March 26, 2026
Steve Peletz
Principal
Finding Novelty, Connection, & Purpose in the Ocean: Cold Water. Big Stories. Shared Courage.
We’re carrying the momentum into March—this time with fog, sandstone cliffs, and a stretch of water that doesn’t offer comfort so much as clarity.
Just beyond the Golden Gate, where San Francisco’s edge frays into the Pacific, a small community of swimmers enters the ocean again and again. Not for records. Not for spectacle. But for connection—to the water, to one another, and to something wilder than daily life usually allows.
On March 26, we’re welcoming Steve Peletz—filmmaker, research diver, and storyteller —who will discuss his short film Land’s End, an intimate portrait of Bay Area swimmers who brave 51-degree water and unpredictable conditions off China Beach at Land’s End. The film has been selected for screening at the International Ocean Film Festival.
Steve’s path to this film spans more than 3,000 research dives across the Pacific—from kelp forests and coral reefs to mangroves and remote offshore pinnacles—working alongside scientists tagging sharks and tracking migratory species. Trained as a research diver at UC Berkeley, he now serves on the board of MigraMar, supporting science that connects and expands marine protected areas across the Eastern Pacific.
Steve will invite some of the Land’s End swimmers themselves to share what draws them into cold, moving water—and what they’ve found there. From that intimate starting point, the evening will open outward into a broader conversation about ocean storytelling, risk and reward, attention and awe, and how direct experiences with the sea can quietly but powerfully reshape how we show up for it.
This is a story about choosing discomfort over numbness. About finding novelty not by going farther, but by going deeper into a place you thought you already knew. And about how connection—earned, shared, and repeated—can become its own form of conservation.
Join us March 26, 7–8pm at Faction Brewing for an evening of film, first-person stories, and ocean perspective that starts close to home and ripples outward.
Bring friends. Bring curiosity. Bring your willingness to feel a little cold, a little awe, and a lot more connected.
The ocean is closer than you think—and it’s already inviting you in.
I am hopeful because over the last 50 years, humans are paying more attention to their impacts on our ocean. Public concern is beginning to catch up, but we have to keep fighting. Hope is not a substitute for action—it’s a necessary part of an action plan.
—Steve Peletz
