MetroWest Daily News, Framingham, MA
  • "The Last Reef'' at the Museum of Science capures fragile wonder of undersea world

  • The undersea world of "The Last Reef’’ teems with creatures more exotic than anything Jules Verne ever imagined.

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    Manta rays glide silently through the deep like stealth bombers on a mission. Swarms of thousands of tiny iridescent fish dart in perfect unison through forests of gently waving coral.
    Shot in extreme close-up, sea slugs gobble algae through shapeless mouths. Dead-eyed reef sharks cruise the depths with regal solemnity.
    Subtitled "Cities Beneath the Sea,’’ this 40-minute film at the Museum of Science captures the stunning diversity of marine life that thrives around coral reefs in French Polynesia, Cancun, the Bahamas, Palau and New York.
    Part travelogue, part science lesson, it carries viewers into the living world of reefs as a complex yet fragile habitat.
    Written and directed by Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas, it is, at once, a celebration of natural wonders and a warning that humans are capable of destroying one of Earth’s most vital ecosystems.
    When viewed on the Mugar Omni Theater’s five-story tall screen, their film is so jaw-dropping spectacular that the environmental message occasionally gets lost or only remembered as an afterthought.
    It begins with the U.S. nuclear tests that destroyed the reefs after the tests were conducted from 1946 to 1958 around the Bikini Atoll in the North Pacific.
    Left alone for decades, the reefs came back to life, a natural renaissance the filmmakers attribute to their "resiliency.’’
    "The Last Reef’’ celebrates that "resiliency’’ even as it warns us that human waste and greed have pushed many of the world’s most magnificent reefs to the brink of extinction.
    Even as we celebrate their beauty, human activity threatens coral reefs around the world by polluting the oceans and causing temperatures to rise, triggering increased acidity.
    Paul Fontaine, the museum’s vice president of education, observed, "The Last Reef reveals that these cities beneath the sea are as vital to life on Earth as rainforests.’’
    "The Last Reef’’ was filmed with the world’s first underwater 4K macro photography unit that captured the complexity of reefs as a vital habitat around which communities of coral and countless species thrive in symbiotic interdependence.
    The cast of characters - scorpion fish and sea anemones, multi-hued nudibranch striped fish and the living coral itself - exceeds anything George Lucas invented for "Star Wars.’’ They live and move through their watery realm, more like birds than land-bound mammals, as if governed by different laws of motion and gravity.
    Approaching the movie’s end, viewers will see strange and striking life-sized sculptures by Jason deCaires Taylor that have been placed in undersea parks in Mexico and Central America. Some appear to be kings and deities like Greek statues discovered in the Mediterranean. Others show dumpy modern humans watching television beneath the waves.
    Page 2 of 2 - Along with warships sunk during World War II and other vessels deliberately sunk the promote reef growths, these artifacts of human life should remind viewers that we provide the last best hope for reefs’ survival and the greatest threat to their existence.
    "The Last Reef: Cities Beneath the Sea’’
    WHERE: Museum of Science; New England Aquarium in 3D
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