Overfishing documentary The End of the Line premieres
Home » Blog » Annabel McAleer » Overfishing documentary The End of the Line premieresOverfishing documentary The End of the Line premiered in New Zealand last night.
Tuna-less sushi was served at the NZ premiere of The End of the Line last night in Wellington. Photo © Louise Hatton
The documentary reveals the global impacts of overfishing, and criticises New Zealand's commercial fisheries, among others.
Described as the Inconvenient Truth for oceans, the film shows how commercial fisheries are over-exploiting our oceans. Scientists predict the global collapse of fish stocks by the middle of this century if nothing's done.
Marine advocates from Forest & Bird, WWF, Greenpeace and ECO say one-third of NZ's fish stocks under the quota management system are defined as depleted or collapsed, and they're calling for an end to unsustainable fishing in NZ waters. A joint press release reads:
We often hear from the fishing industry and Government that our fisheries are the best managed in the world but as The End of the Line shows, this is because of the dire state of fisheries elsewhere.
Since 1950, one in four of the world's fisheries have collapsed, which means the population is so small it may never recover to its former numbers. Here in New Zealand we are not immune: at least one-third of the assessed stocks under the quota management system are defined as depleted or collapsed.
We are calling for the fishing industry and the Government to take an honest look at where our fisheries are heading. They have a responsibility to safeguard our oceans and ensure there is still fish for future generations of Kiwis to eat, by moving to genuinely sustainable methods of fishing, and reducing destructive methods such as bottom trawling and dredging.
Al Brown, co-owner of the Wellington restaurant Logan Brown and author of Go Fish, which the sustainable seafood recipes in the current issue of Good are taken from, attended the New Zealand premiere. "The End of the Line is a brilliant film. We need to get back to only taking what we need from nature, and this film shows us just how high the stakes are—we could be facing a future without fish. To me, as a fisherman and a chef, that's unthinkable."
