Warning: This Movie Will Make You Want to Do Something to Save the Oceans Chris Mooney - Mother Jones
go to original August 18, 2014

Mission Blue tells the story of world-renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle as she travels the globe on an urgent mission to shed light on the dire condition of Earth's oceans. (Netflix)

Early on in the new Netflix documentary "Mission Blue" (preview above), a voice off camera asks Sylvia Earle - ocean explorer, scientist, conservationist, and the film's main character - if she's a "radical."

"If I seem like a radical," Earle answers slowly, "it may be because I see things that others do not."

Unlike 99.9 percent of us, Earle actually gets to say stuff like that. As a woman who has spent almost a year of her life underwater, she really has witnessed things that we cannot imagine. Unfortunately, that includes not only the awe of swimming with a pack of whale sharks in the Gulf of Mexico (and hundreds of other underwater adventures), but also visiting once vibrant coral reefs that today look like desiccated moonscapes, or finding trash entangled in kelp and office chairs sitting on the sea floor.

In Mission Blue (directed by Fisher Stevens, who also brought us "The Cove"), we follow the now 78-year-old Earle from her Florida childhood as a nature-loving kid all the way through her career as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's chief scientist, and now on to her role as a leader of ocean conservation initiatives. Along the way, the film samples her ultra-nerdy research on algaes, travels around the world with her for dives, and lets us hear from her biggest fans, including filmmaker and ocean explorer James Cameron.

Read the rest at Mother Jones

Mission Blue premiered August 15, only on Netflix.

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