#40: Kate Streather – Behind the Making of "Ocean with David Attenborough"

Kate's Bio:

Kate Streather is a documentary researcher with over five years of experience across some of the most respected names in natural history filmmaking, including BBC Studios, Silverback Films, Wildstar Films, and Open Planet Studios. Their credits include Ocean with David Attenborough and Blue Planet III.

Kate brings a rare combination of scientific rigour and production expertise to their work. As a biologist with a First-Class degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Durham, where they specialised in animal behaviour, ecology, and climate change, they bring a depth of understanding to the stories they help tell.

Their hands-on experience spans the full production process, from pre-production and development through to post-production as a core member of edit teams. In the field, Kate has set up and directed a wide range of shoots, including Cineflex, human, macro tank, dive, long lens, drone, and interview, across some of the world's most remote and challenging environments, including Antarctica and West Africa.

Timestamps:

00:00:00 - How Kate Streather’s found her passions 

00:04:10 - Branching into wildlife film making and the opening of new opportunities 

00:08:40 - What it means to work as a scientist in the film making world

00:14:50 - Strengths and struggles of working in wildlife documentaries

00:18:30 - The opportunity to work with Sir David Attenborough in “Ocean”

00:22:00 - What to expect from “Ocean” and what it takes to develop such a project

00:28:10 - Structuring the content in film making: blending science and storytelling 

00:33:20 - Why “no one today has seen a truly wild ocean” and a comparison to the past

00:35:00 - The challenging access to the fishing industry and how to convey difficult images

00:39:00 - How “Ocean” condenses a wealth of incredible experiences around the world

00:47:30 - Adventures on board of a Sea Shepherd’s campaigners boat in Antarctica

00:53:00 - Liberia: election tensions, coastal communities, overfishing and pollution

00:55:10 - More with Sea Shepherd’s cooperating with the Liberian Coast Guard

00:59:00 - The challenges of being a researcher for “Ocean”

01:02:30 - The incredible unbalance between Liberian and Norwegian fishing fleet

01:04:05 - Kate's once-in-a-lifetime experience working with Sir David Attenborough 

01:07:10 - Post-production: editing, archive, fact‑checking, and premiere in London!

01:12:40 - The far-reaching impact of “Ocean” into politics and institutions

01:15:00 - Kate’s motivations and future plans

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Useful Links & Resources:  

Kate Strether on Instagram, Linkedin

Ocean with Sir David Attenborough, 2025 official trailer

Sea Shepherd's website: Sea Shepherd

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Get in touch with The Ocean Age's host Fed DeGobbi on ⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠, ⁠⁠X⁠⁠ or by emailing directly at fed@oceanage.co

The Ocean Age Podcast is produced by Charlotte Raffo and edited by Nebojsa Lešević. Sarah Carpenter and Giulia Leanza are our research assistants. The show notes for this episode were produced by Cecilia Bombonato.

Please send in your feedback: what do you want to hear more or less of? Any suggestions? Would love to hear what you think!

Transcript

Fed DeGobbi: Kate, great to see you again. Welcome to the show.

Kate Streather: Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.

Fed DeGobbi: You might remember we met in person. I was at St George's Hall, I think, in Bristol at an event about storytelling, wasn't it? Yes, it was. I think back in October time maybe. Something like that. I remember it was kind of cold and dark already.

Kate Streather: Not much has changed since.

Fed DeGobbi: There was a short film screening and you were speaking as part of a panel if I remember correctly. So you're from Bristol originally?

Kate Streather: Yes, originally I grew up in Somerset, so very close to Bristol and then went up north to Durham for uni and then came back to Bristol and moved here five years ago to start work.

Fed DeGobbi: Is Bristol a good place to be, do you think?

Kate Streather: Yeah, I love it. It's so great. It's just such a, you kind of just get the best of everything. And I think like the accessibility to nature for me is amazing. Like this weekend, a group of us like going out for a surf and then you can like be surfing and then be back and like having a nice pint in a nice warm pub and you just kind of get all of it.

Fed DeGobbi: It's yeah, I love it as a place. Where do you go surfing?

Kate Streather: Mainly in Wales. So I think we're going to Rest Bay near Porthcawl this weekend. But yeah, Wales or kind of North Devon.

Fed DeGobbi: I started with Bristol because I wanted to dig a bit into your origin story, let's say. And what I was curious to understand was, what came first for you? Was it the love for storytelling or was it the passion for biology?

Kate Streather: Oh, definitely the love for storytelling first. And I think I was a very, I kind of had a very overactive imagination as a kid and my sister would always tease me because I'd always be chatting away to myself and building these crazy stories in my mind and playing with Sylvanian families way before it was too long. I didn't stop early enough. But yeah, I loved, I was obsessed with storytelling and writing little poems and stories for my family. I was big into English and history and very much going down the arts and humanities route. Then I found biology at the GCSE level, so maybe 15.

Fed DeGobbi: Much later on.

Kate Streather: Yeah, much later. I just had a really good biology teacher. I don't think before I'd been taught science in a particularly engaging way and I hadn't really enjoyed it. And yeah, she was just fab. And I wasn't particularly science-y otherwise, like I didn't really do chemistry or physics or anything. So I kind of wrote off being able to do biology at uni and then she revealed that I could. It didn't actually matter. And so it was fine. So yeah, I went on to study biology at uni and then that kind of, the marrying of the two sort of came just before uni, then over uni was when that sort of came together.

Fed DeGobbi: It's interesting how a good teacher can completely change the course of somebody's career and vocation.

Kate Streather: Yeah, it's crazy. And it was literally just one parent's evening where I think I said to her, I was looking at uni courses and none of the history ones were looking that interesting. And I was like, oh, biology looks so cool, but obviously I can't study it. And she was like, why not? Yeah, and she was like, you can. I did maths as well and she was like, that counts because to study a science at uni you have to have two sciences at A-level. She was like, you have the qualifications, you'd be fine. So I did quite a big 180 and then applied to do biology at uni instead.

Fed DeGobbi: Amazing. I can relate in different ways, but I can definitely see that happening. Sometimes it's a bit by chance or sometimes it was always there and somebody helps you find it. And sometimes there's two possible scenarios and they could both have been good and you just happen to be in one.

Kate Streather: Exactly, exactly.

Fed DeGobbi: For a scientific researcher, let's say, going into filmmaking doesn't sound like an obvious path. How did that happen to you?

Kate Streather: Yeah, I think I kind of knew I wanted to work in wildlife TV since I was about 16, 17, when I was discovering biology. And I think I was very fortunate to grow up near Bristol, which is very much the hub of wildlife TV. And so I kind of knew it existed as a thing. I think that's the first big hurdle, finding out this job actually exists. I think it is an interesting direction, but I think also I very much come from the more ecology, zoology, more akin to geography side of biology is what I specialised in. I think it's then just like a really fun way of blending storytelling and that creativity and love of storytelling that I had with then also science communication. I loved academia and I loved my degree, but I didn't want to go down the academic route where you have to specialize so narrowly on one thing. And actually what I was finding, because in my third year I did a lot of specialization on climate change and the human impacts and stuff. And actually what I felt was the most important way to communicate that with people is through storytelling. And that's the way that you can engage people and engage the public with it. I mean, you obviously got the back end of that, which is then the academics and the scientists. But I was really interested in that science communication bit. And therefore, then within that layer, wildlife filmmaking and being able to get people interested in their home and nature and climate change through film and TV, for me, is like the most exciting sort of niche.

Fed DeGobbi: No, absolutely. It feels quite a good level of clarity to have at such a young age. Did you always have that or have you more sort of processed it later on?

Kate Streather: I think I kind of always had it. I think I've been quite a stubborn and driven person from quite a young age. My dad and my mum are both in media, so I think I grew up in this media family and that very much helped with knowing that these jobs exist and what that looked like.

Fed DeGobbi: Yeah, that helps a lot, the awareness. And did you ever walk past along White Ladies Road in Bristol and pass the BBC and think, I'm going to be there?

Kate Streather: I didn't actually, no. But I think, I don't think I did much visualisation of it actually. I think it was just something I always knew I wanted to do. And I think it was kind of funny at uni you'd have in the summers, everyone would be going off, sort of making money, which I didn't realise. you could do by doing these internships and grad schemes. I would just be working as a waitress and then spending all my savings scuba diving or doing various environmental conservation internships and just travelling around, which was great and then set me up perfectly for it. It seemed just like quite a perfect marriage of all the different aspects of my life and things I like to do.

Fed DeGobbi: Those were volunteering type internships?

Kate Streather: Yeah, well, yeah, you would pay to do them. You would pay to volunteer for sure. And so I kind of, yeah, worked at a dive school in Thailand for one summer, which was really cool and doing lots of like, did lots of coral reef surveys for a university, like the day to enter university in Australia and kind of ran lots of fundraisers and beach cleanups. That was really fun. And I'd done some like something at like a orangutan sanctuary in Borneo and helping with the maintenance of that.

Fed DeGobbi: very different vibe from working in a lab or doing research. There's not much adventure.

Kate Streather: Yeah, exactly. So I think I very much, from the get-go, I struggled a lot more with the lab-based side of my degree and of science. I kind of knew that was never really where I wanted to go with it. The adventure was always the most appealing bit.

Fed DeGobbi: So you were already back then seeking that sense of adventure?

Kate Streather: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I also took a gap year. And kind of looking back, it was quite bold of me what I did. I basically as an 18 year old, just went by myself for six months around Southeast Asia and New Zealand. And yeah, it was amazing. It's definitely I wouldn't, me now, I wouldn't pick that same route or do it in the same way. But like, 18 year old me, I had a great time. So you gotta respect that. But yeah, I've always, yeah, always loved a kind of sense of adventure and and independence and just sort of going out and doing it.

Fed DeGobbi: And it gets quite addictive, doesn't it?

Kate Streather: It does. Yeah, it does, for sure.

Fed DeGobbi: Where did you go in New Zealand?

Kate Streather: I went actually all over both islands. It was called the Kiwi Experience, so it's kind of like a hop-on hop-off bus that takes you everywhere, yeah. Which was really good fun. I think by then I was quite ready to come home, but it was an amazing end.

Fed DeGobbi: It's quite far away, isn't it?

Kate Streather: Yeah, for sure.

Fed DeGobbi: You mentioned knowing that those jobs exist and getting into those opportunities and fields of work. This is probably such a silly question, but do you apply to those jobs or is there more to it?

Kate Streather: when you're actually trying to get into TV?

Fed DeGobbi: Let's say, yeah, TV, filmmaking, documentary productions. What I'm thinking is, how does one even know that they exist? Is it like any normal job where you go on a job board and, you know, look for a documentary researcher and you apply? And also, what do production companies look for in a researcher?

Kate Streather: Yeah, so I mean it's, there definitely are job boards, but I would say having had friends who work in more conventional or like kind of corporate jobs or my partners in the civil service, like very different, very different route and way, ways that the industry works. Yeah. I think there's, I mean, for one thing, it took me so long, doesn't quite answer your question, I'll come back to it, but it took me so long to realise that people didn't have end dates on their contract. that was wild. I remember chatting to my sister about it and just this realisation that actually everyone else, so many people around me were just in permanent contracts that didn't have an end date and I was like, what? This is crazy. I've had some longer contracts and definitely on Ocean My longest was a year so I worked on it for like two and a half years but it was in across sort of three contracts.

Fed DeGobbi: So even with that project that was, I guess they knew straight away that was going to be three years I guess, it was still broken in contracts.

Kate Streather: Yeah it's just kind of the way you tend to just get contracted for a certain period of time and it will get extended and so I think that's very different and definitely in terms of how you get in there's no sort of formal grad scheme or correct path like it's so and I think I've got lots of friends in TV and a lot of us have come in it from different angles how I sort of did it which I think is definitely what I know a few people did is you sort of go through a bit of a period of doing work experience at these companies and you go in and you might do some shadowing for a few days or you might think I did some like transcriptions of a BTS interview for one of the companies. What is a BTS interview? sorry, behind the scenes. They were filming behind the scenes of the scientists and I was literally there just typing the interview out. And then I was super lucky. I think the first job I got on TV, not all jobs are advertised and this one wasn't. It was as a junior researcher in the development team.

Fed DeGobbi: It wasn't? So they were looking internally or within their network?

Kate Streather: Exactly. There's so much which is like word of mouth and emailing and it's a lot of who you know and who you have connections with, which definitely starting out is so challenging because you don't really have connections with many people.

Fed DeGobbi: I suppose it's a negative when you're out and it's a positive when you're in. It becomes a moat when you're in because you know that it's a closer circle, I suppose.

Kate Streather: Yeah, very true.

Fed DeGobbi: And what do they look for? Let's say you go in, you do a shadowing stint a few days. What do you think they're looking for? Is it about what you know? Is it about experience, personality, attitude? What is it?

Kate Streather: Yeah, I guess it's tricky. I think I probably have a better gauge now of what they're looking for for me as a researcher going forward. But I guess for people starting out, I think a lot of it is just a curiosity and a genuine love of the natural world. I think I know I've had people who are wanting to get into TV in general and then maybe are going down the wildlife TV route, but the fact that it's wildlife doesn't massively mean that much to them. They just want to be on TV and I think what they're really after is just people who are big old nerds. who just love the natural world and are so excited by it and want to tell those stories. I've spent my whole morning just in scientific papers trying to find these specific facts and chatting away to scientists. I think a lot of it is a curiosity and a love of the world around us. I think also I think personality is another big thing. We work in small teams in very intense environments and ensuring that the people they've got on their crew are going to be able to work well in those teams and handle those environments. I think that's another really important factor.

Fed DeGobbi: I bet you spend a lot of time in close contact together, especially when you're on location.

Kate Streather: Yeah, for sure. On location, you definitely do. And I think also TV is changing a lot, which is really nice. I think historically, wildlife TV, most people came in through the academic route, having done biology. And I think they're now putting a lot in place to try and change that and have people coming in from studying media or film or coming from actually a completely different background and bringing a fresh new perspective to storytelling. And there's a lot of different initiatives or apprenticeships or schemes to get people in from lower economic backgrounds and diversify wildlife TV more, which is great and really positive.

Fed DeGobbi: Yeah, why do you think that is important? Is it about perspective?

Kate Streather: Yeah, I think definitely. I think if you have the same kind of person always telling the stories, then the stories will inherently remain quite similar. And I think having different perspectives and different types of people in and on those teams will just, at every level and across the crew, will just inherently make your story more interesting because everyone will have different perspectives that they can bring in. Yeah, which I think is really important.

Fed DeGobbi: Is there an element of, hey, all of that has been done already. You kind of need to tell a different story now.

Kate Streather: I think yes, and definitely there's quite a big recession happening at the moment in film and TV across the board, but it is, it's affecting the wildlife TV industry a lot. And I think with that as kind of commissions have slowed and there are just fewer commissions happening, being able to pitch something that's new, that's novel, that is telling the story in a different way, that's keeping our audiences interested. That's always, that's always the goal and kind of

Fed DeGobbi: the aim. What do you think is driving that recession? Is it just general lack of money?

Kate Streather: I think a lot of factors came into play. Around 2019, 2020, there was this real increase and boom in commissions and the appetite suddenly really grew, especially for wildlife TV. And so with that, companies expanded really quickly and the industry as a whole got a lot bigger. And a lot more TV was being made, wildlife TV was being made and a lot of it was coming out. And then, whilst that was happening, you also then had this cost of living crisis hit. And at the same time as the cost of living crisis hit, you had all these different streaming platforms. So before people were picking, you know, they would pay for Netflix, but suddenly they're having to choose, do I pay for Netflix or Disney or Apple or Now or my Paramount added and like all these different platforms. And whilst there's then a cost of living crisis, so people are having to make decisions and aren't watching and sort of splitting their viewership. And then in general, I think for the first time ever, a couple of years ago, TV and film as a whole made a loss.

Fed DeGobbi: As an industry.

Kate Streather: As an industry, and it fell into loss. And so all these companies were suddenly having to make sure the stuff they were going to make was going to really hit and really sell. And a lot of wildlife TV had been coming out. The viewership for some of it wasn't as good. And so I think naturally, therefore, wildlife TV just kind of got cut. I mean, everything got cut, but wildlife TV did especially. And Bristol, I think 40% of wildlife TV in the world is made from Bristol.

Fed DeGobbi: Seriously?

Kate Streather: Yeah, it's the global hub of wildlife TV. It's crazy.

Fed DeGobbi: I lived in Bristol for the last eight years, and I had not realised. I mean, I knew that it was a thing, but I had not realised how much of an international hub it was.

Kate Streather: Yeah, it's really big. And so if you've got cuts like where, I don't know, you have one streaming platform who are cutting their number of commissions in half, say, then that's 50% fewer jobs in Bristol. So it's quite a direct impact to the wildlife community in Bristol. It's an interesting time. I feel like it's definitely stabilising more now and picking up and there are more commissions coming through, which is really exciting. But there's been a huge shrinkage in the last few years.

Fed DeGobbi: So, okay, with that in mind, what was your progression and how did you get the opportunity to work on Ocean? Also, might be good to take a step back and explain to the audience what is Ocean.

Kate Streather: I had been working in TV for two years at the same, I was at the same company, kind of worked up as a junior researcher and a logger, which is someone who kind of reviews all the footage that comes through and helps organise it for the edit. And then I'd moved up to being a fully-fledged researcher on one of the series at Wildstar Films. And my contract was coming to an end. And very much just in the way that TV works, when your contract's coming to an end, you just email people your CV and sort of hope for the best. And so I was sending out these emails and I had had a big focus on marine biology in my degree. My dissertation was on coral reefs and I was a big scuba diver and I really wanted to get into the underwater filmmaking side of wildlife TV, which is really competitive and really hard to break into. I was just sending out my CV in these emails saying that I really wanted to do this and I was really keen to. I got a reply from Silverback Films saying that the CEO would like to meet me for an interview. Was I free? I was like, Yep, absolutely. I was actually on holiday with my mum at the time when it was scheduled for, so I had to use the Airbnb ladies living room because that was the only place with Wi-Fi. And I had this interview and it was for Ocean with David Attenborough, which has kind of been the biggest project I've worked on.

Fed DeGobbi: And you knew going into that interview that it was going to be Ocean?

Kate Streather: I knew it was going to be ocean-based, and I think I knew it was maybe going to be similar to David Attenborough's A Life on Our Planet, the Netflix documentary. So I kind of had a bit of an inkling, but not really much. And yeah, I was incredibly, incredibly privileged to have then gotten the job as the researcher on the film. And I was the only researcher across the whole film, which I was then on for, yeah, two and a half years.

Fed DeGobbi: That must have been an exciting time when you got the call.

Kate Streather: Yeah, I mean it was pretty crazy. Yeah, definitely a very life-changing moment in my career for sure.

Fed DeGobbi: And that was through an email that you sent to somebody you knew in that company and then you got the call to actually meet the CEO.

Kate Streather: Yeah, I think there tends to be people, people kind of know who the talent managers and production managers are at all the companies. And so when it's quite typical when you're coming to an end of a contract, if you don't already have that list, one of your friends will share their version of that list with you. So I was just sort of emailing all the talent managers. And I think at Silverback, I emailed the head of production and it just, yeah, was a very fortunate to be the right time. They were literally just starting the development for this film. I was the first team member to join, other than the two executive producers. So yeah, it was just incredibly fortunate timing, which I think is how it often goes with TV.

Fed DeGobbi: It is, it is for sure. And I'm sure it's a combination. I'm sure you've done other things right to pique their interest, you know, and be worth that call. But yeah, what a story. Yeah. I love to talk about the role of a researcher within a TV documentary. But maybe before we do that, would it make sense to zoom out and explain Maybe how the production of a documentary like Ocean works. How long does it take? How many people are involved? What are the stages of the process?

Kate Streather: Absolutely. It's very different depending on what you're working on. Do you want me to do it specific for Ocean?

Fed DeGobbi: Let's talk about Ocean specifically because then it's a relevant example.

Kate Streather: So a bit of an overview of what Ocean with David Attenborough is first, I guess. It's a feature film that came out last year. It had a cinematic release in May and then came out on Disney Plus in June. And it was basically, it was sort of pitched as being David's big message for our ocean. and his sort of call to action for our seas. And it was split into three acts. And so the first act was looking at how our ocean works, but also how our understanding of how the ocean works has changed over his 100-year lifetime. and we focused on coral reefs and kelp forests and the open ocean and how these are all interlinking ecosystems. Then we went into the second act, which was looking at how, with all this in mind, how are we actually treating the ocean at the moment and what state is the ocean in And so it was really exciting. We basically filmed, for the first time ever, bottom trawling and scallop dredging in this way and sort of really revealed to the audiences what was going on, what is normally so hidden and out of sight because it's happening at the bottom of the ocean and by people who don't want you to know what's happening. so we focused mainly on bottom trawling, but also on other types of fishing such as longlining and purse seining. Once we'd shown the audience the state of the ocean, it was also then this big discovery that actually the ocean can recover faster than anywhere else, faster than land. If you leave it alone, even these places that have been so scarred and so impacted by fishing can recover and they do. Then we went into these kind of amazing case studies, I guess, of where this had happened and where life had kind of bounced back. It was sort of David trying to reimagine what our relationship with the seas could look like and how it would benefit everyone, including the fishermen and the policy makers and it will benefit everybody better. So that was sort of the film that I got brought on to research. Films and series, kind of how they are set up, you sort of have three phases. You have a pre-production slash development phase where you're working out what it is you're going to film. I mean, what is it looks like? For us on Ocean, it was slightly different. So normally, how a kind of TV series or a film would work is that a production company would take an idea to a commissioner, such as Netflix or Disney Plus. And if the commissioner liked it, they would commission this idea. you go away and you make the project. And as you're making it, you kind of feed things back to your commissioner. What happened with Ocean is we were funded by philanthropists. So at the right at the beginning, we actually didn't have, we didn't know what the end platform was going to be for the film. Ended up being Disney Plus and National Geographic, which was amazing. But that kind of, yeah, that was sort of all being worked out at the beginning. And because it was funded by philanthropists and because this film very much was David Attenborough's story of the ocean, the film didn't exist without him. What we had to do in that development stage, which is normally kind of you're working out the structure of the film and what it's going to look like and where you might film and what that schedule might look like and how how much time have you got in production, filming, how are you going to coordinate all these different shoots and things like that. We were doing that but we also had to actually record the full script with David because he was 96. Evan at that time. And so we kind of had to have this insurance policy, I guess, to ensure that we, whatever happened as we started filming, we had, we were still able to make this film because without him, it wouldn't exist. So that was a really, it was a crazy way of starting, starting a project by writing the script, because you don't really know what you filmed yet. So it was a quite a kind of backwards process there. But it really worked, I think, because Ocean is less behaviour based and less sort of character driven and it's focusing more on the ecosystems and the environments of the characters or we're looking at fishing but it wasn't as traditional as following a certain sort of, I don't know, fish doing this in this environment. So you could kind of get away with writing the script first but yeah it was definitely a different approach.

Fed DeGobbi: Let's see what you mean. Sometimes it's almost like a live commentary of what you're seeing, but on Ocean, that never happens.

Kate Streather: Exactly. Yeah. So we had this development period, which I think was, so we started, the development started in August and the first shoot was in June the following year. But we'd done all of our shoots with Sir David in that interim period.

Fed DeGobbi: Already.

Kate Streather: Already, yeah.

Fed DeGobbi: That almost, at the beginning, when you started talking about Ocean, you described an arch. It sounds like a story arch, where you're, okay, we start from here, and then we go into the bad, and almost like a shit sandwich of, you know, this is the bad. First, we make you fall in love with the Ocean and David Attenborough's story, then the bad, and then, but hey, actually there's a lot of positive and hope. And so all of that you already worked out and planned at the beginning.

Kate Streather: Yes.

Fed DeGobbi: Is that rare and unusual or is that usually what that stage looks like?

Kate Streather: It's usually what that stage looks like but I think you wouldn't be so in the confines of the script that you've already recorded. But that kind of development process is what you are usually doing. So it might be if you are starting on a new series that is say a blue planet in their development phase, they kind of know the blue planet franchise tends to be the episodes are split up by type of sea, so like the coasts or the tropics or the poles. And then you would probably use that development time to look at your biome that you are focusing on and then the producer will probably have an idea of like what are they wanting their arc to be in that film and so that might be looking at how did the seasons change or like what is it like what's a year like in this this scene and so once you kind of know the narrative arc you start just trying to find the best In the case of something like Blue Planet, it'll be behavioural stories. In the case of Ocean, it was slightly different because it was more finding environments that best showed what we were trying to say and trying to find these incredible behaviours that are filmable and how are you going to film them and where is that going to happen and what time. You're building this all up so you have got a really good idea of what that narrative arc is going to be. It's just, it might be more subject to change because you haven't already got the narrative recorded.

Fed DeGobbi: And where does the science come in? Do you start with a story first and then look for the science? Or do you nail down the science first and then think about building a story?

Kate Streather: I think it depends. Finding stories is so variable. In my research, I use a lot of news articles and social media and podcasts and ways of finding really interesting visual stories. It might be a science news article or it might be this person who's out in a certain area and they've seen a really cool behavior in their backyard and they've filmed it and they've put it on Instagram and you're like, that's amazing. And then the science comes in very quickly of seeing what exists around that, who's researching that area or that species. And you're always having lots of calls and chats with those scientists to see what that story really looks like. And another key bit is digging down, how would you actually film it? and what does, is it filmable, how would you film it, what kind of technology can we use to film things and the kind of grand scheduling that goes on of what time of year does that happen, when would you need to be out there and that kind of thing. So the science and the storytelling are very entwined from the get-go and kind of remained entwined the whole time.

Fed DeGobbi: What did that process look like for Ocean specifically? You mentioned things like, okay, is this even filmable? If it is, how are we going to do it? Do we need to build a new type of camera? Do we need to go to a new place that we've never been? What did it look like for Ocean?

Kate Streather: So, for example, at the top of the film, when I was introducing people to the different environments, it was like, where is the most beautiful coral reefs in the world right now? And where are the most pristine coral reefs still? What time of year is best? And where would we go and film them? So those ones are a little bit more simple.

Fed DeGobbi: On that, sorry, I'm super curious. Is there much left in terms of coral reef?

Kate Streather: I think a lot of it, I mean, yeah, a huge amount, I think like 84% of coral reefs were affected or bleached in 2024, which is our main filming year. So there's a huge amount of damage going on to coral reefs at the moment. Where we filmed was in the Coral Triangle, which for, so kind of Indonesia and Malaysia and that sort of region. kind of various reasons such as its placement and the currents and where it's situated. It is undergoing thermal stress and bleaching at a different rate to the Great Barrier Reef and it's experiencing changing oceans slightly differently. So that's where the most sort of pristine reefs now still are. But yeah, it's really changing everywhere. I think David has a line in the film which I think is so powerful and so true, which is that no one today knows what a truly wild ocean looks like. I did a lot of the research on all the fisheries and the fishing section and it was like even in the I was reading these reports from the 1800s where they were having these fishery commissions and even then they were looking at bottom trawling and being like, this is really bad. Yeah, it was wild. But even then, I'm like, well, you're back in the 1800s and you're still talking about all these fish you're pulling out of the ocean. So no one knows what it could look like. And there was this amazing book by Callum Roberts called The Unnatural History of the Sea. And he goes back further to before records began of fishing, but of kind of tales of as these explorers were going around the seas and sort of finding new places and how they documented it. And there was one which was like, the sea was so thick with fish, boats could hardly move through them. And another that was like, if I thrust my axe into the sea, it would stand upright for there were so many fish. And it's just, yeah, it's so difficult for us to imagine because I think it has obviously changed so much and we just don't know what it did look like before.

Fed DeGobbi: And it's often, I guess, is that slowly moving baseline and that through generations people don't realize.

Kate Streather: Exactly. So yeah, so I mean for example like Ocean, one of our big challenges was always we knew we wanted to film fishing and I think you can film the effects of fishing and the effects on communities and that can be really powerful but unless we actually showed the really nitty gritty, like, what does it look like? I think we sort of knew the film wasn't going to hit as hard as we wanted it to. So that was one of the huge challenges, was working out how are we going to film bottom trawling? Because a lot of people I spoke to had, definitely after a previous fishing documentary had come out a few years before, they didn't want to speak to me as soon as I sort of mentioned fishing because I think they were very scared our film was going to be anti-fishing, which it's not. It's very much not an anti-fishing film but we were just showing the realities of what trawling looks like and so it was really difficult trying to find an in and we worked on it for like a year I think trying to trying to work this out. I went up to Norway and there's a really cool team of scientists with the University of the Arctic there who have this old fishing trawler and they're doing experiments trying to make trawling less environmentally damaging. So I went on that vessel to get a better idea of what trawling looks like and the behaviour of trawling. We really went round the houses with it, trying to find an inn and in the end it was a kind of scientist, conservationist figure who was just that I met at a conference who was kind of perfectly placed to help us film trawling. And we kind of worked with him as a university professor and then also the Turkish government to help us film trawling in the Mediterranean and we sort of fixed cameras to their nets and it was amazing to find. It was all very above board and they led us on. Our crew, they were on the boat and they fixed cameras to the nets and filmed them. So we could really show what bottom trawling looks like on the seabed.

Fed DeGobbi: And I suppose I'd be curious to understand whether you had to make any adjustments around the technology side of things, because one side, correct me if I'm wrong, but one element would be, okay, we need an in, we need to actually find somebody who's going to let us film them, which I'm sure is the biggest hurdle. But once you've got an in, now you're like, well, There's different ways of filming this and the level of impact is massively different. If you film it from the outside, it's one thing, but during the film, you genuinely feel like you're one of the fishes and you want to run away from this thing because you feel like you're in it and it's sort of chasing you. Was that intentional and how did you have to adjust the technology to get that?

Kate Streather: Yeah, it definitely was intentional, very much wanting to get a very intimate view of this very terrifying occurrence. We basically made these little camera rigs, camera housings that would hold our cameras. I can't remember if it was GoPros or Osmos in the end, but it was like little action cameras that we used.

Fed DeGobbi: Like the one I'm using now.

Kate Streather: It's a little Osmo action. it's amazing what they can do and they were in these sort of metal cages to protect the camera and they were then affixed to the net before the net went in and they were rolling the whole time so it was like hours and hours of footage that came back that you would you know Alex, who was the assistant producer who directed that shoot, kind of went through to find these incredible moments. And they just did that many times and managed to get those really, really powerful, powerful moments.

Fed DeGobbi: How many did you break?

Kate Streather: I actually don't. I wasn't on that one, so I'm not sure. It was similar for the scallop dredging as well, which I was on in the UK shoot. And I think only one, surprisingly, because when you see that footage and it's sort of like tearing through rocks and everything's bouncing up, but yeah, one got a big smash to it. But luckily, I think that was… I kind of feared that.

Fed DeGobbi: Right, so take us behind the scene. People obviously only get to see that hour and a half of edited documentary, and it's impossible to imagine all the work and logistics that you're mentioning, the stories that must have happened throughout those three years prior to the documentary going out into the world. How many on-location shoots were you involved in and where?

Kate Streather: I think we were filming for, it was a 64 week filming period on Ocean and during that time I was on location for 28 weeks so it was a lot. My main, I had a couple of shoots in the UK and then my main, my kind of biggest shoots were in Antarctica and Liberia. Antarctica and Liberia. Yes, Antarctica was the krill trawling sequence and then Liberia was showing what's happening out at sea with these trawling activities and being felt by communities on land. What's happening off the coast of West Africa with all these international trawlers, that West African, is then being hugely felt by these local fishing communities. So those were my two and I think Antarctica is quite a good example of, it was the longest shoot across the film, so we were out there for six weeks.

Fed DeGobbi: Six weeks in Antarctica.

Kate Streather: Yeah, and it makes like six minutes of the film. So just to show you, I've got some good, where are the other, there's something like, so 500 hours were spent filming underwater, 300 days.

Fed DeGobbi: In Antarctica?

Kate Streather: No, no, this is across the film. Across the film, 500 hours were spent filming underwater and over 300 days were spent filming at sea. And I think total we had 27 shoots that were across 11 countries and that spanned all seven continents. So it was a global Yeah, and then it gets down into an hour and a half.

Fed DeGobbi: That's unbelievable.

Kate Streather: Let's talk about Antarctica. How do you even get there? So we worked with Sea Shepherd for this shoot, which was incredible. Yeah, I'd worked with them. We worked with them as well in Liberia, and they are just the most amazing group of marine activists. And it was so cool joining their campaigns. So they had a campaign anyway, going down to Antarctica to kind of document the krill trawling activity that goes on down there. So how we got there was we flew to Buenos Aires in Argentina and then down from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia which is like the southernmost tip and their boat Kim picked us up. So they'd been traveling, their boat started in Australia, I think. They'd been on this, like, I think they'd been going for maybe a month, probably more by the time they came and picked us up, yeah. So we got collected at Ushuaia with all of our kit, and I was with, it was me and two cameramen, and then it was about a four-day journey across Drake's Passage to then get to Coronation Island, which is where the frill fishery is.

Fed DeGobbi: And what does the crew look like at this point? Obviously, you're being hosted by this organization and it's three of you for the shooting.

Kate Streather: Yes. So it was us three for our crew, but we joined the Sea Shepherd campaign, which I think they had like 30 people. So it was a really big campaign. And that's like engineers, chefs, media team, first mate, Boatswain. It was a really big crew that we kind of became part of.

Fed DeGobbi: which I'm sure is quite nice, you know, to be part of a slightly bigger.

Kate Streather: Yeah, it's great. I mean, you have some, you have some shoots where your entire work and social life is just the one other person you're filming with, or maybe the two other people you're working with. So it's nice if you're, I mean, boats can get quite claustrophobic after four weeks. So to have 30 people to chat to is quite, yeah, extend your social circle, which is nice. And they were, yeah, they were great.

Fed DeGobbi: What does the day-to-day life look like during those periods? I guess you live on the boat and eat on the boat. What's a normal day? What does it look like?

Kate Streather: normal day we were kind of what was slightly different with this shoot compared to other shoots is because we were joining their campaign we kind of joined their schedule a bit as well which was a was a lovely schedule so it was very nice but yeah I think we kind of they would have they had set times for meals so everyone ate communally and I was in a cabin of four and I think there was maybe 10 of us or 12 of us sharing this one tiny bathroom that was like one loo and then the shower was next to it and you had to like you just couldn't really shower when it was really rough because the water would just go everywhere and you're trying to then like use the little squeegee thing to get it down the drain so it was yeah you'd try and get into the shower if you could and then you'd have breakfast and then you kind of everyone would then go into their little teams to make a plan for the day and so normally what ours then involved is so we were living on this on their campaign ship which was a I think it was like 54 meters long. It was an old Patagonia longline fishing ship. That tends to be what they do with their campaign boats. They try and take a fishing vessel out of circulation and then turn it into a boat fit for their campaigns, which is really cool. So you're on this big ship and then it had two ribs on it, which is a kind of a, like a hard bottom dinghy basically, but a quite a big one, couple of meters long.

Fed DeGobbi: that you can use to get out and wander around?

Kate Streather: And film, yeah. So they had one that was just for them, that they used to help get their media team into the water and closer to the boats. Because big boats, you have to stay really quite far away from the other ships for obvious reasons. And then we had one of these ribs that was basically dedicated to our team. Because we were filming with something called a Cineflex, which is quite an old camera now. Most people use like a GSS shot over system and basically it's a massive gimbal that can hold a very high-end RED camera and huge lens and it can hold it, yeah, it can stabilize it and hold it completely still and it needs to be on a sort of mini crane so that you can like move it around. So that's a lot of there was a lot of, like all of its fixings were sort of permanently fixed into the boat, into this rib. So they took out, they very kindly took out all the seats that should have been in there and instead sort of sat this like hunk of metal that our camera then sat on top of. So then, I mean, a filming day we would kind of go out and we'd be out on this little boat for sort of eight, nine hours. They had a big crane on the boat that would sort of winch your rib because your rib was on top of the boat and it would winch it down into the water.

Fed DeGobbi: And are you in it at that point?

Kate Streather: Yeah, I'm in it. Me and one of my camera operators would be in it. Our camera operator for the Cineflex. We also had a drone op who was fantastic as well and he would stay on the main boat just because the rib was quite small and it was pretty choppy.

Fed DeGobbi: Was it, yeah?

Kate Streather: Yeah, definitely. They couldn't launch the ribs if it was too rough, so we never had it super, super rough. But we were there during a very stormy time, so there was a lot of bad weather. And so yeah, we'd go out and be filming the trawlers for eight, nine hours, and then you'd come back and have a lot of food. And then My next bit of my job, which is the sort of most important bit in a way on location, is then to offload everything you've just filmed and make backups and make sure it's all very safe and secure.

Fed DeGobbi: I bet. So much effort goes into it.

Kate Streather: Yeah, exactly. So that would be, yeah, a kind of typical day for us. Yeah. So it was really, it was really cool.

Fed DeGobbi: I imagine you're there in this little boat and you're filming and in the film you can see all these bottom trawlers around you. Do you know who they are? Do they know that you're even there? What's the relationship?

Kate Streather: Yeah, so they are, it's the, the krill fishery in Antarctica is all legal. So all the information on the boats is all like publicly available. And they were all from, so we had, there was a Norwegian vessel, a Chilean vessel, a Chinese ship. a couple of, I can't remember all of them now, but yeah, I think they would always be around five to six trawlers at any one time that you could kind of see. And they, yeah, they're aware that Sea Shepherd are coming down and are carrying out their campaign. And because Sea Shepherd's all above board and it's, yeah, they can't really, there's not a lot, I don't think they love it, but there's not a lot they can do about it. So yeah, so you just kind of be at eye level with them really. They are such huge ships. Most of them are like a hundred meters long. They are absolute giants. And then you just feel like this very tiny little speck on the water below them.

Fed DeGobbi: Yeah, you definitely get that sense from the film. Do you have any interaction with the people on the trailer?

Kate Streather: No, no, no interaction. They very much do their thing.

Fed DeGobbi: Is there any funny, memorable story that comes to mind during the, say, the Antarctica shoot on location?

Kate Streather: Definitely. I mean, it was, you've got like your six weeks with quite a contained crew. So it was a very, it's a funny time. We had, I mean, one of the most memorable nights, I think we were maybe in transit from one location to another, but it was when it was super, super stormy. And we kind of wake up at three in the morning to this massive whack and everything has just flown out of every possible cupboard. If like, if it wasn't very tightly tied down, it was, it was out. And we were all just like, what the hell has just happened?

Fed DeGobbi: A bit of a Titanic moment.

Kate Streather: Yeah, exactly. And also it was before we'd started filming. So it was on Drake's Passage, it's like the roughest seas in the world. And we were on Drake's Passage and we did get hit by a big storm and it was huge waves and huge winds. And so suddenly there's then like a whole group of us are getting up in the middle of the night and everyone's got very different aims of what they're doing. So the Sea Shepherd crew are obviously going to check that the ship is okay. And the big thwack we heard was basically underneath the kind of main deck, like in the, I guess it would be the hold, but it's probably a proper boat term for it. They had these huge like tons of oil in massive containers to like fuel for the ship because they're going for like months and months. And I think we basically smacked down after a wave with such force that these huge containers had shifted from one side to the other. And so the Sea Shepherd crew were going around and checking that everything was safe and was secure. And I was just like, fuck the camera. Oh my God, we haven't even started filming. We have one big camera with us. The drones were also in another place and I was like, they aren't tied down by anything.

Fed DeGobbi: It's very delicate stuff.

Kate Streather: very delicate stuff, a lot, like very expensive stuff. So I was just kind of like running around going, it was like in this certain little area of the boat that our camera was strapped down. And I went and found it like ropes and everything kind of falling out around it. Luckily it was fine. And then I ran back upstairs to like the other zone that the drones were kept and everything was fine. And it was just very funny because both my camera ops very much just stayed in bed. And I was just sending them photos on WhatsApp and just being like, this camera's fine and this drone's fine. And they were like, great, thanks.

Fed DeGobbi: And you have phone signal even there?

Kate Streather: Yeah, so it's crazy. We had Starlink, which has really changed the game. We had Wi-Fi and yeah, so you're able to be really contactable and in a lot of contact when you're down there, which is kind of crazy.

Fed DeGobbi: Yeah, it's insane in a place like that.

Kate Streather: Yeah, so that was really funny. And then another really sweet moment is we were on the boat over Valentine's Day. And so we did a kind of like a secret Santa, but we did a secret Valentine with all the crew. And then it was really sweet because you had to make your person a gift But obviously, it just had to be from stuff on the boat. And so it was just really lovely seeing what everybody did. So the sound, the media team on the Sea Shepherd boat had a soundie, and he had created this mixtape for his person. And then somebody, I got the most beautiful, someone had hand embroidered me a patch with a little penguin on, which was really cute. People were just using every different skill they had and all the engineers were doing stuff with metal. It was really, really sweet.

Fed DeGobbi: You definitely have to get creative with what you've got around.

Kate Streather: Exactly, I think my camera op used a ratchet strap to make a guitar strap for somebody. It was good fun, it was really good.

Fed DeGobbi: What about Liberia? Different vibe, different temperature, I imagine?

Kate Streather: Yeah, very different temperature. And I did them back to back as well. I had Christmas off in between. But yeah, so they were very, very different vibes. Liberia was definitely a really challenging place to work. We went there like two weeks after they had just had an unprecedented election, where basically the sitting president hadn't been voted in for a second term. And that had never happened before. and people weren't that happy about it and there was quite a lot of potential for kind of protests and political unrest. So we needed like 24-7 security with us at all times and so I think we had like four four guys which was quite the experience and we kind of half the time we were filming on land so we went to Robertsport which is kind of one of the main fishing communities in Liberia. Local guys do this fishing from shore where they let out this small net and bring it back in. Then we also filmed out of Monrovia, which is the biggest slum that they have in Liberia. So that was, again, really hardcore. It's like, I think 40,000 people live there. We had to sort of park in the road's stop at a certain point. So we sort of drove as far as we could. And then we had to park and we had to carry all our camera equipment to the beach where the fishing was happening. But I mean, there's also, there's like 10 working toilets in Monrovia. So most people are just in the whole thing.

Fed DeGobbi: And the whole thing, 40,000 people, 10 toilets.

Kate Streather: Yeah.

Fed DeGobbi: I've got a picture.

Kate Streather: Yeah exactly and so people are using the beach and there's a lot of needles and it was just quite a tough location to work in and we were sort of filming fishing here and these guys were putting in so much effort to put out these nets and haul them back in and you could see them like struggling and sweating and then they'd get this net in and it would just be full of plastic and like fish this size. It'd be tiny and you just like had watched them working non-stop for like an hour to do this. So it was really hard and it was really sad and me and my camera operator were just there like, this just feels… I think when you are wanting to tell stories of what's really happening out there, the reality of that isn't always the nicest. So we were on land for the first half and then second half we were working with Sea Shepherd again. They have a really cool campaign in Liberia where they basically work with the Liberian Coast Guard and the Liberian government and they facilitate getting the Coast Guard onto their boats and they are in the Liberian waters and they go around and they find trawlers. board them and then the Coast Guard boards them and sort of secures the vessels and then the Sea Shepherd crew go on and carry out checks to make sure they're doing everything correctly and if they're not they either sort of tell them what they need to do or if it's just a fully illegal trawler they'll arrest them and sort of send them back to back to port. So what we were then doing having had this quite intense experience on land is me and my it was sort of same setup like big campaign boat a little sort of rib dinghy to then get around and access the trawlers. But this time we were boarding them. So we would find this trawler and you could see it and we were on this dinghy and you had the coast guards with their big guns in front of you and the Sea Shepherd crew and me and my camera operator. I was recording all the sounds. I had all my sound gear and he had his camera and then our little boat would just bounce against the trawler and you just have to clamber on and then you're suddenly just on this illegal trawling vessel. Well, one of the ones we boarded was illegal, just out in the ocean and then the Sea Shepherd crew just started doing their thing and then we were filming to get on board content of nets opening and showing all the bycatch that trawlers get because they're deeply unselective in how they fish. They get a huge amount of bycatch and you were getting little sharks and such an array of life coming up. So yes, that was quite hardcore.

Fed DeGobbi: So these trawlers that you are boarding, are they in on it or are they expecting this to happen?

Kate Streather: They are. Sea Shepherd have been working in these waters for quite a few years, so they are really aware of the campaign. They do repeat boardings, so they kind of know. The Liberian Coast Guard goes on first, so it's a safe environment. They secure it, they make it safe before you get on, but it's still quite a place to be. So much human rights abuses and modern day slavery happens on these vessels, so than just being on one was, yeah, it was quite crazy.

Fed DeGobbi: What did you find was the biggest challenge in all of these experiences? Is it more like the logistics and the technical side, the weather and the sort of survival element, or is it more like the tension that you might have in these moments and the sometimes, I guess, concern for your life and your safety?

Kate Streather: I think in terms of safety, you've done very big risk assessments and big safety considerations back in the office, so there is an element of trusting all the procedures and things that you've put in place for these shoots. I think it's so dependent on your location. For example, in Liberia, I got really ill. I got Giardia, which is basically the illness you get if you ingest poo. So that's quite gross. So I was wiped out for the first bit. So that was really hard and kind of trying to keep your creative juices flowing when you're working in really hard environments. And definitely, I think Liberia had this extra personal element of sort of underlying stress. It's very, it's quite a hostile place to be queer in. So that was like another in the setup element I had to deal with because it's kind of my first time going to, going on shoot somewhere that was like so hostile to it. So that kind of brings in lots of different safety considerations and logistics. Antarctica, like Liberia, it was really hot but it was it was like mid-30s so it's not, you just have to keep hydrated but it's not the most insane environment I've ever worked in. But like Antarctica, you're on those little ribs for eight, nine hours. It's freezing cold. Yeah, windy. Yeah, exactly. So there's just, there's so many, there's so many different ways to kind of consider and keep on top of.

Fed DeGobbi: And I guess some you can predict and some you kind of have to deal with as you go along.

Kate Streather: Exactly. There is so much that you just can't predict. But I think one of my producers was kind of his method, which I do really like, is if something goes wrong, it's like, okay, well, is there anything I can do right now? And if yes, then do it. Great. But if something's happened and they are beyond your control and there's nothing you can do about it, so at that point, you just have to let it go and just be like, okay, this is just what it is going to be now. And we're just going to move forward with it. So It's a lot of problem solving. With new crews, most of the time you meet these camera operators in the airport or maybe at a kit testing day before you go out. You don't necessarily know each other before your shoot, so there's a lot of learning how each other works and forming that team. whilst also this is all happening. So yeah, they're quite chunky.

Fed DeGobbi: I bet also a lot of people skills in terms of learning how to tolerate each other for that long in such close proximity.

Kate Streather: Yeah definitely and I mean like equally working with Sea Shepherd was incredible but they also have got their own campaigns that they're doing so it's like you've got multiple aims and multiple goals at the same time of like what the shoot needs to achieve what their campaign needs to achieve and just sort of making sure everyone gets what they need out of that so yeah it's a lot of management.

Fed DeGobbi: In terms of what you've seen on site Was there anything that you didn't expect that you kind of caught you by surprise a bit, whether because it was a bit overwhelming or just unexpected? Does anything come to mind?

Kate Streather: I think seeing those fishing communities, and I've been researching that story for a long time, and I think it's one thing reading about the statistics of how much their fish populations have dropped and how much they're struggling. I think I heard some anecdotes over a podcast about it, but I think When you're out there and you're watching these guys who are also all really lovely and really excited that you're out there and that you're telling their story and are so nice, and you're seeing the effort that they're putting in to try and catch fish for themselves, for their community, and then these nets are coming up with just heart-breakingly small fish and so much plastic. Yeah, that was definitely the hardest moment, I think. And then I think Antarctica, it was like, it was seeing something that is legal. It was crazy. I mean, the Norwegian ships don't even have nets. They just have this tube that goes into the water that is just pumping out krill 24-7. Most of the other vessels have these crazy big nets and they put them in for a long time, they pull them out, they empty them and they put them back. They are doing that a lot but there is that kind of reset time. The Norwegian vessel just was pumping out krill the whole time and then The fishing season is quite short, so then what a lot of the countries have, but the biggest example we saw was again the Norwegians, is they have what's called transshipment vessels coming. The trawling ships are like 100 meters, these transshipment vessels are like 180 meters, and they come and they bring more fuel and they take away the krill that they've already caught so that they can just keep going and not lose time and never stop.

Fed DeGobbi: That's insane.

Kate Streather: Then you kind of, you go into, and I, yeah, next time you're in a supermarket, you look at like Amiga supplements and food supplements and you will see like on the packaging, it will be like Antarctic krill. And it will use it as like a marketing technique. And I'm like, what? And actually Holland and Barrett really excitingly, thanks to Sea Shepherd, Holland and Barrett have just removed krill products from their shelves. Like last month, I think. But otherwise, yeah, I think that once you have all this information in your head and you have all the context, then you just kind of see it.

Fed DeGobbi: Yeah, it's difficult to see it in a different way.

Kate Streather: Yeah, exactly. You're just like, how is saying that these tablets have been made in Antarctica a selling point for people? It's just, yeah.

Fed DeGobbi: Yeah, and completely legal as well.

Kate Streather: Yeah, exactly.

Fed DeGobbi: Okay, back in the UK. I'm not sure whether this was before or after Antarctica and Liberia, but you had the privilege of working on site with Sir David Attenborough himself. I did. How was that? What will you remember about that?

Kate Streather: I mean, it was the most overwhelming experience ever. It was in October 22. So it was before any of my shoots and everyone, because like a lot of people in wildlife TV have worked with him before and everyone was like, don't worry about it. Like so soon in he'll just become another person. It will be fine. I was like, okay. And then that did not happen. So he was recording a lot of pieces to camera. We were on the south east coast of the UK and he was recording pieces to camera and so I was sort of a bit away from the filming itself. I was kind of helping to be a bit of a bouncer because we were in a town and everybody was there and was trying to get really close to him. But we were all given earpieces so he could hear what he was saying. And the first time he said the first lines from this script I'd just been working on with my producers and executive producers, I just cried. I was like, well, this is deeply overwhelming again. Yeah, so it was just ridiculous. And I was actually very… My gramps, my dad's dad, was a mountaineer. I'm quite like a kind of prestigious mountaineer back in the day. And before I went, my dad was like, Oh, you know, Sir David actually had met Gramps off the back of one of his expeditions. I think it was in 50 something. He interviewed him for a show he was doing. And I had this one moment where we were kind of moving locations and I was driving them. So I was waiting with with David and his daughter, Susan, who is incredible. Wherever he is, she's there as kind of helping oversee everything. We were sort of chatting and I mentioned it to him and he remembered him. He remembered what expedition he'd been on and it was just so special. Very, very memorable moment. That's fantastic. I feel very, very privileged to have met him and worked with him. We stayed in an Airbnb as a whole crew overnight and coming down for breakfast and you're just seeing David Attenborough there grabbing a banana from the fruit bowl, being like, oh yes, this will do. And I was like, what is going on? It was, yeah, crazy.

Fed DeGobbi: On a recent article featuring you, I read that you reportedly said that David Attenborough's favourite sandwich is something like cheddar cheese and butter. And when I read that, and maybe with a chocolate magnum. When I read that, I thought that sounds a lot like a Tesco meal deal. What's going on?

Kate Streather: It was the sweetest rider I have ever seen. Yeah, he just likes on a soft roll, no salad, just cheese and cheddar cheese and butter. And then we discovered his favorite thing, which was a Magnum after lunch. And so my production coordinator went out and got him one and he was so excited. And I was like, this is just amazing. I love it. Such like humble, humble demands.

Fed DeGobbi: Yeah, yeah. You imagine your fancy catering, long tables, exotic dishes. No. Chocolate Magnum.

Kate Streather: Exactly. That's all you need. Yeah, he was great.

Fed DeGobbi: Hey, so what happens after? So we talked about on location, filming. Let's say all of that is done. What happens after? And are you involved with the

Kate Streather: Yes, yeah, yeah, you do. I was very lucky. So I stayed on right until the end of the edit, which was amazing. So then, yeah, you go into the edit and post-production, which is kind of like the final stage of making the film. And so for this, what it looked like is there was quite a lot of archive as well to find. So you've gone through, you've sorted all the footage from location, they're now editing it and you're helping supply them with certain shots if they need help finding certain moments. Also at the front of the film, we had a little pre-title showing Sir David through the years in the ocean. So there was a lot of going back through his, I think it was called Zootopia in the 1950s. like all these really old school series he did and finding like good nuggets of archive we could use and getting that all cleared as well as like generally in films there's the odd moments you have you either didn't realize you needed it at the time or you just need a few more few more archivy bits so There's a lot of that. The whole script, which was done at the beginning but is normally done in post-production, the whole script needs to be fact-checked and every line has got to have multiple references and go through scientists and that. That's quite an intensive process and you can get asked to find quite rogue stats that you're not quite sure how you're going to do it and then you manage to find this little paper that has the perfect nugget in. Yeah, I stayed through post-production, which was amazing. It was sent to Nat Geo three times for feedback, and then based on the feedback, it takes you in different directions. I really loved it, actually. It was so great to be on it from the beginning all the way to the end, because so much You film these stories out on location, but they get made in the edit. My producer Toby Nolan was fantastic. I loved working with him. And then we had the most amazing editor as well called Philippa Edwards. It was such a lovely team. So that happened and then I left the project in February. last year and then it went into its sort of final stage which is called the online and that's where you get all the like colour grading and the like proper composed music gets put in because when you cut in the edit you cut to just like tracks from other shows or we use a lot of other music scores and then the composer will compose the proper score so that gets put in and all different sound effects and yeah I got invited back to a lot of the different viewings and got to see the colour grading happen and then putting down the music and it was amazing. And then this film was very unique in that it then had a huge premiere in London, which was very exciting and also overwhelming to go to. It was at the Royal Festival Hall on South Bank Centre. So me and my partner actually got invited. During the day, there was a future generation screening, which was really cool. So they worked worked with Blue Marine Foundation for this. They basically had done this big ballot where schools could apply for tickets. They had about 2,000 kids and also loads of ocean influencers there. It was the initial screening to help inspire the next generation. Then we had about half an hour to then get into our black tie and then there was the royal premiere in the evening which had celebrities and the king and David Attenborough and it was yeah.

Fed DeGobbi: Just a normal night.

Kate Streather: Yeah just a normal night and also everyone I've ever possibly worked with for the last three years so it was so lovely you'd kind of try and take two steps and bump into somebody else you know and it was so nice seeing crew from America and that you just don't get to catch up with all the time so yeah it was crazy.

Fed DeGobbi: Yeah, I can't imagine. I mean, what does that feel? I mean, are you sort of pinching yourself? Are you thinking this can't be, you know, real? Do you manage to go back to sleep?

Kate Streather: Yeah, I think I was really grateful to have gone to both screenings that day because I think it meant the first one, this Future Generations premiere, I kind of got a bit used to my surroundings and the screen was huge and sort of seeing your name up there in the credits was just a bit ridiculous. So I think it was nice because it meant I was kind of a little bit more used to it for the second time round. I think it would have been quite intense to have gone straight in yeah and it was just yeah it was such pinch me and you're everyone is just having a you know glasses of champagne and celebrating together and it just felt really special and I think we'd always the aim always with this film was to make a really important film that was hopefully going to go really far and I think that day was sort of the first time of being like oh it's actually I think that is what's going to happen. Then what followed was quite, again, a sort of pinch me release. It's done very well in the awards and has been screened in parliaments and at the United Nations Ocean Conference and for the World Trade Organization. It's gone as far as we wanted it to. Seeing that come to life has been amazing.

Fed DeGobbi: That's a really good segue for what I was going to ask you next. To stay on the arc narrative thing, I think you would close it off quite nicely. Because you mentioned a really important thing, the impact, right? What is your assessment of the impact that the ocean had?

Kate Streather: I think we managed to show fishing in a way that just had never been shown. That clip from the bottom trawling in the Mediterranean went so viral and there were days where I was going on my phone and every person I followed on Instagram was sharing it and reposting it. And I think the reach that it had in terms of bringing to light what's really happening and what it really looks like was amazing. And I think there's been some really exciting, it was shown at the United Nations Ocean Conference and some really exciting new marine protected areas and kind of goals came out of that. And that was great. And it's been kind of Australia have just sort of pledged, well, last year they pledged to expand their protected areas to 30% and kind of sighted ocean in that. And so I think it's definitely having the response we wanted in terms of helping and being used as a tool when you've got these big conferences or moments of policymakers coming together to kind of show them with a voice like David's, which has such gravitas and respect and trust with it. which has been amazing. I remember when I was researching for the film, we were looking into something like the High Seas Treaty and I was going back and reading these articles where basically every year or every other year, however often they'd met for the last two decades, they had been trying to put a High Seas Treaty in place and then for some reason something happened and it got delayed to the next time. And then you read the news article on that and it was like, and then something happened and it got delayed to the next time. And I was just sat there in the development stage like, what is going on? And that is something that, I mean, it came in, the High Seas Treaty finally got ratified on the 17th of January and it's finally happened, which is not, because of the film but I think it came out at a really exciting time where a lot of ocean policies were finally being moved forward. So yeah, I think it's doing really well and I think it's also, for me also as a filmmaker, I think it's a really exciting benchmark that a film that doesn't shy away from human impact. Climate change and making bold messages can do really well because I think often, especially when I was sort of talking earlier about this sort of time of recession and lack of TV commissions and a lot of the commissioners are wanting to go on the slightly more entertaining end because that is such an important part of it and I completely agree that does need to happen but I think it was just so exciting to prove that a film could be made that didn't shy away from any of the other staff and it still did really well. And that was really important, I think.

Fed DeGobbi: And I suppose a lot of it is also, and I don't know if this is something that the production drives, but I guess it's also getting the film in the right room, in front of the right people, at the right time.

Kate Streather: Yeah, definitely. And I think the film was like a, I think that, yeah, that is really important. I think that was something that was very much strategized and kind of incorporated. So the whole, the film was always planned to come out in 2025, which was the 20s, the United Nations Ocean Decade. It was always planned to come out for the middle point when this big UNOC conference was happening. So like, Yeah, getting it in all the right places has been amazing and a result of very hard work from the team. There's also no accident, which is very exciting.

Fed DeGobbi: On a personal level, why do you really do what you do? I want to clarify the question because whilst I may be biased sometimes, I'm not super interested in knowing the rational reasons why you think it's a good job but it'd be more about what I want to know is about the stuff that only makes sense instinctively, you know? Maybe hard to admit, maybe a bit more selfish. What would still make you turn up even if rationally it was a bad idea?

Kate Streather: I think that the world is a terrifying place at the moment and I think regularly terrifies me with the news and what's going on in every aspect. And I think storytelling is one of the main ways and definitely the main ways I can contribute of giving hope and trying to provide moments of hope for people. And I think that's why I keep showing up to it because I want to show people that it can be as terrifying and as horrible, but also there can be these real moments of hope at the same time. And yeah, I think that's why.

Fed DeGobbi: And obviously we're recording this in January 2026, a time for planning and resolutions and stuff like that. What's in the future for you? What is your main goal for this year?

Kate Streather: Oh, my main goal, that's a good question. I think, so last year was kind of my first year freelancing as a researcher after finishing Ocean. I think that was a really important learning curve for me of what that kind of looks like to be back into sort of short form contracts. And so I'm really excited. I've got, there's a few projects potentially coming up at the BBC, which would be great. And I'm loving working on Blue Planet 3. That's fantastic. And then I think this year I'm sort of trying to bring a bit more sort of, I guess, focus to like my personal development and things I want to do as well. So yeah. I mean, I'm really excited for this year. I think it will be really fun.

Fed DeGobbi: Where can people find you, find out more about you, get in touch?

Kate Streather: Yes. The easiest place probably to find me is on LinkedIn. No, sorry. Let me do that again. That's not the easiest place to find me.

Fed DeGobbi: Not at all. I did find you there, to be fair.

Kate Streather: Yeah, you did. And it was, yeah, I was watching my big cabriolet. So the easiest place to find me is Instagram, where I'm just there under my name, which is Kate Strether. I am hoping to build a website this year. That is part of my sort of personal development goals, but that's not there yet. So don't, don't look for it.

Fed DeGobbi: What would it be? Do you have a domain yet? Nope.

Kate Streather: So not a good pitch. But yeah, I am also available on LinkedIn. I would say as a caveat, I'm very slow on LinkedIn. So apologies if you do reach out to me on there. I'm not the speediest. But yeah, Instagram is definitely the best place to find me.

Fed DeGobbi: Amazing. Kate, you've been absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much for taking the time and telling us these stories. I'm sure they will have a big impact on the audience.

Kate Streather: Thank you so much for having me. It's been so great and so lovely to chat to you.

Fed DeGobbi: I might see you again in Bristol at some point.

Kate Streather: Yeah, do. Let me know when you're back.