A film about the stickleback that saved thousands shown at the Presidential Library

On April 28, 2022 Presidential Library hosted the premiere screening of the documentary “"Wasp Waist" of the White Sea Ecosystem”. The film had been created with the support of the Three-Spined Stickleback as a Key Component of the White Sea Ecosystem project.

The film was presented by the author and director Pavel Glazkov, a well-known researcher, candidate of biological sciences, journalist, blogger, author of the project “Two of every kind”. Director Dmitry Laius and director of photography Dmitry Skobelev also attended the cinema club.

Large fish - predators or those that people traditionally hunt, make up a small proportion of the inhabitants of the seas and rivers. A much larger role in the ecosystem is played by small fish that feed on plankton and serve as food for predatory fish and birds. These are the key types of the ecosystem that link the upper and lower food levels. It turns out a kind of "wasp waist", the most important gear in a large and complex mechanism of any marine or freshwater ecosystem. 

In the White Sea an important role in the formation of the “wasp waist” is played by the three-spined stickleback, which, not being a commercial fish, makes up to 90% of all fish in the coastal zone. This, as well as the rapid growth of its population during warming and interesting features of biology, made the stickleback the hero of the film and the three-spined Stickleback as a Key Component of the White Sea Ecosystem project.

Leningraders who survived the siege have a special relationship with this plain-looking fish. In peacetime, stickleback was considered "weedy" and it was not eaten. But when the city was under siege and food supplies ran out, Leningraders began to extract stickleback from the Neva. Evgenia Mikhailovna Sinilnikova shared her memories of how this little fish helped people survive.

The filming was carried out in the vicinity of the Marine Biological Station of St. Petersburg State University (Republic of Karelia) in the summer of 2019.

The film collects interviews of experienced and young scientists, students who study the three-spined stickleback and try to answer important and difficult questions of modern biology about how marine ecosystems respond to global human-induced changes.

The event is available on the Presidential Library’s Rutube-channel.