Everything You Need to Know from 'Seaspiracy'

Mar 29, 2021

"We are at war with the oceans. And if we win this war, we're going to lose it all, because mankind is not able to live on this planet with a dead sea."
-Cyrill Gutsch,
Seaspiracy

It's Finally Here!

Last week, the highly anticipated documentary, Seaspiracy, from the team behind Cowspiracy and What the Health, was released directly to Netflix. This is of particular note because that little Netflix logo lends credibility to and generates interest in the film, and getting a media giant to back such a pro-animal rights movie is a remarkable achievement. And in the days after its release, Seaspiracy became one of the top trending films on the site in various countries.

Like its predecessors, this documentary follows an individual's journey of discovering the dark truths of the aquaculture industry that are often hidden from consumers. This time, however, Kip Anderson took a back seat, and our host, narrator, and director is self-proclaimed sealife lover Ali Tabrizi; embarking on this journey with him is his partner and assistant director, Lucy. The power couple traveled across the world to document all they learned, often landing themselves in dangerous situations, and though nothing can compare to watching their journey for yourself, here is some of the most important information to take away from the film.

*Obviously, I can't include everything from the movie here, so please check out the facts page on their website to learn more and verify their sources for yourself (as I'm writing this, the sources have not yet been uploaded to the site), watch the movie if you can, and recommend it to others!

Population Decline

With five million marine animals killed per minute (2.7 trillion per year), it's no surprise that populations of various oceanic species are in decline. Populations of some shark species have declined as much as 99 percent in just the past 50 years, and the populations of seabirds, who often feed at the water's surface as large predators hunt below, have declined about 70 percent. Wild halibut and haddock populations have decreased 99 percent, while other popular fishes like bluefin tuna and cod have declined 97 and 86 percent, respectively.

Bycatch

Each year, about 30,000 sharks are killed, but this is not solely for the shark fin industry; the majority are slaughtered as bycatch, unlucky enough to get in the way of fishing operations. Additionally, a staggering 300,000 whales, dolphins, and porpoises are killed annually as bycatch, and though Japan's Taiji dolphin massacre often receives deserved public condemnation, each year ten times more dolphins (10,000 individuals) die as bycatch off the western coast of France than in Taiji.

Plastic Pollution

Every minute, one garbage truck worth's of plastic is dumped into ocean, but that isn't from plastic straws. (In fact, plastic straws only account for 0.03 percent of ocean plastic.) Industrial fishing is the single greatest contributor to the ocean's abundance of plastic, with longline fishing boats setting enough lines to wrap around the planet 500 times every day. And though cutting down on plastic straws to save the sea turtles is great, only about 1,000 turtles' lives are taken by plastic pollution every year. US fishing vessels, on the other hand, kill 250,000 sea turtles annually.

Even environmental charities, like Oceana and the Plastic Pollution Coalition, and sustainable seafood label groups, like the Earth Island Institute, are nearly as corrupt as the industry itself because these groups often are supported financially by aquaculture corporations or have personal/business ties with them. The Marine Stewardship Council, for instance, gets 80.5 percent of its annual income from licensing; basically, putting the blue "Certified sustainable seafood" logo on seafood products is how they make most of their money.

Climate Change

As important as healthy rainforests are for absorbing CO2, oceanic phytoplankton actually absorb four times more of it than the Amazon and generate 85 percent of Earth's oxygen. Additionally, the oceans absorb heat from the atmosphere as fishes, ascending and descending the seas' depths, churn the water, mixing heat from the surface with the cold waters below.

The ocean is the world's largest carbon sink, storing 93 percent of all CO2. Marine plants can store up to 20 times more carbon than rainforests, but these habitats are being destroyed by trawling ships, whose nets, large enough to hold 13 jumbo jets, drag across the ocean floor, annihilating everything in their path. (It's estimated that 25 million acres of land are deforested every year, but 3.9 billion acres of the seafloor are destroyed by trawlers in the same timeframe.) Because of this, and because healthy fish populations are essential for feeding coral, it's estimated that 90 percent of coral reefs will be dead by 2050.

Government Complicity

Though five percent of the ocean contains so-called "marine protected areas," in more than 90 percent of these waters, fishing is still permitted. This is likely because the aquaculture industry is a boon to western economies, receiving $35 billion in subsidies each year; with even less money, $30 billion, the UN estimates we could combat world hunger.

The irony in this is nearly too great to be real because local fishers in developing nations, such as the coasts of Africa, can't compete with industrial fishing vessels, which therefore leads to increased rates of hunger in those places. These people, desperate and starved, are forced to consume wild land animals, which has direct ties to the spread of zoonotic diseases like Ebola.

Human Rights Abuses

During the Iraq war, 4,500 US soldiers were killed, but in that same 15-year period, 360,000 fishing workers died on the job, making aquaculture one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet. To add insult to injury, the shrimp and prawn industry often uses slave labor. Listening to the stories from former slaves and hearing them plead for consumers to stop supporting this industry is heart-breaking. Even if viewers don't care about the animals or the planet or even their own health, how can anyone look at what these people face and continue to claim that their palate has more worth than the workers' freedom? It's despicable, deplorable, and disgusting.

Conclusions

One thing I felt was particularly important in this film is the spotlight on just how dangerous the industry truly is; for as disturbing as some of the information I've laid out above is, what's even more unsettling, though not entirely unprecedented, is how the industry is truly evil, regarding their employees (or slaves), the documentarians, the planet, and the animals. That's not something I can easily convey here in words, but I hope this film will encourage a change in public perception of an industry that has been allowed to thrive far too long.

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