Bertie Gregory: 'You know the cliché line people say “never meet your hero”? Those people haven’t met David Attenborough’

Have you experienced climate change first hand, I ask Bertie Gregory — the 32-year-old Emmy and BAFTA-award-winning wildlife cameraman. ‘Yes, 100%. You can’t get away from it. Every shoot I go on, the seasons are out of whack, the animals are out of whack. Every scientist and guide you talk to says: “It used to be more predictable.”’

Bertie — the name behind the headline-making shot of a polar bear leaping into a pod of beluga whales in the BBC’s 2019 Seven Worlds, One Planet —is quick to admit that he has benefited hugely from the natural world, but also keen to point out that he’s genuinely passionate about it. The companies he works for — including the BBC and National Geographic — offset the carbon footprint of their productions and he is personally funding the planting of a forest in Dorset. ‘These stories need to get told. If they aren’t told, people aren’t going to know about them.’

Apart from climate change, the cameraman and sometime presenter is working to get the trophy hunting of wolves banned in British Columbia. ‘It’s all well and good if we care about wolves saying “we need to stop climate change”, but if there are no wolves left when we’ve solved that problem [climate change] in 100 years or so, that’s going to be a real shame.’

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Bertie has been taking pictures since the age of 12 — initially using a compact camera, surreptitiously stolen from his father, to photograph his fish tank and the wildlife around his home. ‘A lot of my friends thought I was a complete freak,’ he recalls without irony, but ‘being able to show them places they had walked past every day without realising what was there and seeing them genuinely excited — it gave me a real buzz.’

One zoology degree and 2 1⁄2 years assisting National Geographic photographer Steve Winter later (Bertie left his own graduation early for the job), he’s upgraded the compact camera for a half-a-million-pound gyro-stabilised system — which he used to film Sir David Attenborough walking across a beach in Iceland for the opening sequence of Seven Worlds, from a helicopter.

He calls the experience of working with Sir David ‘spine tingling, simply because he’s such a pro and so lovely in real life. You know the cliché line people say “never meet your hero”? Those people haven’t met David Attenborough’.

The cameraman also specialises in drone photography and works underwater, where ‘you still have to be very close to your subject, so you tend to have very intimate, adrenaline-fuelled encounters’, and, since our interview, has transitioned to a camera-facing role

Some might say too close for comfort.

On a shoot with Steller sea lions, off the west coast of Canada, one playful animal repeatedly pulled the scuba regulator out of Bertie's mouth. In the Canadian sub-Arctic, he was lucky enough to film a harp seal pup (below) taking its first dip — something they do only 10 to 14 days after birth.

‘It was the situation we were hoping for, but we never thought we’d get it. It was a dream idea. I got my dry suit on and the camera and underwater housing, slipped into the water and waited. I spent 1 1⁄2 hours with the mother and pup. In that period, the pup went from being this flappy little mess that kept trying to sit on my head to something that looked like a proper seal.’

A good thing, too, given that harp-seal mothers abandon pups immediately after weaning (at a maximum of two weeks, it’s the second-shortest weaning period of any mammal) to hunt and fend for themselves.

Has he ever felt in danger when working? ‘Ninety-nine times out of 100, it’s humans that have caused the dangerous situation. The media would have you believe the natural world is a really dangerous place and wild animals are out to kill you, which is rubbish. We don’t put ourselves in situations where animals might be defensive or aggressive towards us because that would be irresponsible.’

What about filming those hard-to-watch moments? ‘If humans are responsible for the bad thing you’re seeing, it’s a difficult challenge.’ He elaborates: ‘If you film it and don’t help, you could argue that, although that animal is going to suffer, filming it and getting people’s eyes on it all around the world might mean avoiding many more of that species meeting the same fate.’

He has, however, come to the conclusion that, if mankind is behind the problem, he will ultimately intervene.

Bertie’s work has taken him all over the world, including his current favourite — South Georgia in the South Atlantic Ocean. It took a week, on a 50 foot sailboat in rough seas, to reach the island, which has one of the highest concentrations of wildlife on the planet.

He’s normally on location for months at a time and spends only five to six weeks of the year back in the UK. Anyone hoping to follow in his footsteps, he says, should visit the temperate rainforest-covered mountains and coastline of Vancouver Island, off Canada’s Pacific Coast — think killer, grey and humpback whales, bears and wolves. ‘By going there, you are helping to put a value on these animals, so they are worth far more alive than dead. And that goes for many places.’

There was no back-up plan, he discloses, and it’s only now that he realises how lucky and rare it is to find something you’re so fanatical about at such a young age. ‘It’s hard work, but it doesn’t really feel like work.’

This feature originally appeared in a 2020 issue of Country Life. It has been updated for clarity.

‘Secrets Of The Bees’ and ‘Cheetahs Up Close’, among other show hosted by Bertie Gregory, are available to view on Disney Plus.