Today, I want to talk to you about a documentary about "coral" .
When it comes to coral, perhaps the first thing that comes to your mind is that it is colorful and has a beautiful appearance. Your impression of coral may be like this
However, now they may be like this.
The earth we live in can also be called the "blue water polo". On Earth, 71% is surrounded by oceans, which control weather changes, climate change, and the amount of oxygen we breathe.
It can be said that there is no healthy planet without healthy oceans.
Most people are amazed by staring into space, but on our own earth, there is a most special world, full of life.
This is what most people have never explored - the underwater world
But there are such a group of people who love the ocean and are attracted by the charm of underwater creatures.
So, they picked up the camera and traveled to 21 countries for two years , taking a large number of high-definition photos of the seabed with a 360-degree perspective, revealing the full picture of the seabed for us. It also recorded the process of those corals from beautiful and gorgeous to bleaching, exhaustion and death for us.
Today, I would like to bring everyone closer to corals and listen to their stories through the documentary Chasing Corals.
First, a brief introduction to the production team of this documentary.
The originator and underwater photographer of the documentary is Richard Wells.
He has worked in the advertising industry for ten years, and started diving at the age of 16. He deeply loves the ocean and often goes to find a marine creature called the grass sea dragon. Until one day, after this sea creature completely disappeared, Richard suddenly realized what he should do...
So, he began to look for other marine creatures that were disappearing in addition to the disappearance of his favorite creatures, so he found "coral".
The director is Jeff Orlovsky.
Jeff once filmed a documentary called "Journey to Ice" , which was nominated for an Academy Award in the 85th (2013) year.
It is a film that captures the impact of global climate change from the perspective of melting glaciers. It can be regarded as a companion to "Chasing Coral".
Other key members include underwater photography engineer Trevor Mandello.
Chuck Rego as Underwater Photography Technician
Chuck has been exposed to marine ecology since he was a child. He loves coral very much. He likes to have a coral aquarium at home, and there is not even half a fish in it. Every time I talk about coral, I am full of excitement, and he is a humorous and lovely person.
Diver and photographer Andrew Ackerman
With rich diving experience, he also bluntly stated in the film that this shooting is different from the past, and it is very difficult.
In addition to the people directly involved in the filming above, many marine biologists and coral reef biologists also appeared in the film. They will explain some concepts and phenomena in the documentary from time to time, which is very interesting and vivid. For the people involved in this shooting, coral is not just the object they photographed or researched, it is more like a living individual who loves and respects coral.
At the beginning of the film, the initiator Richard ran around, and through some professional scholars, he re-acquainted with coral.
Like many people, Richard was initially full of doubts about the very simple question of whether corals were plants or animals.
The answer given by the experts is
Corals are animals made up of many coral polyps
Corals grow continuously through the accumulation of coral polyps and the metabolism from generation to generation.
At the same time, the corals continuously secrete limestone and bond them together. These limestones are later compacted and petrified to form islands and reefs, which are so-called coral reefs.
The most well-known coral reef is the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and an entire coral reef can even be seen from space.
Coral reefs are known as "tropical rainforests under the sea" , providing shelter for many marine creatures. The place with healthy coral reefs is the bustling area of underwater cities. It is also the source of life for 25% of the known marine life, and the source of food and income for 500 million to 1 billion people. Not only that, there are many drug extraction and scientific researches that rely on coral reefs.
Corals have no average lifespan, as long as there are no accidents, they can live forever.
And in the age we live in, right under our noses, a large number of corals are threatened, bleached , lose their beautiful colors, and face death.
Scientists have done a lot of experiments to find the cause of coral bleaching, and finally proved that coral bleaching is only possible when the temperature increases by two degrees Celsius .
This experiment shows that coral bleaching is directly related to global warming .
If people ignore climate change and take the average ocean temperature in recent years, in about 25 years , all oceans, for coral reefs, will be too hot to survive.
Historically, there have been three global coral bleaching events .
Scientists are concerned about the status of corals, but there's nothing they can do about it.
Richard, who has ten years of experience as an advertiser, realizes that
Most people turn a blind eye to the status quo of the ocean, and the only way to get everyone's attention is to present the status quo in front of the public.
So he found a documentary director and started shooting.
The filming process was not smooth, or because of the difficulty of communication among the members of the underwater construction.
Either because of equipment problems, or because of the weather.
The original plan of the team was to place the camera on the seabed for a month to photograph the process of coral bleaching. Later, I found that it didn't work, so I held a heavy camera on the bottom of the sea to manually shoot at the same places every day. I had to shoot 60 places a day, and it was repeated 25 times.
Scratches are also commonplace for the team's underwater photographers.
Compared with the physical pain, the most difficult thing for the players to accept is the mental torture. Among the underwater photographers, there is a coral fan, Chuck Lego, who has been by the TV since he was a child, listening to the coral master Professor Charlie Veron explaining various coral species every day .
When I first heard that I was going to shoot corals on the Great Barrier Reef, Chuck's excitement and joy overflowed the camera.
And when he was about to leave on the last day after photographing bleached corals on the Great Barrier Reef, he said, "I'm finally leaving."
These are the corals under their lens.
No matter who they are, they will think so when they witness the process of their favorite creatures slowly disappearing.
Rising ocean temperatures, coral bleaching linked to climate change caused by unchecked human industrial activity
It can be said that marine creatures are suffering punishment for human mistakes.
One day, the rest of the filming team received a notification from Richard that a very strange phenomenon had occurred in the corals in New Caledonia (France), where the corals fluoresced beautifully.
This is a chemical sunscreen produced by corals to protect themselves from heat damage.
It can also be said to be the silent call of coral
As if coral were saying "look at me" "please notice me"
Sadly, people are laughing and laughing on the floating restaurant, unaware of what's going on under their feet.
The ancestors of human beings have known from a long time ago that nature and people influence each other, and people in ancient times will have a heart of awe when they treat nature.
But now, our destruction of nature is getting more and more serious, and it is difficult to see the natural landscape.
The extinction of terrestrial organisms has also been frequently reported in the last decade or so.
Everything on our planet is connected, and without coral, the ocean floor would lose its color.
And in the ocean we are not familiar with, the bleaching of corals is the beginning of the collapse of marine ecology.
The bleaching of coral is a warning to us, cruel but real.
At the Honolulu Convention Center in Hawaii, where the world's top coral reef scientists participated in the International Coral Reef Symposium, Richard presented a video shot by his team.
The scientists present were all shocked and moved by it.
Although the two-year shooting has ended, the actions of the team members have never stopped.
Under their influence, more and more people know and participate in the protection of coral reefs.
Everything is going in the right direction
In the end, let's enjoy the beautiful underwater world together.
May the beautiful corals exist like this forever
forever beautiful
Thank you to this team for bringing us such a great documentary~
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