It’s certainly a difficult watch but it is such an important talking point that you need to sit through. Don’t turn off the TV – Don’t give up. Climate change is real and so are man-made problems. Unfortunately, we can’t just ignore these problems forever and when lasting effects do take place – we won’t be able to reverse them.
David Attenborough take two?
When Sir David Attenborough speaks, everyone listens. For Ali Tabrizi, the filmmaker, it has not been so easy. Like any documentary, show or simply action – there will be a critic. However, with Ali, he has had them flood in with their alternate opinion.
Yes, this documentary is hard-hitting and it really does show footage that will take anyone by surprise but sometimes, that’s what is needed to kick people into touch. The rare critics of David Attenborough and his documentaries share a view that they don’t drill the harshness of situations into viewers strongly enough, that it’s too soft. You can’t have your cake and eat it – do you want to see the true extent or do you not?
Both Sir David and Ali share a common ground, their motivation and passion for change. Ali is so strongly opinionated on the matter and it really shows in his work and his arguments. The very least you can do is listen.
Ocean’s greatest enemy
Over recent years, plastic has really started to grow into the enemy, and rightly so. The disposable nature of single-use plastics is absolutely dreadful and is a huge burden on our world. Slowly but surely, we are responding and taking more of an active approach to protecting our planet. However, when it comes to oceans, plastic is not the only problem.
Seaspiracy highlights the fact that plastic straws only account for 0.03% of the ocean’s daily plastic total. This is still absolutely terrible but hearing the next fact really made me yelp. 46% of the waste in the Pacific Ocean’s ‘garbage patch’ is accounted for by fishing nets. It was simply shocking.
Sustainable fishing doesn’t exist
The word ‘sustainable’ has not been defined between marine conservation groups, so when companies slap a label on for the consumer – what does that mean? It baffles me!
One statistic that keeps floating around is that ‘An individual salmon farm creates as much organic waste as 20,000 humans’. Wow. If that figure alone doesn’t make you question the extent of the problem involved in this industry, then I don’t know what will. 20,000 humans… that is a ridiculous number. To put it into perspective, the capacity of the O2 Arena in London has a capacity of 20,000. MENTAL!
Additionally, PETA released the following comment that supports the statement ‘Commercial fishing is even more damaging than oil spills’:
“The fishing industry in the Gulf of Mexico destroyed more animals in a single day than the largest oil spill in history, Deepwater Horizon, did in months.“
I’ve mentioned before about blissful ignorance but when statements like this start arising, we can’t just turn a blind eye anymore – this is a huge and devastating problem. At this point, if we chose to keep ignoring the obvious, we obviously are part of the problem.
Modern Slavery
If you’ve watched ‘Blood Diamond’ before, you’ll understand the depths of modern slavery – the vulnerable are forced into hard labour, in this term it was mining for diamonds. This still happens. There is a new term that is starting to take centre stage – ‘Blood Shrimp’.
This is becoming a growing problem in Thailand with terrifying reports of slave labour shared – the vulnerable are now being used to catch prawns and shrimp from the ocean.
We see the first-hand effects and extreme fear in the documentary as former fisherman anonymously shares his experience. In the interview, he talks about how he was abused and held at gunpoint on the ship. The fisherman also made allegations that the dead bodies of other fisherman were kept in the freezers on board the ship after they had been killed. This is an extreme and terrifying ordeal that huge populations of vulnerable people are suffering.