Edgy cartoon video about harm from bottom trawling

Hi all,

Blogfish has been busy with other things lately, but this new video has aroused my blogging spirit (embedded below, unless it's been removed from the hosting site) . It was produced by WWF Canada, and it equates bottom trawl fishing with a farmer towing a destructive net across a farm field to "harvest" wildlife and livestock (destroying the farm in the process). It has a catchy and irreverent song, and an edgy message: "we don't farm like this.....why do we fish like this?"

Watch it quickly, before it's taken down from this site. It's already gone from YouTube.

Predictably, this video has aroused the ire of may people connected with the fishing industry. It's a cartoon, its message is sharp, and the content is not technically accurate. The video is intentionally provocative, and I don't think anybody should be surprised that it provoked people connected with fishing.

The people who are complaining about the video have a valid point, it's not a very accurate critique of bottom trawl fishing. And worst of all, it's got an edgy teasing tone, implying that fishermen don't care about the ocean. It's not a good way to reach across the aisle and find solutions to ocean problems.

This is more like a Greenpeace video than something from WWF. I'm glad I'm not a WWF staff person trying explain why WWF produced this video.

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