More than two decades ago Ove Hoegh-Guldberg was one of
the first scientists to warn that coral bleaching was a sign of
climate change and global warming. No surprise then that he
appears in and was the chief scientific adviser for the Netflix
documentary Chasing Coral, winner of the Audience Award at
last year’s Sundance Festival.
The film warns that a temperature increase of just two degrees
Celsius is suicient to put marine life into a state akin to “living
with a constant fever”, hence the death of more than half the
world’s corals in the past three decades.
A professor of marine science at the University of
Queensland, Hoegh-Guldberg is also the inaugural director of
its Global Change Institute, which describes itself as “an
independent source of innovative research, ideas, policy and
advice for addressing the challenges of a changing world”. As one
of the foremost experts on how global warming is threatening
the world’s oceans, he was lead author of the chapter on the ocean
in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, and has advised
organisations as diverse as the Great Barrier Reef Foundation,
the World Bank and the Royal Society in London.Judges’ Special Award
OVE HOEGH-GULDBERG
One of the foremost experts on how global warming is threatening the world’s oceans
WinnerTHE OCEAN AWARDS 2018
Warming oceans exacerbate coral
bleaching and ultimately lead to the loss
of reefs. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg served as
the chief scientific adviser on the film
Chasing Coral, which took three and
a half years to make and involved around
700 hours of underwater filming127