Skip to content

CAUGHT

37:07 2022

On average, 10,000 dolphins are slaughtered every year by unregulated commercial fishing on France’s Atlantic coast in the Bay of Biscay – twice as many as all other countries combined. Sea Shepherd France and the crew of the M/Y Age of Union are on the front lines, fighting to expose deadly fishing methods to get the government’s attention in any way possible.

CAUGHT reveals the shocking consequences of excess consumerism, depleting oceanic ecosystems, while marine life are killed in massive fishing nets. These harmful practices would never be allowed on land where the public could see, and yet, there is still a lack of economic and political will to enforce marine laws and regulations.

Through a raw, unfiltered look at boots-on-the-ground activism, the film pinpoints potential catastrophic ripple effects of overfishing, jeopardizing sustainability for all life on earth in the foreseeable future. There is, however, hope for protecting and restoring critically threatened oceans before it’s too late.

In the case of dolphins, fishing isn’t illegal, which is the problem. We have to change the regulations.

Lamya Essemlali

The change makers

Captain Paul Watson
Founder
United States

Captain Paul Watson was born in Canada and is a marine wildlife conservation and environmental activist. Watson majored in communications and linguistics at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. Watson was one of the founding members and directors of Greenpeace. In 1977, he left Greenpeace and founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society - an anti-poaching and direct action group focused on marine conservation activism. A renowned speaker, accomplished author, master mariner, and lifelong environmentalist, Captain Watson has been awarded many honors for his dedication to the oceans and to the planet. Among many commendations for his work, he received the Genesis Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1998, was named as one of the Top 20 Environmental Heroes of the 20th Century by Time Magazine in 2000 and was inducted into the U.S. Animal Rights Hall of Fame in Washington D.C. in 2002. He was also awarded the Amazon Peace Prize by the president of Ecuador in 2007. In 2012, Captain Watson became only the second person after Captain Jacques Cousteau to be awarded the Jules Verne Award, dedicated to environmentalists and adventurers. Currently, Watson is a registered speaker with the Jodi Solomon Speakers Bureau of Boston, and regularly gives presentations at colleges and universities in the United States and at special events throughout world.

Dax Dasilva
Founder

Dax Dasilva is the Founder of Age of Union and Founder and Executive Chair of tech company Lightspeed Commerce. He was the author of the Age of Union book published in 2019 and began the Age of Union environmental conservation alliance in 2021.

Lamya Essemlali
President of Sea Shepherd France
France

Lamya Essemlali is a French environmental activist of Moroccan origin. She's the president of Sea Shepherd France and the campaign coordinator for Sea Shepherd Global. She has a Master’s degree in Environmental Sciences and an associate degree in Business Communications. At a conference in Paris in 2005, she meets Paul Watson, founder of Sea Shepherd. In 2006, both of them founded Sea Shepherd France, and she became the President of the association in 2008. She has led several campaigns for Sea Shepherd Global in the Mediterranean Sea, the Faroe Islands, and the Indian Ocean to defend bluefin tuna, dolphins, whales, and sharks.

Related
articles

“CAUGHT” Documentary a Catalyst for Change as France Bans Fishing to Protect Dolphins

Read more about this article

Age of Union Alliance Announces $4.5 Million Donation to Sea Shepherd

Read more about this article

Sea Shepherd Arrests Super Trawler off Liberian Coast with M/Y Age of Union Vessel

Read more about this article

Meet the Woman Who Made the Fight Against Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing Her Life’s Mission

Read more about this article

You May Also Like

The Corridor

When he was three years old, Dominique Bikaba’s family was expelled from their ancestral land in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. He has spent the past thirty years fighting for the rights of Indigenous and local peoples to protect their traditional lands and the gorillas that share the forests with them. Today, Dominique and a team of international partners are on an ambitious mission to secure twenty-one interconnected land titles, which would establish one of the largest wildlife corridors of community-managed forests on the planet. In doing so, they are empowering local communities to protect the habitat of the critically endangered eastern lowland gorilla and conserving the all-important Congo Basin Rainforest — the second lung of the Earth — for generations to come. This is 21st-century conservation in action.

Read more

37:07

2022

We Are the Saint Lawrence River

The Saint Lawrence River estuary holds 20% of the world’s freshwater. Learn how changing our behaviours will make a difference in the river's future, the communities, and the wildlife that depends on it.

Read more

37:07

2022