World Hydrography Day

Mary Glackin, NOAA's Deputy Under Secretary, honors the nation's hydrographers
as she explains how hydrography supports the U.S. economy, keeps mariners safe,
and protects our coastal communities and ecosystems.

From NOAA

World Hydrography Day, celebrated in maritime countries around the world, is a time to recognize the ocean surveyors who map the oceans.
Thanks to hydrographers — in NOAA, in other federal agencies, and in private industry — this nation's safe and efficient maritime transportation system supports increased trade and economic growth for American industry and agriculture.

NOAA hydrographers measure oceans depths and search for underwater dangers to navigation, acquiring data for the nation's nautical charts and ocean models.
They have a long history of service to this country, beginning with President Thomas Jefferson's Survey of the Coast in 1807.

Hydrographers have historically played an important role in America.
During the Civil War, following the Confederate evacuation of Charleston in 1865,
hydrographers identified obstructions to the harbor, facilitating the resumption of commerce.

Hydrographic products continue to support updated navigational tools and charts, but today's data is used far beyond purposes envisioned in prior centuries.
From helping scientists understand the movements of tsunamis, to characterizing essential underwater habitat for healthy fisheries, today's hydrographers contribute, more than ever, to a healthy ocean, vibrant coastal communities, and a growing maritime economy.

Bahamas WLP update in the GeoGarage

B48/B62 Morgan's Bluff
showing some shift between Google imagery and WLP charts

4 charts have been updated :

• B43 : Joulter's Cays Cut
• B48 : Morgan's Bluff
• B62 : Morgan's Bluff, Commercial Harbour & Anchorage
• B197 : Andros, North Shore Channel

12 charts have been added (Andros) :

• B47 : Andros - High Rock to High Point Cay
  
• B50 : Andros - Big Wood Cay to South Bight
• B52 : Andros - Cargill Creek
• B51 : Andros - Fresh Creek
• B51A : Andros - Fresh Creek Plan
• B75 : Andros - Stafford Creek
  
• B207 : Andros - Morgan's Bluff to Fish Cays
• B208 : Andros - Saddleback Cays to Fresh Creek Area
  
• B209 : Andros - Plum Cays to North Bight
  
• B270 : Andros - Kemps Bay Harbour
• B163 : Andros - Staniard Creek
  
• B163A : Andros - Staniard Cut
  

Today, 273 charts for Bahamas (from WLP) are published on the Marine GeoGarage

Swimming in Europe: every beach, lake and bathing spot ranked and mapped

The European Union has ranked every bathing spot in Europe.

Click on a dot to see more detail about that beach, lake or bathing spot.
The red stars are spots that are either closed or did not comply to the regulations
(Europe's bathing water : Google Fusion Table)

From TheGuardian

Do you like swimming outside?
But how clean is your beach?

Since 1990, the European Union has been monitoring over 21,000 beaches, lakes and rivers across Europe - anywhere where swimmers go al fresco, in fact.
So that huge dataset covers Brighton Beach, the Hamsptead swimming ponds and the classic Mediterranean beaches of the South of France, Spain and Greece.

So, what does the data, out Thursday 16th from the European Environment Agency, show for your favorite beach?
The overall figures are good - 96.8% of our swimming areas meet the legal standards, if not the full guidelines.
This is down slightly on last year - but more swimming areas are now being surveyed.

The rankings only include outside swimming places - not man-made lidos or pools.

What is happening across Europe? According to the report:

In 2010, 92.1% of Europe's coastal bathing waters and 90.2% of inland bathing waters met the minimum quality standards. Only 1.2% of coastal bathing water and 2.8% of inland sites were non-compliant. The remainder are unclassified due to insufficient data.

In general, coastal bathing water quality deteriorated between 2009 and 2010 – the number of bathing water bodies meeting the mandatory values fell by 3.5%, while those meeting guide values fell by 9.5%.

Inland water quality has also dropped.
The number of rivers and lakes achieving the guide values fell by 10.2%, although compliance with the mandatory values was almost stationary.
Rivers were particularly problematic, with only 25% of river bathing waters achieving guide values.

If you want to, you can find out what variables from the Directive they use to rank each beach here.

The EEA use six, slightly confusing, categories.
In plain language they mean:

• CG - The best beaches, complying with the law and the guidelines
• CI - complies with the mandatory requirements - but not the guidelines
• B - banned or closed (temporarily or throughout the season)
• NF - insufficiently sampled
• NC - Does not comply with the legal requirements
• NS - not sampled

Eventually we will try to map all of Europe's 21,000 beaches - and you can download every country's data here.

Links :

• BlueFlag label
• Pavillon Bleu (France)
• TheGuardian : UK beaches achieve record cleanliness - with a few exceptions
  

Surfing: an exercise in spirituality



Nightsurf from Iker Elorrieta (Gure ametsa, eskerrik asko Iker)

"A dream without stars is a dream forgotten" Paul Eluard

From ManhattanBeach

The visionaries in Hollywood would have you believe that surfers are dumb beach bums who walk around shirtless with their shorts hanging halfway down their butts, calling everyone "dude" and "bro."
You know, the ones that are always "so stoked," or really excited.

Those guys exist, but most surfers are so much more.

These days, I know so many average, everyday people who surf.
Anyone can be a surfer.
Maybe your tax guy was out surfing this morning before he met with you about filing your tax extension.
Maybe the mom next door straps her board to the roof of her car before she drives her kids to school.
Even our kids' dentist and orthodontist (a husband and wife team) surf.
So do their kids.

Surfing is cool. Surfing is hip.
But the culture of surfing is about more than marketing a fantasy for the non-surfers.

For me, surfing is a spiritual experience.
I feel that I am with nature at its very best—and maybe a little closer to god—when I am in the water.

The ocean is a playground for the five senses, and surfing takes you to the core of the action.
I can't think of a better place to see, smell, taste, touch and hear, all at the same time.

When I see a pod of dolphins playing in the surf, I think, they get it.
These beautiful creatures instinctively get it.
Some people are like that, too.
Surfing is as natural to them as breathing—a beautiful gift.

Some surfers I know have a unique perspective about the ocean.
Some feel the ocean is a sacred place.
Some take that feeling too far, trying to keep other surfers out of their favorite surf spot and causing surfers to fear localism—all in the name of a wave.

Although many will say, “I’ve always wanted to learn how to surf,” not all will venture into the sea.
For as many people that say they love the ocean or want to learn how to surf, just as many say they don’t like the ocean and wouldn’t even go for a swim.

Maybe their fear of sharks keeps them on dry land.
(For the record: Yes, sharks live in the ocean, and yes, even in the water off our beloved Beach Cities, but no, I am not suggesting that a shark attack has ever taken place here.)
Maybe they just don't like sand between their toes.

Whatever their reason for remaining on shore, I can think of several to reasons to get wet, and I think more people are catching on to what makes surfing so special.

Surfing can be a great workout—both physically and mentally.
When I’m in the ocean, I am more aware.
Every breath I take feels like a clearing of my head, like a meditation.

But never turn your back on the ocean.

The waves can be powerful and at times, unpredictable.
I have a healthy respect for what I have felt first-hand on more than a couple of occasions.
A tumble in a wave, sometimes referred to as the washing machine, can be scary, but is also a rite of passage for any surfer.

Every wave caught is an accomplishment.
Nevertheless, I don’t measure a successful surf session by how many waves I've caught but by how I feel when I get out of the water.

I understand that surfing isn’t for everyone, and not all surfers view the ocean and the waves in the same light.
For me, it is the light in the ocean that keeps me coming back for more.

Links :

• International Surfing Day : tomorrow Monday June 20th, founded by the Surfrider Foundation and Surfing Magazine
  

Book review: Juliet Eilperin’s ‘Demon Fish’

http://demonfishbook.com

From TheWashingtonPost, by Callum Roberts , a professor of marine conservation at the University of York in England, author of “The Unnatural History of the Sea.”

More books probably have been written about sharks than about any other creatures that live in the sea, so when I opened this one I was skeptical: What could it possibly add?
A great deal, it turns out.
The last decade has revolutionized our understanding of sharks, largely through the marvels of computerized tags attached to sharks’ bodies that let us travel the seas with these beasts and glimpse their world almost as they do.
These devices tell us where they are, how deep they dive and what journeys they undertake, some of which span thousands of miles.

In “Demon Fish,” Juliet Eilperin circles the world in pursuit of sharks and the people who love and hate them.
Her journey goes back more than 1,000 years, to when the Aztecs revered sharks and sawfish.
Hundreds-of-years-old accounts show that past oceans teemed with predators.
Only a few remote places like Kingman Reef in the mid-Pacific support such numbers today.
With an evolutionary legacy 400 million years long, sharks have endured through several mass extinctions.
They have seen the dinosaurs come and go, but nothing has prepared them for us.

The great white epitomizes the fear and awe that sharks inspire.
At up to 20 feet long and as much as 5,000 lbs, it is the emperor of predators.
This beast — or at least a rubber model of it — was star of the 1975 movie “Jaws,” a film that preyed on our primordial fears of deep, dark water and unseen predators that strike without warning to eat us alive.
Much-publicized footage of great whites leaping clear of the sea in South Africa with shocked seal pups clamped in their jaws has done nothing to allay our fears.
Yet computerized tags and painstaking research have thrown up many surprises about great whites.
When the seal-breeding season is over, California’s great whites go on vacation in Hawaii.
Far from being insatiable predators, they feed irregularly, and during lean times can get by for a month and a half on a single bite.
Great white attacks on people are rare, despite the fact that they swim not far from crowded beaches.
Most attacks are mistakes, it seems, with a test chew and quick spit, provoked no doubt by our scrawny unpalatability compared to fat young seals.
A tiny minority of great whites enjoy the flavor enough to make a meal of some unfortunate swimmer.
But in reality, the most dangerous predator by far is us.

Eilperin, the national environmental reporter for The Washington Post, takes us to the heart of a trade in shark flesh that has its roots in 11th-century China.
Today, no Asian banquet is complete without a dish of shark fin soup that proclaims the high status of the celebrants and honors the guests.
But given Asia’s huge population and growing wealth, the appetite for soup far outstrips the ocean’s ability to provide.
Between 1996 and 2000, up to 73 million sharks were slaughtered worldwide every year to supply the trade in fins alone; that’s equivalent to the human population of California, Texas and Pennsylvania combined.
Ever the diligent journalist, Eilperin sampled the soup in Hong Kong and was staggered to discover that the fin was nothing more than a “translucent, tasteless bit of noodle.”
She adds, “This is the moment that I come face-to-face with shark’s fin soup’s amazing secret: it is one of the greatest scams of all time, an emblem of status whose most essential ingredient adds nothing of material value.”

Sharks reproduce slowly, some very slowly. with no more than a pup or two every other year.
This means that overfishing is rapidly emptying the seas.
As Eilperin concludes, most “sharks cannot be harvested sustainably because they cannot . . . offset these human-induced losses.
A sustainable shark fishery is as unrealistic as reasonable bald eagle hunting.
If sharks and people are to coexist, we must urgently rethink our relationships with them.

There are signs of hope amid the carnage.
Hawaii has banned shark finning, while Palau and the Maldives have stopped fishing sharks altogether. But fisheries on the high seas continue unabated.

Eilperin is an unobtrusive and balanced guide.
She has a deft hand with cameo descriptions of the people she meets on her travels and can sketch a scene with a few choice words.
She draws the reader along easily in a tale rich in color and character.
Underwater she dives with whale sharks in Mexico, great whites in South Africa, black tips in Belize and lemon sharks in the Bahamas.
In the process she meets those most passionate about these beasts, from scientists and conservationists to fin traders, big game hunters and the shark callers of New Guinea who in a timeworn tradition lure sharks to their flimsy canoes with coconut shell rattles.
Whether they are killers or protectors, she tells their stories with fairness and understanding.
I forgot the time as I immersed myself in the world of sharks.
Whether you’ve never read a book about sharks or have a shelf full of them, this is a book for you.

Links :

• HuffingtonPost : In defense of the Demon Fish
• TheAtlantic : Sharks, soup, and the domino effect destroying our Oceans
• NPR : Sympathy For The 'Demon Fish'
• TheGuardian : 'Man-eating' shark rammed my boat, says Cornish fisherman