I grew up in a water-loving family. The boatbuilders, Coast Guard auxiliary members, and fishermen in my family taught me to respect and appreciate our shared waters. I learned the value of hard work during 3 A.M. wakeups to go salmon fishing off the coast of Washington and experienced the wonder of marine life during snorkeling trips.
Although I now live inland, my love for protecting waterways hasn’t ceased. I recently watched Seaspiracy, a relatively new documentary film made for Netflix. Here are some key takeaways from this film highlighting the tragedy of both the plastic crisis and the fishing industry.
Plastic Is Still a Problem
The documentary begins with our young protagonist eager to expose the impact of plastic on marine life. Quickly, the story evolves and the filmmaker learns that the Great Pacific Garbage patch (a floating mass of plastic in the ocean) contains 46 percent fishing nets, so we jump to explore the fishing industry.
Multiple interviews are conducted with oceanic organizations whose messaging revolves around consumers and their plastic straw usage. The interviewer is interested to know why so much time is spent trying to change consumer purchasing patterns when the fishing industry is largely responsible for plastic in our oceans. I learned that there are actually a lot of politics involved in the anti-plastic movement that dictate what consumers are told about the actual state of plastic in the ocean.
The film exposes an interesting link between a funding source and a big fish in the seafood industry, but I’ll leave that for the film to explain!
I do disagree with the main point from our filmmaker here. While the fishing industry as a whole is largely responsible for a hefty portion of plastic pollution, so are consumer actions. There’s only so much progress we can make by boycotting seafood, and reducing plastic consumption absolutely does make an immediate impact.
As someone interested in reducing my impact, I’ve switched to using shampoo, conditioner and face wash bars, three very noticeable but positive changes to my routine. Most plastic bottles aren’t actually recycled, so I can see how these small swaps are reducing my personal plastic consumption and therefore, benefitting the planet.
Dolphin Safe Fish Isn’t Actually Real
Across industries, certifications are often used as a sales tool more than a rigorous analysis of a company’s supply chain. Unfortunately, this is true for the seafood industry and it’s for a fairly obvious reason.
If you purchase a can of tuna, it might have a nice blue “dolphin-safe” logo on the can. This logo is meant to communicate to consumers that zero dolphins were hurt in the hunting of these fish. Or, is it?
It’s nearly impossible for any fishing boat to not catch dolphins in their net by accident. That’s called bycatch, and it causes at least 300,000 ocean animal deaths per year.
In Seaspiracy, the filmmaker speaks with various nonprofit organizations to get to the root of what “dolphin-safe” actually means. In the end, we learn that it’s kind of a bogus claim since no one really knows what happens out on open waters. I found this to be the most convincing and well-founded argument of the entire film.
Modern Slavery Exists in the Seafood Industry
Forced labor exists in many industries, like fashion and agriculture, but it’s also used to fuel the world’s desire for seafood. Particularly in Asia, migrant workers are lured to jobs in the seafood industry only to become modern-day slaves.
Seaspiracy did some courageous work to unearth the connections between modern slavery and the seafood that ends up on our plates. Albeit life-threatening, the filmmakers continued to push for information to show the world the exact origin of their seafood favorites.
While the supply chains are complex and host many moral gray areas, it is important for consumers to understand the true cost of eating fish.
Fish Farms Are Not the Answer
If you’ve ever seen “farm-raised” beautifully pink salmon at the grocery store, it’s probably not 100% natural. I previously didn’t know very much about the fish farming industry and imagined (much like my fellow consumers) that farm-raised salmon was healthy, clean, and 100% natural. Unfortunately, that’s not so much the case.
Seaspiracy shows a montage of fish farms, which are essentially cages in the ocean where fish are jammed together in confined spaces and fed “fish feed”, which yes, is similar to what fish from the pet store eat. While it sounds more sustainable, this fish feed is actually incredibly intensive to produce and requires tons of fish to process into tiny pellets, which aren’t as nutritious as the real deal.
Not only that, farmed fish like salmon might be injected with actual pink dye to give them that radiant, salmon color that consumers desire. Plus, close confinement can cause diseases among fish like sea lice and even chlamydia.
We Can’t Regulate Seafood
Humans have (somewhat) successfully raised livestock for human consumption. We can call a cow grass-fed and their meat organic if it’s farmed in accordance with those specifications, but what of the seafood industry?
It’s clear that factory farming isn’t a good solution for harvesting healthy fish, so how do we even know what we’re eating when we eat seafood?
Heavy metals and toxic substances bioaccumulate up the food chain. A 2020 study tested various fish species for heavy metals and found blue tuna to have the highest concentration of these substances. Humans are a part of this same food chain.
One point Seaspiracy failed to make is the connection between microplastics in fish and human consumption of fish. There are 51 trillion microplastic beads in the ocean, which have slowly broken free from their larger connected forms of plastic bags, fishing nets, straws, and bottles. Humans ingest thousands of microplastics per year and we still don’t quite know how that affects our health, because there’s no safe level of plastic exposure.
A Final Review of Seaspiracy
There are a number of unfounded arguments in Seaspiracy that I don’t agree with, and the film has received some criticism already for interviews being taken out of context. However, the film does shed light on critical human rights abuses and public health concerns, nested within the larger context of the health of our shared planet.
If you haven’t seen it yet, I do recommend it. You can make your own conclusions based on the information given and no matter what, you’ll learn something about how humankind’s impact on the oceans hasn’t gone unnoticed by marine life.
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