David Attenborough talks about the making of Blue Planet II, and the peril of plastic in our oceans

The sequel to the hit 2001 BBC series took film crews around the world, including the frigid waters of the Antarctic and to depths of 1,000 metres. Along the way they filmed previously unseen behaviours and paid witness to the destruction caused by humans

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A scientist uses lasers to measure a whale shark in a still from BBC’s Blue Planet II. Photo: courtesy of Blue Planet II

Published: 8:00pm, 21 Oct 2017Updated: 5:29pm, 22 Oct 2017

For Blue Planet II, the sequel to the landmark 2001 BBC series, producer Orla Doherty and her team spent a total of 500 hours at depths of 1,000 metres in Earth’s “inner space”. And on her first Antarctic dive, descending into frigid waters of minus 1.6 degrees Celsius, things didn’t quite go to plan. At 450m, she noticed a puddle “gathering at the bottom of the sub”.

Sir David Attenborough, who at 91 is no longer able to join such voyages in person, watched the footage jealously from the safety of a studio while he put together his narration. “I would have thought what that water was if it had been me!” he jokes.

The Blue Planet II team worked with several submarines to film the Deep episode, spending a thousand hours underwater across the world’s deep oceans to capture landscapes and behaviours never seen before. Photo: courtesy of Blue Planet II

There are no toilets on the submersible – the least of the problems faced by its inhabitants during underwater stints of up to 10 hours at a time. “But it wasn’t! It was seawater,” he confirms with a chuckle (the only way of determining this, apparently, is to dip your finger in the liquid and taste it).

Suffice to say, Doherty survived to tell the tale (an adventure that included spotting fish with antifreeze in their veins and swarms of krill that glow in the dark).

A mud volcano in the Gulf of Mexico, where bubbles of methane erupt from the deep seafloor, dragging plumes of millennia-old sediment with them as they rise. Photo: courtesy of Blue Planet II

It is just one example of the lengths and depths to which the naturalists have gone to explore beneath the waves. They custom-built a “Mega-dome” camera so they could film above and below the waterline at the same time. They were the first professional filmmakers to document false killer whales and bottlenose dolphins – two entirely different species – socialising together; octopuses wearing shells and rocks as body armour; and giant trevally launching themselves out of the sea to prey on fledgling terns in mid-air. Twelve scientific papers are already in the pipeline off the back of the behaviours and habitats uncovered.

Plastic waste from US and Europe winding up in Arctic graveyard

If the first episode is anything to go by, Blue Planet II is a banquet for the eyes and a fiesta for the ears, with a soaring score from Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer. It boasts high drama, comedy, romance and pathos.

Moreover, Asia takes a starring role, with Asian sheepshead wrasse filmed in Japan, broadclub cuttlefish shot in Indonesia and coral reefs captured in the Philippines.