The ways climate change is altering our planet can be hard to see, since they happen so incrementally, and often far away. That’s what’s made the documentaries Chasing Ice and Chasing Coral (a finalist for Best Documentary Feature at the 2018 Oscars) so valuable. The former tracks shrinking glaciers, while the latter shows the devastating die-offs of coral reefs, all thanks to the planet’s rapidly warming atmosphere.

But Richard Vevers, a former advertising expert who's one of the main subjects of Chasing Coral, thinks he might have the answer: a better promotional strategy, one that shows human beings how the world is changing, while still preserving hope that something might be done about it. 

Chasing Coral itself is an example of that strategy. Pull it up on Netflix, and you’ll see formerly colorful coral reefs, home to all manner of sea life, bleached pure white. Yet the movie does offer hope that there’s some way out of this, if we change our ways in time.

Richard joins Todd to talk about coral reef die-offs, yes, but also a life spent under the waves, and just what keeps drawing him to the depths of the ocean.