How Sir David Attenborough's first show shaped his career

Across seven decades of filmmaking, Sir David Attenborough has been to every part of the globe.

Particular areas have continued to fascinate the documentary maker, who is celebrating his 100th birthday. Among his earliest voyages were the Great Barrier Reef, Madagascar and the island of Komodo in Indonesia - all places he has returned to multiple times, seeing changes in everything from technology to climate change.

"When you look at the archives, you get a sense of a person," says Jean-Baptiste Gouyon, academic and author of BBC Wildlife Documentaries in the Age of Attenborough. Gouyon found many documents of Attenborough being a "geek" in the 1950s, excited about the latest developments in filmmaking - like using ophthalmological cameras, usually used for photographing eyes, to film tiny creatures.

His first major series Zoo Quest was another chance for him to be a technical innovator. The show, a collaboration with London Zoo, saw Sir David as part of a team heading to far-flung locations to capture animals.

The show's major technical development saw Attenborough battling BBC executives to be allowed to film in 16mm. This allowed him to use more lightweight equipment than the standard 35mm, meaning he could film where no documentary team had gone before.

It is this, Gouyon believes, that makes Attenborough want to return to certain locations again and again. "There are always new cameras, new film stocks, new filming technologies."

But as Attenborough returned to filming locations around the world, the impact of climate change also became clear.

Attenborough visited the Great Barrier Reef in search of birds of paradise for Zoo Quest. Stretching over 2,300km (1,400 miles) off Australia's north-east coast, the Great Barrier Reef is one of the world's most biodiverse ecosystems.

The naturalist revisited the environment throughout his career, including for a 2015 BBC series. He recalled his first dive into the seascape: "People say to me, what was the most magical thing you ever saw in your life, what was the most magical moment in your career as a naturalist, and I always say - the first time I put on a mask and went below the surface."

Attenborough's concern about the environment was clear in the series - and in an interview with President Barack Obama in June 2015. He told the then-president: "The real problem on the reef is the global one, which is what is happening with the increase of acidification and the rise in the ocean temperature" - as he warned about the impacts of climate change.

The Great Barrier Reef suffered four significant marine heatwaves between 2016 and 2022, causing much of its coral to expel the algae which gives them life and colour - a process called bleaching, which can be fatal to the coral.

Helene Burningham, a professor at University College London, who specialises in coastal science, says "a lot of the change that we're seeing, a lot of the exacerbations in climate, in change in environments is down to, actually, human activity".

This can be from the impact of rising temperatures on environments like the Great Barrier Reef, which Attenborough drew attention to, or the Pacific islands that the naturalist visited in 1960 as part of the series The People of Paradise. Burningham explains that some of those island nations are now being "submerged" in water due to rising sea levels.

However, the scientist notes the impact of climate change in areas like the United Kingdom may be more subtle, like milder winters and different rainfall patterns.

And as Attenborough said in his 2019 BBC documentary Climate Change - The Facts "the science is now clear that urgent action is needed".