A documentary on Netflix is causing quite a bit of commotion in the world of the fisheries and overall in the (marine science) world. When Netflix announced this documentary I was excited and curious as based on the trailer it would tackle the important subject of overfishing and the affect it has on our ocean. I am talking about Seaspiracy, I do believe it is an absolute must watch as it will open your eyes on the effects that commercial fishing has on the health of our oceans. And many of the complex topics that can be found within the ocean are explained in an easy and understandable way. The overall message of Seaspiracy is really strong and should definitely be covered and is in my opinion extremely important! Because at the moment overfishing is definitely an issue in our seas and oceans and we should reduce our intake of fish. But stop eating fish altogether is simply not feasible for the entire world. And is a plant based diet when looking at an environmental point of view really that much better for our world? ( I am going to leave that question hanging because that is a completely different subject and not the point of this post)
After watching Seaspiracy, it left me with mixed feelings and I can completely understand all the commotion that surrounds Seaspiracy. All the commotion is probably a good thing as it does wake even more people up to everything that is happing regarding (over)fishing and other issues within our oceans and makes it less of something that would be considered out of sight and out of mind. But I must say that I wasn’t entirely sure about some things that were mentioned within the documentary.
Some of the facts mentioned really triggered me as I felt the need to fact check them.
Take the fact in 2048 there are no more fish left in the ocean. This is information is outdated. One research paper did state this in 2006 (Worm, Et al.,2006). But later after other scientist looked at the research and after many discussions within the scientific fisheries community, the research was retracted, because of mistakes within the data used. In 2009 these same researches published a new research (Worm, Et al., 2009), and here with the new data input they found that, on average the fish stocks were not on collapse for 2048.
There is so much to say about this documentary, but I am going to keep it to sustainable fisheries, the feasibility of a no fish diet and plastic pollution.
Sustainable fisheries & no fish diet
In the documentary they say that sustainable fisheries does not and cannot exist? But is this really the case? Sustainable fishing is most definitely possible. There are methods that would support the existence of sustainable fishing. One of these methods is maximum sustainable yield (MSY). The aim of MSY is to fish the same amount of fish year after year, while being sure that there are enough fish left within the population to reproduce and keep the fish population healthy. The numbers of fish that is allowed to fish from a population is represented by the total allowable catch (TAC). This should mean that the population of fish stays healthy without a collapse and is thus sustainable. But of course there are challenges that come with the MSY method, as population numbers fluctuate and there are other factors that could impact a population like a change of environmental conditions.
Another way and a new way of making sure that a population stay healthy is through the implementation of Marine Protected Areas (MPA), but what is important is that these MPA’s contain a no-fish zone. In this zone it would be prohibited to catch fish. This would then allow for the fish within the MPA to grow and reproduce. At some point the MPA would be full with a healthy fish population, which will lead to fish starting to repopulate the waters, in which is allowed to fish. This method has been proven to work in various regions. For example in the MPA of Cabo Pulmo in Baja California, Mexico.
Because the documentary makers believe that sustainable fishing is not possible at all, they make the statement that everyone should simply stop eating fish. This is, however, very much impossible. As over 3 billion people, mostly from poor underdeveloped countries, are completely depend on fisheries as their source of food and income. When they fish they only take what they need in order to survive. For other countries fisheries has is so important within their culture that it will simply never happen. We, in the western world, should definitely reduce our intake of fish, because it is partly our consumption that drives the fishing industry. And we actually could have an influence on the fishing industry by demanding that the fish is caught sustainably and we can do this through NGO’s (non-governmental organisation). This is what NGO’s try to accomplish by educating the consumers and trying on a higher level to influence the fisheries industries. There is an interesting paper which talks about reducing industrial overcapacity (overfishing) and encourage small-scale local fisheries to save the supply of seafood. In other words when you eat fish, get it locally or otherwise just ask for fish that comes from your own country.
Plastic pollution
Another fact that I wanted to check and share with you, was the statement that 50% of all plastic pollution in the sea comes from fisheries. This one is a bit complicated, because in a way it is true, we just need to place the percentage in the right context. And this context is, uhm, well there are two different ways to look at it. That is to say I found two researches which mention 50% and pollution from fisheries combined. The first one is about the global percentage of all plastic. 80% of all plastic in the world comes from land based sources, and 20% from marine sources. Of this 20%, half comes from fisheries. In other words 50% of marine sources of plastic pollution comes from fisheries. But when you look at it globally its actually roughly 10% (Li, Et al.,2016). I must say there are still debates about the actual percentage of marine sources, there is a paper which also talks about this estimate being 28%.
There is another research where they looked at the weight of all the plastic within the great Pacific garbage patch. Here they estimated the weight of all the plastic within the Pacific garbage patch. They estimated that 79 thousand tonnes of plastic floats within the pacific garbage patch, of this 79 thousand tonnes, 46% was comprised from fishing nets. So this percentage talks about the weight of the plastic within the garbage patch and only for the Pacific. Further, in this same research they estimate that around 28% of the global plastic input into the ocean comes from fishing, aquaculture and shipping. Which makes it very clear that not 50% of all plastic garbage in the ocean comes from fishing (Lebreton, Et al. 2018). These were the only ‘’50%’’ numbers I could find within the scientific research papers and no-where states that 50% of all plastic in the ocean comes from fishing. Which in turn means that everything we can do on a personal level does help to fight the plastic pollution problem in the world! It of course doesn't mean that it makes it less of a problem because ghost nets, which is the name for lost and discarded fishing nets, do keep on ''fishing'' and thus killing. And NGO's have been campaigning about ghost nets for years. Just keep in mind that most of the plastic pollution globally comes from land, which is where you and I can make a difference.
The depicting of plastic pollution was very dark and didn’t over much hope, but you ought to know there is always hope. In Europe there is an amazing initiative from fishermen to clean our seas. This initiative is called : fishing for litter. This project started in the Netherlands in 2001 and in 2004 this project became international. Now countries like Ireland, UK and Norway are also part of this initiative. And there are more projects like the Ocean Clean up which aim to clean up our oceans.
Again I would strongly advice to watch this documentary as it does show how the fishing industry works and shows the issues that come with the fishing industry, like fishing subsidies (which definitely needs to change and is a big part of the problem), slavery, overfishing, whaling and shark finning. But, please, do remember that this documentary sometimes shows a black and white version. Further Seaspiracy follows one narrative and doesn’t really show the complexity of these issues and the complexity of our world. It aims to shock its audiences and gives a very bleak future. But remember there is still hope of recovery. If you want to have more hope I highly recommend reading or watching ‘’A life on our planet’’ by Sir David Attenborough. As he describes ways on how we can still save our planet and improve its and our own well-being.
Below I have added a couple of papers and links if you want to learn and read more about the issues I described in this blog. I also added two YouTube links to videos which I found very informative in a nuanced way (not everyone is probably keen on reading scientific papers as they aren’t always the easiest to read). I also added links to the reaction statements of Oceana and MSC to Seaspiracy. As I do believe that you should always keep an open mind and look at problems from different perspectives.
Lebreton, L., Slat, B., Ferrari, F., Sainte-Rose, B., Aitken, J., Marthouse, R., … & Noble, K. (2018). Evidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic. Scientific Reports, 8(1), 4666. Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w.
Li, W. C., Tse, H. F., & Fok, L. (2016). Plastic waste in the marine environment: A review of sources, occurrence and effects. Science of the Total Environment, 566, 333-349. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969716310154.
UNEP & FAO (2009). Abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear. FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Technical Paper No. 523; UNEP Regional Seas Reports and Studies No. 185. Available at: http://www.fao.org/docrep/011/i0620e/i0620e00.htm.
Zeller, D.& Pauly, D. (2019) Viewpoint: Back to the future for fisheries, where will we choose to go. Cambridge university press. Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-sustainability/article/viewpoint-back-to-the-future-for-fisheries-where-will-we-choose-to-go/426C9BB9369552CC81A1A10E95573F53
Hilborn, R. 2007. Biodiversity loss in the ocean: how bad is it? Science 316: 1281-1282. Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17546725/
Hilborn, R. 2007. Moving to sustainability by learning from successful fisheries . Available at:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17626466/
Worm, B. Et al., 2006. Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services.Available at: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/314/5800/787
Worm, B. Et al., 2009. Rebuilding Global Fisheries. Available at: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/325/5940/578
Reaction Oceana: https://oceana.org/statement-oceana-netflixs-seaspiracy?utm_campaign=2021&utm_source=hpib1&utm_medium=website&utm_id=KEJa8EEtnPexxi
Reaction MSC: https://www.msc.org/media-centre/news-opinion/news/2021/03/26/response-to-netflix-seaspiracy-film
Marine Biologist Reacts & Reviews ¦ SEASPIRACY - Part1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kskUT_HYJk
SEASPIRACY Netflix review: Marine Biologist response - Scientists vs Public [NOT A DEBUNK]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMvI5flTVeg
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