I’ll never forget the moment I plunged into Samoa’s warm tropical waters in September 2024. As my brother and I went below the surface, the colour exploded everywhere. There were pink corals the size of dinner tables. Orange branches swayed like trees in the wind. Tiny green fish darted through what looked like an underwater garden.

Then, as if the ocean wanted to impress us, a majestic green turtle glided past. It looked ancient and completely unbothered by the two amazed humans floating nearby. I cried behind my mask. I couldn’t help it.

That moment changed me because I realised something that took my breath away. A tiny coral organism thousands of kilometres away has been protecting my family my whole life, and I never even knew it was there.

You might think, “But I’ve never even seen a coral reef.” That’s exactly what I thought, too. But here’s the truth: You are more connected to the reef than you ever thought.

• That stable price on your fish? Coral reefs.
• Your omega-3 supplements? Coral reefs.
• Tomorrow’s potential cancer treatments? Coral reefs.

Whether you live in a landlocked state or in a coastal city, these reefs are working for you right now. And they are dying faster than scientists predicted. When we lose them, we don’t just lose beautiful underwater scenery. We close the door on future medicine and global stability.

But there is hope: Your daily choices—from your bathroom cabinet to your dinner plate—can help save them. Let me show you how this beautiful, dying world is directly linked to your health and your home.

What’s Happening to Coral Reefs

Coral reefs are at a dangerous tipping point due to warming and acidifying oceans. The symbiotic partnership between coral and algae is breaking down due to stress.

The Coral-Algae Partnership Is Breaking

Corals aren’t rocks or plants; they are animals. They are made up of thousands of tiny organisms called polyps. These polyps grow together, adding just a few centimetres each year. Some coral reefs you may have seen in documentaries have thrived for hundreds or even thousands of years. They are older than many of our oldest trees.

But here’s the important part: corals cannot survive alone.

Living within their tissue are millions of tiny algae called zooxanthellae (zo-zan-THEL-ee). You can think of these algae as small solar panels that convert sunlight into food through photosynthesis. The coral gets up to 90% of its energy from these algae. In return, the coral provides a safe home and nutrients that the algae need.

This partnership works perfectly. The algae give corals their stunning colours—bright oranges, vivid pinks, deep purples, and lively greens. Without the algae, corals are almost transparent.

This relationship has thrived for millions of years. Until now.

When Stress Breaks the Bond: Coral Bleaching Explained

When ocean water gets too warm, even just 1 degree above normal for a month or more, corals become stressed. Really stressed. Think about your own body under chronic stress. You might not sleep well. You might get sick more often. Your relationships might suffer. You start to break down.

Corals do the same thing. Under temperature stress, corals expel their algae partners. It’s like your body rejecting food during extreme anxiety. The coral turns bone white, or “bleached,” and begins to starve without its main energy source.

Here’s the heartbreaking part: corals are incredibly resilient. If the water cools down quickly enough, they can welcome their algae back and recover. They want to survive. But if the stress continues, the coral dies. And increasingly, the water isn’t cooling down in time.

Marine heatwaves used to be uncommon. Corals had decades between major bleaching events to fully recover. Not anymore.

The Australian Institute of Marine Science has tracked the Great Barrier Reef since the 1980s. Mass bleaching events happened in 1998, 2002, 2016, 2017, 2020, 2022, 2024 and 2025.  Read that again. Eight massive bleaching events in just over 25 years. And they’re happening more frequently.

It’s like trying to recover from the flu while immediately catching another virus, then another, then another. Your body never gets the chance to heal completely. Eventually, you can’t bounce back. That’s the situation for coral reefs now.

Half the World’s Reefs Are Already Gone

Since the 19950s, we’ve lost about 50% of the world’s coral reefs. Half. Gone.

The pace is getting faster.

According to the World Coral Reef Report, 14% of coral reefs have died between 2009 and now. That’s an area larger than Australia’s Great Barrier Reef—vanished in less than twenty years.

The facts are clear: 2024 was the first year we went above 1.5°C over pre-industrial temperatures for a whole year. If this warming rate continues or increases:

– 1.5°C means 70-90% of coral reefs will die

– 2.0°C means 99% of coral reefs will die

Ninety-nine per cent!!

That means in your children’s lifetime, coral reefs could nearly vanish from Earth. But this is important—this future isn’t certain. We can still change direction. We can still give reefs a chance to survive.

It starts with understanding why they matter to you personally.

Why This Matters to You and Your Family

You may believe that coral reefs are pretty, but they don’t matter in your daily life. Let me explain why that idea is very misguided.

Your Grocery Bill Depends on Healthy Coral Reefs

Those prawns in your freezer? The tuna in your sandwich? The squid rings in your fish and chip order? Coral reefs are working behind the scenes to keep them affordable.

Coral reefs are the ocean’s most productive ecosystems. They cover only 0.2% of the ocean floor but support 25% of all marine life. They’re like underwater rainforests, full of biodiversity.

These reefs produce 15 tons of fish and seafood for every square kilometre. They support nearly 6 million fisheries across 100 coastal countries. For developing nations, fish from coral reefs make up 20-25% of all catches.

Now here’s how it relates to your kitchen:

Over 3 billion people, nearly half of humanity, rely on fish for 15% of their protein. When coral reefs die, fish populations collapse. When fish become scarce, prices rise sharply. Food insecurity spreads. Communities that have depended on fishing for generations lose their livelihoods.

This leads to poverty, conflict, economic instability, and widespread hunger, sending ripples throughout the global economy.

Even if you don’t eat much seafood, your Pacific neighbours do. New Zealand is closely linked to Pacific Island nations, many of which rely almost entirely on reef fish for protein and income. When their reefs decline, regional stability suffers. Migration increases, and the need for food aid rises. We all feel the effects. That tuna in your sandwich? That prawn in your pad thai? There’s an 80% chance it came from the Asia-Pacific region, home to most of the world’s coral reefs. As these reefs decline, your favourite foods will become expensive luxuries instead of easy weeknight meals.

The Medicine Cabinet of the Future Lives in Coral Reefs

Here’s something that might surprise you: some of the strongest medicines we have come from the ocean, and coral reefs are a pharmacy we have barely started to explore.

Currently, 15-20 marine-derived compounds are in clinical use. They are fighting cancer, pain, viral infections and heart disease. One pain medication from cone snails, which live on reefs, is 1,000 times stronger than morphine and is non-addictive.

Coral organisms themselves show remarkable medicinal properties: 

– Anti-tumour and anti-cancer compounds 

– Anti-inflammatory agents 

– Antibacterial properties 

– Antiviral capabilities 

– Neurological treatments 

Traditional medicine systems—Chinese, Tibetan, Mongolian, and Uyghur—have used corals in 56 different formulas for centuries. Modern science is just beginning to understand why.

But here’s the heartbreaking part: we are losing coral species faster than we can study them. Every coral species that goes extinct takes away thousands of potential medical breakthroughs. The cure for your loved one’s future illness could be swimming around a reef right now, or they may have died last year during a bleaching event.

Beyond the scientific loss, there is a profound ethical dilemma. Is it justifiable to accelerate the extinction of a species—even for the promise of a life-saving drug? Our search for medicine should never destroy the source.

We must demand ethical and sustainable protection for coral research. The scientific community needs to adopt a “one-and-done” discovery model: isolate the necessary compound, determine its structure, and then synthesise it entirely in a lab. The ocean is the library; once we’ve read the page, we must return the book—so the resource is preserved for every generation.

When we lose coral reefs, we are not just losing beautiful underwater scenery. We are closing the door on future treatments for Alzheimer’s, cancer, antibiotic-resistant infections, and diseases we have not even encountered yet.

Your children’s generation deserves access to these potential cures, but only if we act now.

Coral Reefs Are Your Coastal Shield Against Climate Disasters

Even if you live far inland, the damage to coral reefs will eventually affect your community. Here’s how:

Coral reefs reduce wave energy by 97%. That’s correct. Ninety-seven per cent.

These underwater barriers protect about 100 million people living in coastal areas from storm surges, hurricanes, and everyday wave erosion. They are natural seawalls that cost nothing to maintain and grow stronger over time if we allow them to survive.

When coral reefs die, those protective barriers break down. Coastal communities then face:

– Severe storm damage

– Increased flooding

– Beach erosion

– Property loss

– Forced migration

When millions of people are forced to leave coastal areas due to climate disasters, where do they go? Inland. The refugee crisis from rising sea levels and coastal damage may be one of the largest human migration events in history.

This impacts everyone—including you, even if you are thousands of kilometres from the nearest ocean.

Protecting coral reefs means protecting coastal communities. It helps reduce climate migration and maintains regional stability. Everything is connected.

We are all downstream from each other. What happens to coral reefs will eventually reach your doorstep.

How You Can Help

No matter where you live in the world. Your daily choices are connected to the coral reef and the wider ocean. So now you can make those actions count. Because if we all work together, these small actions done by millions of families like your own can create real change.

The Sunscreen in Your Bathroom Might Be Poisoning Reefs

Let’s get this out of the way first: Please keep wearing sunscreen. Protecting your skin from UV damage is crucial. I wear mineral sunscreen on my face and hands every single day.

But here’s what I discovered while researching this post: the sunscreen brands I thought were “reef-safe” weren’t as innocent as I believed.

Every year, 14,000 tons of sunscreen wash into the ocean. That’s the weight of about 2,800 elephants—in chemicals.

Many common sunscreen ingredients build up in coral tissue. This creates stress that leads to bleaching. They can damage coral DNA, cause deformities in young corals, and even kill them. We’re adding chemical stress on top of the temperature stress reefs already face.

The worst offenders? Look for these on your sunscreen bottle:

– Oxybenzone (the absolute worst)

– Octinoxate

– Octocrylene

– Nano-titanium dioxide or nano-zinc oxide

– Benzophenone-1 or -8

– 4-Methylbenzylidene camphor

Common brands that contain these chemicals include Aveeno, Banana Boat, Coppertone, Hawaiian Tropic, Neutrogena, and Sun Bum.

The good news? Reef-safe alternatives exist, and they work great.

Look for physical/mineral sunscreens with either non-nano zinc oxide or non-nano titanium dioxide as the only active ingredients.

I personally use Invisible Zinc (available in NZ and AU). After checking during my research, I’m pleased to confirm it only contains zinc oxide. Bonus: switching to mineral sunscreen reduced the inflammation on my face. It’s better for reefs and for my skin.

Your one action today: Check your sunscreen bottle. If it contains the chemicals listed above, replace it with a reef-safe option when it runs out. Then tell three friends what you learned.

That’s it. That’s your coral reef action for today.

The Real Game-Changer: Your Carbon Footprint

Here’s the core issue: Coral bleaching has one main cause: greenhouse gas emissions.

When we burn fossil fuels by driving cars, heating homes, flying, and buying products shipped from far away, carbon dioxide fills the atmosphere. The ocean absorbs about 30% of that CO₂. This makes it warmer and more acidic.

Your emissions from London to New York, or anywhere else, move through global atmospheric and ocean systems. Geography doesn’t matter. We all share the same atmosphere and oceans.

The encouraging news? Every step you take to reduce emissions helps cool the oceans and gives reefs a chance to recover.

You might think your individual carbon footprint is just a small part of the big picture. But that’s how oceans work—many small contributions create something huge and powerful. Here’s how to start:

Energy at Home (Easiest First Steps)

– Turn off lights when you leave a room.

– Unplug devices when they’re not in use, like phone chargers and appliances.

– Improve insulation; check your hot water cylinder, windows, and doors.

– Switch to LED bulbs.

– When it’s time to replace appliances, choose energy-efficient models.

– Consider switching to renewable energy providers, which are becoming more affordable in NZ.

Transportation (Where You’ll See Big Impact)

Transport accounts for 24% of global CO₂ emissions. Small changes add up quickly:

This week’s challenge: Replace just ONE car trip with walking, biking, or public transport. Just one trip. See how it feels.

It could be the coffee run on Saturday morning, the school drop-off on Wednesday, or buying produce at the local farmer’s market. Every avoided car trip matters. If a million families skip just one car trip each week, that’s 52 million fewer car trips per year. The emissions saved are significant.

When flying, choose direct routes. Take-offs and landings use the most fuel. One direct flight is better than two connecting flights every time.

Conscious Consumption (The Powerful Habit)

Every product in your home has a carbon footprint from manufacturing and shipping. Follow these principles:

– Buy less (the most effective choice).

– Choose local when you can.

– Repair instead of replacing

– Support second-hand (my favourite treasure hunt!).

I’m not a big shopper, but I love second-hand stores. It’s a real treasure hunt—you never know what gems you’ll discover. You can find quality clothes for a fraction of the price, unique items that no one else has, and no guilt about manufacturing emissions. If you have kids, make it an adventure. Let them choose their outfits from the second-hand racks. This teaches them about conscious consumption, creativity, and that “new” doesn’t always mean “better.”

Food Choices (Your Biggest Individual Impact)

Here’s the truth: agriculture produces 31% of global food emissions. Animal agriculture is especially harmful to the environment.

I’m not asking you to become vegan. But I do want to challenge you to try Meatless Monday (or any day of the week that works for you).

Just one plant-based meal per week. That’s all.

Replace animal protein with tofu, lentils, chickpeas, black beans, or red beans. You don’t have to change anything else about your recipes—just the protein.

I love this approach because plant proteins are: 

– Faster to cook (no food safety issues!) 

– Cheaper (by a lot) 

– Take up less fridge space 

– Delicious when seasoned well 

My go-to meals include tofu stir-fries, black bean nachos, and lentil curries. They’re quick, satisfying, and affordable.

If every family participated in Meatless Monday, we could all help cut agricultural emissions all around the world.

The Ripple Effect You Create

You might think, “My individual actions are too small to matter.”

But here’s what really happens:

When you choose reef-safe sunscreen, you explain your choice to the cashier. She tells her sister. Her sister posts about it online. Ten people switch brands. Those ten share their stories with others. Companies notice the changes in sales. They reformulate their products. Industry standards shift.

When you try Meatless Monday, your kids notice. They ask why you do it. You explain. They tell their friends at school. Those friends ask their parents. Five more families give it a try. Those families share with their neighbours. When you shop second-hand, you post your finds online. Friends ask where you got that awesome jacket. You inspire three people to thrift instead of buying new. They each inspire others.

This is how movements begin. Not with one person doing everything perfectly, but with millions of people doing something imperfectly.

Your actions create ripples in ways you may never fully recognise. But those ripples reach the ocean. They reach the reefs.

And they make a difference.

Raise the Next Generation of Ocean Protectors

I love this quote by Sir David Attenborough: “If children don’t grow up knowing about nature and appreciating it, they will not understand it. And if they don’t understand it, they won’t protect it. And if they don’t protect it, who will?”

Even if your family lives far from the coast, you can inspire your children to appreciate the ocean.

One of the easiest and most effective ways is a family documentary night.

Instead of watching another Disney movie, try an ocean documentary together. Watch it as a family. Pause to explain concepts if needed. Ask your kids questions like, “How did that make you feel?” “What surprised you most?” or “What do you want to do to help?”

When they want to act—and they will, since kids are naturally compassionate. Show them the simple changes above. Let them be part of the solution.

Ocean Films for Every Age:

Young Children (Ages 2-7)

–  Octonauts (series)

– Splash and Bubbles (series)

– Dolphin Reef (Disney+)

– Finding Nemo (the gateway ocean film!)

Primary/Middle School (Ages 8-12)

– Blue Planet and Blue Planet II (BBC—absolutely stunning)

– Oceans (Disneynature)

– Puff: Wonders of the Reef  (Netflix)

– Shark with Steve Backshall (series)

Teenagers (Ages 13+)

–  My Octopus Teacher (Netflix—bring tissues, it’s beautiful)

– Chasing Coral (FREE to Watch on YouTube—shows coral bleaching but ends with hope)

– Mission Blue (follows ocean advocate Sylvia Earle)

– Ocean with David Attenborough (Netflix)

I watched several of these with my flatmates. We cried. We sat in awe. But we finished each one feeling a sense of purpose and genuine hope. That’s what good ocean storytelling does—it makes you care and shows you how to turn that care into action.

You aren’t powerless, you are part of the solution!!

Remember the moment I shared at the beginning? Diving in Samoa, watching that green turtle glide over vibrant coral? I want your grandchildren to experience that too. And here’s what gives me hope: it’s still possible.

Coral restoration projects around the world are showing great success. Scientists are growing coral “gardens” and transplanting them to damaged reefs. Recovery rates are exceeding expectations.

Communities are creating marine protected areas where reefs can recover without the pressures of fishing or tourism. These protected reefs are bouncing back, showing us that when we give nature space to heal, it does.

Scientists are selectively breeding individual corals for resilience. They are adapting to slightly warmer waters faster than scientists predicted. Evolution is happening right before our eyes.

We’re not too late. But we are running out of time.

Your Challenge This Week

Choose ONE action:

– Check your sunscreen and swap if needed

– Try Meatless Monday

– Walk instead of driving for one errand

– Visit a second-hand shop

– Watch an ocean documentary with your family

– Tell three friends what you learned about coral reefs

That’s all I’m asking. One action. This week.

Because here’s the truth that keeps me going:

We’re all part of nature, connected to every living being on this beautiful planet we call home. When we care for the web of life, it cares for us in return.

The coral reefs aren’t separate from you. They’re your extended family. And family takes care of family.

What’s your one action this week? Leave me a comment below. I read every single one. If this post inspired you, share it with a friend. Knowledge is the first step to action, and action is the first step to change.

 I can’t wait to hear how you’re joining the reef protection movement.

Together, we all have the power to change the world.

Georgia xoxo