The Caribbean is a region brimming with natural beauty and rich biodiversity.
But this natural paradise is in jeopardy.
The sea is clogged with waste,
and many islands are under threat from rising water levels.
Coral reefs are bleaching
and thick blankets of algae and seaweed are choking the seas.
Animals and people are suffering.
But there is hope.
Dedicated conservationists are fighting the effects of climate change.
This won’t be here forever if we don’t take care of it.
They are trying to raise awareness about environmental issues.
The message is to make the children fall in love with the wildlife.
Curaçao is known for its beautiful beaches,
which draw tourists from far and wide.
But the marine and inland environment is also home to many wild animals.
Including Bob, a very special flamingo,
famous not only in Curaçao, but all over the world.
Odette Doest and Flamingo Bob are inseparable.
The veterinarian came to Bob’s rescue
when it flew into a hotel window and was seriously injured.
They posted it and within 10 minutes I was in front of them,
like ‘Hi, I’m here for the flamingo’ and they were like ‘wow’.
Bob can no longer spread his left wing properly, and his feet are too stiff.
He would struggle to survive in the wild, so Odette took him in.
When they asked me his name,
I was like ‘Oh, he’s a flamingo, and then in a split second I thought,
‘Oh, his name is Flamingo ? Bob!’
Isn’t that right Bob? Doesn’t he look like a Bob?
The funny thing is - the name Bob means flamboyant, to be well-known,
and now he’s famous!
Nomen is omen, right?
It’s a Thursday.
And on Thursdays, Bob heads out on his new job, as a wildlife ambassador.
So, this bag is especially for him, not to get hurt. Yay.
Today they’re visiting a primary school.
Meanwhile Bob is used to the passenger seat.
Even if I walk in somewhere and people do know that I’m coming in with Bob
then I have had the reaction, like — oh, is he real?
So they think I just run around with a fake flamingo next to me,
which is also funny.
Bob makes a grand entrance. The children are thrilled.
After some brief introductions, the children get a closer look.
Some of the children are hesitant —
more so than Bob, who by now has clocked up plenty of experience.
Odette spent several months preparing him for visits like these.
None of the children have ever been this close to a flamingo.
Odette then begins explaining
the importance of protecting nature and animals.
Even a child’s kite abandoned outside
can spell death for flamingos and other animals.
This is nylon, and once it’s in nature it doesn’t go away.
A cute flamingo like Bob could get stuck in this.
Bob is quite the hit.
The message sticks.
Plastic isn’t good for them.
If they die, it’s not OK.
Odette knows that moments like these can make a difference.
When they have that ‘Ah!’ reaction,
then you have the gateway to their hearts.
With their young, spunky minds
they will question their parents, their friends.
You know, they will bring up some discussion —
what are we doing, why are we doing what are we doing,
is this something that needs to be continued or not?
This is what Odette is hoping to prevent.
Away from the tourist destinations,
many of Curaçao’s bays are clogged with waste.
Nylon fishing lines and fishing hooks are simply abandoned.
Birds and animals get tangled in them.
The lucky ones, Odette finds and nurses back to health.
Odette’s work as a vet keeps her busy.
But she also runs a wildlife sanctuary — she’s always loved birds.
Flamingo Odi is a year old.
Odette found her seriously injured near a pool
and has been tending to her for months.
You know, a flamingo can live up to 40 to 60 years in the wild,
so she’s a baby.
And, if she’s a female, reproducing also for the flamingo population.
Bob keeps Odi company,
so that she doesn’t forget how to interact with her own species.
She’ll return to the wild soon.
They need to not be tame. Rehab is not cuddling.
Rehab is wild animals that are hurt,
you help them, and you put them back as soon as you can.
Odette is currently rehabilitating 45 wild animals.
They need medication, cages, and 80kg of food each week.
The wildlife clinic and sanctuary depends on donations.
For Odette, it’s a labor of love — but it’s exhausting work.
Do you ever stop working?
No. Yeah, when I sleep.
Soon Odette will have even more work on her hands.
Over just a few days,
a thick mass of sargassum seaweed has drifted to the island’s coast.
For sea turtles trapped in the algae, it can be deadly.
A group of conservationists have made it their mission to save them.
A call came early in the morning.
Boom! I got this call: Julieta we need you. Come!
Julieta is 14 years old
and is a volunteer at the sea turtle conservation organization.
She and the team leader Ard are about to head out.
Nearly all species of sea turtle are now endangered.
The turtles are in distress, paddling helplessly.
They’re fighting for their lives, we want to do what we can to save them.
Many turtles are trapped in the mass of seaweed.
But out here on the water, they’re almost impossible to see.
And they’re not easy to rescue.
The algae are so uncomfortable, it actually hurts when they hit you.
It smells very bad.
And you can’t hear anything, the water just everywhere, it’s stressful.
These huge seaweed blooms are a recent problem.
They’re caused by a rise in water temperatures
along with agricultural fertilizers washing into the ocean from Brazil.
Sea turtles come to the surface to breathe,
and then find themselves trapped in the thick mat of seaweed.
Without help, they would die in the heat.
Every rescued sea turtle is a cause for celebration.
When I save a turtle, it means a lot. I feel like I’m helping.
But it’s not just turtles, it’s everything, the ocean itself,
and everything, creatures, it’s wonderful to me,
and I’d die for that place!
The team have been working here for days on end.
They’ve rescued 25 turtles so far.
Many of them are undernourished and weak
and will need to be nursed back to health.
The sickest turtles are brought to Odette for help.
You found it on the algae, but not on the rocks?
No, this one was in the middle and really inside.
It had probably been there for a while.
These turtles are suffering from a tumor disease found in marine turtles.
Odette will surgically remove some of the growths —
this one is making it hard for the turtle to see.
Curaçao's network of wildlife conservationists call on each other.
These turtles are healthy but need to put on some weight.
They’ll go to the aquarium for a while to recover.
Julieta has been volunteering for three years.
She helps whenever she can, wherever she’s needed.
Being able to help is just wonderful and it gives you hope.
Every summer hurricanes pass through the Caribbean.
In recent years they’ve grown more frequent and gained in force.
The strongest storms bring death and destruction —
like here in the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic.
The storms are being fueled by rising water temperatures.
A hurricane could spell the end of the Guna Yala archipelago of Panama.
Angel Martinez is worried —
storms are growing more powerful and the sea level is rising.
Angel and Saila are fishing today.
These waters have long sustained the indigenous Guna people.
God created this and gave it to us. He gave us this privilege.
We should enjoy it, but we also have to take care of it.
We have to preserve nature, the environment.
They’re hoping to find enough fish for a meal, and perhaps some to sell.
But that’s proving difficult this morning.
This is a sea cucumber! The Chinese like these.
This is a lionfish. They’re venomous, if it stings you, you could die.
The water is shallow here.
The island is surrounded by a reef that forms a natural barrier.
This has an impact on us.
Every time it rains, or high waves hit the island, the island is flooded.
50 of the small islands are inhabited.
Some of the most beautiful have hotels built on them, for tourists.
The Guna live on the other islands.
Many men work as fishermen or as tour guides.
The women sell their handicrafts.
Angel’s island, Gardi Sugdub, is 300m long and 150m wide.
Just about every inch of the island is built on.
Multi-generational families live under a single roof.
My mother sleeps here, I sleep here, my father sleeps there too.
This is our room.
The local people have dug up much of the reef,
and now they also have climate change to contend with.
Sea levels are rising and the island’s days look to be numbered.
We had unusually heavy rain recently. It flooded the island, our home too.
The seawater came up to our ankles. It was unpleasant.
My mother and I bailed out the water all day.
We never had anything like this before.
Blas López is also worried about his home.
The weather has become increasingly unpredictable.
Like many locals, he’s trying to build a protective barrier,
made of discarded materials and coral from the reef.
We look for coral and fill up the holes with it,
so we can build a natural barrier against the water.
Local people are removing the coral that protects their island
in hopes of protecting their homes.
It’s a vicious circle.
Angel hopes the global community
will finally take action against climate change.
Nature responds to our actions that damage the environment.
We have to look after our Earth and keep this from getting worse.
That will require a change in perspective.
The government has long ignored the problem.
They’ve given up on the island
and say the families should be resettled to the mainland.
The move would threaten the way of life of an entire community.
The older residents are especially reluctant to move.
We are like elephants, we want to die in our homeland.
If it wasn’t absolutely necessary, with global warming, the storms...
We feel that we have to go to a better place.
A thousand kilometers to the north, there is still cause for hope.
The coastal waters of Belize are breathtakingly beautiful.
People here live surrounded by the wonders of nature.
But the greatest treasure is under water.
The Belize Barrier Reef
is the second-largest coral reef system in the world.
Some of the coral growth is believed to be 7000 years old.
Just a few years ago, the reef was on the endangered list.
Now it’s slowly coming back to life.
Monique Vernon is helping to preserve the reef.
She’s doing the work she always dreamed of.
Even as a girl, she always knew she wanted to help rescue the coral reef.
What I feel like when I go to work is like ‘Yes!’
When they call me and say, right we’re going to go and do this,
go check the corals here, or whatever it is,
I’m like ‘all right, let’s do this, let’s rock this, let’s rock today!’
In the coastal village of Placencia, people live from fishing and tourism.
Both industries depend on the coral reef.
You know I come out on this trip many times, many days, and I say,
‘Man, I’m so blessed.’
And I look at everything that is in front of me and I think
‘I hope one day this doesn’t become a memory.’
Underwater it’s apparent that the reef is struggling.
Coral dies when the water becomes too warm and too acidic.
Storm surges from increasingly severe hurricanes also damage the reef.
Climate change is leaving behind a bleached, grey emptiness.
Monique works for marine biologist Lisa Carne's NGO, Fragments of Hope.
They’re about to harvest some special coral
they’ll use to ‘reforest’ the reef.
We’re overdue, so there’s no time to waste right now.
Corals are basically like the forests in the sea,
so just like the trees in the forest
provide habitat and shelter for many other animals,
the corals do the same on the reef.
Through careful research,
they determined which coral is especially vigorous.
When we collect from the donor colony,
we never take more than 10% of the large piece.
And these corals of course have a very fast, rapid growth rate.
They use a technique called micro-fragmenting,
in which small coral colonies are transplanted to other locations.
First the harvested coral is sawed into 5cm pieces.
Then the pieces are halved.
Fragments of hope —
and because coral is a living creature, they have to work quickly.
The small pieces of coral
are seeded in places where the original coral has died.
They come out here several times a week
and place the fragments onto so-called cookies, made of a cement mixture.
This seems like a lot of work,
but it’s for the future, and that’s all that matters.
About 80% of the coral fragments survive.
These here have been growing for a year and a half.
As life returns to the reef, other marine life returns to it.
For me, to look back at a reef and say I helped in its diversity,
and for others to see it later on, for me, that’s hope.
Edlin Leslie is also feeling more optimistic again.
If we didn’t have ‘Fragments of Hope’ we wouldn’t have a good reef again.
Everything has started blooming again, you know?
More coral means more fish.
Edlin is a fisherman —
like his father and grandfather before him and now his son too.
He also brings tourists out to fish.
The pelicans tell him where the fish are congregating.
I grew up out here.
I finished school at 15 years old and I started fishing with my Dad.
This is my school, the ocean.
As a fisherman, Edlin also sees himself as a protector of the reef.
Using large nets is out of the question for him.
They kill all the fish, which also kills the coral.
This one is called a yellow jack.
If you don’t have a healthy reef you don’t have any fish to go after,
you know, the reef is there to protect the fish.
If they don’t have the fish that clean these corals and stuff like that,
the coral would die too.
The reef is now teeming with life.
This is like taking candy from a shelf.
Edlin fishes sustainably
and observes all the regulations for what is in season.
That means no spiny lobster or conch today.
It’s going to help this species to get back to where it was once before.
The government has divided the Belize reef into zones.
Fishermen are only allowed to fish in their own area.
It’s a sacrifice for them but Edlin supports the measure.
Anybody that does any illegal activity, I get them off, right away.
We’ve got to protect the Earth
or the future is not going to be here for our kids, you know.
If we conserve as much as possible, then the future will be beautiful.
Edlin has also become an activist.
The Belize government
had been issuing generous permits for offshore oil exploration.
But the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil spill 10 years ago was a wakeup call.
Edlin joined the backers of a petition opposing offshore oil exploration.
The United Nations weighed in — and the government called a moratorium.
We don’t want oil in Belize, we don’t want any dredging,
no oil plants, nothing like that on our reef,
because one oil spill and the whole reef would be dead.
The people of Belize are fighting to save their coral reef.
Monique is taking measurements on the cultivated coral
they’re planning to transplant soon.
The work is supported by project funds and donations.
Coral coverage here has increased to over 50%. 8 years ago, it was just 6%.
Their hard work is paying off — the reef is recovering.
This is not solving the climate change crisis.
All this is, is a little band-aid
buying us some time for the coastal community people here.
I think that the youth right now,
they have all the power to make so much change,
that’s where I’m trying to get at, because they are the future.
Despite their success, there’s still cause for concern.
They’re rescuing the reef here — but elsewhere it’s still being destroyed.
The Belize barrier reef region
is dotted with tiny islands covered in mangroves.
The mangroves are as important to the ecosystem as the coral itself.
Mangroves provide habitat for lots of other critters that live on the reef,
they serve as nurseries and the tap root system,
mangroves also stabilize the land and keep it together,
so when you remove them everything falls apart.
But that’s exactly what’s happening. Many small islands are being sold.
The mangroves are being chopped down and small hotels are being built.
Sometimes coral is even dug up to shore up the islands.
There are so many things out of our control per se
that we’re constantly scrambling to mitigate and try to adapt to.
It’s frustrating that the one thing we can control,
which is coastal development, is not being controlled.
The battle to save the ecosystem along Belize’s barrier reef
has not yet been won.
With the hurricane season approaching,
the new coral fragments need to be firmly embedded
so that they will stay put in a storm.
Back in Curaçao, the environmental activists are thrilled.
Julieta is removing a sea turtle from the aquarium
that she rescued from the seaweed more than a month ago.
Dozens of people have come here to help, weighing the sea turtles,
measuring them, and tagging them so that they can be identified
if they’re brought in again.
Today is a big day for everyone.
These ones are going to be released today,
they’re so much better now, so it’s time for them to go.
Now it’s time to head to the beach.
The wildlife conservationists attract a lot of attention along the route.
So there are actually police, as I see, up front. This is crazy.
It means that more and more people are going to realize what we’re doing,
and notice us, and hopefully more good things will come out of this.
The water is choppy, but clean. 13 turtles will be returned to the ocean.
I’m very, very excited, actually.
They hope the sea turtles will swim away, without turning back.
Let them take a breath, then let them go.
Success — the sea turtles have been rescued.
It’s a special day for Odette, too.
She’s invited local children and tourists.
Today the birds that have recovered will be returned to the wild.
Odi, the female flamingo, will say goodbye to Bob.
For 18 years now,
Odette has been working to help people appreciate nature and wildlife.
Flamingo Bob is the star of the show.
His charm helps win people over to the cause —
which also helps the wildlife rescue program raise donations.
Odi is ready to return to the wild, and to freedom.
It’s a joyous occasion, but there’s always a bit of worry.
Will the wild birds accept Odi —
or has she become too tame and acclimated to humans?
I hope the bird flies away, finds his home and finds his other siblings.
Time to let go. Odi is a little uncertain at first.
Then the flamingo flies away to rejoin her colony.
It’s another moment of celebration.
The people here know
they can’t stem the tide of global warming on their own.
But they’re working for change, and to raise awareness.
Even a small success is worth the effort.