This interview was originally published in Radio Times magazine.
Wildlife film-maker Mark Brownlow had encountered endless days of stomach-churning sickness while crossing the world’s roughest sea. He’d been so close to a killer whale that he could smell its breath, and he’d had a crushing encounter with dense pack ice on a boat whose engine had failed.
Anxious moments all, though not the worst while making a landmark series set in the natural world. That, for Brownlow and his colleagues, was showing the work to David Attenborough.
“The greatest moment when you make any series is when you show David what you’ve been up to,” says Brownlow. “It’s so important for us that we get his blessing.”
And the great man’s verdict? “He was generous enough to be wowed.”
There’s much in this six-part series (that Attenborough narrates) to excite a man who’s seen it all during a 70-year broadcast career. But there’s no escaping the fact that the many exhilarating highs are tempered by some conscience-challenging lows. Wherever you venture in the frozen parts of planet Earth, the consequences of climate change are there to be seen.
It wasn’t considered so clear-cut in 2011, when the first instalment of Frozen Planet was broadcast. As Brownlow rather mischievously points out, as part of its coverage of that series, RT published the views of Nigel Lawson, who cast doubt on the very existence of global warming.
We’ve come a long way since, as Attenborough attests in his opening remarks in the first scene-setting episode.
“Looking down on our planet, it may come as a surprise to find just how much of it is blanketed in snow and ice. These vast frozen wildernesses cover more than a fifth of the Earth. Yet some areas are so remote and inhospitable that even today the closest we’ve come to exploring them is from space.”
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The first Frozen Planet examined life in the Arctic and the Antarctic. But the new series, says Attenborough, explores “all of Earth’s frozen habitats, from its highest peaks to its snowbound deserts, to deep beneath the ice. Between them they contain an astonishing array of animals, many that are found nowhere else on Earth.
“And just as we’re beginning to understand its wildlife, we’re recognising an alarming truth. Our frozen wildernesses are disappearing at faster rates than ever before. Never has it been more important to understand what is going on in these icy territories.”
One such territory, Wrangel Island in the Russian Arctic, creates an apocalyptic impression of life for creatures in the region. This desolate, fog-shrouded place (the Frozen Planet team had to wait three weeks at a Russian base before being helicoptered in) is an unlikely sanctuary for 1,000 polar bears, the greatest concentration on the planet, according to Brownlow.
“They’re almost like climate refugees,” he says, as we see them fighting over whatever carrion the sea brings to shore, such as walrus and whale carcass. There’s a Lord of the Flies bleakness to it all and the reason they end up on this island of dark, forbidding cliffs and black sand is because the Arctic sea ice from which they hunt is, in the summer months, disappearing.
“More and more of them are swimming for 14 days across hundreds of miles of ocean to wash up on the nearest piece of land,” says Brownlow. “Polar bears have evolved to hunt off the sea ice to capture seals; that’s what they’re designed for.
“Today, with the loss of so much of the sea ice, they are going to have to adapt fast or we’re not going to see them in the future. You wouldn’t have had this scene on this scale 10 years ago.”
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Of course, as the storytelling see-saw plunges down, so it must also rise up – the scenes featuring two five-year-old bears on the winter ice will make your heart soar.
“You think there’s going to be a fight. Instead, they start playing – they jump in the water together and slide around on the ice together. It’s a wonderful, magical, moment.”
Is that transition from the gloomy to the glorious hard to get right? “Yes, it is,” Brownlow says. “First and foremost people want to come to these series to revel in the wonder, the awe, the majesty of these frozen worlds. But equally we have to tell the contemporary story of what’s happening. Long gone are the days when we could show you a paradise and forget about the issues – I think we’d be laughed out of the room if we didn’t nail climate change.”
One scene that combines both magnificence and melancholy is that featuring killer whales targeting Weddell seals lazing on what, for them, must seem like the security of a large “raft” of floating ice. In animal intelligence terms it’s stunning; in purely emotional terms it’s heartbreakingly brutal.
The 100-strong pod that roams the waters of Antarctica has evolved strategies to dislodge and kill these unsuspecting seals. Typically, they create a powerful wave that washes the seals off the ice, into the ocean and almost certain death. But if the ice block is too big, the orcas will shatter it from beneath and then ruthlessly deploy their wave-washing attack.
We have seen it before, but not from above – the aerial perspective provided by drones reveals a military-type precision to the attack. “David was blown away by it,” says Brownlow. “From the air you can understand the relationship between the members of the pod and see how synchronised they are in terms of lining up and moving as one. It takes them 15 years just to learn the art of the wave wash and it’s all led by the matriarch, who could be 100-150 years old.
“The big showy males with the huge fins do nothing – they wait for the matriarch to do the hard work, then they clean up. On the one hand it feels brutal because these seals are very lovable and you can’t help but empathise with them, but equally killer whales have family to feed.”
But just when you think at least the killer whales are defying the odds, there’s another crash landing – Brownlow says scientists have seen evidence of emaciation among this group of whales because their seal-meal of choice is becoming more difficult to find.
“Antarctica, particularly on the peninsula, is rapidly heating, which means fewer ice floes. The Weddell seals, which the killer whales primarily rely upon, are now hauling out on land rather than ice floes, so they’re harder to catch.”
There’s a Disney-esque pathos to some of the stories. The harp seal pup has cuteness etched into its DNA, yet after being fed on its mother’s nutrient-rich milk for only 12 days – one of the shortest maternity shifts in the natural world –the pup is left to make its own way in life, alone and vulnerable on the floating ice.
The look – and heart-piercing cry – of abandonment will destroy you, but is this just a character-building ploy? Once upon a time, maybe, but there are few fairy tales in a script that’s dominated by a warming planet.
“Climate change is producing increased storms and larger waves and the baby seals are being tipped into the water before they’re ready to swim,” says Brownlow. “Despite everything, the wildlife is extremely well adapted to the harshness of the environment, but what they can’t cope with is the added extreme that is borne out of climate change.”
There are, it should be said, many species that are coping; the series features stories that will have you cheering in admiration for the wildlife survivors who overcome the hostile environment they’re born into. Among them:
■ The baby hatchling turtles whose bodies shut down – in human terms they’d be clinically dead – over the winter months only to thaw out and come alive when spring arrives.
■ The queen bee who survives a Lapland winter in her underground burrow because of the thickness of her coat, emerging in spring to collect pollen, develop her ovaries and lay the eggs to start a whole new colony.
■ The Siberian tiger shown hunting its prey in the most unexpected places, filmed over three years using camera traps.
■ Amur leopards, snow monkeys in the Japanese Alps and kea parrots in the alpine region of New Zealand – all surviving with a combination of cunning and resourcefulness.
Says Brownlow of the series: “We’re taking the audience to Narnia, with what I hope is going to be the right mix of wonder, entertainment and education.
“There are a lot of new stories, breathtaking new drama, wonderful moments of humour, stunning landscapes, but underpinned with the message that these places are changing and changing faster than we ever imagined. We are capturing this fast-changing, dynamic world in its exquisite beauty but also telling the story of how these changes are impacting the wildlife.”
Frozen Planet II ends with an episode devoted to the scientists who are working at the glacier’s edge of climate change research. And that work is so vital to nature’s survival. Attenborough is succinct in his verdict. “The animals that inhabit our frozen lands and seas need one thing more than any other – and that is for the planet to stop warming. It’s now up to us to make that happen.”
Frozen Planet II continues to air on Sunday at 8:05pm on BBC One. Check out more of our Documentaries coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what’s on tonight.
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