Ocean State: Rhode Island’s Wild Coast is a new documentary series that explores the state’s diverse marine life and conservation efforts.
The second of four episodes, Tides of Change, premieres Monday, June 15 at 9 p.m. on Ocean State Media TV and on PBS Passport. Producer and director of the Ocean State series, filmmaker Tomas Koeck, spoke with Ocean State Media’s Luis Hernandez about what to expect from Episode 2.
Interview highlights
On what to expect from Tides of Change
Tomas Koeck: This was an episode that was a lot of fun to make because a lot of people overlook the northeast in the winter and fall. People think it’s dead. You go outside, you see that gray ocean. You see not as much life that you used to. You’re not getting the warmth of the sun, and people immediately think everything else is kind of hiding away, too. And for a lot of that, that is true, but there’s also all these other organisms that are migrating, moving through these ecosystems, moving through Rhode Island and the broader northeastern area. There’s even animals that are coming from the Arctic and overwintering here, right here in Rhode Island. And to them, this is the ideal temperature in the winter. And we had a really bad winter this past season. So it was really cool to film a lot of these animals in their natural habitats out in the cold. It required me getting in the water; that was very chilly, obviously. But, also involved filming a lot of amazing organisms.
On filming the rescue of an injured seal pup
Koeck: That was amazing to see. You know, largely organizing all of that is Sarah Callan with the Mystic Aquarium. Sarah leads a really great rescue program at the Mystic Aquarium where they’re saving everything from turtles to seals, even different types of fish. And a lot of that goes into the rehabilitation (program.) But, you know, Sarah also branches outside of the Mystic Aquarium with helping recruit volunteers – and those may be volunteers on Block Island; those may be volunteers with the Block Island Maritime Institute and other organizations that are in the area. So it was cool seeing all these different organizations collaborating together, seeing locals come out on the call of, “Hey, there’s a sick seal,” and you have, like, five or six people all going to the scene. They’re all trained. They’re all ready to go. They know what to do. They have training from Mystic Aquarium and from Sarah, and they know exactly how to handle that seal, how to get it into the crate, how to bring it back to the Mystic Aquarium itself. And that’s where Sarah and the veterinarian team can kind of evaluate how the seal’s doing, if it will survive, and they’ll do their best to rehabilitate and then release.
On Rhode Island’s role in marine life migration
Koeck: The reason we’re focusing so much on Rhode Island is it’s this vertex. It’s this area where you have a lot of southern species of animals coming up from the south, and you have animals coming up from the north. It’s this vertex in all these different migration paths. And animals don’t know boundaries.
The way I like to describe it is Rhode Island is the center of this really amazing coastline. You go from all the way up to Cape Cod and this shared coastline into Connecticut, and then you have Long Island. Whales really showcase how all this is connected because they’re migrating so far. They’re coming from the mid-Atlantic and going all the way past Rhode Island. Maybe they’ll hang out around Block Island. That’s a great hotspot. And then they’ll keep moving through. Some of them will stick around. So that was a really cool thing to see, and I hope people understand that when they watch the documentary.
