The Seaspiracy Dilemma

Hello friends! I hope you’ve had a stunner weekend with friends and family, but also, I hope you got a chance to rest!

So Seaspiracy made its debut this week and its a funny thing how, all the excitement often sits with a pang of the potential of the old norms being continued in the narration of these stories, and so messages went around of who had seen it and views as scientists came out saying they had been misrepresented and facts misrepresented, the world of heightened drama and the dramatics created for our enjoyment.

What quickly followed was the younger generation and their take, its an interesting thing the world we live in, a mixture of fashionable things being culture and trends being the bible… all to say, the overwhelming message back - that I heard, was the horror of the why we must stop eating fish met with drama and sworn new ways which is fantastic, I just wondered if anyone else had heard the other stuff, the human stuff.

I understand that we are all in the work to save the ocean, but the how remains as much an important factor as the end because I wondered how some of the bits I saw hadn’t made news,

Like the fact that people working on these ships had pretty much been abducted and working as slaves on these ships,

That peoples lives were minimised to nothing, and that at any point you could be thrown over the boat and the excuse given for your missing body is that you must have gotten ill and fell over, without one more question towards the story,

That humans were being beat and abused, and as the one guy said, he felt sorry because the humans being thrown over, their families couldn’t honour the death and send the soul off in a way conversant with the peoples ways.

Does this sound like something we have been through before?

How does this documentary only send shock waves related to the ocean… or is there overwhelm in our ability to comprehend human suffering? Is shock value the only accessible part in the midst of an overload of uncomfortable information circulating the world right now? That it is possible for human rights to be non existent for some in this day and age?

The story is about human consumption being a problem Zandi, that if we stop eating fish then we can save the seas and while saving the seas, bring the fishing industry to it’s knees so they eventually let these people go back home to their families because this is inhumane and we can’t sit and observe this human suffering happen under our eyes.

Yes, I know this is exactly what everyone was thinking.

The gent in the film later has to make a run for it after he gets an informant to feed him information, and as he receives word that the police are on the way to the venue, he leaves, leaving the informant behind, I guess he would have died anyway, or the money given for this information is sufficient to meet whatever end is in store for him.

And then, the illegal ships captured and sunk, and what happens to recovered fish from the illegal trawling?

Questions.

What do I think about the movie? I think it's incredibly informative, inflated numbers or not - I think its important that people understand the destruction we are causing the earth and her seas.

I think its important that people realise that often enough, conservation organisations have their own ends in mind hidden behind plastic toothbrushes, the responsibility is on each individual to ask these organizations the questions asked by the human on the film, keep these spaces accountable - if I see one more mail talking about their proceeds going to ocean conservation without a link to the HOW, I'm going to explode *_*

The gent then heads to West Africa, my heart bled a little more, also because, the plight of these waters is largely for conversion to pet food in Europe, and so he sheds light on how local fishermen are going further and further in to get fish because the trawlers have taken everything, leading to higher numbers of death due to drowning, these local fisherman are not equipped to go further in but death is what is on the line in order to live.

So what is the solution to this massive problem? I don't think the idea to stop eating fish is it, large scale commercial fishing is a problem and has always been a problem, however, we would need to be careful to not demonise nations who have always lived off the land, in their small way, feeding their families and trading fish for goods, this departure point would again fail entire nations.

Its an interesting thing as I sit here, 2 things are in my head, the colonizer, and the colonized, the colonizer being the standard upon which success would be measured, and the years that follow, where the colonized lose their ways and seek to be seen and revered like the colonizer is, and so begin to wish for these things that make respected citizens, and the continued harm on the earth continues.

We need to redefine the word success, and its associated ideals, there isn’t enough planets to house the dreams of the world all looking to live like middle class Americans.

Xx

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Our guest on the live last week was Jamila Janna, an amazing human who is an Ocean Conservationisty and the Director and Producer of the Film Hluleka, listen here , read more about her ⬇️

Miss Janna (@wanderlustandart ) is a currently a master’s candidate at Stellenbosch University. She is the director/producer of short nature documentary Hluleka: The Wildcoast's Wallflower.

She has been employed short term by NEWF and KZN Sharks Board. She interned for WILDOCEANS and is the former spokesperson for Y4MPAs.

Her background is in stable isoptopes, estuarine and coastal ecology, invasive species, filmmaking, science communication and marine activism.

She has also participated in stakeholder engagements and public speaking, and is passionate about all things poetry, and intersectional (marine) environmentalism.

** Please note, we will be pausing the lives over the next 2 weeks (01 April & 8 April), see you on the 15th, take care of yourself and keep conversations around the most important things, how we can become better, together.**