Original subtitles

I've always loved the ocean.

Growing up in Vancouver, I was surrounded by water.

The ocean was a part of every family trip.

Throughout my life the ocean has seemed constant,

unchanging, immense,

always there to give.

But recently, I've been hearing that the oceans are in trouble.

The shellfish industry here is struggling.

I first started noticing baby scallops dying a few years ago.

The culprit: lethally acidic sea water.

In the last few years,

the local scallop industry lost millions of dollars worth of stocks

due to something called "ocean acidification."

The same thing has been happening in the Pacific Northwest of the US.

I wanna know what's going on.

This idea of acidification is a tough one for me to understand.

The water doesn't feel acid,

it doesn't burn me when I stick my hand in it.

What does that mean when you say acidification?

It's not acid,

but it's more acid than it was, it's less alkaline.

So, what is going on here?

The best science points to climate change as being the problem.

The oceans are becoming more acidic.

When we emit CO2 into the atmosphere,

it's absorbed through the surface of the ocean

and it reacts with sea water to change the chemistry of the ocean.

The tailpipe emissions from my car go up into the air,

go into the water and that causes the acidification?

That is absolutely correct.

So we have put enough carbon, we burned enough fuel

to literally change the composition of the world's oceans.

It's hard to believe. It's really hard to believe.

That change can affect mussels, clams, oysters.

Right. The major thing it does is it makes it more difficult

for the animals that make some sort of a shell to create the shells.

In Vancouver there's been a real problem with the scallop industry.

And in Washington there's been problems with the oyster industry

as well as clams in California and other places as well.

Let's fast forward 50 years.

My son's talking to your son, if you have a son.

Maybe there's no more scallop industry

because we failed to do anything about climate change.

-That's not good. -That's not good.

But it gets even worse.

The ocean acidification is not the only problem.

The oceans are a huge heat sink.

Ninety percent of the global warming that has gone on the planet

is stored in the ocean, that's where all the heat is from global warming.

-Wow. -Every person on Earth,

depends on the oceans for life itself.

And coral reefs, for example, are an extremely important part of that.

Global warming and ocean acidification are a double whammy

for corals in the tropics.

If you head to the Great Barrier Reef

you're going to see major changes in the reef

that are related to ocean warming and acidification.

It's hard for me to imagine that climate change

has altered the entire ocean system.

I need to see this for myself.

The best place to see the impacts of climate change on the oceans

is in Australia, at the Great Barrier Reef.

It's the world's largest coral reef system.

So big you can see it from space.

I'm headed to its southern regions, to a place called Heron Island,

where scientists from the University of Queensland

are doing groundbreaking research on coral reefs.

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg is a marine biologist

who has spent his life studying corals.

More and more, his focus has been on climate change

and the impact it will have on the world's reefs.

-Amazing, isn't it? -Yeah.

Spectacular.

It always pleases me when I look at a sea like this with a coral reef

and fish and sharks, it's just...

And the reefs from above hide all of that biodiversity,

and the only way to see it is to get in the water.

Heron Island is surrounded

by some of the most pristine coral reefs in the world.

Before I see how climate change will affect them,

Ove wants to show me what's at stake.

I've been a diver since I was a teenager,

but what greets me under the surface of the water blows my mind.

The Great Barrier Reef is one the Seven Natural Wonders of the world.

And I can see why.

I have never seen this kind of diversity in life.

Or been this close to a Majestic Manta Ray.

Being eye to eye with these animals is humbling.

I'm realizing how interconnected everything is.

And when I look closer,

I see that reefs are supporting all of this life.

Providing food,

shelter,

and places to hide from predators.

Coral reefs punch way above their weight in productivity.

Though they make up less than 1% of the ocean floor,

reefs support a quarter of all marine species.

If climate change will alter the reefs,

is all this life under threat?

The major problem is that we've assumed

that the ocean is too big to fail.

We've assumed we can fish the fish and always have more fish.

We've assumed that we can put pollution into the ocean

and it'll just go away

and not come back and won't build up.

But we've learned in the last 50 years that the ocean is finite.

That there are limits to what it can absorb.

At the moment it's showing all the signs that it's on wobbly legs.

How is it trying to tell us? What are the signs?

It hasn't been this warm

or changing temperature for thousands of years.

And to see a change in the chemistry of the ocean

that has no parallel in 65 million years if not 300 million years.

That's the last time it changed this quickly.

They often refer to ocean acidification

as the evil twin of global warming.

Because it's a separate but very potent effect.

We only started to learn about it 15 years ago.

So we really only know the tip of the iceberg.

-Right. -Here's the kicker,

it takes 10 000 years or more

to reverse the changes that we've made already.

-That's astonishing. -It's astonishing, isn't it?

Ove explains to me that we've pumped more carbon dioxide

into the atmosphere, than there's ever been in human history.

Scientists knew that this added CO2 was warming the oceans

along with the rest of the planet.

What they only recently discovered was that about a third of it

ends up in the ocean.

There, it combines with sea water to create a dilute acid.

And here's the truly shocking part,

today's ocean is already 30% more acidic than it was

before the Industrial Revolution.

What I want to know is what those changes mean for our future.

And Ove says he can show me.

He and his colleagues at the University of Queensland

have created an experiment

that shows what the future might look like.

You're looking at an experiment we've been running for 12 months.

This experiment has been exposing

parts of coral reefs to warmer and more acidic oceans.

So this is a tank where we've done nothing.

Corals growing, there are corals competing with each other,

it's a normal natural reef.

What we hope and what we see here is that reefs will survive.

-And in relative good health. -Yes.

So the water in here is the water that's out here.

These are the corals you find out here.

-Exactly the same. -If we were able to keep

these reefs in the water as it stands right now...

If we don't stack the odds against them, they will survive.

But of course, what we've been doing is adding CO2 to the water

and acidifying the ocean, we've been hitting the upper layers,

and that's what we've got in those other tanks.

To see how climate change will impact corals,

Ove and his team have exposed the exact same reef species

to a variety of future conditions.

In this tank, we just changed the acidity levels.

Adding CO2 to the water.

The scientists working on this project have discovered

that although they look well,

when you actually look at the process of building these gardens,

it's all proceeding a lot slower.

And they almost got a form of osteoporosis.

That's important because

if you have a storm come through,

these corals are gonna break more easily.

And in terms of growing back, they're gonna take a lot longer.

When you look at this next tank,

where the same reef,

same number of corals and other organisms,

but now exposed to 12 months of 4º Celsius above

where it is today.

So it's a warmer ocean.

And what you see here is most of the corals are dead.

Any coral that survived is bleached.

Wow.

-You can see that. -It's dramatic frankly.

Ove tells me that coral is actually an animal,

and that inside its tissue there are tiny brown algae like organisms

that provide up to 90% of the coral's energy.

When the water gets too warm,

the coral expels these organisms

becoming a ghostly white.

That's bleaching.

The coral is still alive,

but if conditions don't return to normal quickly,

the coral could die from starvation.

The other thing is that it's been dominated by...

bacteria or slime.

-It's pretty ugly. -So we've changed the acidity,

changed the temperature, what happens when we change both?

Oh my God!

This to me looks like death.

Truly shocking. It's truly shocking.

And you'll find it's really brittle if you touch it.

Oh, yeah. Right.

The corals are breaking down as well.

Even after the coral itself has died,

the skeleton that gets left over is eaten by the water.

Absolutely.

The stuff that we're not seeing has dissolved.

-It's gone. -It's this.

Yeah, it's sand.

We thought that would take a lot longer.

-It's horrific to watch. -Yeah, it is horrific.

I mean this is a truly...

shocking visual coming from there.

It really is.

This is what happens.

It's an experience for me as a scientist

to look at this and realize that the animal that I study

isn't part of the future. That's a future we're on right now.

Keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, this is what we'll get.

Would all these tropical reef fish,

which are the basis of the food chain,

would they survive in an environment like this?

Many species will either become extremely rare or go extinct.

We have to decarbonize in the next few decades,

or face the worst of times.

Is this what our future holds?

The difference between the thriving reefs I dived in

and the sludgy mess I've just seen is frightening.

Looking out on this pristine ocean,

it's hard to believe that humans alone

could drastically alter something so vast and ancient.

But I've learned not to be fooled by surface appearances.

The oceans are more delicate and fragile than they seem.

Specially the reefs.

The nursery for all that life.

It's clear we are running out of time.

My question is, how long have we got?

This year is the warmest on record.

And with ocean temperatures reaching dangerously high levels,

a major coral bleaching event

is predicted to hit the Great Barrier Reef.

It's a race against time

to document these reefs before climate change

alters conditions here.

The XL Catlin Seaview Survey

uses cameras to take high numbers of 360 degree photographs

of the bottom of the sea.

Effectively mapping the seafloor like Google Street view maps land.

With this technology,

scientists are able to establish a baseline for the coral reefs.

So that after a bleaching event,

they can figure out how much was actually lost.

It's part of the largest visual stocktake of corals

on the planet ever done.

And after today's dives, I'm actually feeling hopeful.

The reefs here are thriving.

But then I learned my optimism may be misplaced.

Ove has footage from other reefs around the world.

And he says what's happening there

will eventually happen here too.

This is largely a healthy reef.

If you look at a reef that's under stress,

like this one here...

And there's bleaching all over the place.

-That's the white patches. -Yes.

Looks like it snowed under water.

Some of that might recover, if it gets cooler soon.

But a lot of that will die either directly

or it'll die of starvation or disease.

The healthy reef on the left side has reefs that started to bleach...

28TH AUGUST 2015, 6TH NOVEMBER 2015

...like the one on the right.

We're talking... Wow!

That's only a couple of months of it being under that stress.

It's surprising to see how quickly it happens.

That is shocking.

The first time people saw a mass bleaching event

was in the early 1980s.

And never before then.

But in 1998 we had the first global event.

But then you go to 2010 and it happens again,

2015, 2016, and it's happening again.

And all that while it appears

that the interval between these events is shortening,

and their intensity is increasing.

We're now in the third global mass bleaching event.

This year we had very warm conditions coming into the summer,

plus a strong El Niño.

That pushed sea temperatures to the limit over most of the reef.

Looks like it's in real deep trouble this year.

Up to this bleaching event, how much of the world's corals were lost?

In the Caribbean it's very clear

that we have lost probably 80% of corals,

-since the 1970s... -Hold on.

Eighty percent of the corals in the Caribbean are already gone?

That's right. I think you can safely say

that we've probably lost 40 to 50% of corals

across the planet in the last 50 years.

Within 20 or 30 years time you don't have coral anymore.

To be clear, if we continue down even the current path,

if we just continue as we're going right now,

coral reefs will cease to exist by mid century.

-Of this century. -Yes.

Thirty five years from now.

Because we're just putting so much stress on them

that they're going backwards.

I'm sorry. That's astonishing.

-Astonishing. -I'm used to it.

I know, it's amazing that you have.

I think there's a bit of battle fatigue among scientists

who try to communicate this to people,

that coral reefs are under extreme threat of disappearing.

What I see next makes me realize how close this threat is.

Footage coming in from the northern sections of the Great Barrier Reef

shows widespread bleaching already underway.

That is um...

That's far worse than I thought it was.

In some regions, parts of the reef have already died

and have been taken over by the slime

that Ove showed me in his future scenario tanks.

One of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World

is disappearing before our eyes.

And with it, the support system for millions of sea creatures.

There's just no hope.

Yeah, that's pretty shocking.

The thing that's sort of tragic about this is that

they're important to humans as well.

Coral reefs do directly support 500 million people across the planet.

You've only got to go to the Philippines to see people

living almost desperately

on a vanishing ecosystem along those coastlines.

This is life and death in some of these countries.

I was later to find out, 93% of the northern Great Barrier Reef

was impacted by bleaching.

How much will recover is unknown.

It's devastating to know that if I ever have kids,

they may never see or experience these reefs.

But what I'm coming to realize

is it's not just marine creatures at risk.

People will suffer too.

So I'm heading to the Philippines,

to a region known as the Coral Triangle.

Where humans have relied on coral reefs for thousands of years.

There are parts of the world for which coral is a lifeline.

In the Philippines it's easy to see.

The ocean provides.

It's not just food and income.

It's a way of life.

The Philippines sit at the apex of the Coral Triangle.

Often referred to as the Amazon of the seas.

This area contains the most biodiverse oceans in the world.

A staggering amount of marine species lives here.

And there are more types of coral than anywhere else on Earth.

I've come here to learn more about the relationship

between people and coral reefs.

-Here we are. -This is the fish market.

Rene Juntereal is a scuba instructor

and teacher of Economics at Silliman University.

You've got snapper here, you've got jack.

Crustaceans, some tuna.

You're so handsome.

You said that fish in general is 80% of the Filipino diet.

Of the middle and lower income diet.

Everyday, every municipality, every morning you've got this, yeah.

Wow!

It's not yet 7 a. m. and the market is packed.

Rene says it'll be like this all day.

It's clear the demand for seafood is huge.

But things are changing.

You said that the fishermen report that the stocks are getting smaller.

So the yield is small and the actual fish too.

The fish size and the yield are smaller, it's harder to catch.

Not only that,

but the types of fish available at the market are changing too.

Specially these, they're very bony, very small,

but they're very cheap.

So four or five years ago you wouldn't see these at all.

A fisherman would give them away or they'd eat them there.

Eat there, right. No point of bringing them to market.

No, no one would buy them.

Rene says over fishing and pollution

are taking a huge toll on the region.

But climate change threatens to make things much worse.

And all this puts pressure on the reefs

in a place that depends on them.

What's the population that's sort of living around

and surviving off of the coral reefs?

Coastwise, people living on the coasts, about 64, 65 million.

A large portion is below the poverty line.

So if those stocks go away, there is no other source of protein,

-no other affordable source. -Yes, that's a good point.

The contribution of coral reefs or the marine system

to the Philippine economy is something like a billion US dollars.

So when you look into the future and you think about climate change

and the effects on your little slice of paradise here,

what are your concerns? What keeps you up at night?

I'm concerned there won't be any more coral reefs left.

There won't be any fish, there won't be a tourism industry,

there won't be food for 60 or 70% of the people.

So you're talking about a potential massive crisis

for 60% of the Filipino population.

I'm concerned that people aren't taking it that seriously.

If what I saw in Australia is headed here,

Rene is right to be concerned.

Rene wants to show me some of the Philippines famous reefs.

He's taking me to his favorite dive spot, Apo Island.

The marine reserve here

has some of the healthiest corals in the country.

Protected from over fishing and pollution,

the reserve shelters the reefs from some of the assaults on the sea.

The reefs in the Philippines

are every bit as beautiful as those I saw in the Great Barrier Reef.

But here, I'm looking at them with different eyes.

They're a source of food, not just for the sea life down here

but for people too.

In the quiet calm, I'm struck by the enormity.

It's no wonder that mankind looked at the ocean

and thought it would last forever.

But already there are signs things are changing.

And after seeing a mostly thriving coral reef,

Rene leads me to something else.

Five years ago, a storm tore through

parts of the marine reserve surrounding the island.

And this is the result.

Weakened by bleaching, the coral reefs were more susceptible to harm.

In just hours,

a reef that took thousands of years to flourish and grow

was wiped out.

I can't help but think of Ove's future scenario tanks.

Those grim predictions seem already true.

Could this be the future of all coral reefs?

Nothing but rubble and a few small reminders of the life

and beauty that once existed?

Has that level of destruction always been a part of the local ecosystem?

Or is it something new, the complete destruction of an entire reef?

I can say that it's just started to spike

and accelerate in the last five years.

The coral is under assault from a variety of different things.

The coral gets a bit weaker, the storms get stronger

and suddenly you end up with what we saw,

total decimation under the water.

Right. Those are already protected areas.

They're healthier than most of the normal reefs.

If they have a hard time with that damage,

what about the reef that's under other stresses?

To go from the annihilated portion that we saw,

back to healthy, how long does it take?

Decades, centuries?

I'd say centuries, yeah.

It's enough to bring tears to your eyes.

It's tremendously depressing to know that there's not a chance

that's coming back in your or my lifetime, or even your kids'.

We're hundreds of years away from that piece of the ecosystem

being returned to something that would be healthy.

It's something that affects everyone.

It's more than just a few fish going away,

it's more than just a beautiful postcard picture.

The destruction there represents not just the destruction of reef.

-Families in trouble. -Right.

Through frequent dive trips to Apo Island,

Rene has befriended many of the locals.

Hey, come over and meet Josh.

Zenon is a third generation fisherman,

who has spent his entire life on the island, living off its resources.

He and his son Jory make daily trips to spear fish for the family.

Rene tells me there's no better way to understand

the importance of the reefs to the people here

than to watch them at work.

With the simplest homemade equipment,

Zenon and Jory dive to depths of several meters,

holding their breath for minutes at a time.

It's beautiful to watch.

This father and son are so in tune with the ocean,

they almost look like they belong under water.

But the fish they're hunting for are nowhere to be found.

After a day in the water,

Zenon and Jory have invited us back for a meal.

Apo Island has a small population.

And there are few resources beyond what the sea provides.

There are no cars on the island,

and most people eat what they catch or grow.

Apo Island is not unusual.

The Philippines is made up of more than 7000 islands.

And hundreds of thousands of Filipinos live just like this.

Zenon usually serves up what he finds on the reefs,

but today is canned fish.

-Josh. -Yes, please.

This would be a typical amount for four people, right?

-Bit more that four even. -Okay.

This is actually yummy.

This is very yummy.

Today when we were watching we saw that there wasn't much to catch.

So this is not fresh fish, it's canned fish.

Does that happen a lot?

Three days out of a week.

Out of a week sometimes no catch three says out of a week.

Were there times when you had nothing to eat?

-There are meals they don't get. -They just don't eat.

-Has it always been like that? -No.

No? There were more in the past?

Lots of fish.

-Lots of fish. -Used to be lots of fish.

So then, can they still exist off of what remains?

It's hard.

So, in his best case scenario...

What does he want for today and what does he want for tomorrow?

For my family...

For our future...

To be able to eat three times a day...

That he gets to finish school...

That's enough.

-He fishes while you're in school? -Yes.

When you finish with your studies, will you stay on the island?

Don't know.

-Maybe. -Yeah.

So is he happy that his sons and daughters

are finding different opportunities and leaving?

Or is he sad that that way of life is broken now?

For me, it's lonley.

He wants them back.

-He'd rather... -Have them on the island.

If therre were enough fisk, would you all be together?

We would be complete.

He'd rather there was enough fish and they were all together.

I'm tearing up.

I didn't expect that answer.

It breaks my heart that in his perfect world

he'd be able to draw his family back to him.

But if the island won't support you, you can't stay, right?

Thank you for having us.

I appreciated it.

It frustrates me that those who are contributing the least

to climate change, are the ones who will suffer the most.

I can't help but wonder,

what will happen to the people in these towns in all this region

when their source of food and income slowly disappears?

While people in the Philippines were sleeping,

what was supposed to be a minimal storm

has rapidly intensified into a major typhoon.

And now with little notice for preparations

the possibility of a disaster may be imminent.

Back at my hotel,

I'm shocked by news that a category 4 typhoon

is fast descending on the Philippines.

Close to a million people are being evacuated from their homes.

And the potential for large scale devastation is huge.

About global warming, the warmest waters in the world right now

are off the central coast of the Philippines.

Look at December. December's a quiet month.

But the last several years with global warming,

December 2011, 2012, 2014 and now 2015.

Thinking about hose about to be made homeless is horrifying.

As oceans warm, storms like this will become more intense.

Those storms will not only wreak havoc on the land,

but underwater too.

I wake the morning after typhoon Nona swept through the Philippines,

to the north of us, reefs were damaged, homes were destroyed,

and more than 40 people lost their lives.

I want to talk to someone who can tell me

what all of this destruction, both present and future,

means for a population dependent on the ocean.

We saw a storm pass through just north of us here,

which is not traditionally your typhoon season,

and we had a significant storm...

In the last few years, it's been like that.

That there's no predictability anymore.

No predictability.

Laura David is one of the leading oceanographers in the Philippines,

and part of an international team of scientists

focusing on climate change.

With the combination of warming and acidification,

against the backdrop of a population that takes

most of its food out of the local coral reef,

you're either not gonna be able to find what you used to,

or it's just going to disappear.

I don't think people realize the magnitude of that.

Because if we can't get our food protein from the sea,

we start doing it in land and we don't have enough land.

There's some serious security issues around that.

Definitely. Because once this part of the world is hungry,

I mean, where do we go?

If you go around the Coral Triangle,

and all the states that actually depend on the coral reefs,

like Malaysia and Papua New Guinea and Indonesia,

it's the same problem.

So you're talking about a population...

At least about 380 million.

-People? -That's about the ballpark.

If we don't stop what we're doing.

I don't mean to laugh but that seems... That's shocking.

Wow!

Everything that I do in my regular life in some way contributes to this

and I hope that some of the things that I do in my life

are helping to mitigate it.

But it does feel like we're past the age

of simple choices, when could do it gently.

It feels like we have to make a more radical shift,

if we're going to maintain a life that I really enjoy living.

And I'd like to some day look into the face of my children

and not feel guilty for the planet that I'm giving them.

Yeah. There are days when you almost feel helpless and catatonic,

that you can't do anything about it anymore.

But then I see the next generation, and they're more aware.

There's hope. I pray that there's hope.

And that keeps me going.

Right.

Should I have kids?

If your kid can help, yes, why not?

Wow.

If there are more great minds and great hearts,

knowing where we're supposed to go,

I think we can make a difference. But it has to be now.

I think we think that 20 years is okay to delay,

and it's not.

So...

I'm heading to Manila.

From up in the air,

I think of what is happening on the ground.

Millions of people are fishing, buying catch at the market,

or taking tourist boats to sea.

And it's not just here.

This is happening all over the Coral Triangle.

I wonder where they would go if they had to leave.

Together, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia,

Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste

have a population of about 384 million.

By comparison, Syria,

currently in the midst of the world's biggest refugee crisis

had a prewar population of only around 23 million.

I'm wondering how the government here

responds to such a looming threat to its population.

And what it might mean for the rest of the world.

So I'm meeting with someone from the government of the Philippines.

Loren Legarda is a senator known for her record

of protecting the environment.

She's also a climate change ambassador for the UN.

With ocean acidification and the warming of the water,

with the loss of fish stocks,

and the huge degree of instability that could potentially cost,

there's a real chance that there'll be a huge amount

of human migration, right?

The answer is yes.

Here you have a paradox.

There used to be unlimited bounties from the sea, but now,

because of over fishing, warming and acidification,

all of these produce a threat

to meeting the basic needs of our countryside population.

The issue of climate change in the Philippines

is a national security matter for us.

It's not just environmental security,

it affects every aspect of our lives.

-And do you think it's too late? -It's not too late.

No one should be defeatist to say it's too late.

It takes urgent climate action.

Let's get away from fossil fuels,

let's ban coal, let's put a carbon tax on coal.

This needs to come from big polluters, namely China,

India and the United States.

Put together they're more than 50%

of the greenhouse gas emissions in the world.

Do you think that the major emitters are doing enough

to mitigate their emissions?

No. And it's not enough

that they mitigate their own emissions.

They should also assist

other countries, including vulnerable nations

and developed nations or the less consumptive nations,

who are non emitters in the world, like the Philippines,

but who is suffering the most.

We are so interconnected.

Whether it's your ocean in your side of the world,

or our ocean, it's your waste that should not be exported

-to any developing nation. -To anywhere.

I get frustrated sometimes when people don't understand

why it's necessary to do these things.

Because we are in an emergency room.

And no time should be lost.

The ocean is a lifeline

for every human on Earth.

The vast deep ocean

gives us oxygen,

food,

and a temperature in which we can survive.

It's a symbol of calm.

The thing we look to to take away our troubles.

The seas provide so much.

And nowhere is it more apparent than here.

But the ocean connects us all.

I'm back in the US.

So often these things seem so far off.

Whether in time or geography.

But in the Pacific Northwest,

the shellfish industries continue to struggle

as far south as San Francisco.

In Maine, there are similar reports of dwindling oyster populations.

Ocean warming is causing lobsters

of the coast of Connecticut and Rhode Island to move north.

Devastating local economies that depend on them.

Perhaps most alarming

is what is happening in Florida.

Ocean acidification wasn't supposed to have an effect there

for another 50 to 60 years.

But scientists of the University of Miami,

are discovering the coral is already dissolving at a rapid pace.

Ocean acidification and warming,

they're happening here.

Confronted with the information

that we are altering our oceans forever,

what do you do?

I want to talk to someone who can tell me if there are any solutions.

Doctor Sylvia Earle is one of the world's foremost oceanographers.

She's been a diver since the '50s.

Has broken records for deep-sea exploration.

And was the first female chief scientist of NOAA.

Over the years,

Sylvia has been witness to drastically changing seas,

and has dedicated her life to advocating for their protection,

denouncing destructive fishing practices and ocean pollution.

Maybe she can offer a way forward.

I'm pretty depressed, to be perfectly honest.

I didn't really think it was as dire as it is.

It's easy to get depressed.

The facts is we have changed the nature of nature.

It's taken 4.5 billion years

of change to make Earth just right for the likes of us.

But in decades, we have unraveled

the very underpinnings of our life support system.

It's still, even with the things that I've seen,

hard for me to look at that ocean,

that broad expanse that I've grown up on my entire life

and conceive that my actions can have a meaningful impact in there.

Your actions times 7 billion.

And we should realize that we are

totally connected to the natural world,

and our highest responsibility

must be taking care of the systems that take care of us.

So can we do?

How do we mitigate the effects of what I just witnessed?

The more that we destroy the natural systems

the more rapid the accelerating warming will take place.

So I have a map here that shows communities

around the world

who have made pledges to say,

we want this place to be protected, Hope Spots.

With her organization Mission Blue,

Sylvia has created a global network of Hope Spots,

ocean areas designated for special protection.

And many of those areas have become marine protected reserves.

Shielded from fishing and pollution.

Scientific studies are beginning to show that certain marine animals

may be able to adapt to the pressures of climate change.

And these areas give them the best possible chance.

But even now, only 4% of the ocean is protected.

Little more of the ocean is protected now

than it was even a few weeks ago and the trend is very promising.

President Obama made the link between full protection

of a big chunk of the Pacific and climate change.

In September 2016, President Obama expanded

the Papahānaumokuākea marine reserve near Hawaii.

It's gonna be protected and allows us to save and study

the fragile ecosystem threatened by climate change.

In doing so he created the largest protected area on Earth.

Bigger than all of the United States' national parks combined.

All of these protections seem like a great thing.

But I don't see how any of it

is gonna stop the oceans from acidifying and warming.

So how can this, simply put,

how can this marine protected areas affect climate change?

The truth is that alone they cannot.

We're at a crossroads.

And our job right now with rising CO2,

how do we stem the flow of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere?

If we put a price on carbon,

that causes people to say, "Oh, nature's not free."

How does that then directly benefit or impact

the health of the oceans?

The main thing is it's making those generators

of carbon burners, of fossil fuels on the large scale

do something about it.

Sylvia is telling me that the only real solution

to ocean warming and acidification

is the biggest solution of all:

decarbonizing.

And putting a price on carbon pollution

will encourage people and companies to create less of it.

With the degradation that you've witnessed in your own lifetime,

what is it that gets you out of bed everyday?

How do you metabolize that and keep pushing forward?

Well, for one thing I have children and I have grandsons.

I can see the world through their eyes.

I can see where we're taking this if we keep doing what we're doing.

People ask me what is the biggest problem facing the ocean today.

The biggest problem is not what we're putting in or taking out,

it's ignorance.

It's ignorance.

In the ocean, there's nothing there that is useless.

It's all part of what makes the ocean function.

And the most important thing we extract from the ocean

is not oil,

not gas,

it's not fish,

is our existence.

We know we can change, we have to.

We can't just continue to consume

the natural world and get away with it.

We just cannot. We must take care of the ocean.

We can do this.

I went into this journey looking to understand

more about the ocean I've always loved.

I've learned about a crisis, complex, overwhelming.

Now every cell of my being wants to be a part of the solution.

I'm gonna fight for a price on carbon, and in the meantime

I'm going on expeditions with conservation group Oceana,

to help educate people on the importance of our oceans,

and combat the very ignorance

Sylvia said was the biggest threat to our survival.

-Wow! -Oh, my God!

It's a small piece of the solution

and I'm going to do more,

we all have our part to play.

What's yours?

Subtitles: Alicia Núñez Valencia plint.com