David Attenborough, the planet’s most revered naturalist, is swinging harder than ever at 99. His latest film, Ocean, hitting cinemas on May 8—his birthday, no less—tackles the devastation of industrial fishing with a ferocity that’s got even his longtime collaborators raising eyebrows. This isn’t the gentle Attenborough of whispering wildlife docs. This is a man calling out “modern-day colonialism at sea,” his voice sharp as a gutting knife, aimed at practices he says are bleeding the oceans dry.
The film zeroes in on bottom trawling, a method where massive nets, weighed down by heavy beams, scrape the seabed, pulverizing everything in their path. Sharks and turtles, survivors of dinosaur-killing cataclysms, are no match for the hundreds of thousands of trawlers prowling every ocean corner. These vessels, Attenborough argues, don’t just fish—they annihilate, churning up carbon-storing sediment and smashing coral reefs into rubble. “Bulldozing a rainforest sparks outrage,” he says in the film, “yet we do the same underwater every day.” It’s a line that lands like a harpoon, meant to jolt viewers into seeing the invisible carnage below the waves.
Shot across remote seas and coastal communities, Ocean shows trawlers outmuscling local fishers, whose livelihoods collapse as stocks vanish. The film, backed by Silverback Films, doesn’t pull punches. It lays bare how industrial fleets, often from wealthier nations, plunder waters off poorer coasts, leaving ecosystems and people gutted. Keith Scholey, a director who’s worked with Attenborough for over four decades, says the naturalist’s gone “a lot further” this time, unafraid to name the destruction as a global scandal.
This isn’t Attenborough’s first rodeo. His 2017 Blue Planet II sparked a plastics revolution, with governments and companies scrambling to curb single-use junk after his footage of choking seas hit screens. Now, with Ocean, he’s banking on that same power to shame industries and stir action against trawling. The film’s release dovetails with growing calls for tighter fishing regulations, though no government has yet banned bottom trawling outright.
Attenborough’s been at this game since before most of today’s activists were born, narrating nature’s wonders and wounds with a voice that’s equal parts poet and prophet. At 99, he’s not slowing down—just getting louder. Ocean is set to screen in cinemas across the UK starting May 8, 2025, with global rollouts planned. The film runs 90 minutes and was produced by Silverback Films, known for Attenborough’s Planet Earth series. No official box office projections are out yet.