By Shivani Parthipun, Year 10 Journalist Leader

On the 23rd of March, Netflix released a documentary called “Seaspiracy” which explained all the environmental and ethical issues with eating seafood. Recently, many students in NHEHS have watched it and it has inspired many people to reduce their meat and fish consumption and many people have even become vegetarian.

The documentary explained that 46% of the world’s plastic which is in the sea is actually fishing nets and other fishing equipment which have ended up in the ocean. Furthermore, even though many people have been trying to help change the environment for the better by using less single-use plastics such as plastic straws, these items actually only account for a very small percentage of plastics in the ocean compared to the fishing nets. So cutting back on using single-use plastics was not as beneficial as first thought. Many people might remember in May last year where pictures of dead whales were breaking many hearts on social media due to the whales’ deaths from swallowing huge amounts of plastics from the ocean. However, in those pictures, the majority of the plastics were in fact plastic fishing nets and other fishing equipment. Without drastic measures, there could be more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050! There are currently 269,000 tonnes of plastic in the ocean, with a further 8 million pieces of plastic making it into the ocean every single day. We need to stop ruining the oceans and save our planet before it is too late.

“Seaspiracy” also explained that 40% of the fish caught is bycatch, which means it is not used and thrown away. This means that huge amounts of sea animals are killed each year and are wasted. In addition, many of you may have seen a MSC blue tick dolphin symbol on canned tuna. This symbol is a guarantee that no dolphins were harmed when catching the tuna. However, in the documentary, they exposed the MSC company as in fact they have no proof that no dolphins were harmed. The researchers also related these claims of dolphin-safe tuna to many cases of people being kidnapped, murdered and forced into sea slavery. To find out more about it, I highly suggest watching the documentary as it was extremely interesting. Overall, the documentary was very shocking and certainly worth watching.

After watching the documentary myself, I decided that due to the events explained in “Seaspiracy”, I was going to become vegetarian. I felt that after hearing many of the shocking facts and figures in it that it was a good thing to do to help the environment. When my friends found out about this, many of them also said that they too had seen the documentary and become vegetarian or had dramatically reduced their seafood intake. Many of those who had not yet seen the documentary also wanted to watch it as it was highly recommended by many people. Overall, even though only a few of us had watched it at first, as more of us discussed it, more people wanted to watch it and change their diet, in support of changing the environment for the better. The documentary is extremely worth watching and I, along with many others recommend it. 

Now onto some of the things we do as a school to reduce plastic and to be more eco-friendly at NHEHS. On the 17th of May Eco Week begins!

To raise awareness of how you can help the environment, the Year 10, 11 and 12 Eco Reps have arranged for a meat-free Monday on the 17th of May.

In addition to this there will be a walk to school week to promote sustainable walking and modes of transport. Furthermore, there will be a plastic-free quiz and a plastic free day on the 20th of May where the whole school will be trying to reduce all the plastic they use, for example the catering staff will be wrapping all the food in a plastic alternative such as paper wrapping. There are many ways that you can help the environment and by participating in some of these activities listed above you can make a difference. And don’t forget to watch the documentary or see if you can find other ways to help the environment!