Seaspiracy, a documentary-styled film released on Netflix this week, intends to shock, and on that count it succeeds.
The 90-minute exposé shows ocean pollution and its vast effects on marine life; it displays grotesque images of dolphins and whales being slaughtered and of vast bycatch species dying, alleging that commercial fisheries have little regard for marine animals and birds; and it outright dismisses aquaculture for its use of marine ingredients and for what it says are poor culture environments.
With the financial backing of Hollywood star and environmental activist Leonardo DiCaprio, Seaspiracy follows in the footsteps of the similarly produced film Cowspiracy, released in 2014. Like its predecessor, this new film’s clear aim is to turn viewers off of animal proteins in favor of plant-based diets. It doesn’t pull any punches in doing so, alleging:
— That the oceans will be empty of fish in 27 years and will become a barren wasteland
— That aquaculture’s use of fishmeal and fish oil in feeds reduces it to “wild fishing in disguise”
— That farmed salmon are raised in lice-plagued waters and the fish are “swimming in circles in their own filth”
— Dismisses the concept of sustainable seafood entirely
— That the best action is to abstain from any seafood consumption whatsoever.
To make his case, director Ali Tabrizi exhibits victims of forced labor on fishing vessels, notably those from previously documented cases in Thailand. One person who survived tells of physical abuse and the constant threat of death from vessel operators.
Tabrizi also takes on the leading seafood certification group, the Marine Stewardship Council, and concludes that its blue label is purely financially motivated. He describes a shroud of secrecy hanging over the seafood industry that’s aimed at controlling and protecting the financial interests of seafood producers. While MSC did not answer his questions on film, it issued a response upon the film’s release:
“There is a crisis in our oceans, and an urgent need to end overfishing. However, it is wrong to claim that there is no such thing as sustainable fishing and that the only solution to stop eating fish. Some of the problems that the film highlights – bycatch, overfishing and destruction of marine ecosystems – are precisely the issues the MSC certification process is designed to address.”
MSC was not alone in voicing its discontent with the film, which the New York Times panned, calling it “lost in a sea of murky conspiratorial thinking.” Seafood producers, service providers and industry associations around the world swiftly came out in defense of fishing and aquaculture. In the days prior to Seaspiracy’s release the United States-based National Fisheries Institute said it appealed to Netflix to distinguish between legitimate documentaries and propaganda.
“The concern with some slickly produced propaganda pieces, masquerading as ‘documentaries,’ is that audiences will not recognize the film’s true agenda [as] a vegan indoctrination movie,” the organization said in a statement.
“We know the producer is trying to convince an audience not to eat seafood. He’s gone into filmmaking with a desired outcome for his audience, and that’s not documentary making, it’s propaganda,” Gavin Gibbons, VP, communications at NFI, told the Advocate. “We know from Tabrizi’s previous movies, Cowspiracy and What The Health, that the facts are very relative when it comes to this filmmaker.”
Soon after its release, NFI began debunking some of the key arguments the film makes. “The idea that the oceans will be empty by 2048 is based on a completely debunked 2006 statistic, refuted by the author of the original study. The 2048 statistic was put to rest by a follow-up report in the journal Science released in 2009 under the title New hope for fisheries,” it noted.
UK-based Seafish promptly listed 10 reasons to “feel good” about buying seafood, saying, “films like this are designed to shock and it doesn’t always suit to highlight the good work that is happening (in the UK and beyond) to ensure our fisheries are managed sustainably.”
Seaspiracy director Tabrizi interviews Richard Oppenlander, owner of a vegan company and animal rescue sanctuary, who endorses the call to ban fishing in 30 percent of the oceans by 2030 based on his calculation that “less than 1 percent of our oceans are being regulated,” a point that NFI retorted is “not only inaccurate, it’s nonsensical.”
In his coverage of illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing in Africa, Tabrizi claims that one in every three wild caught fish imported into the United States were caught illegally and therefor sold illegally, a statistic that prominent U.S. fisheries researcher Ray Hilborn wrote was not credible, and that the retraction of the approach has been a long, drawn-out process.
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