Greenpeace

Josef again, your friendly Web Editor in Washington, DC! Here's the latest update from the 2009 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah; written by my colleague Willie MacKenzie, an Oceans campaigner with Greenpeace UK.

Dramatic title perhaps, but maybe not quite so far-fetched. Here in sunny Sundance, one of the questions that has been coming up repeatedly at showings of the End Of The Line movie is ‘what about Climate Change?’ assuming, rightly, that a warming planet will have implications for our fish populations too. Well my practised response to this before I got here was simply that the effects of Climate Change make all of the issues of rapacious overfishing all the more important. They make the need for precaution when it comes to fishing, and the need for fully protected areas essential.

The truth is that Climate Change is already affecting our oceans, and we don’t know what the outcome will be on currents/temperature/salinity, which means we can’t predict what impact it will have on plankton or anything more complicated. But common sense tells us, in degraded oceans, where we have already diminished sealife’s ability to cope, it won’t be good news.

Then, just as we got here to promote a movie on overfishing, we find out that there’s a new article published in Science that shows a direct link between fishing and the effects of climate change. Yes folks, fish poo can help save the ocean, by locking up carbon.

So, the moral of the story is, that if we take all the fish out of the ocean, we increase acidification from Climate Change (and make it worse for everything else in the ocean in the process).

In the US, departing President Bush has left a ‘blue legacy’ behind him, showing that where there’s a political will, there’s a way. But whilst the US is ahead of many in creating protected areas, and arguably better at enforcing its fisheries, there is still a long way to go. The US imports most of its fish, and a visit to the local supermarkets here in Park City reveals some quite alarming species on display on the fish counter. The two stand-outs are Chilean Sea Bass (also known as Patagonian toothfish) –which is fished using indiscriminate long-lines (that kill albatrosses) and has a huge amount of illegal fishing too: Orange Roughy, a deep-sea fish that lives to be up to 150 years old (how do you fish that sustainably, exactly?) and is often caught by bottom trawling seamounts.

That these species are still readily available shows how far we have to go, but it also shows something else – that everyday consumers can have a huge impact by simply not buying them.

And remember, every Orange Roughy and Chilean Sea Bass that doesn’t get fished helps save the oceans by simply doing its own business…

Josef here in Washington, DC! You may have heard that some colleagues of mine are currently in Park City, Utah, attending the 2009 Sundance Film Festival to help draw attention to the plight of overfishing on our seas as documented in the Sundance entry End Of the Line. Willie MacKenzie, an Oceans campaigner from Greenpeace UK, has joined our international delegation at the film festival and brings you this latest report.

So, what’s the movie we’re here in Sundance with about then? Well it’s an adaptation of Charles Clover’s brilliant book on overfishing, the End Of The Line, which is an evocative, and shocking portrayal of what we have done, and are doing to our oceans – just to put seafood on our plates.

Seafood is a global issue, and practically nowhere on our seas is beyond human reach now – the movie gives an overview of the main issues like overfishing, destructive fishing and poor management. The movie takes a global look at the true price we’re paying for our seafood, vividly illustrating the impact we’re having, but that very few of us even realise.

All-too-often the things that concern us in the ocean involve what we refer to as “charismatic megafauna”– the big cuddly animals that people like to like. But if you really do care about whales, dolphins, seals, turtles, and seabirds, then you have to care about all the other sealife too. They can’t exist in isolation, and as well as killing these critters directly as “bycatch” we are also trashing their homes, and destroying their food sources too. To add insult to injury the disastrous effects of excessive and destructive fishing are all compounded more by the other ways we upset the ocean, like the impacts of climate change and pollution.

The film really gives you a vivid idea of just how vast, and urgent the issue is. And, as Charles Clover himself says in the film, at a time when human population is increasing exponentially, and when the impacts of climate change are affecting us all, unless we act now to stop overfishing, we will have squandered one of the most important natural resources we have.

So, assuming you care about the ocean, whether you just like the cuddly animals, or like the amazing, fascinating, weird ones, or assuming you like eating fish – this matters to you. And the film explains succinctly why. The oceans belong to all of us, not the fishing industry, the oil & gas industry, or the politicians who seem to listen only to them - and all of us need to claim them back.

Yet, there is still hope. And if there is one message from the movie to take home (and one that’s all the more relevant being in the USA today) it’s that change is possible. If we want to move to sustainable methods and levels of fishing, then we can. And we can give our oceans protection by creating no-take Marine Reserves.

So if you’re wondering if this problem is one we can solve – the simple answer is “Yes, We Can.”

Check out the trailer online now at www.endoftheline.com