Attenborough uncovers nature’s colourful secrets
THE Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Sir David Attenborough named our new polar research ship yesterday… and sank any last hopes of it being called Boaty McBoatface.
The £200million vessel is now officially the RRS Sir David Attenborough (Royal Research Ship), named in honour of the BBC naturalist.
But the joke name topped a 2016 public poll on what to call her with 124,109 votes.
So the Natural Environment Research Council has named her long-range robotic submarine Boaty McBoatface. Wills and Kate looked on as Sir David, 93, told the crowd of several thousand at the Cammell Laird shipyard, on the Wirral, he had been given the “greatest possible honour”.
He said the ship will probe the climate crisis, adding it “will find the science to deal with the problems facing the world today and will increasingly do so tomorrow”.
William, 37, told him: “There has never been a more important moment for this ship to get to work.And there is no person more fitting for this beacon of scientific research to be named after than you.”
Kate, 37, pressed a button to release a bottle of champagne to break on its hull, giving a traditional christening.
Local children involved in the British Antarctic Survey’s Polar Explorer programme, who came dressed as penguins, handed her flowers.
Final fixtures and fittings are almost done on the 450ft, 16,500-ton RRS Sir David Attenborough. Commissioning trials will start within weeks before the floating science lab starts missions in the Arctic and Antarctic.
Yard worker Mackenzie Boyd, who joined Cammell Laird as an apprentice, said it was his first project as a plater.
He said: “It’s amazing.This ship is already famous and it hasn’t even gone to sea yet.”
It was ordered to replace the James Clark Ross and Ernest Shackleton, which between them gave 50 years’ service for polar science. SIR David Attenborough will present a new BBC natural history series to show how insects and birds use ultraviolet colours to signal to one another.
Specially-built cameras reveal shades and tones, normally invisible to the human eye, that play a vital role in communications between many species.
Viewers will also see how predators use colour to cheat by taking on the identity of an animal they prey on.
The three-part special, Life In Colour, will begin filming next year in Costa Rica and Europe. Executive producer Stephen Dunleavy said: “The use of colour is an under-explored aspect of animal behaviour.”