Orla Doherty

Orla Doherty is an Irish producer with the BBC Studios Natural History Unit. She is known for producing The Deep and co-producing Our Blue Planet episodes for the BBC's Blue Planet II.

Orla Doherty
Nationality	Irish
Occupation	Producer
Employer	BBC Studios Natural History Unit
Notable work	BBC Blue Planet II episodes: The Deep and Our Blue Planet
Awards	Vogue's Women Shaping 2018

Early life and career

Doherty's family comes from Donegal, Ireland.^[1] She has a degree in chemistry.^[2] She began working in television for DEF II, a part of BBC Two.^[3] At 30 she tried scuba diving for the first time during a trip to Thailand, which led her to move away at 31 to start studying coral reefs for a non-governmental organization, the Planetary Coral Reef Foundation.^[4][3][2][5] She spent most of the next 10 years on a ship studying the reefs in the Pacific Ocean.^[3] Upon her return, she began working for the BBC's Natural History Unit, and in 2013 she joined the production team of the BBC's Blue Planet II.^[2] In 2018 she produced the documentary Oceans: Our Blue Planet.^[2] That same year, she was named one of Vogue's Women Shaping 2018.^[6] In 2019, she became co-executive producer on the documentary series Mission OceanX.^[7]

Blue Planet II

Doherty worked as a producer for Blue Planet II for four years.^[3] In total she spent two and a half years filming, divided over 17 expeditions.^[1] She produced The Deep episode, for which she spent 500 hours in a submarine under water, going as deep as 1000 meters.^[2][8] She was one of the first people to go that deep in the Antarctic.^[9] She was among the team that filmed a whale fall for the first time in the Atlantic Ocean.^[8] She also co-produced the final episode of the series, named Our Blue Planet, which showed the effect of plastics and pollution on the ocean.^[8] For this episode, she filmed scientists from all over the world.^[10]