End of the Line: Sunday 16 May, Kerikeri

April 23rd, 2010 • Comments Off Conservation online

5pm for 5.30pm showing at The Center in Kerikeri.

UNMISSABLE.

End of the Line

March 16th, 2010 • Comments Off Conservation online, Social media

Last night I watched a movie about fish and was reminded that we won’t be finding Nemo for much longer if we keep doing what we’re doing to our oceans.

That’s not a criticism of the guys out fishing for their dinner or local fishermen bringing in the dinner for their communities. It’s those huge trawlers raping the oceans of whatever’s there for our insatiable appetite for neat, tidy supermarket fish, be it breaded and frozen, fresh from the deli counter or jarred and capsuled as omega 3 brain food. It’s the fact that we only protect 0.6% of our ocean, leaving over 99% open to huge scale commercial fishing and, within that 99%, the quota is many times what it should be to maintain a healthy virgin biomass.

The fish shop in the sea is a finite resource; we’re using it faster than it can replenish itself and it is going to run out. Won’t we look stupid then?

Yes, it’s old news. Everyone has already been sickened by the fact that bluefin tuna has been fished virtually to extinction. We know that whales are still killed ‘for research’. And we’re perfectly aware of the damage that bottom trawling does in terms of collateral damage (did you know that trails from the trawlers can be seen from space?).

But the problem is not being solved. Evidence says that we’re on a trajectory to nothing, that’s NOTHING, in our oceans by somewhere around 2048. No more fish. Just jellyfish and worms.

This award-winning film, End of the Line released in June 2009, is going to be shown in The Centre, Kerikeri soon. I will announce the date here once it’s confirmed. Until then, here’s a taster: