Ocean affront view

People who tear themselves away from coverage of recent natural disasters to attend Saturday’s Explorers Club documentary film festival in New York City will hear more depressing reports about the state of the planet. Among the usual assortment of expedition travelogues (the 1,500-mile odyssey “Alone Across Australia,” to name one) is the sobering “Troubled Waters,” a product of the Monterey, Calif.-based Sea Studios Foundation. The effects of polluted water on aquatic life are not breaking news. Scientists routinely pluck tumors from the corpses of beluga whales, right, that feed year-round in the toxic swill of Canada’s St. Lawrence River. And for years field researchers have puzzled over the anatomical glitches in northern leopard frogs that dwell in Midwestern marshes laced with poison from agricultural runoff. But the bigger picture -- the links connecting a global chain of biological anomalies -- has emerged slowly. “We’re just beginning to understand the impacts of chemicals in living systems,” says executive producer Mark Shelley of Sea Studios. “We may be facing an emergency,” he adds, because the same polluted network that imperils wildlife often delivers our drinking water. Sea Studios specializes in developing educational programming on the environment. It teamed up with a batch of nonprofits to create “Troubled Waters” and three other hourlong episodes that comprise “National Geographic’s Strange Days on Planet Earth.” The miniseries, narrated by actor Edward Norton, will air on KCET and other PBS stations in April (check local listings at www.pbs.org). For more information on the one-day film festival, which is open to the public, call (212) 628-8383 or go to www.explorers.org.

-- Pamm Higgins