Netflix Documentary Seaspiracy: You’ll Never Want To Eat Fish After That

You like to eat fish? Then maybe you should watch this Netflix documentary.

Saskia Balser / watson.de

What was originally intended to be a tribute to the great blue seas has become a spectacular revelation story: filmmaker Ali Tabrizi traveled half the world for his documentary “Seaspiracy”, spoke to those responsible and often put himself in danger for Uncovering Hidden Truths About the Destruction of the Oceans. “Seaspiracy” examines the fishing industry and its enormous impact on the oceans and climate.

If you read the title of the documentary published today on Netflix, you may notice a similarity to the title “Cowspiracy”, which was released in 2014 and caused a lot of excitement with its disclosure of factory farming as one of the main causes of climate change. The similarity of the titles is not accidental: Kip Andersen, one of the producers of “Cowspiracy”, also produced the new marine documentary.

Starting with the horror news of whales stranded on the beach with their stomachs full of plastic, Tabrizi first addresses the problem of litter that the seas clearly have. However, he quickly realized that the greatest danger to whales is not ear swabs or straws, but the gigantic fishing nets that make up as much as 46 percent of the plastic in the world’s oceans.

And although whaling has been officially banned for decades, animals are still hunted in many places, just like dolphins. This has global effects: Tabrizi explains that whales keep the marine ecosystem in balance. They are also indispensable in the fight against the climate crisis, because they fertilize the ocean with phytoplankton, which, according to Tabrizi, absorbs four times more carbon dioxide each year than the Amazon rainforest and generates up to 95 percent of our oxygen. The effect whales have on climate was also recognized by the International Monetary Fund and recorded in a study in 2019. “When dolphins and whales die, the ocean dies. If the ocean dies, we die, ”says Tabrizi.

The reasons for this are difficult for the filmmaker to determine because he is constantly rejected during his research, interviews are rejected and his mission is characterized as “too dangerous”.

Sustainable fishing? There are none

Tabrizi, however, reveals what apparently not only organizations, but also governments want to hide. For example in Taiji, Japan. The tuna industry, which is worth billions of dollars, is booming there, and according to the filmmakers, dolphins should be slaughtered regularly to preserve it. The Dolphin Project and Peta take action against the slaughter of dolphins in Taiji. At the same time, sharks are being killed in Hong Kong for shark fin soup, 50 million sharks are said to die every year from bycatch alone. Does industrial fishing really have to act like this? Is there no more sustainable way?

Tabrizi speaks with numerous experts and employees from Öko-Labels wie «Dolphin Safe»which is supposed to show, for example, that no dolphin had to be killed by bycatch to catch a fish. It turns out that this label is not a guarantee. Observers who are supposed to check fishing boats for compliance are apparently bribed and the fishermen themselves lie because they earn more money with each tag awarded. He too The organization “MSC” for labeling fishery products from sustainable fisheries has come under severe criticism and refuses to make a statement to the filmmaker.

Captain Paul Watson, founder of the marine conservation organization Sea Shepherd says: “There is no sustainable fishing. There is not enough fish for that. Today everything is ‘sustainable’. But it is not sustainable. It’s a marketing ploy. “ It is becoming increasingly clear that too many people make money from industrial fishing, much of it illegal, and therefore cannot trust labels that suggest sustainability.

“There is a simple solution: leave the ocean alone”

So what is the alternative? Paul Watson says: “The ocean is our biggest carbon drain. To do something about climate change, we must first protect the ocean. There is a simple solution: leave him alone. “

If industrial fisheries continue with the same brutality as before, the seas will be empty in 2048, that’s what “Seaspiracy” predicts. According to National Geographic, a 2006 study came to the same conclusion. The prospects are not good, neither for the climate, nor for the biodiversity of the seas, nor for us humans. The only way out Tabrizi finds for himself: “The best thing she could do every day to protect the ocean and the marine animals she loved was not eat them.”