i'm going on a fieldtrip with aya naseem and her team. ogist at the maldives coral institute. she's taking me to see one of their coral projects that they hope may offer a solution in maintaining the health of these lifegiving reefs. so for the maldives, all our islands are protected by coral. if you can see, like, where the waves are breaking, sometimes, you'll get really big waves coming in. but it all gets dissipated by that whole layer of coral that you see there. by the time it reaches the shore, it's really low impact, and it's not going to erode the beach so much. so, the coral reef is an important natural barrier to stop the erosion of the beaches? that's right. it's our first line of defence. so, what's damaging the coral reefs? unsustainable development, that's a big problem. climate change issues with, um...coral bleaching. a bleaching event is when the coral dies en masse due to unusually—warm sea temperatures. one of the biggest ones was the first one in 1998, which affected about more than 90% of our coral. and we did get a l