Seaspiracy fact vs fiction: The truth behind Netflix's controversial new documentary
The ocean will be empty of fish by 2048
Perhaps the most controversial of the claims in the documentary, this number stems from a 2006 paper, from which the lead author, Boris Worm, later distanced himself.
A follow up paper in 2009, which was co-authored by Mr Worm, found that in some areas there had been reduced rates of fishing, leading to some stock recovery, particularly in the US, Iceland and New Zealand.
“When you actually looked at the data it was based on, it was based on a massive extrapolation into the future,” said Bryce Stewart, a marine ecologist at the University of York.
“To see it appear in that film again was a real surprise, because it's a statistic that was questionable to begin with.”
The 2006 study used catch levels to work out what was happening to overall stocks of fish. However, that gives an inaccurate picture, said Ray Hilborn, a marine biologist at the University of Washington, who co-led the 2009 study.
“Catch is a very poor index of the abundance of fish. In many cases, catches are declining because we're regulating fisheries more intensely,” he said.
“We looked at trends in abundance and came to a very different conclusion. The abundance of fish in the half of the world that's well managed – it's increasing not declining.”
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Original description: film title: Seaspiracy, 2021 Netflix, Seaspiracy examines the global fishing industry, challenging notions of sustainable fishing and showing how human actions cause widespread environmental destruction., handout, ... Ali Tabrizi (Filmmaker and avid ocean-lover) in Seaspiracy. c. Lucy Tabrizi
Credit: Lucy Tabrizi
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Ali Tabrizi, a Kent-based filmmaker, is behind the controversial new documentary about the global fishing industry, as he set out to expose the damage being done to fish populations Credit: Lucy Tabrizi
It is not possible to have sustainable levels of fishing
One of the core messages of the film is that there is
no level of sustainable fishing.
Part of the answer to this depends on your definition of sustainable. The internationally recognised definition takes sustainable to mean that if you kept fishing at the same levels, overall stock levels will not drastically drop.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that 34.2 per cent of stocks worldwide are fished to unsustainable levels. The majority are fished at “maximum capacity”, meaning that higher levels would deplete the overall stock.
However, that doesn’t mean that sustainable by this definition is necessarily optimal. Reducing fishing can give some populations time to bounce back to even higher levels, with greater benefits.
There’s also a lot unknown about fish stock levels, because the nature of sealife makes data collection difficult.
“The documentary does a good job of skewering ‘sustainable fishing’,” said Charles Clover, the co-founder of the Blue Marine Foundation.
Arguments about the definition of sustainability aside, marine conservationists argue that it’s not true that there can be no fishing at optimal levels.
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Original description: film title: Seaspiracy, 2021 Netflix, Seaspiracy examines the global fishing industry, challenging notions of sustainable fishing and showing how human actions cause widespread environmental destruction., handout, ... Seaspiracy. c. Courtesy of Netflix © 2021
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Source: ©2021 Netflix, Inc.
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Seaspiracy examines the global fishing industry, challenging notions of sustainable fishing (a sustainable farm is seen here) and showing how human actions cause widespread environmental destruction
“There are examples of people fishing responsibly, and for the benefit of coastal communities,” said Mr Clover. “Saying that all fishing is irresponsible is just crass.”
We should stop eating fish
Given problems with certification, sustainability and slavery, the film concludes that the best thing to do is essentially eliminate seafood from your diet.
The film’s producer, Kip Andersen, is a prominent vegan who made the earlier documentary Cowspiracy, and has set up a
vegan meal planning subscription service that is linked from the Seaspiracy website.
However, critics and even the filmmaker, Ali Tabrizi, agree that expecting the world to stop eating fish is unrealistic, especially in places and cultures that depend on fish for food and jobs.
Whether those who have an easier choice to give up fish, such as in the UK, should do it, is open to argument.
Critics of the film argue that it is an overly simplistic message, which risks leaving management of the oceans to disengaged consumers and corporations who care about it the least.
“We need to get food from somewhere,” said Mr Stewart. “Fishing has quite a low environmental impact compared to many other production sources.”
Being more selective about what you eat is “a perfectly legitimate” message, Mr Hilborn said.
But he acknowledges it can be almost impossible for consumers to make fully informed decisions about the fish they eat. “It's all subjective about what you think is important. So, I certainly agree it's confusing for consumers." he added.
“This is going to put people off the thought that you can do anything about saving the world by taking responsible actions and there's actually a lot of responsible actions you can take,” said Mr Clover.
No certification can give consumers peace of mind
The documentary casts doubt over the credibility of certification from the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and of Dolphin Safe tuna. MSC declined to take part in the documentary, but said its certification process was independent and rigorous.
The International Marine Mammal Project (IMMP), which runs the dolphin safe tuna programme, said it had overseen the reduction of dolphin-kill levels by “more than 95 per cent, preventing the indiscriminate slaughter of more than 100,000 dolphins every year.”
Some marine experts are highly critical of the MSC, by far the most common certification body and say no eco-label can provide 100 per cent assurance.
“The MSC has managed to write an enormously complicated standard that excludes lots of really bad things that fisheries do,” said Mr Clover.
A 2012 study in the journal Marine Policy found that 31 per cent of MSC certified fisheries were found to be targeting overfished stocks. But it said “it is still reasonable to buy certified seafood”, because they were not as bad as non-certified.
“The percentage of moderately exploited, healthy stocks is three to four times higher in certified than in non-certified seafood," the study found.
George Clark, MSC programme director for the UK and Ireland, said: "Fisheries that are certified to the MSC's standard for sustainable seafood, including Cornish sardines and hake, cockles in the Thames Estuary and Scottish haddock and mussels, are taking part in a programme globally recognised as world-leading.
"Credit should be given to those fishermen for being at the forefront of sustainability, rather than trying to undermine the reforms they are delivering. The MSC requirements are rigorous, science-based and are helping protect oceans from overfishing."
Slavery is rife in the fishing trade
Human rights abuses, including forced labour, are well-documented within the industry, and are linked to overfishing, illegal fishing and global demand for cheap fish.
Many of the worst violations that have been documented occurred in east Asian waters, with much of the produce caught during this trade ending up in Western supermarkets.
A 2014 investigation in The Guardian found prawns sold in Tesco, Aldi and other supermarkets linked to trafficking, slavery and extreme violence in fishing boats off the coast of Thailand.
But the issue has also been found among African and Asian crew on domestic vessels in British and Irish fisheries, as well as in the waters of Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Russia and South Africa, and New Zealand.
Online databases such as the Seafood Slavery Risk Tool and the Global Slavery Index can give consumers information about which countries of origin are at particularly high risk for the use of forced labour.
Discarded fishing nets are a much greater threat to marine life than plastic straws
The film compares campaigns against
plastic straws, a tiny fraction of the waste in the ocean, to trying to save the rainforest by banning toothpicks. A fair point, said Mr Hilborn. “Plastic straws are a totally bogus issue."
But, some experts have taken issue with the suggestion in the film that fishing waste, rather than rubbish from the land, is by far the biggest plastics problem in our waters.
It is true that 46 per cent of the
Great Pacific Garbage Patch was found to be fishing nets, as the documentary claims
But, say scientists, that overlooks the fact that plastics used on land tend to accumulate in other places first, such as rivers and coasts, before breaking down into microplastics, which are more likely to sink.
Furthermore, said Mr Hilborn, focusing too much on plastics overlooks that the greatest danger to ocean health is climate change.
“Oceans produce oxygen, they sequester carbon, and they produce food, and I haven't seen any evidence that plastics have any impact on any of those,” he said.
