Filmmaker Juan Carlos Dávila’s new film for PBS, Farmers of the Sea, documents climate change’s threats to the fishing industry and food security in Vieques, Puerto Rico. For islands in the Caribbean, explains Dávila, “we are situated geographically in one of the frontlines of climate change. [We’re] not only facing stronger hurricanes now, [but] we could face food shortages, especially the islands that depend so much on the food that comes from the sea.”
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: We are also joined by Juan Carlos Dávila, who has covered the resistance to PROMESA for years but now has a new documentary about the local fishing industry in the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, where for more than 60 years the U.S. Navy used much of the island as a bombing range, exploding, by one estimate, as much as 3 million pounds of ordnances containing napalm, depleted uranium, lead and other toxic chemicals. Public protests led to the closure of the base in 2003. Juan Carlos Dávila has been reporting on Vieques for years. His latest film just came out on PBS, Farmers of the Sea, focusing on how access to fishing is changing due to climate change and also the impacts of contamination. This is a clip.
PEDRO ZENÓN: [translated] I cannot tell you that lobster fishing is bad, but compared to previous years, the decline has been significant. There are many reasons why this is happening, right? The reality of the matter is that this changes every year. The reefs aren’t like they used to be. There are reefs where you find no marine life, no sponges. There are many fish that you used to catch before, that you rarely find now. Like what happened with the conch. You almost don’t find trunkfish.
GIRL: [translated] Look, those really are turtles.
PEDRO ZENÓN: [translated] I am almost certain that the issue of global warming and pollution has caused fishing to be farther away from the coast, and this is accelerating a lot. We need to find a way to at least decelerate this as much as we can.
AMY GOODMAN: Part of Farmers of the Sea. Juan Carlos Dávila, congratulations on this beautiful portrait of both the fisherpeople and climate change. Talk about why you made this film.
JUAN CARLOS DÁVILA: Well, the reason I really made this film is because when we address the topic of food insecurity in climate change, or how climate change is going to produce food insecurity, we tend to look a lot at what is happening in the land, but there’s so many people in the world, especially coastal communities, island, that depend on the food that comes from the sea for their livelihood, to develop their economies, to bring food to the table to their children. And, for example, if you look at Puerto Rico, the reefs in Puerto Rico, they are facing an alarming amount of bleaching, and it’s really destroying the ocean wildlife, which eventually, you know, is having an effect, a direct effect, on the food that we can get from the sea.
And like the fishermen in Vieques say, and other fishermen in Puerto Rico, the ocean is that industry that always has jobs available, because you can go and fish and come back and sell that fish. But also, even if you are not able to sell the fish, you can provide food for your family so it doesn’t go hungry.
So, this just shows one of those — that the food insecurity in the ocean is also another layer of complication in climate change. And it just shows, you know, how the Caribbean has another complication when we’re thinking about how we are situated geographically in one of the frontlines of climate change. So, it’s not just about — we’re not only facing, you know, strongest hurricanes now, but we’re also facing food — we could face food shortages, especially the islands that depend so much on the food that comes from the sea.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Juan Carlos, we only have about less than a minute left, but we’ll do a post-show. But could you also talk about what has the United States military and the government done about cleaning up Vieques, which was essentially a fishing community before they occupied it and destroyed it for so many years?
JUAN CARLOS DÁVILA: So, the fishing community — the federal agencies, really, what they do is that they inform the community of what they’re doing. Just in general, what they do is that they have been gathering the bombs that they are able to see on the surface and piling them up, and really much exploding them, in Vieques. But then they have — but there’s also many other bombs, which also releases another type of contamination, but there’s also a lot of bombs buried and thousands and thousands of bombs in the water that they haven’t picked up.
AMY GOODMAN: We have to leave it there, Juan Carlos Davila, filmmaker, journalist, activist from Puerto Rico. We’ll link to your piece, Farmers of the Sea, for PBS. Zenón and the Rebel Boats documentary will premiere at the BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia.
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