Chasing Coral

I generally hate documentaries if it’s not crime related, but this is a masterpiece. So moving and sad and well crafted.

"Chasing Coral" is a film by Jeff Orlowski. It focuses on the bleaching of coral and the negative effects that it has on marine life and marine ecosystems. A group of divers and scientists are the main people shown in the film, and they go around the world to show the decline of coral reefs. Climate change and its negative effects are discussed. Also, human activities are mentioned and how they are causing the decline in coral reefs. Rising ocean temperatures, acidification, and pollution are causing the corals to bleach. That means that the corals are losing color and dying. The film discusses how quickly the coral reefs are declining, and how marine life depends on them. There are also people who depend on them for income.  I think that this movie did a pretty good job at educating the viewer on what is happening to coral reefs all over the world. The movie shows beautiful shots of the ocean's coral reefs before and after the bleaching, so it really shows the viewer how bad it has truly gotten. Not only are visuals shown of the reefs, but scientific explanations are also given to help the viewers learn more about relationships between organisms and corals. Local interviews are also done with people that depend on the coral reefs. This makes the viewer feel empathetic towards them. I really like how the film gives a call to action for the viewers and inspires them to help make change occur in our oceans to help stop the large amount of coral bleaching. This movie honestly made me sad, because it just shows the reality of the coral reefs that are dying. Fish, sea urchins, starfish, etc. rely on coral reefs for shelter and food. Knowing that their locations for these things are becoming limited is sad to see. I do know that some organisms can continue to live on the dead coral reefs, but the number of marine lives using the reefs has-and is going to greatly reduce. 

Simply beautiful but so saddening. It is so difficult to see what we are doing to other creatures, but we need constant exposure to such productions to really understand our role in all this destruction.

No doubt, Best coral documentary, open my mind, touching, gloomy, lovely. There is a novel "Hide girl" that wrote a story about the future mutation of coral. It can adapt to higher temperatures, and the colors are incredible, like the one brought to the end of the documentary. worth seeing

I very much enjoyed the movie Chasing Coral. It was very informative, and its appeals to emotion were incredibly moving. The movie did a very good job of explaining complex things in an easily understandable way, and I greatly enjoyed learning about how coral reefs operate and how bleaching works. They also showed lots of relevant figures and had many experts give their statements, which added validity to the film. My favorite example of this was the interview with Charlie Vernon because I liked getting to see the opinion of someone who has been in this field for many years and knows what coral reefs were like before bleaching. I liked the parts where they talked about their struggles with the camera because it made the film much more relatable. It puts the researchers in perspective as real people who have problems and don't know all the answers. As I stated previously, the film's emotion was what really made it. The researchers stated how they wanted to leave emotions out, but it was impossible not to be emotional when they were watching an ecosystem die in front of them. Their emotions made their plea to care for the coral so much more significant.

The documentary, Chasing Choral, was very eye opening and enlightening. It's one thing to hear about coral bleaching but to physically see it as it was filmed, was really heart breaking. The documentary did an excellent job demonstrating how dangerously close we are to loosing coral reefs, and perhaps even a whole ecosystem. The ocean is being greatly affected by the planets change in temperature, which happened in the first place because of human infrastructure. The increase of ocean temperatures is causing the corals to die, leaving only the skeleton of the coral to remain. It's important to note that many organisms depend on the coral to survive, so if the corals are dying, they will have nowhere to go. Our planet is sending us a sign that we need to change our ways before it is too late. The future of the planet is in jeopardy and it is up to us to fix the problem as well as start caring for our environment.

People really need to start watching environmental documentaries like this and start educating themselves about what's happening to our planet. Due to global warming and ocean acidification, 50% of coral worldwide has been lost and within a few decades around 90% is projected to be lost within the next 30 years. Coral supports 1/4 of all marine life.

It's got coral, but not as much as I'd have expected

Should be required viewing for lawmakers, educators. Very well done.

Chasing Coral documents the phenomenon of coral bleaching. Director Jeff Orlowski along with the rest of the team, visit coral reefs in the Bahamas, Hawaii, and the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Their first task is to figure out how they will capture the event of coral bleaching. They begin by building underwater cameras that will withstand the ocean pressure, currents, and sea creatures. However, they experience a bump in the road with the video footage upon retrieval. The pictures and video capturing the coral bleaching is blurry, the footage is useless. The team does not give up, they are determined to fix the technical issues with the cameras and travel to The Great Barrier Reef, where they spend a little over 100 days. The team splits up to get the best footage, however, the first two stops where they set up their cameras are not capturing the desired footage so they completely scratch that plan. They go to two different locations, where they are diving every day for four hours at a time moving around to different coral reefs to get the desired footage. They do this for several weeks. By the last day, Zachary Rago one of the divers, an avid coral reef nerd, who studied environmental biology, was distraught by the devastating effect of coral bleaching. The previously bright vivid colors of the coral, full of life and so diverse, now lifeless. So many coral reefs around the world have been destroyed. Coral Reefs are essential to the ecosystem, without them the oceans will suffer and in turn, so will human life. Coral bleaching occurs is because of rising ocean temperatures due to global climate change. The ocean absorbs about 93% of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The documentary did a great job capturing the phenomenon of coral bleaching, intriguing their viewers, and sparking emotions. It was important to see how it affected the individuals in the documentary, they brought much-needed awareness and calls to action.