Tuna triumph

P.E.I. documentary has sparked discussions on sustainable fisheries

A P.E.I. documentary filmmaker is riding high on a wave of success.

John Hopkins has spent much of the past year travelling to film festivals and screenings for his documentary film, “Bluefin”, while earning international accolades along the way.

Since the film’s first screening at the Atlantic Film Festival in fall 2016, Bluefin has picked up some major awards, plenty of nominations and at least 22 film festival selections.

“At Raindance (Film Festival) it was selected from over 10,000 international submissions in all categories and only five were chosen. It’s a really prestigious festival in the U.K., so that was great,” Hopkins said following a recent screening of the film hosted by the UPEI Environmental Society, Save Our Seas and Shores P.E.I. and Cinema Politica Charlottetown.

The film also won the Wildlife Award in the San Francisco International Ocean Festival by beating out the popular Netflix documentary Chasing Coral. “We were going up against the biggest docs in the world, going out there “Chasing Coral”, and we won,” said Hopkins, with the film also being selected for the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema in Toronto as part of the Films Changing the World Series and winning prizes at the 2017 Santa Barbara International Film Festival and the 2016 Lunenburg DocFest. More important than the awards, Hopkins said the film has also brought together different groups, from chefs and fishermen to scientists and tuna buyers, to start discussing ways of finding more sustainable seafood. The documentary explores the sudden abundance of tuna off the shores of P.E.I.’s North Lake, which is also called “The Tuna Capital of the World,” despite scientific assessments that stocks are rapidly dwindling from overfishing and declining forage fish stocks. Hopkins, who wrote and directed the film, noted the tuna are so starved they’ve begun approaching boats to take bait directly from fishermen.

“It’s been confusing for fishermen here because they’ve seen so many fish they can’t believe its endangered, even though they know the fish are acting abnormally,” he said.

Hopkins said the film has also been well received by members of P.E.I.’s fishing community. “We’ve had a very good reaction from the fishing community and they’ve been appreciative,” said Hopkins, who is now speaking out on the depletion of herring stocks. Hopkins said the herring stocks in North Lake have already collapsed since the documentary’s release and noted herring feeds tuna, whales, sharks and could be disastrous for P.E.I.’s lobster industry. “We’ve learned absolutely nothing from the cod, we’re making all the same mistakes with the herring,” said Hopkins. “We have a serious situation on P.E.I. with this wildlife and it’s going to impact fisheries. The way they’ve been doing it is not sustainable whatsoever. Basically, we’ve lost all our groundfish, and all we’ve got left now that herring has collapsed is lobster.

“And that’s next.”