Shereen Ali

By the year 2048, most fish species in the plan­et's oceans may well be dead, dri­ven to ex­tinc­tion by us hu­mans. Such col­lapse will be large­ly due to su­per-ef­fi­cient fish­ing tech­nolo­gies which are over­whelm­ing fish species' ca­pac­i­ty to bounce back.

But it doesn't have to be this way. If we es­tab­lish pro­tect­ed ma­rine sanc­tu­ar­ies, and reg­u­late fish­ing sus­tain­ably, we can share the plan­et with fish for a long time to come. These ideas were ex­plored by ex­perts in the re­cent­ly screened 2009 UK film The End of the Line, shown at UWI as part of the Green Screen en­vi­ron­men­tal film se­ries or­gan­ised by Sus­tain T&T.

Now in its fourth year, Green Screen, aims to ed­u­cate peo­ple on a range of en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues through film. In this year's se­ries which ran from Oc­to­ber 28 to No­vem­ber 7, films ranged from full-length fea­tures such as the 2014 US film Virun­ga (about the bat­tle to save bio­di­ver­si­ty in the bat­tle-torn Con­go) to short lo­cal films like the 2013 T&T film The Blue and the Gold (about one woman's quest to bring the blue and gold macaws back to the Nar­i­va Swamp).

On No­vem­ber 3, Green Screen fo­cused on fish life with two films: The End of the Line, made in the UK, and Caribbean Fish Sanc­tu­ar­ies, made in Bar­ba­dos. Af­ter the films, Marc De Ver­teuil, di­rec­tor of the in­de­pen­dent en­vi­ron­men­tal ad­vo­ca­cy group Pa­pa Bois Con­ser­va­tion, dis­cussed re­lat­ed T&T is­sues and chaired a ques­tion-and-an­swer ses­sion at the UWI Teach­ing and Learn­ing Cen­tre venue for the event.

The two films gen­er­at­ed aware­ness of the glob­al scope of the an­ni­hi­la­tion fac­ing fish life, and some pos­si­ble so­lu­tions to this. The dis­cus­sion ses­sion af­ter­wards raised many ques­tions about what T&T might be do­ing to pro­tect and con­serve fish life in our own ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters.

Caribbean Fish Sanc­tu­ar­ies

(2012, Bar­ba­dos, 22 min)

The sec­ond of two films shown that evening was a short­er doc­u­men­tary on prob­lems fac­ing Caribbean fish­eries, and some so­lu­tions that are ac­tu­al­ly work­ing. It por­trayed some suc­cess­ful, in­spir­ing ex­am­ples of re­gion­al ma­rine re­serves, in­clud­ing Blue­fields Bay in Ja­maica, the Soufriere Ma­rine Re­serve of St Lu­cia, and the Hol Chan Ma­rine Re­serve off Be­lize.

The film ex­plained that glob­al warm­ing and coral bleach­ing, com­bined with over­fish­ing, are mak­ing more bar­ren reefs in the re­gion, es­pe­cial­ly off Ja­maica's shores, where for years now, fish­er­men have just been catch­ing ba­by fish be­cause there are not enough larg­er, ma­ture fish to re­plen­ish the stocks. Ja­maican fish­er­man Cavin Lat­tiebu­dare is filmed say­ing: "Fish­ing (is) now hand-to-mouth."

In 2007 Ja­maica es­tab­lished five new fish sanc­tu­ar­ies; to­day this has in­creased to 14, in­clud­ing the Blue­fields Bay sanc­tu­ary which the film says is achiev­ing suc­cess–be­cause the fish­er­men were ex­ten­sive­ly con­sult­ed be­fore­hand, and sup­port­ed the need to con­serve fish. They now help to pa­trol the bay. The film al­so ex­plored the Soufriere Ma­rine Man­age­ment Area (SM­MA) of St Lu­cia, in the shad­ow of the Pitons. Launched in 1995, the ma­rine re­serves here have re­sult­ed in a four­fold in­crease in the to­tal weight of fish in the sanc­tu­ary, and a three­fold in­crease in weight of fish caught out­side of the sanc­tu­ary, over a six-year pe­ri­od, the film said. The suc­cess­es are the re­sult of long con­sul­ta­tion with all lo­cal stake­hold­ers to in­form the plan­ning and struc­ture of the SM­MA in the first place.

Be­lize's Hol Cahn Ma­rine Re­serve, formed in 1987, is an­oth­er suc­cess sto­ry, the film said. This re­serve cov­ers ap­prox­i­mate­ly 18 sq km (4,448 acres) of coral reefs, sea­grass beds, and man­grove for­est, and has suc­ceed­ed in re­plen­ish­ing fish stocks in the re­serve ar­eas, grow­ing larg­er fish, and gen­er­at­ing jobs for many lo­cal small busi­ness­es which ben­e­fit from the great div­ing, the rich ma­rine life and the tourism spin­offs. The Be­lize Gov­ern­ment con­sult­ed ex­ten­sive­ly with all lo­cal stake­hold­ers in plan­ning the re­serve.

Now: how many ma­rine re­serves does T&T have? No-one at the film screen­ing on Mon­day could re­al­ly say for sure.

The End of the Line

(2009, UK, 85 min)

The End of the Line film is based on the 2004 book The End of the Line: How Over­fish­ing Is Chang­ing the World and What We Eat, writ­ten by jour­nal­ist Charles Clover, a for­mer en­vi­ron­ment ed­i­tor of the Dai­ly Tele­graph (Lon­don) and a cur­rent colum­nist of the Sun­day Times (Lon­don). The British news­pa­per The In­de­pen­dent called Clover's book "per­sua­sive and des­per­ate­ly dis­turb­ing.....the mar­itime equiv­a­lent of Silent Spring." Clover's book de­scribed the ruth­less hor­ror of how mod­ern fish­ing is de­stroy­ing not on­ly fish pop­u­la­tions, but ocean ecosys­tems, and con­clud­ed that cur­rent world­wide fish con­sump­tion is un­sus­tain­able. It showed how of­fi­cial fig­ures on fish stocks have been wrong for years; how il­le­gal fish­ing is plun­der­ing stocks; and how cur­rent tech­nolo­gies are mak­ing fish­ing like a form of war­fare against life forms that can­not hope to sur­vive. No "re­source"–even the fish in the sea–is in­fi­nite.

The film in­ter­pre­ta­tion of this book con­tains star­tling­ly beau­ti­ful as well as bru­tal im­agery, in­ter­wo­ven with sober in­ter­views with re­search sci­en­tists such as Boris Worm, pro­fes­sor of ma­rine bi­ol­o­gy at Dal­housie Uni­ver­si­ty in Hal­i­fax, No­va Sco­tia.

Open­ing scenes show the swift­ly-mov­ing fil­a­ments of tiny ma­rine or­gan­isms, awash in translu­cent blue wa­ters, hint­ing at the beau­ty, di­ver­si­ty and fragili­ty of ma­rine life. Im­ages of re­silience in­clude healthy, mus­cu­lar-look­ing bluefin tu­na, swim­ming pow­er­ful­ly in sil­ver-blue shoals like preda­to­ry Mafiosi gangs of the deep, tor­pe­do­ing their way through the world's oceans.

But then lat­er in the doc­u­men­tary, we are shown grim shots of mas­sive, bloody fish butch­ery, and con­vey­or belts of end­less num­bers of dead fish. The sheer scale of the dev­as­ta­tion of fish life (and myr­i­ad oth­er forms of sea life) at the hands of in­dus­tri­alised fish­ing fleets tells a ter­ri­ble sto­ry of plun­der and waste. Fish­ing boats rou­tine­ly use so­phis­ti­cat­ed sonar, radar, and thou­sands of miles of lines and nets–even il­le­gal spot­ter air­craft–to track and kill their prey, who gen­er­al­ly don't stand a chance.

The film pow­er­ful­ly por­trays the 1992 col­lapse of cod in the Grand Banks of New­found­land, a place where for 500 years, the cod used to be so plen­ti­ful that a fish­ing cap­tain in 1500 once wrote it was "so thick by the shore that we hard­ly have been able to row a boat through them." But all that life end­ed due to cen­turies of too much hunt­ing. The cod sim­ply reached a point where they couldn't sur­vive. Since the ban­ning of fish­ing in New­found­land in 1992, stocks still have not re­cov­ered.

The film al­leged that Japan's sprawl­ing Mit­subishi con­glom­er­ate was de­lib­er­ate­ly dri­ving the en­dan­gered bluefin tu­na to ex­tinc­tion so its prof­itable stock­pile of frozen fish would sky­rock­et in val­ue.

In one mov­ing scene, a man com­ments on how crazy hu­man be­ings must be, to wipe out en­tire fish species so thought­less­ly and stu­pid­ly: "I feel (...) the sea is go­ing to be dead," he says at one point, in a kind of stunned way.

The End of the Line was the first ma­jor film to look at such dev­as­tat­ing im­pacts of over­fish­ing. Its re­search re­vealed that a quar­ter of the world's fish stocks were be­ing ex­ploit­ed to ex­tinc­tion, and a fur­ther half were al­ready at their max­i­mum ca­pac­i­ty.

Shrimp trawl­ing, in par­tic­u­lar, is shown to be lethal not on­ly to shrimps, but whole un­der­wa­ter ecosys­tems: it scrapes all life from the seabeds, life that may nev­er re­cov­er, the film ex­plained. This form of fish­ing is said to be a mil­lion times more de­struc­tive to life than oil or gas ex­plo­ration.

But in the face of all this bad news, the film re­minds us that we have the pow­er to change it–and that the dev­as­ta­tion is re­versible. The film sug­gests sev­er­al proven meth­ods to re­build fish stocks and stop the waste. These in­clude con­trol­ling the fish­ing of threat­ened species, es­tab­lish­ing net­works of pro­tect­ed ma­rine parks where fish are safe to breed and grow, and ed­u­cat­ing con­sumers to on­ly buy fish from sus­tain­ably run fish­eries.

The film cites Alas­ka as a great ex­am­ple of a place which is suc­ceed­ing in man­ag­ing its fish­eries well. And the film makes the point that where­as glob­al­ly, gov­ern­ments sub­sidise col­laps­ing fish­eries to the tune of US$30 bil­lion a year (it's ar­gued these sub­si­dies ac­tu­al­ly dri­ve the over­fish­ing and wors­en the en­vi­ron­men­tal de­ple­tion), it would cost on­ly half that amount, or about US$12-15 bil­lion, to fund a net­work of glob­al ma­rine re­serves to give fish a chance.