Take a video tour through a pristine coral garden

My wife and I have been keeping saltwater tanks since 1975, and have been shooting underwater videos for almost 20 years. As a new member here, I thought you might like to take a leisurely tour through a beautiful hard coral reef that we shot in the Yasawa Islands in Fiji. The light was just right, the water clear as glass, and many of the corals had their polyps extended. This is the first of our new series "What about the corals???", and features a closer look at the corals, for a change. This video is in 1080 P resolution so you might want to select that on the player, if you have the bandwidth.

 

Beautiful, when was this shot?

 

This was shot about 2 years ago. With all the coral bleaching going on, I hope it still looks like that. I don't think Fiji has the problems that the Great Barrier Reef has though.

 

I hope your right, very sad watching what’s happening on the GBR

 

Amazing video! Thank you for sharing it with us and welcome to the community.

 

We have been on many coral reefs over the last 20 years and what I have always seen personally is that there is usually a dead part of the reef, and a thriving live part. If you look closely at the dead part, it is covered with small young corals that have implanted, and are starting to grow. There is a constant cycle where the dead corals become a solid base for a new generation of corals to grow out and become the next live part of the reef. Even very healthy reefs, if you look under the corals that look great, you will see that they are anchored to an old dead coral skeleton.
Corals love to have something solid to attach to and grow. Every square inch of available space is often covered in corals while the sandy areas between the corals are barren.
The point I'm making is that given time and the right conditions, the coral will probably come back even stronger.
The problem with what is happening to the GBR is that we now have a couple of years of these bleaching events, and the corals are not getting a chance to recover. So they are basically dying out, and we don't know if they will be able to recover because we don't know if the warmer conditions causing the bleaching will be the norm for the future. The problem areas for the GBR are in the north part of the reefs, since they are closer to the equator, and are in already warmer waters so an increase in temp for those areas is devastating. The southern part of the GBR is in much better shape due to the cooler water. If the conditions remain bad for the north, it may be the end of corals in that region. I hope not!

 

Great video! Image is really clear.

 

We shoot everything in 1080 P, and I was a video editor for 18 years, so I always strive to make our videos as good as they can be. It also helped that this was a shallow reef with very clear water.