From fishrot to conspiraSeas...

I wonder how many people in the world are aware of the fact that fake news has not only overrun the digital world in topics such as politics and pandemics. How “alternative facts”, as some now hail them, have seeped into our everyday lives and even into things we thought were impossible to falsify. If you still live under the delusion that there are sacred topics that those dreaded trolls and pirates won’t sully, I’m sorry to be the one to break your heart. One such topic which is close to my, and many Namibians’ hearts, is conservation. And yes, this too has been punted into the dirty dishwater of what is real and what isn’t. Conservation topics nowadays are, like so many others, drenched in the foul-smelling disillusionment of today’s version of ‘truth’.

Netflix and chill-ing realities

On the top of almost every country’s Netflix ‘Must watch’ list this past month is the new conservation documentary Seaspiracy. Brought to on-demand screens by the creators of the award-winning 2014 film Cowspiracy (which almost made all of us go vegan), this chilling docu delves deep into the heart of the almost-empty oceans and uncovers the devilish underbelly of global commercial fishing. It thoroughly ruins your love of salmon, reignites a passionate devotion to the cutest aquatic creatures (dolphins, duh) and will ensure that you never ever ever pick up a pack of John West tuna from the shelves of your nearest Spar ever again. Now, here in Namibia, we are no strangers to the murky waters of commercial fishing scandals (#fishrot), but Seaspiracy takes the epic ‘reveals’ to the next level. Here are some of them, just to get your BPM up: The oceans will be ‘virtually empty’ by 2048. Nearly 50% of the plastics floating in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is made up of fishing nets. Creator Ali Trabizi starts off as a plastics activist cleaning his local beaches, then trudges to the other side of the world tackling mafia-esque dolphin and shark hunters and ends up taking on the world’s biggest fishing conglomerates. Along the way, Ali also links up with big NGOs that claim to be committed to the preservation of the world’s oceans, but finds that they are not always as “righteous” as they would like the world to think. I’m not going to spoil the whole film for you, but your take-away will probably be the same as mine. Substitute your commercially caught I&J for something caught by your hubby or uncle at Henties and you’ll leave the world a better place.

Liars and outliers

After the release of the film, the creators got a lot of clapback from the global fishing industry (as could be expected). They claimed that facts in the film were misrepresented and taken out of context. Netflix and the Seaspiracy team came back with a “what are you talking about? It’s all true, you just don’t like the truth coming out.” Of course the big guns are going to throw money at journos and publications they spend millions advertising with, to create a counter campaign to save their existence. The documentary fact-checks and puts both fishery control organisations and NGOs on the spot with incredibly simple questions that they for some reason can’t respond to. The simple answer to this conundrum is that it doesn’t suit the narrative they have established to get more people to click the ‘Donate Now’ button on their websites. It seems that today’s true conservationists are those that aren’t afraid to go against what has become the status quo of the global conservationist narrative and find the truths hidden behind the veneer of ‘commercial conservation’.

And while I don’t agree with everything Ali says in the film (especially where it comes to sustainability) and feel that he could have elaborated more on the own-use, fair-chase fishing which millions of rural communities around the world rely on for their livelihoods, the overall message of the film comes through effectively. Whether we want to accept the facts or not, the truth is out there. It’s just getting harder for us to establish which truth to believe or not. Don’t just take everything at face value. You are allowed to agree with a single point but not the whole story as well. Do research. Check your sources. And also remember to check who is paying for the narrative you are absorbing, because that at the end of the day is the motivation behind the story.

Watch Seaspiracy on Netflix.

Elzanne McCulloch