Seaspiracy – the documentary that will change the way you look at fish.

You know it’s a good documentary, when your husband tells you he doesn’t want to eat fish again.

On Thursday 25th March – I watched Seaspiracy with my husband.

Being honest, my husband is a great person – he supports me in my mission to create a better world. I believe that’s because he wants the world to be good place for when we have children. Either way though, he follows my lead, quietly making small changes, possibly because he sees the value but most likely because he doesn’t want an ear bending from me where I harp on at him with facts, figures and all the rest! He cares, of course he does – he wouldn’t do half the stuff he does if he didn’t and I appreciate that – after all small continuous changes add up over time.

We’ve watched many a documentary, I’ve read him many an article and played him podcasts and soundbites until he wants to lob my laptop at me, so I was thoroughly surprised when he suggested that we watch Seaspiracy. Actually, tell a lie – he loves the sea so I guess it’s not that surprising. He also loves fishing, he’s been fishing with his dad since he was young and so of course, Seaspiracy was going to catch his interest.

He saw it come up on Netflix, while we were trying to find something to watch to help us get through the boredom of another lockdown evening.

It’s an interesting documentary. In my opinion, it’s a personal journey of discovery and while it’s a bit confusing and shifts from one topic to another and circles back to something – it ultimately takes the viewer on the same journey. They discover the deep dark secrets just as director Ali Tabrizi does. I watched my husband while this documentary was on – it’s a good documentary, I wouldn’t say it was hard hitting journalism but it worked because we felt what Tabrizi was feeling. The shock and disgust. The wasted fish, the mutilated fish, the pollution from fishing nets, the greed of so many and the impact that was having. The final nail in the coffin for my husband was the toxins in the fish… it made him feel sick.

I’m a vegetarian and my husband is not. I’ve never encouraged him to changed anything about his food habits – unless he wants to. It’s my job to tell him what’s what, it’s his decision to do what he wants. But for him to say that this documentary had changed his view on eating fish because of the impact that it has on the planet and potentially his health – I’ve got to be honest, I’m astounded.

To the novice, the uneducated and the selective listener – this documentary shone a light on what’s going on in different places around the world and how our actions are exploiting the oceans. The light was flicking about all over the place but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I actually think it worked really well – but by showing corruption throughout the fishing industry as well as highlighting the questionable practices within the organisations set up to police this corruption; it was possible to see that we as the consumer were once again being duped. BUT not just that – our incessant demand for endangered species was feeding this corruption.

What lessons can we learn from Seaspiracy?

1. Labels are misleading – just because a label promotes sustainability, it doesn’t mean that a product is sustainable.
2. We’ve all heard about overfishing, but we don’t understand what that means?
3. We don’t consider what happens to the unwanted fish?
4. Fishing nets are a waste product that we overlook.