Answering the Ocean's Open Call

Directed & Produced by: David Helfer Wells

Stage:
- Post Production
Location:
- Rhode Island, United States
Updated: July 31, 2026
Project Type:
- Feature
Project Style:
- Observational,
- Reportage
Theme Subject:

Logline

An Oxford-educated commercial fisherman drives Uber between shifts on the water, leads a bi-coastal climate-action campaign, and testifies at an offshore-wind hearing, all while the industry she loves still pays her less than the men whose work she outperforms. *Answering the Ocean's Open Call* is the story of Sarah Schumann and the New England women fishermen who answered the same call she did.

Synopsis

...

A Chevy Bolt heads south on Route 1 at dusk. The driver watches the road the way a fisherman watches a horizon. Her phone glows green: Uber app, route confirmed. Sarah Schumann is going to work — her second shift of the day. The first was on a fishing boat out of Point Judith. The third, sometime tonight, will be writing policy briefs at the desk in her solar-powered house in Warren, Rhode Island.

"Answering the Ocean's Open Call" looks past the question of whether women belong in commercial fishing. Women are already here. They have always been here. The film is interested in something harder: what it costs to answer a calling the industry hasn't fully built itself around, and what kind of person keeps answering anyway.

Sarah Schumann is the hero of this film. Eighteen years on the water in Rhode Island and Alaska. Oxford-educated. Author of an award-winning ecological history of Narragansett Bay shellfishing. Co-founder of "Fishery Friendly Climate Action", a bicoastal campaign. Tonight: ride-share driver. The contradiction is not a failure of her ambition. It is a snapshot of how the industry currently absorbs (and underpays) the people doing its most demanding work, and who quietly subsidize it with second shifts.

Around Sarah, an ensemble: Corey Wheeler Forest, a third-generation fisherman working one of the oldest fisheries in continuous operation in North America, who watches dock customers walk past her to ask men "where the boss is." Marion Grenier, rod-and-reel fisherman, who once received a death threat from a captain at sea and decided not to report it because she was just starting out and feared being blacklisted. Patricia "Trish" Edwards, former nurse, who jumped into twenty-six-degree water to rescue a man overboard. Stephanie Hyrzan, who refuses to use the word "fisherwoman" — "It's pretty obvious that I'm a girl." Frank Maraki, retired after fifty-five years on the water, who says the disasters he survived would have ended differently with a woman on the boat.

The film's center of gravity is a hearing in Providence, Rhode Island, where the Coastal Resources Management Council is taking public testimony on offshore-wind development that would cut directly through Cox's Ledge — fishing ground where these women make their living. Sarah is in the audience. Then Sarah is at the microphone. What she says there is the public articulation of work she has been doing privately for ten years: interviewing other fishermen one-on-one, organizing climate action that doesn't trade their livelihoods for someone else's green branding, advising NOAA on living marine resources. The CRMC testimony does not resolve anything. The wind farm proposals continue. The opioid crisis continues. The settlement sheets still pay women less than less-skilled men.

What changes is what the audience can see now. Sarah is not a single fisherman testifying. She is a node in a network of fishermen — most of them women — who have been talking to each other for years about exactly this. The film makes that network visible.

Closing: Sarah painting her own hull for the spring season. The boat on stands. Black antifouling paint. Hands working. Soon she goes back on the water.

Get In Touch

Team

David Helfer Wells

Director & Producer

Team

David Helfer Wells

Director & Producer

David Helfer Wells is a film-maker and photographer who divides his time between Providence, Rhode Island and Bangalore, India. One day you can find him creating still and moving images for clients, such as Edible Rhody and the Providence Preservation Society on the unique local culture of America’s smallest state. Other days he may be working on personal/grant funded projects on the beautiful Narragansett Bay with the support of Rhode Island’s Council for Humanities and State Council on the Arts. In India’s "Silicon City” Bangalore, he is busy creating visual narratives for clients such as Bryn Mawr College and Aramco World or working on personal/grant funded projects supported by the Fulbright and Alicia Patterson Foundations. He has worked on assignment for such magazines as Fortune, Life, National Geographic, Newsweek, The Sunday New York Times, and Time, among others. His films have been shown in festivals worldwide, including Bangalore, New York City, Rome, and San Francisco.

Close

Budget

This section includes information about this project.

Editing screenplay independent cinema creative project independent creative producer production story project. Camera producer cinema story cinema screenplay award creative film independent film visual camera project.

Grants & Awards

2023 Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, Documentary Film Grant
2022 Coastal Institute catalyst grant , University of Rhode Island

Our Ask

ANSWERING THE OCEAN'S OPEN CALL follows Sarah Schumann, an Oxford-educated commercial fisherman who drives Uber between fishing shifts, and the ensemble of New England women who answered the same call she did. It opens by asking whether they belong; they do, and it asks what it costs them to answer a calling the industry hasn't yet caught up to.

Why this? Commercial fishing is the most dangerous civilian occupation in the U.S., with an opioid overdose rate four times the national average. Yet almost none of that reality reaches the consumers who eat the catch. Women have always been part of this workforce, but their visibility has lagged decades behind their contribution. Sarah and the film's ensemble, Corey Wheeler Forest, a third-generation trap captain; Marion Grenier, fishing with her toddler on the bow; Trish Edwards, who dove into 26-degree water to save a man's life, aren't exceptional outliers. They're early. Gritty, observational, with no voice-of-God narration, the film trusts them to speak for themselves, anchored by Sarah's testimony at a 2023 hearing on offshore wind development cutting through her fishing grounds.

Why now? Climate change is altering the resource itself, offshore wind is redrawing where these women can fish, and a workforce crisis is reshaping who does the work. Women are showing up. Director David Helfer Wells (UNBOWED, PBS 2026) has spent his career documenting communities whose demanding, invisible labor continues after the cameras leave. We're in the third rough-cut phase now, with principal photography complete and pickup shoots underway. This is the moment to finish the film while these women are still here to tell us how they built this.

What we need: Funding to carry us through picture lock, completing pickup shoots, finishing the edit with Editor Loulwa Khoury, sound design and mix, color, archival licensing with Archival Producer Heather Merrill, and motion graphics, ahead of festival submissions beginning late 2026. We've been fiscally sponsored by DER (Documentary Educational Resources) and funded by the URI Coastal Institute and the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities. We're now seeking additional post-production funding, festival strategy and outreach support, and broadcast or streaming partners who want to bring this story of labor, gender, and climate to the audiences who eat this catch without knowing what it costs to bring it ashore.

We are seeking:

Funding,
Co-Production Partners,
International Co-Production,
Sales Agent,
Press Agent,
Festival Premiere,
Streaming Partner,
Broadcast Partner

Get In Touch

Are you an Industry Professional?
Log in or create an Industry Account to view, search, and bookmark Project Pages.