David Attenborough: Ocean comes out on the beloved presenter's 99th birthday, and it's a furious call to arms

After 71 years on our screens, the warm, plummy tones of David Attenborough's voice are easy to bring to mind.

Take this quote from his new documentary, Ocean, where he's talking about a coral reef.

"One could spend days swimming above it and never tire of the colours, the movement, the interactions; it's life at its most mesmerising." (Admit it, you read that in his voice, didn't you?)

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The voice is back with gusto in Ocean, delivering goosebumps and shivers aplenty. But, there is something new here.

Soaring cinematography takes us to the awe-inspiring depths of the ocean, filling our hearts with wonder at its treasures.

But then it flips: the aquamarine Edens we've been careening through suddenly go greyscale and the music stops.

After conjuring underwater magic, the shots become shockingly lifeless. Smashed coral, murky water and debris is all we see in the aftermath of bottom trawling, a process where enormous nets are towed along the ocean floor, picking up everything in their path.

And the voice is now filled with icy cold rage.

As expected, Ocean is about the glory of the watery world — which feeds us, cleans our air and could save us from climate catastrophe.

But it is also about how we are killing it.

The day of the film's release, May 8, is David Attenborough's 99th birthday — and he has come to the party ready to fight.

Born in Isleworth, Middlesex in 1926, David Attenborough has seen the world buck and writhe through unbelievable change and innovation.

He was 17 years old when the first ever successful scuba dive took place. Before then, the ocean was thought of as dark and ominous, and largely empty.

"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. But now, as I approach the end of my life, we know the opposite is true," he says in Ocean.

It all changed once people could see what was going on under there. Attenborough can still remember the first time he got to use scuba gear.

"I was so taken aback by the spectacle before me, I forgot, momentarily, to breathe," he says.

"Nothing I'd ever seen on land could come close to the sensory overload of so much life, so much diversity, right before my eyes."

He, in turn, has helped change the way the world sees our natural environment.

Starting in 1954 with a little three-part show on BBC called Zoo Quests (which he only got to host after the original talent fell ill), Attenborough went on to become synonymous with nature documentaries. He has produced countless shows, has won three Emmy Awards for Outstanding Narration, and is the only person to have won BAFTA awards in black-and-white, colour, high-definition, and 3D and 4K resolution.

Even at 99, Attenborough maintains an impish school-boy delight as he talks about giant kelp forests and sea mountains that soar to three miles high.

"After living for nearly 100 years on this planet," he says in Ocean, "I now understand the most important place on Earth is not on land, but at sea."

We see a lot more of Attenborough in Ocean than we normally do in his documentaries. In between riotously colourful camera pans through coral cities, we cut to him alone in a room, hair starkly white against the dark background, staring down the barrel with his steely gaze.

Previously, the beloved presenter has been criticised for not saying enough about threats to the natural world, particularly around animal extinction and the climate crisis.

In 2018, he said in an interview with The Observer that he didn't want to sound the alarm so frequently that it would become a "turn-off" for his shows, which are "not ecological programs, not proselytising programs". Later that year, he did appear at UN climate talks and said climate change was "our greatest threat in thousands of years".

Now that he's out from behind the camera, he's batting aside any previous concerns to ensure the message comes through.

He doesn't shield the emotion from his voice as he talks about all the ways humans are destroying the ocean — with a particular emphasis on the large-scale destruction caused by bottom trawling.

Sometimes, he seems like he might weep. At other times, he's disappointed. But mostly, he is angry.

Acknowledging that he is nearing the end of his life, he is not interested in going gently into that good night.

"If I asked you, how much of the ocean was fully protected, what would you say? 20 per cent? At least 10, surely? The answer is less than 3 per cent. In practical terms, none of it."

He rails against bottom trawling happening across the world, apoplectic over the fact that the practice is not only legal, but encouraged by government subsidies from numerous countries' governments.

He points out how crucial the ocean is for humanity and how it can help us avoid complete climate catastrophe (did you know ocean plankton removes almost a third of our carbon emissions?).

"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," he rages.

"This is modern colonialism at sea."

He sits on a beach alone, white hair blowing wildly in the wind, blue parka a bright blob in the mist, and looks defeated.

"We have drained the life from our ocean … Now, we are almost out of time."

The thing about living for 99 years, though, is that nothing is new.

When he was a young man, large-scale commercial whaling had pushed populations almost to extinction: the blue whale, the largest of them all, was hunted until just 1 per cent was left.

"I remember thinking that was it. There was no coming back. We had lost the great whales," Attenborough recalls.

But then, after many years of work and campaigning, public pressure forced global powers to enact a moratorium on commercial whaling, which came into effect in 1986.

"What followed was beyond our wildest dreams. The number of humpback whales in the south Atlantic tripled in just 10 years," he says.

It was after this, in 2001, that Attenborough got to see a blue whale for the first time, and the world saw it with him on screen in The Life of Mammals.

"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," he says now.

Despite Attenborough's anger, there is still the distinct pulse of love evident whenever he speaks. And not just for the ocean and the natural world, but for humans, too.

Dang it if Attenborough isn't going into his 100th year with hope.

He's not letting us off the hook, but he is dropping all pretence of neutrality and urging his beloved viewers, the generations of people who have travelled with him to the most remote parts of the world, to do something to protect the world's oceans.

In the new documentary, he shows us places where strict restrictions have led to remarkable ocean recovery, but in a way that has also supported fishing communities to thrive.

He points to the 2022 UN Ocean Conference, where a (voluntary) global commitment was established to protect at least 30 per cent of the world's ocean by 2030. There is another conference happening in June this year, where there will be a push to enforce the protections

"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," he says.

"I'm sure that nothing is more important."