Rob Whitehair Films

The Reality of Bluefin Tuna

robwhitehair — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:49:43 +0000

Numerous friends alerted me on Facebook to a posting yesterday on the Huffington Post by prominent ecologist and marine conservationist Carl Safina. The headline read “ National Geographic Channel, In a Race for Bottom, Adds Killing Endangered Species to the New Season Entertainment Lineup.” In the post, Dr. Safina calls attention to a new series that National Geographic Channel has commissioned called “Wicked Tuna.” The series apparently follows the exploits of commercial fisherman as they hunt Atlantic Bluefin Tuna.
My initial reaction of course was outrage. As an ecologist and conservationist myself, I have kept informed about the plight of the Atlantic Bluefin Tuna. Commercial overfishing has severely put them in jeopardy. Most of the top marine scientists believe that they are a highly endangered species, a species sitting precariously on the edge of extinction and whether they survive or not, depends on our actions. Certainly National Geographic Channel should not be making a series that gives the impression that it is OK to kill endangered species.
As I read through the numerous Facebook posts, most of whom were just as outraged as me, I came across one that urged people not to make uninformed judgments based upon opinion pieces and to seek more information about the series prior to commenting.
Fair enough.
It didn’t take much digging to find published quotes from the production company Pilgrim Studios as well as the head of National Geographic Channel. And a quick lookup of the boats involved in the show revealed that the Captains of those vessels signed a petition against the listing of Atlantic Bluefin Tuna as endangered. No surprise there.
Here are the quotes:
The series focuses on the crews of Tuna.Com, The Bounty Hunter, Hard Merchandise and Odysea. Executive producer Craig Piligian said: “Commercial tuna fishing is brutally competitive. With its limited season, the intelligence and prowess of the fish, and the sheer fact that they’re worth so much, the livelihood of each vessel’s crew can be made or broken in a month. Pairing that kind of pressure with the harsh environment of Gloucester makes this one of the most intense and compelling series Pilgrim has ever produced.”
NGC president Howard T. Owens added: “As a huge fan of the movie The Perfect Storm, I have always wanted to make a series that captured the raw authenticity of the characters in that movie. “The tuna crews in this series immediately draw you in to their struggles and triumphs as they fight to make a living. One fish can literally be the difference between feeding your family or filing for bankruptcy.”
Notice how there was specifically no mention of “endangered or threatened”? Of course not, because that is not what this is about.
National Geographic Channel fed us, in their carefully crafted press release exactly what they want us to think the show is about… they emphasized the struggle to make a living and the dramatic conclusion that one fish is the difference between food on the table or bankruptcy.
If one were only to look at this as a story, endangered fisherman versus endangered tuna; “Fisherman fighting to survive and feed their families, the difference between their survival or not depends on hunting the endangered bluefin tuna.” Dramatic. Great story.
But what would happen if we inserted Elephants instead of Tuna? Same exact story… the struggle of people to feed themselves and selling ivory is the only way they know how. Yet, National Geographic doesn’t glorify that… and my bet is they wouldn’t.
Facts are facts.
Atlantic Bluefin tuna are in severe decline and in need of protection. If it weren’t for the global pressure from the Japanese market for them, this probably wouldn’t be the case. The fishermen who are exploited in this series rely on this global market for their survival.
The difference is this: if the fishermen can’t fish for bluefin tuna, they will need to find other work. If the Atlantic Bluefin Tuna doesn’t get needed protection, all indications are that the species most likely will go extinct.
This is all so very sad. To glorify this with a reality series for the purpose of competing with other networks is even sadder. And for it to come from the revered National Geographic is even sadder.

Wicked Tuna is just irresponsible programming and I strongly oppose it.

That is my two cents.

If you agree with this, contact National Geographic channel and let them know how you feel about it. comments@natgeochannel.com

True Wolf in 100 words.

robwhitehair — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 05:55:32 +0000

How far would you go to tell the truth?

Fate had thrown Bruce Weide and Pat Tucker together with a wolf named Koani. Having never done this before, they had to learn the hard way how to live with this wild animal. Their lives changed dramatically. But just living with Koani didn’t seem right, they wanted to give her life purpose. For 16 years, this unusual pack traveled into hot beds of anti-wolf rhetoric hoping to show the public the truth about wolves. What they didn’t expect was a lesson in their own truth, the truth about being human.

True Wolf… a wolf film with a twist.

robwhitehair — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 05:21:39 +0000

When Bruce Weide first told me the story of the journey that he and his wife Pat Tucker forged with a wolf named Koani, I was hooked. It was a story that was filled with conflict, sacrifice, love and ultimately transformation. My mind raced across the pages of one of my favorite stories, Jack London’s The Call of the Wild.
I have an absolute fascination with what it means to be “wild” so I had to make this film believing that I had come across a real life Call of the Wild. Naturally, I had assumed that the journey we would take would be to enter the world of a captive wolf and in turn learn what it means to be wild. For me, this was a dream come true. After all, it was my own story of a wolf that, in part, drew me to live in the mountains of Montana in the first place.
As with any good story, there is a twist somewhere in the plot, something that the audience didn’t quite see coming, yet was not so out of left field as to be not believable. True Wolf is such a story. But here is where the story takes yet another unexpected twist because this time, the twist happened not on the audience, but on the storyteller.
Indeed the master storytellers love to take us to places that we haven’t been, places we do not know and within that place we somehow find ourselves. I had expected that in entering the world of Koani, I would be a bit closer to understanding what it means to be wild.
Yet, what I had been focusing on were the facts of the story. Koani was captive and I could explore through a captive wolf those elements that define a wild wolf. What I really wanted was the truth.
As Robert McKee puts it so eloquently, “…story is not life in actuality. Mere occurrence brings us nowhere near the truth. What happens is fact, not truth. Truth is what we think about what happens.
And therein lies the twist. Truth is what we think about what happens. In my exploration for truth, I had missed the key element and that is what do I think about it? What did Koani’s life mean to me? What could I learn from her life in captivity and hence translate that onto screen for other people to experience.
In the end, what I discovered was that the truth in this story is that Koani taught me less about what it means to be wild and more about what it means to be human.