There’s a poignant moment in Richard Vevers’ 2018 Netflix documentary Chasing Coral, where – over starkly beautiful footage of brightly coloured dying coral – he says it feels as if the colour is the coral’s way of saying ‘look at me, please notice.’

Unfortunately, not enough people are noticing. Not the dying coral, not the ocean’s acidification or its warming. And yet, the ocean is fundamental to life on Earth, and corals are fundamental to the health of the ocean.

Vevers, a former advertising executive, founded The Ocean Agency in 2010. A former advertising executive, he has spent his career telling stories and trying to get people to care – these days he wants people to care about the ocean, rather than a product.

“Telling people the climate change story through the ocean – and essentially climate change is an ocean problem – ensures people get it,” he says. “They understand the implications of raising the temperatures of the ocean 1.5 degrees far more than they realise the implications of the atmosphere increasing in temperature by the same amount.”

“Coral reefs, the ecosystem most at risk from climate change, is also the most biodiverse and valuable of them all,” Vevers says. “They support more than 800,000 species which in turn support more than a billion people with food and income.” While coral reefs only occupy 1 per cent of the ocean floor, they are home to more than 25 per cent of marine life, illustrating how crucial they are to underwater biodiversity.

The decimation of corals – between 2009 and 2018, the world lost about 14 per cent of the coral on its coral reefs, which equates to around 11,700 square kilometres – could potentially trigger a feedback loop accelerating climate change. “Without coral reefs (the nurseries for global fish stocks), there will be less marine life in our oceans helping to remove carbon from the system,” Vevers adds.

Warmer sea temperatures are the main driver of coral bleaching, combined with ocean acidification   and pollution.

Vevers noticed that while screening Chasing Coral, there was no skepticism around climate change or the intensity of it from audiences. “What’s happening in the ocean cuts through that,” he says. Education is therefore is vital, but right now there is a paucity of it in schools.

“It is hugely important that we get ocean education on national curriculums,” Vevers says. “Up until recently it was only Maldives that did that, so it’s not something we think about. We have a modern, terrestrial view of the planet, and we look at the ocean as if it is an extension of our world where we can’t live, so it is fundamentally devalued in the way we look at it,” Vevers says.

“We don’t look at it as the source of life and the foundation of our world, so we need to really change the perspective so we see it as absolutely fundamental to life on Earth and needs to be treated in that way.”

“What is needed is a reimagining of ocean literacy from the top, down and from the bottom, up,” Vevers says. “Even at the UN Ocean Conference there was very little convincing argument about why SDG 14 (conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development) should be prioritized over other SDG goals, so it remains at the bottom of the list.”

Vevers also argues we are focusing on the wrong things when it comes to the ocean. “We are focusing on ocean plastics, when arguably you would not put that in the top ten ocean issues,” he says. “But there are very few people on the planet who could tell you what the top ten ocean issue are.”

That lack of education is crucial to why the ocean is not top of the environmental agenda, Vevers believes.

“People don’t have the understanding that the ocean can fail. Even though we are getting more understanding that is has started to fail in major ways, that hasn’t got into the public consciousness. There was a recent survey done of 32,000 people in 21 countries and only 15 per cent though the ocean’s health is poor, which is staggering. They see the fish markets full of fish and they don’t understand that its driving climate change or that there is any problem.”

Part of Vevers' job is helping people understand what is happening in the ocean and doing this using innovative technology. The company invented a new camera that was able to map the world’s coral; it pioneered virtual reality education and undertook the XL Catlin Seaview Survey – the most comprehensive underwater photographic survey and record of coral reefs ever undertaken, which saw more than one million images captured and analyzed. It also launched a global scientific study – 50 Reefs – which led to $86 million in funding for a variety of science and conservation organisations.

“We look for the issues that are not being addressed and we look for creative ways of addressing those, even though there is often very little funding or any funding for solving them,” Vevers says. “For example, there wasn’t a global survey of coral reefs, so we didn’t know the state of the world’s coral reefs. No one was willing to pay for it, so we had to find an innovative way to pay for a global survey. No one was recording heatwaves and so we had to find an innovative way of telling that story to the masses.”

Despite all the challenges around getting the ocean’s message out there, Vevers is optimistic, and looking forward to COP27 this November, which is taking place in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El Sheikh which happens to be home to some spectacular corals. His advice to those attending COP27 is simple.

“Just get in the water and see the coral reefs there – these are the big canary in the coalmine. And when you get in the water and see it you cannot help but be deeply impacted by the biodiversity of it,” he says.

“We know that if we don’t stick to the Paris Agreement as agreed, we will lose this entire ecosystem. The science is very clear on that.”