Ocean with David Attenborough (2025) Movie Script
[upbeat music playing]
[David Attenborough] All life
began in the deep blue sea.
Its flow and force...
...have shaped our world.
Revered, and feared...
...since humans first
walked the Earth,
an immense hidden realm,
visible only in our imagination,
for hundreds
of thousands of years.
Only now, are we discovering
what our ocean means...
...for our world.
What we have found
could change the course of
our future, forever.
[intense music playing]
[intense music playing]
Humans have always looked
out at the open blue horizon
and wondered what lies beyond.
Yet it has remained
almost entirely a mystery.
After living for nearly
100 years on this planet,
I now understand the most
important place on Earth is not
on land, but at sea.
And today we're living in the
greatest age of ocean discovery.
For many of us the world
beyond the beach is still dark,
threatening, and dangerous...
out of sight and most certainly
out of mind.
It's time to take the plunge,
to go beneath the waves.
For once you've
truly seen the sea,
you'll never look at Earth
in the same way again.
In my lifetime,
our ability to see the
ocean has been transformed.
The invention of scuba
gear changed everything.
Suddenly, an extraordinary
new world of wonder and
surprise came into view.
It wasn't long before we found
a way to explore that
dark distant part of the planet.
That had remained
hidden for so long.
We journeyed into the deep...
...and gazed at
the bottom of the sea.
In the years that followed I
could never have imagined what
we'd find, miles
below the surface.
Yet, 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,
even in the waters
we know least about,
those furthest from land.
The high seas or open ocean.
The last great wilderness.
It's not owned by any nation,
but shared by
everyone in the world.
The open ocean is truly ours.
Its waters are the deepest
and the most remote.
Much of it has still never
been seen by human beings.
It's our final frontier.
Until recently, we assumed it
to be a largely empty desert.
The few creatures we knew
of wandering this open world
remained a mystery.
Now a new, far more
connected picture,
is emerging of the big blue.
Some of these travelers such
as sharks and tuna have been
tracked making
enormous migrations,
across the entire planet, on
an endless search for food.
And we have only just learnt
how these voyagers find
their way out here,
steering along the twists and
turns of particular currents.
They come together
from across the globe,
at a few precious places.
Seamounts.
Submarine mountains soaring
up to three miles high.
They stand in the path
of ocean currents,
causing water to rise from
the deep, bringing with it food.
Only now are we understanding
just how important
they really are.
As pit stops and endpoints
on ocean odysseys.
[uplifting music playing]
Perhaps most exciting of all,
we have just discovered there
are nearly twice as many of
these oases as we had thought.
Some 40,000 of them
across the sea floor.
So the open ocean is not a
featureless desert after all.
It is more connected than
we had ever imagined.
[uplifting music playing]
Back towards the shore,
closer to land,
there is a more familiar world.
This is the other
great ocean realm,
the shallow coastal seas.
And this is where we
get most of our seafood.
The shallow seas we regard
as being owned by the nations
living on the land next to them.
These coastal countries have
exclusive rights to exploit an
area within a few hundred
kilometers offshore.
This shallow region above
the continental shelf,
is a magical world
where everything is
bathed in sunlight.
[uplifting music playing]
This is giant kelp,
the tallest
living thing in the ocean.
Beneath its towering canopies,
we've discovered a
high-rise community.
The forest needs its many
residents to survive.
Sea urchins do the gardening
and the kelp is kept in check.
If these gardeners get too
abundant, this is the result.
Fortunately for the kelp,
there are urchin-eaters too.
It's a world in
delicate balance.
To have found,
just off our coasts,
jungles to rival any on land
was extraordinary.
It was the equivalent of
discovering a new tropical
rainforest full of marvels that
we had barely glimpsed before.
Scientists had no idea of the
sheer scale of these forests,
or the speed at which they grew.
They border a quarter
of the world's coasts,
and we are still finding
more of them even now.
And only within the last couple
of years have we found the
world's largest seagrass meadow.
This increased the
global estimate of this
habitat by nearly half.
And we have found that ocean
jungles and meadows absorb far
more carbon than the same
area of rainforest on land.
We now know that
together they could help us
avoid climate disaster.
In the coastal seas close to
the equator lies a tropical
world of seemingly
endless surprise.
The first time I used scuba
gear to dive on a coral reef,
I was so taken aback by
the spectacle before me,
I forgot, momentarily,
to breathe!
Nothing that I'd ever
seen on land had come close
to the sensory overload
of so much life,
and such diversity
right before my eyes.
[uplifting music playing]
Everywhere I looked,
at every scale,
there was something new.
One could spend days
swimming above it and
never tire of the colors,
the movement,
the interactions.
It's life at its
most mesmerizing.
We knew that coral reefs
harbored astonishing diversity
ever since we first
set eyes on them.
But the reason they did
so remained a mystery.
I remember reading how
Charles Darwin puzzled over
how reefs form and how
they can turn even the most
barren places
into oases of life.
We now know their
secret and it's wonderful.
Corals are animals.
But this is just
part of their story.
Within their bodies
live plant-like algae.
The algae use sunlight to
produce the food that corals
need to survive.
As the corals grow,
they build stone castles
around their
soft bodies for protection.
And in doing so,
they create the planet's
largest living structures.
It is extraordinary to think
that this one relationship can
turn undersea deserts into
the most complex and diverse
community in the ocean.
And the closer one looks...
...the more one sees.
In this crowded world of color,
there isn't a shape,
or size, that's not at home.
A greater variety of life
may seem hard to imagine,
yet we keep finding more...
...and more.
These little boxer crabs have
been found to wear clumps of
venomous anemones as gloves
with which to defend themselves.
And the peacock mantis shrimp
has the most complex eyesight
of any animal.
2,000 new marine species
are being discovered every year.
From coral-crunchers
and grazers,
to helpers,
and hunters.
We once believed that if
you removed the sharks,
there would be more fish.
Now we are learning
how wrong we were.
We're seeing that the
entire reef depends on all
of these relationships.
If just one is removed,
everything and everyone that
relies on this coral
community could be in trouble.
[waves crashing]
There are things we have
discovered about the shallow
coastal seas that directly
affect our everyday life.
All eight billion of us.
Currents sweep up the walls
of the continental shelf,
carrying nutrients
from the ocean floor,
so creating the most
productive waters in our ocean.
This makes them the perfect
place for phytoplankton.
These single-celled plants
flourish here in unimaginable
quantities, absorbing vast
amounts of carbon dioxide.
We have just discovered that
ocean plankton remove almost a
third of our carbon emissions.
They could be our greatest ally
in avoiding climate catastrophe.
What is more, we now know that
they produce more oxygen than
all the trees on Earth combined.
That is half of
the air we breathe.
They are also the most
important source of food under
the waves.
Yet until recently, we have
been unable to see this world
in such detail.
New images such as these,
reveal that billions of these
tiny battles are taking
place at any one moment.
These zooplankton are the most
abundant animals on Earth.
They're fuel for the
biggest shoals of fish,
and almost every food
chain in the sea.
[uplifting music playing]
[uplifting music playing]
The shallow coastal seas
are truly the foundation
of the entire ocean.
And feed billions of us.
This age of discovery has shown
our ocean to be more complex
and more delicately
balanced than we could
have ever imagined.
It's revealed that this vast,
mysterious world is bound to us
in ways we had never
dreamt possible.
But to truly understand
its importance,
we must first open our
eyes to what is happening
right now...
...below the waves.
[muffled metal rattle]
Few of us imagine this.
[rumbling]
From the surface,
you would have no idea
that this is happening.
It has remained hidden
from view... until now.
A modern industrial
bottom-trawler scours the
ocean floor with a
chain or metal beam,
forcing anything it disturbs
into the net behind.
It smashes its way
across the seabed,
destroying nearly
everything in its path,
often on the hunt for
just a single species.
Almost everything
else is discarded.
Over three-quarters
of a trawler's catch may
be thrown away.
It's hard to imagine a more
wasteful way to catch fish.
An area almost the size of
the entire Amazon rainforest
is trawled every year.
And much of that seabed
is plowed again.
Over, and over.
This churning of the
sediment unleashes vast
amounts of carbon dioxide,
which in turn contributes
to the warming of our planet.
The trawlers tear the seabed
with such force that their
trails of destruction
can be seen from space.
[dramatic music playing]
Very few places
are safe from this.
Including almost nowhere
in my own country.
[Don MacNeish] We have lived
and relied on food from the sea
around the island
for over 5,000 years.
Everything is so
different under the sea.
There's no houses, no roads,
no telephones.
It's just nature, 100%.
When I used to go
scallop diving,
you would dive
down to the sea bed and
just acclimatize yourself.
Things that look like plants
down there are animals,
and they've been there
for millions of years.
Slowly but surely, you would
see a complete bed of scallops.
It's ancient, can take
100 years to grow.
[distant rumbling]
[rumbling grows louder]
[somber music playing]
The first time that I dived
over an area that a scallop
dredger had just been over,
it was just heartbreaking.
All sorts of animals
just smashed to pieces.
It was like swimming
over the Garden of Eden to
a nuclear winter.
The community watched from
the shore as these boats go
up and down, closer, and closer,
over and over again,
just for a few scallops.
The scallop dredgers said,
"We have the right to do this,
and it's completely legal."
They were taking the
future out of the sea,
and the island community
would be left with the wreckage.
A feeling was just of
complete disbelief.
How can this be
allowed to happen?
It's difficult to try and
explain to people just exactly
how abundant it once was here.
Just how much has been lost?
-The idea of
bulldozing through a pristine,
rainforest causes outrage,
yet we do the equivalent
underwater thousands
of times every day.
Ancient seagrass meadows,
plowed into silt.
Delicate, 100-year-old
sponge gardens,
that once sheltered
bustling communities,
destroyed in an instant.
[somber music playing]
Surely, you would assume
it must be illegal?
But it is not only legal,
but actually encouraged by
the laws of today.
Bottom trawling is still
allowed in many so-called
Marine Protected
Areas worldwide.
And perhaps even
more astonishingly,
it is subsidized by governments.
$20 billion are spent every
year supporting overfishing
on an industrial scale.
[dramatic music playing]
Vast factories now
travel the seas.
They work day and night.
Further and faster than ever.
It seems nowhere is off-limits.
Even the open ocean.
[somber music playing]
Lines of baited hooks
50 miles long reel in
millions of sharks every year.
We have now killed two-thirds
of all large predatory fish.
Walls of nets hundreds
of meters high,
leave few survivors.
Sharks and turtles survived
the extinction of the dinosaurs
but may not outlive this.
The change is simple.
We once fished a few
places near shore to
feed our communities.
Now we fish everywhere,
all the time.
And I have lived
through this change.
There are tales
from 400 years ago,
of coastal waters,
"so thick with fish, boats could
barely move through them."
No-one alive today has
known the abundance of a
truly wild ocean.
There are now simply
fewer fish in the sea.
Wherever we look, in
every part of our ocean,
the evidence is clear.
Many sea bird colonies are
starving and in the final
stages of collapse.
Every year more nests fail.
It's the same story of change
in every ocean of the world.
[John Adams] Before, we
were working in harmony
with the ocean.
[gentle music playing]
[gentle music playing]
Then everything changed.
[intense music playing]
[intense music playing]
Where the trawlers
fish is where we fish.
We see them closer to shore.
Our nets used to be full.
We see different, different,
different types of fish.
Today?
No.
The bigger size are gone.
They are no more.
Even the smallest,
the smallest ones,
we are after them
because there's no fish.
These days, when I throw,
I catch plastic.
To even throw a line,
your hook and line,
you bring out plastic.
We depend on fish.
It's where we get
our resource from,
to support our children to go
to school, to feed our family.
It belongs to us.
Without the ocean,
there's no community.
When the trawlers take
away the last fish,
my heart will be so heavy.
[David Attenborough]
Three billion people rely on
our ocean for food.
But ships sent by a few
wealthy nations are starving
coastal communities of
the food source they have
relied on for millennia.
This is modern
colonialism at sea.
Some 400,000
industrial vessels now hunt in
every corner of the ocean.
Nowhere is too far or too deep.
Even the most remote parts of
the planet are no longer safe.
Almost every animal in
the Antarctic relies on
just a single species.
A small red crustacean.
Antarctic krill.
For whales, fish, and penguins,
krill is the most
important source of food
throughout the
Southern Ocean.
[uplifting music playing]
[ominous music playing]
The trawlers have
reached Antarctica.
And they are also
here for the krill.
With so few fish
left in the ocean,
we are now seeking
other prey in the furthest
corners of our world.
These are some of the
biggest factories on the sea.
They suck hundreds of
thousands of tonnes of krill
into vast nets.
It's then boiled and
processed for fish farms,
health supplements, and,
most recently, for pet food,
all on board the ship.
[dramatic music playing]
How can wildlife
compete with this?
Some claim this is sustainable.
But we may now be
removing the foundation of
an entire ecosystem.
We have drained the
life from our ocean.
Now, we are almost out of time.
Indeed, the ocean is in such
poor health that I would find
it hard not to lose hope, were
it not for the most remarkable
discovery of all.
The ocean can
recover faster than we had
ever thought possible.
It can bounce back to life.
For if left alone, it
may not just recover,
but thrive beyond anything
anyone alive has ever seen.
We can be sure of
this beyond any doubt,
because it is already happening.
For over 200 years,
this area was fished
intensively with nets and traps.
With their predators removed,
urchin numbers exploded.
Soaring kelp forests were
transformed into a barren world.
With little left to catch, the
decision was made to stop all
fishing across nearly
three hundred square miles.
It would be a marine
reserve or 'no-take zone'.
Once protected, the predators
could begin to recover.
Balance was restored.
In just five years the forests
were once again flourishing.
And with them, a thriving,
bustling neighborhood.
Safe from fishing, the
animals had time to grow big.
And the larger a female
spiny lobster can grow,
the more eggs she can release.
As the larvae disperse,
they begin a journey
into the unknown.
Leaving the safety of the kelp,
many are carried by
currents into the open sea.
Lobster larvae may travel
for thousands of miles,
even crossing
international borders.
They keep moving
for almost a year,
developing and
growing along the way.
Those that survive the journey,
return to the coast to
begin their adult lives.
And the chances are that
when they finally settle,
they are outside
the no-take zone.
This is how lobster populations
spill into unprotected waters,
reviving fisheries far and wide.
[Ray Kennedy] Initially it had
almost no effect whatsoever.
And then the spillover
started to happen.
Eventually, it turned
into something that was very
hard to ignore.
On one particular day,
fishing on the edge
of the reserve,
we pulled up the
trap of my career.
The most I'd ever
seen in a trap.
One for the record
books right there.
It was an ecstatic moment,
and it was an
eye-opening moment
I think every fisherman I
know will acknowledge the fact
that the reserves are working.
It's an amazing thing to see
how abundant the species is.
There's a bit of magic in there,
that's for certain, you know.
[David Attenborough] The
'no-take zone' is literally
overflowing with marine life.
If we just let nature
take its course,
the sea will save itself.
Huge predators, not
seen for decades,
have returned once again.
Even giant black sea bass,
once assumed lost forever,
now finds shelter
among the fronds.
[uplifting music playing]
Recovery like this
is possible anywhere.
Even in the most overfished
part of the most overfished
sea on Earth.
Fish populations in the
Mediterranean have almost
completely collapsed,
a third have already been lost.
Yet even here there
is still hope.
When a tiny reserve
was established off the
coast of France,
it erupted back to life.
Even the biggest fish
are making a comeback.
This is the result of fully
protecting less than 1%
of the Mediterranean.
But this is just the beginning.
If protecting a small portion
of the sea from fishing has
such a large effect, imagine
the potential power of doing
this across much larger areas.
Now for the first
time this century,
we don't need to imagine,
we can see for ourselves.
[singing in Hawaiian]
[singing in Hawaiian]
[Aulani Wilhelm] It is literally
a place of our ancestors.
What we would
call a "wao akua."
a realm of the gods.
Papahanaumokuakea is the
largest fully protected area,
land or sea, on the planet.
Those calls for protection came
from native Hawai'ian fishermen
and elders.
Without it, there would be
no moli, no Laysan albatross.
Their home is the entirety
of the vast Pacific Ocean.
They are seers of the sky.
They see more of the planet
than almost any creature.
But they depend on tiny little
spits of land in order to breed.
Those of us who come from
voyaging and way-finding
traditions could only
watch them in wonder.
Over years, each pair
develops their own language.
By dancing together they
reaffirm their bond.
[uplifting music playing]
Moli are the longest
living known species of bird
on the planet.
It's hard not to look at
this moli chick and wonder
"What will it see,
in the next 60 years?"
[singing in Hawaiian]
Thanks to the vision of the
elders and the Hawai'ian
fishermen who first
charged us with taking
better care of this place,
they have gone from
near extinction to the largest
albatross colony in the world.
Now, 14 million seabirds
return each year.
It is a pu'uhonua,
a place of refuge.
Why it's important to protect
really big areas is for
migratory species to be
the voyagers that they are.
They need a lot of space.
[uplifting music playing]
People said it couldn't be done.
But due to the protections
of Papahanaumokuakea,
tuna can reproduce and spread
into neighboring areas,
where populations
have increased by 54%.
[uplifting music playing]
Spillover is basic biology.
When we first set out to
protect what is now
Papahanaumokuakea,
the people would ask us,
"What are you
protecting it from?"
and our answer was,
"That's the wrong question.
It's about who and what
are we protecting it for?"
Protecting the ocean doesn't
mean being anti-fishing.
The goals of healthy fisheries
and conservation are the same,
more fish, more abundance,
more health of the ocean.
[uplifting music playing]
-Until now, it was assumed
that no protected area could
be big enough to help
fish species that migrate
over long distances,
such as yellowfin tuna.
This place has shattered
that assumption.
For when we create a
nature reserve on land,
we mostly protect
the life within it.
But we have discovered
that when you do the same
in the ocean, the
effects of these reserves
spread far beyond
their boundaries.
The waters outside
fill with life again.
Wherever we have given
the ocean time and space,
it has recovered fast and
on a greater scale than we
dared to imagine possible.
And it has the power
to go even further,
to defend against the
greatest threats of our time.
When corals experience
heat stress,
they evict their plant partners
and turn ghostly white.
During filming, the
temperature of our ocean rose
higher than ever before.
A devastating heat wave
travelled across the planet,
transforming even
the largest and most
established tropical reefs.
As far as we know,
these reefs have never looked
like this before.
These Elkhorn corals
in the Caribbean...
...were some of the last.
We are likely here to be
witnessing the extinction of
species before our very eyes.
This was the biggest
global mass bleaching event
in recorded history.
If the warming continues,
the corals never recover.
They're smothered
by algae... and die.
Nearly all coral reefs are
predicted to disappear in the
next 30 years.
You could be forgiven for
thinking there is no hope
left at all.
But there is.
In just a few places,
strict protection from fishing
has allowed armies of
grazers to thrive.
They hold back the
smothering algae,
giving the corals a
chance to recover.
These are baby corals,
new life emerging
from the wreckage.
In some places,
entire reefs have
come back to life.
[uplifting music playing]
Protection from fishing has
made these the most resilient
reefs on the planet.
This is the power of protection.
It is the same story in
every ocean of the world.
If I asked you, "How much of
the ocean is truly protected?"
What would you say, 20%?
At least ten, surely?
The answer is less than 3%,
in practical terms, none of it.
Many of the Marine Protected
Areas that do exist are
exploited using destructive
forms of fishing,
and are barely safe at all.
To save it from collapse,
scientists have said we must
fully protect at least a third.
For it to work it should
be, for the most part,
along our heavily
fished coastlines.
And the area we choose
should also include those
magnets for life out in
the open ocean, seamounts.
If we can protect
areas on land,
where the entire human
population requires
space to live,
surely we can
do it in the sea.
Restoring the ocean is
for everyone on Earth.
In front of us is a
chance to protect our climate,
our food, our home.
After a lifetime of
filming the natural world,
I cannot remember a
more exciting opportunity
for our species.
This could be the
moment of change.
Nearly every country on Earth
has just agreed, on paper,
to achieve this bare
minimum and fully protect a
third of the ocean.
Together, we now face the
challenge of making it happen.
[Aulani Wilhelm]
Without the ocean, simply put,
we wouldn't exist.
The planet will go on.
The question is,
will we be part of it?
[Ray Kennedy] I like to
compare our fisheries to having
an apple tree in the backyard.
Do you want to pick all
your apples in one day?
No, you want to go out and
you want to pick a few apples.
You want to take what you need.
[Don Macneish] I'm not
saying that people shouldn't
catch fish, eat fish.
And fishermen should be
able to make a living.
But they shouldn't be
able to do it in a way that
is just breaking everything.
[John Adams] Our
community survives because
of the ocean.
The ocean gives life,
the ocean gives life.
-Success on a
global scale is possible.
I've seen it myself once before.
[explosions]
The pattern was familiar.
Once whaling became
industrialized,
it took just 100 years
until nearly all species were
pushed to the edge
of extinction.
The blues, the
largest of them all,
were pursued
until only 1% remained.
I remember thinking that was it,
there was no coming back.
We had lost the great whales.
Finally, lawmakers acted
on public pressure to ban
commercial whaling.
What followed was beyond
our wildest dreams.
The number of humpback whales
in the South Atlantic tripled
in just ten years.
And scenes like these of fin
whales in Antarctica were
unimaginable just 50 years ago.
Even the greatest
of our ocean giants,
the blue whale,
hunted to the very
edge of extinction,
has begun to return.
I would never have imaged
that in just over a decade of
whaling being banned, I
could encounter one myself.
I can see its tail
just under my boat here
And its coming up,
its coming up!
There!
Only in the sea can you
get such huge size as that
magnificent creature.
Now we are forging a
new relationship with
these gentle creatures.
A blue whale born today...
...could live
for over 100 years.
If we apply the same foresight
to save her home as we once did
to save her species,
then she will witness
a remarkable recovery.
Through the course of my life,
we have been on a
voyage of ocean discovery.
And what a journey it has been.
When I first saw the
sea as a young boy,
it was thought of as a vast
wilderness to be tamed and
mastered for the
benefit of humanity.
Now, as I approach
the end of my life,
we know the opposite is true.
It is my great hope that we
all come to see the ocean not
as a dark and distant
place with little relevance
to our lives on land,
but as the
lifeblood of our home.
I'm sure that nothing
is more important.
For if we save the sea...
...we save our world.
[uplifting music playing
Coldplay "One World"]
[uplifting music playing
Coldplay "One World"]
[uplifting music playing
Coldplay "One World"]
[uplifting music playing
Coldplay "One World"]
[uplifting music playing
Coldplay "One World"]
[uplifting music playing
Coldplay "One World"]
In the end, it's just love
In the end, it's just love
Love
In the end, it's just love
In the end, it's just love
In the end, it's just love
[uplifting music playing
Relics "Blastwatch"]
[uplifting music playing
Relics "Blastwatch"]
[uplifting music playing
Relics "Blastwatch"]
[uplifting music playing
Relics "Blastwatch"]
[uplifting music playing
Relics "Blastwatch"]
[uplifting music playing
Relics "Blastwatch"]
[David Attenborough] All life
began in the deep blue sea.
Its flow and force...
...have shaped our world.
Revered, and feared...
...since humans first
walked the Earth,
an immense hidden realm,
visible only in our imagination,
for hundreds
of thousands of years.
Only now, are we discovering
what our ocean means...
...for our world.
What we have found
could change the course of
our future, forever.
[intense music playing]
[intense music playing]
Humans have always looked
out at the open blue horizon
and wondered what lies beyond.
Yet it has remained
almost entirely a mystery.
After living for nearly
100 years on this planet,
I now understand the most
important place on Earth is not
on land, but at sea.
And today we're living in the
greatest age of ocean discovery.
For many of us the world
beyond the beach is still dark,
threatening, and dangerous...
out of sight and most certainly
out of mind.
It's time to take the plunge,
to go beneath the waves.
For once you've
truly seen the sea,
you'll never look at Earth
in the same way again.
In my lifetime,
our ability to see the
ocean has been transformed.
The invention of scuba
gear changed everything.
Suddenly, an extraordinary
new world of wonder and
surprise came into view.
It wasn't long before we found
a way to explore that
dark distant part of the planet.
That had remained
hidden for so long.
We journeyed into the deep...
...and gazed at
the bottom of the sea.
In the years that followed I
could never have imagined what
we'd find, miles
below the surface.
Yet, 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,
even in the waters
we know least about,
those furthest from land.
The high seas or open ocean.
The last great wilderness.
It's not owned by any nation,
but shared by
everyone in the world.
The open ocean is truly ours.
Its waters are the deepest
and the most remote.
Much of it has still never
been seen by human beings.
It's our final frontier.
Until recently, we assumed it
to be a largely empty desert.
The few creatures we knew
of wandering this open world
remained a mystery.
Now a new, far more
connected picture,
is emerging of the big blue.
Some of these travelers such
as sharks and tuna have been
tracked making
enormous migrations,
across the entire planet, on
an endless search for food.
And we have only just learnt
how these voyagers find
their way out here,
steering along the twists and
turns of particular currents.
They come together
from across the globe,
at a few precious places.
Seamounts.
Submarine mountains soaring
up to three miles high.
They stand in the path
of ocean currents,
causing water to rise from
the deep, bringing with it food.
Only now are we understanding
just how important
they really are.
As pit stops and endpoints
on ocean odysseys.
[uplifting music playing]
Perhaps most exciting of all,
we have just discovered there
are nearly twice as many of
these oases as we had thought.
Some 40,000 of them
across the sea floor.
So the open ocean is not a
featureless desert after all.
It is more connected than
we had ever imagined.
[uplifting music playing]
Back towards the shore,
closer to land,
there is a more familiar world.
This is the other
great ocean realm,
the shallow coastal seas.
And this is where we
get most of our seafood.
The shallow seas we regard
as being owned by the nations
living on the land next to them.
These coastal countries have
exclusive rights to exploit an
area within a few hundred
kilometers offshore.
This shallow region above
the continental shelf,
is a magical world
where everything is
bathed in sunlight.
[uplifting music playing]
This is giant kelp,
the tallest
living thing in the ocean.
Beneath its towering canopies,
we've discovered a
high-rise community.
The forest needs its many
residents to survive.
Sea urchins do the gardening
and the kelp is kept in check.
If these gardeners get too
abundant, this is the result.
Fortunately for the kelp,
there are urchin-eaters too.
It's a world in
delicate balance.
To have found,
just off our coasts,
jungles to rival any on land
was extraordinary.
It was the equivalent of
discovering a new tropical
rainforest full of marvels that
we had barely glimpsed before.
Scientists had no idea of the
sheer scale of these forests,
or the speed at which they grew.
They border a quarter
of the world's coasts,
and we are still finding
more of them even now.
And only within the last couple
of years have we found the
world's largest seagrass meadow.
This increased the
global estimate of this
habitat by nearly half.
And we have found that ocean
jungles and meadows absorb far
more carbon than the same
area of rainforest on land.
We now know that
together they could help us
avoid climate disaster.
In the coastal seas close to
the equator lies a tropical
world of seemingly
endless surprise.
The first time I used scuba
gear to dive on a coral reef,
I was so taken aback by
the spectacle before me,
I forgot, momentarily,
to breathe!
Nothing that I'd ever
seen on land had come close
to the sensory overload
of so much life,
and such diversity
right before my eyes.
[uplifting music playing]
Everywhere I looked,
at every scale,
there was something new.
One could spend days
swimming above it and
never tire of the colors,
the movement,
the interactions.
It's life at its
most mesmerizing.
We knew that coral reefs
harbored astonishing diversity
ever since we first
set eyes on them.
But the reason they did
so remained a mystery.
I remember reading how
Charles Darwin puzzled over
how reefs form and how
they can turn even the most
barren places
into oases of life.
We now know their
secret and it's wonderful.
Corals are animals.
But this is just
part of their story.
Within their bodies
live plant-like algae.
The algae use sunlight to
produce the food that corals
need to survive.
As the corals grow,
they build stone castles
around their
soft bodies for protection.
And in doing so,
they create the planet's
largest living structures.
It is extraordinary to think
that this one relationship can
turn undersea deserts into
the most complex and diverse
community in the ocean.
And the closer one looks...
...the more one sees.
In this crowded world of color,
there isn't a shape,
or size, that's not at home.
A greater variety of life
may seem hard to imagine,
yet we keep finding more...
...and more.
These little boxer crabs have
been found to wear clumps of
venomous anemones as gloves
with which to defend themselves.
And the peacock mantis shrimp
has the most complex eyesight
of any animal.
2,000 new marine species
are being discovered every year.
From coral-crunchers
and grazers,
to helpers,
and hunters.
We once believed that if
you removed the sharks,
there would be more fish.
Now we are learning
how wrong we were.
We're seeing that the
entire reef depends on all
of these relationships.
If just one is removed,
everything and everyone that
relies on this coral
community could be in trouble.
[waves crashing]
There are things we have
discovered about the shallow
coastal seas that directly
affect our everyday life.
All eight billion of us.
Currents sweep up the walls
of the continental shelf,
carrying nutrients
from the ocean floor,
so creating the most
productive waters in our ocean.
This makes them the perfect
place for phytoplankton.
These single-celled plants
flourish here in unimaginable
quantities, absorbing vast
amounts of carbon dioxide.
We have just discovered that
ocean plankton remove almost a
third of our carbon emissions.
They could be our greatest ally
in avoiding climate catastrophe.
What is more, we now know that
they produce more oxygen than
all the trees on Earth combined.
That is half of
the air we breathe.
They are also the most
important source of food under
the waves.
Yet until recently, we have
been unable to see this world
in such detail.
New images such as these,
reveal that billions of these
tiny battles are taking
place at any one moment.
These zooplankton are the most
abundant animals on Earth.
They're fuel for the
biggest shoals of fish,
and almost every food
chain in the sea.
[uplifting music playing]
[uplifting music playing]
The shallow coastal seas
are truly the foundation
of the entire ocean.
And feed billions of us.
This age of discovery has shown
our ocean to be more complex
and more delicately
balanced than we could
have ever imagined.
It's revealed that this vast,
mysterious world is bound to us
in ways we had never
dreamt possible.
But to truly understand
its importance,
we must first open our
eyes to what is happening
right now...
...below the waves.
[muffled metal rattle]
Few of us imagine this.
[rumbling]
From the surface,
you would have no idea
that this is happening.
It has remained hidden
from view... until now.
A modern industrial
bottom-trawler scours the
ocean floor with a
chain or metal beam,
forcing anything it disturbs
into the net behind.
It smashes its way
across the seabed,
destroying nearly
everything in its path,
often on the hunt for
just a single species.
Almost everything
else is discarded.
Over three-quarters
of a trawler's catch may
be thrown away.
It's hard to imagine a more
wasteful way to catch fish.
An area almost the size of
the entire Amazon rainforest
is trawled every year.
And much of that seabed
is plowed again.
Over, and over.
This churning of the
sediment unleashes vast
amounts of carbon dioxide,
which in turn contributes
to the warming of our planet.
The trawlers tear the seabed
with such force that their
trails of destruction
can be seen from space.
[dramatic music playing]
Very few places
are safe from this.
Including almost nowhere
in my own country.
[Don MacNeish] We have lived
and relied on food from the sea
around the island
for over 5,000 years.
Everything is so
different under the sea.
There's no houses, no roads,
no telephones.
It's just nature, 100%.
When I used to go
scallop diving,
you would dive
down to the sea bed and
just acclimatize yourself.
Things that look like plants
down there are animals,
and they've been there
for millions of years.
Slowly but surely, you would
see a complete bed of scallops.
It's ancient, can take
100 years to grow.
[distant rumbling]
[rumbling grows louder]
[somber music playing]
The first time that I dived
over an area that a scallop
dredger had just been over,
it was just heartbreaking.
All sorts of animals
just smashed to pieces.
It was like swimming
over the Garden of Eden to
a nuclear winter.
The community watched from
the shore as these boats go
up and down, closer, and closer,
over and over again,
just for a few scallops.
The scallop dredgers said,
"We have the right to do this,
and it's completely legal."
They were taking the
future out of the sea,
and the island community
would be left with the wreckage.
A feeling was just of
complete disbelief.
How can this be
allowed to happen?
It's difficult to try and
explain to people just exactly
how abundant it once was here.
Just how much has been lost?
-The idea of
bulldozing through a pristine,
rainforest causes outrage,
yet we do the equivalent
underwater thousands
of times every day.
Ancient seagrass meadows,
plowed into silt.
Delicate, 100-year-old
sponge gardens,
that once sheltered
bustling communities,
destroyed in an instant.
[somber music playing]
Surely, you would assume
it must be illegal?
But it is not only legal,
but actually encouraged by
the laws of today.
Bottom trawling is still
allowed in many so-called
Marine Protected
Areas worldwide.
And perhaps even
more astonishingly,
it is subsidized by governments.
$20 billion are spent every
year supporting overfishing
on an industrial scale.
[dramatic music playing]
Vast factories now
travel the seas.
They work day and night.
Further and faster than ever.
It seems nowhere is off-limits.
Even the open ocean.
[somber music playing]
Lines of baited hooks
50 miles long reel in
millions of sharks every year.
We have now killed two-thirds
of all large predatory fish.
Walls of nets hundreds
of meters high,
leave few survivors.
Sharks and turtles survived
the extinction of the dinosaurs
but may not outlive this.
The change is simple.
We once fished a few
places near shore to
feed our communities.
Now we fish everywhere,
all the time.
And I have lived
through this change.
There are tales
from 400 years ago,
of coastal waters,
"so thick with fish, boats could
barely move through them."
No-one alive today has
known the abundance of a
truly wild ocean.
There are now simply
fewer fish in the sea.
Wherever we look, in
every part of our ocean,
the evidence is clear.
Many sea bird colonies are
starving and in the final
stages of collapse.
Every year more nests fail.
It's the same story of change
in every ocean of the world.
[John Adams] Before, we
were working in harmony
with the ocean.
[gentle music playing]
[gentle music playing]
Then everything changed.
[intense music playing]
[intense music playing]
Where the trawlers
fish is where we fish.
We see them closer to shore.
Our nets used to be full.
We see different, different,
different types of fish.
Today?
No.
The bigger size are gone.
They are no more.
Even the smallest,
the smallest ones,
we are after them
because there's no fish.
These days, when I throw,
I catch plastic.
To even throw a line,
your hook and line,
you bring out plastic.
We depend on fish.
It's where we get
our resource from,
to support our children to go
to school, to feed our family.
It belongs to us.
Without the ocean,
there's no community.
When the trawlers take
away the last fish,
my heart will be so heavy.
[David Attenborough]
Three billion people rely on
our ocean for food.
But ships sent by a few
wealthy nations are starving
coastal communities of
the food source they have
relied on for millennia.
This is modern
colonialism at sea.
Some 400,000
industrial vessels now hunt in
every corner of the ocean.
Nowhere is too far or too deep.
Even the most remote parts of
the planet are no longer safe.
Almost every animal in
the Antarctic relies on
just a single species.
A small red crustacean.
Antarctic krill.
For whales, fish, and penguins,
krill is the most
important source of food
throughout the
Southern Ocean.
[uplifting music playing]
[ominous music playing]
The trawlers have
reached Antarctica.
And they are also
here for the krill.
With so few fish
left in the ocean,
we are now seeking
other prey in the furthest
corners of our world.
These are some of the
biggest factories on the sea.
They suck hundreds of
thousands of tonnes of krill
into vast nets.
It's then boiled and
processed for fish farms,
health supplements, and,
most recently, for pet food,
all on board the ship.
[dramatic music playing]
How can wildlife
compete with this?
Some claim this is sustainable.
But we may now be
removing the foundation of
an entire ecosystem.
We have drained the
life from our ocean.
Now, we are almost out of time.
Indeed, the ocean is in such
poor health that I would find
it hard not to lose hope, were
it not for the most remarkable
discovery of all.
The ocean can
recover faster than we had
ever thought possible.
It can bounce back to life.
For if left alone, it
may not just recover,
but thrive beyond anything
anyone alive has ever seen.
We can be sure of
this beyond any doubt,
because it is already happening.
For over 200 years,
this area was fished
intensively with nets and traps.
With their predators removed,
urchin numbers exploded.
Soaring kelp forests were
transformed into a barren world.
With little left to catch, the
decision was made to stop all
fishing across nearly
three hundred square miles.
It would be a marine
reserve or 'no-take zone'.
Once protected, the predators
could begin to recover.
Balance was restored.
In just five years the forests
were once again flourishing.
And with them, a thriving,
bustling neighborhood.
Safe from fishing, the
animals had time to grow big.
And the larger a female
spiny lobster can grow,
the more eggs she can release.
As the larvae disperse,
they begin a journey
into the unknown.
Leaving the safety of the kelp,
many are carried by
currents into the open sea.
Lobster larvae may travel
for thousands of miles,
even crossing
international borders.
They keep moving
for almost a year,
developing and
growing along the way.
Those that survive the journey,
return to the coast to
begin their adult lives.
And the chances are that
when they finally settle,
they are outside
the no-take zone.
This is how lobster populations
spill into unprotected waters,
reviving fisheries far and wide.
[Ray Kennedy] Initially it had
almost no effect whatsoever.
And then the spillover
started to happen.
Eventually, it turned
into something that was very
hard to ignore.
On one particular day,
fishing on the edge
of the reserve,
we pulled up the
trap of my career.
The most I'd ever
seen in a trap.
One for the record
books right there.
It was an ecstatic moment,
and it was an
eye-opening moment
I think every fisherman I
know will acknowledge the fact
that the reserves are working.
It's an amazing thing to see
how abundant the species is.
There's a bit of magic in there,
that's for certain, you know.
[David Attenborough] The
'no-take zone' is literally
overflowing with marine life.
If we just let nature
take its course,
the sea will save itself.
Huge predators, not
seen for decades,
have returned once again.
Even giant black sea bass,
once assumed lost forever,
now finds shelter
among the fronds.
[uplifting music playing]
Recovery like this
is possible anywhere.
Even in the most overfished
part of the most overfished
sea on Earth.
Fish populations in the
Mediterranean have almost
completely collapsed,
a third have already been lost.
Yet even here there
is still hope.
When a tiny reserve
was established off the
coast of France,
it erupted back to life.
Even the biggest fish
are making a comeback.
This is the result of fully
protecting less than 1%
of the Mediterranean.
But this is just the beginning.
If protecting a small portion
of the sea from fishing has
such a large effect, imagine
the potential power of doing
this across much larger areas.
Now for the first
time this century,
we don't need to imagine,
we can see for ourselves.
[singing in Hawaiian]
[singing in Hawaiian]
[Aulani Wilhelm] It is literally
a place of our ancestors.
What we would
call a "wao akua."
a realm of the gods.
Papahanaumokuakea is the
largest fully protected area,
land or sea, on the planet.
Those calls for protection came
from native Hawai'ian fishermen
and elders.
Without it, there would be
no moli, no Laysan albatross.
Their home is the entirety
of the vast Pacific Ocean.
They are seers of the sky.
They see more of the planet
than almost any creature.
But they depend on tiny little
spits of land in order to breed.
Those of us who come from
voyaging and way-finding
traditions could only
watch them in wonder.
Over years, each pair
develops their own language.
By dancing together they
reaffirm their bond.
[uplifting music playing]
Moli are the longest
living known species of bird
on the planet.
It's hard not to look at
this moli chick and wonder
"What will it see,
in the next 60 years?"
[singing in Hawaiian]
Thanks to the vision of the
elders and the Hawai'ian
fishermen who first
charged us with taking
better care of this place,
they have gone from
near extinction to the largest
albatross colony in the world.
Now, 14 million seabirds
return each year.
It is a pu'uhonua,
a place of refuge.
Why it's important to protect
really big areas is for
migratory species to be
the voyagers that they are.
They need a lot of space.
[uplifting music playing]
People said it couldn't be done.
But due to the protections
of Papahanaumokuakea,
tuna can reproduce and spread
into neighboring areas,
where populations
have increased by 54%.
[uplifting music playing]
Spillover is basic biology.
When we first set out to
protect what is now
Papahanaumokuakea,
the people would ask us,
"What are you
protecting it from?"
and our answer was,
"That's the wrong question.
It's about who and what
are we protecting it for?"
Protecting the ocean doesn't
mean being anti-fishing.
The goals of healthy fisheries
and conservation are the same,
more fish, more abundance,
more health of the ocean.
[uplifting music playing]
-Until now, it was assumed
that no protected area could
be big enough to help
fish species that migrate
over long distances,
such as yellowfin tuna.
This place has shattered
that assumption.
For when we create a
nature reserve on land,
we mostly protect
the life within it.
But we have discovered
that when you do the same
in the ocean, the
effects of these reserves
spread far beyond
their boundaries.
The waters outside
fill with life again.
Wherever we have given
the ocean time and space,
it has recovered fast and
on a greater scale than we
dared to imagine possible.
And it has the power
to go even further,
to defend against the
greatest threats of our time.
When corals experience
heat stress,
they evict their plant partners
and turn ghostly white.
During filming, the
temperature of our ocean rose
higher than ever before.
A devastating heat wave
travelled across the planet,
transforming even
the largest and most
established tropical reefs.
As far as we know,
these reefs have never looked
like this before.
These Elkhorn corals
in the Caribbean...
...were some of the last.
We are likely here to be
witnessing the extinction of
species before our very eyes.
This was the biggest
global mass bleaching event
in recorded history.
If the warming continues,
the corals never recover.
They're smothered
by algae... and die.
Nearly all coral reefs are
predicted to disappear in the
next 30 years.
You could be forgiven for
thinking there is no hope
left at all.
But there is.
In just a few places,
strict protection from fishing
has allowed armies of
grazers to thrive.
They hold back the
smothering algae,
giving the corals a
chance to recover.
These are baby corals,
new life emerging
from the wreckage.
In some places,
entire reefs have
come back to life.
[uplifting music playing]
Protection from fishing has
made these the most resilient
reefs on the planet.
This is the power of protection.
It is the same story in
every ocean of the world.
If I asked you, "How much of
the ocean is truly protected?"
What would you say, 20%?
At least ten, surely?
The answer is less than 3%,
in practical terms, none of it.
Many of the Marine Protected
Areas that do exist are
exploited using destructive
forms of fishing,
and are barely safe at all.
To save it from collapse,
scientists have said we must
fully protect at least a third.
For it to work it should
be, for the most part,
along our heavily
fished coastlines.
And the area we choose
should also include those
magnets for life out in
the open ocean, seamounts.
If we can protect
areas on land,
where the entire human
population requires
space to live,
surely we can
do it in the sea.
Restoring the ocean is
for everyone on Earth.
In front of us is a
chance to protect our climate,
our food, our home.
After a lifetime of
filming the natural world,
I cannot remember a
more exciting opportunity
for our species.
This could be the
moment of change.
Nearly every country on Earth
has just agreed, on paper,
to achieve this bare
minimum and fully protect a
third of the ocean.
Together, we now face the
challenge of making it happen.
[Aulani Wilhelm]
Without the ocean, simply put,
we wouldn't exist.
The planet will go on.
The question is,
will we be part of it?
[Ray Kennedy] I like to
compare our fisheries to having
an apple tree in the backyard.
Do you want to pick all
your apples in one day?
No, you want to go out and
you want to pick a few apples.
You want to take what you need.
[Don Macneish] I'm not
saying that people shouldn't
catch fish, eat fish.
And fishermen should be
able to make a living.
But they shouldn't be
able to do it in a way that
is just breaking everything.
[John Adams] Our
community survives because
of the ocean.
The ocean gives life,
the ocean gives life.
-Success on a
global scale is possible.
I've seen it myself once before.
[explosions]
The pattern was familiar.
Once whaling became
industrialized,
it took just 100 years
until nearly all species were
pushed to the edge
of extinction.
The blues, the
largest of them all,
were pursued
until only 1% remained.
I remember thinking that was it,
there was no coming back.
We had lost the great whales.
Finally, lawmakers acted
on public pressure to ban
commercial whaling.
What followed was beyond
our wildest dreams.
The number of humpback whales
in the South Atlantic tripled
in just ten years.
And scenes like these of fin
whales in Antarctica were
unimaginable just 50 years ago.
Even the greatest
of our ocean giants,
the blue whale,
hunted to the very
edge of extinction,
has begun to return.
I would never have imaged
that in just over a decade of
whaling being banned, I
could encounter one myself.
I can see its tail
just under my boat here
And its coming up,
its coming up!
There!
Only in the sea can you
get such huge size as that
magnificent creature.
Now we are forging a
new relationship with
these gentle creatures.
A blue whale born today...
...could live
for over 100 years.
If we apply the same foresight
to save her home as we once did
to save her species,
then she will witness
a remarkable recovery.
Through the course of my life,
we have been on a
voyage of ocean discovery.
And what a journey it has been.
When I first saw the
sea as a young boy,
it was thought of as a vast
wilderness to be tamed and
mastered for the
benefit of humanity.
Now, as I approach
the end of my life,
we know the opposite is true.
It is my great hope that we
all come to see the ocean not
as a dark and distant
place with little relevance
to our lives on land,
but as the
lifeblood of our home.
I'm sure that nothing
is more important.
For if we save the sea...
...we save our world.
[uplifting music playing
Coldplay "One World"]
[uplifting music playing
Coldplay "One World"]
[uplifting music playing
Coldplay "One World"]
[uplifting music playing
Coldplay "One World"]
[uplifting music playing
Coldplay "One World"]
[uplifting music playing
Coldplay "One World"]
In the end, it's just love
In the end, it's just love
Love
In the end, it's just love
In the end, it's just love
In the end, it's just love
[uplifting music playing
Relics "Blastwatch"]
[uplifting music playing
Relics "Blastwatch"]
[uplifting music playing
Relics "Blastwatch"]
[uplifting music playing
Relics "Blastwatch"]
[uplifting music playing
Relics "Blastwatch"]
[uplifting music playing
Relics "Blastwatch"]