Time ticks so slowly on a reef, we'd miss out on all the fun without time-lapse video.
It's easy to forget how our actions affect so many living things. And it's hard to imagine these particular living things are even real.
We operate on a different scale of space and time than animals under the sea.
If we dipped way down beneath the waves, we might see starfish and corals like these, but because we're so big and because we move so fast, we'd miss the real story.
Using magnification and time-lapse photography, filmmaker Sandro Bocci unmasks the otherworldly beauty and strangeness of tiny aquatic lives.
When we see them move, they do some things that look familiar.
Nom, nom.
And they do other things most of us can only sort-of figure out.
We're just starting to face the sheer scale of our impact on the earth.
It's kinda shocking. Big weather changes, big ocean-level changes, fracking earthquakes. There are dozens, hundreds of things to worry about.
And it affects these small creatures, too.
They're swept along with millions, billions, arguably trillions of other life-forms we don't even consider, all caught up in our great wake. As this video reveals, starfish and corals aren't just things. They're living things. With lives. And, though they may never know it, we're stewards of their tiny worlds, too.