Safer Oceans campaign: Salt Lines

Client: Lloyd's Register Foundation

Additional credits: Miran Media

‘Salt Lines’ is one of a series of three films from Lloyd’s Register Foundation, the global safety charity, as part of its Safer Oceans campaign. It tells the extraordinary and uplifting story of Brittany Dunbar, who is the fifth generation Captain of her own lobster trawler and earns her living in an unforgiving traditionally male environment. Located in Maine, USA, Brittany is raising her son and pregnant with her next, whilst consigning gender stereotypes to the past.

This year more than three billion people will rely on the ocean for their livelihoods and yet new research shows that the number of fatalities within the fishing sector is likely to be well over 100,000 annually - a figure previously woefully underestimated at 30,000 - making the commercial fishing industry one of the most dangerous in the world. Close to half of those employed in fisheries world-wide are women and more than two million women bring in their own catch in nearshore coastal fisheries each day. They are a critical and unsung part of the supply chain who revere the sea, but who also face daily threats to their lives from it. Lobster fishing in Maine is intensely physical and dangerous work – the weather, wave-height and the sea-depth the crew are working at all pose huge risks and it takes place in the depths of winter, but it is also at the heart of the community. The film was produced by award-winning social justice filmmaker Dan McDougall of Miran Media.