Seaspiracy
Year: 2021
Director: Ali Tabrizi
Starring: Ali Tabrizi
Runtime: 89 mins
BBFC: 15
Published: 28/04/21
Director: Ali Tabrizi
Starring: Ali Tabrizi
Runtime: 89 mins
BBFC: 15
Published: 28/04/21
A big environmental push that has occurred in the last few years is encouraging people to use less plastic. To swap out single use items that are bad for the environment with substitutes that are made from environmentally friendly, and biodegradable materials. The core reason behind this has been the pollution of our oceans from plastic waste that creates a toxic environment for the wildlife that populates it. Once the plastic breaks down it is ingested by the animals that live there, and over time will either kill the animal from over consumption of toxic material or will become something we ingest via eating the animal. It’s something that a lot of people, including myself, take seriously and I try to reduce the amount of plastic I use wherever possible.
However, the biggest threat to stable marine habitats and ecosystems is undoubtably commercial fishing. The practices employed by all major fishing companies are unsustainable and damaging to our oceans. And whilst there have been efforts over the years to try and make the industry more sustainable, many efforts have been unsuccessful.
Seaspiracy started making the rounds on the internet a couple of months ago now and I intentionally avoided it like the plague because I knew Kip Anderson was involved, the man behind Cowspiracy, one of the most biased, poorly researched, and badly constructed documentaries I have ever seen in my life. Yet it sparked a fire in the vegan community which still use the documentary to this day as ‘proof’ that if we all stopped eating meat then the world’s problems would be solved overnight.
But Seaspiracy was not directed by Anderson, just produced by him, so maybe it might not be quite so reliant on fabricating information or skewing evidence to make its point. So, I have finally given it a go, and just like I had expected, it falls at many of the same hurdles Cowspiracy did in relation to ethical documentary filmmaking.
However, the biggest threat to stable marine habitats and ecosystems is undoubtably commercial fishing. The practices employed by all major fishing companies are unsustainable and damaging to our oceans. And whilst there have been efforts over the years to try and make the industry more sustainable, many efforts have been unsuccessful.
Seaspiracy started making the rounds on the internet a couple of months ago now and I intentionally avoided it like the plague because I knew Kip Anderson was involved, the man behind Cowspiracy, one of the most biased, poorly researched, and badly constructed documentaries I have ever seen in my life. Yet it sparked a fire in the vegan community which still use the documentary to this day as ‘proof’ that if we all stopped eating meat then the world’s problems would be solved overnight.
But Seaspiracy was not directed by Anderson, just produced by him, so maybe it might not be quite so reliant on fabricating information or skewing evidence to make its point. So, I have finally given it a go, and just like I had expected, it falls at many of the same hurdles Cowspiracy did in relation to ethical documentary filmmaking.
I want to make clear that unlike Cowspiracy I don’t outright disagree with what the documentary has to say on the issue of commercial fishing, in fact I agree with much of what is presented. But it’s how the information is presented, and the manner in which director Ali Tabrizi conducts himself as a filmmaker that poses such a problem for me, and therefore makes me care less about the subject he is trying to shed light on because he does it so poorly.
The problems start almost immediately when it’s made clear that Tabrizi has almost no knowledge of the subject matter in the slightest. It begins as Tabrizi wanting to investigate whaling in Asia, believing whaling to be the main cause of all marine issues, but very quickly realising that whaling is not the issue and turns his attention to plastic, before then turning his attention to commercial fishing, and then to human rights issues that come from that. Anyone who has paid any attention to any kind of major news outlet over the past twenty years knows that the biggest issue facing our oceans is commercial fishing, so for Tabrizi to not even have considered that a problem until going all the way out to Asia to point the finger at small, independently run whaling companies is baffling.
The problems continue with almost any ‘evidence’ brought to the table. Very little of the evidence used to back up Tabrizi’s claims are from academic research articles, or government reports, they’re from newspaper articles. It’s secondary or tertiary information at best (which anyone who’s ever written an essay before will know is not reliable information) , and almost nothing comes direct from the mouths of the people who have done the research. The few time Tabrizi does use actual academic research, it’s all papers from over fifteen years ago, which after doing my own research on have found that the authors of said papers have criticised the documentary for using information that is now irrelevant and false because modern findings have yielded different, generally more positive results.
There’s also a lot of instances where Tabrizi presents statistics (accompanied by some big graphs that are supposed to look very scary and professional) that have no evidence to support the claim. This happened a lot in Cowspiracy and was one of the biggest issues I had with the film, so it’s incredibly frustrating to see it happen again here.
The problems start almost immediately when it’s made clear that Tabrizi has almost no knowledge of the subject matter in the slightest. It begins as Tabrizi wanting to investigate whaling in Asia, believing whaling to be the main cause of all marine issues, but very quickly realising that whaling is not the issue and turns his attention to plastic, before then turning his attention to commercial fishing, and then to human rights issues that come from that. Anyone who has paid any attention to any kind of major news outlet over the past twenty years knows that the biggest issue facing our oceans is commercial fishing, so for Tabrizi to not even have considered that a problem until going all the way out to Asia to point the finger at small, independently run whaling companies is baffling.
The problems continue with almost any ‘evidence’ brought to the table. Very little of the evidence used to back up Tabrizi’s claims are from academic research articles, or government reports, they’re from newspaper articles. It’s secondary or tertiary information at best (which anyone who’s ever written an essay before will know is not reliable information) , and almost nothing comes direct from the mouths of the people who have done the research. The few time Tabrizi does use actual academic research, it’s all papers from over fifteen years ago, which after doing my own research on have found that the authors of said papers have criticised the documentary for using information that is now irrelevant and false because modern findings have yielded different, generally more positive results.
There’s also a lot of instances where Tabrizi presents statistics (accompanied by some big graphs that are supposed to look very scary and professional) that have no evidence to support the claim. This happened a lot in Cowspiracy and was one of the biggest issues I had with the film, so it’s incredibly frustrating to see it happen again here.
Tabrizi states at the beginning of the film that he’s fresh out of film school, so it comes as a surprise that he has a complete disregard for ethical research practices, interview conduct, or even abiding by the law when making his film. His lawbreaking is most evident when he initially travels to Asia and is questioned by police (which he insists were undercover, despite being in a marked police vehicle and dressed as police officers) as to what his purpose of visit is, he lies telling them he’s on holiday. This to me screams that he didn’t have a work visa permit for travelling abroad and has lied to local authorities about what he intends to do whilst he is there. He then proceeds to regularly trespass on private property and ignore policies of local businesses by filming against their permission, once again claiming it’s because they have something to hide, rather than him just bursting into somewhere he isn’t welcome and sticking a camera in their face.
Tabrizi can also be heard trying to set up interviews over the course of the film, but his approach is always hostile from the get-go, with many hanging up on him or turning away before he’s even finished his first sentence as he begins to aggressively confront them about ‘murdering marine life’ with no actual evidence to support this claim. It feels as though he was trying to be Michael Moore at times, but the difference is that Moore will only ever pull those kinds of stunts right at the end of the documentary after he has collected all the evidence to prove that people are hiding things, not ten minutes in before he even knows what he’s accusing them of. Any time he isn’t then able to secure an interview he frames it as a conspiracy and that they’re evidently hiding something because they don’t want to speak to him. It’s the equivalent of getting shouted at by a crazy man in the street and then understandably getting away as quick as humanly possible.
Finally, the interviews he does hold are either with figureheads for activist organisations whose goal is to take vigilante justice upon those they believe to be doing wrong, or academics who upon release of the film have stated that they have been grossly misrepresented and were misled by Tabrizi indicating that the question we hear on the documentary is not the question they were asked (with some going as far to take legal action against Tabrizi and his production company).
I refuse to believe anyone that actually graduated film school, especially with documentary filmmaking as their area of study, would have been given any kind of diploma or degree without understanding these basic research practices. It’s negligent, unethical, and disgraceful. Even Kip Anderson didn’t stoop so low.
Seaspiracy is always on the attack and always finds ways to frame something in a biased light. Documentaries are always going to carry with them some level of bias, it’s impossible not to, but good documentaries will try to balance the scales for each ‘side’ to the argument presented. Seaspiracy does not, and even in terms of how the camera and editing is done to provoke anger or disgust from the viewer is incredibly misleading.
At one point in the film Tabrizi travels to Scotland to check out a Salmon farm and shows audiences a container of rotting fish. He uses this as ‘evidence’ for the poor standards supposedly employed by the farm. The thing is though that the people who have shown him this container make it clear that it’s waste fish that was either diseased or deformed in a way that would affect the lives of the healthy fish. Tabrizi tries to make out that a pile of diseased and rotting waste fish is the general quality of what this farm produces. The equivalent of looking at a rubbish bin round the back of a Tesco’s and taking that as evidence of the quality of food they would sell in store.
Another part, right at the end of the film has Tabrizi visit a sustainable whaling operation. I don’t know what he was expecting to see but when the whales are herded onto the beach and then killed, he frames it like the beach landing from Saving Private Ryan. It’s definitely something you need a strong stomach to watch but if anybody thought the reality of people killing animals for food was any different than what you witness then eating meat clearly isn’t something you should be doing. Tabrizi makes that exact choice, which is great for him, but the final minutes of the film become full blown vegan propaganda as he speaks with vegan dieticians about why eating fish isn’t necessary.
Tabrizi can also be heard trying to set up interviews over the course of the film, but his approach is always hostile from the get-go, with many hanging up on him or turning away before he’s even finished his first sentence as he begins to aggressively confront them about ‘murdering marine life’ with no actual evidence to support this claim. It feels as though he was trying to be Michael Moore at times, but the difference is that Moore will only ever pull those kinds of stunts right at the end of the documentary after he has collected all the evidence to prove that people are hiding things, not ten minutes in before he even knows what he’s accusing them of. Any time he isn’t then able to secure an interview he frames it as a conspiracy and that they’re evidently hiding something because they don’t want to speak to him. It’s the equivalent of getting shouted at by a crazy man in the street and then understandably getting away as quick as humanly possible.
Finally, the interviews he does hold are either with figureheads for activist organisations whose goal is to take vigilante justice upon those they believe to be doing wrong, or academics who upon release of the film have stated that they have been grossly misrepresented and were misled by Tabrizi indicating that the question we hear on the documentary is not the question they were asked (with some going as far to take legal action against Tabrizi and his production company).
I refuse to believe anyone that actually graduated film school, especially with documentary filmmaking as their area of study, would have been given any kind of diploma or degree without understanding these basic research practices. It’s negligent, unethical, and disgraceful. Even Kip Anderson didn’t stoop so low.
Seaspiracy is always on the attack and always finds ways to frame something in a biased light. Documentaries are always going to carry with them some level of bias, it’s impossible not to, but good documentaries will try to balance the scales for each ‘side’ to the argument presented. Seaspiracy does not, and even in terms of how the camera and editing is done to provoke anger or disgust from the viewer is incredibly misleading.
At one point in the film Tabrizi travels to Scotland to check out a Salmon farm and shows audiences a container of rotting fish. He uses this as ‘evidence’ for the poor standards supposedly employed by the farm. The thing is though that the people who have shown him this container make it clear that it’s waste fish that was either diseased or deformed in a way that would affect the lives of the healthy fish. Tabrizi tries to make out that a pile of diseased and rotting waste fish is the general quality of what this farm produces. The equivalent of looking at a rubbish bin round the back of a Tesco’s and taking that as evidence of the quality of food they would sell in store.
Another part, right at the end of the film has Tabrizi visit a sustainable whaling operation. I don’t know what he was expecting to see but when the whales are herded onto the beach and then killed, he frames it like the beach landing from Saving Private Ryan. It’s definitely something you need a strong stomach to watch but if anybody thought the reality of people killing animals for food was any different than what you witness then eating meat clearly isn’t something you should be doing. Tabrizi makes that exact choice, which is great for him, but the final minutes of the film become full blown vegan propaganda as he speaks with vegan dieticians about why eating fish isn’t necessary.
Tabrizi makes no attempt at trying to provide solutions to the issues he raises in Seaspiracy. Nor does he acknowledge any efforts that have been made over the last two hundred years to make fishing for an ever-growing population feasible (I say two hundred years because he genuinely compares fishing practices from the early 1800’s to modern fishing practices in order to condemn how much damage commercial fishing is doing). Instead Tabrizi only looks at what’s failed, and his only ‘solution’ to the problem is that everybody should stop consuming all fish products. A point which he even contradicts earlier on in the documentary when looking at Somali pirates and he states that a reduced consumption of fish would destroy the livelihoods of millions of people who rely on that trade for their limited income.
Long story short, Seaspiracy has nothing of value to offer. The good cinematography and production values make it an entertaining watch, but it’s just big budget vegan propaganda with no credible research to draw its findings upon. Tabrizi is one of the worst documentary filmmakers I have ever bore witness to and he should be ashamed that he feels what he has constructed could be deemed acceptable by any means.
So whilst I agree that the fishing industry is out of control and needs to have major corrections made to it, and that eating less fish will certainly have a role to play in that; Seaspiracy only serves to damage any progress that could be made on the matter by deliberately misinforming audiences on the basic facts of how the commercial fishing industry operates, in order to promote vegan products.
Long story short, Seaspiracy has nothing of value to offer. The good cinematography and production values make it an entertaining watch, but it’s just big budget vegan propaganda with no credible research to draw its findings upon. Tabrizi is one of the worst documentary filmmakers I have ever bore witness to and he should be ashamed that he feels what he has constructed could be deemed acceptable by any means.
So whilst I agree that the fishing industry is out of control and needs to have major corrections made to it, and that eating less fish will certainly have a role to play in that; Seaspiracy only serves to damage any progress that could be made on the matter by deliberately misinforming audiences on the basic facts of how the commercial fishing industry operates, in order to promote vegan products.