DOGE’s chaos reaches Antarctica

Photograph: Wolfgang Kaehler/Getty Images

From Wired by Leah Feiger

Daily life at US-run Antarctic stations has already been disrupted.
Scientists worry that the long-term impacts could upend not only important research but the continent’s delicate geopolitics.

 

Few agencies have been spared as Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has ripped through the United States federal government.
Even in Antarctica, scientists and workers are feeling the impacts—and are terrified for what’s to come.

courtesy of @redgeographics

The United States Antarctic Program (USAP) operates three permanent stations in Antarctica.
These remote stations are difficult to get to and difficult to maintain; scattered across the continent, they are built on volcanic hills, polar plateaus, and icy peninsulas.

But to the US, the science has been worth it.
At these stations, over a thousand people each year come to the continent to live and work.
Scientists operate a number of major research projects, studying everything from climate change and rising sea levels to the cosmological makeup and origins of the universe itself.
With funding cuts and layoffs looming, Antarctic scientists and experts don’t know if their research will be able to continue, how US stations will be sustained, or what all this might mean for the continent’s delicate geopolitics.

from National Geographic

“Even brief interruptions will result in people walking away and not coming back,” says Nathan Whitehorn, an associate professor and Antarctic scientist at Michigan State University.
“It could easily take decades to rebuild.”

The USAP is managed by the National Science Foundation.
Last week, a number of NSF program managers staffed on Antarctic projects were fired as part of a wider purge at the agency.
The program managers are critical for maintaining communication with the infrastructure and logistics arm of the NSF, and the contractors for the USAP, as well as planning deployment for scientists to the continent, keeping track of the budgets, and funding the maintenance and operations work.
“I have no idea what we do without them,” says another Antarctic scientist who has spent time on the continent, who along with several others WIRED granted anonymity due to fears of retaliation.
“Without them, everything stops,” says a scientist whose NSF project manager was fired last week.
“I have no idea who I am supposed to report to now or what happens to submitted proposals.”

Scientific research happens at all of the stations.
At the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, scientists work on the South Pole Telescope and BICEP telescope, both of which study the cosmic background radiation and the evolution of the universe; IceCube, a cubic-kilometer detector designed to study neutrino physics and high energy emission from astrophysical sources; and the Atmospheric Research Observatory that studies climate science and is run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
(Mass firings are also expected at the NOAA.)

 

 

I am alarmed by what is happening in Antarctica where the evidence overwhelmingly shows that there is an acceleration of melting of ice, which could be catastrophic to coastal communities everywhere.

What happens in Antarctica doesn’t stay in Antarctica.
pic.twitter.com/VMJ5c7wmT9

— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) November 24, 2023

“The climate science [at the South Pole Station] is super unique,” an Antarctic scientist says.
“The site has so little pollution that we call it ‘the cleanest air on Earth,’ and they have been monitoring the ozone layer and CO2 content in the atmosphere for many decades.”

 

McMurdo Valley

Other directives from the Donald Trump administration have directly affected daily life on those stations.
“Gender-inclusive terms on housing documents” have been removed from Antarctic staffer forms, a source familiar with the situation at McMurdo Station tells WIRED.
“It asked if you had a preference with which gender you housed with,” the source says.
“That’s all been removed.”

Staffers have already pushed back.
“People have been painting waste bins saying “Antarctica is for ALL” in rainbow, people’s email signatures [have] pride additions, [others] keep adding preferred pronouns to emails,” the source says.

“There’s a sense of unease on the station like people have never felt before,” they add.
“The job still has to get done, even though people feel like the next shoe can drop at any moment.”

That unease extends to their own job security.
“There are some people currently at the South Pole that are worried about losing their jobs any day now,” a source with familiarity of the situation tells WIRED.
Workers present at the station aren’t able to physically leave until October, and a midseason firing, or loss of funding, would present a unique set of challenges.

Sources are also bracing for at least a 50 percent reduction in the NSF’s budget due to DOGE cuts.
These cuts are sending Antarctic scientists with assistants and graduate students scrambling.
“We didn’t know if we could pay graduate students,” says one scientist.
While research is conducted on the continent, scientists bring their findings back to the US to process and analyze.
A lot of the funding also operates the science itself: For one project that requires electricity to run detectors, the scientist “was paranoid we would not be able to literally pay bills for an experiment starved for data.” That hasn’t come to fruition yet, but as funding cycles restart in the coming weeks and months, scientists are on tenterhooks.

Sources tell WIRED that Germany, Canada, Spain, and China have already started taking advantage of that uncertainty by recruiting US scientists focused on Antarctica.

“Foreign countries are actively recruiting my colleagues, and some have already left,” says one Antarctic scientist.
“My students are looking at jobs overseas now … people have been coming [to the US] to do science my whole life. Now people are going the other way.”

“Now is a great time to see if anyone wants to jump ship,” another Antarctic scientist says.
“I do worry about a brain drain of tenured academics, or students who are shunted out.”

“The damage caused by gutting the [Antarctic] science budget like this is going to last generations,” says another.

Throughout DOGE’s cuts to the federal government, representatives have said that if something needs to be brought back, it could be.
In some cases, reversals have already happened: The US Department of Agriculture said it accidentally fired staffers working on preventing the spread of bird flu and is trying to rehire them.

But in Antarctica, a reversal won’t necessarily work.
“One of the really scary things about this is that if the Antarctic program budget is cut, then they’ll very quickly get to the point where they can’t even keep the station open, much less science projects going,” an Antarctic scientist tells WIRED.
“If the South Pole [station] is shut down, it’s basically nearly impossible to bring it back up.
Everything will freeze and get buried in snow.
And some other country will likely immediately take over.

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Others share this fear of a station takeover.
“Even if science funding is cut back, there is an urgent need for the US to invest in icebreakers and polar airlift capability otherwise at some point the US-managed South Pole station might not be serviceable,” says Klaus Dodds, an Antarctic expert and professor of geopolitics at Royal Holloway University of London.

Experts are concerned that countries like Russia and China—who have already been eagle-eyed on continental influence—will quickly jostle to fill the power vacuum.
“Presumably it would be humiliating for anyone who wishes to promote ‘America First’ to witness China offer to take over the occupation and management of the base at the heart of Antarctica.
China is a very determined polar power,” says Dodds.

 

The political outcome of the US pulling back from its Antarctic research and presence could be dire, sources tell WIRED.

Antarctica isn’t owned by any one country.
Instead it’s governed by the Antarctic Treaty System, which protects Antarctica and the scientific research taking place on the continent, and forbids mining and nuclear activity.
Some countries, including China and Russia, have indicated that they would be interested in rule changes to the Treaty system, particularly around resource extraction and fishing restrictions.
The US, traditionally, has played a key role in championing the treaty: “Many of the leading polar scientists and social scientists are either US citizens and/or have been enriched by contact with US-led programs,” says Dodds.

That leadership role could change quickly.
The US also participates in a number of international collaborations involving major Antarctic scientific projects.
A US pullback, Whitehorn says, “makes it very hard to regard the US as a reliable partner, so I think there will be a lot less interest in accepting US leadership in such things … The uncertainty will drive people away and sacrifice the leadership the US already has.”

“If the NSF can’t function, or we don’t fund it, projects with long lead times can just die,” another scientist says.
“I’m sure international partners would be happy to partner elsewhere.
This is what it means to lose US competitiveness.” 

 

Links :

• Medium : The Day We Chose Ignorance: NOAA, Science, and the Price of Stupidity
• NPR : Trump administration layoffs hit NOAA, agency that forecasts weather, hurricanes 
• The Guardian : ‘Cruel and thoughtless’: Trump fires hundreds at US climate agency Noaa
• Maritime Executive : After NOAA Layoffs, Experts Warn of Impacts on Shipping and Fisheries 
• InsideClimateNews : Experts Say Attempted Mass Firing of NOAA Workers May be Illegal and Threatens Public Safety
  
• GeoGarage blog : Elon Musk is coming for our weather service / For-profit companies can’t easily replace NOAA’s weather-forecasting process / Can Trump just order new names for Denali and the Gulf of Mexico? A geographer explains who decides what goes on the map

Image of the week : this bird’s eye view of a shark hunt won a photo contest

A school of hardyhead silverside fish (Atherinomorus lacunosus) flees from four blacktip reef sharks near the shore of the Maldives in this aerial photo.

 A. Albi & A. Paula

From ScienceNews by Tina Hesman Saey

The image is part of work to understand whether sharks coordinate their attacks on prey

A school of hardyhead silverside fish (Atherinomorus lacunosus) flees from four blacktip reef sharks near the shore of the Maldives in this aerial photo.

Behavioral biologists Angela Albi and August Paula of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz, Germany, captured the image, a still frame from drone footage, during a study of how sharks interact with each other and their prey.
Blacktip reef sharks (Carcharhinus melanopterus) are social animals, and juveniles, such as these four, often gather and circle within schools of fish.

Albi is trying to determine whether the sharks coordinate their attacks.
The snapshot won the 2024 Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition.

Scientists from around the world submitted images from their research in five categories.

El Ojo: The mysterious floating island in Argentina's swampland that looks like a perfectly round eye

 

El Ojo is a strange floating island in the Buenos Aires Province of Argentina.

 

From LiveScience by Sasha Pare

 

Argentina's El Ojo is said to harbor UFOs and the ghosts of ancient deities, but as far as scientists can tell, the island is simply a fluke of nature that formed through erosion and water currents. 

El Ojo is a mysterious, uninhabited floating island in Argentina's swampy Paraná Delta.

Its name, meaning "the eye," comes from the island's striking resemblance to a perfectly round oculus when seen from above.

Filmmakers drew attention to El Ojo in 2016 after researching material for a documentary in the river delta.

Geolocalization with the GeoGarage platform (SHN ENC chart)

 

The crew, led by Argentinian director Sergio Neuspiller, flew over the island and was struck by its appearance amid the delta's cropped vegetation.
"We found the perfect circle, as seen from the air," Neuspiller told the newspaper El Observador at the time in a translated article. 

"The water looked black but in reality it was completely transparent water, something that is almost impossible to find in the delta [because the waters are generally muddy], but it had a black earth bottom."

El Ojo floats in a crystal-clear lake that is just as perfectly circular as the island itself.

According to El Observador, the island and the lakeshore have mutually created each other's smooth outlines, thanks to the slow, grinding process of erosion.

The island, which is 387 feet (118 meters) in diameter and made of plant matter, floats on a current that circles the lake, causing the circle to rotate on its axis and grate against the banks.

This constant motion means El Ojo has widened the lake and shaved its sides into a perfect disk.
The phenomenon is similar to a process observed in the Presumpscot River near Westbrook, Maine, where a large ice disk has formed several times since 2019 through the action of a circular current beneath the surface.

How Captain James Cook got away with murder

In the course of three epic voyages, Cook mapped the east coast of Australia, circumnavigated New Zealand, and made the first documented crossing of the Antarctic Circle. 

But what horrors did he leave in his wake?

Illustration by Julie Benbassat

From The New Yorker by Elizabeth Kolbert

 

When he died, admirers believed that he deserved the “gratitude of posterity.” Posterity, of course, has a mind of its own.

On Valentine’s Day, 1779, Captain James Cook invited Hawaii’s King Kalani‘ōpu‘u to visit his ship, the Resolution.
Cook and the King were on friendly terms, but, on this particular day, Cook planned to take Kalani‘ōpu‘u hostage.
Some of the King’s subjects had stolen a small boat from Cook’s fleet, and the captain intended to hold Kalani‘ōpu‘u until it was returned.
The plan quickly went awry, however, and Cook ended up face down in a tidal pool.

At the time of his death, Cook was Britain’s most celebrated explorer.
In the course of three epic voyages—the last one, admittedly, unfinished—he had mapped the east coast of Australia, circumnavigated New Zealand, made the first documented crossing of the Antarctic Circle, “discovered” the Hawaiian Islands, paid the first known visit to South Georgia Island, and attached names to places as varied as New Caledonia and Bristol Bay.
Wherever Cook went, he claimed land for the Crown.
When King George III learned of Cook’s demise, he reportedly wept.
An obituary that ran in the London Gazette mourned an “irreparable Loss to the Public.” A popular poet named Anna Seward published an elegy in which the Muses, apprised of Cook’s passing, shed “drops of Pity’s holy dew.” (The work sold briskly and was often reprinted without the poet’s permission.)

“While on each wind of heav’n his fame shall rise, / In endless incense to the smiling skies,” Seward wrote.
Artists competed to depict Cook’s final moments; in their paintings and engravings, they, too, tended to represent the captain Heaven-bound.
An account of Cook’s life which ran in a London magazine declared that he had “discovered more countries in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans than all the other navigators together.” The anonymous author of this account opined that, among mariners, none would be “more entitled to the admiration and gratitude of posterity.”

Posterity, of course, has a mind of its own.
In 2019, the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of Cook’s landing in New Zealand, a replica of the ship he’d sailed made an official tour around the country.
According to New Zealand’s government, the tour was intended as an opportunity to reflect on the nation’s complex history.
Some Māori groups banned the boat from their docks, on the ground that they’d already reflected enough.

Cook “was a barbarian,” the then chief executive of the Ngāti Kahu iwi told a reporter.
Two years ago, an obelisk erected in 1874 to mark the spot where Cook was killed, on Kealakekua Bay, was vandalized.
“You are on native land,” someone painted on the monument.
In January, on the eve of Australia Day, an antipodean version of the Fourth of July, a bronze statue of Cook that had stood in Melbourne for more than a century was sawed off at the ankles.
When a member of the community council proposed that area residents be consulted on whether to restore the statue, a furor erupted.
At a meeting delayed by protest, the council narrowly voted against consultation and in favor of repair.
A council member on the losing side expressed shock at the way the debate had played out, saying it had devolved into an “absolutely crazy mess.”

 

 

Into these roiling waters wades “The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook” (Doubleday), a new biography by Hampton Sides.
Sides, a journalist whose previous books include the best-selling “Ghost Soldiers,” about a 1945 mission to rescue Allied prisoners of war, acknowledges the hazards of the enterprise.
“Eurocentrism, patriarchy, entitlement, toxic masculinity,” and “cultural appropriation” are, he writes, just a few of the charged issues raised by Cook’s legacy.
It’s precisely the risks, Sides adds, that drew him to the subject.

Cook, the second of eight children, was born in 1728 in Yorkshire.
His father was a farm laborer, and Cook would likely have followed the same path had he not shown early promise in school.
His parents apprenticed him to a merchant, but Cook was bored by dry goods.
In 1747, he joined the crew of the Freelove, a boat that, despite its name, was designed for the distinctly unerotic task of ferrying coal to London.

After working his way up in the Merchant Navy, Cook jumped ship, as it were.
At the age of twenty-six, he enlisted in the Royal Navy, and one of his commanders, recognizing Cook’s talents, encouraged him to take up surveying.
A chart that Cook helped draft of the St.
Lawrence River proved crucial to the British victory in the French and Indian War.

In 1768, Cook was given command of his own ship, H.M.S. Endeavour, a boxy, square-sterned boat that, like the Freelove, had been built for hauling coal.
The Navy was sending the Endeavour to the South Pacific, ostensibly for scientific purposes.
A transit of Venus was approaching, and it was believed that careful observation of the event could be used to determine the distance between the Earth and the sun.
Cook and his men were supposed to watch the transit from Tahiti, which the British had recently claimed.
Then, and only then, was the captain to open a set of sealed orders from the Admiralty which would provide further instructions.

The Endeavour departed from Plymouth, made its way to Rio, and from there sailed around the tip of South America.
Arriving in Tahiti, where British and French sailors had already infected many of the women with syphilis, Cook drew up rules to govern his crew’s dealings with the island’s inhabitants.
The men were not to trade items from the boat “in exchange for any thing but provisions.” 

(That rule appears to have been flagrantly flouted.)

The day of the transit—June 3, 1769—dawned clear, or, as Cook put it, “as favourable to our purposes as we could wish.” But the observers’ measurements differed so much that it was evident—or should have been—that something had gone wrong.
(The whole plan, it later became clear, was fundamentally flawed.) Whether Cook had indeed waited until this point to open his secret instructions is unknown; in any event, they pointed to the true purpose of the trip.
From Tahiti, the Endeavour was to seek out a great continent—Terra Australis Incognita—theorized to lie somewhere to the south.
If Cook located this continent, he was to track its coast, and “with the Consent of the Natives to take possession of Convenient Situations in the Country in the Name of the King of Great Britain.” If he didn’t locate it, he was to head to New Zealand, which the British knew of only vaguely, from the Dutch.

The Endeavour spent several weeks searching for the continent.
Nothing much happened during this period except that a crew member drank himself to death.
As per the Admiralty’s instructions, Cook next headed west.
The ship landed on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island on October 8, 1769.
Within the first day, Cook’s men had killed at least four Māori and wounded several others.

A ship like the Endeavour was its own floating world, its commander an absolute ruler.
A Royal Navy captain was described as a “King at Sea” and could mete out punishment—typically flogging—as he saw fit.
At the same time, in the vastness of the ocean, a ship’s captain had no one to turn to for help.
He had to be ever mindful that he was outnumbered.

Cook was known as a stickler for order.
A crew member recorded that Cook once performed an inspection of his men’s hands; those with dirty fingers forfeited the day’s allowance of grog.
He seemed to have a sixth sense for the approach of land; another crew member claimed that Cook could intuit it even in the dead of night.
Although in the seventeen-seventies no one knew what caused scurvy, Cook insisted that his men eat fresh fruit whenever possible and that they consume sauerkraut, a good source of Vitamin C.

Of Cook’s inner life, few traces remain.
When he set off for Tahiti, he had a wife and three children.
Before she died, Elizabeth Cook burned her personal papers, including her correspondence with her husband.
Letters from Cook that have been preserved mostly read like this one, to the Navy Board: “Please to order his Majesty’s Bark the Endeavour to be supply’d with eight Tonns of Iron Ballast.” Cook left behind voluminous logs and journals; the entries in these, too, are generally bloodless.

“Punished Richard Hutchins, seaman, with 12 lashes for disobeying commands,” he wrote, on April 16, 1769, when the Endeavour was anchored off Tahiti.
“Most part of these 24 hours Cloudy, with frequent Showers of Rain,” he observed, from the same spot, on May 25th.
The captain, as one of his biographers has put it, had “no natural gift for rhapsody.” Sides writes, “It could be said that he lived during a romantic age of exploration, but he was decidedly not a romantic.”

Still, feelings and opinions do sometimes creep into Cook’s writing.
He is by turns charmed and appalled by the novel customs he encounters.
A group of Tahitians cook a dog for him; he finds it very tasty and resolves “for the future never to dispise Dog’s flesh.” He sees some islanders eat the lice that they have picked out of their hair and declares this highly “disagreeable.”

Many of the Indigenous people Cook met had never before seen a European.
Cook recognized it was in his interest to convince them that he came in friendship; he also saw that, in case persuasion failed, the main advantage he possessed was guns.

In a journal entry devoted to the Endeavour’s first landing in New Zealand, near present-day Gisborne, Cook treats the killing of the Māori as regrettable but justified.
The British had attempted to take some Māori men on board their ship to demonstrate that their intentions were peaceful.
But this gesture was—understandably—misinterpreted.
The Māori hurled their canoe paddles at the British, who responded by firing at them.
Cook acknowledges “that most Humane men” will condemn the killings.
But, he declares, “I was not to stand still and suffer either myself or those that were with me to be knocked on the head.”

After mapping both New Zealand’s North and South Islands, Cook headed to Australia, then known as New Holland.
The Endeavour worked its way to the country’s northernmost point, which Cook named York Cape (and which is now called Cape York).
The inhabitants of the coast made it clear that they wanted nothing to do with the British.
Cook left gifts onshore, but they remained untouched.

Cook’s response to the Aboriginal Australians is one of the most often cited passages from his journals.
In it, he seems to foresee—and regret—the destruction of Indigenous cultures which his own expeditions will facilitate.
“From what I have said of the Natives of New Holland they may appear to some to be the most wretched People upon Earth; but in reality they are far more happier than we Europeans,” he writes.

The earth and Sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for Life.
They covet not Magnificient Houses, Household-stuff, etc.; they live in a Warm and fine Climate, and enjoy every wholesome Air.
They seem’d to set no Value upon anything we gave them, nor would they ever part with anything of their own for any one Article we could offer them.
This, in my opinion, Argues that they think themselves provided with all the necessarys of Life, and that they have no Superfluities.

If Cook’s first voyage failed to turn up the missing continent or to calculate the Earth’s distance from the sun, imperially speaking it was a resounding success: the captain had claimed both New Zealand and the east coast of Australia for Britain.
(In neither case had Cook sought or secured the “Consent of the Natives,” but this lapse doesn’t seem to have troubled the Admiralty.) The very next year, Cook was dispatched again, this time in command of two ships, the Resolution and the Adventure.
Navy brass continued to insist that Terra Australis Incognita was out there somewhere—presumably farther south than the Endeavour had ventured—and on his second voyage Cook was supposed to keep sailing until he found it.
He crossed and recrossed the Antarctic Circle, at one point getting as far as seventy-one degrees south.
Conditions on the Southern Ocean were generally terrible—frigid and foggy.
Still, there was no sign of a continent.
Cook ventured that if there were any land nearer to the pole it would be so hemmed in by ice that it would “never be explored.” (Antarctica would not be sighted for almost fifty years.)

Once more, Cook hadn’t found what he was seeking, but upon his return he was again hailed as a hero.
Britain’s leading scientific institution, the Royal Society, granted him its highest honor, the Copley Medal, and the Navy rewarded him with a cushy desk job.
The expectation was that he would settle down, enjoy his sinecure, and finally spend some time with his family.
Instead, he set out on yet another expedition.

“The Wide Wide Sea” focusses almost exclusively on Cook’s third—and for him fatal—voyage.
Sides portrays Cook’s decision to undertake it as an act of hubris; the captain, he writes, “could scarcely imagine failure.” The journey got off to an inauspicious start.
Cook’s second-in-command, Charles Clerke, was to captain a ship called the Discovery, while Cook, once again, sailed on the Resolution.
When both vessels were scheduled to depart, in July, 1776, Clerke was nowhere to be found.
(Thanks to the improvidence of a brother, he’d been tossed in debtors’ prison.) Cook set off without him.
A few weeks later, the Resolution nearly crashed into one of the Cape Verde Islands, a mishap that Sides sees as a portent.
The ship, it turned out, also leaked terribly—another bad sign.

The plan for the third voyage was more or less the inverse of the second’s.
Cook’s instructions were to head north and to look not for land but for its absence.
The Admiralty wanted him to find a seaway around Canada—the fabled Northwest Passage.
Generations of sailors had sought the passage from the Atlantic and been blocked by ice.
Cook was to probe from the opposite direction.

The expedition also had a secondary aim involving a Polynesian named Mai.
Mai came from the Society Islands, and in 1773 he had talked his way on board the Adventure.
Arriving in London the following year, he entranced the British aristocracy.
He sat in on sessions of Parliament, learned to hunt grouse, met the King, and, according to Sides, became “something of a card sharp.” But, after two years of entertaining toffs, Mai wanted to go home.
It fell to Cook to take him, along with a barnyard’s worth of livestock that King George III was sending as a gift.

Clerke, on the Discovery, finally caught up to Cook in Cape Town, where the Resolution was docked for provisioning and repairs.
Together, the two ships sailed away from Africa and stopped off in Tasmania.
In February, 1777, they pulled into Queen Charlotte Sound, a long, narrow inlet in the northeast corner of New Zealand’s South Island.
There, more trouble awaited.

Cook had visited Queen Charlotte Sound (which he had named) four times before.
During his second voyage, it had been the site of a singularly gruesome disaster.
Ten of Cook’s men—sailors on the Adventure—had gone ashore to gather provisions.
The Māori had slain and, it was said, eaten them.

Cook wasn’t in New Zealand when the slaughter took place; the Adventure and the Resolution had been separated in a fog.
But, on his way back to England, he heard rumblings about it from the crew of a Dutch vessel that the Resolution encountered at sea.
Cook was reluctant to credit the rumors.
He wrote that he would withhold judgment on the “Melancholy affair” until he had learned more.
“I must however observe in favour of the New Zealanders that I have allways found them of a Brave, Noble, Open and benevolent disposition,” he added.

By the time of the third voyage, Cook knew the stories he’d heard were, broadly speaking, accurate.
Why, then, did he return to the scene of the carnage? Sides argues that Cook was still searching for answers.
The captain, he writes, thought the massacre “demanded an inquiry and a reckoning, however long overdue.”

In his investigation, Cook was aided by Mai, whose native language was similar to Māori.
The sequence of events that Mai helped piece together began with the theft of some bread.
The leader of the British crew had reacted to this petty crime by shooting not only the thief but also a second Māori man.
In retaliation, the Māori had killed all ten British sailors and chopped up their bodies.
Eventually, Cook learned who had led the retaliatory raid—a pugnacious local chief named Kahura.
One day, Mai pointed him out to Cook.
The following day, the captain invited Kahura on board the Resolution and ushered him down into his private cabin.
Instead of shooting Kahura, Cook had his draftsman draw a portrait of him.

Mai found Cook’s conduct unfathomable.
“Why do you not kill him?” he cried.
Cook’s men, too, were infuriated.
They made fun of his forbearance by staging a mock trial.
One of the sailors had adopted a Polynesian dog known as a kurī.
(The breed is now extinct.) The men accused the dog of cannibalism, found it guilty as charged, then killed and ate it.

Sides doesn’t think that Cook knew about the cannibal burlesque, but the captain, he says, sensed his crew’s disaffection.
And this, Sides argues, caused something in Cook to snap.
For Cook, he writes, the “visit to Queen Charlotte Sound became a sharp turning point.” It would be the last time that the captain would be accused of leniency.

As evidence of Cook’s changed outlook, Sides relates an incident that occurred eight months after the trial of the dog, this one featuring a pregnant goat.
The Resolution had anchored off Moorea, one of the Society Islands, and animals from the ship’s travelling menagerie had been left to graze onshore.
One day, a goat went missing.
Cook was told that the animal had been taken to a village on the opposite end of the island.
With three dozen men, he marched to the village and torched it.
(Most of the villagers had fled before he arrived.) The next day, the goat still had not been returned, and the British continued their rampage.
Such was the level of destruction, one of Cook’s men noted in his journal, that it “could scarcely be repaired in a century.” Another crew member expressed shock at the captain’s “precipitate proceeding,” which, he said, violated “any principle one can form of justice.”

Having wrecked much of Moorea, Cook couldn’t leave Mai there, so he installed him and his livestock on the nearby island of Huahine.
A few years later, Mai died, apparently from a virus introduced by yet another boatload of European sailors.

Cook spent several months searching fruitlessly along the coast of Alaska for the Northwest Passage.
But, on the journey north from Huahine, he had stumbled upon something arguably better—the Hawaiian Islands.
In January, 1778, the Resolution and the Discovery stopped in Kauai.
The following January, they landed at Kealakekua Bay, on the Big Island.

What the Hawaiians thought of the strange men who appeared on strange ships has been much debated in academic circles.
(Two prominent anthropologists, Marshall Sahlins, of the University of Chicago, and Gananath Obeyesekere, of Princeton, engaged in a high-profile feud on the subject which spanned decades.) Cook and his men happened to have landed on the Big Island at the height of an important festival.
The captain was greeted by thousands of people invoking Lono, a god associated with peace and fertility.
According to some scholars, the Hawaiians gathered for the festival saw Cook as the embodiment of Lono.
According to others, they saw him as someone playacting Lono, and, according to still others, the whole Cook-as-Lono story is a myth created by Europeans.
What Cook himself thought is unknown, because no logs or journal entries from the last few weeks of his life survive.
It is possible that he just let his record-keeping slide, and it is also possible that the entries contained compromising information and were destroyed by the Admiralty.

After Cook had been on the Big Island for several days, King Kalani‘ōpu‘u appeared with a fleet of war canoes.
(He had, it seems, been off fighting on another island.) At first, Kalani‘ōpu‘u welcomed the British—he presented Cook with a magnificent cloak made of feathers, and he dined several times on the Resolution—then he indicated that it was time for them to go.
It’s unclear whether the King’s impatience reflected the religious calendar—the festival associated with Lono had concluded—or more mundane concerns, such as feeding so many hungry sailors, but Cook got the message.
The expedition soon departed, only to suffer another mishap.
The foremast of the Resolution snapped.
There was no way for it to go forward, so both ships made their way back to Kealakekua Bay.

It was while the British were trying to repair the Resolution that someone made off with the small boat and Cook decided to take the King hostage.
The captain had often resorted to this tactic to get—or get back—what he wanted; it had usually worked well for him, but never before had he dealt with someone as powerful as Kalani‘ōpu‘u.
Cook was leading the King down to the beach—Kalani‘ōpu‘u seems to have been convinced he was being invited for another friendly meal—when warriors started to emerge from the trees.
Sides argues that Cook could have saved himself had he simply turned and run, but, as one of his men put it, “he too wrongly thought that the flash of a musket would disperse the whole island.” In the fighting that ensued, Cook, four of his men, and as many as thirty Hawaiians were killed.
As was customary on the island, Cook’s body was burned.
Some of his singed bones were returned to the British; those that remained in Hawaii, according to Sides, were later paraded around as part of the festival associated with Lono.

Though Sides says he wants to “reckon anew” with Cook, it’s not exactly clear what this would entail at a time when the captain has already been—figuratively, at least—sawed off at the ankles.
“The Wide Wide Sea” portrays Cook as a complicated figure, driven by instincts and motives that often seem to have been opaque even to him.
Although it’s no hagiography, the book is also not likely to rattle teacups at the Captain Cook Society, members of which receive a quarterly publication devoted entirely to Cook-related topics.

 

Like all biographies, “The Wide Wide Sea” emphasizes agency.
Cook may be an ambivalent, even self-contradictory figure; still, it’s his actions and decisions that drive the narrative forward.
But, as Cook himself seemed to have realized, and on occasion lamented, he was but an instrument in a much, much larger scheme.
The whole reason the British sent him off to seek Terra Australis Incognita was that they feared a rival power would reach it first.
If Cook hadn’t hoisted what he called the “English Colours” on what’s still known as Possession Island, in northern Queensland, it seems fair to assume that another captain would have claimed Australia for England or for some other European nation.
Similarly, if Cook’s men hadn’t brought sexually transmitted diseases to the Hawaiian Islands, then sailors from a different ship would have done so.
Colonialism and its attendant ills were destined to reach the many paradisaical places Cook visited and mapped, although, without his undeniable navigational skills, that might have taken a few years more.

Links :

• The Guardian : We retraced Captain Cook’s journey along the east coast of Australia, seeking the other side of history. It was life changing
• GeoGarage blog : An enthralling account of Captain Cook's final, fatal voyage / Capt. James Cook raised an ocean of knowledge / James Cook: The Voyages / The story of a ship that changed the world / 'Legendary' map of Pacific by James Cook's Tahitian ... / Wreckage of Captain Cook's HMS Endeavour discovered / World Globe 1790 - David Rumsey Historical Map Collection / 11 of History's most famous sea voyages / These maps show the epic quest for a Northwest Passage / The island that humans can't conquer

S-101: the next generation of Electronic Navigational Charts (ENCs)

 

From Admiralty by Thomas Mellor

What is S-101?

As part of the International Hydrographic Organization’s (IHO) new S-100 data framework, S-101 is the new standard being introduced for Electronic Navigational Charts (ENCs). 

 

 Some of the most relevant S-100 products:
S-101 Electronic Navigational Chart (ENC): 

S-101 is the new product specification for Electronic Navigational Chart (ENC) datasets. It includes most of the characteristics of the current S-57 based ENCs but improves elements that will benefit from a more flexible framework. Compared to S-57, S-101 will enable easier data updating processes, software enhancements and improved symbology. Ultimately, S-101 will replace S-57 as the official chart data for ECDIS, as well as provide the base layer for all S-100 products and underpin e-navigation services development.
S-102 Bathymetric Surface: 

S-102 will provide maritime users with detailed bathymetric data as a coverage layer to improve decision making on ship navigation and for other purposes. S-102 enables end-users to generate 3D visualisations of underwater ocean floors, so-called high-definition gridded bathymetry (HDGB), to support safety at sea, facilitate precise navigation and improve route planning operations for navigators and pilots.
S-104 Water Level Information for Surface Navigation: S-104 is intended for the encapsulation and data transfer of tidal and water level data for use in an ECDIS or any proposed dynamic tide application. Tidal and water level predictions are fundamental in route planning and entry to ports for navigation and other purposes.
S-111 Surface Currents: An understanding of surface currents is an important factor in the safety of navigation as currents affect the motion of vessels. Surface current information may be considered auxiliary information that complements the S-101 ENC.
S-122 Marine Protected Areas: S-122 is intended to encode Marine Protected Area (MPA) information for use in ECDIS and other information systems. MPAs are protected areas of seas, oceans, estuaries, or large lakes. Marine Protected Area information may be considered supplementary additional information that complements the S-101 ENC.
S-129 Under Keel Clearance Management: S-129 intends to support maritime safety and efficiency of marine traffic by focusing on the clearance between vessel keel and bottom.
S-129 will help navigators plan sailings in areas with small margins between keel and vessel and provide information on the optimal sailing time based on water levels.

source : IHO

S-101 will be the product specification that defines how hydrographic offices construct and distribute ENCs for display in ECDIS, replacing the current standard, S-57, and will be fully interoperable with a wide range of other hydrographic and marine data sets as part of the wider S-100 ecosystem. 

Why introduce a new standard for ENCs?

First developed back in 1992, S-57 was hugely successful in standardising how hydrographic data is created and shared.

With the turn of the century, the industry saw the widespread adoption of digital navigation, including the mandatory carriage of ECDIS for all large vessels enforced by 2016.

Today, ENCs are the primary choice for navigation for the global fleet.

It is thanks to S-57 that over 50,000 vessels sailing internationally can rely on ENCs from over 100 different producers to be delivered in a common format – enabling seamless display on over 50 different ECDIS models.

But navigation technology has developed significantly in recent years and is being further enabled by remarkable advances in maritime connectivity.

As hydrographic offices seek to develop new data products, S-57 lacks the flexibility to truly accommodate mariners’ evolving needs.

So, by building on the success of its predecessor, S-100 is now being introduced as a universal data framework.

For the first time, this framework will not only accommodate ENCs, but also a range of other marine data formats including bathymetry, water levels, surface currents, and more.

How will S-101 ENCs differ to existing ENCs?

S-101 will be the base layer for other interoperable data sets and will be much more flexible in accommodating a wide range of much richer information.

While many aspects of the ENC will remain the same, there will be some key differences in the portrayal of navigational data – all developed with the mariner in mind.

Familiar look and feel

S-101 ENCs will actually retain the same familiar look and feel as the S-57 ENCs that mariners have come to rely upon. 

This is intentional; ENC producers understand that familiarity is key to situational awareness and navigational safety on the bridge.

Therefore, when introducing a new generation of S-101 ENCs, the portrayal of information has been designed to be as clear and intuitive as possible.

Some subtle improvements have been made based on mariner feedback, which are explored in detail below.

 

Example of an S-101 ENC (Credit: OSI)

Intelligent text placement 

When navigating using ECDIS, clarity and confidence is key.

However, often ECDIS users have to turn off textual information on an ENC in order to reduce clutter on screen, which can detract from important navigational information.

Similarly, text can often become overlaid and difficult to read.

In S-101 ENCs, intelligent text placement will be introduced, allowing for text to be positioned in a clearer, more user-friendly way.

Subtle improvements to the direction of text (e.g. along channels), deconflicting overlaid text, and positioning text more clearly around land boundaries will enable mariners to keep textual information turned on.

This will result in less clutter on screen and greater clarity on the bridge.

 

One major improvement of S-101 as compared to S-57 is the possibility for the cartographer to “control” the placement of a text on the ECDIS, so as to avoid overlap with other features or texts and allow mariners for a better readability. 

 

 This possibility is implemented by the cartographic feature “Text Placement”

 

Text placement on an S-57 ENC compared to an S-101 ENC

Improved buoyage symbology

Another visual improvement being introduced with S-101 ENCs is the display of buoyage.

Currently, the symbols for buoys on ENCs lack the helpful colour coding that can be found on paper charts.

Based on mariner feedback, the buoyage symbology in S-101 ENCs has been redesigned to allow for colour coding to help improve situational awareness.

This means if the mariner looks out the window at a cardinal buoy with yellow and black markings, the symbol on the ENC will display the same colours for additional clarity.

Current buoy symbology as displayed on an ENC

Colour buoy symbology in an S-101 ENC

(Credit: OSI)

Reduced alarm fatigue

Another issue raised by mariners that is being addressed with S-101 ENCs is the problem of alarm fatigue.

Often mariners have to deal with false or unnecessary alarms or warnings when planning and monitoring routes, which can become distracting and increase stress on the bridge – which can pose a risk to navigational safety.

To mitigate this, the IHO have reviewed the set features that would traditionally raise alarms of warnings within an ECDIS system, such as caution areas or obstructions.

S-101 ENCs will be encoded more intelligently with new ‘information objects’, which contain metadata about the ENC – which essentially gives ENCs producers more flexibility to encode features into an ENC in a way which doesn’t trigger unnecessary alarms and indications for the user.

Improved cyber resilience

Cyber security is undoubtably an increasing point of concern for mariners in today’s increasingly digital world. 

With improved encryption and a more robust security scheme, S-101 ENCs – and S-100 data as a whole – will be more resilient to modern cyber threats.

As S-100 data is produced, new security schemes will mean that it will have to be digitally authenticated at every stage of the data pipeline – from when it leaves the hydrographic office, all the way to a vessels’ ECDIS. 

This provides extra assurance of the security and integrity of the data being used to navigate.

Future-proof for autonomous vessels

 

 Image credit: Tom Dickenson for ProMare IBM 

 

Current ENCs have been optimised for human interpretation; they are specifically designed for use by a skilled mariner in conjunction with other complementary navigational information.

However, with the introduction of automated and autonomous technologies, S-100 data needs to be compatible and operational for vessels navigating without a full crew on board.

As such, S-100 data (including S-101 ENCs) will be fully machine readable and futureproof for the requirements of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS), and the UKHO are currently leading a working group with other IHO members to fully understand and accommodate the evolving requirements for MASS technologies.

What does this mean for shipping companies?

Below are some of the frequently asked questions and key considerations from users, as posed at our recent panel discussions.

How will this impact data sizes? 

Thanks to advances in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite infrastructure, recent years have seen a significant improvement in maritime connectivity, which has enabled much more efficient and affordable data transfer from ship to shore – which we expect will continue to improve as the S-100 standards are made available over the coming years.

Currently the maximum file size for an S-57 ENC cell is capped at 5MB.

For S-100 data, this cap will be increased to 10MB to allow for richer data to be delivered to the mariner where beneficial, including other products within the S-100 ecosystem such as S-102 bathymetry surface data. 

This does not mean all S-101 ENCs will be closer to 10MB in size, but it does provide a limit to the maximum file size that can be created by a hydrographic office.

The actual data sizes will depend entirely on the requirements of the navigator. 

For example, richer data will be able to be delivered for navigationally complex areas such as port approaches, where mariners would benefit from high resolution data to enhance navigational safety and precision. 

However that granularity of information will not necessarily be required for ENC cells far out at sea.

How will this impact requirements for crew training?

 

In n order to be used safely and effectively, it will undoubtedly be important for crews to be trained and familiarised in the use of S-100 data.

In recognition of this, international committees are currently looking into the training requirements for S-100.

Any updates to seafarer training will be agreed and shared ahead of the implementation of S-100 data, so that mariners can confidently realise the benefits S-100 has to offer.

When will mariners be able to use S-101 ENCs?

The International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) new performance standard will allow shipping companies to fit S-100-enabled ECDIS from 2026.

 

Marks (ed. 1.2.0) 

We are continuing to work closely with ECDIS manufacturers and other hydrographic offices to develop, test and trial S-100 data in line with the development of new S-100-enabled ECDIS models.

This does not mean S-57 data will become obsolete from 2026; new S-100-enabled ECDIS will also support the display of S-57 data alongside the new S-100 products. 

 from static to dynamic

 

From 2029, all new ECDIS installed should conform with the S-100 performance standard and the IMO will retire the current performance standard (S-57).

In practical terms, this means that any new ECDIS fitted on board (including retrofits) will have to be S-100 compatible from 2029. 

 

Links :

• Admiralty : S-57 to S-101: Explaining the IHO standards for ECDIS
• IHO : NOAA's s-57 to s-101 ENC production transition plan  / S-57 to S-101 Conversion Guidance (draft) / s-100 Project
• Hydro : Technology in Focus: S-101 – The new IHO Electronic Navigational Chart Product Specification / Key step forward in smart navigation with S-100 standards
• CHS : s-100 products and services 
  
• GeoGarage blog : A new generation of data standards