Chasing Coral (2017)

[bunniefuu]

[Vevers] I've always been drawn
to the magic of the ocean.

It feels like time slows down.

Most people stare up into space
with wonder.

Yet, we have this almost-alien world
on our own planet...

just teeming with life.

But it's a world
most people never explore.

[man ] Richard Vevers is documenting
the oceans' reefs

the same way Google maps out streets.

[man ] ...snapping a -degree picture

every three seconds.

This is the st country that we've done

as part of a global survey of coral reefs.

[man ] Hidden below the surface
of the world's oceans,

spectacular gardens of coral.

Reefs are where much
of the seafood we eat begins life.

[man ] Reefs are a source of food
and income for over million people.

[Vevers] It's really about trying
to communicate with science,

as much as doing the science itself.

To take people on a journey.

[man ]
...that incredible journey under the sea,

which could be the closest many of us come

to seeing an exotic underwater site.

[man ] Giving anyone with Internet access
the chance to go on a virtual dive

in many of the survey sites.

[Vevers] I used to be an ad man.

I spent ten years in advertising,

working at some
of the top London agencies.

Over time, you realize
you're having these conversations about...

toilet rolls, and it's heated debate.

And it's about selling
four-ply toilet tissue

rather than three-ply.

And you go... [sighs]

"I'm sure there's something better
I can be doing with my life."

I've been diving since the age of .

I used to go looking
for these weedy seadragons,

which are these incredible animals.

It's like a seahorse,
but it's a dragon about a foot long...

that most people don't even know exists.

But then, one year,
they were all disappearing

from all my favorite sites.

You know, this was one
of my favorite creatures in the world.

And you go, "Well, if it's happening
to one of my favorite creatures,

what else is it happening to?"

And that's when I realized

one of the biggest issues
with the ocean is

it is completely out of sight
and out of mind,

and that, essentially,
is an advertising issue.

You know, when you look at our planet,
it's unique in the known universe

because we've got an ocean
that is the source of life.

And it controls everything.

It controls the weather.

It controls the climate.

It controls the oxygen we breathe.

Without a healthy ocean,
we do not have a healthy planet.

How do you communicate these issues?

The project was called
the XL Catlin Seaview Survey.

What we wanted to do was reveal
the oceans to the world.

People were engaging with the imagery,

they were going for virtual dives,

but they weren't understanding
there's a problem.

So, we had to really go back
to the drawing board...

and I think
that was a shocking realization

that we're only at the start of a journey.

[Dustan] Okay, this one is gonna
be behind, in the back-reef.

-So, what year was this?
-This is .

-Right.
-Okay?

-Yep.
-This whole area back here

-was just thick with Acropora palmata.
-Right.

-The elkhorn coral.
-And how much is there left?

.%.

Whoa.

Something like that. You'll see.

-Yeah.
-We'll go see.

[Dustan] So, you wanna know
what we're looking at.

This flat-- This is all dead reef flat.

This is all dead elkhorn coral.

You can see all the skeletons in place,
but there's nothing alive.

So, this is what the reef looked like
in .

This is all covered with living corals.

This is very typical.

Very, very typical of the Florida Keys.

And years ago, that wasn't the case,

years ago, that wasn't the case.

All of it, gone.

[Vevers] Phil told me that we've lost
to % of corals in Florida.

I had no idea
that these issues were so advanced.

-I think it might be this one.
-[man] Yep.

-Morning. I'm Richard.
-Jim Porter. Pleased to meet you.

[Vevers] Very nice to meet you.

Thanks so much for coming down.

[Porter] So, all of this stuff
that I'm showing in here...

um, is from .

-This is Discovery Bay, Jamaica.
-[Vevers] Yep.

And that's what it looked like then.

-And this is a what it looks like now.
-[Vevers] Right.

This survey sat unanalyzed.

Just little bits and pieces,
but not the whole story.

[Vevers] His imagery was designed
for scientific purpose.

It doesn't capture you instantly
without explanation.

This is what we have lost.

-This is the way it was.
-Yep.

I started my career
in love with a place...

and those places have diminished.

To see that lost is very devastating.

[Vevers] A lot of scientists I've met
have got really depressed

about this issue.

Whereas I've had the experience
to do ten years in advertising,

where you believe
any problem can be solved

in a ridiculously short period of time.

You just gotta do a bit
of creative thinking.

-That's great. Lovely. Thank you.
-Thank you.

Excuse me. Do you know where Ruth is?
Ruth Gates?

Um, and the classroom's right here.
All those screens go up.

We'll go in and have a look.

[Vevers] Oh, wow.

-Wow.
-[Gates] Is it cool?

Unbelievable.

Wow.

-Okay, um...
-[laughing]

It's the fact that it's moving.

-[Gates] Isn't it amazing that after all--
-Yeah.

[Gates] Twenty-five years
I've been working on corals,

I can look down a microscope
and go, "Bloody hell"?

-I know, that...
-[laughing]

My understanding was this was an animal,
this was an animal.

-Yeah.
-Are they the same animal?

-They are.
-But, um...

I know they're identical animals...

-Yeah.
-...but are they the same?

-They are.
-So, they...

-They are one animal. I--
-Yep.

It's one animal.

Okay, but they're not considered...

I thought polyp was an animal...

not a coral was an animal
with lots of polyps.

-That make sense?
-A coral is an animal with lots of polyps.

But the polyp isn't an animal?

Well... it's part of the animal.

Right. 'Cause this is a--
No one's ever explained...

-what a coral is.
-Your amazement is,

why did you not know that?

-Why didn't I know that?
-I'm stunned.

-And it's the--
-You're a smart guy.

What's wrong with you? [laughing]

I get completely overwhelmed sometimes,
underwater, on a reef.

Because I can't believe
that these structures

are sort of created
by these simple organisms,

or "seemingly" simple organisms.

I have the utmost respect for corals,
'cause I think they've got us all fooled.

Simplicity on the outside
doesn't mean simplicity on the inside.

We think we're really evolved
'cause we're highly complex beings.

We can do lots of things.
We have opposing thumbs.

But corals... they've decided,
"Forget the external complexity.

Let's just be really sophisticated
in a quiet way."

A coral individual is really made up

of thousands of small structures
called polyps.

Each polyp is a circular mouth...

surrounded by tentacles...

and they can combine
to be millions of them

across a single animal.

They have, inside their tissues,
small plants,

these microalgae...

a million per centimeter squared.

The plants that live inside them
photosynthesize,

and the animal uses that for their food.

They essentially have food factories
living inside of themselves.

So, as the animal grows,

what you see is the animal is growing
over the skeleton

and depositing the skeleton underneath it.

They photosynthesize during the day.

At night...

the plant's really essentially asleep
and the animal comes active.

They expand their polyps.

The tentacles come out.

And now anything
that swims by is caught

by these stinging cells
that are on the tips of the tentacles.

There are many different species
of corals,

and the different species of corals
are different shapes.

Some are very boring to look at.
They look like big rocks on the bottom.

Some are incredibly beautiful to look at.

They have huge, huge branching patterns,
or massive plates.

Some of them look like petals of a flower.

These are foundation species.

They have all these other organisms
that depend on them.

They are the reason we have reefs.

A consortium of organisms
that cooperate together...

that now manifests
in this massive structure

that can be seen from space.

[Vevers] There's a famous reef
in American Samoa called Airport Reef.

We heard that there was an area
where the corals were turning white.

Because we'd been there previously
to do a survey...

we wanted to go back
and take the same images again.

I was truly shocked by what I saw.

The reef was white
as far as the eye could see.

To be honest, I didn't have the knowledge
to know how to process it.

Was this dead?

Was it alive?

This is... Airport Reef.

Before. So, this is in December.

And that's it now.

[Hoegh-Guldberg]
When Richard saw that white coral,

it was a turning point for him.

I think I admitted to him
that I thought this was far more deadly

than some of the other things
that are facing reefs.

And so, what we've seen
since the early s

when this first occurs,

we've actually lost an enormous amount
of coral,

just due to this phenomenon alone.

I think that was the first time
that he saw the enormity of the issue.

That this was a thr*at across the planet
to coral reefs,

which would happen very quickly
and cause a lot of damage.

Back in the 's, we started looking
at this weird phenomenon.

Large sections of--
of reefs were turning white,

literally over a couple of weeks.

And no one really knew why this was.

As we did more and more experiments,

it turned out that it wasn't a disease,

it wasn't too much light.

And the only thing you could do
in an experiment

that would cause corals to go white

was to raise the temperature
by two degrees Celsius.

By the end of my PhD,

we were putting cautious words
in the literature saying:

"Well, you know,
maybe this is global warming,

and this is one of the early impacts
on reefs."

[Vevers] We look at climate change
as if it's an issue in the air.

And you go, "One or two degrees Celsius?

Does that really matter?"

But when you talk about the ocean...

it's like your body temperature changing.

And imagine your body temperature
rises one degree centigrade

or two degrees centigrade.

Over a period of time,
that would be fatal.

And that's the seriousness of the issue
when you look at it in terms of the ocean.

[Gates] Coral bleaching itself
is a stress response,

much like a fever in humans
is a stress response.

If the temperature spikes just
a little bit above their normal range...

corals will start to bleach.

The small plants
that live inside their tissues,

their ability to photosynthesize
and feed the animal host is impaired.

The animal essentially senses that:

"I've got something inside of me
that is not doing what I expect it to do,"

and as happens with us, with--

When we get a bacteria,

we try to get rid of it
as quickly as possible.

That's exactly what these animals do.

They try to get rid of those plants
that are no longer functional...

and leave behind the transparent,
naked tissue.

They've lost the very most important
food source that they have.

So, it's starting to starve.

[Vevers] When the coral bleaches,

the flesh becomes clear.

And what you're seeing
is its skeleton underneath.

So, the bright whites
that you see in the pictures...

is just the skeletons everywhere.

[Gates] If it's a very clean white look
about the coral...

it will still be alive.

It's not allowing anything else
to grow on it.

It will generally not grow.
It will generally not reproduce.

It is likely to die.

You'll see these fuzzy microalgae.

The whole surface suddenly become
much, much fuzzier to look at.

That's an indication that
that coral has d*ed.

[people chattering]

[Vevers] Oh. Can you, uh, mark that one?

Coral bleaching is very difficult
to communicate.

You see a picture
of a beautiful white reef.

Is that a good or a bad thing?

So, we need to communicate it
in a different way.

I was flying on a plane,
and I watched a film, Chasing Ice.

That film was about the documentation
of the disappearing glaciers.

And it suddenly dawned on me
that we had almost identical projects.

So, pretty much
as soon as I got off that plane,

I contacted the director.

The cameras are sh**ting every hour,

but we're only showing every,
you know, week or two...

Richard sent an e-mail, out of the blue,
and he attached two photographs,

one of a healthy coral reef
and one of a dead coral reef.

And when I saw those photos,
the light bulb immediately went on.

It's like,
if you can document that change,

you can reveal this to the public
in a powerful way.

We knew from the start there was something
we wanted to get involved with.

These images were chosen...

We started talking pretty early on about
what a time-lapse camera could look like.

But we were missing this one piece.

We needed a wiper system or something
that would keep the glass clean.

When Richard and the team wanted
to do underwater time-lapse,

they approached us to design something.

So, this one is, uh... a little dirty.

[Rago] We designed a magnetic arm

that pulls a windshield wiper
around this glass dome

and keeps it clean
for long periods of time.

When we first met them,
their deadline seemed absurd.

Nobody's done anything even close to this.

We had all of the issues associated
with just dealing with the time-lapse,

the camera,
but we also had just so many unknowns.

[Rago] When you have a camera system

that you need to be submerged in saltwater
for months on end...

that is subject to huge storms
and hurricanes...

at depth,
with all the tremendous pressure

of billions of gallons
of water pressing down,

that is very, very difficult to do.

If we're tethered to a BeagleBoard
or Raspberry Pi and SSH in,

I need at least volts.
Probably get away with .

Then we could use a -to-
for the Beagle.

-Let's say milliamps.
-Okay.

Twelve minutes a day.

-Seven-point-two watt-hours.
-Yeah.

-Okay.
-Cool.

Well, I think
this is gonna be pretty easy.

[Orlowski] They're D-printing parts,

they're building custom circuit boards,
they're building custom wireless hotspots.

It is really, really complicated.

[Mendelow] Person in boat wirelessly
connects to a computer in a case

which is hardwired to an umbilical cable

that goes down to a router
inside an underwater housing

that communicates wirelessly
to the camera.

When you're done, you just unplug it.

[Rago] This is, by far,
the most complicated thing

I've seen built by View Into the Blue.

At the time, Jeff and Richard had no idea
that I was a coral nerd.

Secretly, I'd been sitting in my office,
really stoked

that I was even in the same room
as this project about coral was going on,

and we were helping support it.

Because I wanted more than anything
to do something for the coral.

These are Lobophyllia.

The chalices are either Oxypora
or a kind of phylia.

Montastrea, Favites, Favia, Platygyra.

That might not be Platygyra...

I got involved in the aquarium industry
at a pretty young age.

Growing up in the mountains
and in Colorado

actually made my obsession
with the ocean a little bit worse.

See, on this coral, there's a lot of life,

but then there's a lot of, like,
death here, so this is just skeleton.

So, that could very well be
because it got too close

to this Euphyllia, perhaps,
they fought with each other,

and this one stung that one to death,
right there.

[Mendelow] He just loves coral.

Even to the point
where he has coral reef tanks at his house

with no fish in them.

And nobody has coral reef tanks
with no fish in them.

[Rago] The beauty of coral
or why I enjoy coral more than fish

is because if a coral dies,
it's your fault.

As long as you don't mess up
and, like, crash your t*nk

or k*ll that coral,
then they're all gonna continue living.

They're just perpetual machines.

They don't really have a life expectancy,
more or less.

They just kind of continue to go on

as long as their environment
allows them to.

That's the same with jellyfish, too.

Jellyfish technically live forever,
but they just get eaten by so many things

that it just doesn't happen.

For me, the most interesting thing
in nature is symbiosis.

Two separate organisms
that have adapted to each other,

and are now benefiting each other.

They're working together, and...

the first thing that comes to my mind
is an anemone and a clownfish.

The anemone provides protection
for the clownfish,

and the clownfish usually provides food
for the anemone.

It's a mutually beneficial relationship.

In the case of a coral,
it goes deeper than that.

The symbiont itself is incorporated
in the organism.

The coral doesn't exist
without these little tiny plant cells.

They are completely reliant on each other,
and you don't have one without the other.

That relationship
between the two of them is...

the most interesting thing
in the world to me.

Is the color change fairly uniform,

-or does it do this?
-Don't know.

-Don't know.
-Don't know.

-Pocilloporas could go overnight, right?
-It's never been sh*t in the wild before.

That's what so thrilling to me
about what's going on here

is that it's gonna be the first time
we'll actually be able to ask that

-and answer that question.
-Yeah.

[Mendelow] But the Pocilloporas
could go overnight, couldn't they?

[Gates] Yeah, a lot of the Pocilloporas
have already gone.

-Completely wiped.
-Wiped already.

[Mendelow] But the Montiporas are
the important reef-building corals.

Montipora and Porites compressa,
yeah, are the two.

And Lutea, that big one that you saw. So--

[Mendelow] And what's
the tissue thickness on Porites?

[Gates] So, they can be down
a half a centimeter.

[Mendelow] Do the ga--?
Do the fertilized gametes carry those...?

[Gates] Yes, 'cause most of them--
In Hawaii, we have a very high proportion

of the coral species that...

[continues indistinctly]

[Vevers] We knew
this was gonna be incredibly hard,

predicting where to put a camera down.

We thought, "We just need to do this
wherever the bleaching is happening."

[video call ringing]

-Good morning, Mark.
-Good afternoon, Richard.

It's, uh... getting a little depressing.

Yes. And I've read your e-mail,

which was, you know, about the El Niño
starting earlier this year.

Mark Eakin provided us with the tools
to be able to understand

where we should be going.

[Eakin] What we're looking at is...

I work for the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA.

We use satellites
to look at the sea surface temperatures

that cause coral bleaching.

The one thing the temperatures
have shown us, with no question,

is the oceans have been warming.

Temperatures in the ocean
go through normal cycles.

If the temperature were staying constant,

then all those ups and downs
would be around that average temperature.

But now we've reached the point
that we've changed that average.

Your warm temperatures keep getting warmer
and warmer and warmer.

The first widespread bleaching event
occurred in the early s.

', ', this was
the first global-scale mass-bleaching.

A lot of corals bleached,
a lot of corals d*ed.

, only years later,

we saw the second
global-scale mass-bleaching.

Now, only five years later...

we've got the potential of the third
global-scale mass-bleaching event.

Basically, at this point, about two-thirds

of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands
are seeing a level of warming

where you're usually seeing bleaching.

The stress levels are high...

[Vevers] I'm zooming in on Hawaii,

and you can see here,
it's . degrees hotter

than it should be at this time of year.

And you look at some
of the other hotspots around the world,

it's . degrees, five degrees hotter,

. degrees hotter
than it normally would be.

There's this big heat wave
that's traveling around the planet,

and it's k*lling corals
wherever it's going.

This is a small window of opportunity
that we've got right now

to be able to capture this bleaching event
and communicate it in a massive way.

There's no plug in here right now.

Normally, we would have done extensive
field-testing with these cameras,

given how complicated they were,

but they just needed
to be put in the water.

[woman] Well, we have a lot of bags.

I'm not sure how happy
the airport people are gonna be.

[Vevers] One-oh-one.

[Rago] It's fairly watertight
through the exterior.

So, guess what we're up to right now.

We're whittling plastic away
from the underwater solar panel.

[Orlowski]
Otherwise, we can't take it on the plane.

Listen up. Listen.

Ninety-nine-point-five.

-Is that good?
-[indistinct chatter]

[Vevers] So, based on the data
that we got from NOAA,

we decided to put cameras down
in Hawaii, Bermuda and the Bahamas.

[Ackerman] We'll go down, we'll scout,
we'll find a bunch of spots,

we'll mark the GPS coordinates.

It's right around that corner.

This was completely different
from any other scuba diving I've done.

And any other scuba diving
that one would normally do.

This was construction underwater.

[Rago] You're working in an environment
that humans weren't built for.

You also can't communicate
with your team,

other than through sign language,

and we are not good at it.

[Orlowski] So, the camera gets mounted
flush to this. This plate.

We can adjust the height of this
and adjust the angle of this.

[Rago] You're in zero-gravity.

So, if you're trying to get leverage
to put something into the ground,

you don't have that.
You're floating, you're buoyant.

-[thunder rumbling]
-[warning alarm]

-[woman] Is that thunder?
-[man ] That's a weather alert.

-I hear a crackling sound.
-[man ] That's-- Yeah.

[man ] Is that static?

-I hope that's not lightning--
-[woman] Oh, my God. That's lightning.

-Do you hear that?
-[woman] Yes, I hear it in my microphone.

I think you should probably turn
the cameras off. I don't know.

[woman] Can we get the metal thing down?

[Mendelow] I kind of don't wanna touch it.

[Vevers]
Because of this vacuum-sealed glass dome,

we couldn't actually change
any of the settings inside on the cameras.

So, they attach this wire going to a box
on the boat on the surface.

[Rago] You have a cable attached
to a stationary device underwater

and it's plugged
into a very delicate piece of equipment.

Boom, we're in.

Now let's see
if this is gonna behave today.

[Ackerman] And you can sit there
on the boat with a tablet

and you can adjust the settings

and you can see
what the camera is doing underwater.

Um, watch this cable. Are we...?

Can you move us closer?

I'm just nervous--

[woman] The slack is getting too tight!

Hold it.

Hand it down to me.

[thunder crashes in distance]

The wind just took us.
The stern anchor didn't hold.

We're just drifting.

[Rago] Bummer.

[Orlowski] It flooded?

That's gonna go down the cable, too.

Something...

[Mendelow]
All right, so, let's take a look.

So, basically you got a few millimeters
of water in there.

Probably splashed
on an electrical connection,

-blew the -volt fuse. You'll be fine.
-[Rago] It did blow the -volt.

Here is what that's looking like
at the moment.

We've kind of tore her apart
to access her and attempt to clean.

[Mendelow]
Jiminy Cricket, look at that mess. Okay.

We're gonna be just fine.

I basically would like you to take
volts directly from the battery...

All right, let's give this one more try.

All right. Here goes everything.

[Rago] Do we have a new message?

Oh! [laughing]

We're good. Oh.

Ah! We're connected.

[beeping]

[Mendelow]
That does look k*ller. Look at that!

That is brilliant, man.

I have a file on my computer.

[Ackerman] Whoo!

-[Mendelow] All right, we're done.
-[Ackerman] What?

-We're done.
-[Ackerman] We're done.

[Orlowski] Yeah. [laughs]

[Rago] Oh, I'm so happy right now.

This is awesome.

[Ackerman] After that,
there was nothing to do but wait.

[Rago] As a kid growing up, I always
had this sweet spot for taxonomy...

which I don't really know
how to put my finger on that.

I always wanted to know what things were,
and I wanted to know the scientific name.

So, I fell in love with catching
all of these little critters

and coming back
and having a bunch of guides

to help me figure out what they were.

And so, when I got into coral,

there were only a handful of resources
from one guy.

This guy, Charlie Veron.

Every time I was looking something up,
there he was.

There are about species of coral
on the Great Barrier Reef.

There's one just over there
that's about six meters high.

[Rago] For all intents and purposes,
he's the godfather of coral reef science.

He's the first guy to really go down
and start cataloging corals,

and I wish I could be that guy,
but I was born a little too late.

Here we have thousands upon thousands
of species all interreacting together

in a complex way.

Corals, unlike any other form
of life on Earth, except man,

have the capacity
to build their own environments,

to create their own habitats.

[Gates] Think of a city.

Corals are experts at creating high-rises.

They're basically creating
this incredible dimensionality,

this three-dimensional framework.

The more complex a structure,

the more biodiversity
can potentially live there.

In a healthy coral reef system,

the entire landscape is covered
with coral.

They're competing for space
with one another,

they grow over and under.

[Hoegh-Guldberg]
Look at Great Barrier Reef,

it's really the Manhattan of the ocean.

This hugely diverse and complex city.

And like in a city, the fish are living
in very specific places.

[Marshall] It's a bit like a neighborhood.

You go back to a neighborhood
and you see the same people.

The same fish is living
in the same piece of coral

week after week.

They live there
pretty much their entire life.

In the morning and afternoon,
you have traffic on the reef.

You've got fish which have,
like, spent the night on the reef,

and then they go out to feed
and all swim together.

So, they're busy places.

When the sun starts coming up,
you actually have a morning chorus,

similar to what we get
when we hear the birds

waking up in the forest
when the sun comes up.

When you listen closely,
you hear things purring.

You hear the grunts and the groans
of so many different animals.

It's not a silent world at all.

It's actually pretty noisy.

Each fish, each animal, has its own job,
and it does its own thing.

There are fish that farm.

They actually grow little plants or algae.

And they'll go pick a piece of algae
and plant it, and look after that area.

There are crabs and lobsters...

and little shrimps that will do things
like defend corals.

There are strange partnerships,

like moray eels,
which will hunt with coral trout.

Completely different fish,
but they work together

to hunt across the reef,
and they share the meal.

One of the things you notice
is the sort of crunching noise.

And this is the parrotfish.

These are fish that have beaks.

They actually eat the coral.
They're crunching away at the coral.

When that coral passes
through the parrotfish,

it comes out as sand.

So, in fact, every single beach,

you're basically walking
on parrotfish poo.

[Vevers] Coral reefs are hugely important
for the ocean,

because they're essentially the nursery.

And they say something like %
of all marine life relies on coral reefs.

[Eakin] We've got half a billion
to a billion people

that rely on coral reefs
as their main source of food.

[Porter] Without that protein,
they're going to be malnourished.

Their culture, their way of life,

their economies are all reliant
on healthy coral reefs.

And many of the new dr*gs
that are coming to help humans

come from the sea.

There's a drug called prostaglandin
that comes from sea fans,

and that fights cancer.

There's another one called bryostatin
that comes from coral rhizomes,

and it fights cancer, too.

There are so many things
that we don't know yet

that could help society,

through the novel chemistries
that we find on coral reef organisms.

[Eakin]
Coral reefs are producing a breakwater

that's protecting us from big waves,
from cyclones.

They're better than the ones
that we can produce,

because they're growing
and rebuilding it all the time.

[Kleypas] The corals are the real basis
of that ecosystem.

You can't have a city without buildings.

And you can't have a coral reef
without the corals.

[Rago] So, we went back to the Bahamas

to retrieve Camera Number
after its time.

We're gonna keep our fingers crossed
and hope we have plenty of footage.

Hoping that there's
at least a month and a half.

Bingo.

That's out of focus.

All of these are out of focus.

This is a big bummer.

In focus... and then the first one
after that's out of focus.

And it progressively gets worse.
You see that?

All this footage is out of focus.

And pretty much useless.

I hope they worked elsewhere.

We're out of focus here.

I thought we were okay.

Damn it.

[Orlowski] So, how bad are the images?

Bad.

-Not usable.
-Unusable.

-[Mendelow] Yeah.
-[Orlowski] And so, it's really soft.

[Mendelow] Yep.

There it gets softer and softer
and softer.

[Orlowski] I've never heard
of manual focus changing over time.

[Mendelow] Yeah.

[Vevers] Hawaii bleached.

It had the worst bleaching it's ever had.

It's just that we didn't manage
to capture it.

We put a lot of effort
getting those cameras down,

and we thought we'd...

we'd done everything right...
and it's a huge knock-back.

More so because we knew
the clock was against us.

We didn't know how long
the bleaching event was gonna last.

[Hoegh-Guldberg] I've been looking
at the latest sea temperature values

for the Australian region.

Definitely warmer than it's been
for quite a while.

That coastal area
is probably gonna continue to warm.

Yeah.

If you're into bleaching... [chuckles]

-this is a good sign.
-Yeah.

Of course,
it means horrible things for the reef.

[man] b*at, seconds.

[Ackerman] Zack and Trevor went all-in
and just fixed the problems.

-The square that pops up on this...
-[Rago] We changed to a fixed lens,

and it allowed us to get rid
of all of the focus issues that we had.

We have such a better system going.

I'm much more confident it's gonna work.

Yeah. Yeah.

Awesome! A stingray.

I'm standing on one
of the two and a half thousand or so

enormous platform reefs that make up
Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

Very few people can realize
that this is the largest structure

ever made by life on Earth.

These reefs extend along
the tropical coastline of Australia,

a distance of over , kilometers,

the length of the entire East Coast
of the United States of America.

[Rago] I always wanted to go
to the Great Barrier Reef.

I wanna see it for its beauty,
and always wanted to get there.

That's the goal. Always been the goal.

[Orlowski] Dude, you're about to see
the GBR from the air.

That's actually a very exciting thing.

And it's just amazing
to think about how massive it is.

And it's all alive.

[Vevers] So, we're sending two teams
to the southern Great Barrier Reef.

We're sending Jeff and Zack to Keppel,

and we're sending Andrew and team
to Heron.

[beeping]

[Orlowski] Camera's in and it's running.

The most smooth
that any of these have gone.

[Ackerman]
It was so much smoother than Hawaii.

[Rago] And then we waited.

Waited for that warm water to come.

[man] Already biologists say
some corals are dying,

bleached white,
a sign in the first stage of death.

You're talking... an event similar
to the rain forests of the world

turning white
over a very short period of time.

Everyone would be jumping up
and taking notice,

wondering what the hell is happening.

You may think, "Well, this is just a cycle
that we go through."

Good morning. Coral bleaching in Hawaii
has gained a lot of attention.

-So much that...
-[Vevers] This isn't a natural cycle.

This is a phenomenon
directly attributed to climate change,

and it's something
that we've only seen in recent years.

[Marshall] One of the ways
of looking back in time with a reef

is to take coral cores,
or slices through coral.

You can look at growth rings in corals

in the same way as you look
at growth rings in trees.

[Cantin] You can see a regular,
normal growth pattern.

This coral grows at around

a centimeter and a half per year,

every year, right up until ,

where you start to see the signature
of a coral bleaching event.

[Marshall] By tracking back in time,
by looking at the history of the reef,

we're absolutely certain
that what we're seeing now

is not a natural fluctuation.

The cause is, unequivocally,
global climate change,

driven by emitting carbon
into the atmosphere.

[Hoegh-Guldberg] I think a lot of people
don't realize climate change is happening

because most of the extra heat trapped
by greenhouse gases

has been transferred to the oceans.

When you burn fossil fuel...
that's burning oil, gas or coal...

carbon dioxide goes up
into the atmosphere.

Carbon dioxide has the property
that it's able to trap heat.

So, the more you have in the atmosphere,

the greater the amount of heat trapped
by the Earth.

It's a bit like putting extra wool
into your sweater.

What people don't know is that %

of the heat that's trapped
is going into the ocean.

That's a lot of energy.

If the oceans weren't doing this job
of absorbing the heat,

the average surface temperature
of the planet would be Fahrenheit.

There are rates of change going on
in tropical oceans,

which, if projected forward...

it means that coral reefs
are a likely casualty

of any global climate change.

I published that
in the peer-reviewed literature.

At that point in time,
people weren't quite ready for that,

and I had a lot of colleagues
that were confronting me,

challenging me, attacking me.

[Marshall] He was ridiculed for this,
for being an alarmist.

But over time he's been proved right,
time and time again.

[Hoegh-Guldberg] I just love the reef.
That's why I did this.

That's why I came here when I was
to this island

and started to study the reef.

It wasn't because I thought
it was gonna disappear

or I was trying to battle a problem
called global climate change.

It's unfortunate
that I can't look at this thing

and still see the beauty.
I see the problems.

This wonderful thing, this thing
that's been around for a very long time...

is threatened,
in our lifetime and on our watch.

And however hard we try to...

to get people to listen, um...

it seems to be lost in the wind, you know?

[Rago] Storms and the weather is really
the controlling factor right now.

The wind and the storms
continue rolling through,

and we get cloud coverage,

we might not see a whole lot happen
here at Keppel.

[thunder rumbling]

[woman] Tropical cyclone Winston,

the strongest tropical cyclone ever
recorded in the Southern Hemisphere.

-The big thr*at going forward...
-[Rago] For the first time...

we felt we were in the right place
at the right time.

And when Hurricane Winston happened,
all of that changed.

It caused a lot of cold water
and a lot of rain

to come
to the Southern Great Barrier Reef.

Part of me is happy that the corals
aren't gonna bleach here.

Actually makes me ecstatic

to think that they're gonna make it
through this event.

But at the same time,
we've tried so hard to capture this.

We essentially had
to make a difficult decision

to stick to our original plan,
with less-than-ideal odds,

or we go check out some of these
other portions of the Great Barrier Reef

that were getting really warm.

It's all of this to the north
of New Caledonia

and below and even these splotch areas
are at Level .

It's just... nothing short of catastrophic
for the coral.

[Orlowski] We know now
New Caledonia is bleaching.

Lizard Island is bleaching.

I guess it is a simple decision
in some ways.

We should just pick up and move over,
and reset up at those new locations.

The problem is the time-lapse cameras.

It'll take weeks to move those systems,
and we'll have missed the bleaching.

We're gonna have
to figure something else out.

[Ackerman] I went to turn my computer off,
and there was this message from Jeff,

saying, "How soon can you pack?"

We were gonna abandon
these camera systems...

and do manual underwater
time-lapses every single day.

I think we, as a team,
realized that there was no going back.

[Rago] We headed up to Lizard Island,

and the other portion of our team
went out to New Caledonia.

It's the most amazing reef.

And it's just demolished.

It's just so hot.

Like, it literally feels like a bathtub.

Anybody order a large Coke?

Here we are talking
about coral reef bleaching

and global climate change...

and here's our other problem.

When we went to Lizard Island,

we didn't have
our time-lapse cameras anymore.

[Orlowski] The idea is to take one tripod
and one camera,

and get as many sh*ts as we can
in as many positions

of as many pieces of coral as we can,
and to repeat that every single day.

[Rago] Get on the boat at :,
go out to your first site.

You would find your markings
for the tripod,

put down each leg at the correct heights,

and then you would have reference points
you could then attach the laser beams to,

and then I had a lamination
of the first day's sh*ts.

And then you would take
two minutes of footage,

then you'd pick everything back up,

move onto the next site,
and do the same again.

And then again and again.

And you do that essentially
times a day.

Between Jeff and I, we had sites.

The reason we built the time-lapse systems
was it seemed absurd

to have people camped on the beach
at multiple locations

and having to go down
and do what a machine is designed to do.

[Rago] Logistically, it was a nightmare.

Getting it in the right position,
and you're fighting the current,

so you're getting bounced around a lot,

your knees are bleeding everywhere,
your body is cut up, you're tired.

It got to the point where you're
spending four hours a day underwater.

Weird things start happening.

[Mendelow] I don't know if it's funny.

It's, uh...

You do what you have to do.

[Vevers] We were getting reports
that the corals in New Caledonia

were doing something completely weird.

[Ackerman] Richard was there, he said,
"It's the craziest thing I've ever seen.

I don't know what it is."

The locals didn't know what it was.

We didn't know what was happening.

I asked Richard to explain.

He's like, "Don't know what to tell you.
It's glowing."

[Vevers] This was different.

The corals were... were fluorescing.

They're producing a chemical sunscreen
to protect themselves from the heat.

You can't even describe it.

They were the most vivid colors
I've ever seen.

This is the most beautiful transformation
in nature.

The incredibly beautiful phase of death.

And it feels as if...

it's the corals saying:

"Look at me.

Please, notice."

[Ackerman] We were diving every day
from a floating restaurant.

[dance music playing over speakers]

That was kind of funny, the first day.

Like, that whole thought
just became much more depressing.

Bit of a shock.

This is one of the rarest events
in nature happening...

and everyone's just oblivious to it.

And you can't blame them for it.
I mean, it's... It's just...

almost typical of all of humanity.

This is going on...

and no one is noticing.

[Rago] We designed something originally

to do this project without emotions.

And when we began doing this manually
at Lizard Island...

you have the emotional ties to it.

You are down there.

And to sit there for a month,

and every single day,
watch something new around you die

that you saw yesterday...

it's just difficult.

You forget what it looked like
at the beginning.

And some days, when you go back,

and you're sitting down there,
looking at it now,

and it doesn't look real.

And you-- It's not even--
You can't even accept it.

And then you open your eyes,
and it's dead as far as you can see.

It's algae and dead coral skeletons.

It's flesh.
It's living tissue... that's rotting away.

It's disgusting, really.

[sighs]

I thought we would find bleaching.

I thought we would capture it.

But I don't think I ever prepared myself,

or thought we were gonna see this.

See, I'm not even mad that I'm leaving,
because it's just so miserable here.

[sniffles]

[Marshall] When coral bleaches and dies...

you're losing the coral animal.

And that's a shame,
'cause it's a beautiful thing.

But a coral is... a fundamental part
of a huge ecosystem.

It is, in a way,
just like the trees in a forest.

If coral reefs are lost,
we're affecting the life

of a quarter of the ocean.

If the little fish disappear,
the big fish disappear,

and then you can look at humans
as one of the big fish.

[Porter] It's easy to think about the fate
of an individual species.

But what is a little harder to explain...

it's the beginning
of an ecological collapse

of the entire ecosystem.

It's more than the species,
the genus, the family, the order.

We're talking about the possibility
that entire classes of organisms

would go extinct.

[Hoegh-Guldberg] When scientists say
they're researching climate change

and coral reefs,

it's not about whether or not
climate change is happening or not.

It's really the uncertainty

between knowing whether
it's going to be bad or really bad.

When we look at ocean temperatures,
there are a range of projections

of how they're gonna change
into the future.

If you take the average,
in about years,

all across the planet,

the oceans become too warm
for coral reefs to survive.

That means they'll bleach every year

and they won't be healthy enough
to recover.

Coral reefs will not be able to keep up,
they will not be able to adapt,

and we will see the eradication
of an entire ecosystem

in our lifespan.

That is a very gloomy statement.

But, unfortunately, it is true.

[Hoegh-Guldberg]
Everything on our planet is connected.

What we're doing is pulling out the card
called "coral reefs"

from this house of cards.

And the real fear is that
we'll take out enough of those cards

where the whole thing
will just simply collapse.

[Kleypas]
If we can't save this ecosystem...

are we gonna have the courage
to save the next ecosystem down the line?

[Dustan] Do we need forests?

Do we need trees?

Do we need reefs?

Or can we just sort of live
in the ashes of all of that?

[Orlowski] So, tell me where we're going.

[Rago] We're actually just going
to Charlie Veron's house.

Used to literally sit behind a desk
for hours a day

using Charlie Veron's coral lists
to ID things.

Like... he was the boss.

He was the information
that I used on a daily basis

to learn everything that I know of corals.

And now, I'm about to go sit
in his living room and interview him.

So, that's quite a big step.

-Hello.
-[Veron] Hello.

-Charlie.
-How are you? I'm Zack.

Pleasure to meet you.

[dog barks]

[groans]

While I was in college
studying evolutionary biology,

I actually got a job at an aquarium.

And so, for five years, I grew coral,

used all of your work to teach myself
as much of coral taxonomy

-as I possibly could.
-Oh, okay.

So, I was very nervous about it--
Coming here, so--

I'm not the sort of person
to be nervous about.

No, not at all, but--

-Yeah.
-I guess I just wanna hear

your perspective of the change
that you've seen over time.

Then it was...
it was a totally different mindset,

because the reef was there forever,
there was no question about it.

-Yeah.
-I even wondered

why you would wanna make it a marine park.

It's so big, nothing's gonna touch
the Great Barrier Reef.

But it's changed enormously.

And this bleaching
and the degrading of the Great Barrier

that I've seen in my lifetime...

it really upsets me.

Up at Lizard, we essentially have
fluorescing or bleached corals

going through their transition to death,
being covered in algae.

You covered the whole thing.
Yeah, way to go.

Yeah, the whole horrible,
horrible, ghastly mess.

Yeah. It was actually quite difficult
while we were up there.

I got quite frustrated a few times where
I just didn't wanna be there anymore.

I didn't wanna watch it anymore.

I was over it. And...

I'm glad I'm not your age.

You know, I'm ready to check out when--

when the Great Barrier Reef gets trashed,
'cause it's been the most...

loved thing
in the physical world of my life.

You know, I've been diving on it
for years.

And I'm damned if I'm ever gonna stop
until I go completely senile.

[laughs]

I'm gonna keep going,

and as long as I can influence people,
I will.

-Because we have to.
-Absolutely.

We've got no choice.
You've got no choice, I'm afraid.

-You've gotta keep at it. You've got to.
-Yep, yep.

Otherwise, you're not gonna like yourself
when you're an old man.

You'll think...
You're gonna like yourself much more...

if you can say,
"Well, I sure tried to turn that around.

And maybe I did influence people
here and there and..."

Don't let a-- Don't let anything stop you.

[speaking indistinctly]

Just gotta get my glasses.

[Vevers] Losing the Barrier Reef
has actually gotta mean something.

You can't let it just die,
and it becomes an old textbook.

It's got to... cause the change
that it deserves.

Us losing the Great Barrier Reef
has got to wake up the world.

[Hoegh-Guldberg]
We have a really interesting situation.

Over the next years,
we're going to be facing

shifting ocean temperatures
and conditions.

And that's just a matter of fact,
because we've got point-five...

[Vevers]
I usually get to these things and...

and you start kind of almost shaking.

[Rago] I definitely have a little bit
of nervousness going.

How much talking is too much talking?

Is getting personal a bad thing?

Like, "This one was one of the more
difficult sites for me to go back to."

[Vevers] Really good to show
that it actually affected you.

-[Rago] Right.
-That's really important.

Um, and good. Um...

-As long as you don't start crying.
-Yeah.

[Vevers] Yeah.

So, over the last two years,

we've been amassing
a huge amount of bleaching imagery

from all over the world.

Now Zack's gonna show you
some of that imagery.

So, if you wanna pop up, Zack.

We spent the last four months
in Australia

and we documented
the ongoing bleaching event.

And so, I wanted to just show you
what our team was able to document.

[Rago] In just two months,

we've lost the majority of fish life
on this coral colony.

The soft corals disintegrate.

Fields and fields of soft coral

that then just turns
into a barren rock face.

I didn't even think it was possible.

[Vevers] This has been a mortality event
on a massive scale.

% of the corals
on the Great Barrier Reef alone have d*ed.

To lose % of the coral animals
in a single year,

it's just mind-blowing,
the scale of this bleaching event.

I think the most shocking part
was how widespread it was.

'Cause it affected almost all the reefs

from Lizard Island
north through Torres Strait.

And it was severe.

It's the equivalent of losing
most of the trees

between Washington, DC, and Maine.

[Rago] Well, this isn't just
the Great Barrier Reef.

This is a global massive event.

There are a large number of places
that are experiencing bleaching right now.

And that's why we need help.

We're looking for people
who have access to a local reef

to help photograph
what's happening in your own backyard.

If you are a diver, please,
join our effort and get in touch...

[Rago] Everybody's come together
that saw our call-out.

At this point,
we are on the bleaching threshold

and under a warning alert for bleaching.

Behind me, you can see
we have the Akumal reefs.

Basically, we've seen...
that one is almost completely bleached.

Water temperature has been rising,
and the coral has been bleaching.

[Rago] You're talking about the Caribbean,
two years in a row,

about Hawaii, two years in a row.

This last summer was especially horrific.

to % of the coral
is already long-since dead.

We know the waters here
started warming up in May, ,

to about three degrees Celsius
above normal.

Most of the Acropora,
the most common branch corals, are dying.

[speaking Bislama] The climate is still
changing. The ocean temperature is rising.

The El Niño this year
has bleached what's left.

[speaking English] Reefs here
have been under major stress,

-like other places across the globe.
-We're here in the Republic of Palau.

I'm in Cebu City, and...

The corals have been bleached
over the past month.

The coral is % bleaching,
and about half of them is dead already.

We now have a mass coral bleaching event
happening here on Christmas Island.

...degrees centigrade.

A lot of the reefs around Sri Lanka
were heavily bleached.

Bleaching is happening right now.

The coral are showing
massive signs of bleaching,

and for that reason,
we have massive mortality rates.

We've found the branch--

Branching Arcoporas, Pocilloporas
have started to show signs of bleaching.

I've been helping capture images
of coral bleaching in the Red Sea.

Bleaching has occurred here, recently.

Uh, there was a bleaching event...

[overlapping reports]

[Veron] I get cross with myself...

because I don't think I did enough.

I didn't make enough noise
when I realized what was happening.

I didn't do enough.

Better at it than I am.

[Veron] Zack has an option
of being part of that fight.

Maybe Zack will say, "Charlie...

he's just a gloomy old man,

and, uh... we can fix these things."

-[man] All good?
-Yeah.

[Rago] How are you guys doing today?

-[kids] Good.
-Are you guys excited?

[kids] Yeah.

[Rago] Let's go diving.

[kids] Diving!

[kids chattering]

[kid ] I see a fish.

[kids chattering]

-[Rago] Take a look around.
-[kid ] I see a turtle.

-[kid ] I see a turtle.
-[kid ] I see a turtle.

[Rago] In my mind,
all kids are born scientists.

They're born adventurers.

They wanna explore.

If we can get the kids
to hold on to that curiosity,

then our planet would be
a much better place.

I could-- I could see a stingray.

-[kid ] What is that?
-[Rago] Turtles, fish, coral,

crabs, starfish.
You name it. It's all there, right?

[chatter continues]

We're gonna take you on an expedition

to go see
the third global bleaching event.

I think having been on the journey
that I've been on,

I should be the most depressed person
on the planet.

I'm seeing the ecosystem

that I've fallen in love with...

die before my eyes.

Having said that,
I'm not actually depressed.

And that's because
there's been a big shift.

You look at every piece
of climate change action,

and it's about improving people's lives.

Creation of jobs, reducing pollution,
greenifying cities.

It's essentially a great transformation
that is already beginning.

[Hoegh-Guldberg]
It's not too late for coral reefs,

indeed, for many other ecosystems

that are facing challenges
from climate change.

It's still possible to reduce the rate
at which the climate is changing.

And that's within our power today.

[Vevers] It's all achievable.

It's not like we don't have the money,
not like we don't have the resources.

It's not like we don't have the brains.

This is inevitable,
this great transformation,

and that's what makes me
so optimistic is...

all we gotta do
is give it a bit of a shove.

♪ I was just born, I was just born ♪

♪ I been crawling
Till I learned to walk ♪

♪ When I met you, I was so young ♪

♪ I didn't know that it could fall apart ♪

♪ Tell me what do I do ♪

♪ Now I see what we've done ♪

♪ And I know that it's true ♪

♪ You gave me nothing but love ♪

♪ Tell me how long, tell me how long ♪

♪ Till we see the pieces that'll break ♪

♪ Tell me how long, tell me how long ♪

♪ Tell me how long will it take ♪

♪ Till we wake up ♪

♪ Till we wake up ♪

♪ Tell me how long, tell me how long ♪

♪ Till we wake up ♪

♪ I been trying
I been trying to tell you ♪

♪ What's inside my soul ♪

♪ I been dying, I been dying ♪

♪ But the ocean changes slow ♪

♪ And it's hard to see it ♪

♪ But I know that it's true ♪

♪ That I gotta be better ♪

♪ So much better to you ♪

♪ Tell me how long, tell me how long ♪

♪ Till we see the pieces that'll break ♪

♪ Tell me how long, tell me how long ♪

♪ Tell me how long will it take ♪

♪ Till we wake up ♪

♪ Till we wake up ♪

♪ Tell me how long, tell me how long ♪

♪ Till we wake up ♪

♪ Oh, I know we're gonna wake up ♪

♪ I scream in color ♪

♪ Tell me, can you hear me
Through the waves ♪

♪ If we keep on waiting ♪

♪ Do we lose the things
That we can save ♪

♪ If we hold each other ♪

♪ We don't have to let it slip away ♪

♪ We don't have to let this slip away ♪

♪ Tell me how long, tell me how long ♪

♪ Till we see the pieces that'll break ♪

♪ Tell me how long, tell me how long ♪

♪ Tell me how long will it take ♪

♪ Till we wake up ♪

♪ Till we wake up ♪

♪ Tell me how long, tell me how long ♪

♪ Till we wake up ♪

♪ I know we're gonna wake up ♪

♪ I know we're gonna wake up ♪

♪ Oh, we're gonna wake up ♪

♪ Oh, we're gonna wake up ♪

♪ Tell me how long, tell me how long ♪

♪ Tell me how long, tell me how long ♪

♪ Tell me how long will it take ♪

♪ Till we wake up ♪

♪ Till we wake up ♪

♪ Tell me how long, tell me how long ♪

♪ Till we wake up ♪

♪ I know we're gonna wake up ♪

♪ I know we're gonna wake up ♪

♪ Oh, we're gonna wake up ♪

♪ Oh, we're gonna wake up ♪

-♪ Till we wake up ♪
-♪ Tell me how long, tell me how long ♪

-♪ Oh, we're gonna wake up ♪
-♪ Tell me how long, tell me how long ♪

-♪ Tell me how long will it take ♪
-♪ Till we wake up ♪