On his 99th birthday, David Attenborough's 'Ocean' highlights the most important place on earth.

By Nell Lewis, CNN

(CNN) – Closing waves, glittering sea spray, a quiet area of ​​deep blue. These are the pictures that “Ocean with David Attenborough”, the latest film of the experienced station, open. After decades in which he shared stories about life on our planet, he tells the audience: “The most important place on earth is not on land, but at sea.”

The film, which was published in cinemas today and can stream on Disney+ and Hulu worldwide in June, coincides with Attenborough's 99th birthday and describes how the ocean has changed during his lifetime.

“In the past hundred years, scientists and discoverers have revealed remarkable new types, epic migrations and dazzling, complex ecosystems that I could have imagined as a young man,” he says in a press release. “In this film we share these wonderful discoveries, discover why our ocean is so bad health, and perhaps most importantly show how it can be restored to health.”

The documentary with feature lengths leads the spectators on a journey to coral reefs, seaweed forests and high-towering seamorners and shows the miracles of the underwater world and the important role that the ocean plays as the largest CO2 wash basin when defending the earth.

But the ocean also faces terrible threats. The film was shot when the planet experienced an extreme marine heat wave and shows the effects of the resulting mass coral bleaching: extensive cemeteries of bright white corals, without sea life.

The extent of the destruction by industrial fishing shows exceptional film material, which was shot off the UK coast and in the Mediterranean. Bottom trawlers are filmed on the towing nets with a heavy chain along the sea floor, indulgent creatures on their way and have dense clouds from carbon-rich sediment.

“The traces of destruction can be seen from space,” says Attenborough, adding that the process not only publishes large amounts of carbon dioxide, but is rejected the majority of the catch, since the fishermen usually only target in one way. “It is difficult to imagine that a wasteful way of catching,” he says.

Practice is not only devastating marine ecosystems, but also coastal communities that depend on fish for their livelihood. Industrial fishing vehicles – What Attenborough “huge factories at sea” refers to – browse and let the locals leave little. It is a form of “modern colonialism,” he says, and even reached the depths of the Antarctic.

“A moment of change”

Nevertheless, Attenborough has hope. He refers to the astonishing ability of the ocean to recover when it has space. In the Pacific Oceant of Kiribati and Palau and the Indonesian province of West Papua, coral reefs that have suffered mass blade events and areas in which fishing, like small sea reserves in the Mediterranean, have withdrawn to life. The film shows Papahānaumokuākea, the world's largest no-fish zone, off the coast of Hawaii, where local fishermen report plenty of fish stocks, since the population groups recover and exceed in neighboring waters, and in the populations such as the Albatross in the restrictions.

Enric Sala, founder of the untouched Seas program and scientific advisor to the film of the film, dipped the remarkable recovery of the ocean first -hand on the southern line islands, on which half of the corals died of Marine heat waves a decade ago. “After four years, they had completely recovered because the fish were there and the fish contributed to cleaning the reef so that the corals could come back,” he says CNN.

Sala shares Attenborough's optimism that the ocean could be saved if we act now. There are three main threats, he says: global warming, plastic pollution and overfishing. The easiest thing is to repair the latter: “If we stopped in one place today, fewer fish die; the system is restored the day after.”

The overarching message of the film is not that the entire fishing is bad, but that priority areas must be completely protected with clear no-take zones. According to the Marine Conservation Institute, less than 3% of the ocean are fully protected – This has to increase, says Attenborough.

“Success is possible,” he adds when he reminds the spectators that such actions have previously taken place on a global level. The whales were sought until extinction, but a ban on commercial whaling in 1986 celebrated many population groups.

Sala believes that Attenborough's film could help Contact the flood: “((The message that we get life out of the ocean, but if we protect at least a third, we can bring it back to life: I have said it for years, scientists have been saying it for years, but now that he says it, people will listen.”

In addition, the shocking pictures from the film illustrate the damage that industrial fishing for the ocean can cause. “That was out of sight for too long, out of sight,” says Sala. “We spoke to the brains of the decision -makers, now we have the pictures that speak directly to their intestines and their hearts.”

Before the United Nations Ocean Conference in June, the film will be published in Nice, France, in the hope that it could influence the governments to take measures. In principle, Member States have already agreed to protect 30% of the world's oceans, but the implementation was slow. In “Ocean” Attenborough demands more urgency.

“This could be the moment of change,” he says. “Almost every country on Earth has just agreed on paper to reach this minimum at least and to protect a third of the ocean. Together we are now the challenge of achieving this.”

The-Cnn-Wire
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