Ocean, narrated by David Attenborough at 99, is a gorgeous and mesmerising film but also a clarion call to each of us to protect the world’s oceans.
The dazzling underwater cinematography and the authoritative narration by Attenborough converge in this masterpiece to expose the devastation being caused by relentless industrial fishing and pollution.
But Ocean also showcases the solution: leave the ocean alone and unharmed, and the coral, fish and other marine life bounce back in their wondrous glory.
“After living for nearly a hundred years on this planet, I now understand that the most important place on Earth is not on land, but at sea,” Attenborough declares in Ocean.
This nature documentary is driven by a mission, said award-winning director Keith Scholey in a video interview from the UK. “The UN ocean conference was coming up — a chance to ratify the agreement protecting 30% of oceans [the 2025 UN Ocean Conference takes place in Nice, France, from June 9—13]. The story came out of the need to get people to understand what we need to do.”
“Thank God David decided to come along on this journey, and then it rapidly fell into place. David's been on the planet for 100 years and, when he was a lad, we knew nothing about the ocean. Then throughout his life, we worked out a huge amount.”
In tandem with these discoveries has been “a massive period of destruction”, said Scholey. Ocean secured original footage of the bulldozing of the ocean floor by commercial fishing trawlers, which cause death and destruction of marine habitats. It's the equivalent of a scorched-earth policy on land, when all that’s left after industrial bottom trawling is grey rubble.
Getting footage of these trawling techniques was very difficult, he said. “Originally, we hoped to find archived material for that but it didn’t exist at the quality that we needed. Obviously, a lot of the people who do those practices are not interested in putting cameras there to show what's going on.
“We were lucky to work with scientists and conservation organisations to be able to get that.
“Now that we understand where the destruction comes from and we understand how the ocean works, we can work out what you do to fix it. The beauty is that this is terribly simple: you just have to leave a third of it alone and it bounces back.”
Riveting scenes in Ocean show how wrecked coral reefs recover over years and fish return to the bright underwater playground. “Conservation on land is really complicated... but in the ocean you have to do nothing, just leave it alone,” said Scholey.
His favourite moments were filming in the Azores, Portugal. “I've been there a number of times and it’s like going on safari at sea. There's so much life... but then you've got this huge challenge, filming in the open ocean. Stuff is very ephemeral. It pops up here and there, and by time you get there, it is all over... but if you have three or four good days, it’s spectacularly good.”
Filming over two years spanned locations as diverse as the Azores, California, Indonesia, the UK, Liberia, Antarctica, the Mediterranean and Hawaii.
Usually directors want to focus on their movies but Scholey’s passion for the ocean took over this conversation. A healthy ocean produces oxygen — Attenborough describes it as the world’s lung — and absorbs the harmful carbon dioxide warming Earth and driving climate change, he said.
Protecting the oceans also boosts fish and fisheries, “which have been in decline through my lifetime and (we) can actually turn that around as well”.
Scholey said it was remarkable making a film like this with Attenborough, with whom he has worked for decades, since Scholey joined the BBC Natural History Unit as a researcher on The Living Planet in the 1980s.
“He had just finished his first career [as a BBC executive], transforming everything. So he's this huge, powerful personality in his late 50s and David seems to have just remained in his 50s. He constantly keeps up to date and modernises with the times, so as a personality David doesn’t age.
“I think it’s his interest in everything and keeping current. The other thing I would say about David is that he is interested in everything except one thing... he finds it very boring to talk about David Attenborough.”
As for the film, he says the goal is to “understand how the ocean works and the damage we’re doing but also building a knowledge and love of the ocean. This could influence the fish people eat, the plastics they use and other daily choices affecting the environment.
“We hope that people will understand the need for 30x30 [the global conservation initiative aiming to protect 30% of the world’s ocean and land by 2030] and to enforce it.
“After all, it’s the public that owns the space, the open ocean. It doesn’t belong to a few corporations, it belongs to us.”
• Ocean will premiere on National Geographic across Africa and on Disney + on June 13.
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