Untitled Sea Shepherd Series
An unscripted series.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
Preparing document…
01 · Cover
02 · The Premise
The Premise
These people are leaving everything and going head to head against poachers and destructive practice which is sometimes sanctioned by the powers that be, in very remote and dangerous places.
They are volunteers and professionals from all over the world who put jobs, homes and families on hold to live aboard working ships for weeks at a time. Some of what they confront is controlled by organized crime, and some of it is legal and protected by the governments where it happens.
The series follows them from the day they arrive until the day they go home.
03 · The Series
The Series
A Sea Shepherd ship can carry thirty people who would never otherwise meet.
A retired soldier. A twenty-two-year-old volunteer on her first trip away from home. A marine biologist. An engineer who has spent half his life at sea. A captain responsible for all of them.
They live together for weeks, often far from shore, while carrying out real conservation operations. We can cast from the people actually joining those operations for personality, chemistry, background and story, then follow what develops naturally once they are aboard.
04 · The Cast
The Cast
Sea Shepherd draws crew and volunteers from around the world, from people just out of college to career mariners, scientists, former military, activists, mechanics and retirees.
For each season, we identify the strongest combination of personalities from the people actually joining the campaign. Some may be experienced Sea Shepherd crew, some may be completely new, and senior captains, campaign leaders or leadership can recur naturally when the work brings them into the story.
The exact cast can change with the campaign, while the basic structure remains the same.
05 · The People We Meet Aboard 1
The People We Meet Aboard
Examples, not a final cast. Every crew change brings new people to choose from.
The Captain
Responsible for every person aboard and every call that puts them in harm's way. Several of our captains are women.
The Campaign Leader
Runs the operation, working between the ship, the authorities and the people on shore.
The Engineer
Has spent half his life at sea and keeps an aging ship running with whatever is aboard.
The Bosun
Runs the deck and turns people who have never held a line into a crew that can be trusted with each other.
The Former Soldier
Left the military and came looking for a mission that still means something.
06 · The People We Meet Aboard 2
The People We Meet Aboard
Crew and volunteers come from every background and every part of the world.
The Scientist
Conducts research during the mission, and is rarely who you would picture in a lab.
The First-Time Volunteer
Twenty-two, on her first trip away from home, learning everything at once.
The Onboard Filmmaker
Films the campaign from aboard, and is usually closest to whatever happens.
The Cook
Feeds thirty people three times a day in any sea, and hears everything.
The Retiree
Finished one career on land and chose to spend a season at sea.
07 · The Newcomers
The Newcomers
Each season starts with people who have never done anything like this.
One is a deckhand who has never worked on a ship. Another is a volunteer who came aboard to film the campaign and ends up inside it. They learn the ship, the work and the crew at the same pace as the audience, and at the end of the rotation they decide whether they are coming back.
The Deckhand
The Media Volunteer
08 · A Season
A Season
A season follows one crew rotation of about eight weeks, from one crew change to the next.
Leaving
They say goodbye to their lives at home and fly into Merida to meet the ship.
Arrival
They meet the captain and the crew, and find out who they will be sharing a cabin with.
The Work
Long watches, hard physical labor and operations alongside the Mexican Navy start right away. Everyone is tested, and not everyone adapts.
Pressure
The campaign pushes back. A detention turns tense, the weather closes in, someone gets hurt or the crew starts to split.
Crew Change
Some go home and some sign on for another rotation. A new crew arrives and the next season begins, often in a different part of the world.
09 · The Stakes
The Stakes
The places this crew works are far from help, and often far from the law.
In Mexico's Upper Gulf of California, poachers set illegal gillnets for totoaba, whose dried swim bladder sells in China for tens of thousands of dollars a kilo. Organized crime controls much of the trade, and Sea Shepherd crews there have been shot at, rammed and attacked with Molotov cocktails.
At Scorpion Reef, the largest reef system in the Gulf of Mexico, crews patrol with the Mexican Navy and fisheries authorities and help detain boats fishing illegally inside the protected area.
In the Faroe Islands, the hunt of pilot whales and dolphins is legal. Crew documenting it have been arrested, most recently in May 2026.
In Antarctica, industrial trawlers legally fish krill in whale feeding grounds, in one of the most remote seas on earth.
10 · Leadership
Leadership
Pritam Singh
President and CEO, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
A businessman who works personally in every part of the organization: finance, operations, fundraising and negotiations with governments.
Leadership is part of the world of the show, and can appear when the work brings them into the story.
11 · The World
The World
The fleet gives us a ready-made setting for those people: ships carrying crews of 4 to 30, weeks at sea, and operations in very different parts of the world.
Depending on the season, that could put the cast in Mexico, Greece, Antarctica, the Faroe Islands or somewhere else entirely. The specific mission changes, but the series does not depend on any one campaign.
Protecting the vaquita porpoise in Mexico's Upper Gulf of California
Freeing entangled sea lions at Consag Rock in the Gulf of California
Patrolling Scorpion Reef off Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula
Campaigning to end the pilot whale hunt in the Faroe Islands
Confronting industrial krill fishing in Antarctica
In Mexico we work hand in hand with the Mexican Navy and Coast Guard.
12 · What Happens Aboard
What Happens Aboard
Nothing needs to be staged. The situations come from the work itself.
Night patrols and boardings alongside the Navy, looking for boats that are poaching.
Drone flights to find illegal nets and gather evidence that can hold poachers accountable.
Hauling illegal and abandoned nets out of the water, and cutting trapped animals free.
Weeks in close quarters with strangers from other countries, languages and backgrounds.
Injuries, breakdowns and bad weather, far from port.
13 · The Fleet
The Fleet
Seahorse, flagship
Bob Barker, 150-foot offshore vessel
Allankay, 179-foot long-range patrol
Sharkwater, 157-foot patrol vessel
Roger Payne, research vessel, launched 2025
Martin Sheen, 79-foot sailing ketch
Cabo, supply and crew change
Seahawk I and II, patrol boats
Crews of 4 to 30, plus fast boats and aerial and underwater drones.
14 · The Work
The Work
15 · Tone
Tone
The series is unscripted and observational. The stakes are real, so nothing has to be manufactured.
Cameras live aboard with the crew and go where they go: onto the small boats, into the detentions and through the long nights in between. The drama comes from pressure, fear, friendship and conflict among people who chose to be there.
Comparable Series
Deadliest Catch (Discovery): danger and hard work at sea, with a crew the audience returns to.
Whale Wars (Animal Planet, 2008 to 2015): proof of the audience for this world, and the series this one moves beyond.
Sea of Shadows (National Geographic, winner of a Sundance audience award): poaching, organized crime and enforcement in the Gulf of California.
16 · Since Whale Wars
Since Whale Wars
Sea Shepherd is vastly different today from its early days as depicted in the Whale Wars series.
From a foundational level, Sea Shepherd no longer fights with governments, but now only with the criminals. In fact, we work directly with governments and law enforcement on many campaigns.
Not only is our fleet now larger, the ships themselves are larger and more complex. Many are actually recommissioned Coast Guard vessels.
Our missions are far more numerous, varied, and global, providing vastly different environments from which producers can choose.
We now have our own camera crews, which includes using military-grade drones and underwater drones.
The range of crew involved in the work is much broader. And in addition to our crews, the ships now include scientists who conduct research during our missions.
So this gives us a large pool of people, on numerous vessels, and enough variation in location and circumstance to keep following the strongest characters season after season.
17 · Close
Untitled Sea Shepherd Series
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
