An Eye for Evidence of the Conditions in Which Almost All of These Crimes Were Committed

OPINION NATURE|Vol 460|20 August 2009

problem falls down on two counts: over- No more fish in the sea simplification and polarization. Although current fisheries policy is inadequate, much The End of the Line of it is based on science. Clover suggests, for by Charles Clover. Documentary directed example, that the practice of discarding — by by Rupert Murray which some 7 million tonnes of caught fish are See http://endoftheline.com thrown back into the sea each year — has arisen because fishermen simply do not want the species they have caught. But wasteful discarding So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish: the quirky is more often the consequence of a fisheries S. VIDLER/PHOTOLIBRARY.COM title of Douglas Adams’s novel could turn out to policy that is designed to prevent fishermen be visionary. Our rampant exploitation of the targeting juveniles and species outside of their oceans is such that by 2048 we may be bereft of allotted quota. our favourite fish, leaving us to harvest less tasty Clover is quick to point out the culprits creatures. This is the message clearly conveyed of the fisheries crisis — slippery politicians, in The End of the Line, a documentary starring Frozen stocks may soon be the sole supply of tuna. greedy fisherman, thoughtless consumers and environmental journalist Charles Clover, based big business — while making activists and sci- on his book of the same name. global ocean. Among the first to recognize that entists the stars of the show. But in adopting a The film takes narrator Ted Danson, an fisheries’ catch rates were in decline worldwide, tone of advocacy, with its inherent moralism, actor who co-founded Oceana, one of the Pauly discovered in 2001 that the phenom- Clover isolates viewers and misses an opportu- world’s largest ocean-conservation organi- enon had previously gone unnoticed owing nity to place this problem in context. zations, from the North Sea to the coast of to systematic distortions in catch trends that Overexploitation of fisheries is one part Senegal where humans are fishing species to were skewed by incorrect reports from coun- of the huge dilemma that humans face in an the brink of extinction. If history has a lesson, tries with big fisheries. In 2003, Boris Worm increasingly resource-limited world. We can it is that once we have gone too far, there may and Ransom Myers of Dalhousie University in seek sustainability, but we will not be able to be no turning back. Despite a moratorium on Halifax, Nova Scotia, reported that 90% of all diversify our consumption indefinitely. And cod fishing in Canadian waters since 1992, the large fish — including tuna, swordfish, marlin climate change will decrease marine resources stock has shown little sign of recovery there. and cod — had been removed from the ocean further. Those most affected will be the fisher- Now, European cod stocks and numerous since 1950. folk of developing countries, who make up 98% other fish species worldwide face the same The End of the Line is informative. Clover’s of people who are directly dependent on fisher- fate, owing to a combination of technological reporting reveals that bluefin tuna — the ies for their livelihood. efficiency and ineffectual policy. endangered species with perhaps the most Despite its polemic hue, The End of the Line is Clover popularizes the work of fisheries alarming plight in the ocean — is allegedly an emotive portrayal of one of humanity’s great- scientists, such as Daniel Pauly, a marine biol- being bought and frozen in bulk by major cor- est challenges, and a stark reminder that early ogist at the University of British Columbia in porations. Once ocean supplies run dry, the and effective action can make a difference. ■ Vancouver, Canada, who have pieced together frozen fish could be sold at sky-high prices. Olive Heffernan is editor of Nature Reports a picture of imminent catastrophe in the Clover’s portrayal of the global fisheries Climate Change.

doing so, you cannot help but notice the misery An eye for evidence of the conditions in which almost all of these crimes were committed. The French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon The Scene of the Crime: But real death is unmistakable. It is both is usually credited with turning the haphazard Rodolphe A. Reiss (1875–1929) awe-inspiring and banal, and in this collec- practice of forensic photography into a system- Elysée Museum, Lausanne, Switzerland tion, often gruesome. There are images of the atic science in the late nineteenth century. But Until 25 October decapitated corpse of a man that was retrieved it was his younger colleague Reiss who devel- from the Lausanne–Geneva railway, along with oped and disseminated those methods, and his head; the exsanguinated body of a woman who founded the world-renowned institute To mark its centenary, the Institute of who botched a home abortion; and the old in Lausanne. Reiss helped to establish scien- Scientific Police at the University of Lausanne, woman who was attacked so violently with an tific police services in Russia and Brazil, and Switzerland, has released from its archives axe that her false teeth flew out, landing some in 1914, he became the Serbian government’s 120 crime-related photographs taken by its distance away. official investigator into the atrocities commit- founder, a pioneer of forensic photography Few of the cadavers pictured are identified. ted by the German and Austrian armies in the called Rodolphe Archibald Reiss. Now on The curators want you to look at them as Reiss First World War. A contemporary wrote that show in Lausanne’s Elysée Museum (Musée did — objectively, with the aim of extracting he would have made an excellent model for de l’Elysée), the exhibition comes with a warn- the maximum information about the perpetra- Sherlock Holmes: tall and youthful well into ing: it is not suitable for sensitive people or tor and the circumstances of the crime. As for his fifties, he had eyes that shone with intel- children under 14. motive, you are left in the dark. Because the ligence, and a passion for deciphering signs In popular television series, the victims photograph is your only source of information, and traces. of murder tend to look reassuringly healthy. you enter into it fully, taking in every detail. In Unlike fictional detective work, however,