World’s First Major Documentary About The Devastating Effect Of Overfishing To Premiere At Sundance Film Festival.

Imagine An Ocean Without Fish. Imagine Your Meals Without Seafood. Imagine The Global Consequences. This Is The Future If We Do Not Stop, Think And Act.

The End of the Line, the first major feature documentary film revealing the impact of overfishing on our oceans, will have its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Documentary Competition. Sundance takes place in Park City, Utah, January 15-25, 2009.

Waitt Family Foundation, Marviva and Channel 4 Britdoc Foundation present an Arcane Pictures, Calm Productions, and Dartmouth Films production of The End of the Line, based on the book by Charles Clover. Executive Producers: Christopher Hird and Jess Search; Ted Waitt and Erica Knie. Editor Claire Ferguson. Producers: Claire Lewis and George Duffield. Directed by Rupert Murray.

In The End of the Line, we see firsthand the effects of our global love affair with fish as food. The film examines the imminent extinction of bluefin tuna, brought on by increasing western demand for sushi; the impact on marine life resulting in huge overpopulation of jellyfish; and the profound implications of a future world with no fish that would bring certain mass starvation.

Filmed over two years, The End of the Line follows the indefatigable investigative reporter Charles Clover as he confronts politicians and celebrity restaurateurs, who exhibit little regard for the damage they are doing to the oceans. One of his allies is the former tuna farmer turned whistleblower Roberto Mielgo – on the trail of those destroying the world’s magnificent bluefin tuna population. Filmed across the world – from the Straits of Gibraltar to the coasts of Senegal and Alaska to the Tokyo fish market – featuring top scientists, indigenous fishermen and fisheries enforcement officials, The End of the Line is a wake-up call to the world.

Scientists predict that if we continue fishing as we are now, we will see the end of most seafood by 2048. The End of the Line chronicles how demand for cod off the coast of Newfoundland in the early 1990s led to the decimation of the most abundant cod population in the world, how hi-tech fishing vessels leave no escape routes for fish populations and how farmed fish as a solution is a myth.

The film lays the responsibility squarely on consumers who innocently buy endangered fish, politicians who ignore the advice and pleas of scientists, fishermen who break quotas and fish illegally and the global fishing industry that is slow to react to an impending disaster.

The End of the Line points to solutions that are simple and doable, but political will and activism are crucial to solve this international problem. We need to control fishing by reducing the number of fishing boats across the world, protect large areas of the ocean through a network of marine reserves off limits to fishing, and educate consumers that they have a choice by purchasing fish from independently certified sustainable fisheries.