Ahead of its release on World Oceans Day this Sunday, the SFT’s Bonnie Welch reflects on David Attenborough’s powerful new documentary, Ocean, drawing parallels between land-based farming and the fishing industry.
David Attenborough’s new film Ocean is both captivatingly beautiful and harrowing – the kind of film you wish you’d never seen but could watch again immediately. I attribute this feeling to the incredible cinematography, capturing both the magnificence and delicate intricacies of marine life, as well as to the significance of its central message, that “the most important place on Earth is not on land, but at sea”.
The ocean absorbs over 90% of excess heat from global warming, generates more than half of the oxygen we breathe, and acts as a vital carbon sink. And yet the ocean, once considered wild and mysterious, has changed dramatically over the course of Attenborough’s lifetime – driven by the massive growth in industrial fishing fleets and the rise of aquaculture (i.e. fish farming). Overfishing, pollution and climate change are now driving marine ecosystems to collapse. So how did we get here? And what can we learn from the mistakes and progress made on land?
Agriculture: A cautionary tale
As populations have risen around the world, industrial scale fishing and aquaculture have exploded in the past few decades. Although land-based agriculture is thousands of years old, it has undergone a similar trajectory. From early hunter-gatherer societies (pre 10,000 BCE) who hunted wild animals and foraged for plants, nuts and berries; to the domestication of plants like wheat, barley and rice, and animals like sheep and cattle (10,000 BCE – 3,000 BCE); to the “Green Revolution” of the 20th century with the use of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, irrigation systems, intensive monocultures and the factory farming of livestock; and most recently in response to this, the rise of organic, agroecological and local food movements.
This journey has been long and fraught with tensions and challenges. Today, almost half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture, contributing to biodiversity loss, soil degradation and climate change. And yet, we have at hand the systems that can help turn farming from being part of the problem, to being part of the solution – improving biodiversity, restoring soil health and drawing down carbon, whilst producing plenty of nutrient dense, healthy food. These regenerative approaches mirror traditional knowledge, embrace nature and prioritise long-term resilience over short-term yield.
We need to prioritise these systems and their ocean equivalents, if we are to stand a chance of preventing catastrophic and irreversible ecosystem collapse on land and at sea. But do we have all the answers when it comes to the oceans?
Oceans: At a crossroads
The way in which we have sourced food from the oceans has followed a similar pattern to agriculture on land, from early human societies who relied on fishing with simple tools like spears and hooks (100,000+ years ago); to commercial fishing with boats and nets in the Middle Ages (500 – 1500 CE), and the Industrial Era (1800 – 1950) which saw steam and diesel-powered boats, trawlers and refrigeration revolutionise the industry; and finally to the modern era (1950 – present), in which we’ve seen massive growth in industrial fishing, including deep-sea trawling, leading to overfishing and vast habitat destruction in seas. As Attenborough says, “We are now at a crossroads, with humanity draining life from the ocean.”
Bottom trawling is responsible for a quarter of global catch each year, more than any other marine fishing technique. On the hunt for species such as cod, hake, shrimp or octopus, the method involves large boats dragging vast weighted nets across the sea floor, catching anything and everything that gets in their way, which results in a huge amount of bycatch (discarded as waste) and destruction.
As fish stocks have declined and demand has continued to rise, we have turned to the farming of fish to fill the gap. Unfortunately, the result has been just as extractive and damaging as industrial fishing. Take salmon farming in the UK as an example: Steph Wetherell writes, “salmon farming began at a small scale with crofters raising salmon in sea pens in the 1960s, but [it] has grown into a massive commercial sector with an estimated 75 million fish raised in over 200 farms across Scotland.” Now a staple in supermarkets around the world, it is regarded by some as the oceanic equivalent of battery chicken farming – high stocking densities, poor animal welfare and increased risk of disease.
The Soil Association, which has been certifying organic salmon since the early 2000s, recently carried out a review into the welfare needs and environmental impact of farmed salmon, highlighting critical issues including fish suffering mass mortality events, sea lice outbreaks affecting wild populations, and the release of harmful chemicals into the environment, even in organic systems. Sarah Compson, Director of Standards Innovation at Soil Association also points out that, “there is so much more known about what land-based farmed species need to live a good life than for aquatic species, despite a recognition that fish are sentient beings.”
One of the many problems of fish farming is what the fish are fed. In the case of salmon, it takes more than a kilo of wild fish to produce a kilo of farmed salmon. One of the most shocking moments in Ocean is footage of vast ships in the Antarctic using vacuum systems to harvest krill – a foundation food for whales, seals, penguins and many other species. I spoke to Toby Nowlan, Producer and Director of Ocean, who described that his role as filmmaker was not to “vilify individuals or fishers, but to show the processes exactly as they are for people to make up their own minds. Because of the nature of fishing – being beneath the waves – we rarely get to see how devastating and violent processes like bottom trawling truly are. The scale of the industry must be seen to be believed.”
How do we turn the tide?
Despite the damaging consequences of industrial fishing and aquaculture, Ocean’s central message is one of hope – that the ocean can recover faster than we had ever imagined. Marine protected areas are known to protect species within their boundaries, but new research has shown that there is a ‘spillover’ of fish into adjacent areas open for fishing, delivering large scale benefits for fish catch rates – seen by many as a win for both conservation and local economies.
The film references several examples of the ocean’s ability to heal – including the global ban on commercial whaling in 1986, which allowed whale populations to recover from near extinction, and marine ecosystems bouncing back when left undisturbed, including off the Isle of Arran, Scotland and Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in Hawaii – though even here there are challenges, including Donald Trump’s recent proclamation to reverse fishing regulations in the area.
On World Oceans Day this June 8th, campaigners will be putting pressure on governments gathered at the UN Ocean Conference in France, to uphold commitments to protect at least 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030 (currently less than 3% is protected). It’s an ambitious target, which involves creating a global network of Marine Protected Areas as well as other conservation measures. For governments to listen, we all need to get behind this. As well as supporting World Ocean Day, there are educational resources, explainers and petitions available via the 30×30 campaign website.
You can also act with your consumer power and support local and more sustainable options. Sole of Discretion is a collective of small-scale fishers in the UK who procure fish and shellfish that have been caught with as little damage to the environment as possible, whilst supporting local fishing communities. The Marine Conservation Society also has a seafood tracker which aims to help consumers make sense of labels and identify alternatives to fish species that are at risk.
With genuine effort, many believe it is possible to balance conservation and harvesting, but questions remain as to how measures to protect the oceans might affect livelihoods and diets, and how best to balance these things. What’s clear is the need to give nature an opportunity to bounce back – both at sea and on land. As Attenborough says, “the ocean’s power of regeneration is remarkable – if we just offer it the chance.”
