Hope in the Water, a three-part documentary series profiling innovators in blue food technology, premieres 19 June on PBS.
In advance of the release, PBS and Fed by Blue, an international campaign to promote responsibly produced blue food, hosted dual “blue carpet” events in Los Angeles, California, and Portland, Maine, U.S.A.
Starring Baratunde Thurston, Martha Stewart, José Andrés, and Shailene Woodley and produced by the award-winning journalists at Intuitive Content, the series highlights solutions and practices that improve marine food security and improve sustainable practices globally. Scientists at The Blue Food Assessment based at Stanford University and the University of Stockholm are the scientific advisors for the series. Celebrity chef Andrew Zimmern, who has previously worked with Verlasso and Kvarøy is an executive producer and television writer and producer David E. Kelley, the founder and chairman of Riverence, is an advisor on the series.
The show is part of a multi-year impact campaign from nonprofit Fed by Blue, founded in 2022 by Jennifer Bushman, Jill Kauffman Johnson, and Katherine Bryar, aiming to produce content that inspires visionary work in ocean sustainability.
“Fed by Blue is working to amplify efforts that are bringing new pathways, new dialogue, and new perceptions about the importance of foods that come from water,” Bushman previously told SeafoodSource. “Helping to develop a docuseries on this topic has been an anchor for our greater work.”
The documentary explores ocean environments jeopardized by climate change, illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, and habitat destruction and profiles scientists, teachers, programs, and aquaculture and fishing companies working to make seafood supply chains more sustainable.
"So, for me, it really just comes down to what else are we spending our time doing? What else is there to care about? You care about your family; you care about your neighbors. It's the same thing as caring about the ocean or caring about trees all in this ecosystem together. And, you can't talk about one thing without addressing the Earth," Woodley told People Magazine at the Los Angeles premiere.
A preview of the series was released in April 2024. At the Los Angeles event, 300 guests watched a sneak peak of the documentary and heard a panel discussion that included Zimmern, Kelley, Woodley, series showrunner and director Brian Peter Falk, and Native Conservancy CEO Dune Lankard. The Portland event featured a panel with Conservación ConCiencia Founder and Executive Director Raimundo Espinoza Chirinos, Fishadelphia Founder and Executive Director Talia Young, and chef and sustainable seafood advocate Barton Seaver. Bristol Seafood President and CEO Peter Handy and Bushman also spoke at the event.
Bushman said the Fed by Blue movement has set the ambitious goal of pushing the entire globe toward a more sustainable and equitable food system, with education serving as a key element of that effort.
“We’re trying to work with teachers around the country, and what we want them to know is that when they make that great responsible blue food choice, they're not only making a choice that's more nutritious and delicious, but it’s helping economies like the one [in Maine] and ... across the globe.”
