Tipping Barrels' is a unique combination of surfing and environmental journalism that follows surfers Arran and Reid Jackson on a trip into the heart of the Great Bear Rainforest, where they learn more about the region and the issues confronting it.

The issue at the heart of the film is the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline, which would pump crude oil from Alberta to Kitimat, on the North Coast of British Columbia. Here it would be loaded onto supertankers bound for markets in Asia and the U.S. Over 225 supertankers a year would transit the narrow waterways that make up the Great Bear Rainforest, putting one of the Earth’s most ecologically sensitive and intact ecosystems at risk of an oil spill.