With nearly a foot of snow on the ground and temperatures hovering around 20 degrees, it’s hard to imagine Jeff Ragovin reeling in a 100-pound tuna from the crystal blue waters off Montauk. But a sneak peak of a future episode of “Bounty Uncharted,” his documentary-style video series, transports us right into that moment and dozens of others just like it.
The winner of 15 awards — he added another to the list last week, best food film at the Cannes Film Festival. “Bounty Uncharted” is the culmination of all the things Mr. Ragovin loves: the East End, the water, food, and storytelling.
Each episode focuses on one person and their story — told while out on the water in Mr. Ragovin’s 27-foot EdgeWater boat — the Bounty Uncharted. Everything caught on the trip is cooked at Mr. Ragovin’s house in Springs and shared as a group meal. Fresh local produce also plays a role, with episode one following him to Balsam Farms in Amagansett. Recipes attached to each episode can be found on the website bountyuncharted.com.
“I’m Jeff Ragovin. I’m obsessed with fishing the open seas where nature is my passion. In the kitchen — my palate, the table my canvas, and entertaining, my love. This is my world. This is my life. This is ‘Bounty Uncharted,’ ” is the voice-over that starts each episode.
“It’s a diary of my life that I’m sharing with the world,” Mr. Ragovin said on a cold snowy morning at his house on Old Stone Highway. The 48-year-old grew up on 27th Street in Manhattan, but “I was meant to be here. I was meant to be by the water,” he said. His father kept a boat in Freeport and weekends in the summer were for the boat and fishing. His grandparents, who lived in Cedarhurst, planted a garden every spring and as a child the garden was a highlight.
So far, four episodes have been released, with more in the works. With 110,000 subscribers on YouTube and tens of thousands of viewers on Instagram, Mr. Ragovin says there is something to the formula. The stories, the people, the sea life, and the food touch everyone. Together with Michael Cuomo, who uses the online handle @montaukair, and who works on the show as its cinematographer, Mr. Ragovin constructs a magnificent and at times haunting visual of the waters of the East End.
But those platforms are not monetized. Mr. Ragovin calls “Bounty Uncharted” a passion project that he funds himself. He is a technology entrepreneur and when the company he co-founded, Buddy Media, was bought by Salesforce, he spent several years in the corporate world. In 2015, he decided to move to his weekend house in Springs full time after experiencing what he called an identity crisis.
Mr. Cuomo, whose photos and videos have been shared and spread like wildfire across social media as well as print media, captures rare moments of schooling striped bass, spinner sharks, and mother and calf humpback whales sometimes mere hundreds of feet from the shores of Montauk. Mr. Ragovin, for his part, hosts the show and provides the voice-over and poetic musings reminiscent of the late Anthony Bourdain.
The original concept, Mr. Ragovin said, was to invite celebrity chefs to join him on his adventures at sea, and on episode one, he did just that. Michael Chernow, the chef and owner of the Meatball Shop and Seamore’s in Manhattan was featured catching his first tuna on the Bounty Uncharted. They left the dock at 4:30 a.m. and dropped their lines in the open ocean between Block Island and Martha’s Vineyard. “He will never forget that day,” Mr. Ragovin said.
But that vision shifted when Mr. Ragovin saw a man named Alphonso James tell his story. Mr. James was imprisoned for 32 years for murder — a crime he says he did not commit. He was released from prison in 2017 on parole and continues to fight for exoneration through the Wisconsin Innocence Project. His story moved Mr. Ragovin and he asked Mr. James to be part of the series. Episode two was born, and the spirit of the show became “life here through storytelling of inspirational people,” he said.
The series also intends to cast off the stereotype of what people think East Hampton is.
“What does it mean to live here?” he asked, adding that it’s not about the tony Hamptons atmosphere that comes to mind for many people from elsewhere. “It’s about sustainability; it’s about livelihoods.”
And it’s not just an act for the camera; Mr. Ragovin is a founder and current president of South Fork Sea Farmers, which started as an “oyster gardening” experiment and turned into an educational and environmental advocacy group. The group built its first oyster reef in Three Mile Harbor with recycled shells. That one reef turned into four more throughout town — in Hog Creek, Lake Montauk, Napeague Harbor, and Accabonac Harbor. A sixth reef — planned on the other side of a narrow section of Three Mile Harbor where the original went in — is waiting to be approved. To date, $80,000 in scholarship money has been awarded through the group to local kids who want to study marine biology or related sciences.
As for the future of “Bounty Uncharted,” it seems boundless. Mr. Ragovin is keeping his options open and creating what feels right. “I don’t know where we’re going to go next.”