AD 2017 Q4

thought I knew a lot about climate change before
I worked on Chasing Coral. Then one day I got
an email from Richard Vevers, who described how
much coral reefs were changing. For me, this opened
a window onto an ecosystem I knew very little
about. We explored stories about plastic, ocean
acidification, waste runoff, overfishing — you name it.
Then on the very first dive we did with Richard, we saw
coral bleaching. That dive was in 2013 in Bermuda. As
Richard continued to document bleaching in different
places, we realized this was the storyline to follow.
What was your first impression of Richard?
Richard was a guide for me. He was teaching me
about the oceans, and he could communicate complex
science very efficiently.
What was the most compelling thing about the ocean
information he shared with you in those early days?
Richard kept traveling to different sites around the
world and bringing back images of bright white coral. In
American Samoa he was photographing healthy coral,
and six months later he went back to find it had turned
totally white. He went back again soon after, and it was
dead. He was the one and only person on the front lines
documenting this. Scientists were studying it, but they
weren’t creating these intense images.
When in the process did you know that you would
focus on the Great Barrier Reef?
When we saw the extent of the coral bleaching on the
GBR last year, we knew exactly what story we would
be telling. I was living at Lizard Island with Zack. He
was emerging as this great, dedicated character, and
we were finally getting the imagery we’d been after by
diving the same sites every day.
Tell me more about Zack.
We had been working with Richard to figure out how to
PHOTOS ©NETFLIX/CHASING CORAL
document the bleaching, and we kept reaching out to
people to help us design underwater cameras that could
capture time-lapse imagery. That’s how we found Zack,
who in many ways carries the emotional heart of the
film. Through the process of developing this camera
system we found out Zack is a coral nerd who grew up
working in a coral aquarium in high school and college.
I remember you coming home from that first trip
with Zack, saying, “I have to film this guy more.”
We knew corals were bleaching, but it was still
challenging to pinpoint exactly when it would happen
and capture it on camera. We had been working
with a team of scientists, including Mark Eakin at the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA), to predict it.
We’d gone to Bermuda and the Bahamas and Hawaii,
but there were all sorts of technical challenges with
the equipment. We just weren’t getting the footage we
needed. Very unfortunately for the reef, but fortunately
for the film, the bleaching event continued longer than
expected, giving us the chance to follow it to Australia.
Going to Australia was a huge risk for us. “Would the
cameras work this time?” So we changed our approach
and kept a crew on the ground to respond quickly if
things changed. I went with Zack to Lizard Island,
and another team went to New Caledonia, capturing
bleaching and mortality there. They saw some incredible
and unique coral behavior; having two teams really
made a difference in our ability to tell the story well.
How did you find divers who could shoot the film
— divers who were also cinematographers?
At the very beginning there was Andrew Ackerman, a
young, aspiring filmmaker who had volunteered for us
on other small projects. As Chasing Coral got started,
I learned that he was a very experienced diver. So that
was dumb luck and good fortune. Andrew became my
dive instructor and guide, and he had a keen interest in
learning more about underwater cinematography, so
we shot a lot of the film together.
Hundreds of divers actually contributed to the film. A
lot of them were citizen scientists and volunteers from
around the world who responded to our global call for
footage of coral bleaching from their own backyards.
That’s one of the parts of the film I’m most proud of.
What was the hardest dive you had to do for this film?
For me personally, one of the toughest was in
Papua New Guinea. There was nothing technically
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