Slowly But Surely

By Clare James. 2020

Watercolour painting nibbled by 200 snails.

Animation film

Photographed and animated by Brett Brogan

At first no-one wanted to believe it. Everything/everyone seemed to be co-existing quite peacefully. But the scientists’ warnings sounded dire. Words like ‘irreversible’, ‘fatal’, ‘catastrophic’ were being shouted. But no-one wanted to listen. What could we possibly do about it anyway?

Things were changing. Slowly but surely. We started to see the changes with our own eyes, if we looked really hard. A bit of colour disappearing here and there. Nothing too dramatic at first, but then things started to speed up. We saw, and now could imagine where this was heading. A beautiful thing was being destroyed.

‘Bleaching’, we’re told, is a sign of extreme stress. The coral was no longer able to cope. The balance had been tipped. This was serious.

So we too started to shout.

But no-one would listen.

We went hoarse, but our words fell on deaf ears. The reef was dying. Were we all even looking at the same thing? Why won’t they stop? Maybe we can slow things down, try to reverse what we’ve already done, save what is left.

Maybe we did see this coming, or felt it deep in our gut, that all was not okay.

Over 200 hundred snails were photographed every 5 seconds for three days and three nights, resulting in over 35,000 high res. photos. Brett later wove these thousands of images together into this stop animation film showing the snails nibbling away at the reef, ultimetly destroying it.