In the 2011 Jules Verne Trophy, the 14 sailors on-board Maxi trimaran Banque Populaire V just burst into the history of offshore racing by becoming the fastest men around the globe with crew, after 45 days 13 hours 42 minutes and 53 seconds of sailing.
Loïck Peyron and his crew improved the reference time of the Jules Verne Trophy held by Groupama 3 since March 2010 by two days eighteen hours one minute and fifty-nine seconds.
Departed on November 22nd at 09:31:42 Paris time (08:31:42 GMT), after having crossed the imaginary line between Ouessant (Finistère-France) and Lizard Point (southern tip of England), the Maxi Banque Populaire V crossed the finish line of the Jules Verne Trophy at 23:14:35 Paris time (22:14:35 GMT) Friday 6th of January 2012.
She undertook this sailing around the world in 45 days 13 hours 42 minutes 53 seconds days at an average speed of 26.51 knots, covering a total distance of 29 002 miles.
Launched in August 2008 in Lorient (Morbihan-France),the giant trimaran holding the colours of Banque Populaire has also established several referenced time on various partials officially listed by the WSSRC for her first world tour:
Equator / Equator record in 32 days, 11 hours, 51 minutes and 30 seconds
Indian Ocean crossing record (Cape Agulhas / South of Tasmania) in 8 days 7 hours 22 minutes and 15 seconds
Under the leadership of the skipper Loïck Peyron, Thierry Chabagny, Florent Chastel, Thierry Duprey du Vorsent, Kevin Escoffier, Emmanuel Le Borgne, Frédéric Le Peutrec, Jean-Baptiste Le Vaillant, Ronan Lucas, Pierre-Yves Moreau, Yvan Ravussin, Xavier Revil, Brian Thompson, Juan Vila and onshore router Marcel van Triest, are the new holders of the Jules Verne Trophy.
Loïck Peyron, skipper of the Maxi Banque Populaire V: The feeling from the guys onboard: Emotion and Happiness ! We have filled a good part of the contract!
Our memories are full of wonderful images: the departure, icebergs, albatrosses, the Kerguelen Islands...
When you sail around the world in 45 days, you see many things.
The only one we did not get is Cape Horn but this frustration is quickly forgotten with the record we now have in hands.
We are very proud!
Jules Verne Trophy:
Start date and time: November 22nd 2011 at 09:31:42 Paris time (08:31:42 GMT)
Arrival date and time at Ushant: January 6th 2012 at 23:14:35 Paris time (22:14:35 GMT)
Distance: 29 002 miles Average speed : 26.51 knots
New reference time on the Jules Verne Trophy* : 45 days 13 hours 42 minutes 53 seconds
Time difference with Groupama 3’s record in 2010: 2 days 18 hours 1 minute and 59 seconds
International vessels operating illegally in protected waters have stayed away after being filmed and identified by local fishers
A group of 23 impoverished west African fishing communities has driven off a fleet of illegal, unreported and unregulated "pirate" trawlers by filming and reporting them when they are found in their waters.
In the 18 months since the London-based Environment Justice Foundation (EJF) raised the £50,000 needed to buy and equip a small seven-metre community surveillance boat for villages in the Sherbro river area of Sierra Leone, local fishers have filmed and identified 10 international trawlers working illegally in their protected waters and have made 252 separate reports of illegal fishing.
Between 1 January 2010 and 31 July 2012, EJF’s community surveillance project in southern Sierra Leone received 252 reports of pirate fishing by industrial vessels in inshore areas.
EJF’s local staff filmed and photographed 10 different vessels operating illegally, and transmitted the evidence to the Sierra Leone government and European authorities.
Nine out of 10 of the vessels are accredited to export their catches to the EU
Images of the pirate ships and their GPS positions are analysed to establish the identity of the vessels and the evidence is passed on to European Union (EU) and African governments, fishing ports and other communities.
Nine of the 10 ships identified by the Sierra Leonean communities were found to have licences to export their catches to Europe.
The effect of communities policing their own waters has been spectacular, says EJF in a new report on pirate fishing in west Africa.
More than US$500,000 in fines has been collected from the vessel owners, $6m worth of fish has been seized and none of the vessels has been reported in Sierra Leone's inshore exclusion zone for six months.
In addition, it says, Panama and Korea, whose vessels have been repeatedly identified fishing illegally in Sierra Leonean waters, have agreed to act on the information provided by the communities.
"A clampdown in one area can lead to overfishing elsewhere. So we see the need for a number of these boats along the coast. Fishermen are the best eyes and ears when it comes to illegal fishing," said Andy Hickman, an EJF campaigner.
Using the evidence gathered in coastal communities, the Sierra Leone government has begun a crackdown on pirate fishing.
Ocean 3 (pictured) was fined US $90,000 and had its catch confiscated (valued at US $60,000).
However, the vessel escaped, still owing US $20,000 in fines to the authorities
The west African coast has been plagued for 20 years with massive international trawlers that are able to scoop up hundreds of tonnes of fish a day and export their illegal catch to Europe, at the expense of local fishermen who use 8m open pirogues (small flat-bottomed boats).
The foreign trawlers, that are meant to stay outside the 12-mile limit, come in much closer at night because few west African countries have the money to monitor or police their waters.
"Along with the economic losses, pirate fishing in the region severely compromises the food security and livelihoods of coastal communities. In Sierra Leone, fish represents nearly two-thirds of the total animal protein consumed in the country," says the report.
Anger at the activities of pirate fishing vessels is now boiling over.
According to the report, countries like Liberia, Senegal, Mauritania, Guinea and Ghana have the highest levels of illegal fishing in the world with nearly one-third of the total catch being taken illegally.
The lack of a Global Record of fishing vessels and a Unique Vessel Identifier (UVI) enables unscrupulous operators to change their vessels’ names or to 'flag hop' to avoid detection and sanctions.
This makes it difficult for coastal countries to ascertain whether vessels have histories of IUU fishing and whether they are managed by legitimate operators.
For example, Kummyeong 2 (pictured), documented by EJF as fishing illegally in Sierra Leone in December 2011, was identified three months later in Guinea operating under a new identity.
EJF travelled to Guinea in March 2012 where they identified Kummyeong 2 anchored at sea, one mile from the port of Conakry.
The vessel had erased its name and painted a new name, Conosu, on its hull.
Sierra Leone now considers it a fugitive, and efforts are ongoing to make sure it returns to face a fine for its illegal activities.
EJF is campaigning for the vessel to be banned from exporting its catches to the EU
Earlier this year Senegal cancelled the licences of 29 foreign fishing trawlers, demanding that they offload their catches in the capital Dakar before leaving its territorial waters.
Senegal's catch of a lifetime
The move followed threats of direct action by the country's 52,000 small-scale inshore fishermen against the owners of foreign trawlers.
Artisanal fishing pirogues in Senegal
EJF is calling on the EU to tighten up its regulations, blacklist companies that have been shown to have repeatedly fished illegally and prevent illegally caught fish from entering the European seafood market.
"The EU is the world's largest importer of fish. It has a crucial responsibility to combat illegal fishing around the world, particularly in vulnerable countries where fish is a vital source of food security, employment and income," said Hickman.
TEDxMonterey - Jason Scorse - The Ocean's True Market Value
From WashingtonPost A handful of surf intellectuals are letting go of lofty environmentalist rhetoric and fighting economics with economics.
In 2002, a surfer named Chad Nelsen enlisted an economist at Duke University to help put a price tag on a popular surfing spot on Puerto Rico’s northwest coast.
Nelsen’s idea was novel: to prove that the waves breaking on the beach constituted a multimillion-dollar asset and persuade the local town to take pains to preserve it.
Real estate developers were after another multimillion-dollar asset: the views from the beach, which would be the selling point for three high-rise condominiums they planned to build.
Surfers and environmentalists feared that the construction at Rincon, the village in Puerto Rico, would change the flow of sediment around the beach and bury a reef that created the surf break.
Nelsen sought to show that without the reef, there would be no waves, no surfers and, ultimately, a big drop in tourism dollars.
“We found that people were buying second houses there just for the surfing,” said Linwood Pendleton, the Duke economist who assisted Nelsen and is a chief economist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“It was contributing literally millions of dollars a year to the local economy.”
Rincon and its world-class wave break, discovered by surfers in the late 1960s, embodies a cycle that’s as regular as the tides: Surfers trek to remote reaches of the globe in search of the perfect wave. They discover prized beaches.
Word gets out.
Tourists pile in.
Developers seize land and opportunity.
Construction alters the wave break.
The surf loses its edge.
Surf advocates have long argued that Mother Nature is priceless, invoking geological and hydrological mechanics that distinguish the character and appeal of the waves.
In a new strategy, Nelsen and a handful of other surf intellectuals are letting go of lofty environmentalist rhetoric and fighting economics with economics.
Taken from the north end of Zicatela Beach in Puerto Escondido, Mexico (Pete Orelup)
“Those of us who really love the ocean have an instinct when we see beautiful places like this to think that they’re priceless and to think that the commodification of nature, and putting price tags on everything, is the root cause of nature’s destruction. . . . I think that’s actually counterproductive,” Jason Scorse, director of the Center for the Blue Economy, said in a TEDx talk in April.
Scorse is the author of the book “What Environmentalists Need to Know About Economics” (2010).
“When nature is undervalued, we make bad decisions.”Rincon was a rare victory for surfers.
The international campaign to protect the wave break, led by the Surfrider Foundation, an advocacy group, blocked the condo proposal and persuaded lawmakers to designate Tres Palmas, the name of the break, as the heart of Puerto Rico’s first marine reserve.
And it helped launch the science of “surfonomics.”
In March, Nelsen, 42, completed a doctorate of environmental science at UCLA, where he studied the economics of surfing.
Surfonomics is an offshoot of natural resource economics that seeks to quantify the worth of waves, both in terms of their value to surfers and businesses and their non-market value — or how much people would be willing to pay not to lose them.
“The assumption is often that surfing is worth zero dollars,” said Nelsen, environmental director for the Surfrider Foundation.
“It’s taken for granted. It’s not perceived as being a viable and important source of economics, particularly with decision makers in coastal zone management that we’re talking to all the time.”
To prove there is intrinsic value in a wave, Nelsen started at the beginning.
A report he produced last August tabulates the number of surfers in the country and how much money they shell out for the privilege of riding the waves.
After surveying more than 5,000 surfers, Nelsen concluded that about 3.3 million people in the country surf 108 times a year, drive an average of 10 miles per session and contribute at least $2 billion to the U.S. economy annually.
“The report is to demonstrate that, hey, there’s a lot of surfers in the U.S. They go to the beach a lot, and they spend a lot of money in these communities,” Nelsen said.
“Therefore, you should take their interests seriously.”
In part, the survey is an effort to shake the stereotype of the shaggy stoner who lives out of a van and doesn’t contribute to society.
Nelsen calls that misconception “the Spicoli virus” in reference to Sean Penn’s iconic surfer-slacker character from the 1982 movie “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”
The median surfer these days is 34 and pulls in more than $75,000 a year, according to Nelsen’s study.
“Even 10 years ago, the posture was one of trying to dismiss the arguments of these ‘crazy surfers,’ ” said Michael Walther, a coastal engineer in Florida whose research persuaded officials in Monmouth County, N.J., to rethink a beach renourishment plan that would have buried a surf break at Sandy Hook in 2001.
photo ?
Building proposals for a new harbor in Los Angeles, a cruise ship terminal in Australia, a factory in Mexico or a jetty in France don’t account for potential damage to surf breaks that bolster nearby communities with tourism dollars.
When surfers have spoken up, Nelsen said, their arguments have tended to be passionate but abstract and lacking a concrete link between the building, the break and the local economy.
Meanwhile, the argument of real estate developers is more easily couched in economic terms: job creation, revenue and growth.
A simple case study: A world-class surf break at Madeira, an island off the coast of Portugal, suffered a damaging blow when the government installed a seawall in the 1990s.
The idea was to defend cliffs against erosion to prepare the area for tourism infrastructure.
U.S.-based Save The Waves Coalition objected, saying the wall would make surfing more dangerous. The seawall was built, and surfers stopped visiting en masse.
Save The Waves Founder Will Henry thinks that they lost the fight because they weren’t properly equipped.
“If you talk in dollars, that’s a language the government speaks,” Henry said.
“We didn’t have any real data at the time to say, ‘This asset is going to be worth X amount of dollars over the next 10 years.’ It just didn’t exist.”
Save The Waves has since produced two studies evaluating the economic value of surf breaks, in partnership with academics at Stanford University, the University of Oregon and the University of Hawaii. Mavericks, an epicenter of big-wave surfing in Half Moon Bay, Calif., is worth $23.9 million annually in a report produced in 2010.
A wave at Mundaka, off the coast of southern Spain, brings in about $4.5 million to the local economy each year, according to a 2007 study.
Economists calculate the value of a surfable wave by tabulating visiting expenses of surfers and surf spectators.
Some of the indicators they watch: distance traveled, visits per year, time taken off work, length of stay, drive time, gas money, parking fees, food breaks, gear rentals.
The theory is that such figures represent how much money a person is willing to part with for the experience.
At Mavericks, for example, economists calculated that more than 420,000 people, not just surfers, visit each year to watch the waves and spend an average of $56.70 per visit.
Afternoon offshores creating some perfection at Kirra (Queensland) (photo ?)
‘Waves are our Yosemite Valleys’
The practice of protecting natural resources for public use is as old as Yellowstone, the country’s first national park.
It was established in 1872 “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people,” according to the statute signed by President Ulysses S. Grant.
The field of natural resource economics is a natural outgrowth of the same idea.
It began as a means of quantifying value in mining, fishing and timber industries, and it provides a method of assessing dollar values for travel and activities around places where people recreate.
The methodology gives economists tools to gauge how much people are willing to pay to go skiing or whale-watching or to hike the Appalachian Trail.
“These waves are our Yosemite Valleys,” Nelsen said. He believes they deserve the same considerations and protections. “We think of these as national treasures.”
The same way national parks set use restrictions on select areas, surfers are beginning to induct unique wave breaks into what they call World Surfing Reserves.
The designation was created in 2009 by Save The Waves and modeled on an Australian organization called National Surfing Reserves that has had success coordinating protection plans with government officials for about a dozen surf breaks.
What is often lacking is the financial element — key to swaying decision makers, said Neil Lazarow, an economist who evaluated surfing on Australia’s famed Gold Coast.
Sachuest Beach, this bay faces SW (Newport), catching all the sea breeze windswell. (photo ?)
The movement to apply economics to environmentalism got a boost last year from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
In a report issued to the White House, the council recommends investing in research surrounding “environmental capital,” or non-consumptive natural resources that people will pay to enjoy.
The idea that self-sustaining resources such as waves don’t attract dollars simply because you can’t count people moving through a turnstile is outdated thinking, said Pendleton, the Duke economist.
“We’ve tended to focus on big industrial uses of the outdoors while forgetting about these much more sustainable uses of the outdoors, especially recreation,” Pendleton said.
“And we do it at our own economic peril.”
Economic studies of activities like surfing are critical when economists are calculating damage assessments in the wake of environmental disasters, such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Unfortunately, we’ve been performing a lot of crisis-driven studies where we are figuring things out after the fact,” said Charles Colgan, chief economist for the National Ocean Economics Program, a project of the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
“We don’t want to wait for the next oil spill or hurricane to figure out what’s going on. It’s a costly way to do things.”
As industries such as commercial fishing have taken a plunge, tourism has come to account for a larger chunk of the ocean economy.
Commercial fishing produced slightly less than $5.7 billion in 2009 while coastal tourism and recreation accounted for more than $61 billion that year, according to NOAA reports.
Colgan thinks the rise in coastal tourism is partly because of the economic downturn driving people to cheaper housing inland.
Because it is too expensive to live where they can surf, people are traveling farther to do so.
“As growth is shifting inland and people are traveling to the coast from further inland, the idea of surfing as just a cultural issue on the coast needs to be shifted,” Colgan said.
“It’s not about that one stretch of beach. It affects a larger geographical area.”
Frozen perfection in New York.Long Island. (photo Matt Clark)
A risky proposition
Surf economists admit that surfonomics is a risky proposition.
The few reports documenting the value of waves have not, so far, been challenged or scrutinized by developers
But what if, for example, a wave worth $24 million annually is pitted against a new hotel that would bring in $30 million a year, Surfers Against Sewage, another advocacy group, says in a 2010 report on ocean resources.
“Are the developers then in a position to ‘buy’ that wave from the surfers?”
“That’s everyone’s fear, especially when you start stacking up recreation against offshore oil,” Pendleton said.
“How can we ever compete?”
Scorse, the marine policy advocate, is in the final stages of a study that he said proves that surfing contributes potentially hundreds of millions of dollars — not in tourism, but in property tax revenue.
He said his research, which he expects to complete this year, shows that houses within walking distance of surf spots in Santa Cruz, Calif., are worth far more than coastal homes farther from great wave breaks.
Nelsen, for his part, isn’t worried about the implications.
“We’re not arguing that the world is one big cost-benefit analysis,” he said.
“You could probably make more money on Yosemite than you make today if you filled it with condos. But no one is arguing that we should. Surfonomics is just one measure of the value of these resources. It’s not the only measure.” Links :
The Aurora Borealis has been photographed by a stargazer on the west coast of the Isle of Man.
Dave Thornley, from Peel, photographed the Northern Lights from Ballaugh beach on Monday.
The Aurora Borealis are best seen from the Northern latitudes like Norway, Alaska, Iceland and northern Scotland.
Mr Thornley said: "To see something this intense so far south is extremely rare. This is the first time I have managed to get pictures like this."
He added: "I was just setting up my camera on the mount when I saw a glow coming from the north so I swung the camera around and took some pictures.
"It was quite exciting, I just wasn't expecting anything this intense so I made some frantic phone calls to my friend, Harvey Wood and he came out and got some pictures because we have both been trying to photograph the Northern Lights for ages."
Mr Thornley and Mr Wood are regular night photographers and Ballaugh beach is a favourite spot because of the lack of artificial light.
The pair have been trying to capture the Aurora Borealis for the past year.
The Northern Lights were last seen from the Isle of Man in May
"I knew there had been a geomagnetic storm but we were only planning to photograph the Milky Way," Mr Thornley said.
"I just remember seeing big fingers of colours and light right above our heads at about 45 degrees from the horizon and from other reports from around the UK, it seems it lasted throughout the night."
Martina Garrdiner also took this photo of the Aurora Borealis over Ballintoy Harbour, County Antrim, Northern Ireland early this morning.
The Northern Lights happen when incoming solar radiation hits the earth's upper atmosphere and excites atoms to a new energy state, emitting colours which is energy in the form of light.
Pete Irvine is from Ballintoy in Northern Ireland where he took this picture of the harbour. He says that the white lights are from star trails.
Howard Parkin, chairman of the Isle of Man Astronomical Society, said: "The Aurora Borealis can be seen from the Isle of Man about two or three times a year but it is rare for all the conditions to be right.
"I think the last time they were seen from the island was in May but when they are viewed from this latitude it usually looks like a green glow - to get all the colours is spectacular, rare and wonderful."
When the waves of light are predominantly red, it indicates a high level of "oxygen excitation" compared to low levels in the green layers. South Erradale, Gairloch, Scotland.
You can't normally see water currents or the wind.
Now you can: A computer code used to visualize wind has been adapted by researchers to show surface currents of the Great Lakes.
The code was originally developed to make a map of the wind by Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg, artists/technologists who lead Google's "Big Picture" visualization research group in Cambridge, Mass., according to their website.
A screenshot, taken on the afternoon of Oct. 3, 2012,
But researchers at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Michigan saw the stunning wind map and figured it could be applied to surface currents of the Great Lakes, which are largely driven by wind.
They were right.
And, luckily for them, Viégas and Wattenberg agreed to share their code.
The result? A stunning map of surface currents on the Great Lakes, as shown in this screenshot of the map on the laboratory's website from Oct. 3.
The code uses a computer model to visualize wind patterns, said David Schwab, a researcher at the laboratory who's in charge of the map.
The model is based on measurements of wind speed, air temperature and other variables at weather stations and buoys around the Great Lakes, Schwab told OurAmazingPlanet.
It's updated four times per day.
General Water currents of the Great Lakes (Environment Canada)
"I think a lot of people never realized how variable the currents are in the lakes," Schwab said.
He thinks the map will be useful for recreational boaters, fishermen and the shipping industry, as well as for generally increasing people's knowledge of the Great Lakes, he said.
Faster currents are shown as thicker white lines, and the speed of the current can be determined by zooming in on individual lines.
Lake Michigan Underwater Currents that was done in the late 1800's via bottle paper courses...
So today, for a cost of 9.9 € / month ('Premium Charts' subscription), you can have access to 2588 additional updated charts (4332 including sub-charts) coming from 3 international Hydrographic Services (UKHO, CHS, AHS and France).
Misfit pictures welcomes all ocean lovers to join us in the creation of our next film WHAT THE SEA GIVES ME, a stunningly beautiful portrayal of the seemingly inexplicable relationship between ourselves and the sea.
Our film highlights individuals whose lives and destinies are defined by their connection to the ocean. Whether it be the extremely dangerous researching of Great White sharks, diving to depths never before reached, surfing death-defying mountains of water or humbly feeding your family from the day's catch - all of us are invisibly linked to the ocean in one form or another.
If you are still reading, I guess you know exactly what I am talking about.
But here's a little more.
WHAT THE SEA GIVES ME is a feature length documentary comprised of intimate and candid interviews with some of the ocean's most extraordinary ambassadors.
We will give you an honest and personal look through the eyes of those who thrive under the most extreme water conditions, those ensuring the proper care of the oceans for future generations and those who simply derive a sense of pure joy from the sea.
Proposed interviews include Great White shark researcher Brett McBride, artist Matt Beard, photographer Chris Burkard, bodysurfer Angie Oschmann, conservationist Jean-Michelle Cousteau, free-diver Herbert Nitsch, oceanographer Walter Munk and many others.
In addition to riveting personal interviews, we are filming in spectacular above-and-below-the-water locations around the world (South Africa, Greece, Fiji, Australia, Ireland, New England, California, and Hawaii) to display the natural beauty of the oceans.
The goal of WHAT THE SEA GIVES ME is to raise ocean awareness on a global level while reminding the viewer how closely we are all connected to the sea; and, to introduce you to an unique group of people we find absolutely captivating.
“... a sense of threat as well as one of miracle attends Marten’s images. The people who fill his beaches at low tide seem often still to be there at high tide, invisibly in their fixed positions, fatally swallowed by metres of sea.”- Robert Macfarlane
Photographs of the same locations taken at high and low tide make for a series of fascinating diptychs
Since 2003 photographer Michael Marten has travelled around the British coast to photograph identical views at high and low tide, six or 18 hours apart.
St Cwyfan's, Anglesey: 'At midday, the church looks isolated and austere beneath a grey, rain-threatening sky. Later, the clouds are paler and kinder.' Photograph: Michael Marten
See how the seascapes in his photographs are dramatically transformed by clicking on the vertical slider in the middle of the image and moving it left or right.
The British landscape photographer Michael Marten is, in his own words, "a student of tides".
In 2003, he spent a day photographing a set of rocks on the coast of Berwickshire and, afterwards, while reviewing his pictures, he realised that he had captured the same view at ebb and flood tide.
He realised, too, that the incoming sea had radically altered the perspective and the atmosphere of that stretch of landscape.
Hayle river mouth, Cornwall. 18 March 2010.
Low water 12 noon, high water 6pm.
So began the nine-year journey around Britain's coastline that is distilled into the 105 colour images in Sea Change, a body of work that records landscapes defined by these two contrasting moments in time.
Marten's preparation for each set of photographs was painstaking.
He scanned tide-table charts and local coastal maps to find the best locations to set up his 5x4 camera and the exact times when the tide was at its lowest and highest.
"When I take the first picture of a tidal pair," Marten writes in his afterword, "I mark the position of my tripod with sticks and stones or scratch marks on rocks so that I can set up in the same position six hours later or the next day. I place a sheet of tracing paper on the ground glass screen of the 5x4 camera and, under my darkcloth, use a pencil to trace lines that will remain unchanged when the tide comes in or goes out: the horizon, a rock, a harbour wall, or distant headland."
Thus, the second image is meticulously framed exactly like the first.
The end result is a book of intriguing diptychs: some torrential; some busy, then deserted; some so radically different in atmosphere and detail that they seem to be entirely different landscapes.
Put simply, the sea changes everything, not just the land it covers, but the land around and beyond it.
Bedruthan Steps, Cornwall. 25 and 31 August 2007.
High water 4.30pm, low water 2pm
Marten is also a master of tone and colour, and the photographs speak of the elements as much as the sea and the shore.
In Aberffraw on Anglesey, he captures St Cwyfan's church – known locally as "the church in the sea" – at midday at high water on 9 April this year.
It looks isolated and austere beneath a grey, rain-threatening sky, a place not so much of refuge as of pure isolation.
At 5.45pm on the same day, the tide has retreated way beyond the raised stone mound that the church squats on, and the clouds are paler and kinder.
The church looks part of the landscape, the same sandy colour as the sand and pebbles in the foreground. It also looks welcoming.
Salmon fishery, Solway Firth. 27 and 28 March 2006.
Low water 5.20pm, high water 12 noon
There are diptychs of tidal estuaries, famous beaches, coves, ports and crags that jut into the sea.
There is even a diptych of Crosby, Liverpool, where the artist Antony Gormley's cast-iron men stand submerged in water, then alone on a long, wide expanse of sand.
They look defiant even as the tide rises around them and over them.
As Robert McFarlane notes in his illuminating introductory essay, one of the most powerful aspects of Marten's photographs is "the cognitive dissonance between the serene and the sinister".
As sea levels rise inexorably, these beautifully strange images are ominous too in their evocation of what may come.
Links :
DailyMail : Sea change: Photographer captures the dramatic contrast along Britain's landscape caused by ebb and flow of coastal tide
TheGuardian : Ins and outs: Michael Marten photographs the difference the tide makes
