Swimming Upstream at ZAP for PBS Nature

Salmon : Running the Gauntlet
A Sea Studios Foundation Production for WNET/NATURE. Airing on PBS Sunday 8pm, May 1. Check local listings.

Mark Shelley, founder and executive producer at Sea Studios in Monterey spent four years putting together this remarkable 60 minute documentary that examines the folly of humans damming wild salmon habitat throughout the west and then going to extreme measures to preserve the fish by raising them in hatcheries and trucking and barging the fingerlings AROUND the dams to enter the sea. The footage is spectacular; the specie's life cycle is even more amazing than you had previously thought and sad to say, the future looks pretty bleak.

ZAP provided online finishing services including color grading and HD mastering for THIRTEEN WNET in New York.

Here is a statement from the filmmaker:

Salmon: Running the Gauntlet celebrates one of the world's most incredible animals, with a remarkable and vital role in sustaining millions of square miles of diverse ecosystems - and whose imminent disappearance will have profound effects for the richness of life in the pacific northwest. Salmon: Running the Gauntlet is the story of a creature at once resilient and fragile, manipulated and wild. It is one of the nature stories of our time - not just of what we destroy, but how we try to save.