"Voice of the Sea," a weekly show produced under the UH Sea Grant College Program, earned a regional Emmy award for News/Long Form Content in the Environment/Science category.
The series highlights different aspects of local marine science across the Hawaiian Islands. The Emmy-award winning episode, titled "Papahānaumokuākea Marine Debris Project," takes viewers to the remote conservation area northwest of the main islands.
The episode features the PMDP team, which is the main conservation and clean up organization taking care of the region. The 30-minute segment showcases the detriments marine debris has on native wildlife and coastlines, while highlighting the work being done by the team to keep the impacts at a minimum.
"We're buying time for these species and habitats until we can solve the larger problem and reduce the amount of plastic in the sea," Kevin O’Brien, PMDP president, said in the episode.
Kanesa Duncan Seraphin, host and producer of "Voice of the Sea," said the team has brought home more than 70 Telly awards over 13 seasons, but this episode marked the first Emmy award recognition.
She credits the PMDP team for their work as well as the show's photojournalist, Andrew Sullivan-Haskin.
“PMDP is doing this incredible work that's out of sight of most people, and they're getting to witness this incredible thing, and they get to share that beauty and bring it back," Duncan Seraphin told HPR. “They're the ones doing this work, and we're just there for a snapshot of time. And so, every award that we've won, it just very much belongs to not only our team, but the people that are in the episodes.”
PMDP estimates that roughly 1.3 million pounds of marine debris have been removed from Papahānaumokuākea since 2020.
Duncan Seraphin said she is proud that she played a part in bringing this education and exposure to people who wouldn't otherwise know about the Papahānaumokuākea monument.
"Oftentimes people think of science as really unemotional and objective, but really science is a human endeavor — the questions that we ask and the way that we go about our work is all tied to our humanity," she said. "I think that's another aspect that this episode particularly portrays and it's an element that I feel very passionate about bringing out in our series."
