Our dying oceans? Documentary Triggers wave of concern (and criticism)
It is a searing indictment of how our oceans have been mismanaged and left in peril and has become one of the most talked- about films of the year.
Seaspiracy warns that without urgent action to halt commercial over- fishing and pollution our seas will be dead within decades.
However, the filmmakers have been forced to defend what has become one of the most watched documentaries on streaming giant Netflix as critics accuse the programme of citing unreliable statistics and sensationalising the crisis.
Directed by Ali Tabrizi, who was also behind the award- winning 2014 documentary Cowspiracy, the film warns commercial over- fishing is emptying the seas, disputes the claim that dolphin- safe tuna is, in fact, dolphin safe, and highlights so- called “blood shrimp”, a seafood industry built on slave labour and the abuse of human rights.
While many experts have spoken in support of the fundamental message of the film – that our oceans are over- fished and under threat – critics question a core message, that people should stop eating fish to reduce demand and slow commercial fishing, and have
dismissed a claim that our oceans will be empty by 2048.
However, Tabrizi has denied the film misrepresents the crisis adding: “We are not scientists nor did we claim to be. Despite there being some confusion about this particular projection, the overall state of fisheries are in severe decline.”
Travelling across the planet, the film leads to Scotland where activists condemn the pollution and animal welfare concerns surrounding the country’s salmon farms.
As well as footage of piles of dead fish and sea lice-infested live salmon, the film cites the 2018 claim from a senior nature conservation adviser at the National Trust for Scotland that the amount of organic waste from a single salmon farm in Scotland is the same as all of the country’s west-coast towns combined.
However, the Scottish Salmon Producers Organisation ( SSPO) has refuted the allegations that its industry is guilty of animal welfare abuses, leads to loss of wild fish stocks and pollutes the surrounding seas.
Dr Iain Berrill of the SSPO said: “While this film raises some very impor tant issues, the claims made against salmon farming in Scotland are wrong, misleading and inaccurate. To take just a few of these exaggerated and emotive claims – salmon farming is not responsible for degrading wild fish stocks for use in feed, lice on our fish are not out of control, and claims equating organic waste from salmon farms to human waste are misleading and have been repeatedly debunked.
“Farmed Scottish salmon swim and shoal freely in high-quality, cool seawater that is constantly being refreshed by tides and currents.”
Seaspiracy has also faced criticism over its blanket solution to the issues facing our oceans: to simply stop eating fish.
This has been challenged by defenders of those living in fishing communities in the developing world, who re l y on seafood to survive.
As Greenpeace states on its website, while those in more affluent countries may be able to cut fish out of their diets and replace it with something else: “A blanket ban on eating fish would unfairly disadvantage (developing) communities.
“It is industrialised fishing that is the true evil here, not traditional harvesters taking what they need to feed their family.”
And, although better regulation of commercial fishing has been advocated by marine experts in agreement with the film, some have said that to stop fishing our oceans will lead to more damage on land.
“There are sustainable fisheries and we are not damaging all of our marine environment, but we can always do more to protect it,” said Professor Paul G Fernandes, chair of fisheries science at the University of Aberdeen.
“All food production has environmental costs. Land has been damaged far more than the sea and extinction – or ‘defaunation’ – on land has been much worse than at sea so far. If we don’t get our protein from a sustainable proportion of free living wild animals at sea we will have to produce more of it on land, which will require more resources – space, water and energy – to produce, further deteriorating our terrestrial ecosystems.
“Not to mention the nitrogen release, carbon footprint and the welfare issues of keeping animals or plants in mass miserable captivity for generations.”