Atlantic didn’t quite turn out the way I’d imagined it to, upon hearing the premise. For reference, here’s the premise I got: a documentary about fishing in the Atlantic.
Fishing in the Atlantic. From that I’d expect a documentary about how fishing is impacting the marine life of our oceans; problems involving ocean pollution, overfishing, resource depletion and of course, the big one, global warming. Upon reading the ‘blurb’ of the film on the festival website however, I knew it wasn’t going to quite like that. Atlantic centres around three small towns, one in Newfoundland, one in West Ireland, and another in Norway, all dependent on fishing to keep their small population afloat (And yes, I did just make an insensitive pun concerning the livelihoods of a couple hundred people. Each of these towns is under threat from international fishing pirates, whereby foreign boats are fishing in their waters, when the native fisherman have a restriction on where they can fish, and how much they can bring in. All three villages are separated by the colossal Atlantic Ocean, and yet united by their common strife.
Lead by the comforting voice of Brendan Gleeson, we’re taken around the northern part of the globe with beautiful shots (several from a drone), depicting the beautiful green highlands of Ireland, the quaint harbours in Newfoundland, and the towering mountains over the sea in Norway. All this imagery is spliced in with old footage, sneaky cams, close-up interviews and the occasional underwater shot to polarise the size of the ocean with the impact of the fishermen’s catches in retrospect.
Truthfully, although we’re studying the Easter Rising in modern history at the moment, my favourite location within the documentary was in Lofoten, Norway. There is a scene in which a sound-communications expert explains her worries for marine life with the effects of loud underwater air guns used by mapping boats to build a map of the sea floor to find oil and natural gas beneath the seabed. The boom emitted from these guns is picked up by the dinghy’s underwater microphone – from 200km away – and heard by the experts on board, trying to listen to whale song.
The question is raised, what effect does this have on the wellbeing and movement of marine life? The answer – due to the horrendously loud air guns, mapping around promising oil sites in the Atlantic around Norway and Ireland, a certain species of fish has disappeared. A whole species that was relied upon in the summer has disappeared completely, having a monumental effect on fisherman’s revenue and the fish stocks of not only the fishing villages, but all of Europe.
Although I was hoping for an environmentalist-take on the issue of improper fishing in the Atlantic Ocean, I got the humanitarian version, which I greatly enjoyed and certainly learned a substantial amount from.
Atlantic is screening at the Irish Film Festival.
