Puffins swimming on Blue Planet II

Everyone loves a puffin: their expressive faces, colourful beaks, that waddling stride. Affectionately known as sea parrots, we love to watch their antics when they return to our shores each year.

Back in June 2016 I challenged myself to film puffins swimming underwater. Good footage of them swimming is rare. They’re nervous little birds, hard to approach, extremely fast swimmers, and can turn on a sixpence. I did my research and then developed a technique to help me capture the action underwater.

It gives me tremendous pleasure to announce that my puffin footage will appear in Blue Planet II episode 6: Coasts to be broadcast on BBC 1 on the 3rd December 2017. My contribution will amount to less than 30 seconds of the overall series, not enough to get me a credit at the end, but nevertheless a significant milestone and achievement. It means so much to have made a contribution to Blue Planet II, the most prestigious blue chip documentary about the underwater world. And my work will be narrated by my hero, the grand master, Sir David Attenborough.

So when you see a puffin swimming underwater in episode 6 it was filmed by me!

Special thanks to Miles Barton of the BBC for involving me and thanks to Nick Wilcox-Brown for the introduction. Also thanks to my sister Sue Jackson for her artistic talents.

This will be a fantastic ground-breaking series. I can’t wait to see the wonders that are in store for us – magical ocean stories captured by so many talented wildlife filmmakers. Here’s a link to the trailer for the series.

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Words by Andy