Ocean, Sir David Attenborough’s latest documentary, exposes the curse of modern-day industrial fishing: bottom trawling.
Sir David cannot contain his anger. This highly destructive practice is laying waste to marine life all over the globe. It involves gigantic trawlers pulling a massive metal beam across the ocean floor and driving all the creatures it throws up into a huge net behind. The beam shatters everything in its path, leaving immense scars on the face of the planet.
“The trawlers tear the seabed with such force that their trails of destruction can be seen from space,” he declares, clearly shocked.
There is more. “An area almost the size of the entire Amazon rainforest is trawled every year, and much of that seabed is ploughed again, over and over,” continues the world’s most respected naturalist. “This churning of the sediment unleashes vast amounts of carbon dioxide, which in turn contributes to the warming of our planet.”
Left: A clown anemonefish on a coral reef beaming with life in Raja Ampat, Indonesia. © Silverback Films & Open Planet Studios/Olly Scholey.
Right: An aerial view of the impacts of bottom trawling on the ocean floor, China. © Silverback Films & Open Planet Studios.
To make matters worse, the trawlers usually only hunt for one particular species and discard three-quarters of their catch, an appallingly wasteful practice. As you can see, there is no environmental upside to bottom trawling.
What makes it even more concerning is this method of industrial fishing is not widely known. Because the damage takes place beneath the surface of the ocean, it is “out of sight, out of mind.”
99-year-old Sir David, who shows more vim and vigour than people half his age, asserts, “The idea of bulldozing through a pristine rainforest causes outrage, yet we do the equivalent underwater thousands of times every day.
“The idea of bulldozing through a pristine rainforest causes outrage, yet we do the equivalent underwater thousands of times every day.”
– Sir David Attenborough
“Ancient seagrass meadows ploughed into silt. Delicate hundred-year-old sponge gardens that once sheltered bustling communities destroyed in an instant.” It is a worldwide scandal that this environmental scourge is allowed to continue.
No section of the globe is immune to this devastating procedure, which is further impoverishing already impoverished communities. Rich nations are spending $20 billion annually to fund this extremely harmful industry. “Three billion people rely on our ocean for food,” says Sir David. “But ships sent by a few wealthy nations are starving coastal communities of food sources they have relied on for millennia. This is modern colonialism at sea.
“Some 400,000 industrial vessels now hunt in every corner of the globe. Nowhere is too far or too deep. Even the most remote parts of the planet are no longer safe.”
All that might be about to change, though. Sir David’s Ocean is a powerful documentary that highlights the catastrophic menace to our seas caused by our own greed.
This beautifully photographed, feature-length documentary has a very strong campaigning message. The aim of Ocean, which is streaming on Disney+, is to wake viewers up to this existential danger to our future on this fragile planet.
A glimpse at the horrors of bottom trawling:
The world’s most influential advocate for the natural world, Sir David describes it as the one of most important documentaries of his 75-year career. Ocean includes the first ever footage of bottom trawling, filmed in Turkey, with the agreement of the government, and off the coast of Plymouth, as part of a scientific study organised by Marine Biological Association.
It is heartbreaking to watch the footage. It shows the gruesome consequence of bottom trawling: a seabed that resembles the aftermath of a cataclysmic war. Exposing to the world the grim reality of bottom trawling for the first time, the film enables audiences to grasp the extent to which it is trashing our oceans.
The documentary also emphasises the alarming truth that all our lives depend on the health of our seas. No ocean, no human existence.
The film makes an urgent plea for us to act before it’s too late. Dr Enric Sala, National Geographic Explorer, founder of an organisation entitled Pristine Seas and executive producer of Ocean, comments: “I couldn’t think of a more crucial time for this film to be available to a global audience. For the first time, people can see the destruction of bottom trawling unfold in front of their eyes – the heavy nets dragging across the ocean’s precious floor and killing everything in their wake.”
But all is not lost. Action is now being taken on a global scale to counter the grave threat posed by bottom trawling. The recent UN Ocean Conference, held in Nice, marked a major breakthrough. 50 countries ratified a crucial new accord, committing to create strictly enforced Marine Protection Areas in 30 percent of their waters by 2030. Dozens more nations have promised to set up these No Take Zones by the end of the year.
The establishment of Marine Protection Areas may be our last chance to save life in our oceans. Left: A pod of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins swimming across the coral reefs of the Red Sea, Egypt. Right: A cheeky-looking sheepshead wrasse in a kelp forest in California.
Both photos © Olly Scholey.
Marine Protection Areas are proven to have a dramatic impact on fish populations. That positive effect has been observed even in the most overfished sea on earth, the Mediterranean. There the fish population had almost completely collapsed.
Yet when a Marine Protection Area was established covering less than 1 percent of the Mediterranean, the impact was seismic. The sea erupted back to life. Giant kelp forests flourished once again and fish populations boomed as a result. If left alone, the ocean has an astonishing ability to regenerate in double-quick time.
Keith Scholey, the director of Ocean, outlines why Marine Protection Areas are such an effective concept. “The beauty of the idea of marine protection for 30 percent of the ocean is that you can actually fish the hell out of the rest of it. Because of the spillover, you will get so much going into the areas outside the Marine Protection Areas. A lot of marine biologists think you wouldn’t even have to have fishing quotas. There’s always going to be enough coming out of the 30 percent.”
The director adds, “There is all this muddle of regulation surrounding the ocean at the moment, but actually this is a very simple thing, and it’s absolutely been proved to work. We will get a wilder ocean than any of us have ever known in our generation, which is extraordinary. It’s a win-win.”
In contrast to the many people who are predicting doom and gloom for our oceans, Scholey is hopeful about the future. “I’m very optimistic. The science works. If the UN understands all this, if world leaders go down this road, the ocean will recover, and it will recover fast, and that will be better for humanity.”
“The beauty of marine protection for 30 percent of the ocean is that you can actually fish the hell out of the rest of it.”
– Keith Scholey
The director, who won an Emmy in 2019 for Our Planet, is also optimistic that Ocean can make a difference. “I couldn’t bear to think that I did nothing at this moment where we can bring about really good change.”
Sala echoes that sentiment. “I hope the film makes people all over the world fall in love with the ocean and inspires them to protect it.”
The involvement of Sir David, who has built up a worldwide reputation for complete trustworthiness over the past seven decades, bolsters the film’s credibility no end.
Scholey, who has worked with the great man for over 40 years, reflects, “The extraordinary thing with David is that he can make a film about a subject like this and everyone trusts what he says to be right.”
It is only fitting and proper that Sir David has the final say. “This could be the moment of change,” he exclaims, the excitement clear in his voice. “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.”
A beat. “After a lifetime of filming the natural world, I cannot remember a more exciting opportunity for our species.”
Get inspired by David Attenborough on the beautiful life in our oceans HERE
Ocean is currently streaming on Disney+.
Author: James Rampton
Lead image: A humpback whale breaches. © Silverback Films and Open Planet Studios/Steve Benjamin.
Videos of Ocean with David Attenborough: Nat Geographic / Silverback Films & Open Planet Studios. Courtesy of Disney+.
If you liked this article, you may be interested in the IUCN Red List of threatened species, and in Nature, Wildlife and Climate Change.
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