Ross Sea film aims to boost global profile
Peter Young’s campaign to protect Antarctica’s Ross Sea from fishing is going global this year, with his documentary The Last Ocean to be screened at a number of film festivals.
The documentary, released in August last year and described as ‘‘wild and wonderful’’ by the Dominion Post, will be screened again in Nelson at 7.10pm on Monday, and Mr Young will be at the Suter Cinema for a question-and-answer session afterwards.
Nelson is a base for New Zealand’s Antarctic toothfish effort, and he said he hoped that fishing industry representatives would attend.
He said that as someone with a background as a hunter-gatherer, and with experience working on fishing boats in Alaska, he was not against the fishing industry.
‘‘We just should not fish in these last areas. Let’s just protect this last vestige of an intact marine ecosystem. It’s a marginal fishery, it makes a little bit of money, and carries huge risks to life and the environment. It just doesn’t make sense.’’
He had been able to engage with fishing leaders nationally, but not so far in Nelson.
‘‘It would be great to get someone from the fishing industry to see it. That was the whole idea of the film, really.’’
After Monday’s screening, he would give an update on what had happened since the documentary was made, including a failed attempt to thrash out a more restrictive management regime for the Ross Sea at the recent meetings in Tasmania of the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), a body comprising the countries that fish legally in the Ross Sea.
The gathering, which lasted a fortnight, failed to agree on establishing no-take marine protected areas in Antarctica.
Mr Young said he hadn’t expected a marine protected area (MPA) to be agreed on at its first international hearing. ‘‘I was still really disappointed that New Zealand didn’t put forward a much stronger MPA. This still provides a great opportunity for New Zealand to step up to the plate.’’
He said the documentary’s first international screening would be in Germany.
‘‘We’re entering it for film festivals and it’s been accepted for quite a few, so this year’s going to be quite a big year for us. It will be interesting to take it international, because it’s an international story when we talk about the last ocean.’’
The fishing industry has argued that toothfish are only taken from 3 per cent of the Ross Sea and that CCAMLR stringently manages the fishing in balance with conservation.
Mr Young agreed that it was a tightly managed fishery, but said the fish were being caught in the most productive part of the Ross Sea, and CCAMLR’s plan would see the toothfish population decline to 50 per cent of its untouched state over 35 years, which would ‘‘destroy the ecosystem’’.
Two longliners fishing for the SealordTalley’s joint venture New Zealand Longline left Port Nelson for the toothfish season at the end of November. They will be away for several months.
A third boat, the Russian-flagged Sparta, also left the port after undergoing repairs and ice-strengthening following its holing by ice during the 2011-12 season. Its 32 Russian and Indonesian crew were stuck for 12 days until temporary repairs could be made and the South Korean icebreaker, Araon, was able to open a lane through the ice and escort the Sparta into open water.
The near-catastrophe, along with a fatal fire on a South Korean boat in the same area on January 11 last year, and the sinking of a third ship a year earlier, prompted criticism from environmental groups.
Green Party oceans spokesman Gareth Hughes said the pristine Antarctic environment was put at risk by ‘‘old, singlehulled, unsuitable fishing boats . . . that race to catch as much as they can despite the weather’’.