Ocean Film Fest

This past Friday and Saturday, the Hilo Palace Theater hosted the first annual Ocean Film Festival. They showed 8 documentaries, all related to environmental issues that affect our oceans. Along with a friend, I got an all-day pass on Saturday, and spent about 8 hours watching movies. I realize everyone doesn't have this kind of free time to spend watching documentaries, so I'd like to share some of what I learned yesterday with you. Maybe something will catch your eye, too.

First, a brief summary of what we missed. On Friday, the festival kicked off with:

• The End of the Line - If you like sushi, you might want to pay attention. By some current predictions, virtually all of the world's seafood will be gone in 40 years. Here's the strategy this film proposes:


• Control fishing by reducing the number of fishing boats across the world
• Protect large areas of the ocean through a network of marine reserves off-limits to fishing
• Educate consumers that they have a choice by purchasing fish from independently certified sustainable fisheries
  
  
• A Sea Change - The human industrial production of carbon dioxide is causing the world's oceans to become more acidic. This process occurs subtly, on such a monumental scale that if it tips over and destabilizes marine ecosystems, we'll be forced to watch helplessly as the world (as we know it) falls apart. The solution is to limit CO₂ emissions and overfishing, around the world.
  
  
• Addicted to Plastic (watch it online) - I think plastics are a fascinating subject. And probably the most challenging aspect of plastics is that we're making an enormous mess with them. Eventually, somebody's going to have to clean it up.

Saturday brought more movies, and several of them were quite good.

• Requiem (watch online) - A documentary made by a lady in Kona, about how much she loves filming sharks. I didn't really get this one, but it's not bad.
  
  
• Where Have All the Dolphins Gone (1990) - Looking back, I guess this movie provides an early modern example of the ruthless, brutal greed of commercial fishing. It focuses on the way the tuna industry in the eastern Pacific targeted dolphins because schools of tuna swam with them. Thanks to a public outcry and the "dolphin-safe tuna" certification, this practice has stopped, since there's no longer a market for the product. This movie desperately needed an update on what's happened in the last 20 years.
  
  
• Sharkwater - This movie has beautiful cinematography, a surprising message, and a passionate, pretty self-absorbed narrator. It's incredible to me, totally unbelievable, that the entire world population of shark species are in danger because shark fin soup is such a popular luxury dish in China that fishermen and poachers will catch hundreds of sharks in a day, chop off their dorsal fin, and toss the mutilated body back in the sea. The surprise twist is that if we kill off the 400-million-year-old apex predator of the sea, ocean herbivore populations will explode, devastating the ocean plant population, which produces the majority of the oxygen we breathe. The film also features Captain Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, who are so passionate about saving whales (and sharks) that they ram illegal fishing boats. Great stuff.
  
  
• A Life Among Whales - A very touching, powerful movie with beautiful footage of whales. It focuses on the life of Dr. Roger Payne, and the sad truth that despite 25 years of international protection for cetaceans, Japan (and Norway and Iceland) continues hunting many species of whales and dolphins (under the guise of "research"), and has been bribing poor countries to support their plan to increase whaling operations. For more information, see Save the Whales Again! It's a lovely movie though, probably my favorite of the day.
  
  
• The Cove - This movie, which the Palace also showed back in the fall, was the climax of the festival. It's been nominated for an Oscar, and the producer was on hand to talk with the audience after the film. It's been trying to raise awareness that the captive bottlenose dolphin trade (serving dolphinariums like SeaWorld) incidentally funds the secret slaughter of 20,000 dolphins a year in Taiji, Japan. The rejected dolphins are killed for their meat, which has such dangerously high levels of mercury that the dolphins are called "toxic waste sites". The fishermen in Taiji have suspended operations for now, but whaling (including many small whales, like dolphins) continues.

I recommend the last 3 movies; they were all quite good. The ones from Friday look interesting, and I'll have to try to find some way to watch them.