Seaspiracy (Netflix Original)
You may not eat fish again if you watch this passionate Netflix documentary, Seaspiracy, about global corruption, from destroying marine life with plastic garbage to slaughtering whales and dolphins using slave labor. I may exaggerate my tone as director/narrator Ali Tabrizi too often does, but if there is just a small portion of truth here, you best pay attention to see what you can do about our seas.
Perhaps the most depressing disclosure is the destruction of marine life and habitats by the growing amount of plastic, which can accumulate in square miles like colonies, seemingly indestructible fake food for unknowing fish like dolphins and whales who ingest without the ability to expunge. To see creatures entangled in monstrous nets as collateral damage is to weep for our inability to stop the imprisonment.
As Tabrizi gets closer to Asia, Japan’s wanton fishing of sharks for their fins leaves a numbing feeling of waste and cruelty. But crueler still is Thailand’s supposed sustainable Grind, an occasional herding of whales resulting in a blood red harbor of death.
Yet the bad that men can do is evident as young men corral fish while these youths are themselves enslaved by ruthless employers. Maybe more depressing is Tabrizi’s disclosure that non-profit organizations can be more corrupt than whalers.
With that human flourish, Tabrizi’s 90 min doc makes his point about the universal corruption of humanity and the need to preserve the seas, which need all sizes of fish to sustain itself. Typically, Tabrizi is in hyper mode, but I doubt few of us will give up fish in our diet. His answer to curbing the global exploitation of seas and men can, however, spur us on to better, more humane practices.
If seafood disappears, according to a study, by 2048, then most of us will not have to worry. Except for our grandkids, hmmm. I may stop eating fish right now.
Seaspiracy
Director: Ali Tabrizi
Screenplay: Documentary
Cast: Tabrizi, et al.
Run Time: 1h 29m
Rating: TV MA
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JohnDeSando62@gmail.com
