The impact of fishing trawlers has never been more obvious than it is in this clip. Photo: Ocean With David Attenborough
If you eat fish that you bought from a store, there’s a very good chance that fish was caught by trawler. You likely know that trawling is a horrendously bad thing, but it’s not likely that you’ve seen first-hand exactly how destructive it is. But a new film called Ocean With David Attenborough puts it into stark relief. As Attenborough says, “It’s hard to imagine a more wasteful way to catch fish.”
Ocean With David Attenborough focuses on how our actions are quickly leading to the destruction of the ocean and just how destructive certain fishing techniques can be for the world’s most important resource. It’s tough to watch just how terrible one of the most common methods we use really is.
“The visceral, heart-wrenching footage featured in the clip is the first time the process of bottom trawling was filmed in such high quality and the immense scale of trawling’s destruction revealed,” the clip’s description reads. “This destructive fishing method occurs daily across the globe. As Attenborough says in the clip, ‘very few places are safe from this.’ Iron chains bulldoze across the seabed, leaving trails of devastation in their wake that are visible from space.”
Trawlers are often only interested in one species, but thousands of others are caught up in their grasping fingers and simply thrown aside. The creators of Ocean With David Attenborough hope that showing us how awful this method is will have a hand in changing the way we feed ourselves.
“Only by revealing this footage to the world and exposing what’s happening beneath the surface,” they wrote, “can people start to truly understand the impact on marine life.”
OCEAN With David Attenborough was released as a Global Cinema Event on May 8. Watch it in theaters now.
