Doc Edge 2025: Fatal Watch (dirs. Mark Benjamin, Katie Carpenter) | Review
Fatal Watch is an urgent and damning look at the hardly regulated fishing industry; the cost of which is more than just environmental. The film had its international premiere at the 20th Doc Edge Festival in the Tides of Change category.
Who knew there was such a job position, among fishers, seamen and other naval crew, as a fisheries observer. Their role – to oversee the practices aboard fishing vessels to make sure they are in compliance with international fishing laws such as overfishing and that no other illegal practices are occurring. And the illegal practices are many – from overfishing and overcrowded shipping vessels to drug and human trafficking. In the course of Fatal Watch we realise there is one more to be added to the list – murder.
Mark Benjamin and Katie Carpenter initially took on the subject of the high seas as an investigation into overfishing but an adjacent story of observers going missing proved to be a chilling entry point into an invisible global crisis. Benjamin and Carpenter open an overwhelming can of worms as they focus on the disappearance of observers. Human lives are highly dispensable in this multi-billion dollar industry.
The directors combine testimonies of friends and family members of observers with reporter findings and industry facts. These all point towards the fact that what goes on in the Pacific is far from peaceful. It’s harrowing to watch the horrific camera footage of one observer walking around the ship as if drugged before he falls overboard, just like it is to find out the conditions and consequences that these usually young dreamers work in.
After focusing on the lost observers in the first part of the documentary, Fatal Watch switches gears and becomes an indictment of mostly Chinese fishing vessels and their practices. It’s a necessary move to give context to the global impact of anarchy in the Pacific, but it doesn’t serve the film itself as it takes away the human connection that the viewer has developed with the topic.
The cost of a can of tuna to the environment is indeed vividly shown through footage of huge fishing ships and their endless nets of catch and bycatch. Similar to the climate crisis, this type of money making feels super-naive and super-arrogant at the same time. Furthermore, the human cost is equally high as they spend months, years and in some reports decades on these refrigerator vessels with little contact with land and therefore any hope of human rights regulations and protection from crime.Fatal Watch puts into visual context the depressing realities of life at sea. Often romanticised, the sea in its size and beauty seems inexhaustable, but the reality is quite the opposite, and not nearly as pretty as we’d like to imagine.
Doc Edge Festival is celebrating 20 years of “Life Unscripted” from 25 June to 13 July 2025 in Auckland. Revisit our on-site coverage of last year’s edition here.
