Twilight Greenaway

The Lesson of ‘Less’: Why ‘The End of the Line’ Seafood Documentary Doesn’t Go Far Enough

I walked out of the screening of “The End of the Line” feeling deeply uneasy. Most of my discomfort had been carefully orchestrated by the film’s director, Rupert Murray, who filled the 80 minutes with straight-talking scientists and image upon image of wild fish being violently removed from the ocean.

Fishermen stabbed endangered bluefin tuna (left) in roiling pools of bloodied water. Giant trawl nets scraped across the ocean’s bottom, decimating coral and seaweed in its wake, leaving pounds of wasted sea life to be tossed back over the side of the boat. Then there was the sheer number of industrial-size factory vessels, crawling ominously over the surface of the ocean with their highly precise tracking systems, often blatant disregard for quotas, and the ability to catch several times the number of fish remaining in the ocean below them.

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Silent Seas

When Taras Grescoe began the journey behind Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood, he was looking to do more than write a thought-provoking, timely report; he wanted to change his own behavior. In the introduction, the former food writer recounts that before doing the research for the book, he had “heard all the talk about sustainable seafood, but was still not sure how to walk the walk.” And so walk Grescoe did. And fly, and boat, around the globe on a nine-month adventure through the modern seafood industry.

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The Life Aquatic

Can we have our fish and eat it too?

Seafood. The very word conjures up warm breezes and beachfront restaurants. And — thanks to our increasingly industrialized food system — seemingly endless supply.

“In the past 20 years, a lot of seafood has gone from luxury items to commodities,” says Sheila Bowman, the outreach coordinator for the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program, which publishes a comprehensive pocket guide to seafood sustainability. “We can’t all expect to have all-you-can-eat shrimp for $9.99. We couldn’t have all-you-can-eat grizzly bear either. There are just some things that aren’t generating that way.”

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