‘If we save the sea, we save our world’ – Attenborough urges ocean protection

Sir David Attenborough has issued a powerful rallying cry to protect the oceans in a film released to coincide with his 99th birthday.

The new documentary, Ocean With David Attenborough, includes dramatic footage of the devastation fishing practices such as bottom trawling wreak on the seabed and its wildlife, as well as highlighting the wonder of natural habitats, from kelp forests to coral reefs, and the need to protect them.

In one sequence the camera follows a bottom trawl – where nets are dragged with a metal beam across the seabed to catch fish – as it travels over the ocean floor, destroying the habitat, stirring up silt which releases carbon, and scooping up species indiscriminately.

It also shows before and after footage of scallop dredging off Scotland’s Isle of Arran, to highlight the damage it causes, with Sir David warning that bottom trawling is still allowed in marine protected areas worldwide, and subsidised by governments.

Elsewhere the film documents the damage being done to coral reefs by climate change warming the oceans and causing mass bleaching events, followed by a growth of algae on the corals which kills them off.

It also shows factory ships catching krill – a key food source for Antarctic wildlife from penguins to whales – on an industrial scale for fish farming, health supplements and pet food.

And local Liberian fishermen are dwarfed by the industrial trawlers off the coast of west Africa, threatening their livelihoods, as Sir David warns wealthy nations are sending vessels to catch fish in “modern colonialism at sea”.

But in a documentary released in cinemas ahead of a major UN ocean conference in France in June, Sir David also offers a message of hope that, given the chance, the oceans can recover and provide food, store carbon in seabeds, kelp and seagrass, and allow wildlife to thrive.

The film includes footage of kelp forests off California where fishing has been fully prevented, which have recovered to healthy ecosystems, and boosting lobster populations that spill over into the wider sea where catches have increased, and the world’s largest marine protected area off Hawaii.

And Sir David points to the reversal of fortunes for the world’s whales after an international whaling ban was secured, and sites where coral recovers after bleaching where fishing is banned, as fish eat off the algae and allow the ecosystem to regrow.

“The ocean can recover faster than we thought possible,” he says in the film.

“If we just let nature take its course, the sea will save itself.”

And he concludes: “If we save the sea, we save our world.”

Conservationists are calling for governments at the June conference to deliver on pledges to protect 30% of the world’s oceans, protect the high seas or open ocean outside national maritime borders and halt the most damaging forms of fishing.

In the UK, Blue Marine Foundation has launched a campaign, The Bottom Line, which is calling on Environment Secretary Steve Reed to end bottom trawling in marine protected areas, with the charity’s co-founder Charles Clover labelling the practice “ecological vandalism”.

Mr Clover said of the film: “This is, if not the first, which it may well be, certainly the best documented example of trawling footage ever filmed, and its effect upon audiences will be truly shocking.

“That this is going on on the continental shelves of the world every day and the devastation it leaves behind would make anyone cry.”

Bottom trawling is still permitted in nearly three-quarters (74%) of England’s inshore marine protected areas and 92% of Scotland’s, Blue Marine Foundation said.

Marine minister Emma Hardy said: “Our precious marine animals and habitats have been under threat for too long.

“This Government is committed to protecting and restoring our oceans to good health and banning destructive bottom trawling where it is damaging protected seabed habitats.”