At 99, David Attenborough shares strongest message for the ocean

“After almost 100 years on the planet, I now understand the most important place on Earth is not on land, but at sea,” says Sir David Attenborough, a man who – having spent his working life documenting the world of natural history – is about to launch what he has called “one of the most important films of his career” on the eve of entering his one hundredth year.

Perhaps for the first time in those 100 years, Sir David is telling a story like never before because Ocean, a feature-length film and a production atypical to anything that has come before it – is not just a love-letter to the planet’s support system but a profound and direct call to arms to protect it. Not for the sake of nature. But for the sake of ourselves.

Afforded a cinematic production released this Thursday, May 8 before being rolled out to Disney+ later this year, Ocean meets Sir David reflecting on a lifetime in natural history television and feature production with a blue carpet premiere tonight at the Royal Festival Hall. 

“If we save the sea, we save our world,” says Sir David who this weekend admitted in an exclusive interview with The Times that he “won’t get to see the ocean’s recovery and restoration” but that the ‘young children seen playing on the beach today’ very well may do. At the very least, they will get to witness “perhaps the most consequential time for the human species in the past 10,000 years.”

Sir David will not get to see how that story plays out. But in Ocean – a co-production between the likes of Silverback Studios, OpenPlanet, The National Geographic, Arksen, and many other collaborative partners – he is certainly delivering his final attempt to steer the narrative. Because in Ocean, the world finally gets to see it all; the ocean in all its glory and wonder – the kind of visuals followers of Sir David’s career are already so used to seeing – contrast with the destruction being wrought upon it. All of it, closer than ever before.

Ocean with Sir David Attenborough will take viewers on a breathtaking journey to show there really is nowhere more vital for our survival, more full of life, wonder, or surprise than the ocean that covers 70% of our planet. Through spectacular sequences featuring coral reefs, kelp forests, and the open ocean, Sir David brings home the very reason why a healthy ocean keeps the entire planet stable and flourishing.

“My lifetime has coincided with the great age of ocean discovery,” says Sir David. “Over the last one hundred years, scientists and explorers have revealed remarkable new species, epic migrations, and dazzling, more complex ecosystems beyond anything I could have imagined as a young man.

“In this film, we share some of those wonderful discoveries, uncover why our ocean is in such poor health, and – perhaps most importantly – show how it can be restored to health.”

But we will have our work cut out for us. Ocean goes beyond that which much of the public have seen of the ocean space ever before. A gut-churning sequence documenting the unbiased destruction caused to the seabed by bottom-trawling hammers that home in a cinematic experience unlike anything Sir David and his long-time collaborators at Silverback Studios have brought to the screen – big or small – before.

The new footage shows how the chain that the trawlers drag behind them scours the seafloor, forcing everything in its path into the net behind it. Those deploying the practice of bottom-trawling are often only after a single species of fish. More than three-quarters of what they catch may be discarded.

“It’s hard to imagine a more wasteful way to catch fish,” Sir David says. 

Not only is it a practice most wasteful and destructive, it is one completely at odds with the needs of our species to survive the worst impacts of climate change. It’s a process that releases vast amounts of carbon dioxide which contributes to the warming of the planet and its ocean. It’s also one of the many symptoms of an approach to the ocean that has almost made the film’s narrator lose hope for the future of life on the planet. That is, were it not for what he describes as “the most remarkable discovery of all”. That the ocean can recover faster than we had ever imagined.

In Ocean the world is presented with a decision to make. And a view of the either path we have right now ahead of us. Told in a way so visceral, it’s almost confounding to think of a future in which we continue on the current path of destruction – so hopeful is the alternative.

For Sir David, the story of the world’s whales has been a source of huge optimism. It’s estimated that 2.9 million whales were killed by the whaling industry in the 20th Century. It has been called by scientists the largest cull of any animal in history, pushing almost all whale species to the edge of extinction.

“I remember thinking that was it,” recalls Sir David of the moment in history when just one per cent of blue whales were left in existence. “There was no coming back, we had lost the great whales. “

But in 1986 lawmakers bowed to public pressure and banned commercial whaling worldwide. The whale population has been on the recovery since then.

It’s this Sir David and the team behind Ocean now hope to emulate. Without isolating communities, the film aims to shine a glaring light on where things have gone wrong. But it, crucially, offers a glimpse at what we can do to correct it. 

“This could be the moment of change,” he says.

The film’s release is timed ahead of World Ocean Day, June’s United Nations Ocean Conference 2025 in Nice, and midway through the UN’s Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. As world leaders decide the fate of our ocean, Ocean with Sir David Attenborough will show why ocean recovery is vital for stabilising our climate and securing a healthier future for us all, and how marine protection – if immediately implemented – can help turn the tide.

“Nearly every country on Earth has just agreed, on paper, to achieve this bare minimum and protect a third of the ocean. Together, we now face the challenge of making it happen.”

Ocean with Sir David Attenborough will be released as a Global Cinema Event from May 8. It will be made available on National Geographic, Disney Plus, and Hulu later this year.

source : oceanographicmagazine