SEA-CRETS FROM THE DEEP

FEW PEOPLE KNOW THE OCEANS LIKE BLUE PLANET PRODUCER JOHN RUTHVEN, WHOSE WORK HAS TAKEN HIM ALL OVER THE GLOBE. NOW, IN A FASCINATING NEW BOOK, HE SHARES HIS MOST AWE-INDUCING...

Growing up on a farm in North Wales, I discovered that the animal world is much more varied than pet cats and sheepdogs – if you know where to look. I went exploring in bluebell woods and found mysterious ponds teeming with newts, and stones with the fossils of even stranger creatures embedded in them.

That filled me with a lifelong desire to look beyond the obvious, to see the extraordinary variety of the natural world. It led me to the BBC’S Natural History Unit, where I became involved in the first Blue Planet series with Sir David Attenborough in 1999. And from there it took me all over the globe, including to the underwater coral canyons of French Polynesia in the South Pacific – dubbed ‘the rainforests of the sea’. I have gone in search of sharks, dolphins and every manner of sea life to film them for TV.

In fact, if you’ve ever had a whale in your living room, on your television screen, I might have put it there...