A feature documentary film about the hunt for a rare glowing ocean phenomenon that has captivated mariners for centuries.
SYNOPSIS
For centuries, sailors told fantastic tales of nighttime seas glowing ghostly white from horizon to horizon. Mariners called the strange phenomenon the “milky sea;” milky seas are even featured in the novels 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and Moby Dick. While they may seem mythic, milky seas are in fact real, but scientists know virtually nothing about them because they are so difficult to find. But now, a scientist named Steve Miller has figured out how to spot milky seas using a novel method: satellites.
The feature-length documentary film ‘The Milky Sea,’ directed by Sharon Shattuck and produced by Ian Cheney, is the definitive chronicle of a rare glowing ocean phenomenon that is truly stranger-than-fiction. We’ll document stunning research breakthroughs and frustrating near-misses as Steve criss-crosses the world, assembling an international team of collaborators including scientists, historians, eyewitnesses, and Indigenous fishermen who work together to decipher the milky sea phenomenon. As the film unfolds, it becomes clear that Steve’s interest has gone far beyond the polite curiosity of a professional scientist; milky seas have become his mission. His obsession. His white whale. Steve’s ultimate goal? To deploy to a milky sea, study and capture it on film for the first time, and maybe even dive in. No one on the planet is better positioned to make this dream a reality than Steve himself.
Director Statement
I have a background in forest ecology and I love telling human stories about science; I'm also endlessly fascinated by what makes people tick. I have been filming with Steve and his collaborators since 2023, including during an epic two-week expedition to Indonesia in Summer 2024 where we interviewed half a dozen eyewitnesses about their experiences sailing through milky seas. Coming out of that trip, I feel that I have become as obsessed with milky seas as my subject!
A major reason I think milky seas are so tantalizing is that they remain juuuust out of reach. There are more common forms of marine bioluminescence: the flashing blue waters of that Puerto Rican bay, or flashing blue waves along the California coast. But milky seas are entirely different -- they glow steadily and ghostly white from horizon-to-horizon. Only a few dozen people alive today have seen a milky sea, and they describe the experience as surreal and sublime.
Documentary filmmakers must necessarily be a bit obsessed with their subjects; otherwise why would anyone take on such a thankless and scrappy job?! Together, this obsessed filmmaker and my obsessed subject are making history: within the next two years, we will capture a milky sea on film for the first time ever.
ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)
Director Sharon Shattuck
Sharon Shattuck is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and podcaster. Picture A Scientist (2020), about women scientists fighting sexual harassment, was nominated for a 2022 News & Documentary EMMY and was distributed on NOVA (PBS) and Netflix. From This Day Forward (2015), an autobiography about growing up with a transgender parent, was a New York Times Critic’s Pick and was distributed on POV (PBS), Netflix, SundanceNow, Amazon, and iTunes. She’s a writer and host of the podcast Conviction: American Panic, about a family caught up in the ‘satanic panic’ of the 1990s, from Gimlet/Spotify. In 2023, the podcast’s protagonist was exonerated due to their reporting. She was the co-creator of the EMMY-nominated New York Times Op Docs short film series Animated Life, which told stories of scientific discoveries using papercut puppetry. Sharon is a DOC NYC and HBO Documentaries 40 UNDER 40 alumna. She has degrees in forest ecology and journalism and lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Ian Cheney is an Emmy-nominated and Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker. His feature documentaries include King Corn (2007), The Greening of Southie (2008), The City Dark (2011), The Search for General Tso (2014), Bluespace (2015), The Most Unknown (2018), The Emoji Story (2019), Thirteen Ways (2019), Picture a Scientist (2020), The Long Coast (2020), The Arc of Oblivion (2023), and Observers (2025). His short films include Two Buckets (2006), Truck Farm (2010), The Melungeons (2013), The Smog of the Sea (2016) and The Measure of a Fog (2017), and Shelf Life (2024). He received bachelor’s & master’s degrees from Yale University, and an MFA in Film from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. A former MacDowell Fellow & Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, he lives in midcoast Maine
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