Our Blue Canoe is the cinematic feature documentary that chronicles the epic journey of the Pacific Voyagers, a group of over 100 Pan-Pacific Islanders, who for the first time ever, are sailing a fleet of traditional-style voyaging canoes across the vast continent of water they call home to carry a message of stewardship for the ocean.
Ranging in age and experience, these men and women are fishermen and artists, teachers and farmers. While some are life-long seamen, others are getting their first taste of the open ocean. But as diverse as their individual lives may be, they share one voice – one vision.
As we embark upon this odyssey with them — from New Zealand to Hawaii, California to Cocos Islands, the Galapagos to the Solomons — we uncover a story as ancient as it is modern, as sacred as it is scientific. Using traditional navigational skills and relying on the stars, wind, and wildlife as their guides, they map their way in the wake of their ancestors.
Moving together silently through the water.
But this is by no means a story about living in the past. For our voyagers, it’s the future that’s at stake. Along with them and the world’s top ocean scientists, we plunge into the depths of the most critical environmental issues facing our blue planet — and find that each one has a human face.
Together, we revel in the company of Blue whales, and curse the raft of plastic beneath the swells. We brace ourselves through feral storms, and celebrate safe arrivals on remote and wild shores. As our Pacific crewmates open their lives and their culture to us with humor and grace, heartbreak and hope, we discover their journey becomes our journey; their dreams become our dreams – their story becomes woven into ours.
At the heart of this film is a narrative about connection — between people and nature, between the old ways and the new, between science and spirit. It is human story, told by the people of the Pacific who are contending with the effects of a changing planet in very real ways. As we voyage with them across this mighty ocean we find they are not only reclaiming their heritage as the finest of sailors, but also the finest of stewards. Drawing on the lessons of their past to propel us all forward, these navigators are charting a bold new course – and steering us toward a sustainable future aboard Our Blue Canoe.