Green turtles can live up to 90 years. And wherever in the world they swim, when a turtle meets an old friend, one says to the other: “Damn!” That David Attenborough has been around for a long time.’
Arguably the greatest broadcaster in the history of television and arguably the most influential teacher who ever lived, Sir David first showed us green turtles during his Zoo Quest adventures on Raine Island in 1957.
More than 65 years later, his great planet Earth III (BBC1) brought us back to this remote outpost, about 75 miles off the Australian coast, to revisit the turtles.
Tens of thousands of them strand here every year to lay eggs. The sight of young animals fighting their way out of their nests and staggering to the shore always moves us and is a vivid symbol of how vulnerable wild animals are. It was extraordinary to hear Sir David when the cameras returned. No one else has such a perspective on this phenomenon.
Sir David Attenborough is arguably the greatest broadcaster in the history of television and arguably the most influential teacher who ever lived, writes CHRISTOPHER STEVENS
In Planet Earth III, Sir David returns to Raine Island, where he first introduced us to green turtles in his Zoo Quest adventures in 1957
But Zoo Quest didn’t tell the whole story – and neither did Planet Earth III. Before this eight-part series aired, Sir David did not do any personal interviews, but I messaged him and asked about Raine Island.
He replied that the first visit happened by chance when “a guy in the pub who had a boat” in Oz offered to take him and the film crew. The journey lasted ten days and a shocking sight awaited them.
“There were dead turtles everywhere. In the 19th century, convicts had built a watchtower and dug stones from the center of the island, giving the island a saucer-shaped shape.
Turtles came up and after laying their eggs they went back downhill to what they thought was the sea, except it was actually in the middle of the island. So the place was completely littered with turtle carcasses. “It was the most depressing thing I’ve ever seen.”
Undoubtedly too disturbing for the most primitive television audience of the 1950s. Luckily, conservation workers have reshaped the island, moving thousands of tonnes of sand, and the turtles are thriving – although rising sea levels are a real threat.
For Sir David, now 97, the return of the cameras was one of the highlights of the show. “I was fascinated to see it all again,” he said.
Every moment of this opening episode was mesmerizing. High-resolution photography is more explosive and beautiful than ever before, and drones are giving us images we could never have imagined, such as the spectacle of Cape fur seals threatening a great white shark.
They pounced on it, crowding like crows chasing a buzzard. Underwater photography alone could not show this, although a pair of divers did get into the water.
Sir David revealed his first trip to Raine Island was depressing as he was littered with the bodies of dead turtles who became confused and thought the center of the saucer-shaped island was the sea
High-resolution photography is more explosive and beautiful than ever before, and drones are giving us images we could never have imagined, such as the spectacle of Cape fur seals threatening a great white shark
A family of ostriches leaves their nest in the heart of the Namib Desert after waiting over 40 days for their eggs to hatch
They stayed near the seabed and filmed back to back – the fur seals may get away with being cocky, but it’s not advisable to take your chances with a great white seal.
It’s impossible to label any Attenborough series from the last seven decades as ‘the best’.
But Planet Earth III can certainly lay claim to being the most visually impressive. The flamingos on the Yucatan salt flats, the Namibian desert lions, the archerfish and the pregnant right whale: they were all breathtaking to see.
Images of a whale nursing a newborn calf were particularly moving since the extinction of these animals seemed inevitable just a few decades ago.
When Sir David made his series Life On Earth in the 1970s, whale killing was rampant. Before the 1986 whaling moratorium, fleets slaughtered them as quickly as they could find them. The Soviet Union’s intention, as revealed in a BBC4 documentary earlier this year, was to exterminate whales so that the “capitalist West” could not profit from them. It was ecological madness.
Right whales got their name because their slow movement and weight made them the “right whales” to hunt. Watching the mother caress her 16-foot-tall calf, which needs 44 gallons of milk a day, was like a reprieve from disaster.
It is remarkable to learn that the whales choose this place as a nursery, also because the sound of the waves on the shore muffles their murmurs and prevents killer whales from discovering them.
Sir David never explained in his series why sea angels glow in the dark when they are hungry and cannot see
An arctic wolf on Ellesmere Island in Canada. Although he would laugh at it, Sir David’s touches have become almost supernatural
At the other end of the scale, the blind sea butterflies and their equally blind predators, the sea angels that hunted them in the White Sea off the northwest coast of Russia, were eerily beautiful.
Sir David did not explain why, if the angels cannot see, they glow in the dark when they are hungry.
The sight of them digesting their prey in their transparent stomach sacs was cruel but enchanting. They looked like refugees from a Harry Potter book.
I was lucky enough to see previews and, as Mail’s Weekend magazine revealed in a great issue earlier this month, there are still some unparalleled stories ahead. One of my favorites is the two-ton rhino walking through a Nepalese town to a grazing area as tuk-tuks drive around him. Then there are long-tailed macaques in a Balinese temple who rob tourists and ransom their phones.
All of this is told in a soothing Attenborough style, always erudite but never pompous, and with a touch of mischievous humor. Although he would laugh at it, his touches have become almost supernatural.
Mike Gunton, executive producer of the series, told me that Sir David had decided to film his introduction on the grounds of Down House in Kent, the former home of Charles Darwin.
“The weather has been absolutely terrible for weeks, it was pouring rain, which wasn’t going to look good. But David being David, on the one day we were booked to film, the sun was shining and it was beautiful.” Nature is so indebted to Attenborough that even the weather obeys him.