China’s fishermen explain why they think the sea is theirs

 The Tanmen people call their navigation log of the South China Sea “Genglubu”,
which means the “Road Book”.
There are numerous versions of the Genglubu, and it contains centuries of hard-won experience. Every island and its surrounding conditions are clearly described.
Chinese experts believe the navigation logs are clear evidence that Chinese fishermen were the first explorers in the South China Sea.
The people of Tanmen have been fishing in the South China Sea for generations.
Tanmen is a very small fishing town, which has become well known as its residents work on China ‘s maritime frontier.
(CCTV America)

From TheWashingtonPost by Will Englund

One of the challenges for the Chinese government is the growing tensions in the South China Sea. 
China has proposed resolution through dialogue to its neighbors, but territorial disputes continue to arise.
Today’s fishermen not only face the perils of the open sea, but also the danger of an encounter with a foreign patrol boat.

Little boats with noisy engines puttered purposefully down the river and out toward the South China Sea.
Big vessels — ships, really, with three or four decks, and heavy equipment — lay tied up close to the crowded town, looming over the low buildings along the bank.
Then a workhorse of the sea — high-bowed, about 40 feet long, wheelhouse astern — slipped by.
It was heading out for a week, or more likely a couple of weeks, on the open water.
Crewmen, stripped to the waist, lathered up and washed from a barrel of water on deck as their trip began.
The boat cleared the last bulkhead and then let loose with dozens of firecrackers that hung in strings over the sides.

We had arrived by bus: fifteen reporters from a dozen countries, on a tour arranged by the East-West Center of Hawaii.
We were in Tanmen, on the island of Hainan, at the northern approaches to the South China Sea, to talk with fishermen. We were not going from boat to boat looking for someone with tales to tell.
Our local escorts had arranged a meeting on the paved walkway along the south bank of the river.
A delegation of retired fishermen was there to receive us and tell us about their livelihoods.

China and its neighbors are quarreling over the South China Sea, and fishermen play a role in that. Chinese coast guard boats have been driving Philippine and Vietnamese fishing boats away from reefs and fishing grounds that China now claims control of.
We were here to get the Chinese water-level perspective.
Su Cheng Feng is 80, retired now for 11 years.
At first, after the firecracker display died down, he was the most talkative.
He said he didn't meet fishermen from other countries very often in the old days when he was out at sea, before the surrounding countries' territorial claims began to be taken seriously, because their boats were smaller than the Chinese boats, and, frankly, their skills weren't as high.
The sea, he said, was China's traditional fishing ground.
Chinese "fishermen have been fishing in the South China Sea for many, many generations," he said.
"These are our own waters, just as natural as a farmer going to his field."

 China's 1948 nine-dash line map

source : The South China Sea

We asked him about the past.
What was it like before the Communists came to power in 1949, or even during the war, when he was a boy and his father was a fisherman?
He didn't have much to say; nothing special, nobody talked about it.

Wu Shujin, 79, Mai Yunxiu, 79, and Huang Qinghe, 82, listened in, added a word here and there. They had all been captains.
They had fished for wrasse, grouper and mackerel.
They dried their catch on board or sold it to a buyer's boat that would take it back to shore.
They didn't get much help from the government
 (Younger men standing nearby disputed that.)

Then Lu Yuyong suddenly appeared.
He's 51, still active on a boat.
He took over the conversation.
"The life on a boat is very tough," he said.

 Lu Yuyong, 51, looks up from a chart of the South China Sea on which he has placed a traditional Chinese compass. (Will Englund/The Washington Post)

He brought out a pink plastic bag and unwrapped from it a traditional Chinese compass.
It's one of the four great Chinese inventions, he said (along with gunpowder, paper-making and printing).
Suddenly he was on his knees on the blacktop, unrolling a nautical chart of the sea.
He was showing us how to use the compass on the chart, and having a little trouble, most likely because it had traditional markings on it and not the 360 degrees of a modern one.
Su got down with him, and all the reporters and local hangers-on crowded around.
Lu said he was glad the Chinese government is building up some of the islands in the sea; he has lost three family members in storms who had nowhere to go to and no one to help them.
Permanent occupation on some of the islands could save lives, he said.
But when fishermen from other countries dare to fish the South China Sea, he said, "they're invading our waters."
"We could go all the way to Australia if we wanted to," he said.
"But we don't. That's not our ground. It's not about loving or not loving your country. It's about fishing your own waters."

www.genglubu.cn

Chinese fisherman, he said, were the first to discover the islands of the South China Sea.
"And as opposed to other countries, we are civilized," he said, again mentioning the compass as one of the four great inventions.
He rolled up the chart, then got out a piece of paper and drew his own map of the sea, which he labeled the "Ancestor Sea."
He talked about the annual celebrations in Tanmen for the Brotherhood of the 108 (also known as the 108 Stars of Destiny, or the Outlaws of the Marsh), demonic overlords from a 700-year-old novel who were banished, repented and were reborn as heroes.
What upstart nation, he seemed to be asking, could lay claim to history here the way China can?

Links :

• China.org : Tanmen fishermen fish in dangerous waters 
• TheDiplomat : Rethinking China’s Maritime Militia Policy

Explore life beneath the waves in honor of World Oceans Day

Google and its partners are committed to using technology

to better understand and protect the ocean. 

From Google_LatLon by Jenifer Austin and Brian Sullivan, Google Ocean Program

Covering more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, the ocean remains one of the most uncharted and undiscovered ecosystems on the planet.

Home to the majority of life on Earth, the ocean acts as its life support system, controlling everything from our weather and rainfall to the oxygen we breathe.
Yet despite the ocean’s vital importance, the ocean is changing at a rapid rate due to climate change, pollution, and overfishing, making it one of the most serious environmental issues we face today.

Walk the coastline of Larsen Bay, Samoa, home to some of the most pristine coral reefs in the Pacific

Mapping the ocean is key to preserving it.
Each image in Google Maps is a GPS-located digital record of these underwater and coastal environments, which can be used as a baseline to monitor change over time.
This comprehensive record of coral reefs showcases the beauty of these ecosystems and highlights the threats they face, such as the impact of increasing storms in the Great Barrier Reef and of rising water temperatures, factors causing the reefs to bleach white.

 These two images taken just one year apart, demonstrate reef deterioration from ocean warming.

With just one click, you can swim underwater alongside some of the most wondrous and exotic creatures, including great white sharks in Australia.

Google recommends you check out these amazing “street views” of ocean life:

• Dive with giant ocean sunfish (Mola mola) and giant parrotfish off the coast of Bali.
• Swim underwater alongside schools of giant travely in Mexico.
• Do the backstroke with humpback whales in the Cook Islands.
• See the breathtaking beauty of sea turtles in Timor-Leste.
• Search the ruins of shipwrecks in Aruba.
• In American Samoa, you can go for sunset walk along Ofu Airport Beach, or walk along Ofu beach, known as one of the most scenic beaches in the world.
• In Chagos Islands, you can tour Ile du Sel, a tiny island vegetated with a thick forest of coconut palms, and explore the famed bird nesting habitat of Grande Ile Bois Mangue.

Mola mola, the world’s heaviest bony fish, in Crystal Bay, Bali

 Two humpback whales swimming in the Cook Islands in the South Pacific

As the ocean changes, we must change with it by creating new technologies, to help document the state of the ocean today and how it changes in years to come.
Working closely with XL Catlin Seaview Survey, we’re announcing a select group of new partnerships for our underwater Street View program to map and publish more imagery of our ocean and water systems for the world to understand and explore.

• NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries: Expanding our current partnership to bring unprecedented access to American marine protected areas
• Reef Check: Engaging and training volunteer citizen scientists to participate in ocean mapping and data collection
• Blue Ventures: Developing locally-managed marine areas for biodiversity and the benefit of coastal people throughout Madagascar and the Indian Ocean
• Our World Underwater Scholarship Society: Providing a program of firsthand underwater-related experiences to selected scholars across the world
• GUE’s Project Baseline: Empowering a global network of highly skilled SCUBA divers to create a lasting visual legacy of underwater conditions in oceans, lakes, rivers, springs, and caves all over the world

In addition to underwater and coastal Street View imagery, Global Fishing Watch, developed in partnership with nonprofits SkyTruth and Oceana, is producing the first public and interactive view of industrial fishing at a global scale.
With so much of what happens on the ocean going unnoticed, Global Fishing Watch will aim to empower governments, the seafood industry, research institutions and the public with new tools to better inform sustainable practices and management policies.

This World Oceans Day, we hope that you’re inspired to learn more about ocean change.
So dive into the deeps of the sea and become engaged to protect the ocean and understand how it supports us, so that all of us can better support it in return.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog :  Google SeaView : Ocean survey launches on Great Barrier Reef / Dive into the Great Barrier Reef with the first underwater imagery in Google Maps / Caribbean has lost 80% of its coral reef cover in recent years / Take a virtual swim with the dolphins on protected Brazilian islands 
• Google LatLon : Dive in to the heart of the Coral Triangle in Asia, home of the richest coral reefs on Earth

Yacht entering harbour in rough seas

Very skillfull helmsman on this Delphina 37'

harbour entrance of Savaneke on Bornholm Island, part of Denmark in the Baltic.

 Bornholm island with the GeoGarage platform

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Yacht capsizes in surf at Spanish port of Zumaia

The Golden Gate bridge from the air

The Golden Gate Bridge from the air. from Makai Creative

Explainer: how do you measure a sea’s level, anyway?

ESRI : Mean Sea Level, GPS, and the Geoid

From The Conversation by Gary Griggs

There are about 330 million cubic miles of water in the world oceans today, 97% of all the water on the planet. Early in our planet’s 4.5 billion year history, water from the atmosphere and from the interior of the Earth gradually collected in the low areas on the planet’s surface to form the ocean basins, accumulating salts along the way.

 OK, but which sea’s level? And how do you know what it is?

Wally Gobetz, CC BY-NC-ND

The level of the ocean around the Earth, and therefore the location of the shoreline, are directly related to the total amount of water in the oceans, and also closely tied to climate.
As climate changes, so does sea level.
Throughout the history of the oceans, which goes back about 3.5 billion years, give or take a few million, climate has constantly changed and, in response, sea level has gone up and down. As seawater warms, it expands and sea level rises.
As the Earth warms, ice sheets and glaciers melt and retreat, adding more water to the oceans, which raises sea level.

Sea level change between 1993 and 2008 NASA/JPL

People have been keeping track of sea level, or the elevation of the oceans, for about 200 years.
Until fairly recently, this was done with tide gauges, which are water-level recorders anchored to some structure along the coastline.
It might be a wharf, a concrete breakwater or some other solid structure that is stable over long periods of time.
The oldest tide gauge in the world is on the coast of Poland and was installed in 1808.
In the United States, there are two tide gauges that have been in operation since 1856, one in New York and one in San Francisco.
There are many others as well, but most of them are much newer; many were set up over the past 50-75 years.

Installing a tide gauge in Alaska. 

NOAA Photo Library, CC BY

A tide gauge is essentially a large pipe inserted into the ocean, which has a float inside that moves up and down as the water level changes.
As the tide rises and falls each day, these gauges record those changes in water level, day after day, year after year.
These instruments were first set up to provide accurate information on water depths so ships could enter and leave ports safely.
As time went on, however, it became clear that sea level recorded on these instruments was rising globally.

 A tidal gauge, ready to be installed

Each of these official tide gauges keeps track of sea level at a particular coastal location.
Many coastal areas are not stable, however.
Some are sinking (such as New Orleans or Venice), and some are rising (Alaska and Scandinavia, for example).
Each tide gauge keeps track of how sea level is changing relative to the land on which it is anchored.

 NOAA tide gauge data for Grand Isle, Louisiana (near New Orleans), where sea level is rising relative to the land at 9.03 mm/yr (36 inches/century) due to subsidence of the Mississippi delta area. NOAA

Even though sea level rose around the world at a rate of about 1.7 millimeters per year over the last century (nearly seven inches per century), because some gauges are on coasts that are rising and some on coasts that are sinking, these local sea-level rise rates will vary.
In parts of Alaska, the land is rising faster than sea level, so the tide gauge actually records a drop in sea level relative to the land.

NOAA tide gage record for Juneau, Alaska, where local sea level is dropping relative to the land at 13.16 mm/year (4.3 feet/century) due to uplift of the coastline. NOAA

These geographic variations were resolved in 1993 when two satellites were launched that use radar to measure the level of the ocean very precisely from space.
This high-tech approach eliminates the problems of land motion on Earth and has given us a new global sea-level rise rate over the past 22 years of 3.2 millimeters per year, the equivalent of 12 inches per century.

Global mean sea level as measured by satellite. University of Colorado/NASA

Elevations on land, contour lines on maps and depths on nautical charts are based on the long-term average of sea level.
This is complicated by the fact that sea level around the world at any instant is not the same, due to local variations resulting from differences in water temperatures, currents, atmospheric pressure and wind.
In order to bring some order to all of these geographical variations, and to provide a constant point of reference, a datum or base level was established based on averaging out the elevation of sea level from many tide gauges over an extended period of time.
This datum is now called the North American Vertical Datum (or NAVD) and is the elevation (close to mean sea level) on which all map elevations are based.
So if a wharf, highway or building is “20 feet above sea level,” it is 20 feet above this official North American Vertical Datum.

Links :

• Eyeontherise : Ever wonder whether your home would be affected by rising sea levels? Florida International University has launched a new web app called Sea Level Rise Toolbox that shows the possible impact of a 6-foot rise in sea levels. After downloading the free app, it allows users to type in their home address, then click on an orange tab to see the projected increase of water levels.