Chapter 9 of 10 · 2'52"
The shallows look beautiful because the coral has turned white. That color is the reef dying: corals expel the algae living inside them, and what remains are skeletons, later smothered by seaweed. "And the reef turns from wonderland... to wasteland." The bleaching was a mystery until it lined up with warming seas, and with carbon released by burning fossil fuels.
❝ Monologue · 5 lines Beautiful White Coral Turns Tragic
The Earth Begins to Lose Balance
In the shallows, ocean life is coming apart. A Blue Planet film crew stumbles on coral reefs turning white, a sight little known in 1998. The color comes from corals expelling the algae that live inside them. Beauty flips: the white is skeletons of dead creatures, and seaweed smothers the reef until wonderland becomes wasteland. Warming seas explain the bleaching, and the ocean has been absorbing the excess heat.
The white is doing two jobs. It looks like a spectacle, and it is a death. "Because what you're looking at is skeletons." Seaweed finishes the work. "And the reef turns from wonderland... to wasteland." The harder turn is the cause. Bleaching was a mystery, then it kept showing up where the ocean was warming. Climate scientists had already warned that burning fossil fuels and releasing carbon dioxide would heat the planet. A marked change in atmospheric carbon "has always been incompatible with a stable earth," and it was a feature of all five mass extinctions. Volcanoes needed up to a million years to dredge up enough carbon. Burning coal and oil did it in less than two hundred. Air temperatures looked steady into the 1990s only because the ocean was absorbing the excess heat and masking the impact. The white reef is the first indication that the earth was beginning to lose its balance.
A1–C2 is the CEFR scale. Cards above the level you pick fade, and playback will not auto-pause on them.
“When you first see it, you think perhaps that it's beautiful, and suddenly you realize it's tragic.”
It lets the pretty mistake stand for a second, then takes it back.
literary
“Because what you're looking at is skeletons.”
It turns a pretty view into a noun you cannot soften.
literary
“And the reef turns from wonderland... to wasteland.”
Two matching words and a pause turn a fairy tale into ruin.
literary
“A marked change in atmospheric carbon has always been incompatible with a stable earth.”
It sounds like a rule, so the claim feels impossible to bargain with.
Formal
“It was a feature of all five mass extinctions.”
Naming all five makes the pattern sound like a rule of deep history.
Formal
“It was the first indication to me that the earth was beginning to lose its balance.”
A planetary claim arrives as one person's first private alarm.
literary
When you first see it, you think perhaps that it's beautiful, and suddenly you realize it's tragic. Because what you're looking at is skeletons. Skeletons of dead creatures. The white corals are ultimately smothered by seaweed. And the reef turns from wonderland... to wasteland.
David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet: your progress
Chapter 9 of 10 · about 2 min to go
← Previous
Up next · 10headed for disasterThe scene: No Ice Where Ice WasThe white color is caused by corals expelling algae that lives symbiotically within their body. The algae had been living inside the coral, and once it is expelled the reefs turn white. That is the reason given for the white itself.
At first, the cause of the bleaching was a mystery. Scientists then found that in many cases where bleaching occurred, the ocean was warming. Climate scientists had warned that the planet would get warmer as we burned fossil fuels and released carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
The global air temperature had been relatively stable till the '90s only because the ocean was absorbing much of the excess heat, masking our impact.
Volcanic activity took up to one million years to dredge up enough carbon from within the earth to trigger a catastrophe. Burning millions of years' worth of organisms all at once as coal and oil did that in less than 200 years.
