"End of the Line"

Saving Ocean Life: movie review

The movie "End of the Line," based on the book of the same name by Charles Clover, had much amazing photography and many frightening facts. However, it did have its upside, which seems worth emphasizing. Clover was asked toward the end, "Are you optimistic or pessimistic?"
"I'm optimistic because of two things. (1) We are learning many facts very quickly. We know a lot more than we did even five years ago. (2) There is still time, and people will respond to environmental challenges when they are informed of them, as they did before about pesticides, then pollution, and more recently climate change." Steps to preserving ocean life were then given.
1. Educate consumers. Monterey Bay Aquarium provides a card, Seafood Watch, that people can get on their website and that gives which fish are recommended, which are second choice, and which should be avoided because they are imminently endangered. It has markings for mercury content and "certified sustainable." It can be found at http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/download.aspx.
2. Pressure food distributors and restaurants to stop providing endangered species to customers. A note to give to restaurants with your check can be found at endoftheline.com.
3. Pressure governments to set aside large portions of the oceans as marine reserves. This has shown to enable endangered species to recover, but now only 0.6% of the ocean is set aside in preserves where no fishing can take place. We need 20%-30% of each ecosystem in the ocean to be made into a marine preserve if we are to not lose our ocean life in the next 40 years.
4. Enforce current laws against overfishing. This is not easy because the ocean is a big place, but the organization Sea Shepherd is a non-profit devoted to non-violent direct action to stop fishing more than the legal limits or in illegal territory. Members solicited support after the talk. It is estimated that about $25 billion is made each year from harvesting unregulated fish.
5. Eat lower on the fish-chain. One person said that anchovies are better for you than salmon, and it takes five kilos of anchovies to produce one kilo of salmon. For this reason fish farms are not good for sustainability.
Then Michael Pawlish, a doctoral student at Montclair State University, told about his summer job. He worked and lived on a boat off Louisiana, helping catch brown pelicans. They were struggling in the water, covered with oil and hungry. They would net them out, put them in cages, and send them to a veterinarian, who cleans them (mostly with Dawn dishwater detergent) and feeds them, perhaps giving them some Pepto-Bismol if appropriate. Then the pelicans are released near Texas or Tampa, Florida, so they do not become covered with oil again. Michael was asked what he ate during the summer. The boat's chef was a good one, he said, and they ate a lot of fish.
A recurring theme of "End of the Line" was the disruption of fishing by modern large-scale techniques and giant corporations making lots of money. Humans now have the capacity to remove five times the number of fish from the ocean than are there. Actually, each year we tend to remove half of them. There is debate as to whether the number of edible fish in the oceans has decreased 75% or 95% in the past 60 years, but in any case it is frightening.
We saw protests all over the world of fisherman who had been fishing for generations against massive fish removal and regulations trying to prevent all fishing. The film began with Newfoundland mobs in 1992 protesting Canada's ban on northern cod fishing. It was too late. The cod have not recovered, although people stated in the film that they could remember when cod was so plentiful that ever having less was unthinkable.
The European Union has tried to regulate blue fin tuna fishing, a seriously endangered species worldwide. However, it is estimated that we must harvest only ten million tons a year if the blue fins are to recover, and now over 60 million tons are being harvested, although only about 30 million tons are legal.
Some sea life is thriving as their predators disappear. These include lobsters, shrimp, cow nosed rays and jelly fish. One person wondered if people could become fond of jelly fish burgers.
One very damaging modern method is bottom trawling, dragging a huge net along the bottom of the ocean. The majority, maybe 90%, of what is caught is not profitable, and is thrown back dead. When shrimp is harvested this way, only about one percent of the yield is shrimp; the rest if "by-catch." Small fisherman can sell up to 60% of what they catch.
Catastrophe is predicted before 2050 if we don't mend our ways. What might our planet be like with a dead ocean? We are dangerously close and should change our ways soon. More can be learned at endoftheline.com, including what fish are recommended now for humans to eat. They are nutritious, and I think we need not stop eating fish, just change the fish we eat. Many in the audience believe we should stop eating fish altogether. Surely we all need to rethink our eating habits.
The next free film in this series will be "Gasland" at 6:30 PM on Wednesday, Sept. 15 at the Montclair Public Library.

Disclaimer: Please don't trust my numbers! The room was dark, and the film went quickly. I have rarely been so unsure about the numbers that I wrote down. I have checked this piece with several other viewers before s sending it off, but if accuracy matters, please check one of the websites.