{"id":18893,"date":"2025-10-16T21:07:01","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T21:07:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/?p=18893"},"modified":"2026-03-01T14:14:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T14:14:16","slug":"screening-discussion-ocean-with-david-attenborough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/es\/actividades\/frenar-la-sobrepesca\/screening-discussion-ocean-with-david-attenborough\/","title":{"rendered":"Screening & Discussion: OCEAN with David Attenborough"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Three MEPs graced this special event in the evening of Wednesday, 15 October 2025: Isabella L\u00f6vin, Christophe Clergeau, and Sebastian Everding. Moderated by Laura Sullivan, the programme offered the screening of a shortened version of ‘OCEAN’ with Sir David Attenborough. Film director Toby Nowlan was in the panel of discussants together with Veronica Manfredi, Director of the ENV. C Directorate at DG Environment, European Commission, Michalis Croessmann, President of the Professional Fishing Association of Amorgos \u00abChozoviotissa\u00bb, Greece, and Ana\u00efs Berthier, Senior Lawyer and Head of ClientEarth Brussels.<\/p>\n

Following a brief introduction by MEP L\u00f6vin, a 25 min. sequence of the documentary ‘OCEAN’ was screened, accompanied by commentary of Sir David Attenborough, now 99 years old, who shared insights distilled from his extra-ordinary life as a nature documentalist and discoverer. See the trailer here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\"\"

Toby Nowlan, Silverback Films<\/p><\/div>\n

Toby Nowlan of Silverback Films provided some additional background to the production and the efforts to bring to light the incredible havoc industrial bottom trawling wrought to anything and everything in its path by mounting cameras inside the trawl. Such bottom trawling takes place day in, day out – out of sight of ordinary citizens. Those seeing the images find it completely incomprehensible how such practices are allowed to persist, including in marine areas called ‘protected’.<\/p>\n

Even to those in the room, who had seen the documentary before in full, the scenes of utter destruction on the one hand and the incredibly fast recovery shown in fully protected areas, did not fail to leave a deep impression.<\/p>\n

Veronica Manfredi, Director of Directorate C of the European Commission’s DG Environment acknowledged the contradiction. She suggested that EU Member States needed to deliver Action Plans to implement the Green Recovery next year, an opportunity to address this serious problem. There were pathways to engage with positive change, such as filing complaints and participating in public consultations on legislative initiatives.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\"\"

Ana\u00efs Berthier, ClientEarth<\/p><\/div>\n

That was all very well, countered Ana\u00efs Berthier, Senior Lawyer and Head of ClientEarth Brussels. She admonished the large disconnect between the laws and regulations on paper and what happened in real life on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

In this context, she cited the finding of a recent study estimating the cost of inaction to protect the environment at \u20ac 190 billion per year!<\/p>\n

As the guardian of the Treaties, she estimated that the Commission was not doing enough to hold the Member States and other players accountable for the damage done or not avoided and other forms of not acting lawfully.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\"\"

MEP Christophe Clergeau<\/p><\/div>\n

In direct response, MEP Christophe Clergeau expressed his doubt whether the Commissioner for Fisheries and Oceans Costas Kadis was allowed to do his job as EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen denied his request for a coordination mission across portfolios to shape up the Ocean Pact in a coherent manner. He wished President von der Leyen would explain HOW to achieve the restoration goals. In that context, he emphasised that it was essential to also engage the Council of EU Member States to finally implement<\/strong> existing legislation they had contributed to decide.<\/p>\n

He also wished to see more ambition in relation to articulating an effective Ocean Pact, which so far had an allocation of only 3% of the proposed Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF, 2028-2034). According to him, this was too little to ensure a well-designed and integrated transition towards carbon neutrality and biodiversity regeneration. He was echoed by MEP Isabella L\u00f6vin who expressed hope that the crisis in the Baltic could become a test case for positive change. MEP Sebastian Everding added that social justice and ecosystem recovery needed to go hand in hand.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\"\"

Michalis Croessmann, President of the Professional Fishing Association of Amorgos \u00abChozoviotissa\u00bb, Greece<\/p><\/div>\n

Meanwhile, on the ground, small-scale fishers are taking initiatives to rescue marine life in the water. Michalis Croessmann, President of the Professional Fishing Association of Amorgos<\/a> in Greece, explained what his association had already done with some support from local civil society organisations.<\/p>\n

He stated that a master plan was needed to phase out bottom trawlers. If nothing would be done soon, the small-scale fishers and ocean resources were running out of time.<\/p>\n

Other panelists recalled that the new marine spatial planning directive intended to underpin the Ocean Act should strengthen the enforcement of other existing instruments, such as the Birds Directive, the Habitat Directive, the Marine Strategy Framework Directive and relevant provisions of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). It was therefore a source of concern that instruments that were good, but had not been implemented by EU Member States, were now opened up for change by President von der Leyen.<\/p>\n

In his closing remarks, host MEP Clergeau urged vigilance. The time for learning from the past and acting was NOW. He invited all citizens and organisations intent on ocean healing to mobilise and push for a coherent and ambitious Ocean Pact aligned with existing international treaties and regional and EU specific needs.<\/p>\n

Mundus maris<\/em> will step up its efforts at spreading ocean literacy as many undesirable developments happen, because there is not enough public scrutiny and involvement for creating majorities for better alternatives.<\/p>\n

Text and photos by C.E. Nauen<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":20048,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[189,185],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-enfoque-ecosistemico-de-la-pesca","category-frenar-la-sobrepesca"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18893"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18902,"href":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18893\/revisions\/18902"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}