TIME TO WAKE UP
. . . by the Blue Planet II producer behind those graphic TV sequences, who says it’s not too late to save the oceans
THE heartbreaking pictures of a mother whale carrying her dead baby in her mouth – screened on Blue Planet II at the weekend – have provoked shock and sadness in many viewers.
As the show’s executive producer, I knew the likely effect of screening such an affecting film sequence. I felt the same wrenching emotions when I first saw it – pity for the grieving mother, and horror at the realisation that man-made pollution is probably responsible.
I believe strongly that we were right to show it – and I hope these devastating images will help alert everyone to the dangers of plastic now pouring into our oceans. Blue Planet II is not a campaigning series, but we set out to film the story of today’s oceans, and the poisonous spread of plastics and chemical pollutants is one of the headline issues we could not ignore.
My fervent hope is that these pictures will help to stem the tide of toxic pollution, and above all plastic, into our seas. It’s not too late to search for a solution.
Short-finned pilot whales are among the most sociable creatures in the ocean. They live in tight-knit family groups and are highly intelligent, with complex language skills and individual personalities. I have no doubt they are capable, just like us, of emotions, such as love and grief.
The mother whale had been carrying her dead calf for days as she swam. The other whales were clearly aware of what had happened, and seemed deeply affected.
The Blue Planet II team couldn’t take the dead baby away for an autopsy, and without scientific analysis it is impossible to say with certainty what killed it. But ongoing studies are helping us understand what may be going on, thanks to the work of scientists including Dr Paul Jepson, of the Institute of Zoology, who has studied how chemical pollution is a likely cause of declines in some whale and dolphin populations in Europe.
We believe this is because firsttime mothers are drawing on their deep fat reserves for the first time, to make rich milk. Because those fat reserves have not been tapped before, ultra-high levels of toxins caused by ingesting plastic have been allowed to build up in it.
This could help to explain why one pod of killer whales off the Scottish coast have not been able to raise a single live calf in the past 25 years.
It isn’t just that plastic itself is harmful. Worse still is its tendency to attract other toxins in the water, almost like a magnet. Poisons cling to it, and when the plastic is swallowed, scientists fear those toxins could be released into the gut of the animal. Certainly, some whales and dolphins are among the most contaminated creatures on the planet.
It’s most likely that toxic chemicals killed the baby whale featured in Sunday’s programme, but plastic may well have played a part in the process.
Plastic is a global issue because, as presenter Sir David Attenborough explained last Sunday, ocean currents can carry plastic waste everywhere. In the graphic example highlighted on the show, shipping containers were washed overboard from the cargo ship Ever Laurel in a Pacific storm off Hawaii, on January 10, 1992.
One container was filled with 28,800 ‘Friendly Floatee’ bathroom toys – and these yellow ducks and green frogs have been popping up all over the world ever since. Within ten months, some were washed up on the coast of Alaska but more were still arriving three years later. Meanwhile, they were being found on the British coastline, and even frozen into Arctic ice. This explains why some of the most remote places on the planet are also some of the worst polluted. Ocean currents circle around slow whirlpools called gyres, far from the coastlines. Like soapsuds circling the plughole of a bath, plastics are drawn towards these gyres, and often wash up on islands in the Pacific and the Caribbean which have very small human populations.
One of the many dangers for marine life are the large pieces of plastic waste which can entangle themselves around marine animals, and even drown them. Last Sunday’s episode included a distressing shot of a turtle with a frayed plastic sack looped around its neck. The animal was exhausted by its struggles to free itself, and could not swim or feed.
Fortunately, though viewers did not see this, our cameraman was able to approach the turtle and cut it free.
For some, help is impossible. In January, a 20ft Cuvier’s beaked whale beached itself repeatedly on the Norwegian island of Sotra. Unable to guide it back to sea, vets were forced to euthanise it. The post-mortem examination revealed 30 large plastic bags in its stomach, and numerous smaller ones that had once contained bread or fruit.
The amount of plastic in our seas defies belief. Eight million tons enter the ocean every year. Worldwide, there are around five trillion pieces. Some of it was designed to kill sea-life. Fishermen’s nets will go on trapping fish for decades if they are abandoned at sea. Lobster pots keep snaring creatures on the sea bed, even if they are never emptied.
Smaller pieces of plastic have been found at great depths: A shopping bag next to a deep-sea vent at the bottom of the Pacific,
food packaging a mile deep in the Atlantic and more than 600 miles from the nearest land.
It is estimated that half of all turtles have ingested plastic. For birds, it’s even worse – an estimated 90 per cent of seabirds have mistaken plastic for food. The odour of rotting algae on plastic attracts them, and they swallow it, often regurgitating it for their young.
On the island of South Georgia, close to the Antarctic, we were horrified to see how plastics kill chicks. One young albatross had swallowed a toothpick that pierced its intestines. It must have died in agony.
A cameraman took another sickening image of a bird’s skeleton, perched on a heap of bottletops – the former contents of its stomach.
But it isn’t just the plastic debris that kills. The action of the waves can break down plastic into particles small enough for the tiniest creatures to consume. Recent studies show that even coral reefs are ingesting plastic.
Microplastics are in every part of the food chain and beyond. I’ve filmed and dived all over the world, and on remote beaches I have been mystified to see strange artificial colours bleeding into virgin sands. This effect is caused by millions of invisibly small grains of plastic becoming part of the beach.
This crisis has to be addressed. Raising public awareness so that people use fewer supermarket bags has been a significant success, helping all of us to realise that everyone can play a part, however small. The Government’s 5p levy on plastic bags has substantially reduced Britain’s plastic waste at a stroke.
But we all use plastic every day, so new campaigns for recycling plastic bottles have the potential for further big changes, encouraging us to take positive steps to reduce waste, whether that’s by actively recycling, or by refusing to buy products with too much needless plastic packaging.
We don’t yet know the full impact that plastic is having on our seas. What we do know is that an increasing number of eminent scientists are deeply concerned.
Sir David has told me how, when he was a child, plastic was seen as a miraculous material, because it never decayed. That same indestructible quality is what makes it so dangerous now.
But we cannot afford to despair. Mankind was ingenious enough to invent plastic – now we must find the ingenuity to deal with it.