Get ready for a field trip to the Maldives!
The Maldives are a collection of islands located in Southeast Asia, in the Indian Ocean. The warm and tropical climate of the area allows these islands to host some of the world’s most amazing coral reefs. A new film called Coral Gardeners: Regrowing Reefs in the Maldives takes the viewer on an underwater tour of these islands and shows their beauty and current issues facing them. Like the rest of the world, the oceans in this area are failing due to increases in water temperatures and acidity levels, causing the reefs to bleach. Scientists estimate that some 90 percent of the world’s reefs will be gone by 2050 (as a refresher—coral bleaching happens when the symbiotic algae living within the coral polyps is ejecting, making the skeletons turn white).
Like other tropical nations, the Maldives relies heavily on their coral reefs....
University of California Press