At the age of 100, David Attenborough remains as fascinated by the natural world as ever, a zest he shares with viewers in the Emmy-contending National Geographic documentary Ocean with David Attenborough.
“It’s life at its most mesmerizing,” he says of the planet’s oceans. Having reached this stage of his explorations, he observes, “I now understand the most important place on Earth is not on land.”
The film shares wonders of the marine environment — and alarming threats to the oceans. Footage of industrial fishing techniques shows how oceans floors are being violently scraped in search of a few marketable species, with much of the “catch” killed and discarded.
“Bottom trawling is… a practice that’s been going on for centuries, but it’s become such an industrial scale now that it has a huge, huge impact on our ocean,” said Ocean director Keith Scholey, during an appearance at Deadline’s Contenders Television: Documentary + Unscripted event. “And what is surprising is no one knows it’s going on. It’s as common as plowing a field… and yet people have never seen images of it before. And so, I think it was a real revelation in the film that this is what industrial fishing really looks like.”
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The film highlights some positive developments, like reserving parts of the ocean as “no take” zones to allow overfished species to recover. That’s happening in the Channel Islands off the coast of Southern California.
“In five years, you see change; in 10 years, you see massive change,” Scholey affirmed. “There’s this wonderful thing called ‘spillover’ in the protected area: You get lots and lots of big animals, whether it be crayfish or fish, they produce huge amounts of eggs, produce huge amounts of babies that then flood into the ocean [beyond] the protected area. And so, you see fisheries recover as well. Marine protection is a win-win for everyone.”
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Attenborough has won three Primetime Emmys for Best Narrator. Sir David lends his mellifluous voice to Ocean, but he also appears on camera throughout it.
“Nearly all the scenes that we shot in that film, he was 98 when we shot them,” Scholey said. “I was at an event last night and I saw him and he was as bouncy as ever.”
Check back Monday for the panel video.
