Chasing Coral

Chasing Coral is a Netflix original documentary made by Richard Vevers to discuss the disappearance of coral reefs worldwide. He does this by assembling a team of divers, photographers, and scientists and sends them to a coral reef to capture footage. The beginning of the film discusses how essential coral is to the ocean ecosystem and its anatomy. The viewer learns the coral lives in a symbiotic relationship with algae. The algae inside of the coral provides the coral with nutrients while the coral gives the algae shelter. Corals are the heart of any ocean ecosystem, and when it dies, the ecosystem dies along with it. Corals don't have a lifespan, which means that they don't die unless something happens to their environment. When the oceans warm, as a result of climate change, coral undergoes a process known as bleaching. This occurs when the algae leaves the inside of the coral, which causes the coral to turn white, then eventually die. Vevers assembles a team to document this process; they create underwater cameras to capture the bleaching firsthand. They set up these cameras in different places in the ocean, such as in Hawaii and the Great Barrier Reef. While some of these underwater cameras do not work, they manually capture the footage and provide stunning results.

Chasing Coral is a must-watch for every single person on this planet. The ocean plays a massive role for every human on this Earth, especially those who rely on coral reefs for food, yet most people are entirely oblivious to coral bleaching. It takes the film awhile to get to the severity of the coral bleaching as the film mainly documents the divers and photographers in their journey. This is one of the weaknesses of the film, while the first half of the film educates the audience about coral, it wasn't until midway through the documentary where the audience gets to see what happens to the coral reefs when it bleaches. However, this long process of documenting the people producing the best cameras for underwater time-lapses produces stunning yet devastating footage of coral bleaching and the aftermath. After capturing this footage, the divers used it to educate kids and adults on this situation. For people who cannot attend these events, the film should have provided how the viewer can help this phenomenon. The film's only resource is its website, but they could have done more. Chasing Coral is effective in showing the devastation of bleaching worldwide but not so much in conservation.

To find out more about coral bleaching visit https://www.chasingcoral.com.

To watch the full film on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGGBGcjdjXA.