Sir David Attenborough turns 99 and urges the world to save our oceans
His words frame a film that blends decades of experience with a fresh urgency, documenting both the devastation and the resilience of our marine ecosystems.
"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.
IOL News
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
IOL News
3 days ago
- IOL News
Seaweed fed to cattle stops them farting methane
The seaweed asparagopsis that is being fed to animals in an attempt to reduce their methane emissions. It is barely visible, and needs no irrigation or fertilisers: lying off the coast of Australia is a vast seaweed crop destined to curb livestock's climate-altering flatulence and belches. The underwater farm stretches across 1 800 hectares in the Tasman Sea about 10 minutes off the portside town of Triabunna in the island state of Tasmania. Beneath the waves are forests of asparagopsis, a native red seaweed abundant in Tasmanian coastal waters that is rich in the organic compound bromoform. More than 40 studies have shown that the seaweed can lower methane emissions from livestock when added to fodder or grain, said Fran Cowley, a researcher at Australia's University of New England. According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, emissions from ruminants and manure management practices account for more than 32 percent of the world's methane emissions related to human activity. "When we look at gold-standard measurement of methane inhibition, asparagopsis is able to achieve almost complete suppression of methane suppression - so, 95 percent," said Cowley, a professor of livestock production and a leading researcher into ruminants. While far less abundant in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, methane is about 80 times more potent over a 20-year timescale at warming the planet. But its lifespan is shorter, making it an important lever in attempts to limit global warming. Cowley led one of the longest experiments into asparagopsis, held over 200 days in bovine feed lots in the eastern state of Queensland. Results published in August 2024 showed that emissions from the animals were halved over that period when compared to animals that received no supplements. The outcome indicated an improvement from a previous study, one of the most advanced in the field at the time, in which emissions from a Japanese herd were reduced by 28 percent. The bromoform within the seaweed affects the digestive system and curbs the animals' burps and farts without impacting their health or the quality of the resulting food products, Cowley said Bromoform is a concern because at high levels it has been considered to be carcinogenic in rats, and potentially humans, she said. But researchers found it was degraded in the stomachs of grazing animals." So there is no accumulation of bromoform in the meat or in the milk because it's only coming in at a relatively low dose to start with," Cowley said. "All the studies that have been done on meat have shown absolutely no accumulation of bromoform, or any impact on the taste, or the tenderness, or the juiciness of meat." Studies had shown that any damage to the animals' rumen - a chamber in the stomach that breaks down plants - was no worse than in those fed a grain-based feedlot diet, she said. Sea Forest's marine farm produces feed supplements from the seaweed: oils, pellets and "lick blocks" - a solid form that animals can lick to consume. Founder and chief executive Sam Elsom turned to seaweed farming in 2019, after about 15 years in the textile industry. The company wants to be the "enabling force" to make agricultural products sustainable without extra costs to farmers and consumers, he said. The seaweed is grown partly in the open sea and partly in filtered seawater ponds on land, which are easier to replicate elsewhere in the world and allow growers to control light, nutrients and the availability of carbon. Sea Forest is already working with Tasmanian dairy company Ashgrove and Australian burger chain Grill'd, and signed an agreement last year with British supermarket chain Morrisons, Elsom said. It has also held "encouraging" talks with some French dairy producers and is in the process of registering its seaweed products with the European Food Safety Authority, he said. One of the big challenges was the cost to farmers, who need financial incentives and support to make the effort to lower livestock methane emissions worthwhile, Elsom said. | AFP
IOL News
4 days ago
- IOL News
Lindsay Lohan reveals her beauty secrets: No plastic surgery involved
Lindsay Lohan claims she hasn't had any plastic surgery done. Image: Instagram / lindsaylohan Lindsay Lohan's fresh-faced glow has had fans buzzing for months, wondering what the secret is behind her dramatic transformation. Now, the 38-year-old actress is finally clearing the air. In an interview for ELLE's 2025 Summer Issue, the 'Freaky Friday' star addressed the facelift rumours head-on and shared the real story behind her revamped appearance and believe it or not, it's not cosmetic surgery. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ "Everyone does Botox," Lohan admitted. "I drink this juice every morning. It's like carrot, ginger, lemon, olive oil, apple. I also drink a lot of green tea, a lot of water. I'm a big pickled beets person, so I put them in almost everything. My skin care is very specific. I'm trying out some serums now that I'm doing. I'm testing them." On top of that, she's big on cold water to start the day. "Also, I'm a big believer in ice-cold water on your face when you wake up," she said. "I drink lemon juice a lot; I also put tons of chia seeds in my water. Eye patches, I do every morning. I'm into lasers." She tried Morpheus8, a buzzy non-invasive microneedling treatment, but quickly realised it wasn't the best fit for her. "I did Morpheus8 once, and then I realised my skin is so thin that I can't be doing that," she shared. Things really changed after she became a mom. "My skin changed after having my son. It got really sensitive. That's what really made me change my whole routine and diet and everything. I did blood tests, and I was like, 'I want to know everything I'm allergic to.' So I cut everything out, and that's kind of when everything started to change for me." Lohan, who has a two-year-old son, Luai, with husband Bader Shammas, says motherhood gave her skin a new level of sensitivity, but also a fresh perspective. "It doesn't happen to everyone. But I'm glad it happened to me, because it made me aware of how to take care of my skin long term," she said. Get your news on the go, click here to join the IOL News WhatsApp channel. IOL Lifestyle
Daily Maverick
22-05-2025
- Daily Maverick
Wrong penguin, right wing: The Full Monty director casts accidental bird in botched pic of Argentine coup
The film has been reviewed by some of the world's largest news outlets — and it seems just about no one has noticed the species switch. The Penguin Lessons — a film inspired by an English teacher saving an oil-soaked Magellanic penguin in 1970s Argentina — has managed to do something remarkable. It cast the wrong bird. In the latest cinematic case of 'close enough', not just any wrong penguin. A representative of a seriously threatened species. From the other side of the South American continent. The penguin starring alongside the Oscar-nominated Steve Coogan is, beyond a shadow of a biological doubt, a Humboldt penguin (Spheniscus humboldti) — not the native Magellanic penguin (Spheniscus magellanicus) central to the real-life memoir on which the film is based. The evidence? Impeccable. The Humboldt's single black breast band, rather than the Magellanic's double black band— as spotted by Daily Maverick's Biological Investigation and Regional Discrepancy Specialists (BIRDS). Unlike the Magellanic penguin, the Humboldt's bill is surrounded by pink flesh. To ensure we weren't hallucinating, we consulted a seabird expert — who asked not to be named, citing professional constraints, institutional discretion and a deep desire not to get dragged into a penguin controversy on their lunch break. 'Errmerrrgerrrrd,' they replied to BIRDS' bewildered WhatsApp. 'No, you're not hallucinating … What the actual f**k.' Somewhere, David Attenborough is quietly screaming into a pillow. A tale of one misplaced penguin The real 'Juan Salvador', the penguin from Tom Michell's 2016 memoir, was a Magellanic penguin rescued from the horrors of an oil spill in Uruguay, just above coastal Argentina. In adapting the memoir, this Sony Pictures Classics film may have opted for historical charm and emotional uplift, but missed geographic and taxonomic accuracy entirely. The Magellanic penguin mostly hails from Argentina, southern Chile and islands. The Humboldt penguin basically hails from Peru and north and central Chile. Unless transcontinental cosplay is an evolutionary strategy, the species may share only a tiny overlap. You might as well cast a black rhino (hook-lipped, critically endangered) to masquerade as a white rhino (broad-lipped, near-threatened). And hedge your bets no one will care. The not-so-funny drama to save a species But the penguin switcheroo, por que? It raises some troubling conservation and education questions. Take Magellanic penguins, of which there are between 2.2 million and 3.2 million individuals in the wild. Unsurprisingly, the IUCN Red List — the gold standard of threatened species — classifies it as 'least concern' but declining. Last assessed as vulnerable in 2020, the Humboldt, on the other hand, is in big trouble. Its numbers have plunged by about 10,000 individuals in just a few years. Today, there are probably no more than 23,800 left. Seen in perspective, Humboldts aren't much more numerous than the world's most threatened penguin — the African penguin (Spheniscus demersus), of which only 19,800 remain. The IUCN classified the African penguin as critically endangered in 2024 and it's identified by only a slightly thinner breast band than the Humboldt. The African version looks so much like its Humboldt counterpart that even experts could get tripped up thinking The Penguin Lessons stars the world's most imperilled penguin. Parading an endangered species in a film as one that is of least concern could — conceivably — make it seem far more common than it is. When fact-checking fails, feathers fly If Hollywood can CGI a talking raccoon into a galaxy-saving hero, should it be able to tell one penguin from another — or try? Daily Maverick asked a few more seabird specialists. BIRDS can confirm that Juan Salvador was not portrayed by an African penguin. At least, that's what Dr Alistair McInnes, BirdLife South Africa's seabird conservation programme manager, thinks. 'Based on the extensive amount of pink at the base of the bill, it looks like a Humboldt penguin,' said McInnes. The smoking gun came from an actual Humboldt penguinologist. 'I looked at the link you sent me and… it is… 100%… 1,000% a nice, cute Humboldt penguin. So, you are right!' Dr Alejandro Simeone, a Humboldt penguin expert at Andrés Bello University in Chile, wrote by email. 'If the movie is based in Argentina, it should be a Magellanic.' But then the nuts and bolts of science may not always be what makes Oscar-nominated director Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty) tick. In a YouTube interview with the good people of Bafta, Cattaneo highlighted his animal handler's penchant for zooming off in a prepacked van and saving penguins' lives. You know, 'if there's actually ever an oil spill, or something similar, anywhere in Northern Europe'. At this point, memoir author Tom Michell was perched next to Cattaneo. And he was paying attention. ' But,' the stony-faced author interjected, 'there aren't any penguins in Northern Europe?' Cattaneo corrected himself by saying he was talking about sea lions. BIRDS consulted our sea lion sister bureau, the Biological Assessment of Regional Know-Names (BARK), which confirms what we suspected: that Northern Europe doesn't have any wild sea lions. Margaret, the Magellanics and the ghosts of geography The Penguin Lessons is set against the fall of Argentina's 1976 Peronist government which makes way for the brutal military dictatorship known as the National Reorganisation Process. The movie does not have anything to do with the Argentine/UK war over the Falklands/Malvinas Islands, which unfolded a few years later in 1982. But it's instructive to think that the penguin film is set in a time that leads to the junta's unsuccessful campaign to reclaim the Falklands/Malvinas. Margaret Thatcher, of course, responded with force, retaining an iron grip on one of the world's largest breeding colonies of Magellanic penguins. Javier Milei, Argentina's chainsaw-wielding president, probably still thinks London owes Buenos Aires a lot of penguins. Lima and Santiago — Humboldt penguin central — would back Milei on this one. So, reenacting the logic of taking what suits the narrative, even where it may not belong, is a possible geopolitical humdinger that an English film about an Argentine coup wants to avoid. But why use the wrong penguin? According to Christina Hagen, Pamela Isdell fellow of penguin conservation at BirdLife South Africa, 'there is quite a big population of Humboldts and other banded penguins in captivity. As long as they followed animal welfare regulations for animals in movies, it wouldn't affect the wild population.' In an odd real-life plot twist, My Penguin Friend is also a new film about a Magellanic penguin rescued from an oil spill who befriends a human in need of help. Yes, you can't make this stuff up. Starring Jean Reno (La Femme Nikita), the 2024 production used 10 rescued Magellanic penguins from Brazil's Ubatuba Aquarium to portray the penguin lead. This film's easy-to-find press notes not only declare extensive details about the penguin actors' rescue origins, they also tell an educational story of what threatens their wild counterparts — stuff like oil spills, ocean trash, guano mining and overfishing. In other words, if a journalist gets it wrong, it's on them. BIRDS could not find evidence that The Penguin Lessons — which has netted reviews in BBC Wildlife Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Times and more — followed the same transparency policy. If anything, none of these reviews reported the filmmakers' unusual species choice. So, we went to the filmmakers. The film's South African reps told us that the film employed six penguin actors to play the lead. As penguins are social creatures, each penguin had a penguin boyfriend or girlfriend on set. The American Humane Society, they pointed out, monitored the 12 penguins' welfare. Answers were not received within 48 hours by 1o.30am on Thursday clarifying the film's casting choice. We also did not receive information on whether the penguins were sourced from licensed, captive environments. Were production credits and press materials updated to reflect the correct species and their origin? No answers were received from Sony Pictures Classics to our repeated requests for access to password-protected press materials, first sent on 5 May. Ster Kinekor, which has aired the film in South Africa in recent weeks, responded promptly with press notes. But these did not acknowledge the species switch, either. The real cautionary tale? It's worth the reminder that Tom Michell, the real-life teacher, got the Magellanic penguin right in his own memoir — devoting extensive passages to its conservation status and biological behaviour. In an interview with the blog Honest Mum, Michell has also revealed that most of the film was, in fact, 'real Humboldt penguin footage' — that is, where animatronic penguins weren't used to film more demanding sequences. The error lies not with the young traveller-turned-environmentalist who lived a heartfelt story, and recounted it in a nuanced conservation narrative, but the production team who retold it. And yet, The Penguin Lessons achieves its aim as lite escapism about cross-species friendship during political turbulence. Apart from an unseeable species faux pas, it's good at communicating humanity's careless footprint to a general audience. It demonstrates the therapeutic value of the natural world. This was a tale worth retelling — with the right penguin. DM
