The reefs of the Dead Sea.

and coral reefs and rakishlooking craft in the offing.

He does not hear it.

A great deal of this has been happening in the Great Barrier Reef, particularly in coral reefs all over the world.

look at light, look at patterns.

Coral

Coral

So we had our own miniature rainforest, a private beach with a coral reef.

So we went and taught the techniques. We did workshops and lectures.

The other reason is this amazing bush glows.

So when we think about scaling up metabolic materials, we can start thinking about ecological interventions

The people in Chicago decided that as well as exhibiting our reefs, what they wanted to do was have the local people there make a reef.

There is now a cement manufacturing company starting in the United States called Calera.

And if the bleaching doesn't go away if the temperatures don't go down reefs start to die.

In each of these cities, the local citizens, hundreds and hundreds of them, have made a reef.

They're things like this.

What planet are these people on?

But it turns out there is a very good reason why we are crocheting it because many organisms in coral reefs have a very particular kind of structure.

That one on the right is about five feet high.

And we've got this 3,000 square foot gallery and we want you to fill it with your reef.

Of course evolution is somewhat random, and you know, about 55 million years ago there was this rebellious little puffer fish faction that said, oh, the heck with the coral reefs we're going to head to the high seas.

Laden with raccoons, gold, silver and coral... the treasure ship sailed away down the river.

Ocean acidification is a really big issue that people are concerned with, as well as ocean warming, and the effects they're going to have on coral reefs.

And you show up, and it's dead.

Simulates coral growth, albeit somewhat slowly. Written by Frederick Roeber 1997.

My sister and I started this project in 2005 because in that year, at least in the science press, there was a lot of talk about global warming, and the effect that global warming was having on coral reefs.

I'm here today, as June said, to talk about a project that my twin sister and I have been doing for the past three and half years.

Plants and organisms that make shells, coral, think of it as a building block.

It's almost impossible to model this structure any other way, and it's almost impossible to do it on computers.

On the scale of decades, in our lifetimes, we're going to see a lot of damage to coral reefs.

On the left is water coming through the shore, taken from a NASA satellite.

So in 2007 we had an exhibition, a small exhibition of this crochet reef.

Corals are very delicate organisms, and they are devastated by any rise in sea temperatures.

And by the way, the reason the kittens here are orange and these are green is because that's a bioluminescent gene from coral, while this is from jellyfish.

And I don't know whether they actually saw crab in it, or imagined that one might be, but whatever the case, they would leap off the bottom and go through the water and land right on top of this coral head, and then the web between the arms would completely engulf the coral head, and they would fish out, swim for crabs.

And indeed there are now thousands and thousands of models that people have contributed all over the world as part of this.

But business as usual means that in 50 years, there may be no coral reefs and no commercial fishing, because the fish will simply be gone.

And the reason that is, is because in a place like this island a lot of the sand is made of biological material because the reefs provide a place for all these microscopic animals or macroscopic animals grow and when they die, their shells and their teeth and their bones break up and they make grains of sand.

And they would see a coral head, maybe 10 feet away, and start moving over toward that coral head.

Kwajalein

Johnston Atoll

The bottom is transformed from, in this case, a hard bottom or soft coral into a muddy mess.

MAD Growth on Columbus Circle. ReefCity.

Now it's reversing that equation, and actually sequestering half a ton of CO2 thanks to the recipe from the coral.

I'm haunted by the thought of what Ray Anderson calls tomorrow's child, asking why we didn't do something on our watch to save sharks and bluefin tuna and squids and coral reefs and the living ocean while there still was time.