Battle to save our Blue Planet
Conservationists saving our Blue Planet
IN HARMONY Trawlermen work to save orcas
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
Pollution and plastic waste must be tackled for sake of ocean life DAVID ATTENBOROUGH TV NATURALIST
Quinn is part of a British Antarctic team which has been studying the albatross for the past 40 years. The largest bird in the sky, the adult albatross travel thousands of miles collecting fish and squid to bring back to their young. But in the past decade, their population has been in decline, and Lucy and the team have become alarmed at what the albatross parents are attempting to feed their chicks. Lucy collects what the young birds have managed to regurgitate and this has recently included plastic bags and food packaging. One young bird died after it swallowed a plastic toothpick, which pierced its stomach. Using GPS trackers, Lucy’s team can see where the adult birds have been hunting – and they cover vast continents. She says: “This isn’t just a problem in these remote parts, it’s happening worldwide. It’s our rubbish going into the oceans and our problem that we need to solve.”
On the east coast of America, Dr Leslie Hart is also concerned about contamination causing the mysterious deaths of young dolphins.
She and her team of scientists perform autopsies on the dolphins and the findings have left them gravely concerned.
Leslie says: “Looking at very young dolphins is always heartbreaking. We are often shocked by the high levels of toxins that we detect in these animals.”
Sir David says plastics in the sea break down into tiny particles, called micro-plastics, which are swallowed by plankton. They are eaten by bigger fish which are, in turn, eaten and it goes on until they reach the dolphins at the top of the food chain.
He says the dolphins swim in a “toxic soup”, adding: “It’s now thought that a mother’s contaminated milk could kill her calf. Industrial pollution and the discarding of plastic waste must be tackled for the sake of all life in the oceans.”
There is happier news in the Caribbean, where a one-man operation begun 20 years ago has turned into a group effort which has saved leatherback turtles from the threat of extinction.
The turtles, the largest in the world, have ancestry that stretches back 100 million years to the dinosaur age. In recent times, turtle numbers have fallen catastrophically due to hunting.
Len Peters, who lives in Trinidad, says: “I grew up in a household where the presence of turtle meat was normal. The fridge was full of it.”
But when he realised leatherbacks were on the brink of extinction, he took action.
The mothers were being killed as they arrived on beaches to lay their eggs, so he embarked on a mission to protect them. After being threatened with violence by angry locals, he came up with a plan to make the turtles a tourist attraction, using villagers as guides.
Len says: “The poachers are part of the conservation programme.” Now, instead of seeing 40 turtles on the beach at the height of the laying season, he is seeing 500. Similarly, in Sri Lanka, the fortunes of the sperm whales have been reversed. They had been killed in vast numbers, but when the civil war ended in 2009 and fishermen were safe to take to the waters once again, there were rumoured sightings of huge pods, the likes of which had not been seen for years. Marine guide Daya searched for three years before he found them. He says: “We saw 15 go past us, then another pod and after 40 I started counting, but still they kept coming and I lost count. I estimate that there were 300 sperm whales.” Sir David sees it as a reason to be hopeful. He says: “When sea-going nations come together, they can achieve astonishing results.” Blue Planet II, BBC1, Sunday, 8pm
SIR David Attenborough is switching to dry land to probe the harrowing life and death of an animal star.
After the final part of Blue Planet II on Sunday, Sir David looks at the mistreatment of Jumbo, a 10ft 6in elephant who gave rides in London Zoo and was sold to US circus owner P.T. Barnum in 1882.
Six-ton Jumbo, whose name came to mean large, died three years later supposedly charging a goods train in Canada to save his keeper and a fellow elephant, Tom Thumb, said Barnum.
But eyewitnesses told a different story of the circus’s star attraction running away – and scientists found no evidence of skull fractures. Experts believe he died being hit in the rear. Mike Baker, of Canada’s Elgin County Museum, branded Barnum’s story “pure bunkum”.
The documentary also reveals Jumbo may have had painful toothache from being fed sticky buns and pelvis damage from giving rides at London Zoo to visitors including Queen Victoria’s children. Scientists think toothache accounts for his night-time, cage-smashing rages.
Attenborough and the Giant Elephant, BBC1, 9pm, Sunday.