AdamsFilmAnnotation4

The film ‘The End of the Line’, directed by Rupert Murray, was released in 2008.

This film focuses upon human's war on fish. It presents the issue of fishing stocks in rapid decline. Once one species is depleted, the fishing industry changes it's business model to another species. The central theme is that the future will not be the same as it is now, and if we remove all the creatures from the ocean we will certainly have problems. It describes an industry out of control and identifies the error with labeling any living creature as a commodity.

This film is very good at what it aiming at doing. It argues it's point using many images and some amazing expert interviews, as well as animated graphs depicting the depletion of fish stocks throughout the last 50 years. It portrays the fishing industry as a bit of a bully who ignores regulation and often misleads regulators by providing false data. This skews the actual numbers into something much less than what there is. The major emotion felt in this film is anger and sadness. Sadness because we are never going to have as much as we did.

Political problems identify a lack of regulation in the global community, exemplified in the blue fin tuna market, where caps were set twice as high as the absolute limit in order to avoid the species going extinct. Economics drives this problem, mainly becuase we the consumer is demanding fish and not just one or two species but a diversity and freshness. The culutral significance of fish in our diet is hugely important and also very influential in how we have allowed, or rather demanded, the industry to supply us with alot of it. The sustainable problems that go along with overfishing are scary. This film represents that this fish problem, is perhaps the greatest example of how not to manage a resource.

How the economic diversity amongst developed countries and western Africa provides for a climate in the fishing industry that is wrong and wasteful was what struck me as most compelling. That area of the world is being ravaged and in the meantime, they act like a crime is being committed to the people of Meditteranean and Africa. Also, the figure showing that 90% of fish stocks are left compared to 1952 when large scale industrial fishing began left me feeling quite sick.

When they showcased the efforts made in Alaska to control the amount of fish caught, and the entire series of clips failed to do anything for me as a viewer. This is becuase they just had showed how the global stocks are being depleted, if not already, and their beacon of light was one state doing something that should be done. I had to scratch my head at that one. If everyone did that, fish stocks would still be in decline, just the amount of fish caught would be controlled.

This film is perfect for pretty much everyone who eats fish and has eaten fish in a restaurant or frequently purchases fish at a grocer. Everyone can relate to this film becuase fish is a part of our success story. Young viewers might become alarmed by the future, and older viewers will be humbled by what has happened during their lifetime.

This film discussed some of the impact overfishing has had upon coral reefs, but it failed really in the grand scheme of things to address the scope and importance those habitats have not only on maintaining balance in the oceans but also their ability to provide us with many benefits. More of the film should have been spent considering the potential risks to these systems, as well as provide alot of data on how we directly influence the decline of coral reefs through other activities. The list of feedbacks just goes on and on.

My solution is very simple, and fortunately extremely easy to put into place. We simply place a global moratorium on all commerical and industrial scale fishing until 2025. The ability for the oceans to bounce back is quite amazing and can do so really quickly. 15 years of no fishing would be undesirable for consumers and food sources would have to compensate for the decline in protein in our diets, but the benefits include; possibly saving ourselves from a crisis, protecting biodiversity, and allowing time to better manage our terrestrial agriculture techniques.

At some point in the film, it was mentioned that fish droppings have a link to climate change. So, obviously i investigated how and why, and to really what extent the film meant. A U.S.A. Today article explains how the acidity of the oceans can be balanced by droppings, or fecal pellets, that provide calcium for mineral production if ocean sediments. Calcium acts like a buffer in an acidic system, and thus controls the acidity. []

However, this doesn't tell the full story. []

There is actually alot more to the feedbacks associated with climate science. As climate warms, and ocean acidity increases, fish populations decrease on their own and the resulting loss of bacterial respiration and calcium deposition in the ocean creates a paradoxical problem. If we lose fish, the climate will continue to change. If the climate changes continue, fish populations will decline. Thus, leaving ourselves with a large hole to climb out of.