The wildest – and most worrying – images from Barack Obama’s nature documentary

A new Netflix series offers a previously unthinkable look at life under the sea, and continues Barack Obama’s documentarian reinvention

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It doesn’t bear thinking about, but the world must prepare for a post-Attenborough era. The man who has brought more than 100 wildlife documentaries to our screens is still going strong, and has just released a new series on Asia. But if another documentary, launching next week, is anything to go by, his voice may one day be replaced by that of Barack Obama.
Our Oceans is not the former president’s first rodeo – he narrated 2022’s Our Great National Parks, also on Netflix – but it will cement his new role in the minds of British audiences. “They’re both great men,” says James Honeyborne, executive producer of Our Oceans, who also produced 2017’s Blue Planet II. Obama, he explains, “is such a great fit for the series. He’s a man of the ocean, he was born in the middle of the Pacific [in Hawaii], and he’s protected more of the ocean than pretty much anyone else. He’s a very authentic and passionate voice in that area.”
Over five years in the making, Our Oceans will offer never-before-seen glimpses into life under the sea over five episodes, each focused on a different ocean. Technological advances have opened up a new world, including non-invasive suction cameras attached to cetaceans, which show a thrilling whale’s eye view of a female humpback protecting her calf from a male. 
There are narwhals stunning Arctic char with their tusks, and an octopus turning its siphon into a blowgun to shoot fish in the face. “The magic of underwater filmmaking is that you get this opportunity to delve into a world that to so many people is out of sight and out of mind,” says Honeyborne. “A lot of people don’t like what’s happening underneath, or might find it a bit scary. But when you actually look you find a world that’s hugely relatable and in many ways remarkably like our own.”
That world is rapidly changing, and he says the mission was not only to entertain, but to help viewers connect with and care for the oceans. “It’s a world in crisis. Ocean health is in decline. We address the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis due to overfishing, and pollution. It’s about finding a balance that allows people to immerse themselves in the joys and wonders and excitements of all the discovery that’s happening underwater.”
Our Oceans will be on Netflix from 20 November