Underwater filmmaker Ken O'Sullivan has told RTÉ Entertainment he is thrilled that viewers will discover the depth of beauty in Irish waters when Ireland's Deep Atlantic begins on RTÉ One on Sunday night.
The eagerly-awaited, two-part documentary was six years in the making. It sees O'Sullivan and his team pushing the boat out - literally - to film large whales, sharks and cold water coral reefs on Ireland's deep seabed - capturing some wonders of the deep for the first time on camera.
"You just get your chances with wildlife, and you need to take them," O'Sullivan told RTÉ Entertainment as he put the finishing touches to Ireland's Deep Atlantic during the week.
"For 10 or 12 years I was filming underwater in the shallows around Ireland - 20 metres, 30 metres of water. For this series what we wanted to do is just get out into the deep Atlantic, ultimately to the edge of the Continental Shelf - but lots of deep water in between - to see what we could find there.
"We've documented things that were never documented before. I'm not bragging, but I'm very proud. There's five, possibly six academic research papers coming out of the two programmes. Because I'm probably the only eejit sticking my head in the water and watching these things!
"There's a scene at the end of the first documentary with humpback whales. It was just the most amazing 40 minutes of wildlife I've seen. Anywhere. And I've been a lot of places."
O'Sullivan described documenting underwater Ireland as "a privilege".
"We're delighted to show it to people," he said. "And the big news is we're delighted that it's going to - hopefully, we believe - make its way onto the Junior Cert curriculum and the Leaving Cert as additional educational material.
"There's one thing that's really gratifying that we hear again and again is people look and say, 'Is that Ireland? Did you really film that in Ireland?!' We just document what's there. It's not visual effects; we're not making it up."
Ireland's Deep Atlantic, Sunday April 22 and 29, 9:30pm, RTÉ One
