David Attenborough has a new film for his 99th birthday – and it's surprisingly optimistic
The legendary British natural historian, broadcaster and documentary filmmaker, who has hosted such landmark series as Life on Earth, The Living Planet and Frozen Planet over more than 70 years, is still hard at work. His latest documentary, Ocean with David Attenborough, opens in cinemas around the world on his birthday.
'He's remarkable,' co-director Colin Butfield says on a Zoom call from England. 'He's coming to the premiere, he's in fantastic form. I've just written a book with him, which is tiring enough for me, and I'm 52. I don't think he's ever going to stop working.'
Ocean has Attenborough reflecting – in that famously authoritative voice – on what he has learnt over his lifetime.
'After living for nearly 100 years on this planet, I now understand that the most important place on Earth is not on land, but at sea,' he says. 'To this day, we have seen more of other planets than we have of the ocean. Now we are making discoveries that completely change our understanding and could offer a better future for everyone on Earth forever.'
The film shows some alarming threats to the ocean's vitality, including industrial bottom-trawling. A chain or metal boom is dragged across the seabed, turning it into an underwater desert, to catch a single species, with almost everything else caught in a net discarded.
'Lines of baited hooks 50 miles long reel in millions of sharks every year,' Attenborough adds. 'We have now killed two-thirds of all large predatory fish.'
Also concerning are huge trawlers harvesting krill in Antarctica, threatening the food supply of almost every creature there, to supply fish farms, health supplements, and pet food. Another bad sign is mass coral bleaching in Florida, the Caribbean, the Maldives, and the Great Barrier Reef, attributed to heatwave conditions around the world.
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