Guided Reflection entry on The End of the Line

1. One of the scenes that really got to me was when the fishermen brutally gutted the bluefin tuna near the beginning of the film. This scene was incredibly difficult to watch and nearly had me in tears. The fisherman snapped fins, stabbed the gills, slashed under the head and much more. There was blood everywhere, on the boat, on the hands and especially in the water. The worst part was knowing that it is completely real and even happens every day. It truly showed humans in their most evil form, as other fishermen cheered and whooped as the mass murder was taking place. As interesting as this documentary is, this scene made me cringe and reconsider my choice to watch the film. As terrible as it was, it was a necessary evil to set the stage for the rest of the film.

2. What surprised me is how unknown this problem is to the general public. I already knew about the hazardous practice of overfishing due to previous environmental science classes and my own personal research, but was quite unaware that most people don't know how deep the problem of overfishing harms us. Most people do know that seafood often has a lot of controversy surrounding it around the globe, and some may even have heard about the shark fin industry and its unethical and immoral practices while fishing. Similarly, overfishing is the result of greediness from corporations and it also ends up taking away local fishermen jobs. This is truly devastating because there are many families around the world who are built on fishing and all of a sudden they are put in danger and have no jobs. I say danger because messing with the corporations "resources" is not an easy task by any means and can put your family and yourself in an ocean of debt and legal papers. Not fun. Besides that, one billion people rely on seafood as the primary protein, and overfishing puts those one billion at risk of starving. One BILLION people. That is one out of seven people. Just because this problem does not apply to us directly, most definitely does not mean that it is not real. Also, from an ecological perspective, fishes do a lot a maintain the ecosystem. They contribute a ton of nutrients, feed the keystone species, and are incredibly diverse. The loss of fish would become a tragic loss wreaking havoc across the planet by throwing ecosystems off-balance. That is one thing we really shouldn't let happen, alas, it happens nevertheless.

3. Some questions that I was left with were: What are industries doing to stop this? Also, people usually think that boycotting is a good solution whenever they see a problem originating from a corporation, however, that is not always true. In this case, fishes literally cannot be boycotted because some people depend on fishes to feed themselves. So, these huge companies will get the money either way. What can we do as a society to change the way that we fish? Should we end the corporations and just trust our local fishermen? As for people who are landlocked with not a lot of sources of water, then how will they get fish?
After watching this film, I felt really disappointed in the way our species has handled this situation in the last century. These corporate giants are incredibly difficult to fight against, so it causes a sense of purposeless. In the end, people really do have to try their hardest to speak up for those who can't, because our future depends on our actions today.
Some concepts that I would really like to do some research on is the fishing capacity and what industries can get away with, how to stop illegal fishing, how to stop bycatch (most wasteful practice of fishing when everything is caught into the net. Includes whales, sharks, turtles etc. They end up dead by the time they are tossed back into the ocean), how to give power back to local fishermen, and how to sustainably fish.