My Octopus Teacher takes viewers on a journey into the kelp forest, as it follows Craig Foster, who suffering from burnout, begins a daily diving regimen in the freezing kelp forests at the tip of Africa in order to re-energize himself. Foster, who is an award-winning filmmaker and co-founder of the Sea Change Project, dedicated the past nine years to diving every day in the Atlantic Ocean without a wetsuit, documenting the process of how the human body adapts to cold and studying the kelp forest ecosystem. What he discovers below the water’s surface is a totally alien motivation in the form of an unusually curious octopus. This beautiful record of an animal’s entire life—something seldom achieved in the wild, let alone underwater—was shot over a full year and explores the habits and personality of a strange, undulating creature that most of us have only ever eaten.

The film’s director, Pippa Ehrlich is a South African natural history filmmaker and ocean storyteller, specialising in the field of marine science and conservation. She has worked with some of the world’s top marine researchers and underwater photographers and is also a member of the Sea Change Project. She states: “It’s an overwhelming feeling knowing that millions of people all over the world are going to watch our film. This is very exciting for me as a filmmaker, but also as a conservationist. We hope that the film will inspire local and international interest in The Great African Seaforest and that people all over the world who have access to kelp forests will be encouraged to engage with them in a meaningful way - even if it’s just taking their kids snorkelling or rock-pooling. We also realise that conservation is as much about looking after people as it is about protecting nature and so on an international scale, we hope that the film inspires tourists to come to South Africa and visit the seaforest because we desperately need to create jobs that do not rely on the extraction of natural resources.”
Co-Host Noah Cyrus.