A sophisticated animated short film based on a real-life, two-year family sailing adventure from across the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and through the Caribbean. As a first time filmmaker, Toomey sails to some of the most remote, uninhabited places on the ocean, only to discover that everyday plastics have found their way there – before her! By offering solutions on how to diminish our dependence on plastics, she returns to shore hopeful for our future. —AB

Unable to swim and afraid of the deep, Aunofo Havea Funaki began her seafaring life at age 25. Seventeen years later she became the first licensed female captain in Polynesia. As she reconciles and honors her father’s whaling heritage, she is transforming how younger generations in Tonga relate to the sea through ecotourism instead of slaughter. “The whales connect us to our history.” —BB

Step into the magical world of mangroves! Along tropical coastlines from Indonesia to the Caribbean, mangrove forests support a plethora of life – including human communities. Providing a safe environment for juvenile marine species and protecting the coast from erosion and large storms, mangroves are fascinating and incredibly important marine ecosystems. Let’s do our part to conserve them. —GC

Starfish sniff with their feet, hundreds of them on each of their arms. They move by taking in seawater and spreading it along their arms into their tube feet. Sticky glue at the base of these feet clings onto the underlying rocks enabling the starfish to move their whole body. When they start moving quickly toward food, perhaps a shellfish, they bounce--or gallop —KH

Jellyfish are not so passive as they first appear. Their long poisoned tentacles need only to graze a passing fish to make it helpless prey, its digestion openly exposed to the camera. —KH

Two young ocean naturalists whimsically teach us about their favorite fish. They invite us to ponder which saltwater critters delight us the most with their unique adaptations, and they encourage us to consider how we can use our own “superpowers” to protect them. —BB

Many scientists believe primordial life sprang from geothermal vents in the ocean’s deep trenches. There, a witch’s brew of chemicals, ignited by volcanic infernos in the cold and dark, sparked the creation of organic molecules and proto-cellular forms. Now, meet what evolution has produced: elegant sea creatures that still “hot-tub” at volcanic hot springs—but in the sun-warmed shallows of Sulawesi’s lush reefs. —MJS

Na Kama Kai (Children of the Sea) is a non-profit that cultivates stewardship and love for nature in youth by connecting them to the land and the sea. They hold an ocean clinic in Brazil and through interaction with locals, they quickly realize the many ways the ocean connects us rather than divides us. —YI