Exhibitions

Scientific paper, after scientific paper that I read all seem to present the simple statement – that our oceans are dying and we are killing them. The oceans are the life force that keeps our planet alive – yet it has been predicted that we will have wiped out all the life in the oceans by 2049.

This is within my lifetime – and this is just one of those things which keeps me awake at night. I wonder: Do we have a plan B? What shall we humans do, once we fish the last fish?

In February 2011, Georgia went to Taiji Japan for a month to photograph the annual 6 month-long dolphin slaughters.

Staying in the nearby in the town of Kii Katsurra, my afternoons were spent exploring the town and its fish markets – this town is a large tuna port.

Planning to return in September 2011, the day prior to her arrival back in Kii Katsurra, a typhoon struck this area – with a death tally over a hundred people. With the town in crisis, a plan B for her time in Japan was launched – and time was spent in Tokyo exploring and photographing the fish market there.

Wandering around fish markets, seeing the volume of animals killed – there is so much death. Through my eyes, and my world view, I do not see a dead fish – I see a dead life, a life taken from its environment – fished and killed in a slow and cruel method. Knowing this is just one market, in one town or city, on one day – my brain is boggled by the volume of life that we are ripping out of the ocean on a daily basis.

Overfishing is just one of the ways we are killing the oceans. And it is not isolated to one country, one region or just one town.

‘Do we have a plan B?’ is graphic and confronting images of Georgia’s exploration of fish markets in during her visits to Japan – and she poses the question: Do we have a plan B for when we kill the ocean?