‘The End of the Line’ is a compelling indictment of industrial fishing

‘The End of the Line’ is a compelling indictment of industrial fishing
by Sara Barz
8 Jun 2009

If scientists are correct, 2048 will be a terrible year for sushi restaurants. And diners selling tuna melts, too.

End of the Line movieThe End of the Line isn’t going to make you feel so good about hitting the neighborhood sushi bar.In fact, if I had any money to invest in a seafood venture, Carl Safina’s suggestion to “consider the jellyfishburger” may be the best advice. By mid-century, jellyfish may be the only “fish” left to catch.

Though it lacks the starpower of a certain former vice president, The End of the Line does for the fish what Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth did for the climate: scare the pants off the viewer. The documentary deftly makes the case that industrial exploitation of the world’s fish stocks will result in the end of seafood by 2048, if not sooner, and that some species may already be in collapse.

Accompanied by many graphs, interviews with prominent marine scientists, and scenes of gruesome fishing practices, Charles Clover, a British journalist and narrator of this film, says that he first became aware of the dangers of overfishing when he mistakenly stepped into a meeting at The Hague in the early 1990s. “They said that trawling is like plowing a field seven times a year,” he said. “As a farmer’s son, I know that you can’t possibly plow a field that often and expect it to produce.”

To read the full article: http://www.grist.org/article/2009-06-08-end-of-the-line-movie-fishing/