Fed by Blue, an international campaign to promote responsibly produced blue foods, is working to secure funding for a second season of its documentary series “Hope in the Water” after the first season saw widespread media coverage – and increased seafood sales for retail partners.
The first season, a three-part documentary series which aired on U.S. public television channel PBS and is still available for streaming, highlighted different innovations on the water that both help provide food and enhance sustainability or preserve areas of the sea. The program was produced by Emmy Award- and James Beard award-winning Andrew Zimmern’s production company Intuitive Content in collaboration with multi-award-winning American television writer and producer David Kelley, garnering over 7 million views and becoming the most successful multi-platform launch in PBS’s history.
Fed by Blue Co-Founder and Executive Director Jennifer Bushman told SeafoodSource the mission of Fed by Blue has been to create an “agnostic” nonprofit funded outside the seafood industry that could build different kinds of impact campaigns about responsibly sourced foods from the water with stories just like those featured in “Hope in the Water.”
"It may seem like a vast undertaking, but that was the goal," Bushman said. "We hadn't seen campaigns that highlight the importance of this food system and its impactful work. There are powerful, hopeful stories with the potential to drive education and change in consumptive behavior in the market place. We wanted the chance to test the theory. ‘Hope in the Water’ represented one part of that.”
“Hope in the Water” was meant highlight the positive work of innovators using blue food systems as a means of both producing a product and enhancing the sustainability of the areas they are producing in.
“While we are only at the starting line, the success of the series and the impact campaign suggests that we can achieve that,” Bushman said.
"Hope in the Water" was directly viewed by more than 7 million people, had nine separate premiers with more than 2,000 attendees – and more than 20 screenings after that – partnered with 35 different PBS stations, and was featured across more than 145 news stories in publications like the New York Times, People Magazine, Wall Street Journal, and Forbes.
Fed by Blue also created teaching programs that were sent to thousands of schools in the U.S., featuring five free lesson plans designed for grades six through 12.
“We’re waiting for grant approval to do grants for teachers that are going to build programs in their school districts so that they can teach other teachers and utilize the toolkits that have already been produced,” Bushman said.
Getting to that point wasn’t easy.
Bushman said working with PBS means the program had to go through extremely stringent vetting to ensure there was no influence related to the seafood industry. This vetting was specific to the funding, the science, and the authenticity of the stories, according to Bushman, who said the process and auditing took over a year to complete before PBS would sign a distribution contract.
"I emphasize this point because there’s a misunderstanding ...
