Silent extinction shows a coral’s response to rising water temperatures in a visual work that documents the tragic beauty of corals’ endangered existence.

In a close collaboration with a team of coral researchers, documentary filmmaker Maja Friis has used macro optics to discover distinctive movements and altered behaviours in coral individuals from an underwater world of slow life and silent extinction. ‘Silent Extinction’ is a video portrait of the coral species Fungia undergoing a complete transformation as an immediate response to an ongoing heat stress.

The coral has been filmed non-stop day and night during a period of several weeks where the coral has been exposes to a scientific heat experiment simulating the ocean’s now regular heat waves. This thorough shooting process has made it possible to visually capture the coral’s instantly response to rising water temperature in a way that hasn’t been visually detected and captured in real time before.