isolated islands, so they are unique. This primordial world is home to some of the strangest

creatures on earth -- from sea-going lizards to tortoises the size of rum barrels. This

is a special place where so many strange animals are living together. Penguins, mantas, sea

lions, sea iguanas. Altogether in one place. And this strange ecosystem has very interesting

behaviors. The islands are engulfed in cold and warm ocean currents, resulting in this

unique diversity of species. You get cold water organisms and warm water organisms all

mixed. Corals are among the warm water species living in the islands- and what is happening

to them may be a harbinger of things to come. We know now that the ocean chemistry is changing

dramatically and that's because of the industrial age and all of the carbon dioxide that has

been put into the atmosphere. Corals are forecast to be impacted severely by these changes in

ocean chemistry. The isolation of these islands makes them a perfect laboratory for studying

climate change. The Galapagos Islands acts as a natural laboratory because it's naturally

exposed to high c02 conditions that provide essentially a window into the future of what

we can expect throughout the rest of the world's oceans, with the doubling and tripling of

atmospheric c02. The other added benefit is that it has experienced two very strong El

Nino events in the last three decades. During El Niño warm seawater temperatures cause

coral bleaching. And coral bleaching is one of the primary concerns of what coral reefs

face with climate change. So by going into the Galapagos and studying how these reefs

respond to warmer temperatures under these naturally low pH conditions, we can gain a

window into the future. What is in store for coral reefs? Can corals survive in more acidic

oceans and cope with increased water temperatures? Major funding for this program was provided

by The Batchelor Foundation, encouraging people to preserve and protect America's underwater

resources. And by Divers Direct Emocean Club, inspiring the pursuit of tropical adventures

and scuba diving. Early Spanish explorers called them "Las Encantadas"

--"the Enchanted Islands." The Galapagos are located in the eastern Pacific,

about 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador. In 1835, Charles Darwin visited the archipelago,

calling it a "little world within itself." The strange creatures he encountered would

later shape his thoughts on the origins of life, and help him form his theory of evolution.

The Galapagos Islands is a really fascinating location. Because even Charles Darwin when

he visited noted how coral reefs were conspicuously absent from this location. Because the Galapagos

sits right on the equator. It's within the tropical belt. What really differentiates

it from the rest of the tropics is that you have this strong upwelling creating very different

conditions than what you find normally in the tropics. Upwelling is a physical process

whereby deep waters are brought to the surface. This deep water is rich in c02 and rich in

nutrients. And when it comes to the surface, it creates these low pH locations in the ocean.

This upwelling, as well as the confluence of several currents, results in the unique

life forms living in the Galapagos. For half the year, The Humboldt, or Peru current, brings

cold, nutrient rich waters up from Antarctica. From the west, the Cromwell current also brings

cold water. Around January, the trade winds shift and the Humboldt current slackens. Now

the Panama current dominates. The Panama Current flows south from the Panama and Colombia area,

and the Panama current brings tropical organisms into the Galapagos. What Darwin couldn't see

is that corals are among these tropical organisms. Now a team of around 20 scientists have arrived

onboard the M/Y Golden Shadow to study the health of these reefs. Supported by the Khaled

bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, they will spend a month in the Galapagos as part

of the five-year Global Reef Expedition. One of the biggest barriers to oceanographers

and ecologists to study remote areas of the oceans is just getting access to it. And the

Golden Shadow and the Living Oceans Foundation is very unique in that regard that we provide

scientists from around the world the access they need. The foundation was established

by Prince Khaled bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia, to conserve coral reefs around the world.

He knew that reefs are in trouble, and what he wanted was to set up a foundation that

would go out and answer some of the pressing questions about why coral reefs are dying

and what we can do to stop it. So he came up with this idea "Science without Borders"-it's

basically because there are no political boundaries between the oceans. It's all connected. And

what you do in one location, can affect another location. We go around the world to survey

these reefs. We're applying a standard protocol that was developed through a consortium of

scientists and we're applying that same survey protocol every place we go. We've developed

this model of cooperation where we invite researchers from around the world to come

on the ship and join us. And we're able to select researchers that have specific knowledge

about each region that we go to. One of the people joining them on this trip is longtime

Galapagos National Park naturalist and dive guide Mathias Espinosa. The Galapagos are

relatively new volcanic islands, formed less than five million years ago. And their history

is written into the rocks. Okay Philip, this is very interesting because this island is

an uplifted island that means that lava flowed to a place underwater, and with the pressure

of the plates that piece came out of the water. And you see some layers here, of white coral

that shows you there was a lava flow underwater and a long time of nothing but white coral

could grow on the lava flow. And then another lava flow over it. So it's very interesting

to see that there were times of lava flows then nothing, then another lava flow. And

so obviously these corals have existed in the Galapagos for thousands and thousands

of years for that layering effect to have happened. Yeah, definitely. I mean we're not

rich in corals, but it shows that we had the constant arrival of corals and growing up

to a certain point. I guess for thousands of years. One of the comments you hear all

the time is well, coral reefs have always undergone disturbance and change. And that's

absolutely true. The thing we're really concerned about is the frequency, the severity and the

duration of the changes all seem to be ramping up at scales that coral reefs have never experienced.

Now, scientists want to understand what the thresholds may be for corals to survive into

the future. Maybe you can try to anchor with a cut around

here. The strong currents near the islands can be dangerous to divers, so they consult

with local expert Mathias before their research dives.

Whatever the current is, don't let your people get into deeper water.

One way the experts study the corals is by measuring the currents that occur nearby.

So this right here is our current meter. And what we are going to do, we set it up and

then we are going to deploy it. The scientists want to correlate the strength of the currents

to the types of coral communities they find in an area, to better understand why certain

corals live where they do. Coral reefs that exist in the Galapagos really pale in comparison

to what you find in other parts of the world that have very high pH. There's a limited

subset of species that occur there, and they're very sparse in terms of spatial distribution.

There's very few coral reefs in the Galapagos islands. These corals weren't discovered until

the early 1970s. Dr. Peter Glynn was among the first to explore and study the reefs of

the islands. They were totally healthy. Very vibrant coral communities. All of the corals

looked in excellent condition. And so we thought that there would never be a problem there

- that coral reef development would continue into the future. But every so often the natural

balance between cold and warm ocean currents in this region goes awry. During El Nino years,

trade winds reverse direction, the cold life-giving waters of the Humboldt and Cromwell currents

dwindle, and warm waters devoid of nutrients flow in from the western Pacific and surround

the islands. And what happens is the surface waters warm considerably. And corals live

very near their upper thermal limits. And they're so sensitive that a deviation in sea

surface temperature of only one degree Celsius above the normal conditions for a month or

more, will elicit coral bleaching. A coral lives in a symbiotic relationship with algae

that live inside its tissues. And the algae photosynthesize and provide fixed carbon to

the coral host. And in turn the coral provides nutrients, a home that is free from predation.

However the symbiosis is very restricted into a very narrow thermal range. When temperatures

warm the corals will expel their symbiotic algae that live within their tissues. And

this is called coral bleaching. So the coral can live for a period without its symbiotic

algae, but it can't live for too long. So if the stress remains for a couple months

or more, corals will start dying. I think the El Nino phenomenon has occurred for several

thousands of years, and there was just no one around to observe the early events. But

in 1982-83, we had a very severe El Nino event. In the Galapagos, the coral mortality at our

study sites ranged anywhere from 95-97%. Very high. In 1997-98, there was another very strong

El Nino event. And some of the corals that weren't affected in 82-83, suffered mortality.

So we had two very strong events occurring just in one century. So this was very unusual,

and it had a tremendous impact on corals in the eastern pacific. On this research expedition,

scientists are going back to past study sites to see if the corals have recovered. In the

North, one species survived the second bleaching event better than the first. It seemed to

have adapted to the warmer temperature, which is a hopeful discovery for the team. We found

very substantial recovery in Darwin and Wenman. But very minimal recovery in the central and

southern Galapagos Islands. There's been coral bleaching events elsewhere that have killed

off all the corals. But what makes the Galapagos unique is that the entire reef framework itself

was actually completely bio-eroded in about 10 years. Other places usually the non-living

coral reef framework will persist over time much longer. The lack of recovery and bio-erosion

of the underlying reef framework likely are caused in part by the fact that pH is much

lower in the southern and central Galapagos. Derek measures the carbon dioxide, or Co2

levels, in the water around the islands. Research has shown that increased levels of cO2 in

the oceans will have devastating impacts on corals. The oceans act as a carbon sink for

atmospheric C02. So the oceans naturally equilibrate with the atmosphere over time. About 30 percent

of all the fossil fuel carbon dioxide, that's what we put in the atmosphere since the industrial

revolution, has been absorbed by the oceans, which actually raises the ocean's acidity

and lowers the ocean's pH. So this process is termed ocean acidification. The more acidic

it becomes the harder it is for coral to deposit its skeleton. The rate of change in ocean

pH that's occurring right now hasn't occurred in the oceans for at least the past 300 million

years. So what that means is that organisms and animals that live in the ocean are experiencing

a change in the environmental conditions at a rate that's greater than anything they've

seen, since prehistoric times. The Galapagos serve as the perfect natural laboratory to

study how corals will be affected by more acidic oceans. So the unique nature of the

Galapagos is such that the different islands have different pH conditions. Some areas of

the archipelago already experience double the amount of dissolved carbon dioxide in

the water compared to most regions where corals exist now.

These c02 conditions in the Galapagos basically approximate what we expect for the

rest of the oceans with ocean acidification at the middle or end of this century. To study

the coral calcification rates, Derek extracts cores from a species of coral that is common

in the Pacific. We used a pneumatic hand drill fit with a diamond coring bit at the end,

so we can attach this directly to a scuba tank.

And what this allows us to do is to take a sample down the main growth axis of the coral.

And corals lay down density bands, much in the same way that trees put down tree

rings. So every year, corals go through a natural oscillation in their skeletal density.

This process may look destructive, but its impact on the coral is similar to that of

a biopsy in a human. We take a cement plug or

use some coral rubble, that doesn't have anything living or growing on it. We plug up

the hole and then fix it with an underwater epoxy. And then the coral is able to grow

tissue right back over that that lesion within a few years. The overwhelming majority of

the time the coral isn't harmed from the sampling. Once back in the lab in Miami, Derek

analyzes the cores. So this is an example of a coral core we take out of a massive

coral skeleton. We cut it down and put it into our CT scanner. And then with that CT

scanner we can look at that coral core in three dimensions of the x

ray images which provides us a metric of the density of the core as you go down over

time and as you look at coral growth. So what we see here is an example of about 10

years of growth from a coral core, and you see these high density peaks that occur on

regular intervals. So that's associated with the annual high-density peak formation that

occurs in coral growths. So we use the distance between these peaks to get an

estimate of the annual growth rate of coral skeletons. And then once we have that data

of coral growth with time, we can understand how various disturbances or

environmental conditions like sea temperature may have impacted rates of coral growth.

What we see is that the calcification rates at the different regions vary considerably.

And as you increase in pH the calcification rates

also increase. Experts forecast that climate change will not only lead to ocean acidification,

but rising water temperatures will also lead to more frequent bleaching events. The

most recent research that's been done, has shown that globally all coral reefs are

going to begin experiencing annual bleaching events, somewhere around the year 2050. And

what we've learned in the Galapagos is that it only takes one coral bleaching event

to kill an entire reef and have that reef framework be completely eroded and you know