‘Seaspiracy’ review: Fact and fiction meet fish in controversial Netflix documentary

Though presented as a piece of investigative journalism, the documentary does spread misinformation, and has now been panned by experts and even participants of the film

‘The oceans will run out of fish by 2048’: this message was doing the rounds a few years ago and still pops up on WhatsApp forwards. Though the research paper was immediately retracted and the original authors themselves accepted the error and updated the data, the scourge continues. In Netflix’s new documentary Seaspiracy, this is a message displayed in big bold Scorsese red letters accompanied by dramatic music. . The 90-minute documentary by filmmaker Ali Tabrizi starts out as a nature documentary trying to understand whale stranding, but soon turns into a journey uncovering the effects of the commercial fishing industry. With hidden cameras and filming in dangerous locations, the documentary tries to expose the illegal fishing markets which have a deeper, hidden system of corruption, slavery and fraud, involving the big industry names and government backup. Seaspiracy travels from Asia to Europe to the U.K making new revelations about the industry while maintaining a sense of urgency.