IMAX director Greg MacGillivray’s 2003 film, Coral Reef Adventure, follows the exploits and crusades of the husband and wife underwater filmmaking duo of Howard and Michelle Hall as they embark on a ten-month expedition of the world’s most vibrant and endangered coral reefs.Beginning at the Great Barrier Reef off the Australian coast, the Halls explore the vast underwater ecosystem and the scores of wildlife that thrive off of it.

Traveling on throughout a number of the South Pacific’s most spectacular reefs, the filmmakers also visit some reefs on the verge of extinction, making the sobering point that an entire reef’s death occurs very quickly, while its creation takes thousands of years.

Coral Reef Adventure marks the third oceanic, ecologically-themed IMAX film from MacGillivray, following Dolphins. Also featured in the film are famed sea explorer Jean-Michel Cousteau (son of the pioneering oceanographer Jacques Cousteau) and noted ichthyologist Richard Pyle. (Barnes & Noble)

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Like any IMAX movie, Coral Reef Adventure is so vivid, vast, and colorful that you can’t help but be astonished by its visual splendor. But this undersea exploration has a deeper, more serious agenda as well, warning its viewers that the natural magnificence of the world’s most impressive coral reefs is, in most cases, a mere 30 years away from extinction due to the devastating effects of global (and oceanic) warming.

Whether or not that timeframe is accurate (and there’s not enough solid science presented here to prove it either way), it’s tragically obvious that we are in the process of losing entire ecosystems that cannot be replaced, and when you witness these awesome coral reefs in their still-thriving vitality, you experience a sense of urgent responsibility toward our stewardship of planet Earth.

By showing us the commitment and potentially life-threatening work of reef explorers and world-class undersea cinematographers Howard and Michele Hall, the film provides an all-access pass to some of the most exotic, playful, and dangerous creatures in the ocean, presented with the kind of intense, almost three-dimensional clarity that can only be achieved in the IMAX format.

And while the giant-screen awesomeness of IMAX is lost in translation to DVD, Coral Reef Adventure offers the best-to-date use (on disc 2 of this two-disc set) of High Definition DVD-ROM formatting. For PC users equipped with Windows XP and Windows Media Player 9 series (or later) software, the amazing images in Coral Reef Adventure achieve an almost life-like resolution. The ultimate conclusion remains: If we don’t do something to protect these delicate, endangered wonders of nature, we will lose a part of ourselves. (Amazon)