'Voice for planet' sounds siren call amid ocean crisis

Sir David's latest film Ocean may be his most powerful yet

- Neil J Gostling and Sam Illingworth

Sir David Attenborough's broadcasting journey mirrors the changing story of nature on screen, write Neil J Gostling and Sam Illingworth.

Over the course of seven decades, Sir David Attenborough's documentaries have reshaped how we see the natural world, shifting from colonial-era collecting trips to urgent calls for environmental action.

His storytelling has inspired generations, but has only recently begun to confront the scale of the ecological crisis. To understand how far nature broadcasting has come, it helps to return to where it started.

When Attenborough's broadcasting career began in the 1950s, Austrian filmmakers Hans and Lotte Hass were already pushing the boundaries of what was possible by taking cameras below the sea and touring the world aboard their schooner, the Xafira.

In one of their 1953 Galapagos films, a crewman handled a sealion pup, having crawled across the volcanic rock of Fernandina honking at sealions to attract them. A penguin and giant tortoise were brought on board Xafira. And as Lotte Hass took photographs, she'd beseech some poor creature to "not be frightened" and "look pleasant".

This is a world away from today's expectations, where both research scientists and amateur naturalists are taught to observe without touching or disturbing wildlife.

When the Hasses visited the Galápagos, it was still five years before the creation of the national park and the founding of the island's conservation organisation Charles Darwin Foundation.