Great Barrier Reef: David Attenborough goes to new depths to find answers for reef in distress

Updated April 08, 2016 11:52:13

Natural history broadcaster Sir David Attenborough first visited the Great Barrier Reef in 1957.

Sixty years on, he returns at a time when the reef is under serious threat. Since his first visit, it has lost almost half of its coral since and he is determined to discover how it can be saved.

Through the groundbreaking David Attenborough's Great Barrier Reef, the naturalist dives deeper than anyone before to better understand the natural wonder.

The Great Barrier Reef is just a wonder of the natural world…a lovely place. I was fantastically privileged being in the ship [Alucia] which would take me up in the skies and down to the bottom of the seas… just a dream come true really.

[The Reef] is splendid, beautiful, remarkable, and wonderful. It touches the human imagination and the human spirit and it's very precious.

The resilience of the natural world gives you great hope really. Give nature half a chance and it really takes it and works with it. But we are throwing huge problems at it.

The Reef eco system is one of the most complex, and varied, and crowded ecosystems on the planet.

I've travelled in a submersible that’s one of a kind. There's no other one like it, and it has taken me down to a part of the Barrier Reef that no human being has ever looked at before.

Wherever there are human beings and wherever there is industry, there are consequences. And the consequences on the coast are likely to be not too good for the Reef.

Sitting there [in the Triton submersible] as if it were an armchair and looking at one of the most extraordinary places on earth….a privilege given to very few.

David Attenborough's Great Barrier Reef will begin this Sunday at 7.40pm on ABC.

Topics: great-barrier-reef, television, documentary, earth-sciences, qld

First posted April 08, 2016 05:04:27