IMU Cinema Club and Psychology Club Social Responsibility Team collaborated in organizing a documentary screening in our Aşık Paşa Conference Hall on April 27, 2022, Wednesday, to discuss the human impact on marine life. The participants of the event watched the documentary “Seaspiracy” about global destruction of the oceans directed by Ali Tabrizi, who started off with plastic waste in the seas and has brought to light many other problems in our seas in his research. The documentary screening aimed to instill awareness in our students toward nature and particularly toward understanding life from the perspective of marine species.
“There is a garbage truck load of plastic dumped every minute into the ocean and over 150 billion tonnes of microplastics are already there – they [the microplastics] now outnumber the stars in the milky way.” is one of the claims of the documentary to draw attention to marine pollution. The documentary reveals that most of the plastic danger is caused by fishing nets regularly discarded into the sea as a result of fishing activities, highlighting that 46 percent of waste in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is made up of fishing nets. Another point underlined in the documentary is the claim of an article published in Science journal in 2006 that the species richness in the oceans and seas will decline due to destructive fishing and that “the oceans will be empty of fish by 2048”.
Following the screening, the audience shared their thoughts with the awareness they gained and made a psychological evaluation of the movie. The discussion led all to the same crucial conclusion: it is a duty for all of us to protect seas and oceans and create a more sustainable world!