Blue: the impact of human activities and pollution on marine environments and ecosystems told through individual stories

Karina Holden, “Blue” (2017)

Instead of bashing its audiences over the head with facts ‘n’ figures about the impact of human activities on oceans and marine ecosystems, this documentary chooses a show-don’t-tell approach in which several stories focusing on particular issues are told from the viewpoints of their activist / researcher protagonists. While the initial presentation is relaxed, frequently languid, and the documentary can become quite poetic with beautiful scenes, the film can be also uncompromising and direct in presenting uncomfortable and even gut-wrenching scenes and facts. Children watching this documentary may need adult reassurance in viewing some scenes.

A marine biologist who enjoys free diving notices over time that fish populations in the areas where he swims are dwindling rapidly. A young activist visits a fishing village in Indonesia where she observes fishermen bringing in sharks and cutting off their fins for the shark-fin trade, the remaining carcasses either being thrown back into the sea or mashed up into feed for pigs. A journalist at a Filipino fish market notes how bluefin tuna populations are rapidly becoming depleted because of over-fishing for the sushi trade in Japan and the US. In the meantime huge commercial fishing trawlers fling huge nets into the oceans to catch huge schools of fish. Many of these nets either become lost or are dumped into the ocean and some wash up onto beaches in Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria region to be picked up by local indigenous rangers. They find the remains of long-drowned turtles caught up in the nets. If that’s not confronting enough for viewers, a later story in which researchers checking the health of young albatross chicks by pumping their stomachs and finding plastic bits and pieces (some large enough to cause obstruction and possibly even agonising death) will have some viewers racing for the barf-bags.

Through these stories – I must admit to becoming very cynical about the current trend in film documentaries and other non-fiction media in general to tell “stories” above other methods of relaying important information – particular environmental issues relating to sea life and marine ecosystems are explored to varying degrees of depth. The broader contexts of several issues are not made clear, though: the over-fishing of sharks for their fins is not linked to the rising prosperity of the middle classes in China and other parts of Asia, and likewise the depletion of bluefin tuna stocks does not mean much when the huge global market for bluefin tuna sushi (which becomes ever more prestigious among sushi fanatics as the fish itself becomes more endangered) is unmentioned. Where all the plastic bits and bobs floating in the oceans to be swallowed up by seabirds (which then feed them to their chicks) come from in the first place remains unsaid. (Are they blown out to sea by wins or are they flushed out untreated into rivers and coastal marine environments through storm-water drains?) The emphasis on telling multiple personal stories means statistics that would drive home the scale of each issue, and the urgency that each such issue requires to be remedied, are ignored.

The film ends on a hopeful note, urging viewers to take action, however insignificant viewers themselves may feel about whatever it is they can do, to help save marine species, combat over-fishing and control plastic pollution in the oceans. The underlying problem of the capitalist structures and values that we have, urging more growth and exploitation of natural resources while ignoring the consequences and effects of more economic exploitation at sea and on land on marine ecosystems, remains untouched.