Reviews by Teens

Review by Shree, member of the Cedarbrae Youth Advisory Group

Going into the theatre, I did not know what to expect. I was thinking this was going to be just like any other documentary, except about coral – a topic that does not really come up very often in everyday conversation. Minutes before the screening started, I was sitting among at least 2,000-3,000 other high school students under the dim lights of the humongous theatre hall, trying to relate to global warming, and climate change with beautiful and colourful coral that I had only known were found in Australia in the Great Barrier Reef until then – it was not until the movie ended that I became a bit more knowledgeable about coral.

As the lights began to go off one by one and the people began to settle in the seats, the screen began to display extremely beautiful underwater pictures of thousands of corals and underwater sea life. This was followed by the appearance of the cast, and soon we began to be enlightened about the deaths of millions of corals every year, across the world. The rate that coral was vanishing made me gasp, as I tried to imagine a world without those beauties that support the life of so many ocean creatures. Basically, in the next two hours I actually learned there were more places with coral, like Hawaii! The crew of scientists, climatologists, and researchers actually set cameras across the world to catch the moment of the death of coral, and after a string of unsuccessful trials, they manually recorded the pictures and clips of the ocean every day over a few months to create this documentary. In all, I think the documentary is very realistic; the part that the crew play is very essential because it was their input that made this so raw and eye-opening. I think this documentary is must watch for everyone because the execution of their message through this documentary is really incredible.