A group of Lincoln Academy students plans to film a documentary about ghost traps and use it to teach younger students about the ocean environment.
The Lincoln Academy students belong to Ocean Ambassadors, an educational collaboration between the Newcastle high school and OceansWide Inc., a Newcastle nonprofit.
The documentary, “Beneath the Sea: Explore to Restore,” will follow the Ocean Ambassadors, along with professional divers, instructors and mentors, as they find and remove ghost traps and other ocean debris off the Maine coast.
The students plan to distribute “Beneath the Sea” to elementary schools along the coast of Maine in 2014.
The students will visit the elementary schools to talk about the documentary and “explain the importance of collecting and recycling ocean debris,” according to an OceansWide press release.
The polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, coating of lobster traps eventually wears off when traps, due to snags or cut lines, become lost underwater, Lincoln Academy junior Angus Fake said in an online video about the project.
The PVC “goes up through the food chains and harms a lot of the fisheries that a lot of people on the coast of Maine depend on,” Fake said.
The goal of the documentary is “to raise ocean awareness and create a stewardship to help restore the ocean for future generations,” according to OceansWide. The project will also give fishermen the opportunity to reclaim traps, and will free up real estate on the ocean bottom.
A documentary filmmaker who works for National Geographic will help shoot the documentary.
The documentary, in addition to its environmental benefit, will teach the students valuable skills. The students will earn their scuba certifications, learn to pilot boats and remotely operated vehicles, and use sonar and other technology as they scour the ocean floor for ghost traps.
The Ocean Ambassadors need $25,000 to cover the expenses for the documentary, and an online crowdsourcing campaign is underway to raise the money.
The $25,000 will pay for scuba certification and equipment for the students, as well as other expenses for the production and distribution of the documentary.
The campaign, at the website Kickstarter, asks “backers” of the project to make a pledge toward the $25,000 goal. Anyone who contributes $15 or more will receive a gift.
For example, a $15 pledge will get the backer an Ocean Ambassadors T-shirt, while a $7,500 pledge secures a package including an associate director credit, an Ocean Ambassadors hat and jacket, and an invitation to join the Ambassadors on a cleanup cruise.
As of Dec. 30, the campaign has 14 days to reach its $25,000 goal, and has just $1,135 in pledges from 25 backers thus far.
For more information, visit their campaign here.