Where are the Fish?

by Rachael Kinley, Researcher, Oceans and Jungles team

Of the three months that I’ve been on location for Human Planet Oceans shoots, over half of this time has been spent waiting for fish to appear.  Off the shores of three continents, from sunrise to sunset, we’ve searched the open seas desperately hoping for some ‘sign’ that they are on their way.

Fisherman Taba waiting for mullet in Mauritania

First it was waiting for migrating mullet in Mauritania. The idea was to film with the Imraguen people who inhabit the Bank D’Arguin National Park and fish the huge numbers of mullet that pass through their waters each year.  Every day for two weeks we optimistically headed out to sea in the fishermen’s dhows, but the mullet never arrived.  Was it the moon, the wind or the water temperature?  We will probably never know but after much debate we reluctantly decided to call off the shoot.

Fishermen waiting for the fish migration in Brazil

Then we moved on to Laguna on the coast of southern Brazil to try again to film a similar story.  It was hard to decide when was the best time to go as the local fishermen seemed to have wildly conflicting ideas of when the mullet season actually occurred. In the end we embarked on our trip in mid May and although at first it looked as if we were going to be unlucky for a second time, after spending three weeks on location we finally managed to film fishermen hauling in impressive numbers of fish.

Here I am heading out to sea in the Philippines

OK, so we were successful, but it was touch and go for quite a while and I swore I would never go on another shoot that depended on fish turning up.  But what do you know, this October I was off again on another wild fish chase. This time it was off the coast of Palawan in the Philippines, sailing for fourteen hours a day for seven days with deep sea diving fishermen desperate to land a big catch.  Sitting out at sea on a boat in the tropics, overlooking palm tree fringed sandy beaches, is not the worst place in the world to be left in limbo, but after days on end of no filming opportunities and burning our budget, even paradise can lose its appeal.  But as so often seems to be the case on Human Planet shoots, on the very last day we finally managed to net something spectacular enough to make the cut.

A catch at last!

We had what we needed, but I was dismayed to hear that even this catch was half the size of those that the fishermen said they used to get. The problem was not that the people had been lying to us about when and where the fish come in, nor that they had lost their traditional skills, but that there are no longer plenty of fish in the sea.  Although newspapers and documentaries such as End of the Line tell us that global fish stocks are declining, as we still see plenty of fish on our supermarket shelves, it is all too easy to ignore the warnings.

Celebrating a catch with new friends

I myself was aware of the problem, but it was really brought home to me by witnessing first hand how barren the seas of the world have become.  At first the persistent lack of fish on our shoots seemed little more than the annoying bad luck that can plague any film shoot, but talking to people whose lives and livelihoods depend on maritime resources, I have become increasingly aware that diminishing fish stocks are becoming a huge problem affecting millions, if not billions, of people around the world.  Having seen just how hard the lives of some of these people are already, I hate to think how they will survive if the fish disappear altogether.

Dale Templar - Series Producer - Human Planet

Heartache for Haiti

About six months ago, I sent assistant producer Willow off to do a recce in Haiti.  We were looking for a place to show the huge destructive force of hurricanes and Haiti is regularly caught in the path of the worst storms that sweep through the Caribbean.  Ironically, we never filmed in Haiti; in the 2009 season the hurricanes chose other paths.  It was a bitter-sweet failure for the series.  Willow and I were both aware we’d wasted time and money but also felt secretly pleased that the people of Haiti had escaped yet more devastation and destruction for another year.  We could never have imagined  the cruel twist of fate that would hit them just months later.   Of all the places on Earth for a earthquake of this magnitude to hit.   On her trip , Willow was given an insight into the desperation, poverty and hopelessness faced by the  majority of the Haitian population.   Hours after the earthquake, she and I talked on the phone, both unable to take in the enormity of the disaster.   She had been there, I had made films after the Kobe Earthquake in Japan and in Banda Ache following the Boxing Day Tsunami.   The hearts of the Human Planet team go out to the people of Haiti.   Maybe, just maybe, something good will come from this.