A must-watch documentary about bluefish in Turkey

Until the 1980s, dolphins were mercilessly fished in the Marmara Sea and the Black Sea. The state distributed arms, ammunition and loans to dolphin fishermen for them to fish more. For years, in Black Sea houses, rags immersed in dolphin oil were used in lamps. Leave aside the screams of dolphins when they were hit by the fish spear, dynamite or bullet, the Sea of Marmara turned reddish with dolphin blood. 

When the state banned dolphin fishing, then the fishermen switched to school fish. Today, fishermen, with the help of their high-tech equipment, cast their kilometers-long nets in front of schools of fish and stop them from passing through the Bosphorus. These fish have been migrating through the Bosphorus to be able to feed themselves for 8,000 years. 

The fleets of fishermen caused the population of the fish in the Black Sea and the Marmara to decline. When the decreased fish population was inadequate to feed the tens of thousands of boats, illegal fishing started in every portion of the sea in the country. Scores of marine species were massacred. For each kilogram of fish caught, 10 kilograms of fish were thorn away. Seed fish were caught without even being able to breed once.  
Each year, 700,000 tons of anchovies are caught and two thirds of this goes to fish farms as feed. The fish farms which are supposed to be sustainable do not produce new fish; on the contrary, they have been transformed into expensive production units by causing overfishing of anchovies. 

The "Lüfer" (bluefish) documentary being shown at the !f Istanbul Independent Films Festival pursues the rapidly vanishing bluefish in our waters while depicting the brutal and unmonitored fishing here; it throws our consumer habits back in our faces. 

The camera...