Tintswalo Boulders in Simon’s Town has launched an innovative Marine Exploration Adventure Experience for its guests to explore the underwater world of False Bay, in which renowned cinematographer Craig Foster filmed ‘My Octopus Teacher’. Continue reading →
One of the best accolades for Cape Town is the news that ‘Searching for Sugar Man‘ is one of five films nominated for the Academy Awards in the Documentary Feature category, and that ‘Asad‘ has been nominated for Short Film (Live Action).
‘Searching for Sugar Man’ tells the story of Capetonian Sugar Segerman’s search for Seventies American rock star Rodriguez, who was more popular in South Africa than in any other country, and who ‘disappeared’. Through an internet appeal, Segerman found Rodriguez and brought him back to South Africa for a series of concerts in the Nineties. Swedish film producer Malik Bendjelloul heard about the Rodriguez story from Segerman, and made a documentary, which won acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival when it was launched last year. Not only has the documentary been nominated for an Oscar, but it also has been named Best Documentary Feature in the Critics Choice Awards, according to 2Oceansvibe. The bulk of the film is shot in Cape Town, and shows off our City’s icons such as Table Mountain, Lion’s Head, Camps Bay beach, and the scenic Victoria Road between Camps Bay and Hout Bay, with the Twelve Apostles as a backdrop. Segerman’s record shop Mabu Vinyls off Kloof Street is also featured. We are surprised by the word for word copying without acknowledgement to the source in the media statement by Mariette du Toit-Helmbold, CEO of Cape Town Tourism, about the role Cape Town plays in the documentary, from our first blogpost about the documentary. Cape Town Tourism ignored the local release of the documentary on the cinema circuit four months ago, despite its focus on Cape Town, proving how out of touch it is with news about our city! One can safely speculate that Mrs Helmbold and her PR and Communications Manager Skye Grove have not seen the film!
‘Asad’ was produced by Capetonian producer Rafiq Samsodien, states the media release from Alan Winde, Minister of Finance, Economic Development, and Tourism, and tells the tale of a boy who struggles to survive in war-torn Somalia. The film was shot in Paternoster, and used Cape Town residents. The film has already won acclaim at the Austin Film Festival, New Orleans Film Festival, Rhode island Film Festival, and Tribeca Film Festival.
Just being included on the Academy Awards nominations list will boost cinema viewership of the two films, and therefore will promote brands Cape Town and Western Cape in the next two months. It will also boost the Western Cape as a film destination, offering the services of producers, animators, directors, screenwriters, actors and cinematographers, said Minister Winde.
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter: @WhaleCottage
A documentary about overfishing will be screened at Nu Metro cinemas from 22 October onwards, and is an ‘inconvenient truth’ about the future of the global fishing industry. “The End of the Line” is a film based on a book with the same name, written by British environmental reporter Charles Clover, reports the Cape Times. It raises important issues about which fish consumers should eat, and which fish types restaurants should include on their menus.
Clover says that if fishing continues unabated, fish stocks around the world will be depleted by 2048. He views fish not only as a food type, but also as a type of wildlife which needs to be protected. The protection of whales by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is well-known, and is the only sea mammal receiving any direct protection from a private organisation, to prevent whaling by the Japanese in the main, but also by fisherman in Norway and Iceland.
Despite good research provided to politicians about responsible quotas that should be set, to allow for the recovery of depleted stock, they tend to set higher than desired quotas, with disastrous results for the future of the fishing industry. The European Union ministers, for example, have allowed 61 000 tons of bluefish tuna, whereas the quota should be 30 000 tons. Consumers can make a difference, by refusing to order, buy and eat fish species that are on the endangered list.
Clover wants his film to encourage consumers to buy ‘sustainable seafood’, to support responsible fishing, and to support the creation of marine reserves. The Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative (Sassi) has worked on an educational program since 2005, to make consumers aware of endangered seafood types. It has updated its 2005 list, and has moved Prawns, Sole and Kingklip from its “Green – Best choice” list to the Orange – Think Twice” list, making almost every local restaurant guilty of moving away from sustainable and responsible seafood usage.
The Sassi list encourages one to eat fish on its Green list, which includes Alaskan salmon, Anchovy, Angelfish, Calamari, Canned tuna, Dorado, Hake, Herring, Maasbanker, Kob (land-based), Mussels, Oysters, Sardines, Snoek, Crayfish, Yellowtail and Yellowfin Tuna. The Orange list includes farmed Abalone, Atlantic Yellowfin Tuna, farmed Atlantic/Norwegian Salmon, Cape Dory, line-caught Geelbek/Cape Salmon, Hake, King Mackerel, Kingklip, Kob, Monk, Prawns, Red Roman, Sole (East coast), Swordfish, White Stumpnose and locally-farmed Yellowtail. Encouraging news is that projects to improve the stocks of Kingklip, Monk and East Coast Sole are underway. Fish types on the Red list, to absolutely avoid, are Black Musselcracker, Bluefin Tuna, Kob (caught by trawlers), Red Steenbras, Red Stumpnose, Cape Stumpnose, Galjoen, West Coast Steenbras , White Musselcracker and White Steenbras.
What makes it difficult to apply ‘sustainable seafood’ ordering is the lack of knowledge of restaurants about the source of the fish, and the fishing style. A handy service allows one to text cell 079 499 8795 with the name of the fish, and one will receive a reply as to the degree of endangeredness of the seafood. The only restaurant that I have seen carry the Sassi logo, demonstrating its support for sustainable seafood usage, is Pete Goffe-Wood’s Wild Woods in Hout Bay.
I checked out the fish species on the current Eat Out Top 10 restaurant list menus. Roots and Terroir do not have a menu on their websites. Rust en Vrede, Grand Provence and The Tasting Room do not use any seafood which is not on the Green list. La Colombe, Overture, and Mosaic serve Prawns and/or Kingklip, which are on the Orange list. The Roundhouse serves Tuna, Kob and Scallops – as the type of Tuna, and fishing style of the Kob is not specified, one cannot judge its responsibility in including these seafood types on its menu. Ninth Avenue Bistro serves Tuna, but does not specify which type. Overture serves ‘Silverfish’, but it does not appear on the Sassi list at all.
For more information about the Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative see www.wwf.org/za.sassi.
POSTSCRIPT 23/9: In the Cape Times of 22/9, it is reported that the prediction of fish becoming extinct by 2048 has been slammed by South African scientists. However, Charles Clover, author of the book, says that this is mentioned in the film.
POSTSCRIPT 16/10: The Weekend Argus of today reports that Swiss billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli has pledged about R 38 million to ‘fund the policing of the UK’s Marine Protected Area around the Chagos Island in the Indian Ocean”, in response to seeing “End of the Line”. The documentary has had an impact on celebrities too – Jamie Oliver has taken bluefin tuna off his menu; and Charlize Theron, Sienna Miller, Sting, Stephen Fry, Woody Harrelson and Prince Charles are all supporting the Blue Marine Foundation, which was set up as a result of the documentary by using private sector support to improve fish stock and sustainability.
POSTSCRIPT 16/10: Blowfish Restaurant in Blouberg is the most SASSI-aware restaurant in South Africa, as far as we aware. A page of their menu is dedicated to their “Green Values”, and each of their green fishes are marked on the menu. They do however also stock orange fish on the SASSI list. A SASSI poster has been put up near the fish counter in the restaurant, to educate restaurant patrons.
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com
Whales and dolphins are an emotive topic, and Oscar-winning Best Documentary “The Cove” pulls out all the stops in appealing to the hearts of viewers of its documentary about the dolphin capture and slaughter in Taija in Japan.
The story starts with Ric O’Barry, who was an actor in the ‘Flipper’ TV series many years ago. When the beloved dolphin ‘star’ of the series dies in his arms, in a suicide he says, he saw the light, and realised that it is cruel to keep dolphins in captivity. Dolphins are particularly sound-sensitive, and any noise in a captive environment will make dolphins kill themselves. Since he became aware of this, O’Barry became a dolphin activist, and was arrested on many occasions, being caught whilst releasing dolphins kept in captivity.
When he heard about the bottle-nose dolphins that are cornered into a cove in Taiji by means of a banging sound from fishing boats, and then captured for resale to dolphinariums and aquariums around the world, at an income of $ 150 000 each, or killed for the sale of their meat, he decides that he must get involved, despite the danger this entails. He connects with the Ocean Preservation Society, which takes on his cause, and he and its leader Louie Psihoyos, a previous National Geographic photographer who becomes the executive director of the movie, assemble a team of dedicated activists that believe in protecting dolphins. Jointly the team installs underwater cameras and sound equipment in the cove, as well as on the hillside overlooking it, in a dangeous operation, so that the torrid actions of the Japanese fishermen can be documented for the world to see. The red sea water after each killing is enough to get every cinema-goer involved.
Two further themes run through the movie. Firstly, much footage comes from the International Whaling Commission’s (IWC) 2006 meeting in St Kitts, which reflects the Japanese registering new members they pay to vote in favour of their whaling activities. Many of them are islands in the Bahamas. In the Commission meeting many of these are filmed sleeping during the proceedings, and not knowing which whale types pass by their countries! It shows the IWC to be an ineffective organisation, which does not concern itself with the preservation of dolphins and porpoises, even though they are defined as whale species. It also documents the abuse of the Japanese in being allowed whaling for “scientific research” purposes. This is what the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is fighting in the Antarctic, south of Australia, actively attacking Japanese whaling boats in this whale sanctuary, to prevent them from killing whales. The Society’s founder and leader Captain Paul Watson is as determined to stop the slaughter of whales as is Ric O’Barry in stopping the slaughter of dolphins.
Secondly, the documentary presents information that the 23 000 dolphins that are killed in Japan annually are sold as whale meat, unbeknown to the Japanese population, that would not touch dolphin meat as food. Despite this, a school feeding programme had intended to serve dolphin meat to children at Japanese schools, until the results of the research initiated by the Ocean Preservation Society proved that dolphin meat contains poisonous levels of mercury. The dolphin meat school feeding programme was stopped as a result.
Each of the activists that participated in the dangerous mission, and the documentary producers and cameramen deserve an Oscar for their brave actions, which could have led to their arrest. O’Barry, the initiator of the dolphin rescue action, has expressed his regret for ever making dolphin petting and dolphin training popular via the “Flipper” TV series.
Actress and singer Hayden Panettiere and her boxing champion boyfriend Vladimir Klitschko recently visited Taiji, Osaka and Tokyo to focus attention on her ‘Save the Whales Again!’ campaign, on the strength of the outrage that ‘The Cove’ has created, and to encourage the fishermen of Taiji to make their money from other means.
Recently producer Louie Psihoyos took on a sushi restaurant, called Hump, in Santa Monica, and exposed that it serves whale meat. It has since closed its doors.
The documentary encourages viewers to take part in the campaign to save dolphins. Its website www.takepart.com invites viewers to write to their leaders and to spread the word about what the Japanese are doing in Taiji; to learn more about the effect on dolphins of being kept in captivity; to calculate one’s own mercury exposure; to assist ‘Save Japan Dolphins’; and to send donations to the filmmakers. More information about the movie can be read at www.thecovemovie.com.
POSTSCRIPT 23/10: Earlier this week Cape Town dolphin-lovers showed their support to the dolphins of Japan and of the International Save Japan’s Dolphins Day, by hanging three blood-covered dolphin replicas from the unfinished highway in the Cape Town city centre. We are grateful to the photographer Jordi Matas for the use of the photograph (www.portfolio.jordimatas.net).
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com