{"id":527600,"date":"2026-06-10T06:33:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T06:33:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/527600\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T06:33:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T06:33:18","slug":"ocean-doc-captures-the-horrors-of-seabed-trawling-for-the-first-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/527600\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Ocean’ Doc Captures the Horrors of Seabed Trawling for the First Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/p>\n

Sir David Attenborough turned 100 last month, and much of his incredible life\u2019s mission has been celebrating and showcasing the natural world. Billions of people on Earth have heard Attenborough\u2019s voice, heard his words, and seen his work. Arguably, nothing on Earth impacts life as much as the oceans, and that\u2019s the focus of \u201cOcean with David Attenborough,\u201d streaming now online and on National Geographic, Disney+, and Hulu. <\/p>\n

\u201cOcean\u201d\u2018s arrival on streaming comes after its award-winning run on the film festival circuit last year, during which the feature-length documentary racked up five wins and four nominations. PetaPixel watched the film ahead of its streaming debut and chatted with cinematographers Doug Anderson and Toby Strong. <\/p>\n

As Strong tells PetaPixel, he shot the above-the-water sequences, including interviews and aerial work, among other scenes, while Anderson worked below the water. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt being \u2018Ocean,\u2019 [Doug] is the master of this,\u201d Strong says. <\/p>\n

While Strong and Anderson\u2019s extensive cinematography work didn\u2019t overlap, insofar as they didn\u2019t directly work together in the field, they nonetheless managed to dial in an extremely cohesive and consistent visual language throughout the film. <\/p>\n

\"TwoAlex Warham and Jacca Deeble launch a drone to film footage of an ocean trawler. (Credit: Silverback Films and Open Planet Studios\/Alex Warham) \"AToby Strong films Hawaiian green sea turtles on the beach in Midway Atoll. (Credit: Silverback Films and Open Planet Studios\/Toby Nowlan) \"ADirector of photography Doug Anderson films the coral reefs of Raja Ampat, Indonesia. (Credit: Silverback Films and Open Planet Studios\/Olly Scholey) <\/p>\n

They both embraced a shallow depth of field, which was quite unusual in underwater filming sequences until very recently, with the advent of much larger cinema camera image sensors and lightweight, fast lenses. <\/p>\n

\u201cI spent about six months in the field for this one, and I don\u2019t think there was a shoot that went by without the latest material from topside being a very foundational stone at the beginning of our shooting period,\u201d Anderson says. \u201cWe spent a lot of time trying to work out how we were going to knock the ball back.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"AA school of sweetlips on a coral reef in Raja Ampat, Indonesia. (Credit: Silverback Films and Open Planet Studios\/Olly Scholey) <\/p>\n

\u201cWe both come from a lineage of this, as Doug said, natural history filmmaking,\u201d Strong says. \u201cIt\u2019s not sleepwalking, but it\u2019s like, \u2018Here\u2019s your budget, here\u2019s your kit.\u2019 It\u2019s very observed, very clean, very science-based, and that\u2019s great. We need that. I\u2019m very proud to have come through that lineage.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I think from [\u2018Ocean\u2019] director Toby Nolan, who is a visionary and brilliant, what we wanted to do, rather than observe, is make the viewer part of it. There\u2019s a gateway to emotion. You are seeing this, and it elicits emotion. I think that\u2019s why it has done so well.<\/p>\n

\"TwoA clown anemonefish on a coral reef in Raja Ampat, Indonesia. (Credit: Silverback Films and Open Planet Studios\/Olly Scholey) \"TwoTuna in Revillagigedo Islands, Mexico. (Credit: Erick Higuera) \"AA humpback whale breaches. (Credit: Silverback Films and Open Planet Studios\/Steve Benjamin) <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I think Doug and I both tried to do on each shoot is to think about our characters and to think about it. And for me it was, it was people, but Doug had different characters within it, different animal characters underwater. And Doug took that time to think about it and choose the best lenses for that.\u201d <\/p>\n

So while Anderson and Strong didn\u2019t directly work together, they both feel like they talked in a way, through the dailies they shot and sent through the production team. <\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t only the gear used to film wildlife documentaries and natural history films that has changed over the years; as Anderson notes, it\u2019s also how people watch films like \u201cOcean.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"AA compass jellyfish off the coast of Pembrokeshire, United Kingdom. (Credit: Olly Scholey) \"AA school of mobula rays in the offshore waters of the North Atlantic. (Credit: Olly Scholey) \"AA pair of Laysan albatross in Midway Atoll. (Credit: Silverback Films and Open Planet Studios\/Toby Nowlan) <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a much more cinematic experience now for people, you know, you\u2019ve got a 65-inch telly in your front room, whereas 15, 20 years ago, you had a tube. That\u2019s part of this, part of the process,\u201d Anderson says. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I think back over [my career], I literally have been doing this for 30 years, I think back over it, the bit that really has kept me going is changing what we do to reflect the way that the audience experiences what we do and the cinema of it has definitely changed,\u201d Anderson continues. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd from my point of view, definitely working at wider apertures, being much more careful about lens choice \u2014 like it has become really, really important and really kept me kind of going, you know, because I think if I was making television the same way as I made in the late \u201990s, I probably would\u2019ve lost interest,\u201d the cinematographer laughs. <\/p>\n

\u201cObviously being involved in something that is so meaningful\u2026 we\u2019d all been waiting so long to make [a film like this.] These films don\u2019t come up very often and when they do, you wanna absolutely smash it.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"AA pod of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins swimming across the coral reefs of the Red Sea, Egypt. (Credit: Olly Scholey) \"AerialThe shallow sea forests off the Isles of Scilly in the United Kingdom. (Credit: Olly Scholey) \"AA sheepshead wrasse in a kelp forest in California. (Credit: Olly Scholey) <\/p>\n

Strong echoes Anderson\u2019s sentiments. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve waited a long time to make something that allows you to be creative and make something that affects positive change in the world and reaches over three billion people. That\u2019s the holy grail that we all pray to work on,\u201d Strong says. <\/p>\n

As for depth of field and the cinematic look of \u201cOcean,\u201d he \u201cadores\u201d a narrow depth of field. <\/p>\n

One of Strong\u2019s go-to lenses is an EF-mount 24mm prime he\u2019s used for nearly two decades, \u201cif not more.\u201d <\/p>\n

Strong\u2019s favored cinema camera is also an arguably unorthodox choice in the nature and wildlife documentary space, he uses a Kinefinity Mavo Edge from China. (https:\/\/kinefinity.com\/products\/mavo-edge-8k) It\u2019s an 8K cinema camera with a 45-megapixel full-frame image sensor. <\/p>\n

\u201cNo one else uses them,\u201d Strong says. \u201cIt\u2019s cheap and it makes the most exquisite, soft, beautiful images.\u201d <\/p>\n

Alongside his go-to EF-mount 24mm prime lens, Strong also shot extensively with the legendary Canon K35 lenses, a favorite among many cinematographers. He has a quiz for any PetaPixel readers who watch the new film: can they spot which scenes were shot on the cheap, old EF primes, and which were shot with K35\u2019s, which cost as much as a house for a full set? He isn\u2019t convinced people will be able to tell the difference. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think for those people getting into filmmaking, it\u2019s important to be careful of hype. We can use appropriate technology and it doesn\u2019t have to be expensive to find beauty,\u201d Strong says. <\/p>\n

For both Anderson and Strong, working on a David Attenborough project is obviously a huge honor.<\/p>\n

\"AnDavid Attenborough looks out to sea in Southern England. From National Geographic, Silverback Films and Open Planet Studios, and in association with All3Media International, documentary special OCEAN WITH DAVID ATTENBOROUGH highlights the vital, achievable actions the world can take to restore the ocean and stabilize the climate, debuting in 2025. (Credit: Conor McDonnell)
(Conor McDonnell) <\/p>\n

For Strong, working directly with Sir David Attenborough for interview sequences was a particularly memorable part of \u201cOcean.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cNormally, you should make your film and then you\u2019ll interview David at the end. He\u2019ll do the voiceover because you know what we filmed,\u201d Strong says. \u201cDavid was really worried, and the team was quite worried, that David might not be there when we finish this film and this meant so much to David. So we recorded his commentary record before we filmed anything else. Like, you never do that. Thank goodness as we sit here, we\u2019ve just had David\u2019s 100th. So we could redo it, but that shows just how much it meant to him that we did that.\u201d <\/p>\n

Strong is also grateful for his time working with fishermen in West Africa. The team spent a few days with the community there, and as Strong recalls, everything just flowed really nicely. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt magical. That felt really special, doing something and working your craft, and it\u2019s having a positive effect on people. That was a good thing.\u201d <\/p>\n

For Anderson, his most impactful shooting work was much less positive, but no less important. <\/p>\n

\u201cOcean\u201d shows underwater footage of real, active dredging on the ocean floor for the first time ever. It is devastating, visceral, violent, and frankly, hard to watch. The damage is incomprehensibly swift. <\/p>\n

As soon as the film was greenlit, Anderson and other members of the team were in an office in Bristol, England, trying to figure out what they were going to do, and what had to be in the film. <\/p>\n

\u201cPutting bottom dredging in the film, on the screen, no holds barred\u201d was vital. \u201cIf we achieved that, the rest of the story would sort of tell itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeeing those images coming up for the first time, it was, well, it was two things, really. One is the normal sense of relief to capture it. But also just the horror of it. I spent my entire life underwater and I\u2019ve seen the effects of bottom trawling\u2026 It\u2019s like the day after the Somme, you know?<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I never imagined that the actual visuals of the gear on the seabed would be as traumatic to watch as they were. It brought a tear to my eye on the boat. I just couldn\u2019t believe it. It really shouldn\u2019t have taken us this long to do this.\u201d <\/p>\n

As Sir David Attenborough came to realize after decades of traveling the world, the health of Earth and its inhabitants is less about the land itself and much more about a healthy ocean. A healthy ocean means a healthy planet. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to know what\u2019s working and what isn\u2019t, and to see firsthand what we are doing to Earth\u2019s oceans. \u201cOcean With David Attenborough\u201d beautifully, expertly captures it all. The good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between. <\/p>\n

But it also offers hope in the form of a solution. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very easy with these things to think, \u2018I\u2019m powerless. There\u2019s nothing I can do,’\u201d Strong says. \u201cBut we have hope, we have agency. How we act as an individual affects what happens to the ocean. We can have a tremendous effect.\u201d <\/p>\n

Image credits:<\/strong> National Geographic, Silverback Films, and Open Planet Studios <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sir David Attenborough turned 100 last month, and much of his incredible life\u2019s mission has been celebrating and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[263],"tags":[3616,2054,18,117,19,1915,17,327,95379,95380,3618,3619,133,227674],"class_list":["post-527600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-conservation","tag-documentary","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-interview","tag-ireland","tag-movies","tag-natgeo","tag-nationalgeographic","tag-nature","tag-ocean","tag-science","tag-sirdavidattenborough"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116724421406563780","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}