Chasing the Third Global Coral Bleaching Event
Underwater Earth, in partnership with XL Catlin, Google, and scientists at The University of Queensland and NOAA responded to the bleaching event that spanned 2014 through 2017. Using specially developed cameras, we are the only ones set up to chase the event, dispatching teams on a global basis to visually record it. The unique 360-degree imagery we produced revealed the true scale of a global bleaching event to the world.
Christophe Bailhache with our Reef Response SVII-S Camera
In September 2015 we teamed up with NOAA and Google to announce and promote The Third Global Coral Bleaching Event. It became one of the biggest climate change stories in the lead up to COP21 with a media reach of 2.4 billion.
We were there at the start in Hawaii in October 2014, and then chased it all over the world from American Samoa (3 separate missions), to the Great Barrier Reef in 2016, from Florida and Japan to the Maldives - and back to the Great Barrier Reef for an unprecedented second year in a row in 2017. Our imagery has appeared in virtually every major news publication. The science undertaken is on an unprecedented scale. Our work became the subject of the Emmy award-winning Netflix Originals documentary Chasing Coral.
Contact info@underwater.earth if you would like to use our imagery or infographics for media, outreach and education purposes.