David Attenborough’s 'Ocean' is a brutal, beautiful wakeup call from the
sea
[June 07, 2025]
By ANNIKA HAMMERSCHLAG
NICE, France (AP) — An ominous chain unspools through the water. Then
comes chaos. A churning cloud of mud erupts as a net plows the seafloor,
wrenching rays, fish and a squid from their home in a violent swirl of
destruction. This is industrial bottom trawling. It’s not CGI. It’s
real. And it’s legal.
“Ocean With David Attenborough” is a brutal reminder of how little we
see and how much is at stake. The film is both a sweeping celebration of
marine life and a stark exposé of the forces pushing the ocean toward
collapse.
The British naturalist and broadcaster, now 99, anchors the film with a
deeply personal reflection: “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.”
The film traces Attenborough's lifetime — an era of unprecedented ocean
discovery — through the lush beauty of coral reefs, kelp forests and
deep-sea wanderers, captured in breathtaking, revelatory ways.
But this is not the Attenborough film we grew up with. As the
environment unravels, so too has the tone of his storytelling. “Ocean”
is more urgent, more unflinching. Never-before-seen footage of mass
coral bleaching, dwindling fish stocks and industrial-scale exploitation
reveals just how vulnerable the sea has become. The film’s power lies
not only in what it shows, but in how rarely such destruction is
witnessed.
“I think we’ve got to the point where we’ve changed so much of the
natural world that it’s almost remiss if you don’t show it,” co-director
Colin Butfield said. “Nobody’s ever professionally filmed bottom
trawling before. And yet it’s happening practically everywhere.”
The practice is not only legal, he adds, but often subsidized.
“For too long, everything in the ocean has been invisible,” Butfield
said. “Most people picture fishing as small boats heading out from a
local harbor. They’re not picturing factories at sea scraping the
seabed.”
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This movie poster provided by National Geographic shows “Ocean With
David Attenborough.” (National Geographic via AP)
 In one harrowing scene, mounds of
unwanted catch are dumped back into the sea already dead. About 10
million tons (9 million metrics tonnes) of marine life are caught
and discarded each year as bycatch. In some bottom trawl fisheries,
discards make up more than half the haul.
Still, “Ocean” is no eulogy. Its final act offers a stirring glimpse
of what recovery can look like: kelp forests rebounding under
protection, vast marine reserves teeming with life and the world’s
largest albatross colony thriving in Hawaii’s Papahānaumokuākea
Marine National Monument. These aren’t fantasies; they’re evidence
of what the ocean can become again, if given the chance.
Timed to World Oceans Day and the U.N. Ocean Conference in Nice, the
film arrives amid a growing global push to protect 30% of the ocean
by 2030 — a goal endorsed by more than 190 countries. But today,
just 2.7% of the ocean is effectively protected from harmful
industrial activity.
The film’s message is clear: The laws of today are failing the seas.
So-called “protected” areas often aren’t. And banning destructive
practices like bottom trawling is not just feasible — it’s
imperative.
As always, Attenborough is a voice of moral clarity. “This could be
the moment of change,” he says. “Ocean” gives us the reason to
believe — and the evidence to demand — that it must be.
“Ocean” premieres Saturday on National Geographic in the U.S. and
streams globally on Disney+ and Hulu beginning Sunday.
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