Gambia, like many of its West African neighbors, has embraced the lucrative production of fishmeal. But the booming aquaculture industry, widely hailed by conservationists as the best hope for slowing ocean depletion, is polluting waters, decimating fish stocks, and threatening the lives of millions worldwide.
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00:00 (dramatic music)
00:02 Paradise Beach, once known for its golden sand
00:18 and clear waters, has become a dead zone
00:21 with millions of rotting fish.
00:27 - Nobody in their lifetime, we ask the elderly people,
00:30 nobody saw it.
00:31 And they believe in these supernatural things.
00:34 So they said--
00:35 - It's a bad omen.
00:36 - Yeah, bad omen, exactly.
00:38 - Crabs, fish, everything was completely dead.
00:42 Even all the plants surrounding the place are all dead.
00:45 - Turn red.
00:46 - They all died.
00:47 And the water, there's no living thing in that water.
00:50 - Locals have been quick to link these apocalyptic scenes
00:55 to the Chinese factories now dotting these shores.
00:59 These fish meal plants promise employment, infrastructure,
01:03 and a potential solution to a global food supply crisis.
01:07 But at what cost?
01:08 Two thirds of the planet is covered by water.
01:15 It's our planet's wildest frontier,
01:18 breathtaking as much as it is vital to all life.
01:24 A place of discovery and endless reinvention,
01:27 a metaphor for freedom,
01:28 as well as a profoundly dystopian realm
01:31 where the darkest of all humanities play out.
01:33 Over 50 million people work at sea
01:39 and human rights and environmental abuses
01:41 often occur with impunity.
01:43 Six of you.
01:44 - Six people, we are sleeping in there.
01:46 - So hot.
01:48 This is, I've never ever seen this bad.
01:51 My name is Ian Urbina.
01:54 As a journalist, I've spent the past decade
01:56 reporting from this lawless frontier.
01:59 I run an investigative journalism organization
02:01 called The Outlaw Ocean Project
02:03 that reports about crimes happening in this space.
02:06 This is the outlaw ocean.
02:20 (water bubbling)
02:22 The 5,500 kilometer coastline of West Africa
02:38 is home to some of the most diverse waters in the world.
02:42 It's also economically vital to the region.
02:47 More than 7 million people from Mauritania to Liberia
02:51 rely on fishing for their livelihoods.
02:53 For centuries, artisanal fishermen
02:56 worked in tandem with nature's rhythms.
02:59 Abundant fish maintained healthy local fisheries.
03:03 Then industrial fishing by foreigners began.
03:06 - We have to start perhaps in 1880
03:17 when the Brits deployed the first steam trawlers
03:21 and they emptied around the British Isles
03:24 the stocks of fish that had accumulated
03:27 over centuries in a decade or so.
03:30 And they had to fish further offshore.
03:34 And basically that phenomenon
03:37 reproduced itself in every country of the world.
03:46 The biomass, the amount of fish in the water has declined.
03:49 We have wiped out 90% of the big fish
03:52 and that is very hard for people to conceive.
03:56 - With the depletion of at-sea stocks,
04:06 a hopeful solution emerged, fish farming on land.
04:11 (upbeat music)
04:13 Aquaculture is often framed as both sustainable
04:24 and a scalable way to feed the world.
04:26 But there is a catch.
04:28 Industry routinely chooses to feed powdered wild fish
04:32 to their farmed fish in order to fatten them up
04:35 and sell them faster.
04:36 Fishmeal is a very inefficient food source
04:39 that actually worsens depletion of ocean fish stocks
04:42 rather than slowing it.
04:44 - Fishmeal is a product that you get out of fish
04:49 that little fish, they are ground up.
04:51 They are not treated like fish for human consumption
04:56 and they are put in grinding machine
04:58 and they are then dried in a reduction plant
05:03 and then you get powder.
05:04 (upbeat music)
05:07 - With relentless demand from China
05:21 pushing fishmeal prices to record highs,
05:24 companies have set their sights on West Africa
05:27 as a new source of supply.
05:28 Gambia is the target.
05:31 Stocks are still relatively robust
05:34 compared to the rest of the oceans.
05:36 It's one of the world's poorest nations
05:38 with the least monitored national waters.
05:41 My team and I joined local journalist Mustafa Mane
05:51 who has spent years investigating the impact
05:54 of 14 fishmeal factories that have popped up in Gambia
05:58 and neighboring countries.
05:59 Where are we right now?
06:02 - We're at Gunju, just close to the Goliad factory.
06:07 - Do you think it's safe for me
06:08 to try and sneak some shots with this phone?
06:10 - It's risky, it's really risky
06:13 because you can be attacked, you can be assaulted.
06:16 They are very aggressive because they don't compromise.
06:19 - Okay, should we put the cameras away or?
06:22 - The cameras should be put away.
06:23 - I'll be able to put the camera down.
06:29 Not only does the industry create food security issues,
06:33 but it also destroys local tourism
06:35 with rancid smelling emissions
06:37 and pollutes local waters as the factories dump toxic waste.
06:42 A local TV crew filmed images of the process.
06:49 But what was deeply concerning and not exposed
06:53 were the levels of chemicals the factory used
06:55 to turn fish to dust.
06:58 The effects on the environment were catastrophic.
07:01 Waters turned red and the fumes were toxic.
07:04 Microbiologist Ahmed Manjang analyzed the water
07:13 and found it contained double the amount of arsenic
07:16 and 40 times the amount of phosphates
07:18 and nitrates deemed safe.
07:21 Locals destroyed a pipe
07:22 that was pumping waste into the ocean.
07:25 Activists were arrested, but the pipe was restored.
07:29 - NDC, protect our environment!
07:31 NDC, protect our environment!
07:34 - Why do you think they can get away
07:39 with operating above the law?
07:41 - Because Gambia is in serious political debt with China.
07:44 - Okay.
07:50 Hello.
07:52 What's going on?
07:53 You good?
07:55 I went to Manjang's home.
07:57 He's the microbiologist who had tested the toxic waters.
08:01 He's also now a leader in the opposition to the factories.
08:04 - The local fishermen, they lost control of their fish.
08:08 These fishmeal are taking the protein
08:10 away from our dinner tables.
08:13 So what's that going to happen?
08:14 We're going to have a malnourished nation.
08:17 Anyway, we are taking the natural one,
08:18 giving it to the Chinese.
08:20 They convert it into powder, send it to China,
08:23 feed the fish, ship and bring it to Gambia.
08:25 - And resell it to you at an expensive price.
08:28 - The bonga fish we see now will disappear
08:31 and that will be a disaster for this community.
08:34 - The ocean conservation group, Sea Shepherd,
08:44 began to patrol Gambian waters to help the local Coast Guard.
08:49 I was invited on board.
08:50 The first time out, we saw a vessel,
08:59 didn't know who it was, ran at it, got there,
09:03 and suddenly it's the vessel that we were most interested in
09:08 because it's connected to this
09:09 really sketchy fishmeal plant on land.
09:12 - Can you repeat, please?
09:15 - I repeat.
09:16 - No, don't do that, okay?
09:19 I cannot, but we need to keep a hold of the ship.
09:21 I cannot let it go.
09:23 - Impossible, impossible, everything impossible.
09:28 Come here, I'm asking you, impossible.
09:30 - This is a vessel that had its transponder off,
09:34 so it was already a dark vessel,
09:36 but even worse, it had no fish log.
09:40 - A fishing vessel's gotta have a navigation log,
09:53 which is their positions every day,
09:55 where they fished, the quantity of fish.
09:57 You can see the last entry here was on the 21st of January,
10:01 and then there is nothing.
10:04 Then this is a dark ship.
10:07 Who knows where they've fished?
10:09 - He's saying that they can't start going to Van Julien.
10:20 He needs two hours to make some repairs.
10:24 We've seen it motoring all morning.
10:25 It's a delay tactic, so you can get on the radio.
10:27 - The captain of the ship was not particularly cooperative,
10:35 and the Sea Shepherd crew and the Gambian fishery
10:38 and Navy officers told him he was under arrest
10:41 and ordered him to bring his ship into port.
10:44 (dramatic music)
10:46 - And then the second vessel was 10 times worse,
11:01 and there was this space, it was like a crawl space,
11:04 where all these guys were sleeping at night.
11:06 (men chattering)
11:12 - It's so hot.
11:12 I've never, ever seen this bad.
11:16 Few things rattle me these days,
11:25 but for some reason, that space really rattled me.
11:39 The local fishermen here also testifying
11:44 that these guys have been crawling very close to the shore.
11:49 On top of that, the living conditions here
11:52 are really not for humans.
11:54 Not even for animals, but not for humans.
11:57 - We saw how rules were broken with impunity
12:06 to meet government-imposed quotas,
12:08 but also how these trawlers fished well beyond demand
12:12 of the fishmeal factories,
12:14 leading to massive discarding of dead fish
12:17 back into the ocean.
12:19 The overcatch is left to rot in the waters
12:21 or on the beaches, like in Gambia.
12:23 - We harvest fish the same way that is similar
12:28 to using bulldozers to catch rabbits.
12:32 And if you use bulldozers to catch rabbit,
12:35 you will have no forest.
12:38 Our use of aquaculture is ironically accelerating
12:41 the very problem we set out to solve.
12:44 Rather than slowing the depletion of fish stocks,
12:47 aquaculture is speeding it up because of fishmeal.
12:50 And ultimately, it is the poor and our oceans
12:53 that continue to pay the price for our ferocious appetite.
12:57 - I will run and come back, but I will never stay away
13:01 because I believe one thing that is,
13:03 if Gambia is the soil, it's the soil for us.
13:06 And if Gambia is made, it's made for us.
13:08 And I always ask myself one question, that is,
13:11 what is gonna be my answer if my children
13:13 or my grandchildren happen to ask me,
13:15 what were you doing when all this environmental
13:17 disaster was happening?
13:19 I always want to have the answer.
13:21 And that's the main reason that's why I keep
13:23 speaking to people.
13:24 I keep doing what I should do.
13:26 I keep raising the awareness level of people
13:28 because awareness raising is key.
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13:32 (water rushing)
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