![]() But seas are heating up so quickly and bleaching events are occurring so frequently that even hardier corals may ultimately not survive, Gates said. Scientists are studying the factors that help corals recover from bleaching, ranging from genetics to alliances with microorganisms to partnerships with more resistant corals. Not all corals die after bleaching, and some species are proving to be more resilient than others, Ruth Gates, "Chasing Coral" science adviser and director of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology at the University of Hawaii, told Live Science. (Image credit: Copyright Chasing Coral, photo by Catherine Yrisarri) "Chasing Coral" producer and director Jeff Orlowski inspects a custom-built camera drone. ![]() "This was too important to let go, we needed to get imagery that was as powerful as possible." ![]() "We knew we need to get this story out to the world," Orlowski said. But that made them only more determined to share what they found, he said. "It was far worse than we ever thought it would be," Jeff Orlowski, the film's director, told Live Science. One especially sobering scene shows Zackery Rago, a camera technician for the film and a self-described "coral nerd," at a site on the Great Barrier Reef, holding a piece of dying coral as its transparent flesh disintegrates in his hands. This large-scale coral bleaching was the first global event to last for more than a year, and its effects were so devastating that even the filmmakers were stunned by what they saw. And the bleaching continued into 2016, as the team shot manual time-lapse footage at locations at the Great Barrier Reef. ![]() A third mass bleaching episode that began in 2014 was still underway in 2015, when the "Chasing Coral" filmmakers installed stationary time-lapse cameras at reefs in Hawaii and in the Bahamas. Researchers identified the first global bleaching event in 1998, which was followed by another in 2010, Eakin said. In "bleached" reefs, the corals' white skeletons are visible under their transparent flesh. ![]()
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