Sir David was speaking to the Prince of Wales when he was promoting his latest film, Ocean with David Attenborough.
Dramatic footage from the new film captures the destruction caused to the seabed by bottom trawling.
David Attenborough recalls almost drowning in scuba diving equipment
While talking to Prince William, Sir David put an open-circuit helmet on his head which lead to him telling the story about how he once almost drowned when he tested a scuba diving outfit in 1957, reports the Metro.
He was working and filming clips on the Great Barrier Reef when the incident happened, the newspaper explained.
“When I put mine (helmet) on for the first time, I suddenly felt water and thought, ‘this can’t be right’. But by the time the water got about there (pointing to under his nose) I thought, ‘I’m sure this is not right’,” he said.
“Of course, you’ve got this thing screwed on top of you and you can’t breathe or make yourself heard. I was saying ‘get it off me.’”
He went on to say that the director wasn’t convinced there was a fault with the equipment and insisted on trying it out himself.
Sir David said: “He grabbed it and said it was fine, but I again said there was a fault, and he put it on, and I’m happy to say, he went underwater and came up even faster than I did, because there was actually a fault on the thing”, he said, laughing with the Prince about his ordeal.
He talked about the destruction of the “deep ocean floor” that has occurred since his first dive, describing it as “just unspeakably awful”.
Sir David was one of the first people to explore the ocean.
How to watch Ocean With David Attenborough
Ocean With David Attenborough was released in cinemas to mark the renowned naturalist and TV presenter’s 99th birthday and includes a sequence where the camera follows a bottom trawl, where nets are dragged with a metal beam across the seabed to catch fish.
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As the iron chains travel across the ocean floor, they can be seen bulldozing through the habitat, stirring up silt which releases carbon and scooping up species indiscriminately.
The footage is thought to be the first time the process has been filmed in such high quality, showing the scale of destruction caused by trawling.
You can watch the new film in UK cinemas or on Disney+.
