Factual producer Big Wave Productions has been commissioned by BBC One to make doc feature The Man Who Loves Kelp (w/t).
The feature, told through the eyes of 73-year-old lorry driver and free-diver, Eric Smith and his daughter Catrine Priestley, tells of a once magical underwater forest, teeming with life that used to flourish off the south coast, until the trawlers came. By 2019 the area was reduced to a barren desert, with 96 percent of Sussex’s kelp gone. Eric’s lobbying of the government body helped initiate a landmark plan to ban trawling in Sussex to let the seabed recover. In 2021, those efforts paid off, when trawling was banned out to 4 km — the first such ban in the U.K.
The film, a journey as Eric free dives and witnesses the forest’s slow return, will include natural history scenes, and show how friends, family and social media have helped this become a very special success story; one that is an inspiration for all U.K. coastal waters.
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