One of the claims made in the documentary Seaspiracy was that, all of the fish in the sea will have disappeared by the year 2048
Seaspiracy, a documentary currently streaming on Netflix, premiered in March of 2021 and exposes a darker side of the global fishing industry, and has caused much controversy since it was released.
For those of you who may not be aware of it, Seaspiracy is the latest documentary film aimed at raising awareness into the environmental state our planet. It focuses on the commercial fishing industry and how oceans are becoming depleted.
The film follows on as a sort of sequel to the well known documentary Cowspiracy, which was a film based on the intensification of animal agriculture and its effect on the environment.
The documentary claims made that, as a result of fishing globally, all of the fish in the sea will have disappeared by the year 2048.
Eight experts of fisheries sciences, marine sciences, and ecology have since weighed in on this claim that Will the oceans be empty of fish by 2048; seven out of eight answered ‘extremely unlikely’.
Seaspiracy‘s director and narrator, Ali Tabrizi, says in the Netflix documentary that “if current fishing trends continue, we will see virtually empty oceans by the year 2048”.
This claim has been echoed across many blog-sites and news articles since it was first made back in 2006, but where does the dramatic claim come from?
This comes after microbiologists have devised a new sustainable way of removing polluting microplastics from the environment, and they want to use bacteria to achieve this feat.
A scientific paper that was published in Science by Boris Worm and colleagues in the year 2006 which looked at the decline of populations and species of marine species. They found that loss of the oceans’ marine biodiversity has important effects on the global ecosystem.
In one sentence written within the concluding paragraph, they also said that the “current trend is of serious concern because it projects the global collapse of all taxa currently fished by the mid-21st century”.
An expert on fisheries sciences from Washington University, Dr Michael Melnychuk, highlights some of the key issues with this 2006 prediction. He says that “the definitions of ‘collapsed’ by the authors are based on catch data, but these do not necessarily reflect abundances of fish populations”.
He also pointed out that the method that had been used by the authors to extrapolate the data into the future was not realistic.
Dr Robert Steneck, who is an expert in oceanography from Maine University, highlights that “three years after the initial publication Worm et al 2009 (also published in Science) pointed out that many fish stocks are rebuilding globally”.
Since 2006, the authors of the paper have also tried to put more emphasis on the broader conclusions of their findings instead of with this one prediction.
There have also been numerous scientific publications since that have heavily criticized the 2048 prediction for the reasons that had been highlighted by Dr Melnychuk, but unfortunately, this claim has since stuck.
Dr Melnychuk also highlights a final reason why this 2048 prediction is not accurate, saying “assumes that our hands are tied and these trends will continue indefinitely”.
Seaspiracy claimed that the oceans will be empty of fish by 2048 even though this prediction has been strongly refuted for over a decade. Other similarly contentious claims had been made throughout the documentary in order to expose the darker sides of the global fishing industry and suggest that the only way to save the oceans is for the world to stop fishing altogether.
Some of these experts believe that this overly negative image of the fishing industry could actually do more harm than good to the Earth’s oceans.
Dr Alec Christie, an expert in marine biology from the University of Cambridge, says “the way this movie used data from scientific papers was a good example of questionable research practices – cherry-picking and unjustifiable and opaquely extrapolating data beyond the bounds of the study.”
This comes after environmental conservationists have expressed their “anger” after a beached whale has been found with 16kg of plastic waste inside its stomach. The cetacean, which was a female Cuvier’s beaked whale measuring just over 5 meters in length, washed up on a beach in Messanges within south-west France.
However, not all the experts have agreed that the inaccuracies of Seaspiracy mean that it does more harm than good. Dr Simon Allen, who is an expert in marine science from Bristol University, has pointed out that “at the end of the day, love it or loathe it, Seaspiracy has got some tongues wagging and people asking questions.”
All the experts, however, agreed with one claim made by Seaspiracy: that overfishing is in fact a serious issue.
Dr Harris says that “today, it’s likely that 1/3 of the world’s fish stocks worldwide are overexploited or depleted. This is certainly an issue that deserves widespread concern.”
Dr Allen added that “overfishing is still the biggest problem on the global high seas”.
Dr Christie’s concluding opinion on Seaspiracy is that “we all agree that its message of the ecological harm of industrial fisheries is a major urgent issue, but we need to present facts not fiction and unite, build consensus, and use rational arguments to convince people to change.”
