10 squirrels on speed

As someone who loves the sea, it has been a both breathtaking and heartbreaking to watch David Attenborough’s latest documentary Ocean.

As the 99 year old (wow) says: “One could spend days swimming above it and never tire of the colours, the movement, the interactions; it’s life at its most mesmerising.”

The ocean is one of the few places where I feel truly at peace. The sight, sound and feel of the sea have a calming effect on me, washing away my busy thoughts for a few brief moments.

It’s pretty crazy inside my head at other times. I watched a Facebook video recently about characteristics of women with ADHD. And while I remain very much on the fence as to whether I have that, there was a line in the video that I really related to.

It described what goes on inside the heads of women with ADHD as being like “10 squirrels barrelling around on speed”.

I sent the video to DD and he replied “only 10?”

Anyways, back to the sadness I felt while watching the documentary, which I watched as part of my recently acquired Disney + subscription.

Ocean highlights the “unspeakably awful” damage humans are wreaking on the world’s open oceans.

It was harrowing to view the scenes of smashed coral and debris in the aftermath of bottom trawling, a process where enormous nets are towed along the ocean floor, picking up everything in their path. Often the fishermen are only seeking scallops and all other sea life they collect and kill is discarded. It is beyond shocking, yet totally legal, despite the devastation it is wreaking.

I feel an overwhelming need to see as much of the ocean as possible before we destroy it. At least that is my excuse for all the holidays at sea that I keep organising.

The watery destinations on my bucket list include Rowley Shoals, the Abrolhos Islands, Raja Ampat and Palau. Apparently the undersea life is also pretty extraordinary on Lord Howe Island, which has the world’s most southern coral reef ecosystem. Oh, how I yearn to go there!

I hope to see some of the destinations on my list over the next few years. And in the meantime I’ll be doing some research on how to eat seafood ethically.

How lucky are we to have a treasure like David Attenborough, still dazzling us with wonders of the natural world as he approaches his 100th year on earth?

Oh, and I was surprised to discover the documentary was co-funded by Australian billionaire Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest. He was inspired to support the project by his lifelong love of Attenborough documentaries and his PhD thesis, titled Pelagic ecology and solutions for a troubled ocean.

While one billionaire is hell bent on winding back measures to mitigate climate change, another is using his wealth to save the world’s oceans.

Song of the day: Otis Redding “Sitting on the dock of the bay”