"Coral Bleaching" by Olivia

Beneath the surface, the sea forgets its color. What was once a living mosaic of coral and light now turns pale, as if the ocean itself were holding its breath. Coral bleaching is more than a change of hue; it is the quiet unraveling of life, a symptom of a planet under strain.

When waters warm, corals release the tiny algae that feed and color them — a partnership broken by heat. Without these symbionts, the coral’s skin becomes translucent, ghostlike. They do not die immediately; they simply fade, starving slowly in a silence too vast to hear.

The cause lies above the surface: a sky thick with carbon, a world heating by its own hand. A single degree can tip the balance, turning reefs from sanctuaries to graveyards. Acidified waters erode their skeletons; storms grow harsher, coastlines more fragile. What once shielded a quarter of all marine life now trembles in fragility, covering less than one percent of the sea yet holding the weight of entire ecosystems.

To protect what remains, we must change how we live — cut emissions, let reefs rest, guard the waters that guard us. Marine sanctuaries, sustainable fishing, and coral gardening offer small breaths of recovery, but without cooling the planet, they are only pauses in a rising fever.

Coral bleaching is not merely an oceanic event; it is a reflection. It mirrors our disconnection and calls us back to humility — a reminder that the ocean’s pulse and our own are bound by the same warmth, the same air, the same future.