Chasing coral

Reef man 89 · Jul 15, 2017

this morning I turned on Netflix and found a new documentary called CHASING CORAL. It's about a guy maping out the bottom of the ocean like how Google maps out the road way system. But he realized that over 50 percent of the oceans coral are all dead. The under water footage you see is sad when it's just fields of dead acros. Just thought I would share this with the reefing community. I think everyone should check it out to see how bad our oceans are being affected with global warming.

jenkinscrew2578 · Jul 15, 2017

Was definitely very sad to watch

Michael Cronmiller · Jul 15, 2017

Agreed...watched this morning....what an eye opener on the devastation of the reefs worldwide

Reef man 89 · Jul 15, 2017

Michael Cronmiller said:
Agreed...watched this morning....what an eye opener on the devastation of the reefs worldwide

To watch the time lapse they did and the amount of death in the matter of 2 months was unbelievable.

d2mini · Jul 15, 2017

Very very sad. I was choked up for most of the 90 minutes.

ncaldwell · Jul 16, 2017

My wife cried a good bit but reaffirmed her decision to go into marine biology to study climate change

Reef man 89 · Jul 16, 2017

It's just unbelievable the devastation that is going on in the GBR. All because of the decisions that humanity is making on a day to day basis. When they brought that if you started to cut down all the trees from Maine to Washington then people would notice but sence it's under the ocean no one actually sees the devastation that's going on. Its like a out of sight out of mind thing. It's just crazy to think that in our life time all the reefs can be destroyed if nothing is done to change the warming of the oceans. I wanted to share this program on this forum so more people can check it out and see for themselves.

DH-Reef · Jul 18, 2017

I love the reefs, I love fish and all of the living creatures that exist within them, but to suggest "All because of the decisions that humanity is making on a day to day basis"...I just don't understand that mentality. What is the Earth, 4 billion years old...and we've been keeping records for what? A couple hundred years?

Is it sad, of course, but to suggest that people are responsible for ANY change (warming or cooling...they've been blamed for both), when change has been occuring for billions of years, just seems like a giant leep to me.

landlubber · Jul 18, 2017

DH-Reef said:
I love the reefs, I love fish and all of the living creatures that exist within them, but to suggest "All because of the decisions that humanity is making on a day to day basis"...I just don't understand that mentality. What is the Earth, 4 billion years old...and we've been keeping records for what? A couple hundred years?

Is it sad, of course, but to suggest that people are responsible for ANY change (warming or cooling...they've been blamed for both), when change has been occuring for billions of years, just seems like a giant leep to me.

human related or not, awareness and being inspired to manage earth better is never a bad thing. to me that is what the documentary was more about and i'm sure ,if possible, 100% of us would prefer to keep our hobby safe for us and future generations.

Reef man 89 · Jul 18, 2017

DH-Reef said:
I love the reefs, I love fish and all of the living creatures that exist within them, but to suggest "All because of the decisions that humanity is making on a day to day basis"...I just don't understand that mentality. What is the Earth, 4 billion years old...and we've been keeping records for what? A couple hundred years?

Is it sad, of course, but to suggest that people are responsible for ANY change (warming or cooling...they've been blamed for both), when change has been occuring for billions of years, just seems like a giant leep to me.

I didn't mean for it to sounds like it how it was type out. I understand what your saying 100 percent. When I said that about humanity it was mainly about the pollution going on. Back before they were burning trash and make huge landfill with it. They were putting it on huge ships and dumping it in the middle of the ocean. Right now there are BILLIONs and BILLIONS of tons of trash just floating around in the ocean right now. That of course is having a impact on the ecosystem. The massive oil spills that happens in the ocean has a huge impact on the wild life. I also don't believe that all the gobel warming that has happened came from the evolution of man kind. Seeing that we have only been on this earth for the past 500 years or so. And the earth is billions of years old. That's kind of what I meant about it.

DSC reef · Jul 18, 2017

I like the awareness there bringing to the reef. Out of sight, out of mind has been a downfall for the beautiful reefs were loosing. I like how it wasn't politicized and there goal was to just start bringing attention to the devastation to a vital ecosystem.

DH-Reef · Jul 18, 2017

landlubber said:
human related or not, awareness and being inspired to manage earth better is never a bad thing. to me that is what the documentary was more about and i'm sure ,if possible, 100% of us would prefer to keep our hobby safe for us and future generations.

No doubt, I agree with that 100 percent. Being smart about how we dispose of our wastes, making sure that factories are not poluting our oceans, finding better ways to transport oil and chemicals, those are all things that we should be doing.

DH-Reef · Jul 18, 2017

Reef man 89 said:
I didn't mean for it to sounds like it how it was type out. I understand what your saying 100 percent. When I said that about humanity it was mainly about the pollution going on. Back before they were burning trash and make huge landfill with it. They were putting it on huge ships and dumping it in the middle of the ocean. Right now there are BILLIONs and BILLIONS of tons of trash just floating around in the ocean right now. That of course is having a impact on the ecosystem. The massive oil spills that happens in the ocean has a huge impact on the wild life. I also don't believe that all the gobel warming that has happened came from the evolution of man kind. Seeing that we have only been on this earth for the past 500 years or so. And the earth is billions of years old. That's kind of what I meant about it.

Using the ocean as a dumping ground, now that is disgusting...and I didn't see your comment about the oil until after I posted.

Every time I see something like that, I'm thinking, "as technologically advanced as we are and we can't find a way to line these ships, so that doesn't happen?"

Dsnakes · Jul 18, 2017

Just watched it, very eye opening. I look at my little 20 gallon slice of reef differently. Ive loved it since I set it up, but now it seems much more precious.

thaitopher · Jul 18, 2017

I remember when I grew up in Thailand I used to go to this iand off the coast and snorkel. This was in the 80s. Thailand used to be so unregulated that by the time the 90s rolled around all the coral around the island was gone because tty he water was so murkey. I remember getting oral on my bathing suits because the hotels and other industries would literally dump straight into the ocean. Then the tsunami vame and did as much damage in one day as all of the pollution did in 50 years.

A Toadstool Leather · Jul 18, 2017

A great asset for reef conservation is the use of protected areas. Even though it does not prevent bleaching events they can mitigate human impacts (pollution, sedimentation, etc..) and at least provide a chance for recovery. To be honest the lost of reefs is a loss to all of us due to their beauty and the habitat they provide for commercially important fish. There are even medical advances that could be derived from reef inhabitants. I wish there was more we could do about global warming, but at this rate little progress is being made.

uglyman · Jul 19, 2017

It's devastating that such a large part of the GBR has bleached but what I find disgusting is my government (yes I am an Aussie) has not recognised that this could be global warming that is killing our national treasure. To add insult to injury they have given the green light to a massive coal mine in the state of Queensland right where the barrier reef is and they plan to let coal carrying cargo ships pass in and out of the reef and will more than likely allow dredging of the ocean on the doorstep of the GBR so these ships can enter/leave the port.

A little info on the mine
https://www.acf.org.au/stop_adani

Charterreefer · Jul 19, 2017

I wish the American government could help although, the way this government is currently positioned not much can happen they (We, yikes) have removed our ecological teeth!