From the cove to the globe

Boulder’s Oceanic Preservation Society broadens its call to action with ‘Racing Extinction’

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Hidden cameras, undercover reconnaissance, international travel — the folks at the Boulder-based Oceanic Preservation Society are at it again, following up their 2010 Academy Award-winning documentary The Cove with more high-risk, covert campaigns, stunning camerawork and an even bigger call to action in Racing Extinction.

In this new, ambitious endeavor, director Louie Psihoyos tackles the role humans play in advancing what is shaping up to be the world’s sixth mass extinction — an annihilation scientists say could lead to the loss of 50 percent of the world’s species in the next 100 years.

“I remember thinking this is the biggest story in the world — it’s like we’re living in the age of dinosaurs but we could do something about it,” Psihoyos says in the opening minutes of the documentary.

Indeed, Racing Extinction is a massive story, weaving together multiple issues that threaten life on Earth. The effect can be dizzying as the film bounces between threads, from black market wildlife trade to carbon dioxide emissions to livestock production and back again.

“It’s an enormous subject,” says producer Olivia Ahnemann. “You’re looking at the sixth mass extinction. … You’re not just focusing on one cove and one species. It was an enormous challenge from a writing and editing and storytelling point — how do you fit all of this into one flowing narrative?”

Though the movie may feel like it’s packing a bit much into 90 minutes, the overall effect is emotional as viewers travel with Psihoyos and his team of activists, scientists, nature photographers and visionaries to explore both the beauty of this planet and the horrifying ways in which humanity is decimating that beauty.

Through Psihoyos’ keen vision — sharpened by years as a photographer for National Geographic — viewers see warehouses in China where sharks have been stripped of their fins for use in soup and where manta rays have been gutted for their gills for use in archaic medicinal practices.

But audiences also see an upscale dining establishment in Santa Monica, Calif., serving whale sushi.

“It’s really easy for us to look east and say, ‘Look what China’s doing. They’re destroying the planet. They’re polluting everything. They’re wiping out species.’ But the West is already doing an incredible job of massively depleting and damaging the environment and taking out a lot of the threatened species,” says Boulder-based ocean activist Sean Henrich in the documentary. “What’s happening in China now is they’re going through the same growing pains that we did. But when we went through our growing pains, there were only a billion people on the planet. With China going through its growing pains, there’s over 1.3 billion people in China alone.”

“It’s very easy to point the finger at another culture or country and what they’re doing, but it’s good to put the mirror up to our own practices and relationships with these things,” Ahnemann says. “It may not be rhino horn or manta ray gills, but do you know whether there are shark products in your omega-three oils or your makeup?” 

Unlike documentaries such as Blue Planet, with its inspiring cinematography of marine creatures that had never been captured on film before, Racing Extinction doesn’t attempt to move us merely through the beauty of our world, but reminds us that humans are a species, too — the only species, in fact, to single-handedly accelerate mass extinction.

“I think when you become aware of what’s going on in our planet with nature and how vulnerable it is at our doing, you want other people to understand it,” Ahnemann says. “I read a statistic in National Geographic yesterday that half of Americans do not believe in climate change at the hand of humans — it shocks me. So being able to play a role in communicating these issues and the science on a more popular platform and format is amazing and I feel a responsibility as a citizen of this planet to do my part for it.”

Ahnemann acknowledges that the subject matter is deep and the consequences of remaining on our current path are dire, but even the smallest changes — from consuming less meat to getting involved in local politics — are steps in the right direction.

“We don’t have a choice. It can’t be insurmountable because it has to be solved and it has to be solved collectively from an individual standpoint and from an environmental standpoint and an industry stand point — we all have to turn this ship around,” she says. “So if [the film] can inspire children and adults to look at themselves and think, ‘Well I can do something like that; I can offer pro-bono legal work to an organization that’s working on conservation efforts,’ or, ‘I can have my school start a garden in the playground,’ whatever it is, I think that collective energy is what’s going to get us there.”

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