Planet In Focus '19 Film Review - Artifishal

Human beings tendency to treat nature as a warehouse is the root idea behind Patagonia Films Josh Murphy directed Artifishal. The belief that nature exists to take what you want while dumping your waste anywhere you feel fit. The narrative splices in horrific scenes of frontier men posed with mountains of animal bones  juxtaposed to newsreels of streams and rivers full of fish.  Establishing the myth of endless resources until the government decided that it needed to insert itself to protect them as civilization was advancing to natures peril.

The theory was that with the advance of civilization dams needed to be built therefore fish hatcheries  were needed to mitigate for the loss of habitat.  The working logic as presented on queue by Brett Galyean Manger of Coleman National Fish Hatchery near San Francisco: population is going up water is a concern so if you want to still see salmon hatcheries are required as there is not enough water or environment to support salmon. Propaganda that dates back to the post U.S. Civil War era.

Spencer Baird as U.S. Fish Commissioner was the father of the practice starting artificial propagation with a hatchery bearing his name in 1873. Geneticist Dave Phillip explains that they were not scientist but instead, agriculturalists calling it Wildlife Management, Fish Propagation, birthing the agricultural mentality that still rules today. Its a farm; you raise, put them out you harvest them.  Questions began to be asked in the '70s and not until now are some of the most damaging practices set to be reversed.

Director Murphy highlights two key events that debunked the practice. First, Madison River Montana where they did a study in the seventies to stock one out of three fishing creeks. The non stocked locations doubled the number of fish while the stocked one halved leading to no more stocking of waters with self-sustaining populations in the state. The other Mount St. Helen's eruption of 1980 that decimated the surrounding river basins. No hatchery fish were put in a a result; 5 years later the fish were back at higher levels than before, doubling  two years after that showing what wild fish can can do even under the harshest conditions when not constrained by or forced to intermingle with hatchery fish.

Artificial documents the negative impact when a country becomes dependent on a multi -billion dollar industry. Hatcheries and Fish Farms provide jobs, create projects, justifies the existence of certain government agencies and a bump for politicians that have them built in their constituencies. Mother nature can do it better, have been doing it for thousands of years and for free. The wild method produces larger, healthier, sustainable numbers as opposed to smaller, diseased,weaker engineered fish. The empirical data supports this and its time that governments do as well.

**** Out of 4

Artifishal, Josh Murphy,  U.S.A. | 75 Minutes  | 2019.

Tags: Yvon Chouinard, Salmon Spawning, Dams, Spencer Baird, Ecology, Fish Hatcheries, Fish Farms, Fish Propagation, Washington State, Oregon, Montana, Biological Diversity, Protests, Government Legislation