The San Francisco Ocean Film Festival

You may have heard by now how escalating erosion is threatening California's coastline. In the Bay Area, erosion has recently led to evacuations in Pacifica and the closure of two lanes of the Pacific Coast Highway. (Stay tuned for a feature on Crosscurrents delving into these issues and what residents are doing to solve them.)

So it seems fitting to welcome this year's SF Ocean Film Festival with some appreciation of the power of our seas, and also the importance of respecting and preserving everything in and around them.

Oceanographers, students, surfers, and marine biologists are just some of the filmmakers that made the more than 50 films featured in the festival, which starts today (February 3rd) and goes through February 7th.  Film subjects include the majestic creatures that live in the ocean -- whales, dolphins, sharks -- and the people who thrive on the rush of visiting it -- deep sea swimmers, surfers, rowers and sailors.

The schedule includes the award-winning documentary The Cove, an investigation into the mass killing of dolphins off the coast of Japan, which was nomiated for an Oscar. 

Films were contributed from all over the world, but some locally-based or -produced films to keep in mind are: The Comfort of Cold, profiling 75-year-old Joe Illick who swims twice a day in San Francisco Bay; Bicycle Trip, made by cinematographer Patrick Trefz about a surfer's journey from the Santa Cruz Mountains to the sea; and From the Badlands to Alcatraz, in which five Lakota youth travel from South Dakota to San Francisco to swim from Alcatraz to the City.