“Shifting Baselines in the Tijuana Tide” is a new 5-minute video from the Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project.
It addresses the ocean conservation problems from the highly polluted Tijuana River. The video (available in English and Spanish) is a co-production with California Sea Grant, University of Southern California Sea Grant, and Wildcoast. In addition, The Annenberg Foundation and The Keith Campbell Foundation for the Environment provided partial funding and Surfrider Foundation is assisting with outreach and distribution.
“The Tijuana River is one of the worst sources of ocean pollution in North America,” says writer/director of the film, Tyler Carlisle. “It’s a problem that is currently caught up in a cross-border blame game as the large-scale problems continue to go unaddressed.”
The video presentation is intended to help local conservation efforts communicate more effectively the current situation. Over 60 percent of Tijuana’s raw sewage flows directly into the river, through the Tijuana River Estuary and into the ocean. Imperial Beach pays the price for this problem with over 200 days a year of closed beaches and periodically high levels of Hepatitis A measured in the coastal waters. The video encourages viewers to join local efforts such as Pervious Pavers in an attempt to curb the overall pollution and runoff problem. It will be posted on multiple websites on Earth Day, along with a Spanish language version of the same piece.
The project is part of the on-going efforts of the Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project, which brings together ocean conservationists and filmmakers in an effort to communicate the problems to wider audiences. It is based at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and has more than 20 partner groups, including co-founding partners Scripps and Surfrider Foundation.
