Frozen Planet: the making of David Attenborough's new TV series

We take the poles of the self. Forty percent of our planet is covered in some form of ice, but it has not always been so. We take for granted, and our knowledge is fragmentary. People still often dispute the fact that polar bears are in the north and penguins in the south that Antarctica is a continent frozen Arctic Ocean and frozen.

Extreme cold is not the problem for these animals, their challenge is the changing seasons. It took three years to make Frozen Planet and all the footage is new: orcas are seen hunting in groups by creating a wave that knocks a seal off the ice; we see frozen forests, the formation of a snowflake, the calving of a glacier and the birth of an iceberg. And there’s the first footage of a 'brinicle’, a stalactite of ice reaching to the sea floor that kills everything in its path as it freezes. The photography is epic and spectacular; every shot is mind-blowing. There is, as Attenborough told me, no dross.

The man behind this series is Alastair Fothergill. Fothergill has worked with Attenborough since 1988; he began at the BBC Natural History Unit (NHU) in 1983 and at the age of 32 he became its head.

He quit the post to go back into the field and make The Blue Planet (2001), followed by Planet Earth (2006), which had an audience of nine million, and is the highest-selling non-fiction DVD ever – worldwide. He is the executive producer on Frozen Planet, though in effect he is very hands-on, splitting the making of it with the series producer Vanessa Berlowitz. He now divides his time between the BBC and Disneynature, for which he has made two films, out next year, an unprecedented gesture by the BBC that shows the high regard in which he is held.

It was Fothergill who brought Attenborough to the North Pole for the first time in April last year. It was not easy. For a start, there is only a small window in which it is accessible: the Russians run a temporary camp there from the end of March, when the sun rises, only an annual event in the Arctic, to the end of April, when the ice is beginning to break up. They make a runway about 70 miles from the pole for aircraft to land, but to do that they need a tractor, which has to be dropped from a plane on to the ice, with parachutes attached to it. Sometimes it goes straight through the ice, and they have to start again.

HMS Prince Leopold

Personally I would rather you did not. The current and future generations of local divers have already lost access to one of the historic wrecks in the area, based on events that happened 90 years ago. When access is banned, the story of the vessel and those aboard her fades very quickly from the consciousness. I believe these bans to be a selfish disservice to both the memory of dead sailors and history in general. We may differ in our views on this subject. Maybe you can clear up some confusion in my understanding of events. I am not a historian by any means. My understanding is that the vessel was torpedoed off the coast of France, was taken under tow and later abandoned between Selsey and the IOW. I presume the deaths resulted from the attack rather than the sinking. Are you able to confirm or otherwise? Some salvage has been carried out but it is not sustained. Most of the wrecks in the area were salvaged commercially, dispersed (blown up) or swept by the RN shortly after the war. Divers were picking over them between the 50s and early 90s (depending on the depth). Amateur salvage does not provide the financial incentives it once did (well not in the 30m and shallower range anyhow). The activity is very much in decline. Rising dive costs, changing attitudes and cheap digital cameras have seen 'spidge' collecting become the preserve of a tiny minority. It is unlikely to put a stop to it. Most of the local skippers understand these wrecks are their livelihood and discourage items being removed from any of the wrecks. There is very, very, very little disturbance and looting going on. The few that persist in it are like hard core drink drivers, but far less likely to be caught so they will keep on doing it until spidging is made illegal, which is very unlikely. The interesting bit is that banning access to wrecks provides the spidgers with some justification which inevitably persuades others to join their ranks. If the wreck is designated the journey to a complete ban get's a great deal shorter and easier. The ease with which access bans can be handed out on sites that are already designated was demonstrated just a year or two ago. The UK has a nasty habit of pandering to vocal individuals and minority lobby groups - it is cheaper to appease them than manage them.

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