Following its premiere on Earth Day at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and on the Smithsonian Channel, award-winning ocean conservation film An Ocean Mystery: The Missing Catch will screen in Vancouver on April 28, 2017.

Join the Sea Around Us for this free screening at UBC’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries – in the AERL Lecture Theatre (Room 120), 2202 Main Mall. Screening will start at 11 a.m. RSVP REQUIRED.

Narrated by actor and ocean conservationist Ted Danson, The Missing Catch investigates how close we are to a global crash in fish populations and fisheries. As government and industry regulators track the amount of fish we catch, and claim the oceans can handle the huge catches, fish numbers keep dropping.

In fact, catches have been declining at a rate of 1.2 million tonnes per year since 1996.

The documentary follows the research of world-renowned fisheries scientist and the Sea Around Us Principal Investigator, Dr. Daniel Pauly, as he and his colleagues piece together a true picture of the amount of fish we have taken from our oceans and the speed at which we are running out of fish.

“The job of documenting what is caught in the world and the state of fisheries is a big one,” Dr. Pauly said. “We did this largely to help the community, the fishery scientists, and civil society to know more about what is really caught”. That’s where the film comes in.

Co-produced by the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation and the Smithsonian Channel, The Missing Catch is a detective story that ranges from the North Atlantic coastline to the reefs of the Bahamas and the shores of Honduras and Senegal. “The film uses some countries as examples of what happens across the world,” the scientist added.

But beyond highlighting the problems, the documentary also showcases some innovative solutions. In Honduras, for example, Dr. Pauly and the filmmakers collaborated with Rare’s fisheries scientist Dr. Stephen Box, whose previous work at the Smithsonian Marine Station led to the creation of an app that gathers detailed data from small-scale fisheries.

In the end, it all comes down to Pauly and the Sea Around Us’ motto: if we manage our fisheries better, we can have more fish than we thought possible.

Following the screening of An Ocean Mystery: The Missing Catch, there will be a Q&A session with Dr. Pauly and Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation’s filmmaker Alison Barrat. Alison will join via Skype.

Please note that on April 22, 2017, the film will be screened at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History at 6 p.m. as part of Rare’s Earth Optimism Summit. Later that day, at 8 p.m. EST (11 p.m. PST) it will be on the Smithsonian Channel.

An Ocean Mystery: The Missing Catch from Living Oceans Foundation on Vimeo.