“Do you know where your seafood is from?” asks Fish & Men, a feature length documentary that played Friday at the 15th Amelia Island Film Festival in Florida. It follows Massachusetts fishermen who struggle to make a living as the local cod populations dwindle, even as Americans import most of the fish they eat from other parts of the world.
The documentary repeats the hard-to-square fact that about 90 percent of the fish consumed by Americans is imported from other countries. To ramp up the absurdity, sometimes fish caught in Gloucester, Mass., are exported halfway across the world, treated with chemicals and then imported back to the same area. Fish & Men and the Gloucester fisherman ask a simple question, one we’re all thinking: Why can’t the fresh fish caught here, be sold and served locally?
The crux of the issue is that Americans are generally content to consume fish of a lesser quality — fish that other, less-regulated countries are more than happy to provide in great quantities. Americans consume pork and beef at a much much higher rate than people in many other counties. Fish & Men posits that since fishing is less harmful to the environment than beef and pork, Americans could help the environment by choosing more fish — and might embrace it more if it were fresher, and caught locally.
Fish & Men director Darby Duffin wrote a first-person essay for MovieMaker last Fall, which illuminates his journey making the movie as a first-time director and later getting distribution through Vince Vaughn’s distribution company.
Watch the trailer for Fish and Men here:
The Dark Hobby
The feature documentary The Dark Hobby played alongside Fish & Men, and looks at how the exotic fish market is rapidly removing a key part of the barrier reef ecosystem from Hawaii.
The film shows divers off the coast of Hawaii capture exotic fish that are then sold in stores for consumers’ salt-water home aquariums.
Director Paula Fouce was on hand for a Q&A after The Dark Hobby screening where she explained the personal experience that set the documentary in motion.
“I went back to Hawaii and went snorkeling again, after not having been there for about 17 years. We went to two places in Maui and one on the Big Island. I got out of the water. And I went into the snorkeling shop and said, ‘What happened to all the fish? There used to be so many. There used to be schools of fish running up against your leg — it was just magical.'”
The snorkel shop employees directed her to Robert Whitner, aka “Snorkel Bob,” an activist fighting to change legislation that allows divers to capture these fish.
While The Dark Hobby zeroes in on the legal fight to end these exotic fish capturing practices in Hawaii, Fouce made clear that this was not an isolated issue.
“It’s a problem all over the world. Because it does affect the reef, and the ocean and the oxygen for the entire planet,” she said.
In fact, in other countries, divers use cyanide and TNT to capture these fish. Your instincts are correct: cyanide and TNT often kill the fish. But this is a numbers game. The fish that aren’t poisoned or exploded are stunned, and therefore easier to capture. But this is not the end of the danger they face, as many will later die in transit to the aquarium shops.
Watch the trailer for The Dark Hobby here:
The Dark Hobby is now available on demand. Main image (above): divers in The Dark Hobby.
Fish & Men is also now available on demand.
Amelia Island Film Festival runs through Monday.
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