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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13:58 [Music]
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