Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Battle to save our Blue Planet
More than 17 million of us have been transfixed every week by the wonders of Blue Planet II, 2017’s most-watched TV programme. But in the final episode on Sunday, Sir David Attenborough delivers a stark warning – our oceans are in crisis.
The 91-year-old broadcaster, says: “For years, we thought that the oceans were so vast and the inhabitants so infinitely numerous that nothing we could do could have an effect upon them.
“But now we know that was wrong. The oceans are under threat now as never before in human history.”
But he also brings hope, showing how the conservation efforts of some incredible individuals have helped turn things around, proving that the oceans have an astonishing capacity to recover.
An example is the herring population off Norway, which was on the brink of collapse from over-fishing in the 1960s. Studies in the past three years estimate they have bounced back to one billion.
Just 50 years ago, the Norwegian spring-spawning herring had all but disappeared and a decision was made to kill hundreds of orca whales, because they were their predators.
Today, the recovered herring stocks offer one of the greatest spectacles in the ocean as hundreds of humpback whales and orca gather for the feast.
The change came about after the Norwegian government imposed strict new rules for fishing. Marine biologist Eve Jourdain is dedicated to checking that the orca which come into the area to feed are also saved.
She and her team tag the orca to see how they hunt and how many herring they kill. They discovered that the whales kill less than 1% of the herring, while fishing takes 10%, allowing the population to be sustainable.
Meanwhile, in South Georgia, 900 miles north of Antarctica, Lucy