Soil Health Has A Blackfish Problem

Why Redesigning our Farm System Can’t Be All About the Soil

You know Tilikum, right? That’s the blackfish.

First of all, I’ll be the first to say, I love Blackfish. It’s a murder mystery where super-smart, charismatic sea mammals are both the perpetrators and the victims.

I first watched it in a student theater in South Africa approximately 1 million years ago, and I can still remember the goose bumps I got when I first heard the line, “when you look into their eyes, you know somebody is home.” What a subtle indictment of both the trainer-killing whales, and of ourselves, for keeping these creatures “of great spiritual power,” who are not something, but someone, in torturous captivity.

If you haven’t watched Blackfish but are interested in killer whales, marine animal parks, human relations with ocean mammals, or the extent to which workers are not valued in the modern workplace, you should definitely check it out. It is truly, as Variety’s movie critic wrote, “a mesmerizing psychological thriller.”

Blackfish is more than a juicy one-off documentary. It was, for nearly 8 years, the most watched nature documentary on Netflix, with millions tuning in…