DOCUMENTARY | SEVEN WORLDS , ONE PLANET
B efore Blue Planet II , BBC nature programmes had been criticised for treading too lightly around humanity’s damage to the planet. But the 2017 docuseries heralded a new urgency to the trendy blockbusters, helping transform popular attitudes towards waste and pollution with distressing images of plastic enveloping a turtle, and albatrosses inadvertently feeding plastic to their chicks. Likewise, Seven Worlds, One Planet , which is the BBC’s latest nature series, does not eschew these environmental messages. The first story about the impact of climate change comes just 16 minutes into the opening episode, which concerns our most hostile continent, Antarctica. Throughout, there are sequences that highlight the human actions – pollution, habitat destruction and poaching – causing the Earth’s sixth mass extinction. This shift in the BBC’s nature programming is a response by filmmakers to accusations that they have pulled punches in the past. The Antarctica episode producer, Fredi Devas, says: “I wanted, within that programme about Antarctic wildlife, to talk about the environmental issues that are threatening the natural world – and not just the natural world that
we know about because we see it, but the natural world that is very far away, and yet is being impacted by climate change.” Interestingly, when asked how technology helps convey this message to audiences, his response was: “Although technology is important, there is something more important when shooting in the Antarctic – and that’s field craft; working with teams that understand the environment, understand animals and are observant of animal behaviour and how best to capture it in the right conditions.” The importance of field craft is especially observed in Antarctica’s final sequence, which depicts life under the sea ice, where starfish, sea spiders and three million predatory worms carpet the ocean floor and sea anemones feast on jellyfish. Devas says: “This truly was the riskiest thing to shoot and required huge amounts of courage from the camera operators.” First, scientists drilled nine feet deep, then the team got into heated dry suits, dropped down and swam off to their filming
location, which could be a 20-minute journey. According to Devas: “The water hole appeared black from the surface, but was crystal clear once inside it – and this caused one of our camera operators, Espen Rekdal, to experience feelings of vertigo.” Despite the protective gear, the team’s faces were still exposed to the freezing water. They also had no assured way of navigating back to the hole, since GPS doesn’t work under tonnes of ice. Devas explains: “Decades ago, camera operators would dive with ropes tied around their ankles, but there were problems with entanglement, so that doesn’t happen anymore. Now they just use memories. We had this plan, whereby if someone wasn’t back in time, another person on the ice above would scrape out arrows with their boot, in the hope that the divers would look up and see them. It’s really low-tech.” He adds: “The sea ice is constantly moving with the tides and, if they didn’t time their return right, the sea ice could drop on to the seabed and block their access.”
I wanted to talk about the environmental issues that are threatening the natural world
ABOVE A time-lapse reveals rich life under the Antarctic sea ice, from colourful starfish to spindly sea spiders
18 DEF I N I T ION | FEBRUARY 2020
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