OVERFISHING will bring an end to the world’s seafood market by 2048. So says a new film “The End of the Line,” released on World Ocean Day (8th June)
In search of socially responsible reporting for Changing Course, I vetted this film for you, dear reader, last week.
It warns that overfishing could result in the end of seafood by 2048 because all fishing stocks will collapse as a result of overfishing. The documentary has been compared to Al Gore´s Inconvenient Truth.
Just another bit of scaremongering?
Sadly, probably not. One of the most interesting books I’ve ever read is “Cod” by Mark Kurlansky. Read "Cod" and witness through it the total collapse (and failure to recover) of the Canadian and Newfoundland fishing industries and you’re likely to agree.
Likewise, anyone who works in shipping and who has an interest in world trade (that’s you by the way) will find this book fascinating.
“Cod” is “an extraordinary little book, unputdownable, written in the most lyrical, flowing style which paints vivid pictures and, at the same time, punches into place hard facts that stop you dead in your tracks. Who would ever think that a book on cod would make a compulsive read? And yet this is precisely what Kurlansky has done.” (Sir Roy Strong.)
Celebrities who have already seen “The End of the Line” were so shocked that many have posed naked “with fish” to raise awareness.
Greta Scacchi, who took part alongside Emilia Fox and Terry Gilliam, urged consumers to buy only sustainable fish to help stocks of all fish recover as well as the bluefin tuna, which has been so much in the press lately.
"The film is based on meticulous and accurate research and it is shocking to hear the experts reporting that if we continue with current fishing methods – a free for all, largely unregulated plundering of the sea – the prediction is that within 40 years the sea will be inhabited only by worms and jellyfish," she said.
