Three coastal communities built entire ways of life around the sea. In India's backwaters, the Malayali people navigate a mosaic of lagoons and natural lakes that offer an escape from poverty on land. In Timor, sea fishing was traditionally men's work until soil degradation pushed women onto the water; the film follows the Wawata Topu, a group of women divers who earned the respect of the men in their villages by mastering it. In Indonesia, the Badjo, a seafaring people with no fixed land, live in stilt villages built directly over lagoons, sailing and fishing much as their ancestors did. The film moves between these three settings with on-location footage of diving, boat-building, and daily household life, letting fishermen, divers, and elders describe skills passed down across generations. Narration ties the three stories together around a single idea: knowledge of the sea, accumulated over centuries, still decides who eats and who does not.