May 14, 2021 — American consumers are familiar with the “Dolphin Safe” label on their tuna cans, and they may soon be seeing “FAD-free” labels, too.
The Blue Marine Foundation, a London-based NGO focused on marine conservation, hosted a free online interactive roundtable on “Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs) in Responsible Tuna Fisheries” on Thursday, 6 May.
April 1, 2021 — A Netflix documentary about the impact of commercial fishing has attracted celebrity endorsements and plaudits from fans with its damning picture of the harm the industry does to ocean life. But NGOs, sustainability labels and experts quoted in Seaspiracy have accused the film-makers of making “misleading claims”, using out-of-context interviews and erroneous statistics.
Seaspiracy, made by the team behind the award-winning 2014 film Cowspiracy, which was backed by Leonardo DiCaprio, pours doubt on the idea of sustainable fishing, shines a spotlight on the aquaculture industry and introduces the notion of “blood shrimp”, seafood tainted with slave labour and human rights abuses.
Launched last week, the 90-minute film is already trending on the platform as one of its Top 10 most watched films and programmes and has been praised by celebrities including Bryan Adams, the vegan Canadian rock star, who urged his followers to watch it and stop eating fish. Chris Froome, the seven Grand Tour-winning British cyclist, tweeted that “my mind has been blown” by the film. George Monbiot, the environmentalist and Guardian columnist, who appears in it, described it on Twitter as “a brilliant exposé of the greatest threat to marine life: fishing”.
Directed by Ali Tabrizi, a film-maker from Kent, the wide-ranging documentary questions the sustainable seafood movement and looks at the way the Dolphin Safe and Marine Stewardship Council labels may not be able to provide the assurances consumers are looking for.
March 31, 2021 — Groups and organizations involved in the global seafood industry, as well as individual stakeholders and scientists, are responding with concern to a new Netflix documentary, “Seaspiracy,” which purports to investigate the impact of commercial fishing on marine ecosystems and wildlife.
The 90-minute film, which has consistently led Netflix’s top 10 rankings around the world since its late-March release, was created by the same team behind 2014’s “Cowspiracy,” a similar feature-length documentary spotlighting the animal agriculture industry.
March 30, 2021 — An executive with the international organization responsible for the Dolphin Safe tuna label is charging that the producers of the new Netflix documentary “Seaspiracy” took his comments out of context to suggest dolphins are being slaughtered by tuna fishing operations.
Mark Palmer, associate director USA, for the International Marine Mammal Project (IMMP), which is operated by the Earth Island Institute, said he provided the documentary’s film crew with “extensive information on how the Dolphin Safe label is used for the protection of dolphins.”
None of this information was used in the documentary, he said in a post on the group’s website.
Palmer, in one of the more memorable scenes from the film, was asked if his group could guarantee that no dolphins were ever killed in any tuna fishery anywhere in the world.