Ocean with David Attenborough (2025)

[bunniefuu]

[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 ill*gal?

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 k*lled 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"]