“Ocean: Earth’s Last Wilderness” by Sir David Attenborough & Colin Butfield
From the icy oceans of our poles to remote coral islands, Sir David Attenborough has filmed in every ocean habitat on planet earth. In fact, he is known to be (probably one of the rare few) who has been engaged with all kinds of audio-visual technology, across formats, from the time television was launched till date (2025). In his centenary year, with long-term collaborator Colin Butfield, he shares the story of our last great, critical wilderness, and the one which shapes the land we live on, regulates our climate and creates the air we breathe.
Through one hundred years, eight unique ocean habitats, countless intriguing species – and through personal stories, history and cutting-edge science — Ocean uncovers the mystery, the wonder and the frailty of the most unexplored habitat on our planet. And it shows its remarkable resilience: it is the part of our world that can, and in some cases has, recovered the fastest, and in our lifetimes we could see a fully restored marine world, even richer and more spectacular than we could possibly hope, if we act now.
Ocean: Earth’s Last Wilderness (published by Hachette India) is the book accompanying the last film that Sir Attenborough will ever make. In India it was released on 8 May 2025 by Jio Hotstar. We are honoured that Sir Attenborough gave us permission to publish this book extract on Moneycontrol. It is from the opening chapter wherein he ruminates about the discoveries in the oceans that have been noticed and documented by humans. The vast advancements in technology have helped tremendously. Whether it is the ability to scan the depths of the ocean and map the ocean bed to relying upon satellite imagery to spot sea mounts.
In this chapter, Sir Attenborough uses the lifetime of a blue whale – some ninety years — as a handy benchmark to mark the timeline of modern ocean discovery. Apparently, blue whales have been recorded in all the ocean basins; only the frozen parts of the Arctic and Southern Ocean were out of their reach, something that he is convinced will surely change over the coming years as whale numbers recover and the sea ice retreats. Ocean is a fascinating film and an equally fascinating book. For once, the print product accompanying a film is perfect.
It is a book almost a century in the making, but one that has never been more urgently needed.
Sir David Attenborough is a broadcaster and naturalist whose television career is now in its seventh decade. After studying Natural Sciences at Cambridge and a brief stint in publishing, he joined the BBC in 1952 and spent ten years making documentary programmes of all kinds, including the Zoo Quest series. In 1965, he was appointed Controller of a new network, BBC2, and then, after four years became editorially responsible for both BBC1 and BBC2.
After eight years of administration, he returned to programme-making to write and present a thirteen-part series, Life on Earth, which surveyed the evolutionary history of animals and plants. This was followed by many other series which, between them, surveyed almost every aspect of life on earth.
Colin Butfield is co-founder of Studio Silverback, Executive Producer of the WWF’s Our Planet project and an advisor for the Earthshot Prize.
3 August 2025
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