Customer Reviews

The End of the Line

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's ironic that within a couple of weeks of this film being released to DVD, the world's leaders decided to do nothing to protect Bluefin tuna. Delegates to the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora succumbed to lobbying from Japan, a nation that in devouring 4/5 of the world's Bluefin creates a lucrative and addictive market for developing nations to provide fish flesh for Japanese consumers.

The End of the Line is not a film specifically about Bluefin, but about modern fishing and the decline of sea stocks. This is no Cove. There is no late night skulking, no high tech gadgetry, no villainous fishermen, no tension, no pathos. It's more like Food, Inc. for the seafood industry, a rather conservatively shot documentary with some lovely ocean photography, a few graphs showing depressing and repetitive declines in populations of some of the world's more commonly consumed fish, and lots of talking heads, most notably The Daily Telegraph's environmental reporter Charles Clover, Professor Jeffrey Hutchings (Dalhousie University), Dr Boris Worm (Dalhousie University), Professor Daniel Pauly (University of British Columbia) and Prof Yvonne Sadovy (University of Hong Kong). There's a sequence with a former Bluefin fisherman that looks like it might offer a taste of drama. His life is now one of loitering in hotel rooms near wharves photographing fishing ships or following them about on the oceans hoping to document how some countries get around fishing quotas. He ends up in a hotel in Tokyo chatting with someone on his mobile and we never hear from him again, nor about anything he may have uncovered.

Perhaps the most telling scene is reporter Clover's telephone interview with a Managing Partner of Nobu's, one of the world's premiere Japanese restaurants and sellers of Bluefin at retail locations in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Cornered on film about serving a species that is predicted to disappear within the next half decade, Managing Partner Richie Notar boasts that he's now prepared to identify Bluefin on Nobu menus as an endangered species. When Clover presses Notar on whether he thinks this will make any difference in consumer demand, Notar compares selling Bluefin to selling tobacco. The consumer, he says, has to take some responsibility.

And presumably until the consumer does, Nobu is going to take it's cut. And so will everyone else down the line until one day it's all gone and there's no cut left to take.

This is not a hugely entertaining film, but it is informative. Watching it just might change the way you eat.

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This is a great documentary and every person should see it. Fish stocks in the ocean are at dangerously low levels, with many species very close to extinction. This film tells you exactly what has happened, how come we didn't know about this before and what we need to do about it, quickly. The solution is a simple one and they have 3 suggestions. One involves being conscious about your choice of fish, how to eat sustainable fish stocks. For example eating farmed fish is not such a good idea because they are not produced sustainably, it takes 5kg of little fish to produce 1kg of salmon. Better to eat the small fish ourselves. In any case the larger fish are at such dangerously low levels they may never recover. Many governments are not monitoring or policing their fishing industries properly and the Japanese are raping the ocean and freezing what bluefin tuna are left so they can get more money for them later, when the supply dries up which will be soon. Asian supermarkets are absolutely nuts. Live fish crowded in tanks everywhere, if people don't buy them they just die. So its very selfish to eat sashimi now, or tuna. Or order endangered species from the menu of posh restaurants. If you want to know which fish are sustainable and preferable to eat go to (...) or (...). The ocean belongs to all of is but a few big greedies, as usual, are exploiting it and making billions, leaving us with nothing for the future. The whole balance in the ocean is being compromised by this. Stop eating the wrong fish. See the film and join the campaign.

Another good film about turtles is "Chances of the World Changing".

There was so much cod in Canada it was said you could walk on its back. Overfishing led to its extinction. More than 40.000 fishermen lost their jobs. Despite the moratorium imposed in 1992 the cod isn't coming back. Extinguishing a species is an *irreversible process*.

In general, the global sea catch peaked in 1988. Industrial fishing methods will produce the collapse of all fisheries by 2048, following scientists interviewed in this documentary.

Apart from the extinction of the cod in Canada, other examples of the signs on the wall will be shown. If you also want to see how those huge amounts of tuna are caught, 150 tons of them each time the nets are hauled, check it out on the DVD Wild Pacific. The tuna in the Atlantic is nearly extinct and the fishing fleets are now driving tuna to extinction in the Pacific.

We are definitively living the age of stupid (Age of Stupid (2pc)). Fishermen are aware of the dwindling fish populations, but won't accept their guilt. Fishermen all over the world blame *other species* for the collapse of the fisheries. Each year, Japan kills 1.000 whales (Whale Wars: Season 2) and 23.000 dolphins (The Cove), blaming *them* for eating the fish. Canada still massacres seals (see it for yourself : The Whale Warrior: Pirate for the Sea), blaming *them* to eat cod.

What will be left for our children, then, in 2048 ? Sterile oceans. Algae and jellyfish will thrive. This will be our heritage...

What is even more frustrating is that the solutions are so simple. We would just have to declare a minimum of 20 % of the ocean area as no-fish area, so fish can reproduce there. And fish quotas should be imposed AND enforced. Then we could easily have sustainable fisheries.

This is an important video to become aware of an "invisible" problem that will affect us all in the near future.

I haven't started reading the book, The End of the Line: How Overfishing Is Changing the World and What We Eat. It's in a stack of equally depressing books on my reading list. So I was "delighted" to see that it was also available as a movie. I've now seen it twice; once at home, and once in a classroom with 100 college students.

Depressing is right.

I've been a big supporter of the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program for years, distributing thousands of seafood guides. But, in The End Of The Line, seeing the massive scale of overfishing is just overwhelming. Bluefin tuna stocks in the North Atlantic are declining so precipitously that the United States backed a proposal to ban all international trade in this species during the 2010 meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). The proposal's opponents, led by Japan, won.

Maybe they should have watched this movie. However, facts never got in the way of political decisions.

Daily Telegraph environmental reporter Charles Clover wrote this book after wondering where all the fish have gone. Then, in a haunting discovery, Daniel Pauly finds that the reports in China of steadily increasing captures have been fabricated. Instead, the global catch has been on the decline, and numerous fish stocks, like the bluefin, were on the edge of commercial extinction.

The scientists interviewed for this movie are more optimistic than I am. China's 1+ billion people don't use sustainable seafood guides, and neither do most voracious seafood consumers in the US, Japan, and Europe. Luckily, the stringent rules governing commercial fishing in Alaska have practically all (all?) the species fished there good choices for sustainable seafood. But the consumer/purchaser has to ask what species they are eating, how it was caught, and where it came from.

The End Of The Line contains beautiful cinematography. Ironically, even the tragic filming of overexploited fisheries is well done. And the scientists provide a unified message of concern.

This film should change your seafood eating habits. I certainly hope it does...

Unlike many films which outline the exploitation of natural resources, End of the Line includes proactive suggestions on what we as consumers can do to stop the hemorraghing of the oceans. A must see.

I teach environmental science and was hoping to find a good documentary about overfishing to share with my class. I have been using 'Empty Oceans, Empty Nets' for years, but since it came out 10 years ago, I felt it was time to replace it. That film is only 60 minutes long, but much more efficiently gives the same info as the End of the Line which is twice as long. Sure, the latter has nice cinematography. It also seems more hyped, like a persuasive documentary. I was disappointed with the film and felt a bit misled by all the rave reviews here. But then again, I'm comparing it to another film which I liked and now recommend over this one.
I will continue showing Empty Oceans. For more info: [...]

Should be shown to all students and teachers/educators to heighten the awareness of your fish consumption.
IF the consumer ceases to purchase endangered/threatened
species, what will happen to wholesale prices?
Is it too late? My copy is being loaned out to a commercial tuna fisherman who is aware of laws &restrictions, but who's policing our seas to enforce laws that
regulate fishing quotas?

I have taken a stance. I no longer eat bluefin tuna (among other endangered fish) that is commercially caught.
Kudos to AK who's practices sustainable fishing...a working example that it can and does work.

Drift nets and other non-selective methods of fishing need to be outlawed.
BYCATCH is one of the most ineffective ways to fish....
Please watch and support sustainable fishing....

This is a very good documentary. It clearly show that today's fishing practices are unsustainable and need to change or there will be no fish left. It does a good job of exposing problems without vilifying the people involved. It also does a good job of not only pointing out the problems, but also of suggesting some solutions to those problems. The fishing industry is clearly lacking sensible regulations and ways to enforce their regulations. In the end it really comes down to us as the consumers, if we aren't part of the solution we are part of the problem.

This is a very informative documentary. Any environmentalist should watch it and even those who are not environmentalists should watch it as it literally affects anyone who likes to consume fish...as there soon won't be any! The documentary is well done as a presentation as well. It keeps your attention and interest.

I lived on a cruising sailboat for years, but have almost completely dropped fish from my menu. This excellent documentary chronicles the decline of our global fisheries caused by greed and massive overfishing. It's one of the great unsung problems of our time and this documentary is an important film worth sharing with everyone you know. Though dark by necessity, the film closes on a positive note, offering win/win solutions and simple, positive actions we can take to make a difference before fisheries collapse altogether by 2048.