Santa Barbara International Film Festival

Run time: 95 min. | USA

Called “Her Deepness” by The New Yorker and The New York Times, and a “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress, Sylvia Earle is an oceanographer, explorer, author and lecturer. She has led more than 60 expeditions and logged more than 6,000 hours underwater. A former chief scientist at NOAA, Earle is founder of the Mission Blue Foundation, chair of the Advisory Council for the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies and a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. In 2009 Earle was awarded the TED Prize and granted a wish to improve the world. Earle’s wish was to convene an extraordinary gathering of scientists, philanthropists, and conservationists for a TED conference at sea in the Galapagos called “Mission Blue.” Her hope was to raise awareness of the need to protect the world’s oceans, our life support system, from ourselves. The documentary film MISSION BLUE highlights Earle’s life’s work and follows the increasingly urgent international effort, coordinated by the National Geographic Society, to build awareness about the state of our oceans.