Wanderer between the worlds: In the eleventh part of his documentary series, Hannes Jaenicke is committed to providing information about the life and death of the salmon.
- Actor Hannes Jaenicke is an animal and environmentalist
- The series “In Action for…” on ZDF * is about salmon
- The number of wild animals has shrunk dramatically
The salmon, says Hannes Jaenicke at the beginning of this documentary, is a wanderer between the worlds. The same applies to the actor: for many years he has been using his popularity to draw attention to pressing problems in animal and environmental protection. Fortunately, the style and tone of the documentaries created in collaboration with the authors and directors Judith Adlhoch and Eva-Maria Gfirtner are more factual than his non-fiction books ("Whoever follows the herd can only see asses").
After articles on gorillas, elephants, lions or birds, the trio in the eleventh part of the series "In Action for ..." is devoted to one of the German culinary favorites. Not so long ago, salmon was considered a luxury delicacy; and then industrial mass production started. In the second part, Jaenicke also visits a Norwegian salmon farm , but his accusation is less concerned with factory farming and more with its consequences for the environment.
Salmon swim against the current: the picture also fits Hannes Jaenicke
First of all, the film deals with the fascination of the salmon . The animals are born in freshwater rivers, swim into the sea and eventually return to their place of birth to reproduce; hence "wanderer between the worlds". Of course, they literally have to swim against the current to get to their spawning grounds; another picture that also fits Jaenicke, who does not use a hand in his books.
This also applies to his key witness: Canadian biologist Alexandra Morton has been researching the life of salmon for thirty years. Their finding is terrifying: the number of wild animals has shrunk dramatically. Of course, this also has to do with human interventions in the environment. The salmon is able to overcome even the most difficult natural obstacles upstream. However, he can only fail because of weirs and conclusions, and if he does not reach his spawning ground, there is no offspring either.
Hannes Jaenicke in action for the salmon: ZDF documentary shows drastic consequences
However, the encounters of wild salmon with their bred conspecifics have far more drastic consequences , as Jaenicke can prove with the help of the biologist in the area around the western Canadian island of Vancouver Island. Atlantic salmon are farmed in the salmon farms off the coast; The Pacific salmon is native here.
Its fate is a depressing reminder of the history of the Native Americans: the hiking routes lead the local salmon past the breeding farms. Pathogens enter the water via the faeces of the farmed salmon, against which the immune system of the Pacific salmon is powerless.
ZDF documentary about salmon: Hannes Jaenicke with impressive appeals
Because experience has shown that the mere communication of facts changes little, Jaenicke continually interrupts the documentary style of the film in order to address the audience directly: “We take everything from the sea and only give back our filth. In the long run, this cannot go well. ”Visually, these appeals are also very impressive. The high-quality pictures are anyway the great strength of "Hannes Jaenicke in action for ...".
Salmon may not reach viewers' hearts as directly as orangutans, dolphins or polar bears, but many recordings are simply spectacular. Daniel Ritter and Strobel, who produced the series together with Adlhoch, and the underwater filmmaker Tavish Campbell, who documented the life and death of the Canadian salmon, were responsible for the image design.
I really like SALMON. But I will probably have to look for another favorite fish, because Hannes Jaenicke will present some facts on the ZDF tonight at 10:15 p.m. that I will literally "not like". Http://t.co/qyOOwJmodE
- Bruno Kassel (@BrunoKassel) June 16, 2020ZDF documentary by Hannes Jaenicke The salmon has involuntarily become a vegetarian
"Hannes Jaenicke in action for the salmon": Tuesday, June 16, 2020, ZDF, 10.15 p.m. The broadcast on the net.
The biologist's explanation of why the fish are so important for the entire ecosystem is one of the things that makes sense immediately. The film shows a little bear fishing for a dead salmon from the water. He carries it in the forest, where the carcass rots and returns to nature's cycle as fertilizer for the trees. This cycle no longer works because only a fraction of the once huge salmon population is left.
In the supposedly exemplary Norwegian fish farms in which our salmon is produced, not everything is going well either, and not just because of the water contaminated with chemicals that is led into the open sea.
An absurd detail illustrates the whole perversion of human intervention in nature: the salmon is a predatory fish that lives mainly on small crabs; the meat owes the typical pink to them. In the fish farms, the salmon has involuntarily become a vegetarian; the pink comes from food coloring that is added to the feed.
By Tilmann P. Gangloff
The TV criticism of Markus Lanz: A moderator amazes with tremendous ignorance. Also interesting: "Stars above us". The ZDF drama shows a woman falling into nothing.
* fr.de is part of the nationwide Ippen-Digital editors network
List of rubric lists: © ZDF / Andre Becker
