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 a coral reef.
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 underwater playgrounds are built by hard corals
which produce limestone 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 islanders' homes and violent seas.
When we're injured,
doctors use calcium carbonate from coral
to mend our broken bones.
When we're sick,
chemical compounds from the reef may restore our health.
No place on earth holds
greater potential for medical cures.
Reefs feed us.
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 breathe.
Rusi Vulakoro, a native of Fiji, has always lived close to the sea.
For centuries my ancestors were careful not to overfish.
So our reef was healthy.
But this year something happened...
something terrible.
A blanket of death settled 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 love.
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's a marine biologist.
All across the world,
we have Red Sea, East Africa, Maldives, Philippines...
We're seeing these kinds of problems showing up
at unprecedented rates.
Richard showed us how coral reefs were dying
at an alarming rate all around the world.
You also get changes in temperature as you go...
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 its incredible clarity, was
the best way to do this.
Open it all the way up to F/28.
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've done before.
It would be our most important expedition
in our thirty years of diving together.
Parts of the Great Barrier Reef have 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'd been long fished out by commercial fishermen.
Today, we've seen 12 giant clams.
And that's a great sign. That means that this reef is bouncing back.
A local marine biologist named Tracey Medway
led us to the giant potato cod.
They're 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 each other
until one of them disappears.
Just as fish protect the reef,
coral offers homes and hiding places for the fish--
anything from a simple shack
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 its tail,
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.
Mmm.
The cod gets groomed
and the wrasse gets dinner.
Partnerships like this seem to require mutual trust...
lots of trust.
Cat Holloway, a coral researcher, joined Michele
to study interspecies communication.
I was afraid I was going to inhale it, and maybe swallow it.
But I didn't.
It just tickled and pinched a little bit.
I've 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 microscopic 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,
a change of two degrees centigrade drives the algae out.
Without its main 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'd been to
20 years before, and I was surprised to see
that some of the reefs are-are so damaged because of ocean warming.
Our Australian survey gave us a baseline for understanding what was going wrong
at Rusi's reef, 2,000 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 dive at 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.
The time had come.
I took Howard and Michele further down the reef.
I wondered where all the animals had gone.
These reefs are dying.
It all just makes me really 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're almost all gone.
After seeing all the 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 crab
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 overfished these waters.
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 that sediment to go.
At the mouth of the river
silt blocked the sunlight 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 course for another island.
There we joined up with Jean-Michel Cousteau
who's the son of the legendary explorer.
Jean-Michel comes to Fiji 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 these 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're also beneficial.
Chemical compounds from coral reefs have been reproduced in the lab
to provide relief from chronic pain,
ease childbirth,
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 prefer 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's 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.
Yeah, I catch little fish... little fish for science.
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 what lives there.
You can't get a true picture of a coral reef
if you only look at part of it.
But deep dives can be really dangerous.
Even using special breathing devices,
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 seem 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 as we prepared 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're expert divers,
and there's much to learn by exploring regions where so little is known.
Support divers attached safety tanks to a lifeline
every 50 feet.
One hundred feet.
Roger. One hundred 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 they can and stop.
After that, we're on our own.
As we drop down the reef wall,
it gets darker and colder.
And in a way, we're going back in time.
At 200 feet,
we pass limestone deposits that were laid down
twenty thousand years ago,
back when this was the top of the reef.
Yeah, we're at bottom-- 350 feet.
At 350 feet,
we enter the Twilight Zone.
It's sort of spooky, but wonderful
to look around at a reef that no one has ever laid 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've never seen before.
I doubt anyone's ever 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 scientists explore a reef
that they might never be able to dive on their own.
It's not every day you get to witness the discovery of a new species of fish.
- Wow! Yeah. - See that red one with the long tail?
That's the one I'm really excited about.
That was-- Th-Th-That--
- That's definitely new. Oh, yeah. - That's a new one?
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.
Rusi has seen first hand
how corals can thrive when reefs are protected.
He's 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've also seen a lot of coral damage.
The siltation we saw at Rusi's reef
led us to our 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 flying around in contraptions like this.
But there's still something not quite right about an engine
that will fit in my backpack.
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 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 the survey boat
the Quicksilver Crossing.
Reef Check has over 4,000 sport divers in 60 countries
monitoring the health of coral reefs.
We asked Reef Check volunteers to check the coral damage here at 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.
The volcano has subsided and eroded somewhat
and the reefs are farther from shore.
The final stage is this flat doughnut of an island called an atoll.
The volcano has completely subsided back into the sea
leaving a ring of coral which once circled a tall mountain.
The team headed for the second largest atoll in the world--
Rangiroa--
to survey the remotest reefs in French Polynesia.
Ten years ago a cyclone wiped out most of Rangiroa's coral.
But storms are natural events and coral reefs 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 parrotfish 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 is so famous for?
Their absence is not necessarily a danger sign for corals,
but it could signal an imbalance in the whole reef ecosystem.
So finding the sharks became our main goal.
We searched the sharks' favorite hangouts,
but they didn't seem 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 worried me.
The aerial search for sharks turns up nothing
and we're running out of time,
but there's 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 right 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 have been 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 the 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 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 for 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.
They're supporting leaders who fight global warming,
joining teams like Reef Check,
and 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 takes a long, long time to build a coral reef,
step by step.
The reefs survive on partnerships
and the most important partners the corals have are you and I.