Original subtitles

Coral Reef Adventure

The South Pacific.

Lagoons that hint at paradise.

Magnificent coral reefs that tease and

delight the dreaming corners of our minds.

This is the world as we wish it could always be.

In this great carnival of life

thousands of colorful characters coexist.

Diversity strengthens the coral reefs,

the more species,

the more survival systems.

Coral reefs have been going strong for sixty million years.

Some corals sway like flowers in the breeze.

Others masquerade as stones.

But all corals are animals.

These underworld playgrounds are built by hard corals

which produce lime stone and turn it into homes.

Stacked one on top of the other

millions of coral homes

gradually form a gigantic reef.

How wonderful that the largest living structures on earth

are built by tiny animals.

Coral reefs protect nearly all tropical coasts,

standing between islander's homes and violent seas.

When we're injured

doctors use calcium carbonate from coral

to mend our broken bones.

When we're sick

chemical components from the reef

may restore our health.

No place on earth

holds greater potential for medical cures.

Reefs

Feeders

Over three hundred million people

rely on fish from reefs.

For Pacific islanders like me

our coral reefs are as necessary as the air we breath.

Rusi Vulakoro, a native of Fiji

has always lived close to the sea.

For centuries

my ancestors were careful not to over fish.

So our reef was healthy.

But this year

something happened,

something terrible.

A blanket of death set over the reef

What was killing our reef?

I made up my mind to find some answers.

I decided to reach out to

some of my dive partners around the world.

Howard and Michele Hall

have spent thirty years exploring and filming reefs.

Their underwater photography is world renowned

When Howard and Michele got Rusi's message

They were in the mountains,

far from the reefs they loved.

All during that flight I kept wondering

what we could do to help Rusi.

Then I realized that

our friend Richard Pyle might know what to do.

He is a marine biologist

All across the world

Red Sea, East Africa, Maldives, Philippines,

We're seeing these kind of problems showing up

at unprecedented rates.

Richard showed us how coral reefs are dying

at an alarming rate all around the world.

Ocean warming is the major cause.

Richard urged us to document the coral reefs

on film for science

before they disappear.

We knew that the IMAX camera with it's incredible clarity

was the best way to do this.

Our mission was clear.

Bring back images that would give scientists

insights into why Rusi's reef was dying.

We needed to compare Rusi's reef

to other reefs all across the South Pacific.

Starting with the largest of them all,

the Great Barrier Reef.

The prospect of diving coral reefs

all across the South Pacific

was a bit like a dream come true.

We would make hundreds of dives,

and some of these would be deeper and more dangerous

than anything we have done before.

It would be our most important expedition

in our thirty years of diving together.

Parts of the Great Barrier Reef

had been protected from overfishing for two decades.

The first goal of this ten-month expedition

was to see how well that protection really worked.

When I first dove here 22 years ago,

these giant clams were not here.

They had been long fished out by commercial fishermen.

Today we have seen 12 giant clams.

That's a great sign

that means this reef is bouncing back.

A local marine biologist named Tracey Medway

led us to the giant potato cod.

They are called potato cod

because they have these splotchy potato shaped

markings on their sides.

Throughout most of the South Pacific,

the really large fish have been wiped out by fishermen

Potato cod thrive here only because of the laws that protect them.

These vegetarian convict tangs protect the reef

Nibbling away seaweeds that smother corals.

If too many of these kinds of fish are removed

corals will die.

That's why overfishing destroys reefs.

We often don't realize

how two species benefit from each other

until one of them disappears.

Just as fish protect the reef,

the coral offers homes and hiding places for the fish.

Anything from a simple shark

to a custom dream home.

Gobies often share a home with bulldozer shrimp.

Whenever he ventures out of the burrow

the shrimp keeps at least one antenna on the goby.

The goby gets an impeccable burrow to live in

without lifting a fin.

And the very nearsighted shrimp gets a bodyguard.

With a flick of it's tale,

The goby warns the shrimp of approaching predators.

This hundred year old coral

makes a nice dentist's office

for potato cod.

A small fish,

a cleaner wrasse,

swims right into the cod's mouth

to feed on parasites.

The cod gets groomed

and the wrasse gets dinner.

Partnerships like this seem to require mutual trust.

Lots of trust.

Cat Hollerway, a coral researcher

joined Michele to study intersperses communication.

I was afraid I was going to inhale it,

maybe swallow it.

But I didn't.

It just tickled and pinched a little bit.

I studied animal behavior for so many years.

This was...

This was different.

This was a chance for me to

actually be part of it.

Cooperation between species sustains life here.

But sometimes it's almost invisible.

The coral's most important partners

are tiny microscope algae

that actually live inside the coral animals tissues.

These helper algae use sunlight to produce sugar,

the primary food source

that gives corals the energy to build reefs.

Most corals cannot survive without helper algae.

But worldwide,

abnormally warm seawater

threatens this partnership.

Time lapsed photography can show us how

in just one week

that change of two degrees centigrade drives the algae out.

Without its primary food source

the coral bleaches a ghostly white.

If the algae don't return,

the coral starves.

Here in Australia we went to some places that

we've been to 22 years before

and I was surprise to see that

some of the reefs were so damaged because of ocean warming.

Our Australian survey gave us a baseline

for understanding what was going wrong

at Rusi's reef

2000 miles away in Fiji

when we got to Fiji,

it didn't take five minutes to reconnect with Rusi.

Howard made me smile again.

Michele and I were eager to help Rusi.

But first

we had to pay our respects to local tradition.

Before outsiders can direct my home island

the elders must grant permission.

My people have always limited fishing.

This tradition of reef conservation

has worked well for centuries.

'Til now.

First I wanted Howard to see my village reef

as it used to be.

The reef looked great with plenty of small fish.

But we didn't see nearly as many big fish

as we did in Australia.

And that worried me.

But time had come.

I took Howard and Michele further down the reef.

I wondered where all the animals had gone.

These reefs are dying.

And it all just makes me very sad.

Seeing so much of this reef destroyed

we realized that

Rusi's reef may be what all coral reefs look like

in thirty years.

Our reef used to be home to so many creatures

but now they are almost all gone.

After seen all these destruction though

I saw an octopus.

Octopus make like a tent with their body.

They put up their eight arms and

actually trap shrimps and crabs that live on the reef.

He had obviously figured out

how to survive.

Not many reef dwellers are able to do that.

For islanders who survive by fishing,

the death of the reef has really hit us hard.

Especially when you have children to feed.

But what killed Rusi's reef?

Foreign fishing fleets have over fished this water.

And thermometers tells us that the ocean is two degrees warmer than normal.

I found more bleached coral and no big fish.

But I had a hunch that

ocean warming and overfishing

were not the only problems.

Ten miles inland,

when tropical rain forests were cut down,

the river turned muddy with silt.

Two rivers merge,

one with logging upstream,

one without.

There's only one place for all of that settlement to go.

At the mouth of the river

silt blocks the sun light that the coral needs for growth.

Rusi's reef had been hit by a combination of stresses.

Ocean warming, overfishing and siltation.

Corals may fight off one threat

but three at once proved too much.

Now I understood the problem better

but what could I do?

Howard thought a healthier reef

might give us some answers.

We set quest for another island.

There we joined up with Jean-Michele Cousteau

who is the son of the legendary explorer.

Jean-Michele comes to Fuji every year to help marine biologists

like Maria Joao Rodriguez, monitor coral reefs.

We guided Howard and Michele to a nearby reef

where siltation is not a problem,

thanks to mangrove trees.

Their roots trap silt,

protecting the reefs.

Many fish use mangroves as a nursery to protect their young.

My fellow Fijians

have set aside the beneficial mangroves

as part of a marine preserve.

Making the reef offshore a wonderland,

healthy, beautiful and strong.

This is the way I want my reef to be.

Tropical coral reefs are found worldwide.

Fiji is the soft coral capital of the world.

Corals are beautiful,

but they are also beneficial.

Chemical compounds from coral reefs

have been reproduced in the lab

to provide relief from chronic pain,

ease child birth

and even extend the life of AIDS patients.

Corals share their food.

In fact many of them share the same stomach.

When the current picks up speed

time lapse photography shows

how these soft corals inflate like balloons

to trap passing morsels.

On a healthy reef like this,

you see so many different creatures.

We preferred not to approach the animals.

It's better if they come to us.

This distant cousin of the cobra

can kill a person with its venom in a matter of minutes,

but they rarely bite humans.

Michele is counting on that.

We learn a lot about a reef from its animals,

and so do the children.

There is more to the reef than meets the eye.

Observation is the first step in science.

Who would notice

that yellow damselfish guard their tiny eggs

before they hatch.

Or that the sea cucumber filters waste

leaving the reef cleaner for all.

Some of the finest marine biologists are Fijians.

We could have a budding scientist in our midst.

We've learned that we don't inherit the earth

from our parents.

We borrow it from our children.

Children love to spot fish they've never seen before.

That same thrill of discovery drives many scientists

like Richard Pyle.

Richard Pyle calls himself a fish nerd.

He studies fish on the deepest parts of coral reefs.

The deeper down we go on a coral reef

the less we know.

I want to find out who lives there.

You can't get a true picture of coral reef

if you only look at part of it.

But deep dives can be really dangerous.

Even using special breathing devises

we could still get a fatal disease

called "the bends".

I nearly lost Howard on a deep dive

only two months ago.

He had a bad case of "the bends"

It could have killed him.

To stop the progression of the illness,

I began breathing pure oxygen

but it didn't seen to help.

I was losing all feeling in my right leg.

One of the terrifying moments for me

was actually seeing him stumble.

I just thought this can't be happening.

Michele rushed Howard to the hospital

hoping that a specially pressurized chamber

might halt the illness

and save his life.

Thank god for the communication system

because at least then I could talk to him.

Howard survived.

But his close call was on my mind when

we prepare for a dive to 350 feet.

The next day on the deep dive

Howard and Richard would face pressures

nearly 12 times greater than normal.

But they are expert divers

and there is much to learn by exploring regions

where so little is known.

Support divers attached safety tanks to a life line

every 50 feet.

As we descend,

too much oxygen is bad.

Too little is worse.

Both can kill you.

The safety divers go down as far as he can and stop.

After that

we are on our own

As we drop down the reef wall

it gets darker and colder.

And in a way we are going back in time.

At 200 feet,

we pass lime stone deposits that were laid down

twenty thousand years ago,

back when this was the top of the reef.

At 350 feet,

we entered the twilight zone.

It's sort of spooky but wonderful

to look around at a reef that

no one has ever lay eyes on before.

It's starting to get interesting.

We don't see any of the corals that rely on sunlight.

Instead we see fan corals and whip corals.

This reef community definitely appears to be thriving.

In his quest to find out what lives down here,

Richard can only bring a few specimens back to the surface

to be documented for science.

Looking around I see at least a dozen new fish species

that I have never seen before.

I doubt that anyone has seen them before.

Scientists like Richard

are mapping the web of life that

we are all part of.

Each new fish Richard finds

holds millions of years of genetic engineering

for medical research.

Then the intense water pressure

caused the primary camera

to malfunction.

I was glad that Howard called an end to the dive.

We hope that Howard's images

will let scientist explore a reef

that they might never be able to dive on their own.

It's not everyday you get to witness

the discovery of a new species of fish

You see that red one with the long tale

that's the one I'm really excited about.

That's definitely new.

Oh, I see those all the time.

Until quite recently,

the deep coral reefs were

this big dark void on our map of life.

But each new discovery

leads us to new connections.

This may seen like just some insignificant little red fish,

But it's a very important piece

to the biodiversity puzzle.

As soon as I saw I knew it was something different

the months of hard work in Fiji paid off

Russy has seen first hand

how corals can thrive when reefs are protected

he is now ready to return to his home island

my fellow Fijians have shown me

how to set up a marine preserve

protect the mangroves

and even curb logging operations

I really want to get started.

Here in Fiji we've seen some amazing reefs.

But we have also seen a lot of coral damage.

The siltation we saw in Rusi's reef

led us to a next question.

Is closeness to shore

a major risk factor for corals?

French Polynesia is a perfect place

for answering this question.

In French Polynesia

Howard and Michele started with

The heavily populated islands of Tahiti and Mo'orea

where the reefs are close to shore.

But with only six weeks left in the whole expedition

Howard had to get the big picture fast.

I'm used to hang gliders.

I'm used to fly around in contraptions like this.

But there is still something not quite right

about an engine that can fit in my back pack.

Mo'orea is sort of like Rusi's island.

The coral here is very sensitive

to siltation and pollution

because the reefs are very close to shore.

After checking out the north side of Mo'orea

we head across the mountains to survey the south coast.

Even near towns

we didn't spot much reef damage.

Coastal development puts reefs in jeopardy.

Siltation pollution, and the loss of mangroves

are all serious risks

But resorts like this prove that

respecting the environment is a good business.

Because tourists avoid damaged reefs.

Our flight over Mo'orea

just gave us a first impression.

So with time running out

I turned to Reef Check aboard survey boat

the Quicksilver Crossing

Reef Check has over 4000 sport divers in 60 countries

monitoring the health of coral reefs.

We asked Reef Check volunteers

to check the coral damage here in Mo'orea.

to find out if the reefs closest to shore

are the most severely damaged.

From the air

it's clear how these volcano islands formed

and how coral reefs formed around them.

The steepest youngest islands Tahiti and Mo'orea

stand tall.

These islands have not eroded and subsided much

so the coral reef ringing them is not far offshore.

Bora Bora is middle aged, so the volcano

has subsided and eroded somewhat

and the reefs are farther from shore.

The final stage

is this flat donut of an island called and atoll

The volcano has completely subsided back into the sea

leaving a ring of coral which one circled a tall mountain.

The team headed for the second largest atoll in the world.

Rangiroa

to survey the remotest reefs in French Polynesia.

10 years ago

a cyclone wiped out most of Rangiroa's coral

But storms are natural events

and coral reef do recover from them

as long as human impacts don't interfere.

Here the coral seems small but healthy.

Right away we saw two male parrot fish

fighting over territory.

This was a sign of a large and thriving fish population.

But why haven't we seen the huge schools of grey reef sharks

Rangiroa so famous for?

Their absence is not necessarily a danger sign for corals

but it could single an imbalance in the whole reef ecosystem.

So finding the sharks became our main goal.

We search the shark's favorite hangouts

but they didn't see to be home.

We used caution because

one thing you don't want to do

is catch a grey reef shark by surprise

if the sharks are out roaming the reef in shallow water

the quickest way to spot them

is from the ultralight.

Throughout the Pacific

whole populations of sharks have been wiped out

by commercial fishermen.

Grey reef sharks are especially vulnerable

and that's what worry me.

The aerial search for sharks turns up nothing.

And we're running out of time

but there is one last place to look.

Tiputa Pass

Here the current just screams.

Hundreds of startled sharks are hanging out

like a street gang in this little canyon.

We're being swept into them

and there's nothing we can do about it.

Could they be mating?

This is when you try very hard

not to look like a shark.

I've had two friends badly bitten by grey reef sharks

The most social of all sharks,

greys tend to swim in tight groups.

I've been diving for 35 years

but I've never seen the likes of this.

There must be 300 sharks in this school

and that's a healthy number.

This big school doesn't close the book

but it is a favorable sign

for the health of this reef ecosystem.

We party with the sharks for nearly an hour

knowing that on their way home

we'll have the current at our backs

so we can go with the flow.

For ten exhausting but magical months

Michele and I explored

some of the most magnificent coral reefs on earth.

During that time

our concern for corals grew into a shared passion.

My people look at the reef

and we don't want to believe that such a place

could be gone forever.

My friends Howard and Michele

have given me new tools to heal my village reef.

Howard's love to the reefs nearly cost him his life.

But after making more than 500 dives

we came back with some really powerful images.

One image I can't get out of my mind

is that lone octopus crawling through the rubble.

Soon it may not have a home.

No one set out to kill a beautiful thing.

But when a reef dies

billions of living things die.

Corals appears to be dying faster than normal

and the trend is rapidly accelerating.

Most living coral reefs as we know them today

could be gone in 30 years.

If that happens

then something inside of me will die too.

After all the coral reefs have given us

more and more people are now returning the favor.

Their supporting leaders who fight global warming

joining teams like Reef Check

getting involved.

We may have greater potential

of finding new medicines on

coral reefs than any other environment on earth.

To save them is really saving ourselves.

It take a long, long time to build a coral reef

step by step

the reefs survive on partnerships.

And the most important partners

that the corals have are you and I.

What we must to do is

encourage a sea change in attitude

one that acknowledges

we are a part of the living world

not apart from it.