Enric Sala, the renowned Girona, Catalonia born-and-raised oceanographer, marine conservationist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, hadn’t intended to seize the spotlight during a Zoom call last week with TV reviewers, but there it was.

Sala’s documentary Pristine Seas: The Power of Protection, a semi-biographical account of his lifelong campaign to persuade world leaders to set aside vast stretches of ocean as marine protection zones, makes its global debut Monday on NatGeo WILD.

And while other marine researchers and National Geographic filmmakers were in on the call, when someone asked Sala if the oceans are in as much trouble as some scientists — Sala included — say they are, he rose to the bait.

“Just last week there was a scientific study that shows the ocean has become really noisy, because of our activities,” Sala said. “Seismic testing and boats and the noise from ports — all the noise we are making underwater — is making it very, very difficult for whales and other creatures in the ocean to be able to communicate, to be able to reproduce, to be able to survive. Our impact is huge.”

Sala grew up on Spain’s Costa Brava coast, where he developed a lifelong passion for the sea. He earned a Bachelor of Science (Biology) from the University of Barcelona, and followed that with a Ph.D in ecology from the University of Aix-Marseille in France.

He went on to become a professor in his own right, taught at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. Five years later, he moved back to Spain, where he was appointed director of marine conservation and ecology — the first person to hold that post — for Spain’s National Council for Scientific Research (CSIC).

Sala felt unfulfilled though. While at Scripps he established the Scripps’ Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation.

“What I was doing was simply writing the obituary of the ocean,” he says now. He felt he needed to do more.

He changed course, and became a crusader for the environment rather than a witness after-the-fact. He was inspired in large part by National Geographic Explorer Mike Fay’s groundbreaking MegaTransect of the Congo Basin in 1998 and ‘99 — an expedition that took Fay 465 days to cut his way through 3,200 kms (2,000 miles) of equatorial rainforest.

The distance covered and the discoveries made along the way wasn’t what struck Sala, though.

What struck Sala was that Fay’s expedition convinced then-president Omar Bongo of Gabon to establish 13 national parks. It wasn’t just about adventure, in other words. It was about conserving what was left.

Sala thought, why not do the same for the world’s oceans?

Sala was named a National Geographic Fellow in 2008, where he initiated the Pristine Seas project, a global program to explore, map, document and protect the last wild places in the ocean.

His partner in the project, James Cameron (yes, that James Cameron), was appointed a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence in 2011. Since then the two have campaigned hard on behalf of the world’s oceans.

Fast-forward 10 years. To date, the Pristine Seas initiative has helped establish 6 million square kms (2.3 million square miles) of marine protected area. That may seem a lot but it is by no means enough, Sala says.

“Today, only seven percent of the ocean worldwide is protected from fishing, oil, drilling, mining and other damaging activities. The science is telling us we need at least 30% of the ocean protected by 2030.

“The good news is that we know that when we give space to the ocean, the ocean comes back spectacularly, marine life returns. The ocean has this amazing resilience, this amazing ability to come back.

“In the last ten years, as you can see with our Pristine Seas film, we have worked with local communities and governments to protect 23 of the largest marine areas in the ocean, covering twice the size of India. And some of these places are still pristine, (which means) you jump in the water and you are immediately surrounded by sharks.

“Other areas are not so pristine. But we see that after a few years, fish and other species can come back. We don't have enough of the ocean protected, but what we have seen in the last ten years gives us hope.”

Brian Skerry was a boy from a small Massachusetts town with a big dream, to one day explore the mystery and natural beauty of the world’s oceans with a camera. Forty years, 28 National Geographic assignments, a Peter Benchley Award for Excellence in Media and some 10,000 hours underwater hours later, one could be forgiven for thinking he has seen it all.

Then came his underwater moment with an orca off the coast of New Zealand last September while filming Secrets of the Whales, a four-part event series for the Disney+ streaming service that bows on April 22nd, Earth Day.

Skerry was one of several National Geographic explorers and filmmakers at a Zoom session, “Underwater Storytelling,” with TV reviewers last week. Skerry joined Enric Sala, a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence whose upcoming program, Pristine Seas: The Power of Protection, premieres Monday next week on NatGeo WILD; Valerie Taylor, one of the world’s pre-eminent shark experts and a deep-sea diver and ocean photographer in her own right; marine biologist and shark expert Melissa Cristina Márquez; and Janet Vissering, the executive in charge of natural history program development and production for National Geographic’s global network of TV channels .

“These animals have to let you into their worlds,” Skerry recalled. “So many things have to line up. The sun has to be out, the animals have to let you close, they have to be doing something interesting, the visibility has to be good — all those things. You need almost divine intervention, everywhere you are.

“I had this moment, off New Zealand, where I was hoping to see this population of orca who have figured out how to eat stingrays. I jumped in the water and was swimming toward this family of orca that were hunting in a shallow harbour. And this female was coming toward me with a ray that she had started to eat.

“As I got closer, she dropped it in front of me, and I swam down to the bottom. It was only about 30 or 40 feet deep. I knelt on the bottom next to that dead stingray, wondering if she would come back. And then out of the corner of my eye, I saw her swimming around my back. She came around my left, got directly in front of me and then just hovered there.

“Then she looked at me, looked at the ray, looked at me, and looked at the ray again, as if to say, ‘Are you gonna eat that?’ When I didn’t, she just gently picked it up and brought it up. I was able to make a picture of this ray in her mouth, and then she turned and shared the food with her family.

“It’s just extraordinary to think that animal may have been, I don’t know, offering me dinner. And when I chose not to partake, she went on her way.

“That’s just a brief glimpse into the world of these animals, enough to make us realize how much we don’t know.”

If Skerry has one hope with Secrets of the Whales, it’s that it will touch the popular nerve.

“I like to think the work we do is about giving voice to the voiceless,” Skerry said. “We're just at the very beginning of trying to figure these things out.

“What we can see and what science is showing us is that these animals have rich lives, much like our own. They babysit; they have food preferences, depending on where in the world they live; they have singing competitions; they share parenting ideas; and they mourn for their dead.

“My hope with all these shows is that we’ll celebrate the celebratory aspect of the ocean, but also sound the cause for concern.”

Journal

“Man is modifying the world so fast and so drastically that most animals cannot adapt to the new conditions. In the Himalaya as elsewhere there is a great dying, one infinitely sadder than the Pleistocene extinctions, for man now has the knowledge and the need to save the remnants of his past.”

— Peter Matthiessen