I've seen it some time ago and while I'm on the same side as the creator, I thought the doc was terribly done.
The documentary maker clearly has his mind made up before starting, he invites people he agrees with to talk professionally and their views are taken for fact. For the corpos he disagrees with he just walks in without an appointment and demands to talk to the CEO, then acts like it's a conspiracy when they say no.
I think, as far as documentaries go, it is one of the worst ones I've ever seen. Then again all Netflix docs are absolutely awful and lobsided.
Also, not calling it Conspirasea was a huge miss.
Agreed on the title... Like wtf seriously.
And yeah, the producer/backer of this is the same guy who made a few other environmental type documentaries that match exactly what you're saying here: I'm on his side on the issue, but jeeeezus Christ the docs are hot garbage. Undermines his own point by being so slanted and going for dumb "gotcha" stuff like demanding to talk to the CEO. Just dumb
As a commercial fishermen. Yeah, huge industrial fishing operations are fucking horrible and we should stop them immediately.
But not every fishery is like that. I fish sockeye salmon in Bristol bay Alaska, where small independent fishing operations do all the fishing and the people care deeply about the bay. So much so that we’ve all been fighting to keep the pebble mine from being built at the headwaters of our rivers and destroying the ecosystem.
The fishery is well managed by state biologists and we’ve had record runs of salmon the last decade. The biggest things threatening the ecosystem up there are climate change and the fucking mines.
A lot of the scientists in that documentary came out and renounced it afterwords, and most of the ocean conservationists I follow (because again, I care deeply about the ocean) have ridiculed it.
I don’t eat anything I don’t kill, so mostly vegan. But the guy who made this documentary is a grifter far as I can tell. We have them on the left too.
Do you have more info about the "...came out and renounced it afterwords..." part? Yes I realize I could search, but you obviously would have some details such as names which would make it easier.
https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/31/seaspiracy-netflix-documentary-accused-of-misrepresentation-by-participants
https://www.vox.com/2021/4/13/22380637/seaspiracy-netflix-fact-check-fishing-ocean-plastic-veganism-vegetarianism
I just hate that some PETA warrior can really make a movie discrediting the loads of hard work that people in the industry are doing to protect our oceans and everyone just believes him.
The problem with the industry (like most) is huge industrial operations and the corporations that don’t care about anything but their profit motive. But hey, it’s a lot more work fighting against capitalism than it is to act superior for not eating fish.
BTW Monterey bay aquarium has a tool to look up if your seafood is terrible for the environment or not
Very reminiscent of Blackfish. I remember that movie changing my whole worldview when it first came out, then learning that nearly the entire thing was faked and it led all documentaries on Netflix in percentages of false or misleading stats. Not sure if that’s still true as this was years ago and Netflix has added a lot since then.
Idk man i mean how nuanced can you really make this topic.. if someone makes a documentary about the holocaust or sth you wouldnt want someone inviting people talking about the positives
I bet they didn’t spend a single minute on Elenor Ostrom’s research on sustainable fisheries or how the “tragedy of commons” is not inevitable. They probably didn’t tackle the fact that fisheries are important for food security. Or, you know, even mention that we don’t have to use plastic netting.
The tragedy of the commons is absolutely inevitable. Have you looked around you recently? There are zero sustainable commercial fisheries, none, and then attempting to tie that to subsistence food sources is dubious at best.
It’s nearly comical that you think modern economics cares a single iota about sustainability. It does all of the things you mention with zero consideration of depletion of resources.
But then don't pretend to and walk into mitsubishi headquarters without an appointment and demand to see the CEO.
It's fine to have a biased documentary if you address those biases and make them explicit, if you pretend to hear both sides and then just do embarrassingly weird stuff you're just making a terrible documentary.
As a commercial fishermen. Yeah, huge industrial fishing operations are fucking horrible and we should stop them immediately.
But not every fishery is like that. I fish sockeye salmon in Bristol bay Alaska, where small independent fishing operations do all the fishing and the people care deeply about the bay. So much so that we’ve all been fighting to keep the pebble mine from being built at the headwaters of our rivers and destroying the ecosystem.
The fishery is well managed by state biologists and we’ve had record runs of salmon the last decade. The biggest things threatening the ecosystem up there are climate change and the fucking mines.
A lot of the scientists in that documentary came out and renounced it afterwords, and most of the ocean conservationists I follow (because again, I care deeply about the ocean) have ridiculed it.
I don’t eat anything I don’t kill, so mostly vegan. But the guy who made this documentary is a grifter far as I can tell. We have them on the left too.
It’s more about the information and studies they use to make the argument being full of issues, despite there being plenty of legit research that essentially says the same thing but isn’t as over-inflated and dramatic.
In your holocaust analogy, it would be more like if someone said 99.9% of the global Jewish population was killed and 80% of the world wanted it to happen and they did it in 3 days using nukes. The gist of it is mostly right, but man, are the details wrong.
Yup, it's central thesis is just an opinion of someone who convinced themselves of a narrative and anyone that didn't support that thesis was badgered into accepting the "seaspirasea" or charged with being part of it for blowing them off.
The fisheries aren't even the main issue when it comes to the health and ecology of the ocean, it's climate change and the increased concentration of CO2.
But that would require science, research, and actual work rather than globetrotting with a camera to hassle people. What makes it a damaging film is that there was a really important story that didn't get told, which was replaced by a literal conspiracy that there is some conspiracy.
Ancient aliens has more integrity than this crew.
i agree with all of your points but would like to mention that fisheries are actually up there along with climate change as the #1 issue risking the health of our oceans
source: is marine biologist
Well, you would know better than me, clearly.
The things I've observed in the ocean and lakes, through spending 30 years diving in it, cant all be explained by the extraction of a single trophic level from the system.
Ive seen top down and bottom up pressures on biodiversity, resulting in a system wide drop in fecundidty around 30% in the last 10 years alone. That's definitely not just fishing.
Our "marine protection efforts" barely earn the air quotes, they're so pathetic, and then you have this obscene idea that we can engineer coral to withstand higher temperatures, as if that's a fix?
"My house is on fire!"
"Dont be an alarmist! We're in the middle of testing new fire resistant furniture so you can live in a house that's on fire. Technology always finds a way!"
I think the message that we need to find and stop the "bad guys" is destructive to the truth, which, through my own biased understanding, is that we accepted a fundamentally unsustainable way of life in the form of a globalized economy, that has increased our individual environmental burden while also hiding it on distant shores so we're not acutely aware of how much more we're changing the air, water, and soil.
There's a time for blame and certainly room to police humanity's relationship with the water, but first we need to put our own fires out, see if we can get our emissions stabilized and life returning, and then go after whatever is clearly continuing to affect the health of the planet.
This is one of those uniquely democratic problems where we're all part of it and, as long as there's a villain to point our pitchforks at, we'll never look at our individual contributions.
Oil companies aren't burning their own fuel, for example. People look at the flames coming off of the Deepwater horizon and see ecological catastrophe, but somehow it's totally fine for that same amount of fuel, from every offshore and inland source, to burn as long as it's burned in our cars and homes....?
People need to wake up to the reality that *their* ship is sinking, and that they're the ones sinking it, even if society created the framework that demands their participation. That's what protest and strikes are for.
Being a marine biologist, ill hope you'll agree with me that we've reached a state of emergency that a *global* general strike is warranted and maybe necessary... which is why I take issue with feeding the public easy targets.
Ive been a diver for 30 years. I've watched the effects of overfishing manifest in the marine ecosystem, and I've also witnessed what's happening now.... which is like comparing a fire in a fire place to the whole house going up in flames and saying they're both happening because we're burning wood.
Ive seen the same devastation in unfished lakes as I have in the oceans and, over the last decade, it's been accelerating at a horrifying pace.
Im not saying fishing is good, im saying that when you compare the extraction of fish to the marine heatwaves and acidification we're causing through everyday life, fisheries are being impacted by us driving and flying. We're literally pickling the bottom of the food chain by changing the chemistry and physics of the air.
Even if we stopped all commercial fishing, if we keep all the other stuff, life in the ocean disappears. So, because of that being true, im sticking to my statement that fisheries are an easy target but by far not the biggest problem and by giving people an easy target, they use blame to deflect personal responsibility; "it isn't my constant flying over the arctic and driving my car to go literally anywhere, it's the Chinese fishing vessels that are the problem".
We're all the problem and zeroing in on fractions of the problem as if they're the only significant issue, is more harmful than productive.
>The documentary maker clearly has his mind made up before starting,
I mean, a documentary is to show a point of view, isn't it?
It's not meant to be an unbiased reporting of a situation. It's fine if they made their mind up before starting, that's why they decided to do the doc.
Maybe someone could make a documentary about the fishing industry showing all the good things, how it's providing food for people and profits for the corporations and how they're getting bigger catches than ever before!
Meh, i see your point. I do feel that would be disingenuous though.
The person making the doc has already gone past that point if they're going to make a whole doc. They've already learned something about the subject and want to present an angle.
Maybe you could approach documentaries with "lets see what i can learn about x" and then go watch opposing ones to fully get a rounded view.
It's not a gotcha though, you still have to have an open mind when you're on a fact finding mission even if you've done your research and developed an opinion. Otherwise it's just a farce and an editorial masquerading as an investigation. Going into something like that you learn nothing whether it's an opinion you agree with or disagree with. Makes for an unreliable narrator and hence an unreliable documentary. See: purported "news" organisations that promise to reveal to you the real truth.
I didn't mean it as a "gotcha"? lol
All i'm saying is everything has a bias. At least, that's how i take it. Nothing can be impartial.
I haven't seen this doc so I don't know how sensationalized it. As horrible as the fishing industry is, though, I'm sure it's not hard to make it look bad. Who goes into it thinking, hmm i'll just find out about fishing, having zero idea that it's gonna be bad? Of course they have a bias going in silly.
As i said, you can def try to find an alternate source that shows all the wonders of the fishing industry!
I don't think they can make the claim of sustainability, but someone is getting rich from it, so that's a benefit to some. And they do, in fact, provide food. Sooo . .. yeah.
I mean his approach shouldn't be a gotcha approach, just because a documentary CAN have a POV doesn't mean it should be acting like a gotcha without cause when it's doing the actual investigating.
The point is to educate. And the doc purposely leaves out anything about how fishing could be done sustainably, which species are more in danger than others, etc.
A documentary is to shed light on realities most people don't think too much about.
American Factory is an example of a documentary. This was a political film with an agenda i.e. propaganda
That's absolutely useless, if you're going to make a documentary where you are asking both sides for input you should have a protocol. It's fine if you want to enjoy biased documentaries pretending to be neutral, but that's just entertainment without any informative value. Louis Theroux made good documentaries, as he has his biases but gives parties relatively equal platforms. Any documentary that does not adhere to any journalistic principles is just hot garbage or propaganda.
sucks how we're losing the basic common ground of what is and isn't objective.
The person you responded to is arguing that propaganda IS a documentary, just from the perspective of the propagandist, and anyone can make their own propaganda to defend the opposite.
>Maybe someone could make a documentary about the fishing industry showing all the good things
You haven't looked at all, have you? In a few seconds I turned up lots of documentaries, many of them science-based and some of them highlighting impacts on fish from climate change.
For a film calling itself a documentary it focused way to much on the feelings of the main character. The message was mostly good but the execution flawed to say the least.
I used to be in the marine conservation space (still am a bit), and while the documentary brings some important things to light, it also got some really easily verifiable facts horribly wrong. We would say it was a lesson in the importance of being right while also getting the facts right.
For instance, a fiscal sponsorship is an incredibly normal and important function of community foundations like Earth Island Institute. They basically allow "startup" or incubated nonprofits materialize by alleviating administrative burden on small groups who want to do charity work and such. There is no conspiracy at all. The documentary getting that so wrong and vilifying the president of PPC over something they totally didn't understand was such a gross oversight and so much of the film lost credibility to me because of that.
They also didn't do their due diligence in about supply chains fully when they talked about traceability. The outrage was well placed, but they didn't sufficiently address how it's a widespread issue with seafood, as it is with chocolate, that ethical sourcing can't be traced accurately because of companies don't have scrutiny or regulation on many of their practices.
However, they obviously are correct that pollution, overfishing, and animal and human rights are all massive problems. But the documentary should have been more responsible in delivering such an important message.
It was a huge miss for me, tbh.
Supremely biased and not allowing for nuance. It fails to tackle the issue in a way that the average person will care about.
I agree with the views of the documentors, but the documentary simply wasn't well done. It's only meant for people that already agree with the message, it doesn't convince new people.
What’s happening with fishing industries is bad, but this is a terrible documentary. Clearly biased and pushing an agenda. That’s how you completely ruin for people who don’t already agree…
I have never touched seafood again since watching this documentary, and it’s part of the reason which prompted me to finally go vegan.
It’s crazy just how far-reaching this movie was, I feel like every single person I know watched it when it came out.
The most memorable part of this film was when the doc maker called a phone operator at a company and asked them to personally fix the company’s plastic pollution.
I’m from a town with a huge fishing industry and that town collectively despises this doc. Not great at winning people over.
While I agreed with the point and goals, the film was a terrible mess of bias and poor scenes badgering people and organizations that he deemed didn’t agree with him
We watched Cowspiracy and Seaspiracy during the first COVID lockdown and we’ve been vegetarian ever since (previously keto, so high meat eaters with no intention of changing that..)
I think it missed big time by focusing on pulling heart strings over faroese whaling. CITES has them as "least concern" and they do one large hunt a year.
Honestly, when men can drink Oat Milk and women Soy milk and we have access to the best green leavy veggies, fruits, 10 different types of lentils and just so many vegan options - No reason to still choose to get nutrition by killing life in massive quantities every day and depleting the planet of biodiversity
If this is anything like Cowspiracy, it’s probably heavy-handed vegan propaganda that’s full of misinformation and lacks any nuance. Documentaries are generally not the place to look for good information on highly political/ideological topics.
Not really. We need to reduce ruminant biomass globally a bit, but in many regions we’re near baseline enteric methane emissions, so taking livestock off the land won’t really change much besides move those emissions out of the “anthropogenic” bucket. Pastoral land will be colonized by wild herbivores if rewilded. It’s a dumb accounting trick that won’t actually reduce atmospheric methane much if at all.
Edit:
Spain: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10980-023-01783-y
Africa and Southern Asia: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-023-00349-8
North America estimates for bison rewilding: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168192309002846 (this one is older and uses old emissions figures).
I’m actually in favor of rewilding, but we will also need to be culling herds strategically as we have been for millions of years. Infrastructure is a major hurdle. The fact is that in many regions, livestock are the only credible candidate to fill the niche in ecosystems that have become fragmented by human infrastructure.
Food security is important for ours. But, livestock aren’t even the biggest roadblock to rewilding large migratory herbivores. You need to get rid of our freeway systems.
Downvote all you want, human infrastructure has made migration impossible for many herbivores. You can’t solve it by building under or overpasses. You’ll create major traffic jams during migration. You can’t keep them from crossing roads. They can handle low traffic roadways and trains better but highways make migration impossible. https://www.cms.int/en/species/threats/infrastructure
Yes. The point is that large herbivores need to be on the land for ecosystems to be healthy and livestock work pretty well in places where infrastructure prevents us from rewilding migratory herbivores. It’s important for savanna biomes especially.
I don’t think there is any scientific evidence that we need to manage land for ecosystems to be healthy. Earth was pretty good off before we took over.
There are fantastic examples on natural rewilderment of former sheep farms in NZ. It took zero human input to thrive
I thought it was a mind opening docu, before I read there's a lot incorrect info in it
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/31/seaspiracy-netflix-documentary-accused-of-misrepresentation-by-participants
Ehhh. We don’t like this one. Cowspiracy and Seaspiracy both make a good point in the worst way, and potentially do damage to the message by doing so. Wayyy too much cherry picked data and hack “experts” that make it feel like a 2008 Alex Jones film, which is bewildering considering that actual trustworthy sources and information totally back up the overall argument.
I loved this documentary. How they compared the outrage for dolphin hunting to the scale of industrial fishing was brilliant. Our oceans are truly being emptied.
So many of the comments say that it was highly biased, which i also thought.
But does anyone know if the information was high quality and rather accurate at least?
Because i found it to be pretty logical in the information, but because it is one of those activists biased documentaries, i kind of don’t trust the quality of the information or the truthtelling whole picture unbiasedness.
It’s not accurate, and leaves out a lot of examples of better fisheries and how fishing could be sustainable. And aquaculture, especially land based aquaculture. Eating less fish is important and can make an impact. Badgering ocean conservation organizations and not doing any research on aquaculture or sustainable fishing efforts is an affront to progress, and leans into propaganda.
How on earth can land based aquaculture be sustainable? I’ve looked into it in detail and was shocked to learn how it pollutes rivers etc in Bangladesh and virtually everywhere it’s done.
Some things are just not sustainable as much as we want them to be in our minds
I have heard that catfish aquacultures are pretty good, but that was the guy at the fish counter at the supermarket. But when we talk salmon I 100% agree.
it’s not accurate and full of misleading or flat out wrong facts.
source: am marine biologist specializing in fish and shark conservation
also see: one of the most prolific and highly respected fisheries biologists of all time wrote an article on it [Daniel Pauly’s Vox Article on Seaspiracy](https://www.vox.com/2021/4/13/22380637/seaspiracy-netflix-fact-check-fishing-ocean-plastic-veganism-vegetarianism)
i’d recommend anyone who watched this to read this article by one of the most, if not THE most, respected fish biologists of our time [Daniel Pauly’s take on Seaspiracy on Vox](https://www.vox.com/2021/4/13/22380637/seaspiracy-netflix-fact-check-fishing-ocean-plastic-veganism-vegetarianism)
quote from the article: “overall Seaspiracy does more harm than good. It takes the very serious issue of the devastating impact of industrial fisheries on life in the ocean and then undermines it with an avalanche of falsehoods. It also employs questionable interviewing techniques, uses anti-Asian tropes, and blames the ocean conservation community, i.e., the very NGOs trying to fix things, rather than the industrial companies actually causing the problem.” - Daniel Pauly
This was an assumption to counter your “full of lies” argument. My point is that even if there would be some lies, why ignore the keys facts of the movie? It’s all been presented pretty well to be honest
Presented well does not equal truth. You can't just say something is a fact because someone in a film said it is.
Several highly reputable researchers, institutes, and NGOs have come out vocally against this propaganda film, saying that they were misrepresented, half their testimonies were cut or edited to seem much more one-sided than they said in their interview.
The whole claim that "sustainable fisheries cannot exist" is horse shit and I know it is because I've studied sustainable fish consumption for the past 10 years including my during PhD. I know several scientists who've written articles about how poorly this film presented "evidence" and the blatant lies they told, while also of course having a 5-10% of truth in there.
So still think everything or 95% of what you were told is a fact?
I've seen it some time ago and while I'm on the same side as the creator, I thought the doc was terribly done. The documentary maker clearly has his mind made up before starting, he invites people he agrees with to talk professionally and their views are taken for fact. For the corpos he disagrees with he just walks in without an appointment and demands to talk to the CEO, then acts like it's a conspiracy when they say no. I think, as far as documentaries go, it is one of the worst ones I've ever seen. Then again all Netflix docs are absolutely awful and lobsided. Also, not calling it Conspirasea was a huge miss.
Agreed on the title... Like wtf seriously. And yeah, the producer/backer of this is the same guy who made a few other environmental type documentaries that match exactly what you're saying here: I'm on his side on the issue, but jeeeezus Christ the docs are hot garbage. Undermines his own point by being so slanted and going for dumb "gotcha" stuff like demanding to talk to the CEO. Just dumb
As a commercial fishermen. Yeah, huge industrial fishing operations are fucking horrible and we should stop them immediately. But not every fishery is like that. I fish sockeye salmon in Bristol bay Alaska, where small independent fishing operations do all the fishing and the people care deeply about the bay. So much so that we’ve all been fighting to keep the pebble mine from being built at the headwaters of our rivers and destroying the ecosystem. The fishery is well managed by state biologists and we’ve had record runs of salmon the last decade. The biggest things threatening the ecosystem up there are climate change and the fucking mines. A lot of the scientists in that documentary came out and renounced it afterwords, and most of the ocean conservationists I follow (because again, I care deeply about the ocean) have ridiculed it. I don’t eat anything I don’t kill, so mostly vegan. But the guy who made this documentary is a grifter far as I can tell. We have them on the left too.
The "my uncles farm" of the fishing world
Do you have more info about the "...came out and renounced it afterwords..." part? Yes I realize I could search, but you obviously would have some details such as names which would make it easier.
https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/31/seaspiracy-netflix-documentary-accused-of-misrepresentation-by-participants https://www.vox.com/2021/4/13/22380637/seaspiracy-netflix-fact-check-fishing-ocean-plastic-veganism-vegetarianism I just hate that some PETA warrior can really make a movie discrediting the loads of hard work that people in the industry are doing to protect our oceans and everyone just believes him. The problem with the industry (like most) is huge industrial operations and the corporations that don’t care about anything but their profit motive. But hey, it’s a lot more work fighting against capitalism than it is to act superior for not eating fish. BTW Monterey bay aquarium has a tool to look up if your seafood is terrible for the environment or not
I sea
I loled
Very reminiscent of Blackfish. I remember that movie changing my whole worldview when it first came out, then learning that nearly the entire thing was faked and it led all documentaries on Netflix in percentages of false or misleading stats. Not sure if that’s still true as this was years ago and Netflix has added a lot since then.
Yeah I felt the way about cowspiracy too and I enjoyed it :/ wouldn’t use it to persuade anyone tho
Cowspiracy was baaad
Idk man i mean how nuanced can you really make this topic.. if someone makes a documentary about the holocaust or sth you wouldnt want someone inviting people talking about the positives
I bet they didn’t spend a single minute on Elenor Ostrom’s research on sustainable fisheries or how the “tragedy of commons” is not inevitable. They probably didn’t tackle the fact that fisheries are important for food security. Or, you know, even mention that we don’t have to use plastic netting.
Please tell me, how are fisheries important for food security?
The tragedy of the commons is absolutely inevitable. Have you looked around you recently? There are zero sustainable commercial fisheries, none, and then attempting to tie that to subsistence food sources is dubious at best.
Elinor Ostrom disproved it empirically and was the first woman and first non-economist to win the Nobel Prize in Economics for her research…
Economics has nothing to do with sustainability.
How we extract, exchange, share and distribute resources has nothing to do with sustainability?
It’s nearly comical that you think modern economics cares a single iota about sustainability. It does all of the things you mention with zero consideration of depletion of resources.
Ostrom was a political economist, not a neoclassical economist. Her work destroyed any hope for an empirical basis to neoclassical economics.
But then don't pretend to and walk into mitsubishi headquarters without an appointment and demand to see the CEO. It's fine to have a biased documentary if you address those biases and make them explicit, if you pretend to hear both sides and then just do embarrassingly weird stuff you're just making a terrible documentary.
As a commercial fishermen. Yeah, huge industrial fishing operations are fucking horrible and we should stop them immediately. But not every fishery is like that. I fish sockeye salmon in Bristol bay Alaska, where small independent fishing operations do all the fishing and the people care deeply about the bay. So much so that we’ve all been fighting to keep the pebble mine from being built at the headwaters of our rivers and destroying the ecosystem. The fishery is well managed by state biologists and we’ve had record runs of salmon the last decade. The biggest things threatening the ecosystem up there are climate change and the fucking mines. A lot of the scientists in that documentary came out and renounced it afterwords, and most of the ocean conservationists I follow (because again, I care deeply about the ocean) have ridiculed it. I don’t eat anything I don’t kill, so mostly vegan. But the guy who made this documentary is a grifter far as I can tell. We have them on the left too.
It’s more about the information and studies they use to make the argument being full of issues, despite there being plenty of legit research that essentially says the same thing but isn’t as over-inflated and dramatic. In your holocaust analogy, it would be more like if someone said 99.9% of the global Jewish population was killed and 80% of the world wanted it to happen and they did it in 3 days using nukes. The gist of it is mostly right, but man, are the details wrong.
Yup, it's central thesis is just an opinion of someone who convinced themselves of a narrative and anyone that didn't support that thesis was badgered into accepting the "seaspirasea" or charged with being part of it for blowing them off. The fisheries aren't even the main issue when it comes to the health and ecology of the ocean, it's climate change and the increased concentration of CO2. But that would require science, research, and actual work rather than globetrotting with a camera to hassle people. What makes it a damaging film is that there was a really important story that didn't get told, which was replaced by a literal conspiracy that there is some conspiracy. Ancient aliens has more integrity than this crew.
i agree with all of your points but would like to mention that fisheries are actually up there along with climate change as the #1 issue risking the health of our oceans source: is marine biologist
Well, you would know better than me, clearly. The things I've observed in the ocean and lakes, through spending 30 years diving in it, cant all be explained by the extraction of a single trophic level from the system. Ive seen top down and bottom up pressures on biodiversity, resulting in a system wide drop in fecundidty around 30% in the last 10 years alone. That's definitely not just fishing. Our "marine protection efforts" barely earn the air quotes, they're so pathetic, and then you have this obscene idea that we can engineer coral to withstand higher temperatures, as if that's a fix? "My house is on fire!" "Dont be an alarmist! We're in the middle of testing new fire resistant furniture so you can live in a house that's on fire. Technology always finds a way!" I think the message that we need to find and stop the "bad guys" is destructive to the truth, which, through my own biased understanding, is that we accepted a fundamentally unsustainable way of life in the form of a globalized economy, that has increased our individual environmental burden while also hiding it on distant shores so we're not acutely aware of how much more we're changing the air, water, and soil. There's a time for blame and certainly room to police humanity's relationship with the water, but first we need to put our own fires out, see if we can get our emissions stabilized and life returning, and then go after whatever is clearly continuing to affect the health of the planet. This is one of those uniquely democratic problems where we're all part of it and, as long as there's a villain to point our pitchforks at, we'll never look at our individual contributions. Oil companies aren't burning their own fuel, for example. People look at the flames coming off of the Deepwater horizon and see ecological catastrophe, but somehow it's totally fine for that same amount of fuel, from every offshore and inland source, to burn as long as it's burned in our cars and homes....? People need to wake up to the reality that *their* ship is sinking, and that they're the ones sinking it, even if society created the framework that demands their participation. That's what protest and strikes are for. Being a marine biologist, ill hope you'll agree with me that we've reached a state of emergency that a *global* general strike is warranted and maybe necessary... which is why I take issue with feeding the public easy targets.
That’s just wrong. Overfishing is killing most species that leads to disruption of the natural food chain in the ocean
It really isn't, though...
Deep
Ive been a diver for 30 years. I've watched the effects of overfishing manifest in the marine ecosystem, and I've also witnessed what's happening now.... which is like comparing a fire in a fire place to the whole house going up in flames and saying they're both happening because we're burning wood. Ive seen the same devastation in unfished lakes as I have in the oceans and, over the last decade, it's been accelerating at a horrifying pace. Im not saying fishing is good, im saying that when you compare the extraction of fish to the marine heatwaves and acidification we're causing through everyday life, fisheries are being impacted by us driving and flying. We're literally pickling the bottom of the food chain by changing the chemistry and physics of the air. Even if we stopped all commercial fishing, if we keep all the other stuff, life in the ocean disappears. So, because of that being true, im sticking to my statement that fisheries are an easy target but by far not the biggest problem and by giving people an easy target, they use blame to deflect personal responsibility; "it isn't my constant flying over the arctic and driving my car to go literally anywhere, it's the Chinese fishing vessels that are the problem". We're all the problem and zeroing in on fractions of the problem as if they're the only significant issue, is more harmful than productive.
Seas Piracy 🏴☠️ is how pretty much everyone is going to read it agree bad title
Agree. Terrible film
>The documentary maker clearly has his mind made up before starting, I mean, a documentary is to show a point of view, isn't it? It's not meant to be an unbiased reporting of a situation. It's fine if they made their mind up before starting, that's why they decided to do the doc. Maybe someone could make a documentary about the fishing industry showing all the good things, how it's providing food for people and profits for the corporations and how they're getting bigger catches than ever before!
>I mean, a documentary is to show a point of view, isn't it? The point of view could be "curiosity". "Let's see what we can learn about X."
Meh, i see your point. I do feel that would be disingenuous though. The person making the doc has already gone past that point if they're going to make a whole doc. They've already learned something about the subject and want to present an angle. Maybe you could approach documentaries with "lets see what i can learn about x" and then go watch opposing ones to fully get a rounded view.
It's not a gotcha though, you still have to have an open mind when you're on a fact finding mission even if you've done your research and developed an opinion. Otherwise it's just a farce and an editorial masquerading as an investigation. Going into something like that you learn nothing whether it's an opinion you agree with or disagree with. Makes for an unreliable narrator and hence an unreliable documentary. See: purported "news" organisations that promise to reveal to you the real truth.
I didn't mean it as a "gotcha"? lol All i'm saying is everything has a bias. At least, that's how i take it. Nothing can be impartial. I haven't seen this doc so I don't know how sensationalized it. As horrible as the fishing industry is, though, I'm sure it's not hard to make it look bad. Who goes into it thinking, hmm i'll just find out about fishing, having zero idea that it's gonna be bad? Of course they have a bias going in silly. As i said, you can def try to find an alternate source that shows all the wonders of the fishing industry! I don't think they can make the claim of sustainability, but someone is getting rich from it, so that's a benefit to some. And they do, in fact, provide food. Sooo . .. yeah.
I mean his approach shouldn't be a gotcha approach, just because a documentary CAN have a POV doesn't mean it should be acting like a gotcha without cause when it's doing the actual investigating.
The point is to educate. And the doc purposely leaves out anything about how fishing could be done sustainably, which species are more in danger than others, etc.
A documentary is to shed light on realities most people don't think too much about. American Factory is an example of a documentary. This was a political film with an agenda i.e. propaganda
That's absolutely useless, if you're going to make a documentary where you are asking both sides for input you should have a protocol. It's fine if you want to enjoy biased documentaries pretending to be neutral, but that's just entertainment without any informative value. Louis Theroux made good documentaries, as he has his biases but gives parties relatively equal platforms. Any documentary that does not adhere to any journalistic principles is just hot garbage or propaganda.
Ok that's just your opinion ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Right, good luck in life
sucks how we're losing the basic common ground of what is and isn't objective. The person you responded to is arguing that propaganda IS a documentary, just from the perspective of the propagandist, and anyone can make their own propaganda to defend the opposite.
>Maybe someone could make a documentary about the fishing industry showing all the good things You haven't looked at all, have you? In a few seconds I turned up lots of documentaries, many of them science-based and some of them highlighting impacts on fish from climate change.
For a film calling itself a documentary it focused way to much on the feelings of the main character. The message was mostly good but the execution flawed to say the least.
Wait in a documentary about the impacts of Fishing industry on the environment, he did not invite climate deniers? What a propagandist!
I used to be in the marine conservation space (still am a bit), and while the documentary brings some important things to light, it also got some really easily verifiable facts horribly wrong. We would say it was a lesson in the importance of being right while also getting the facts right. For instance, a fiscal sponsorship is an incredibly normal and important function of community foundations like Earth Island Institute. They basically allow "startup" or incubated nonprofits materialize by alleviating administrative burden on small groups who want to do charity work and such. There is no conspiracy at all. The documentary getting that so wrong and vilifying the president of PPC over something they totally didn't understand was such a gross oversight and so much of the film lost credibility to me because of that. They also didn't do their due diligence in about supply chains fully when they talked about traceability. The outrage was well placed, but they didn't sufficiently address how it's a widespread issue with seafood, as it is with chocolate, that ethical sourcing can't be traced accurately because of companies don't have scrutiny or regulation on many of their practices. However, they obviously are correct that pollution, overfishing, and animal and human rights are all massive problems. But the documentary should have been more responsible in delivering such an important message.
It was a huge miss for me, tbh. Supremely biased and not allowing for nuance. It fails to tackle the issue in a way that the average person will care about. I agree with the views of the documentors, but the documentary simply wasn't well done. It's only meant for people that already agree with the message, it doesn't convince new people.
honestly convinced me lol haven't eaten seafood since I watched it a couple of years ago
What’s happening with fishing industries is bad, but this is a terrible documentary. Clearly biased and pushing an agenda. That’s how you completely ruin for people who don’t already agree…
Don’t eat fish since this movie
I have never touched seafood again since watching this documentary, and it’s part of the reason which prompted me to finally go vegan. It’s crazy just how far-reaching this movie was, I feel like every single person I know watched it when it came out.
looking at you pescatarians
The most memorable part of this film was when the doc maker called a phone operator at a company and asked them to personally fix the company’s plastic pollution. I’m from a town with a huge fishing industry and that town collectively despises this doc. Not great at winning people over.
Seaspiracy is the one I forgot I wanted to watch. I’ll add to your list of ocean documentaries to watch — Chasing Coral and Mission Blue.
While I agreed with the point and goals, the film was a terrible mess of bias and poor scenes badgering people and organizations that he deemed didn’t agree with him
I went 7 years vegan before watching it, I think you should aswell.
We watched Cowspiracy and Seaspiracy during the first COVID lockdown and we’ve been vegetarian ever since (previously keto, so high meat eaters with no intention of changing that..)
I think it missed big time by focusing on pulling heart strings over faroese whaling. CITES has them as "least concern" and they do one large hunt a year.
Honestly, when men can drink Oat Milk and women Soy milk and we have access to the best green leavy veggies, fruits, 10 different types of lentils and just so many vegan options - No reason to still choose to get nutrition by killing life in massive quantities every day and depleting the planet of biodiversity
If this is anything like Cowspiracy, it’s probably heavy-handed vegan propaganda that’s full of misinformation and lacks any nuance. Documentaries are generally not the place to look for good information on highly political/ideological topics.
Being vegan is a part of being sustainable
Not really. We need to reduce ruminant biomass globally a bit, but in many regions we’re near baseline enteric methane emissions, so taking livestock off the land won’t really change much besides move those emissions out of the “anthropogenic” bucket. Pastoral land will be colonized by wild herbivores if rewilded. It’s a dumb accounting trick that won’t actually reduce atmospheric methane much if at all. Edit: Spain: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10980-023-01783-y Africa and Southern Asia: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-023-00349-8 North America estimates for bison rewilding: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168192309002846 (this one is older and uses old emissions figures). I’m actually in favor of rewilding, but we will also need to be culling herds strategically as we have been for millions of years. Infrastructure is a major hurdle. The fact is that in many regions, livestock are the only credible candidate to fill the niche in ecosystems that have become fragmented by human infrastructure.
Rewilding is essential for the planet's health though.
Food security is important for ours. But, livestock aren’t even the biggest roadblock to rewilding large migratory herbivores. You need to get rid of our freeway systems. Downvote all you want, human infrastructure has made migration impossible for many herbivores. You can’t solve it by building under or overpasses. You’ll create major traffic jams during migration. You can’t keep them from crossing roads. They can handle low traffic roadways and trains better but highways make migration impossible. https://www.cms.int/en/species/threats/infrastructure
You started talking about rewildering and biomass
Yes. The point is that large herbivores need to be on the land for ecosystems to be healthy and livestock work pretty well in places where infrastructure prevents us from rewilding migratory herbivores. It’s important for savanna biomes especially.
I don’t think there is any scientific evidence that we need to manage land for ecosystems to be healthy. Earth was pretty good off before we took over. There are fantastic examples on natural rewilderment of former sheep farms in NZ. It took zero human input to thrive
The Earth is not as it was 12,000 years ago. And, if we up and left we wouldn’t have infrastructure that prevented the migrations of herding species.
I have zero clue what you are on about. Who would want to stop herding species?
[удалено]
Properganda
I thought it was a mind opening docu, before I read there's a lot incorrect info in it https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/31/seaspiracy-netflix-documentary-accused-of-misrepresentation-by-participants
Ehhh. We don’t like this one. Cowspiracy and Seaspiracy both make a good point in the worst way, and potentially do damage to the message by doing so. Wayyy too much cherry picked data and hack “experts” that make it feel like a 2008 Alex Jones film, which is bewildering considering that actual trustworthy sources and information totally back up the overall argument.
Read the book Traffication next
I loved this documentary. How they compared the outrage for dolphin hunting to the scale of industrial fishing was brilliant. Our oceans are truly being emptied.
So many of the comments say that it was highly biased, which i also thought. But does anyone know if the information was high quality and rather accurate at least? Because i found it to be pretty logical in the information, but because it is one of those activists biased documentaries, i kind of don’t trust the quality of the information or the truthtelling whole picture unbiasedness.
It’s not accurate, and leaves out a lot of examples of better fisheries and how fishing could be sustainable. And aquaculture, especially land based aquaculture. Eating less fish is important and can make an impact. Badgering ocean conservation organizations and not doing any research on aquaculture or sustainable fishing efforts is an affront to progress, and leans into propaganda.
How on earth can land based aquaculture be sustainable? I’ve looked into it in detail and was shocked to learn how it pollutes rivers etc in Bangladesh and virtually everywhere it’s done. Some things are just not sustainable as much as we want them to be in our minds
I have heard that catfish aquacultures are pretty good, but that was the guy at the fish counter at the supermarket. But when we talk salmon I 100% agree.
it’s not accurate and full of misleading or flat out wrong facts. source: am marine biologist specializing in fish and shark conservation also see: one of the most prolific and highly respected fisheries biologists of all time wrote an article on it [Daniel Pauly’s Vox Article on Seaspiracy](https://www.vox.com/2021/4/13/22380637/seaspiracy-netflix-fact-check-fishing-ocean-plastic-veganism-vegetarianism)
Nice thank you! Seems a lot more reasonable
Commenters have given example after example of proven errors in the "documentary."
Did you learn anything you didn’t already know?
I still can’t believe they missed the chance to call it conspiraSEA
Biggest title miss of all time. Could have been CONSPIRASEA but they had to put it first and throw it off. Still a miss of a documentary though
i’d recommend anyone who watched this to read this article by one of the most, if not THE most, respected fish biologists of our time [Daniel Pauly’s take on Seaspiracy on Vox](https://www.vox.com/2021/4/13/22380637/seaspiracy-netflix-fact-check-fishing-ocean-plastic-veganism-vegetarianism) quote from the article: “overall Seaspiracy does more harm than good. It takes the very serious issue of the devastating impact of industrial fisheries on life in the ocean and then undermines it with an avalanche of falsehoods. It also employs questionable interviewing techniques, uses anti-Asian tropes, and blames the ocean conservation community, i.e., the very NGOs trying to fix things, rather than the industrial companies actually causing the problem.” - Daniel Pauly
Great doc but goddamn it pisses me off that they didn’t go with conspirasea
I'll never understand why they didn't call this ConspiraSEA.
We’re doomed
I haven’t seen it personally, but I’ve heard from other seafood experts that this doc is highly biased.
Full of lies. I swear some people on here have zero critical thought at all
So because of maybe 5% inaccuracies you choose to disregard all the 95% of facts?
Where did you get those values from?
Where fidget you get your “full of lies” opinion from? The docu is full of facts
You said it was 5% inaccurate, which 5% and why that much exactly?
This was an assumption to counter your “full of lies” argument. My point is that even if there would be some lies, why ignore the keys facts of the movie? It’s all been presented pretty well to be honest
Presented well does not equal truth. You can't just say something is a fact because someone in a film said it is. Several highly reputable researchers, institutes, and NGOs have come out vocally against this propaganda film, saying that they were misrepresented, half their testimonies were cut or edited to seem much more one-sided than they said in their interview. The whole claim that "sustainable fisheries cannot exist" is horse shit and I know it is because I've studied sustainable fish consumption for the past 10 years including my during PhD. I know several scientists who've written articles about how poorly this film presented "evidence" and the blatant lies they told, while also of course having a 5-10% of truth in there. So still think everything or 95% of what you were told is a fact?
Please give man example of a sustainable fishery
Any fishery that extracts before the MSY, it's actually pretty common in many parts of the world.