Sir David Attenborough turns 99 and urges the world to save our oceans
"After almost 100 years on the planet, I now understand the most important place on Earth is not on land, but at sea," he says.
For Attenborough, the message is clear: if humanity hopes to combat climate change and protect biodiversity, the battle must begin beneath the waves.
The new cinema-length documentary 'Ocean' explores the critical role the seas play in sustaining life on Earth and highlights their current state of peril.
As Sir David Attenborough celebrates his 99th birthday, the renowned naturalist marks the occasion not with reflection, but with action, launching what he considers one of the most important films of his long and influential career.
Premiered at London's Royal Festival Hall with King Charles III in attendance, 'Ocean' brings into sharp focus the damage caused by industrial fishing, especially bottom trawling—a practice still permitted and, in many places, subsidised.
Footage in the film reveals how heavy chains dragged along the seabed destroy habitats, release carbon dioxide, and discard up to 75% of unintended catch.
Attenborough describes the method as "a wasteful way to catch fish", and warns that unless practices change, the oceans' ability to support life, including our own, will diminish rapidly.
Yet 'Ocean' is not a tale of despair. The film also chronicles remarkable recoveries, offering a message of hope.
The near-extinction and subsequent rebound of the world's whale populations stands as a key example. In the 20th century alone, nearly three million whales were killed.
Species like the Blue Whale were reduced to just one percent of their population. Attenborough recalls believing they would never return.
But public outcry led to a global ban on commercial whaling in 1986, and since then, whale numbers have steadily increased. Scientists now say this revival shows how the ocean can recover more quickly than previously imagined—if given the chance.
This optimism threads through the film, and Attenborough's voice reminds viewers that the world's leaders have already committed to protecting a third of the oceans.
With a UN conference on the horizon, he hopes 'Ocean' will galvanise action to honour that promise.
Keith Scholey, one of the film's directors and a long-time collaborator of Attenborough's, reflects on his enduring drive and energy. Even at 99, Attenborough remains a force, both creatively and in his mission to awaken global awareness.
The documentary's closing message is one of cautious optimism. A healthy ocean not only supports marine life but also helps lock away carbon dioxide, a critical factor in the fight against global warming.
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Daily Maverick
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How refugee comics empower displaced voices amid global crisis of migration
Comic books and graphic novels written by refugees counter the one-dimensional version found in most visual media. There are more refugees in the world today than at any other point in history. The UN estimates that there are now more than 120 million people forcibly displaced from their homes. That is one in every 69 people on Earth. Some 73% of this population is hosted in lower- or middle-income countries. From the legacies of European colonialism to global inequality, drone warfare and climate instability, politicians have failed to address the causes driving this mass displacement. Instead, far-right parties exploit the crisis by inflaming cultures of hatred and hostility towards migrants, particularly in high-income Western countries. This is exacerbated by visual media, which makes refugees an easy target by denying them the means of telling their own stories on their own terms. 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Because comics are drawn by hand and use abstract icons rather than photographs, refugees can tell their stories while avoiding any unwanted scrutiny and also maintaining personal privacy. This reintroduces refugee agency into a visual culture that often seeks to reduce migrants to voiceless victims or security threats. For example, in Escaping Wars and Waves: Encounters with Syrian Refugees (2018), German comics journalist Olivier Kugler dedicates two pages to a man he calls 'The Afghan' because he didn't want his name or identity revealed. Kugler presents this man's testimony of failed attempts to get to the UK, but he never draws his face or refers to him by name. The third way comics challenge anti-migrant images is by shifting our attention from refugees themselves to the hostile environments and border infrastructures that they are forced to travel through and inhabit. Refugee researchers describe this different way of seeing as a 'places and spaces, not faces' approach. For instance, in Undocumented: The Architecture of Migrant Detention (2017), Tings Chak walks her readers through migrant detention centres from the perspective of the people who are being processed and detained. Drawing displacement This emphasis on place and space is built into the structure of our own book, Graphic Refuge. We begin by focusing on graphic stories about ocean crossings, particularly on the Mediterranean Sea. We then turn to comics concerned with the experience of refugee camps, and we also ask how interactive online comics bring viewers into virtual refugee spaces in a variety of ways. It is the obliteration of homes that forces people to become refugees in the first place. Later in the book, we explore how illustrated stories document the destruction of cityscapes across Syria and also in Gaza. Finally, we turn to graphic autobiographies by second-generation refugees — those who have grown up in places such as the US or Australia, but who must still negotiate the trauma of their parents' displacement. Whereas most previous studies of refugee comics have focused on trauma and empathy, we take a different approach in Graphic Refuge. We set out to show how refugee comics represent migrant agency and desire, and how we are all implicated in the histories and systems that have created the very idea of the modern refugee. As critical refugee scholar Vinh Nguyen writes in our book's foreword, although it is difficult to truly know what refugee lives are like, those of us who enjoy the privileges of citizenship can at least read these comics to better understand 'what we — we who can sleep under warm covers at night — are capable of'. DM First published by The Conversation. Dominic Davies is a reader in English at City St George's, University of London in England; Candida Rifkind is a professor of graphic narratives at the University of Winnipeg in Canada.
