David Attenborough urges action on plastics after filming Blue Planet II

[nitpicker]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/15/david-attenborough-urges-immediate-action-on-plastics-blue-planet

David Attenborough urges action on plastics after filming Blue Planet II

Sunday 15 October 2017 09.22 BST

Sir David Attenborough has urged the world to cut down on the use of plastics by “tomorrow” to curb increasing dangers to the ocean. The TV naturalist told how his experience filming the second Blue Planet series demonstrated to him the threat that plastic causes to the underwater environment. His comments came as he attended a question and answer session about the show ahead of its broadcast on BBC One later this month, 15 years after the original series.

Asked what concerned him the most about the crew’s findings, the 91-year old said: “Two things. One of course is the rising temperature, and particularly in the last programme it is illustrated what happens if the temperature goes up by 1.5 degrees. The second thing is plastic. Plastic in the ocean. Now, what we’re going to do about 1.5 degrees rise in the temperature of the ocean over the next 10 years, I don’t know, but we could actually do something about plastic right now. And I just wish we would.

“There are so many sequences that every single one of us have been involved in, even in the most peripheral way, where we have seen tragedies happen because of the plastic in the ocean. We’ve seen albatross come back with their belly full of food for their young and nothing in it. The albatross parent has been away for three weeks gathering stuff for her young and what comes out? What does she give her chick? You think it’s going to be squid, but it’s plastic. And the chick is going to starve and die. “There are more examples of that. But we could do things about plastic internationally tomorrow.”
(snip)

Attenborough, who presents Blue Planet II, appeared on the Q&A panel with composer Hans Zimmer, executive producer James Honeyborne, series producer Mark Brownlow and producer Orla Doherty before the programme’s broadcast this month. The programme is a a BBC Studios Natural History Unit production and filming took place all over the world, in locations including South Africa, Egypt, Australia, Mexico, Japan and Norway. It will air on 29 October.