A new doc­u­men­tary expos­es the dev­as­tat­ing real­i­ty of fish farming

Doc­u­men­taries about the future prospects of our plan­et have, by neces­si­ty, become increas­ing­ly alarm­ing of late. Yet it’s tak­en a nation­al trea­sure like Sir David Atten­bor­ough to raise the alarm for the wider pop­u­lous ­– and big busi­ness – for them to sit up and take note. Final­ly, we are all now hav­ing to con­sid­er our use of plas­tic and what it does to our oceans.

This new film from eco-friend­ly out­fit Patag­o­nia joins a wider cho­rus of envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns, here focus­ing on the plight of wild salmon off the west cost of the US. For years, farmed fish­ing ​‘hatch­eries’ were viewed as a solu­tion to pre­serv­ing wild fish pop­u­la­tions affect­ed by dam build­ing and rerout­ed rivers. Yet the real­i­ty of dwin­dling num­bers in the oceans points to a man­made dis­as­ter born out of cor­po­rate hubris that defies logic.

Direc­tor Josh ​“Bones” Murphy’s film explores how these hatch­eries actu­al­ly reduce wild pop­u­la­tions dra­mat­i­cal­ly, since the farm-gen­er­at­ed, often-mutat­ed fish aggres­sive­ly fight their wild coun­ter­parts for habi­tat. As a result, the rich nutri­ents from a wild fish’s car­cass which would usu­al­ly feed back into the ecosys­tem are being lost at an alarm­ing rate.

Murphy’s film unpacks a case that’s been out in the pub­lic domain for near­ly 40 years. When Mt St Helens erupt­ed in 1981, wild salmon pop­u­la­tions, ini­tial­ly thought destroyed by the lava, actu­al­ly shot up as a result. As the fish farm­ing indus­try has grown around it, so those pop­u­la­tions have dra­mat­i­cal­ly dropped. The mes­sage is sim­ple. Nature doesn’t destroy its own. Only man can do that.

A range of talk­ing heads – from envi­ron­men­tal­ists to trib­al elders to keen fish­er­men – expand on the issues and frus­tra­tions their com­mu­ni­ties face, when deal­ing with a prob­lem that involves gov­ern­ment agen­cies, big busi­ness and tax-pay­er-fund­ed schemes that are clear­ly not work­ing. The cor­po­ra­tions, not sur­pris­ing­ly, go on the offen­sive to defend their position.

Fur­ther still, the plight of wild salmon has a very real knock-on effect for com­mu­ni­ties reliant on them for sur­vival – both in the west­ern states of Wash­ing­ton, Ore­gon and north­ern Cal­i­for­nia, and in areas of North­ern Europe like Nor­way. Yurok elders share their exas­per­a­tion at the sit­u­a­tion. Their tribe’s intrin­sic rela­tion­ship with salmon is illus­trat­ed by way of bespoke ani­ma­tion. With­out the fish, the tribe believe they are doomed.

There isn’t much to cel­e­brate at this point, although a leg­isla­tive ray of hope sig­nals there may yet be a light at the end of the tun­nel. Fol­low­ing protests that attract­ed con­cerned locals from all walks of life, gov­ern­ment passed a series of bills ban­ning the use of open-farm­ing hatch­eries in Wash­ing­ton state by 2021, there­by revers­ing fur­ther pol­lu­tion of wild fish pop­u­la­tions. It’s a pos­i­tive, vital first step. But clear­ly, there is much work yet to be done.

Appro­pri­ate­ly, the big ques­tion – that is, what world are we going to leave for our chil­dren? – is left to the Yurok peo­ple them­selves, on the front line of the dwin­dling salmon pop­u­la­tion. They may have sur­vived the hor­ror of west­ern ​‘set­tle­ment’, yet could still be wiped out by a more insid­i­ous fate. Atten­bor­ough may not be on hand to help push this out to the mass­es, but their pow­er­ful and time­ly mes­sage adds to the need for gen­er­a­tional change in posi­tions of pow­er, which clear­ly can’t come soon enough. The year 2020 may yet offer some hope.