I've loved only two.

That first one,

it was more like a passionate affair.

It was a beautiful fish:

flavorful, textured, meaty,

a bestseller on the menu.

What a fish.

(Laughter)

Even better,

it was farm-raised to the supposed highest standards

of sustainability.

So you could feel good about selling it.

I was in a relationship with this beauty

for several months.

One day, the head of the company called

and asked if I'd speak at an event

about the farm's sustainability.

"Absolutely," I said.

Here was a company trying to solve

what's become this unimaginable problem for us chefs:

How do we keep fish on our menus?

For the past 50 years,

we've been fishing the seas

like we clear-cut forests.

It's hard to overstate the destruction.

Ninety percent of large fish, the ones we love --

the tunas, the halibuts, the salmons, swordfish --

they've collapsed.

There's almost nothing left.

So, for better or for worse,

aquaculture, fish farming, is going to be a part of our future.

A lot of arguments against it:

Fish farms pollute -- most of them do anyway --

and they're inefficient. Take tuna,

a major drawback.

It's got a feed conversion ratio

of 15 to one.

That means it takes fifteen pounds of wild fish

to get you one pound of farm tuna.

Not very sustainable.

It doesn't taste very good either.

So here, finally,

was a company trying to do it right.

I wanted to support them.

The day before the event,

I called the head of P.R. for the company.

Let's call him Don.

"Don," I said, "just to get the facts straight, you guys are famous

for farming so far out to sea, you don't pollute."

"That's right," he said. "We're so far out,

the waste from our fish gets distributed,

not concentrated."

And then he added,

"We're basically a world unto ourselves.

That feed conversion ratio? 2.5 to one," he said.

"Best in the business."

2.5 to one, great.

"2.5 what? What are you feeding?"

"Sustainable proteins," he said.

"Great," I said. Got off the phone.

And that night, I was lying in bed, and I thought:

What the hell is a sustainable protein?

(Laughter)

So the next day, just before the event, I called Don.

I said, "Don, what are some examples of sustainable proteins?"

He said he didn't know. He would ask around.

Well, I got on the phone with a few people in the company;

no one could give me a straight answer

until finally, I got on the phone

with the head biologist.

Let's call him Don too.

(Laughter)

"Don," I said,

"what are some examples of sustainable proteins?"

Well, he mentioned some algaes

and some fish meals,

and then he said chicken pellets.

I said, "Chicken pellets?"

He said, "Yeah, feathers, skin,

bone meal, scraps,

dried and processed into feed."

I said, "What percentage

of your feed is chicken?"

Thinking, you know, two percent.

"Well, it's about 30 percent," he said.

I said, "Don, what's sustainable

about feeding chicken to fish?"

(Laughter)

There was a long pause on the line,

and he said, "There's just too much chicken in the world."

(Laughter)

I fell out of love with this fish.

(Laughter)

No, not because I'm some self-righteous,

goody-two shoes foodie.

I actually am.

(Laughter)

No, I actually fell out of love with this fish because, I swear to God,

after that conversation, the fish tasted like chicken.

(Laughter)

This second fish,

it's a different kind of love story.

It's the romantic kind,

the kind where the more you get to know your fish,

you love the fish.

I first ate it at a restaurant

in southern Spain.

A journalist friend had been talking about this fish for a long time.

She kind of set us up.

(Laughter)

It came to the table

a bright, almost shimmering, white color.

The chef had overcooked it.

Like twice over.

Amazingly, it was still delicious.

Who can make a fish taste good

after it's been overcooked?

I can't,

but this guy can.

Let's call him Miguel --

actually his name is Miguel.

(Laughter)

And no, he didn't cook the fish, and he's not a chef,

at least in the way that you and I understand it.

He's a biologist

at Veta La Palma.

It's a fish farm in the southwestern corner of Spain.

It's at the tip of the Guadalquivir river.

Until the 1980s,

the farm was in the hands of the Argentinians.

They raised beef cattle

on what was essentially wetlands.

They did it by draining the land.

They built this intricate series of canals,

and they pushed water off the land and out into the river.

Well, they couldn't make it work,

not economically.

And ecologically, it was a disaster.

It killed like 90 percent of the birds,

which, for this place, is a lot of birds.

And so in 1982,

a Spanish company with an environmental conscience

purchased the land.

What did they do?

They reversed the flow of water.

They literally flipped the switch.

Instead of pushing water out,

they used the channels to pull water back in.

They flooded the canals.

They created a 27,000-acre fish farm --

bass, mullet,

shrimp, eel --

and in the process, Miguel and this company

completely reversed the ecological destruction.

The farm's incredible.

I mean, you've never seen anything like this.

You stare out at a horizon

that is a million miles away,

and all you see are flooded canals

and this thick, rich marshland.

I was there not long ago with Miguel.

He's an amazing guy,

like three parts Charles Darwin and one part Crocodile Dundee.

(Laughter)

Okay? There we are slogging through the wetlands,

and I'm panting and sweating, got mud up to my knees,

and Miguel's calmly conducting a biology lecture.

Here, he's pointing out a rare Black-shouldered Kite.

Now, he's mentioning the mineral needs of phytoplankton.

And here, here he sees a grouping pattern

that reminds him of the Tanzanian Giraffe.

It turns out, Miguel spent the better part of his career

in the Mikumi National Park in Africa.

I asked him how he became

such an expert on fish.

He said, "Fish? I didn't know anything about fish.

I'm an expert in relationships."

And then he's off, launching into more talk

about rare birds and algaes

and strange aquatic plants.

And don't get me wrong, that was really fascinating, you know,

the biotic community unplugged, kind of thing.

It's great, but I was in love.

And my head was swooning over that

overcooked piece of delicious fish I had the night before.

So I interrupted him. I said,

"Miguel, what makes your fish taste so good?"

He pointed at the algae.

"I know, dude, the algae, the phytoplankton,

the relationships: It's amazing.

But what are your fish eating?

What's the feed conversion ratio?"

Well, he goes on to tell me

it's such a rich system

that the fish are eating what they'd be eating in the wild.

The plant biomass, the phytoplankton,

the zooplankton, it's what feeds the fish.

The system is so healthy,

it's totally self-renewing.

There is no feed.

Ever heard of a farm that doesn't feed its animals?

Later that day, I was driving around this property with Miguel,

and I asked him, I said, "For a place that seems so natural,

unlike like any farm I'd ever been at,

how do you measure success?"

At that moment, it was as if

a film director called for a set change.

And we rounded the corner

and saw the most amazing sight:

thousands and thousands of pink flamingos,

a literal pink carpet for as far as you could see.

"That's success," he said.

"Look at their bellies, pink.

They're feasting."

Feasting? I was totally confused.

I said, "Miguel, aren't they feasting on your fish?"

(Laughter)

"Yes," he said.

(Laughter)

"We lose 20 percent of our fish

and fish eggs to birds.

Well, last year, this property

had 600,000 birds on it,

more than 250 different species.

It's become, today, the largest

and one of the most important

private bird sanctuaries in all of Europe."

I said, "Miguel, isn't a thriving bird population

like the last thing you want on a fish farm?"

(Laughter)

He shook his head, no.

He said, "We farm extensively,

not intensively.

This is an ecological network.

The flamingos eat the shrimp.

The shrimp eat the phytoplankton.

So the pinker the belly,

the better the system."

Okay, so let's review:

a farm that doesn't feed its animals,

and a farm that measures its success

on the health of its predators.

A fish farm, but also a bird sanctuary.

Oh, and by the way, those flamingos,

they shouldn't even be there in the first place.

They brood in a town

150 miles away,

where the soil conditions

are better for building nests.

Every morning, they fly

150 miles into the farm.

And every evening, they fly 150 miles back.

(Laughter)

They do that because they're able to follow

the broken white line

of highway A92.

(Laughter)

No kidding.

I was imagining a "March of the Penguins" thing,

so I looked at Miguel.

I said, "Miguel, do they fly

150 miles to the farm,

and then do they fly

150 miles back at night?

Do they do that for the children?"

He looked at me like I had just quoted a Whitney Houston song.

(Laughter)

He said, "No; they do it because the food's better."

(Laughter)

I didn't mention the skin of my beloved fish,

which was delicious -- and I don't like fish skin;

I don't like it seared, I don't like it crispy.