Filming A Fish Story
Local filmmakers beat the “Penguins” in an environmental documentary competition.

BY JOY LANZENDORFER

It doesn’t seem likely that a successful film—March of the Penguins—would lose a “best documentary” award in an open competition. Yes, it missed out on an Oscar, but when competing for an environmental award, surely it wouldn’t lose to a low-budget independent documentary made right here in Marin County.

But that’s what happened recently in Los Angeles. Farming the Seas, Habitat Media’s documentary about fish farming, won the 15th annual Environmental Media Award for best full-length feature documentary, beating out three other films, including March of the Penguins. Al Gore was keynote speaker at the event.

“We were definitely surprised to win,” says Steve Cowan, director of Farming the Seas. “Mostly because March of the Penguins is a full-on gorgeous National Geographic-type film and lots of money was spent on production. But they didn’t have an environmental message, so they lost.”

The Environmental Media Award honors film and television “that increases public awareness of environmental issues and inspires personal action,” according to the award’s Web site. Farming the Seas, which aired on PBS last year, not only tried to educate viewers about the fish farming industry, it also tried to get people inspired to make more informed choices when they purchase fish.

Although March of the Penguins did an excellent job of educating people on the struggle penguins go through to survive in Antarctica, the filmmakers missed a chance to talk about environmental issues, believes Cowan.

“They had an opportunity to show how these penguins and their habitat are threatened by global warming,” he says. “And they didn’t go that route.”

Environmental messages are the reason Habitat Media formed in the first place. The San Rafael nonprofit specializes in environmental and political films that educate viewers. But more than that, Cowan and his partner, Barry Schienberg, want their movies to matter. They want to inspire you.

The two began working together in 1992. At that time, Schienberg owned a film editing facility in Sausalito. He had been working in film for several years prior to buying the business, as well as studying theater and making children’s educational programming for Marin County Parks and Recreation. He bought the editing equipment thinking that he would finally be able to make the kind of political and environmental films that appealed to him.

It didn’t work out that way, though.

“I always felt like I needed tools to do the kind of work I wanted to do,” he says. “So, I bought the post-production facility, but ended up working night and day to pay it off instead. I didn’t have time to do my work.”

Meanwhile, Cowan had been working for environmental organizations like Friends of the Earth and the Earth Island Institute. He had started out writing about environmental issues, but came to the conclusion that film was a better way to communicate with people. So, he started taking film classes and making his own films.

THE TWO MEN hit it off. Not only were they both working in filmmaking, they also shared a passion for environmental causes. Cowan was interested in the plight of endangered sea turtles, and Schienberg, a longtime vegetarian, was interested in animal rights. They began working together, making educational and campaign videos for environmental groups. Then they made several documentaries on conservation issues associated with sea turtles, one of which was purchased by National Geographic Television in 1999.

In 1996, they went to Thailand to do a short film on the destruction of the mangrove forests, which are being torn out for shrimp farming. Mangroves are shrubs that grow in coastal water. Their extensive root system stabilizes sand and mud as well as filters water. This delicate ecosystem, which supports many specific species, is also a buffer to strong winds and high waves, like tsunamis.

Once in Thailand, Cowan and Schienberg were surprised to find what an impact shrimp farming had on the mangroves, which are being removed at an astounding rate and at a large environmental cost. They realized that shrimp farming was just one part of a huge issue that most people in the U.S. hadn’t even thought about.

“A lot of times, fish like shrimp are farmed in other countries, and so we tend to eat them without considering what they have to do with us,” says Cowan. “The issues with the mangroves are not U.S. news.”

Soon after returning from Thailand, the filmmakers met with KQED, public broadcasting for Northern California. There was interest in a show on fishing the oceans.

From that meeting came Empty Oceans, Empty Nets, a one-hour documentary on the global fisheries crisis. It aired locally and was such a hit that over 250 PBS stations picked it up. It aired in April of 2002 during Earth Week to over 1.5 million households. Another half million people watched the show in the following months.

The film continued to be broadcast up through 2005 and was used as an educational video by many organizations. Currently, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is considering distributing Empty Oceans, Empty Nets to its regional fishery commissions for educational purposes.

“KQED was surprised the documentary was such a hit,” says Cowan. “They didn’t know it had such relevance to their audience. It had such a tremendous response, they wanted us to go ahead with a sequel.”

In 2004, PBS aired Farming the Seas, which picked up where Empty Oceans, Empty Nets left off, going into the benefits and problems with fisheries. Following a sneak preview on KQED San Francisco to over 134,000 viewers, the documentary was picked up by PBS stations nationwide and is still being aired.

Although the media has started to report on aquaculture more frequently, most people haven’t heard much about it, which makes it one big story to tell.

“The only problem I had with the films was that they were trying to get all that information into one-hour increments,” says Zeke Grader, executive director of the Institute for Fisheries Resources in San Francisco. “You can spend one hour on shrimp farming alone. You need four hours to explore the issues covered in those films.”

Schienberg did all the shooting and part of the editing of the films. Cowan had the daunting task of doing the research and most of the writing. “It took a lot of research,” says Cowan. “I talked a lot with people on advisory boards, marine scientists, experts on fisheries and advocates for conservation.”

When the budget allowed, Cowan would fly to locations to see if a story lead was worth bringing a film crew out to document. When it came time to shoot, the film crew traveled to Thailand, New England, Alaska, British Columbia, Japan, China, Europe, Hawaii and the Canary Islands, among others. In the course of the documentaries, they covered shrimp, salmon, tilapia, tuna, oyster and mussel farming. They watched people pick shrimp out of mud, looked at salmon swimming in their cages, slept on the floor of huts and watched fishermen pull nets of fish onto boats.

For Schienberg, who loves animals, this last thing could be hard to watch.

“Seeing fish dying right in front of my eyes was sometimes painful,” he says. “I realize it doesn’t mean the same to the fisherman as it does to me. The fish are a commodity, not a life to them. I understand that. The fish are a means to their own survival.”

Although careful planning went into the films, with all the traveling, sometimes the unexpected happened. Once, a bad storm trapped the crew on a boat for more than 24 hours. In China, their equipment was confiscated in the airport and they were shipped off to a hotel for 48 hours, unsure if they were about to be deported or not.

“When we walked through the airport, we stuck out like a sore thumb with all our gear and everything,” says Cowan. “We had to get a handler to convince the authorities that we were not there to paint a bad picture of China.”

There were other inconveniences. When staying with fishermen in Thailand, Schienberg discovered that it was more difficult to stick to his vegetarian diet than he had originally thought. To feed him, the accommodating fishermen gathered swamp grass, a weed that grew nearby, and boiled it for him.

“It tasted like spinach, which I don’t like,” Schienberg said, laughing. “I’m a vegetarian who doesn’t like many vegetables.”

AS AN INDUSTRY, aquaculture is rapidly expanding. The world population is increasing, sushi is more popular than ever, and the health benefits of fish have been widely reported, which means that demand for seafood is rising. This not only creates incentive to overfish the ocean, it means more fisheries are opening up every day. If things keep up at this rate, some experts say there won’t be enough fish to meet the need.

“Even with all the world’s fisheries, there is not enough fish to meet the demand for seafood,” says Cowan. “So something has to be developed.”

Though fisheries seem like they would add to the fish population without taking away from the oceans, too often the opposite is true. Since the most popular fish are carnivorous, wild fish are used to feed them. For example, every one pound of farmed tuna takes 10-12 pounds of wild fish. So, farming tuna leads to a net loss of protein in the ocean.

Usually, the fish that is ground up and fed to the tuna is perfectly edible to humans as well.

“It’s far different from cattle,” says Grader. “Yes, you need 50 pounds of seed for every pound of cow meat, but they’re eating grass. We’re talking about sardines, herring, anchovies—staples people can put on their table, and do in Third World nations. This is satisfying the First World luxury for taste at the expense of Third World diets.”

There are other concerns about fisheries. Because farmed fish are cooped up in small spaces, they are more likely to get diseases from each other. To combat this, many fishery owners pump the fish with antibiotics. In addition, farmed fish sometimes escape their nets and can overrun or spread diseases to wild fish. In 1978, escaped farmed fish spread a deadly parasite to wild salmon in Norway. The Norwegian government was forced to kill all the fish in the area to keep the infestation from spreading.

Farming the Seas points to possible solutions to these problems, from tanks on dry land to ponds that are regularly vacuumed out. It also showcases fisheries in China that use three types of herbivore fish, which are more self-sustaining than carnivores. And, since consumers often have no way of knowing where the fish they buy is from or under what conditions it was caught, the movie suggests that consumers support sustainable farming by buying herbivores like mussels, oysters and tilapia.

Seeing aquaculture firsthand has changed how Cowan eats fish in his own life. He carries a card in his wallet from the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch that says which fish are the most environmentally friendly to buy. He no longer eats tuna sandwiches and has stopped eating shrimp completely.

“There are very few places that produce shrimp in a good way,” he says. “About 99.9 percent of shrimp is harvested in a way that is considered a problem—either through shrimp farming in places like Thailand or through fishing boats that trail nets sea turtles get caught and drown in.”

The documentaries do attempt to tell both sides of the story. They show shrimp farmers in Thailand discussing how the farms create jobs in an economically depressed country, for example. Though Habitat Media receives the occasional hostile reaction from commercial fishermen and other people, most feedback to the films has been positive.

“The vast majority of the e-mail we’ve received from industry members has been very appreciative of the film’s editorial balance,” says Cowan. “That’s largely because we presented the fishermen’s points of view and their efforts to restore fisheries.”

Of course, some point out that with fish ranging from $5-$20 per pound, sustainable aquaculture, which consists of smaller and more labor intensive operations, may drive up the price even more. But that, according to Grader, is a small price to pay when you consider the benefits to employees and the environment.

“It’s like Fair Trade coffee—it’s not that big of a difference,” he says. “Lots of times the middle man is taking a bigger cut for himself, so it doesn’t have to be more expensive. In many cases, they may sell it more directly with the hands in the middle taking smaller cuts.”

For the time being, Habitat Media has put the oceans aside and is making its first purely political documentary, The Lost Art of Tea Tossing. The film explores the state of democracy in America today. Tea tossing refers to the Boston Tea Party.

“The spirit of democracy that citizens had in 1776 was much more active than it is today,” says Cowan. “You have to be active to have a true democracy. You have to go out on a limb. Given the growing influence of corporations in politics, with big money influencing way more than a single vote can, that kind of democracy isn’t really happening anymore.”

The Lost Art of Tea Tossing will look at how campaign donations from corporations influence politicians and whether “clean” or publicly funded elections are the solution. The movie will be released in 2008 in theaters—that is, if Habitat Media can secure enough funding to finish it.

Although new technology makes it cheaper and easier to make films these days, it still takes money to pay Habitat Media’s three employees and expenses, not to mention the high cost of living in Marin. Even with the go-ahead from PBS to make films like Farming the Sea or Empty Oceans, Empty Nets, the filmmakers had to raise the money to produce the films. At least half of Cowan’s time is spent applying for grants.

Personally, this means that Cowan and Schienberg have to struggle a bit financially. But that is the downside of doing work that you love, believes Schienberg.

“Years ago, as a kid, I was watching Johnny Carson interview another comedian,” he says. “I don’t remember who he was interviewing, but I remember he made a point about how lucky he and the comedian were to be doing work that was their passion and that they loved.

“For some reason, that has always stuck with me.”

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