The Madness Of King Tides?

Since more than half of the conservation projects I oversee are scattered across the Pacific Rim, I tend to stay up late (sometimes into the early morning hours) to read the news across several time zones (and dates). I was alarmed to read the news reports this morning from Papua New Guinea (PNG) about unusually high tides wreaking havoc in New Ireland Province. According to several sources, more than 25,000 people from New Ireland Province and Bougainville have been driven from their homes by the high tides since Tuesday.

What struck me as puzzling, however, was that almost every report attributed the damage to what they called "king tides." "Huge waves caused by king tides smashed into dozens of villages and towns in northern Papua New Guinea, destroying homes and flooding businesses and a hospital," writes the New Zealand online news outlet Stuff. Australia Broadcasting News reports, "A relief operation is slowly taking shape in Papua New Guinea's New Ireland province to help thousands of people displaced by huge king tides that struck the island two days ago." And Radio New Zealand has several stories under headlines that read, "King tides hit PNG’s Gulf province."

So what's a king tide? I Googled the term and found that Wikipedia describes a king tide as a name given to exceptionally high tides. Well, okay. But I always referred to the monthly highest of the high and lowest of the low tides as spring tides (having nothing at all to do with the season). These are the tidal cycles (during new and full moons) that result when the Sun, Earth and Moon are in a line.

But these are monthly occurrences. If king tides are spring tides, why are PNG tides so violent and destructive now rather than as a monthly phenomenon? Is there something else going on with a king tide?

According to the Queensland Government Maritime Safety website, the term king tide has no scientific definition although in popular usage it refers to any high tide well above average height. The popular concept, however, is that king tides are the annual highest of the monthly high tide occurrences (or the annual highest of the monthly spring tides). In the Pacific basin where PNG is located, this annual highest of the high tides tends to occur around Christmas time.

What now appears to be behind the destructive PNG is not actually a king tide but a particularly strong storm surge. As reported in The National, one of PNG's daily newspapers, "The National Weather Service said the sea swell was not the result of a king tide but a product of the “La Niña” (wet weather) pattern PNG is experiencing."

According to the PNG National Weather Service, accumulation of high sea levels is typical during La Niña events. No seismic activity and no tsunami activity could account for the destructive sea swell. Manasupe Zurenuoc, chairman of the PNG National Disaster Committee and Secretary for Department of Provincial and Local Government Affairs, explained that the unusually high seas were a result of a combination of abnormally high sea levels and tropical depressions. Pacific Magazine and the PNG Post-Courier appear to corroborate this explanation with a headline that reads, "Weather, Not 'King Tide,' Caused PNG Wave Destruction."

Two People Who Don't Understand the Power of Television in America

The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, a global alliance of partners involved in collecting ecological and socioeconomic data to track trends in coral reef health, today released their much anticipated 2008 update of the world’s reef status. Their findings were announced today by the Director General of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

In case you missed the live announcement, fear not. It was taped, uploaded to YouTube, and can be viewed above. All I can say is that if we are relying on these distinguished spokespeople to generate a sense of urgency, then coral reefs are indeed doomed.

The report's findings are no great surprise to the coral reef scientific and conservation communities: if current trends in carbon dioxide emissions continue, many of the remaining reefs may be lost over the next 20 to 40 years. This will have alarming consequences for some 500 million people who depend on coral reefs for their livelihoods.

Globally, the downward trend in reef health of recent years has not been reversed. Major threats in the last four years, including the Indian Ocean tsunami, more occurrences of bleaching, outbreaks of coral diseases and ever-heavier human pressures, have slowed or reversed recovery of some coral reefs after the 1998 mass bleaching event.

Clive Wilkinson, my colleague in coral reef conservation and Coordinator of the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network says that, “The report details the strong scientific consensus that climate change must be limited to the absolute minimum. If nothing is done to substantially cut emissions, we could effectively lose coral reefs as we know them, with major coral extinctions."

Bush Administration Gets Fitted For New Suit

Here in the 600 block of California Street in San Francisco's Financial District, our offices share floors with conservation neighbors the Center for Biological Diversity.

I've been a huge fan of the Center even before we were neighbors. Their mission is to use science, legal expertise, and media attention to protect endangered species and ecosystems. While they utilize a diverse arsenal of approaches, you may know them as the "environmental lawsuit people." And perhaps rightly so. A snapshot of their personnel shows a brain trust of talented, aggressive attorneys who have chosen to eschew partnerships, fat salaries, and exorbitant compensation packages at private law firms in favor of fighting for a healthy planet. As a result, the Center boasts an impressive record of 93 percent favorable outcomes on their lawsuits.

But a recent announcement by the Center of their intention to file a suit against the Bush administration for failure to protect endangered coral reefs might, at first blush, leave you scratching your head. On November 26, 2008, NOAA announced that it will designate almost 3,000 square miles of coral reef area off the coasts of Florida, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands as critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act. The new rule, published in the Federal Register, was required by a court-approved settlement of a 2007 lawsuit brought by the Center for Biological Diversity.

Shouldn't the Center be celebrating? Have they gone sue crazy?

Well, take a closer look. The Endangered Species Act requires that when a species is listed under the Act, the federal government must protect habitat that is essential to its survival and recovery. Thanks to efforts by the Center for Biological Diversity, Elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata) and Staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis) were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2006. In the new critical-habitat rule, the federal government designated important areas to be protected for the corals, but created a giant loophole that disregards the primary threats to coral habitat: elevated seawater temperatures and ocean acidification.

Miyoko Sakashita, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, explains that, "On one hand, the law required the federal government to identify areas to protect for the threatened corals. On the other hand, the administration skirted the real threats to coral habitat, global warming and ocean acidification, by inserting language into the rule that carves out an exception for those threats. It is not only irrational, but it is illegal under the Endangered Species Act.”

You've heard me go on at length before about once magestic stands of Caribbean Elkhorn and Staghorn corals that have been reduced to shadows of their former glory due to a combination of diseases and elevated sea surface temperatures. But I've also outlined the emerging issue of ocean acidification, a concomitant byproduct of global warming caused by the ocean’s absorption of carbon dioxide that impairs the ability of corals to build their protective skeletons. Some scientists have predicted that most of the world’s coral reefs will disappear by midcentury due to global warming and ocean acidification under a business-as-usual emissions scenario.

What the Center's intended suit seeks from the Administration is language that sets substantial reductions in carbon dioxide pollution, the ultimate cause behind coral habitat destruction. The Center for Biological Diversity filed an official 60-day notice letter to the Bush administration on November 25 outlining their intent to sue over the Administration’s inadequate critical-habitat rule.

Burn With Envy, DSN Guys!

What's 250 feet in length, packs state of the art technology, has a cruising speed of 25 knots, and is guaranteed to make the boys at Deep Sea News wet themselves in awe?

I give you the Oculus, the crown jewel in design concept from luxury mega yacht manufacturer Schöpfer Yachts. Don't get too excited yet. It's still just concept, but the CGI overview is certainly pretty! The bio-engineered Oculus, designed to accommodate 12 guests in extraordinary comfort and style, features a 12 foot high ceiling in the main salon, a cylindrical double height dining room, central stair and (of course) an elevator tube.

As an ocean scientist, I can honestly tell you that deploying and hauling-in equipment like secchi disks or plankton tows on conventional vessels is a royal pain. All that pesky distance before my instruments actually touch water!

But no more. With its revolutionary “low rider profile,” the Oculus is simply perfect for accommodating a crew of oceanographers. And when surveys are through and seas get rough, a push of a button activates lateral retractable side panels that close for a watertight seal.

While I'm sure Craig wants first dibs on one of these puppies, I'll happily settle for a six-month berth in the third level aft private salon in exchange for offering an evening seminar series on coral reefs. Schöpfer Yachts? Feel free to ring me.

Excuses Are For Sucka's

I've been out of the blogging life for so long, I needed to relearn how to use a keyboard again. Q-W-E-R-T-Y... ahh, it's all coming back.

No excuses for you, my dear, loyal, faithful, understanding reader (and I do mean singular reader at this point!) All I can do is come back with a bang. To wit: Nothing at all to do with oceans I'm afraid, but hopefully it makes you smile.

Enough With Coral As Home Decor

Even in sleepy, organic, green-centric Mendocino, one cannot escape the dead, bleached remains of once vibrant, living coral reefs. At least three different stores along the main strip either used dead coral colonies and reef mollusks in window merchandising or flat-out sold dead coral as objet d'art.

Enough already!

Coral isn't just too precious to wear, it's too precious to end up as chachki in the window or on a shelf next to that picture of Aunt Peg. Read up on the impacts of coral reef harvesting and what you can do to help keep coral alive and on reefs where they belong.

Algal Knots

Manuel and I just returned from Mendocino where we spent five days sleeping late, eating well, napping, strolling the cold, foggy shorelines, and celebrating our back-to-back birthdays. Forty-five years old! How did that happen?

As I swing back into the real world (and begin preparing for my AARP paperwork), take some time to enjoy this photo-study of beach wrack. Breathe deeply... you can almost smell the glorious intertidal bouquet!

Rocks Suck Carbon

Forget your complex carbon sequestration schemes involving tree planting or ocean fertilization with iron filings. According to a new report to be published in the November 11 edition of the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences, peridotite--the most common rock found in the Earth's mantle directly below the crust--has been found to soak-up carbon dioxide.

As reported by geologist Peter Kelemen and geochemist Juerg Matter, peridotite (pictured above) naturally absorbs gaseous CO2 and converts it into solid minerals such as calcite.

Hooray, we're saved!

But wait, peridotite is found miles beneath the Earth's crust and mining the rock is impractical.

Oh no, we're still doomed!

But wait, peridotite is found at a few locations on the Earth's surface such as Papua New Guinea, Oman, and Greece where tectonic plate collisions have exposed deep mantle rocks. In fact I once strolled through vast glacially carved valleys of peridotite in the Tablelands of Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland.

Hooray, we're saved!

But wait, peridotite can't naturally absorb enough CO2 on it's own and there's not enough of it on the Earth's surface to really make a dent in greenhouse gas reduction.

Oh no, we're still doomed.

But wait, Keleman and Matter report they have devised a means to enhance peridotite's naturally occurring carbon absorption capacity 1 million times. They predict the enhancement--injecting peridotite with heated water containing pressurized carbon dioxide--would result in 2 billion or more of the 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted by human activity every year to be permanently captured in mineral form.

Hooray, we're saved!

But wait, the method would require thousands of miles of pipeline transporting poisonous gas, and the major CO2 producing nations with little or no access to peridotite (the US, China, and India) are potentially shit out of luck.

Oh no, we're... I give up!

Yes We Did... Except In California

It's a morning where I should be feeling elated, relieved, and victorious. Instead, I find I'm battling with anger over Proposition 8 passing. No sadness or grieving... just straight out anger that my home State of California was duped by the rhetoric of fear (funded primarily from christian groups and individuals). I'd at least like to think that the good people of California were duped, as the alternative--that they truly believe people like myself and the millions of others in the GLBT community simply don't deserve equal rights--is a path I don't wish (emotionally or intellectually) to walk down.

All this talk of "America finally united," only fuels my pain. I stood in a crowd of hundreds last night on the streets of Oakland and watched the election results roll in. We all burst into screams and tears of joy as it was announced that Obama had secured the necessary electoral votes. Everyone I could see, Black, White, Asian, Latin, were shaking hands, clapping, and hugging. An African American woman next to me, tears rolling down her face, grabbed me by the arm as we all shouted cheers of, "Yes we can!"

As much as I wanted to be taken over by the moment (and believe me, it was a powerful, transcendent feeling last night) my own tears of joy were held back knowing that Proposition 8 would be a hard fight at the polls. My suspicions were confirmed when I got home and heard that Prop 8 support was leading. It continued the lead throughout the night, and this morning 52% of the vote showed support for Prop 8's passing.

It's still unclear what this means for the thousands of same-sex marriages performed over the past 6 months since the ban on gay marriage was found unconstitutional. In conversations with other angry friends over coffee, we talked about the stark incongruity that Californians could elect the first African American into the nation's highest seat of power yet in that same moment, touch a voting screen or mark a ballot card to deny other Californians of fundamental rights.

We played the blame game for a while. Why did SF Mayor Gavin Newsom allow his arrogance to play into the hands of Prop 8 supporters? The constantly running TV and radio ads of Newsom smugly announcing that same sex marriage is happening "whether you like it or not" played well in San Francisco, but enraged inland communities. And why didn't No on 8 supporters react more swiftly to the devious strategy that framed the proposition as safeguarding children from learning about same sex marriage in schools.

Prop 8 supporters tapped into some visceral fear that trumped any laid back, easy going, good life, California-esqe "live and let live" credo we all like to pretend we live under. They campaigned on a platform that "things will change if we don't pass this proposition." When in reality, the only change that would happen is if Prop 8 passes. It would strip GLBT Californians of rights. If Prop 8 went down, it would be business as usual. Gay marriage would not be mandatory instruction in schools, same sex couples could marry and be legally protected under state laws. Church steeples would not have crumbled to the ground, California would not have turned overnight into Sodom and Gomorrah, and packs of leather daddies and dykes on bikes would not have set up recruiting stations in every valley town.

I've now lived in three states--Massachusetts, Maine, and now California--where the long fought for rights for legally recognized equality for GLBT people has been won, briefly celebrated, then stripped away by out-of-state interests and funding and the machinations of over zealous religious groups preying on archaic fears. Massachusetts managed to defeat bigotry and fear and now remains the only US state to allow same sex unions. Last night saw California, Florida, and Arizona pass bans. But California's ban stings more profoundly because it marked the first time that voters rejected same-sex marriage in a state where it was already legal.

I know I'm supposed to keep my chin up and forge ahead. That's what civil rights supporters do. But I'm challenged today to find a shred of civility. I need to try to center myself in the "greater" good of President-elect Obama. Even though he himself does not support same-sex marriage, he may be able to seat new Supreme Court justices over the next four years. Justices whose constitutional interpretations aren't clouded by fundamentalist ideology and bigotry.

YES WE CAN!

On my way home here in Oakland's Jack London Square, it was like Mardi Gras. People had taken to the streets, musicians were playing outside one of the blues clubs on Broadway as Oakland residents danced, screamed, snapped photographs, and cried. It was an emotional explosion of relief, disbelief, and pride. We all got to share a moment of history together with, for at least tonight, nothing but hope and promise ahead.

Hope you are feeling the buzz as well!