Net losses

The End of the Line is an informative but
depressing documentary on the global
fishing industry

SEA CHANGE: The End of the Line

by MALCOLM FRASER

As every conscious eater knows, a whole lot of our food choices are toxic and very, very politically incorrect. But fish is good for you, right? Well, no. Thanks to Rupert Murray’s documentary The End of the Line, there’s one more food to feel guilty about eating. Turns out that the global fishing industry is pushing the world’s fish supply to an apocalyptic precipice.

Based on a book by Charles Clover, who appears along with a parade of doom-saying scientists, the film paints a uniformly bleak picture of corporate self-interest rampantly stampeding over the public interest and general ecological reality. Among an avalanche of sobering statistics, one chart that stands out shows a sustainable level of global fishing, a European Union-brokered proposal at twice that number, and then the current amount being fished at three times the EU’s suggestion. In short, the film argues, the world is running out of fish and nobody is doing anything about it, except the absurdity of (as Clover puts it) “negotiating biology.”

A bit of suspense is added to the storyline with Roberto Mielgo Bregazzi, a fish detective of sorts who tries to investigate the illegal fishing of Bluefin tuna, which despite being an endangered species still turns up on chi-chi restaurant menus. But with corporate secrecy being what it is, this thread trails off.

Not only is the film depressing, it sometimes suffers from a lack of coherence. Murray occasionally resorts to PETA-worthy gross-out footage of rough-looking fishermen plunging knives into their catch—with slow motion and dramatic music to drive the point home—but then turns around and tries to tug heartstrings with stories of how fishermen are losing their livelihood. A narration by Ted Danson may also give viewers of a certain generation the strange sense of being lectured about environmentalism by Sam Malone from Cheers.

In the last half-hour, the film finally lightens up and proposes some solutions. But without a rapid and widespread surge of consumer activism, it seems that by mid-century the sea will mostly contain, as Clover warns, “a highly simplified ecosystem of mud and worms.” And at that point, someone will probably make a documentary on why we shouldn’t eat those.

THE END OF THE LINE OPENS THIS
FRIDAY, SEPT. 4