dustan: imagine you as a human being. we increase your body temperature by two degrees, you have a fever, rht? we increase it by anher two degrees, and you're dead. that's what's happening to the reefs. if you recover from your fever, you can go on to be a perfectly healthy person. the reef can go on to be a perfectly healthy reef if this was just a one-time stress. if it becomes a chronic stress, and every year it gets worse, slowly those corals that survived this year might not survive next year or the year after or the year after or the year after. narrator: scientists have confirmed a dramatic rise in ocean temperatures over the past two decades. every day, humans are pushing more than 100 million tons of carbon dioxide into the earth's atmosphere. this co2 is being absorbed by our earth's oceans, contributing to rising water temperatures and acidification, which are catalyzing the sudden demise of coral reefs worldwide... from healthy to threatened to dying. the coral triangle of southeast asia is vanishing at an ala