SIR David Attenborough has seen and done a lot in his 70-year career, but he’s still haunted by one standout moment which he said is the “most depressing thing” he’s ever seen.
In a recent interview on the Worldwide Fund for Nature's (WWF) new podcast, Sir David, 97, said that a trip to an island off the coast of Australia in the ‘60s led to him witnessing a terrifying sight that still haunts him today.
The beloved TV presenter and naturalist recently recalled a trip he made to Raine Island over 60 years ago.
Raine Island is just off the coast of north-eastern Australia, situated at the outer edges of the Great Barrier Reef. It is a great place to view seabirds breeding, however it is rarely frequented because it is so difficult to get to.
Sir David made the trip, though. He recalled: “We eventually found a chap at the pub who had a boat and I asked if he’d go to Raine Island, and he said, ‘Never been!’ So I asked, ‘Could we go up?’ And he said, ‘Yes, why not? Why are you wanting to go?’
“I said, ‘Because it’s breeding season… the seabirds.’ So it took him 10 days or something to get up there – it was a long way. And there were these wonderful birds.”
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However, after making it to the island, Sir David’s search for birds led him to a horrifying sight.
“The thing that made a huge impression on me wasn’t just the marvellous seabirds breeding, but there were dead turtles all over the place,” he admitted.
Sir David continued: “The reason that there were dead turtles was that the convicts who had built a watchtower dug stones from the middle of the island.
“So the island was saucer-shaped, and turtles were coming up and having laid their eggs, and going downhill back to the sea, except that it was actually the middle of the island!”
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“So the place was absolutely littered with corpses of turtles. It was the most depressing thing that I’d ever seen,” he said.
Happily, there have been changes in the area, and more turtles are surviving and breeding out near Raine Island now.
Sir David revealed; “That was 60 years ago, and now a new crew has been there. It’s still quite a difficult place to get to because it’s so remote, and I was fascinated to see it all again.
“But this crew went at a better time, which was the breeding time for turtles, and they saw that turtles were alive rather than finding the corpses of the unfortunate ones that were lost.”
However, this tragic man-made atrocity has remained on his mind and the years since and it shines through in his most recent project, Planet Earth III, which debuts on BBC One this Sunday.
The series takes viewers on a journey around the world while it explores the impact of the human race on the natural world and shows how animals are becoming displaced – or worse, on the brink of extinction – because of it.
Planet Earth III premieres on BBC One and iPlayer on Sunday 22 October.
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