ForumforAg Food Systems Podcast Summary

In this edition of the Food Systems Podcast, recorded at the Forum’s Annual Conference 2025, Alex Turk talks to Fred Buyle, Freediving World Record holder, explorer and photographer.

Here is a summary of the conversation.

You are a freediving world record holder, an explorer and a photographer. You’re here as an inspirational speaker on “diving for answers”. Tell us about freediving: how much mindfulness is there behind it?

Freediving is the most natural way of exploring the ocean. It’s a very ancient art, with people starting to freedive over 4,500 years ago as pearl and sponge divers. It became a competitive sport; I got into it as a kid, and I was professional for 10 years. But my true motivation has always been exploring the ocean and its inhabitants. This passion led me to underwater photography and into a lot of different fields.

With oceans being the greatest carbon sink and central to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, how important is climate adaptation?

If we lose the ocean we die, every form of life on Earth will disappear. We talk a lot about land issues, but the ocean faces huge issues. We’ve lost around 90% of predatory fish in the last 50 years, and the acidification of the oceans is causing coral bleaching. These problems are difficult to see because they happen beneath the surface, but they are a global issue. Everything is linked, and my talk is about how we link the ocean and the land because we are part of the same planet.

What will be the message about how important that link is to mitigate biodiversity loss from the land, the sea, the air?

The solution we need for a better world requires a systemic approach. We cannot just protect the land and the sea separately; everything is connected. If you throw something in a river, it will eventually get into the ocean. Plastic, for example, decomposes into microplastics that are ingested by fish and, eventually, by us. What we put in our fields also ends up in the ocean, so every little thing we do has consequences.

Are you disappointed when you hear things like seabed mining being announced by the Trump administration? We don’t know what that effect would be, but we can say it won’t be good.

I’m not super afraid about deep-sea mining because I don’t believe we have the resources to do it, to make it a profitable industry right now. I think we should focus more on things we can change, like the waste of subsidies used for big fishing fleets in Europe and, of course, climate change.

So your message is that we can all make a difference; be more frugal, avoid  unnecessary disturbance?

Yes, that’s what I’ve been voicing for 20 years. We can all make a difference because it’s the end consumer who will determine what happens in the food industry. For example, if you eat meat three times a week instead of every day, the impact will be huge. We will have to reduce our footprint on the planet at some point, whether we like it or we don’t.

We heard NASA astronaut Mike Massimino talk about heavenly beauty and the emotion he felt looking at the Earth. Do you feel the same from looking from the ocean up?

Yes, that is what still motivates me to go there after 45 years of freediving. It’s a very similar approach to what an astronaut has. It’s a silent activity, which allows the fish to come to us. However, we don’t belong to the ocean. We are welcome for a short time but it’s not our home, and we must eventually go back to land as we are land animals.

You can watch or listen to this podcast on the Website, iTunes, Spotify or Podbean.