The Indy’s award-winning Seasplainer team is embarking on a documentary

This article was updated on Dec. 14, 2024.

The rate of at-sea fishing fatalities in Newfoundland and Labrador has not decreased in recent years, despite improvements to fishing safety. That’s a key finding from a recent Indy investigation, which is now set to be the focus of a new documentary short-film. 

As of Dec. 5, The Indy is just 44 per cent of the way toward its GoFundMe campaign goal of raising $5,000 by Dec 15. 

With one day left, we are calling on your support to help us meet our goal. 

Support the growth of an award-winning series by award-winning reporters

Last month, freelance journalist Leila Beaudoin was recognized with the 2024 Jack Allston Memorial Award, which rewards excellence in the coverage of local or provincial planning issues by the news media in this province. Beaudoin received the recognition for her 2024 documentary, All Eyes on the Water: A Climate-Focused Documentary from Coastal Newfoundland.

The Indy’s GoFundMe campaign will support Beaudoin’s next short-film, this time with The Independent’s Seasplainer team.

Seasplainer is The Indy’s award-winning fisheries and ocean series, having secured top honours at both regional and national journalism awards in 2024. Reporters Leila Beaudoin and Jenn Thornhill Verma took home gold in the business category at the Atlantic Journalism Awards last spring, and then gold for best column at the Digital Publishing Awards. 

New film to focus on the fatal truth about commercial fishing in the province

In their latest Seasplainer, Beaudoin and Verma reported that in the last five years alone, we’ve lost 17 lives at sea in the commercial fishing sector. “Ranging in age from 25 to 74, these men were sons, brothers, fathers, cousins, uncles and community members,” the authors write.

What’s particularly troubling about deaths in the commercial fishing industry, the federal Transportation Safety Board reports, is that “the vast majority, if not all, of these fatalities are preventable.”

“Every year, the same safety deficiencies on board fishing vessels continue to put at risk the lives of thousands of Canadian commercial fish harvesters and the livelihoods of their families and communities,” the TSB reported in 2022, laying out key safety issues that must be addressed to make commercial fishing safer.

So why haven’t things changed, especially if most tragedies are preventable?

That’s the central question behind the new documentary film Leila Beaudoin and the Seasplainer team are working on for The Independent.

Since publishing the Seasplainer investigation, Hugo Fontaine, a spokesperson for the Transportation Safety Board, shared with The Independent that the TSB Watchlist “has been moved to a three-year cycle to allow time for more substantial progress on the most pressing issues facing Canada’s transportation industry. We are currently in the process of developing and publishing our next one, which will be published in 2025.”

That timing means that Seasplainer’s reporting can have an even greater impact. 

We need your help!

To interview decision-makers and industry players, Leila needs to travel the island and get to the people who are accountable for industry safety.

We have launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise $5,000 by Dec. 15, 2024 if the project is to go ahead. Click the button below to make a donation!

With this documentary film, The Independent is bringing its reporting into new territory with the goal of exposing the gaps in fishing safety policy and legislation. Because when fish harvesters in Newfoundland and Labrador go to work, they should also come home to their families and communities.

As an added bonus, anyone who donates $50 or more will automatically be entered into a draw to win an original oil painting by Jenn Thornhill Verma. See pictures and get more info on the fundraising page.