the what I had
to do. I had to be more creative, right there's
no farms there, but also because it's basically it's a
military island, right, so I couldn't just put the drone up.
I had to call it a military base and see
if there's like fighter jets that are going to come
through anytime soon, so that I'm not hitting planes with
my drone. That was a very very odd place to
film in that sense. And they had King penguins just
like walking around town. Nowhere else in the world have
I seen that. That was the Yeah, I thought it'd
be like a challenge to find them. I was prepared
to like go Trekking, get the four wheeler out, go
look for penguins. Now they're just in town, so that's wonderful.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2: Everyone's different, and again, Scotland is a unique place. Not
to add to the list, But you know, I bashed
in the US for a lot of reasons in recent years.
But you know, I bashed on American seafood and probably
too much, and it's something I'm trying to change. I
want to work more with stateside farmers and fishers. I've
been actively trying to find ways to do that. It is.
It is just a terrible time for it. You know,
Noah has been stripped of thousands and thousands of employees.
They don't have budgets for this kind of stuff. You know,
the universities I would want to work with in places
like Hawaii, same thing. That doesn't mean it's impossible. So
there are some projects on the horizon in the US
that I'm quite excited about, and I haven't done one
in years, So I'm hoping that this kind of opens
up some more domestic projects for me there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good buck to the seafood from your from what
you have experienced. When you look ahead twenty years, do
you think seafood sector will rely more on combinations of
wild captured, raunching and d aqua culture rather than one
dominant system. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean when people ask me, I've been asked you
think a culture is the solution. No, it's not. It's
wild capture solution, no ranching, now, land based. None of
it is like a silver bullet, right. I think the
beauty of it is that we can do all of it,
and that balance will probably get us enough healthy seafood
to feed the world. We're already doing it, right. This
split between aquaculture and wild captures about fifty to fifty.
And you know, I think one of the issues there
is it's dominated by certain regions for aquaculture and by
fisheries for other If we can kind of build a
more inclusive system, right, if there's no reason that fishers
and aquaculturists can't really be directly involved with each other.
They already are in terms of raw materials. It's just
a matter of public perception and business modeling that prevents
it in some ways.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, no, vaguely, James, I would ask, after everything
you've experienced on laid the success, criticism, pressure, and opportunities,
what advice would you give somebody trying to build something
meaningful in today's digital world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a it's a scary, chaotic world out there.
But I would say, if you want to build something online,
something like what I've done right where this is now
what I do, and I wouldn't change it, right, do
it because you love it, not because you want to
make videos. You want to grow an audience, not because
you want to hit metrics. You should be okay with
doing with making videos, committing time to this if nobody's
going to watch it, because that's the reality when you start,
that's going to happen, and you should be okay with that.
You should be proud of what you do simply because
you've done it, you know, just like any other hobby.
That's the best way to start with this stuff because
if you seek viewership, fame, money and all that with
this kind of stuff, it's not going to happen because
you will move on. It is far. It's much better
go get a job than it is to pursue this path.
That's what you're out if that's what your goal is.
But you know, if you are looking for a creative outlet,
and if you think that what you have to show
hasn't been shown before, by all means, give it a shot.
Put real time into this, see what you can do.
You never know.
Speaker 1: Good advice. Thank you very much, Jim's I really appreciate
the chat and pow as we would say over here,
power to your elbow and good luck for your future.
Speaker 2: But I'm going to say catch on the flip side,
I feel that feels pretty Bostonian released