Having previously produced The Blue Planet (2001), Planet Earth (2006) and Frozen Planet (2011-2012), renowned wildlife documentary producer Alastair Fothergill’s new groundbreaking project went live on Netflix in 2019. In collaboration with the WWF, Our Planet was met with critical acclaim. Produced by Silverback Films, which Alastair co-founded in 2012 with Keith Scholey, the documentary took more than 600 crew members to create over four years of filming in 50 different countries. We spoke to Alastair about the importance of balancing a sense of urgency with hope and inspiration when creating a nature documentary during the climate crisis.

Oceanographic Magazine (OM): What inspired you to go into documentary filmmaking?

Alastair Fothergill (AF): From when I was very little I had an absolute passion for nature. I grew up on the north Norfolk coast and I loved birdwatching. I had a fantastic teacher at school who further inspired that passion. While I was at Durham University studying zoology, the BBC and the Royal Geographical Society were running a competition called the Mick Burke Award. I entered and a group of us went off to make a film about our expedition from the top to the bottom of the Okavango Delta in Botswana. I was lucky enough to be taken on as a researcher for the BBC after university and worked there for almost 30 years.

OM: One of the earlier series you worked on was Reefwatch in 1988. Have you returned to any of the reefs you filmed for that show?

AF: Not specifically – after Reefwatch, which was in the Red Sea, the BBC was considering doing a similar broadcast from the Great Barrier Reef. I did an amazing two week recce and we basically dived almost the whole length of the reef. I haven’t been back but I know that great areas of that reef have now bleached. I almost don’t want to go back, I know it would be really heart wrenching to see that.

OM: The first series of your own that you produced was called Life in the Freezer, which came out in 1993. Was climate change on the agenda then?

AF: It was only just beginning to be talked about in the early 1990s. By the time we made Frozen Planet (2011), which was about both the Arctic and the Antarctic, it was so prevalent in the public conversation that we persuaded the BBC to do a special episode, a seventh episode that dealt with climate change and the effects of global warming in the polar regions. But it’s just gathered speed, and it’s fantastic that it has, because clearly it is the issue of our age. Everything is almost irrelevant compared with the potential seriousness of climate change.