In 2007, a research vessel stationed off the coast of eastern Canada cast two fishing lines, each with 1,500 hooks, in order to estimate how many cod were left in this region’s waters. They caught only a few fish. Eleven years earlier, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney had declared a moratorium on cod fishing with the goal of rebuilding the species’ population back to a secure, if not profitable, number. The Arctic cod population, like that of Western Atlantic bluefin tuna, Chesapeake Bay scalloped hammerhead shark, Atlantic salmon, North Sea haddock, Southern Atlantic snowy grouper, East Gulf of Mexico red snapper and American plaice, is reaching what director Rupert Murray foresees as “the end of the line.” His so-titled documentary examines the decline of our ocean’s diverse species while proposing immediate solutions.

His film gives us the chance to see what the ocean actually looks like and how it is affected by industrial fishing. Murray frequently returns to frames of our oceans’ surface waters—their vastness extends toward an infinite horizon line. We witness fishermen from Senegal and the Strait of Gibraltar pull netted fish from the water, we see images of bounty, and we begin to reckon the sheer mass of fish killed. There are recurring images of hooks, blood and swarming catches. Anchovies are processed for fishmeal—the pile of dead fish appears limitless.

These images reappear variously in many local landscapes documented. Halifax, Alaska, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Lampadusa and Senegal bear a universal problem and it blends into one common visual. But opinions on industrial fishing tell a less cohesive story and this documentary presents the argument through two divergent perspectives.

“We are fighting a war against fish,” scientist Daniel Pauly explains. Though he is pro- sustainable fishing, he identifies man’s increasing power within the fishing industry—technological nautical advancement, increasing consumer demand, influential policy-making and greedy corporate control—to explain why humans are unwilling to restrain themselves from destroying fish populations. “Fisherman cheat because they can. Fisherman cheat because they won’t get caught. That’s true of all systems,” says Charles Clover, on whose book this movie is based. On a phone call with the manager at Nobu London, Clover asks why the restaurant refuses to take bluefin tuna off the menu. The manager avoids the obvious answer: because it is popular, fish are fashionable and consumers will buy it. Instead, he offers a guarantee that the menu will warn customers about endangered fish by putting an asterisks and a note beside any fish that qualifies. We know that bluefin tuna are in crisis, yet corporations large and small care little about preserving the population.

The largest purchaser of bluefin tuna is Mitsubishi. Estimates by one tuna researcher claim that the multinational corporation now controls about 60% of the total production of Northern bluefin tuna in the Atlantic and Mediterranean through its freezing and transportation capacities. Each year scientists calculate in tons the numbers needed to regulate and rebuild tuna populations. They then recommend their findings to an EU fishing ministry. To maintain the Atlantic bluefin tuna population, fisherman would have to reduce their yearly catch to 15,000 tons. To see the population rejuvenate, the catch limit would have to be 10,000 tons. Knowing this information, EU ministers have voted for a cap of 29,500 tons—and in real numbers, Atlantic bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean are actually fished to unregulated capacities of 61,000 tons per year, about 1/3 of the total bluefin population. When governments simply refuse responsibility for stricter regulations, fishery commissions can ignore scientific truths. But the race against fish, controlled by human competition, is also influenced by denial—a fisherman in Senegal speaks straight into the camera to claim “the sea has betrayed us.”

Still, there is optimism in the End of the Line. Understanding the resistance they are up against, scientists regulating fish extinction believe that there is hope in unveiling real numbers, actual species disappearances and major changes to our ecosystem. Public knowledge enhances transparency. Because fish populations are collapsing at calculable, consistent rates, scientists aver with confidence that if changes are not made to the fishing industry, most fish we eat today will disappear by 2048.

End of the Line is an educational tool and a call to arms. Murray imparts three written commandments to his viewers as the film ends: consumers, politicians and advocates must enact change. We must be curious eaters, asking questions about where our fish comes from and whether it is sustainably produced. Helping us on this front, Clover has launched a new site called Fish2Fork, which features sustainability grades for restaurants that serve fish all over the world — and you can add reviews. In addition, politicians need to value science and take control of fishing regulations and fisherman must be forced to observe the rules. Advocates for a sustainable fishing movement must work for the creation of more ocean reserves like the one filmed in the Exuma Cays of the Bahamas. Here, endangered and collapsing fish species swim freely in an area protected by no-fishing laws. 1% of our ocean is currently protected from commercial fishing; the remaining 99% is an illusion of abundance.

When industrial fish farming began in 1952, the number of boats trolling for catch was not anywhere near today’s fleet. One and a half billion fishing hooks a year are attached to lines so long, they could wrap around the world 550 times over. One-tenth of the world’s entire catch captured using long line and trawling methods is thrown back overboard. Seven million tons of sea creatures ranging from turtles to dolphins to sea birds are not even brought to market. As we “win” the fight against fish by exploiting the ocean’s exhaustible resources, Murray challenges us to ask what we have to gain by doing so.

You can see the film at a screening near you. Meanwhile, here is the trailer:

It seems like not a week goes by without industrial animal food production somehow making headlines–the H1N1 flu pandemic, astounding meat recalls, high levels of arsenic in chicken feed, or any of a dozen other concerns. One recent story that should have generated some rather large waves, however, has made only a minor splash. Chile’s salmon farming industry, second only to Norway’s, is on the verge of collapse.

Salmon are not indigenous to Chile, but grown in crowded cages installed in the bays and estuaries of the country’s otherwise beautiful southern fjord region. These “farmed” Atlantic salmon are fed a steady diet of wild fish–perfectly edible for humans, but more profitable when converted into “value-added” finfish. The approximately three pounds of wild fish needed to produce each pound of farmed salmon has caused some people to refer to finfish aquaculture operations as “reverse protein factories.” Equally alarming, salmon farms have become excessively dependent upon toxic pesticides to combat sea lice and antibiotic medicines to thwart viruses that can run rampant among the high concentrations of rapidly growing, penned fish–not unlike industrial-scale hog, poultry, and cattle CAFOs on land.

But the drugs are no longer working. According to industry source Intrafish, Chile’s 2009 salmon output could decline by as much as 87 percent from last year–a drop from 279,000 metric tons in 2008 to between 37,000 metric tons and 67,000 metric tons. The cause is the widespread outbreak of a virus known as infectious salmon anemia (ISA). When the virus first appeared in 2008, many offshore aquaculture companies moved their production farms further south in Chile, into waters still unaffected by ISA. Instead of lessening the problem, the industry actually spread the virus into the southern waters.

The Chilean government and regulatory agency are now implementing measures to address the crisis, but their efforts, for the time being, have been too little, too late. Chilean salmon stocks have been devastated, and this is expected to send ripple effects throughout the world’s food supply. A 20 percent shortfall in the global supply of farmed Atlantic salmon is predicted for this year and perhaps 2010 as well. The human toll in this saga is also significant, as the salmon industry has become a primary employer in the southern region of the country, and could lead to the unemployment of as many as 15,000 people.

Experts had been cautioning for years about the hazards of unsanitary conditions and overcrowding in industrial salmon cages. The first widespread die-offs due to ISA began to mount early in 2008, but the industry declined to take protective measures to guard against further spread of the infection. Critics have called for improved conditions by limiting the number of salmon in the cages and by spreading the farms farther apart from one another to avoid transfer of disease and to lessen the concentration of harmful chemicals, antibiotics, and other adverse affects of large-scale fish production.

Unfortunately, this has not been the only alarming news in 2009 about Chilean aquaculture. In February, the Pew Environment Group obtained documents [PDF] from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revealing that the Chilean salmon industry has been using antibiotics prohibited on fish destined for the United States. (Pew wrote a letter [PDF] to the FDA) Apparently, the FDA notified the three companies guilty of using the unapproved drugs that they can no longer use them on fish raised for the U.S. market. But questions remain whether or not the FDA will enforce these restrictions, and if so, how they will go about ensuring that the banned substances are not used.

Concerns over antibiotic overdosing and its potential to create antibiotic resistant disease organisms that could harm humans may become less of an issue if the Chilean salmon industry suffers an even further decline. Many are calling for a dismantlement of the industry. Others caution that without real reforms it could implode of its own unsustainable production practices. At a minimum, we should take this as one more in a long series of wake-up calls that our concentrated animal food operations–whether on land or at sea–need to be urgently reconsidered, before they are all on the verge of collapse.

Photo: Sam Beebe / Ecotrust

It seems to be hardwired into the human psyche, the inclination to shout “It’s not my fault!” at the first sign of accusations. And we all know that the louder and the more frequent our declarations, the more likely it is that we actually are to blame.

Thus it goes with fisheries around the world – constantly looking for a scapegoat to blame for the decline of their fish stocks. Or in this case a “Scape-Whale.”

Much to my surprise, there has been a scientific debate raging for decades about the role that whales play in depleting fish populations. The argument goes like this: whales eat fish, therefore we should kill whales to protect the fish.  And then get to eat the whales, too.

The push for this “culling” practice (the scientific term for the ‘selection’ (removing or killing) of surplus animals from an animal population) has largely come from Japan. The Japanese whaling industry, along with members from Iceland and Norway, have been increasing the pressure to support whaling as a way to improve fish populations.

In a 2004 National Geographic article, a Japanese Fisheries Agency spokesperson “said that whales eat at least ten target species hunted by people, including Japanese anchovy and Pacific saury.” But biologist Peter Corkeron with the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research responded:

“The bottom line is that we are exploiting the oceans’ resources more and more.  It’s almost a no-brainer that eventually someone will point the finger at other species that are using the same resources.”

The good news for whales is that a recent study published in the journal Science proves the “whale = bad” argument is spurious.

Arizona State University scientist Leah Gerber and co-authors demonstrate that the impact of whales is small compared to human fishing patterns. Data from the Caribbean and North African locations demonstrate that the impact on fisheries caused by human behavior is hundreds of times greater than the fish consumed by whales.

The paper makes several recommendations; including taking into account the “indirect social and economic benefits of whales” – that is tourism. They also recommend that “despite complicated politics, science should be an integral component of the discussions about managing whale and fish interactions.” (Read: up until now, science has been absent.)  Finally, they recommend managing marine ecosystems based on long-term sustainability, rather than the goal of short term fishery yield as is often currently the case.

In his superlative book The End of The Line, author Charles Clover finds evidence of this “It’s not my fault” syndrome throughout the worldwide fishing industry.  Moving forward, the paper makes a convincing case that we need to take responsibility for the impacts we are having on the oceans – as individuals, as nations, and as a species.

ASU’s Leah Gerber on fisheries

Photo: Arizona Board of Regents, humpback whale swimming through the ocean