There’s a disturbingly distinct type of representation of the Asian and African communities in this racist Netflix documentary

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Apr 10, 2021

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• This article contains spoilers.
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• A marine scientist’s view on Seaspiracy’s issues by Jean Utzurrum

Seaspiracy is a brand new, conservationist-styled Netflix documentary riding on the titular success of ‘Cowspiracy’.

And there’s no doubting that this film project is conservationist. It does a great job of highlighting the problems that humans place on the ocean; it’s efficient at creating pangs of guilt.

And like any strongly-received ecological film , it is proving controversial — but not for the ideal reasons.

It’s been branded as fake news; people from the global communities noted in the film are finally finding the voice to say that the Seaspiracy narrative is, in fact, racist.

But first: to the manipulation of data.

Seaspiracy is so sensationalist, it had to be factchecked

The copy-paste use of secondary source materials quoted out of context, the Seaspiracy film has been subject to fact checks from the BBC, the multiplied outcry from the academic, conservationist and dedicated environmental activist media communities are being ignored by the press… Seaspiracy has been fact checked because these truths are starker and even harder to swallow than the actual film.

It does highlight the commercial fishing industry’s destructive practices

The documentary of course, does well to detail the fishing industry’s impact on sea life, the world’s oceans.

But there are a few issues that no-one is talking about when it comes to Seaspiracy:

1. The demonization of only South East Asian fisheries
2. The total lack of equal female…