Thoughts On Seaspiracy: Should We All Stop Eating Fish?

Seaspiracy - a documentary that was recently released on Netflix - explores many aspects of the global fishing industry including large-scale commercial fishing, plastic pollution and whether eating fish can ever really be ‘sustainable’. While the documentary has had some criticism for taking quotes out of context, it has shone a spotlight on the fishing industry and caused many to think more about their food choices. One theme that this documentary and others like it tend to have in common is that they expose the problems within our globalised food system. We have access to food from all over the world - and while this luxury of choice has some benefits - it will always come with its problems. When our food is traveling across oceans to reach us, it can be pretty difficult to know where it’s come from and how it was grown, raised, or caught. So, can we still enjoy these foods without feeling caught in a system that we don’t fully trust?

One issue raised in Seaspiracy is around food labels - can we trust them? As consumers, we use food labels to ease our conscience around whether our food reaches a certain standard that doesn’t harm the natural environment or wildlife. The distance between the food at the supermarket and those who actually produce it can be far and wide, which is why we need labels and certification bodies. While there are some certification bodies and organisations doing good work to ensure that we can eat food from further afield and still know it’s come from a ‘trustworthy’ source, these labels and certifications aren’t always watertight or a guarantee. This will always be a problem within a global food system where our food is measured in air miles and we often don’t even know where it was produced. I cannot speak to every issue raised in Seaspiracy, but this issue of globalisation in food is a big reason why we are left with a feeling of hopelessness after watching these documentaries - how can we ever change a system that’s so big and, clearly, not transparent?

Our global food system has skewed our understanding of sustainability - to quote Guy Singh-Watson, Founder of Riverford, ‘anyone offering you a continuous range of fresh, day boat-landed fish is lying’ [1]. The reality is that sourcing enough fish out of the ocean to feed the number of people on this planet that want to eat ‘sustainable’ fish will never be a sustainable endeavour that benefits our oceans. To quote Guy again, ‘we need marine reserves where all commercial fishing is banned. Disturbance of the sea bottom should be illegal. Quotas need to be redistributed to smaller, local boats. The plundering of fish stock in the developing world by large foreign boats must stop, and fossil fuels must be taxed. If that is politically undoable, then yes, we should stop eating fish.’ 

However, in reality, a lot of people will never give up fish. So, is there another solution? The reason why so many people, after watching Seaspiracy, declared that they would never eat fish again is due to a lack of trust in our food system - so how can we repair it? We need to accept that certain foods will never be sustainably sourced in a global supply chain and question whether that means we should be eating them at all. We need a mental shift when it comes to our view of ‘sustainable food’ - if we cannot play an active role in, or even observe directly, where the food we’re eating came from then we will always be relying on someone else (usually with their own interests) to tell us that it’s sustainable. If you aren’t willing to investigate further how or where your food comes from then maybe you shouldn’t be eating it. The same goes for vegetables and meat - we need to support systems that are actually slow, work with nature, and are light on the planet. It means that if you choose to eat fish or meat, you eat it on occasion and from a traceable - and preferably local - source that is transparent and non-intensive.

Support small-scale farmers, fishermen, growers etc. who are producing food for their local communities, as they cut out the middlemen that stop us from fully understanding what we are eating. We don’t need a label to tell us whether something is produced in the right way if we have a direct relationship with our local producer. We all have power when it comes to the choices we are making every day with the food that we buy and consume. There are plenty of people producing food in a sustainable, honest way and if we want to change the system then we need to support them, rather than a system that we don’t trust. Food is political - as long as we choose to put our money into a system, that system will keep on growing and thriving. So, if we choose to put our money into a more transparent and (legitimately) sustainable food system then that is the system that will thrive.

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[1] https://wickedleeks.riverford.co.uk/opinion/news-farm-fish-environment-ethics/uncomfortable-truth-about-fishing

The Plastic Binge: How Our Addiction to Plastic is Harming Us All

In the middle of the Pacific Ocean lies an island twice the size of Texas that is made entirely of wasted plastic. You may have heard of the island dubbed as the ‘Great Pacific garbage patch’ or the ‘plastic trash vortex’. At first glance the issues surrounding this island’s existence are quite apparent; underwater footage of the island shows sea creatures wrapped in plastic, their forms morphed by the plastic waste debris. Then comes the wider message that this island portrays, it is a microcosm of a far larger problem that supposedly begins with disregard and a lack of understanding.

In today’s globalised, consumerist culture understandings of environmentalism often lead back to a ‘man vs. nature’ scenario. That in order to find our path back to restoring some hope regarding climate change we must ‘seek nature’ - a narrative that further suggests a good vs. evil tale of the city competing with the great wilderness.

Although I am a great advocate for re-connecting and re-claiming our wildness, this understanding of environmentalism seems to have forgotten that we are nature; we are not an entirely separate entity. Climate change is not a doomsday battle between man and the elements. It is a sheer reminder of how interconnected we are with all that we connect with, and are often totally disconnected from. Progression does not have to mean destruction; it does not have to come at a detrimental cost. Nature is in our cities as it is in our wilderness, it is in the homes we have built and the children we have raised, and we cannot ignore our connected fate.

On New Zealand’s South Island lies a small harbour town called Akaroa. The waters near Akaroa are the home of Hector’s dolphins, the smallest and rarest dolphins in the world. These dolphins resemble mini orca’s and glide through the water in sizeable pods. While not only being the rarest breed of dolphin on the planet, the adult population of this species is estimated at only 8,000; with the rarer breed of hector’s dolphins, Maui Dolphin’s, estimated at only 55.

It is animals like these that are highly at risk of being deformed or poisoned by the toxic chemicals that plastic waste distributes. To simply stand and watch these mammals thriving in their natural habitat is enough to make you realise that the ocean is not our territory to abuse; it is the home of creatures that we may never even lay our eyes upon and many that we are yet to discover. Yet, marine species’ are not the only ones that will have to live with the consequences of our waste; chemicals from the plastic that we dump in our oceans are also contaminating the food and water that we consume.

The decaying process of plastic takes thousands of years. When plastic gets into the ocean it traps the chemicals that run off from industry, such as fire retardants and pesticides. The island of plastic in the Pacific Ocean is one of five islands formed from plastic waste that have been discovered; other garbage patches have been found in the Indian and Atlantic oceans. 580,000 pieces of plastic waste per square kilometre reside in the Atlantic Ocean.

Due to the vast expanse of the deep blue it is easy to ignore the implications that this waste is having on the underwater eco system, as with much of the implications of human action, the consequences are ‘out there’ in a place that we only see, read or hear about through a medium that we quickly forget. Yet, as animals ingest stray pieces of plastic the toxicity infects their entire body; larger plastic elements can also sit in their stomach until they die or choke to death. The chemicals that are trapped in plastic waste are stored in the bodies of fish as they pollute surrounding waters and make their way into our food system. Fish are not only eaten by humans but are also ground up and fed to cattle, resulting in these polluting chemicals also finding their way into meat products.

As more waste is dumped into the ocean at an alarming rate these issues will only become more apparent, no doubt leading to detrimental consequences for human health. As the narrative around climate change progresses we need to rethink the rhetoric; we as a community on planet earth need to understand that only when we join forces with nature and realise that environmentalism is not man vs. nature, are we truly ready to make real change in the face of global warming. This goes beyond simply appreciating the wild around us; it means building, creating and living in a way that recognises our place in the earth’s natural ecosystem. Modernisation does not need to be at war with the wilderness; as we seek to progress we have the chance to do so in partnership with nature, instead of at the expense of our planet. Plastic waste is just one aspect of the detrimental effect that our negligent choices are having, but it clearly shows that we are not immune to the negative consequences of our actions.