Ocean With David Attenborough<\/a><\/em> has turned its narrator into a record holder. At 100, Attenborough is the oldest nominee in Emmy history, passing Norman Lear, who was 99 years and 11 months old on nomination day in 2022. (Lear turned 100 before that year’s ceremony.)<\/p>\n His Best Narrator nod is one of six for National Geographic<\/a>\u2019s documentary, along with Best Documentary or Nonfiction Special, Best Cinematography for Doug Anderson and Toby Strong, Best Music Composition for Steven Price<\/a>, and both sound mixing and sound editing categories. Attenborough is up for Best Narrator twice this year, competing against himself for Netflix\u2019s A Gorilla Story<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But the people who made Ocean<\/em> are prouder of something else. They say the film helped change international law.<\/p>\n Directors Keith Scholey<\/a> and Toby Nowlan<\/a>, along with composer Steven Price, joined Gold Derby to talk about the making of<\/a> Ocean<\/em>: never-before-seen footage of the ocean floor being destroyed, a score built almost entirely out of one singer\u2019s voice, and a treaty they believe the film helped make law. <\/p>\n Scholey has been making films with Attenborough since 1983. This one sits at the top.<\/p>\n \u201cCertainly in my career, it\u2019s the film I\u2019m most proud of,\u201d he says. \u201cTo pull off a film of that power with him, which had such meaning, and actually ended up \u2014 I know it sounds maybe pushing the point, but it has changed the world. And there\u2019s evidence about that.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked what Attenborough did here that he hadn\u2019t seen in four decades of working together, Scholey says it was closer to acting than presenting. \u201cDavid really put his personal emotion into each take,\u201d he says. \u201cIn some places he\u2019s clearly really angry. He really doesn\u2019t like what he\u2019s seeing, what he\u2019s being told. And at other times he\u2019s just so filled with wonder about the solutions. When he contemplates his age and the time of his life, it\u2019s desperately moving.\u201d<\/p>\n Price, who won an Emmy for scoring David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet<\/em>, writes his music around that iconic voice. \u201cDavid\u2019s voice ultimately is an absolute gift if you\u2019re a music person, because he is so musical and his performances of the words are so perfect,\u201d he says. \u201cEmotionally he totally leads everything that I wrote. He doesn\u2019t waste any syllables, and the way he expresses himself is always so clear.\u201d<\/p>\n Nowlan, who co-directed and co-produced the film and is a first-time Emmy nominee, knew early what he wanted the film to do. \u201cThis wasn\u2019t just another film for us,\u201d he says. \u201cThe great hope, of course, was that it would go on to make a difference for the ocean \u2014 an actual tangible difference.\u201d<\/p>\n Bottom trawling \u2014 essentially dragging weighted nets along the ocean floor to scoop up whatever is living there \u2014 happens daily around the world, covering an area of seabed almost the size of the Amazon rainforest every year, according to the film. Almost none of it had ever been filmed. The team figured they would just buy footage somebody else had already shot.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the start, we thought, we\u2019ll just get some library in,\u201d Scholey says. \u201cAnd then we started looking for library, and there isn\u2019t any. And we said, wow, why is that? This is such a common practice. And then of course we quickly discovered why. They don\u2019t want you to film it.\u201d<\/p>\n So they went looking for scientists already out on the water studying the damage. That took them to two research teams: one in the Mediterranean off Turkey, and one off Britain working on scallop dredging, which rakes the seabed for shellfish.<\/p>\n \u201cThe group of scientists decided that the way they would measure the exact effect of bottom trawling could be using cameras,\u201d Nowlan says. \u201cSo that was where we came in. We provided the cameras for those scientists. Which is extraordinary really \u2014 the first precise study of shallow bottom trawling is done by some wildlife filmmakers.\u201d <\/p>\n Building the cameras took almost as long as getting permission. Anderson and fellow cinematographer Olly Scholey spent close to two years developing housings for the job. \u201cIt\u2019s very dark down there, it\u2019s happening 20, 30 meters plus. You can see the turbulence and the violence that these rigs have to withstand,\u201d Nowlan says. Cameras were lost. What came back was worse than they expected: \u201cThe images that came up shocked absolutely everyone, including all of us. We weren\u2019t quite prepared for how shocking they were.\u201d<\/p>\n The archive that didn\u2019t exist now does. \u201cPart of the deal was that at the end, everything that we shot was going to become open source,\u201d Scholey says. \u201cSo no one was ever going to have to go and look for archive of bottom trawling.\u201d Clips, like the one below, have been seen tens of millions of times, and groups in other countries are repurposing the material.<\/p>\n \n![\"ONLY](\"https:\/\/www.goldderby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/176495_0588R.jpg?w=300&h=168&crop=1\")
<\/div>\n![\"David](\"https:\/\/www.goldderby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/OceanWithDavidAttenborough_002.jpg?w=650\")
“It has changed the world” <\/h3>\n
![\"Alex](\"https:\/\/www.goldderby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/OceanWithDavidAttenborough_040.jpg?w=650\")
“We started looking for a library, and there isn’t any” <\/h3>\n