Watching Chasing Coral a troubling thought keeps going through my mind.  I seem to recall lots of bleach coral in some spots in the Philippines when I was in approximately kindergarten.  I don’t want to give my age completely away.  But, I will say that it was long before all this climate change was even spoken of a pending ice age let alone global warming let alone climate change.  Also, fluorescent coral is treated in the ‘documentary’ as being novel as well.  Well, that’s been around for eons.  So… kind of stunning that these coral experts treat it like something never seen before.  In short, this documentary is coming up short time and time again.  I cannot believe that I’m the only one who has a profound interest in marine biology who keeps shaking his head no over and over again at the misrepresentations set out time and again in this purportedly serious documentary.

Anyhow, this is the poem that I just put together watching a huge swatch of  the show.

Coral Vanity of Man
by Michael Romani

While looking for a sense of locus
It helps us if we keep in focus
They say time is running out of sand
While we desperately seek to understand

We record data to verify the belief
In our study of the barrier reef
But, blurred images offer false relief
As we insist on islands of grief

There in our footstep traces
Found on the shore of washed out places
These after images tell a story
That is played out as man's quest for glory

The truth told is that the ocean acts as a sink
For our heat and leave it to cause us to think
But, you see this has always been
From times immemorial, again and yet again

Is it maybe the sick vanity of anthropocentric man
That makes us want to believe things always stay
When I read back in history as far back as I can
I find that everything changes; it all fades away

It seems to me that nothing ever stays the same
And it's little more than a political game
That sets the expectation that all needs to be the same
And that money and power are what really place blame

Vivid fluorescence though self painted by coral
Is treated as evidence though displayed in plural
It is as if this was noticed by man for the first time
And opportunistically treated in terms of clime

The self appointed experts manipulate data to say
That there is something novel to this vibrant display
They act as if mankind has never observed it
In a panic causing interpretation of changing habitat

Never allow a crisis to go un-manipulated it is said
As they play on emotions hoping to override the head
Insisting that every difference seen is death
When no one knows if this is the hand that left

Algae does not ever grow into blooms over night
So this much I know is manipulated and not quite right
And the world has seen deeper changes before
I listen as lies are told and know that we've seen this before

Perceived disaster played hand in hand with shaded Nihilism
Has been use over and over again to supplant our realism
Painted as resistance as manmade change they seek to blame
It just seems like we're living history under another name.

(c) September 18, 2017  Michael Romani
All Rights Reserved