Fishy business. The Social Impact of SST.pdf - Act Now!

ed and pink plastic roses are everywhere. "It pains me," she says, "to look out the window andsee everything half-dead."Indeed, some things outside are totally dead. A sea lion for one, lassoed by neighborhood boyswho dragged it from the water to eat it. But they abandoned the carcass when a policemanshowed up, too late to rescue the officially protected species.The neighborhood council asked people not to throw garbage into the water, but there arerenegades. What they toss out on the ebb largely floats back six hours later, on the high tide.There's a worn shoe, a toothless comb, tin cans, disposable razors, shreds of fish net, Styrofoamcups. No glass soft-drink bottles, though--they're redeemable at stores for cash.Other residues also go into the drink: human waste illegally dumped by families too poor toafford a sewer connection, and viscera legally dispersed through long outfall pipes from thefish-meal plant. Not surprisingly, Talcahuano and its twin bays have been declared emergencyzones. A model cleanup plan, the first of its kind in Chile, is being crafted by central, regionaland city government authorities."I just hope things keep improving," Rodriguez says, "more than anything because you alwayswant the best possible future for your kids, don't you?"Social Standard [UK] June 2005 Film Review of Darwin’s Nightmare: ‘Indictment of GlobalCapitalism’ by Tristan MillerWith the decline of indigenous fish stocks and the population explosion of the Nile perch, manyof the millions of Africans who live and work around Lake Victoria have been displaced fromtheir traditional farming and fishing occupations. Out of economic necessity, they have beenforced to accept positions as wage-labourers for large-scale Nile perch fisheries and packingplants. Meanwhile, processing of the invasive perch, whose flesh is much oilier than those ofnative species, has led to an increase in demand for firewood to dry the meat. This has resultedin widespread deforestation and the pollution of Lake Victoria from runoff. This sorry state ofaffairs is chillingly documented in Darwin's Nightmare, which premiered at the 2004 TorontoFilm Festival and is now gradually seeing wide release across Europe. Director Hubert Sauperpresents us with contrasting images to reinforce the human devastation of the fishingcommunities in and around the Tanzanian city of Mwanza. We are taken inside the boomingfish processing factories, where 500 tons of Nile perch are filleted and packed for export toEurope every day; meanwhile, two million Tanzanians find themselves gripped by a deadlyfamine. We see fishermen and prostitutes wasting away from AIDS; the local Christian clergy,steadfast in their religious superstitions on sex, refuse to advocate the use of condoms. Ananimatronic fish in a fat factory owner's office croons out "Don't Worry Be Happy'' while thestarving street-children outside come to blows over the apportionment of a meagre can of rice.Those who failed to snatch a handful assuage their hunger by melting down and inhaling theplastic material the factory uses to package its fish. Perhaps the most memorable and horrificscene in the movie comes after [filmmaker] Sauper interviews a factory official on a balconyoverlooking the premises. The camera pans across the grounds and focusses on a rickety truckbeing loaded up with fish offal. "Don't film that truck,'' barks the official. Some days later,though, Sauper secretly follows the truck to a dirty, stinking landfill where its foul cargo isdumped. The air is thick with the ammonia of decaying fish, and hordes of maggots feast uponthe rotting carcasses. A group of mud-caked women, crippled and sick from years of breathingthe noxious fumes, crowd around the pile of offal the truck has left behind and get to work.205