vessel built in 1910 and world headquarters of the biosphehere foundation, which he created with gaie a alling, an ococean scientist and hihis parr of 30 years. together, they have been on the leading edge of documenting the dramatic changes in the planet's coral reefs. alling: we started an 18-year expedition around the world, and it was to look at coral reefs.. we lookeded at 49 seses around e world, and we found that 2/3 of the coral reefs in earth were at risk and suffering, in decline. van thillo: we were in the south pacific. we were sailing past the phoenix islands, and we had just heard that "national geographic" had been there a year earlier, and they hailed it as being the most beautiful reef and most amazing place to go. so our crew said, "let's go there, check it out, and we'll take a break and we'll go diving on fantastic reefs." and as they arrived there, they found that almost the entire reef was dead. man: 2004, 2005, the middle of the ocean, the phoenix islands in the middle of the ocean, the nation n of kiribatati, had this extraorordinary hotot spot thatt developed over it f

spending over a decade at sea studying whales, dolphins, and marine life of all kinds, at age 26, gaie alling was invited to take part in a unique experiment. together with her partner, 25-year-old engineer mark van thillo, and a small team of experts, gaie lived for two years inside biosphere 2, a scientific wororking model of the earth's biosphere. alling: biosphere 2 was a manmade, contained, closed system that was trying to re-create the global ecology of earth's systems. so this manmade world had all the living components necessary toto be another biospherere. it was extremely complex, very biodiverse. nothing could go in andd out of this system frfrom r earth'h's biososphere except information, so it was materially sealed off as a laboratory to study earth's ecology. van thillo: we had a million-gallon ocean with an entire coral reef that came from southern mexico, from yucatan. we started to look at the health of the corals. what we discovered--and gaie was in the ocean every day--what she discovered was that if we are healthy, our biosphere is healthy, or if our biosphere is healthy,