14 posts tagged “environment”

Divers love coral reefs. Why wouldn't we? They're the lungs of the ocean, and provide ample living space for the lovely creatures we enjoy staring at under the sea.

Turns out the economic value these cavalcades of beauty manifest is even more dramatic than previously thought. A new NYT article discusses tourism, why people flock to coral seas, and how much money that brings in around the world.

Of course, it leaves aside questions of how these hordes affect the reefs themselves, and who profits most from all the money that's being made -- but answering those questions is what my book's for, I guess.

And mainland public works projects are just hastening the extinction train's journey down the tracks. So says Kunitoshi Sakurai, president of Okinawa University, in today's Asahi Shimbun.

Hint: he's right.

Well, that was worth the wait.

The first confrontation between protesters and the Japanese government featured dozens of boats, multiple helicopters, a plane, canoeists, divers and snorkelers. I saw 60 and 70 year old women take on intimidating Coast Guard patrol boats on the open sea. I have about a zillion stories already that I'm itching to tell, and if they had wireless internet at Henoko, this would be the best blog ever. As it stands, it's probably for the best that I get to save that stuff for the book.

Private contractors were attempting to complete environmental surveys, a precursor to the new base. They were met with a sit-in on land and more than they bargained for at sea:

The jeitai (Japanese Self Defense Force) has not yet shown up as expected, although there's still a two-week window where they're set to do maneuvers in Okinawa. Today the Japanese Coast Guard proved that they could be pretty imposing, too, videotaping constantly and breaking out about a half-dozen small boats. Here, they try to separate a protester from his position helping to surround a private contractor vessel:

Coast guard vessels dispatched from two huge cutters, and occasionally returned to refuel. For the most part, dialogue was cordial, due in large measure to charismatic protest leader Natsume Taira.

I'm reading this LA Times series, which won the Pulitzer prize, for inspiration and depression. It's about how humans are killing the oceans, a task previously thought impossible. Let's hear it for modern ingenuity.

A group of friends and I were out snorkeling the other day, and I remarked about a study I'd read. The study said that coral as we know it might be extinct by 2030. I like to think this encouraged us to enjoy it now more than it brought us down, but you never know.

Okinawa's environment is special. All you need to do is walk, bike or paddle around to see it. Ecologists look for ways to assess that specialness -- I look for ways to express it to readers.

The reason I'm writing this book is simple: I think if people get to know the Okinawa I know, they'll love it as much as I do, and be inspired to come enjoy it, which will inspire folks further to protect this precious place. If you can't be here in the forest and see a velvety-blue butterfly land on a broadleafed, rain-flecked leaf, I'll try to tell you as much as I can about the place where such scenes are common, though never pedestrian.

But that's fun stuff, seeing animals and plants in the wild. The work comes in crunching numbers and explaining why bloodless calculations matter.

For starters, some people still don't get why biodiversity is so important. Even if you don't believe, as I do, that life is intrinsically valuable and worth preserving, there are other reasons. Ecology enriches our lives in so many ways, from aesthetics to medical advances. More, we're learning that species loss in places like the ocean threatens the web of life itself, as this paper in the journal Science (abstract available to non-subscribers) demonstrates.

Places like Okinawa are essential to global species diversity, particularly in the ocean. But how do we know this? How do we demonstrate it?

Rare species are especially important if they are what's called endemic -- that is, they occur nowhere else but this particular earthly home. We've talked lots about the ocean, so let's talk about terrestrial ecology for a minute.

The Yanbaru forest up north contains many of Japan's endemic species. There are 17 types of indigenous birds here, including the famous Okinawa woodpecker and Yanbaru kuina. There are also endemic mammals like the Ryukyu long-tailed rat, and reptiles like the red-streaked Ryukyu yamagame (mountain turtle):

For a science-heavy examination of endemism in Okinawa, especially Yanbaru, check this PDF out. Short version: Okinawa has significantly more endemic species than anyplace else in Japan, and even environmentally significant Hokkaido pales in comparison to the great forests here just about however you look -- more different types of tree, more different animals, more different insects.

Yes, more different insects. Hey, nobody said biodiversity was always easy for hikers.

Next up: interview folks from this group. I've got a framework for understanding the ecology of the region: now I want to talk to the scientists on the ground who are working hard to understand it.

What we know about Okinawa now is more than enough to justify passionate efforts to preserve it. And we're learning more each day.

Okinawa's hot and humid climate affects the people here in numerous way. Handkerchiefs are standard fare everywhere. Cool ice tea is ubiquitous in summer. And clothes have to breathe.

The warmth also brings particular types of trees. Perhaps nothing shows how Okinawan culture has adapted to the natural environment than bashofu, the practice of making light, breathable clothing from banana fiber. Yesterday I watched artisans at the Ogimi workshop and village in northern Okinawa engage in this centuries-old tradition.

Fiber is drawn from the Ito-Basho [pdf], which is the type of banana tree that does not produce edible fruit. Ryukyuan traders brought the tree to Okinawa in the 13th or 14th century, likely from southern China or Malaysia. This is the Ito-Basho:

I witnessed about two dozen weavers making fabric from the long, fibrous strands. Photography isn't allowed inside the studio itself, so I can't show you the actual work being done. I can tell you, however, that the male-to-female ratio inside the studio is roughly 12:1. If I were a young man in Ogimi village, I would study weaving.

Commonly, the clothes are dyed with bark from the sharinbai, an evergreen shrub. The bark is shown below:

This link has a history of bashofu weaving, including the post-war collapse of the industry after cheap western clothing came onto the market. Once mass produced cotton became available, bashofu dwindled. Thankfully, it's being revived.

Not just clothing, either: the Ogimi workshop displays various artistic items, handbags and wall hangings, the local three-stringed banjo and more::

The clothes are beautiful, functional and very expensive. Yes, that link points to a $2100 children's kimono. That's what the market dictates for the hours of time and care it takes to produce material of this nature.

I had hoped to get a bashofu shirt for myself, but they didn't have any available. Besides, I didn't have an extra $1000 or so. But I wanted to support the locals and look good at the same time, so I purchased my first-ever bolo tie (modeled below with my friend Chihiro, a tour conductor from the mainland):

You might say that I should try the bolo with a dress shirt. I would retort that the juxtaposition of timeless craftwork with the type of $10 t-shirt that nearly led to its extinction here is a beautiful irony.

The student had already started pulling the two sea hares apart when the purple ink began to flow. The creatures excrete the colorful substance to deter predators, explained the professor. Was that also the reason these two congregated together, another student mused?

Oh no, he said, they're probably mating.

It's not my habit to interrupt the sex acts of invertebrates, but it's not like I could prevent others from doing so. Besides, the rich purple color was intriguing, and taking pictures beats stumbling around trying to take notes in the dark. We continued to ruin the sea hares' Saturday night attempts at wild times. They're hermaphrodites, so I didn't feel too bad -- their dating pool is twice the size of yours or mine.

I was tagging along with Dr. Robert Bolland's marine biology class at the University of Maryland's Asia campus here. An extreme minus tide would allow us access to nooks and crannies previously unnavigable.  Dr. Bolland, a well-regarded biologist that I'd briefly interviewed for a story, took us to the south end of Onna flats. That's site six on this map, and it included a wet slog through a sequence of caves along with a trip to the small island Americans call Goat Island.

Dr. Bolland's been out here for decades. We walked across the flats, pausing occasionally. He pointed out a head of live coral that looks sadly out of place amongst all its the dead, petrified cousins.

“It wasn't so long ago – 10 years, maybe – that I'd come out here and all of this would be alive,” he said. 

What are the problems? Elevated water temperature from global warming and red clay runoff from development on land. The silty, sticky soil seeps into the ocean after trees and grasses are removed. This chokes out the coral and helps spread disease.

That's not the only problem from development out here. As the tide pulled back, we saw this sewer pipe from one of the local hotels. Stories abound about the big resorts -- which are owned almost exclusively by big corporations from the mainland -- playing fast and loose with their waste.

Bolland is not one to softplay his take on environmental issues. “The tidelands are a disaster,” he said. “It's more than a little bit depressing.”

Yet there are still wonders here.

The glowing orange tubastrea, a stony coral known as cup coral, shone in the night. Most coral has symbiotic algae content that helps supply it with nutrients, but not tubastrea -- it has to rely on directly drawing nutrition from the water. Hence, it is found in the caves, where more edible plankton is found.

Outside the caves brought different sights. This sea cucumber uses sticky emissions to hamstring a crab's attempt to pinch of bits of it. If you get some on your hands, be sure to pick up a bunch of sand to abrade the gunk off of yourself – if you absentmindedly touch an eye, it can harm your sight.

A small pencil slate urchin moved around slowly but perciptibly:

Then there were the dangerous beauties, such as this diadema urchin, whose long spines contain dangerous venom.

A cone shell is toxic, too, but some researchers believe its venom will ultimately be used to treat diseases. For now, though, don't pick one of these up. 

Creatures normally found in open water made appearances, like this octopus: 

A vermillion sea star, which one sees out here only at night: 

And an eel stranded in a tidepool by the withdrawing tide:

I asked Dr. Bolland about his prognosis for places like this. Can the coral recover? Maybe, the answer came, but slowly. He doesn't expect to see coral like a decade ago again, at least not in his lifetime. The Japanese are using this as a resort island. Since development is such a problem already, and there's more to come, well ... 

"There is no real good news. It just makes you sick," he said.

After meandering through the darkened caves and miraculously making it out without my ninth (yes, ninth) concussion, I strolled home to transcribe my notes and think about what he'd said. In the second miracle of the night, my hastily scrawled recordings were legible. Stranger still, a large mosquito had somehow managed to fly into my notebook during  the evening and -- without successfully biting me -- become pressed perfectly flat between the pages. 

The ecology is rich out here, it flies into your notebook and dies before you even notice. Notice what I said: before you even notice. 

One leap forward, two leaps back
Will politics get me the sack?
Here comes the future and you can't run from it
If you've got a blacklist, I want to be on it.
-- Billy Bragg, "Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards"

There's an old French proverb that says those who do not do politics will be done in by politics. Economics, too. Both of those disciplines are fundamental to survival for individuals, families, countries and neglected prefectures.

This is why Okinawan politicians talk extensively about the economy. This is probably why business-centric candidates keep getting election. Now, in an interview with Sekai Nippo editor Yoshiaki Konishita, Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima has vowed to "invest [his] total energy in “Okinawa’s Great Leap Forward.”

Nice choice of words. Holy Mao Tse-tung, Batman, has Okinawa's conservative governor turned pink with a rhetorical flourish?

Hardly. It's a steady diet of market solutions. This is backed by some intriguing data. Tourism, as the governor correctly notes, has grown steadily in the last five years. Managed correctly, it's probably Okinawa's best shot at a sustainable industry. 

But that's a key caveat. It matters a great deal that the word "environment" appears nowhere in the interview, and has been similarly absent from Nakaima's other public pronouncements. Take certain meanings from this. The governor is interested in following through on campaign promises to his core business constituency. The governor is primarily interested in tourism as a short-term cash cow.  

The economic realities on the ground are bleak. Young Okinawans I speak with are almost all concerned about what they'll do for work, how challenging it will be to build a financially independent life. 

I'm consistently amazed, though, at how well-informed every Okinawan is about the ecology of their island. When I was growing up in Oregon, I often wondered what I'd do to make ends meet as an adult. I was woefully ignorant of the profound ecological riches around me. The kids here know about the dugong, the yanbaru kuina, the noguchigera, and in many cases the effect of red soil runoff on coral reefs.

This is significant. A job as a kayak guide will last precisely as long as there are wild and wonderful places to lead awestruck visitors.

Okinawa's Great Leap Forward takes place in hiking boots or beach sandals. Without forests and coral, any economic growth here won't last long. Younger people, even those reliant on development, realize this. Does the governor?

We were about to hop into the dive boat at Yomitan port when I made the connection.

Just two days before, I knew, commercial fishermen had netted a pregnant female great white off Okinawa's coast. Off the coast of Yomitan, actually. Near the port. The port from whence we were about to depart.

From a rational perspective, this meant nothing. It was the first great white seen near Yomitan in 10 years. White sharks don't commonly come this far north, so they're rarely seen around Okinawa's main island. Still, I was suddenly glad someone had taught me the Japanese term for gooseflesh, torihada ga tatsu, because I certainly had that going on as I thought about the 16-foot-long creature that had been in this water.

Shudder-wise, you can talk all day about the statistics, about how only four or five people die a year on average from shark attacks, about how you're more likely to be hit by lightning, or be crushed by a vending machine (especially here, where coin-dispensed refreshment is ubiquitous). There's still that tingly sensation of primal fright. At least for me.

Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a book about the origins of conflict postulating that our genetic memory as humans contains a fear response from the time when we were prey for animals, not predators. In less flowery language, we're all afraid of being killed and eaten. I buy this, and I'm comfortable with my current spot on the food chain. While other divers actively seek out these admittedly magnificent animals, I'll take my chances with the sharks at the poker table, thanks.

And they are magnificent. Admiration from afar is still admiration, mind. You'd have to be incapable of awe to not be impressed by that mass of muscle and sinew, that perfect eating machine.

Awe isn't always productive. Famously, Peter Benchley's book and film Jaws painted the great white as a deadly man-eater. Overfishing -- for sport, out of fear, or for trade in valuable teeth and fins -- depleted populations worldwide. The shark was added to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species' list of endangered animals in 2004. 

Though the pregnant female shark caught here died, her seven offspring were brought to Churaumi aquarium in an effort to save them. Okinawa's aquarium actually indirectly assisted with great white research before, when their tank design inspired a facility in California to make some shark-friendly adjustments.

White sharks have had a tough time surviving in captivity, for some of the same reasons they're flagging in the wild. We just don't know as much about them, or how they fit into the ecosystem, as we should. That's changing. As Peter Benchley himself realized, humans are more of a threat to the shark than vice versa, and increasing our base of knowledge is essential to undoing the damage.

Last week, another white shark was found off the coast of Ishigaki, about 275 miles south of here. They're more common in the southern islands than they are where I live.

Only one person has been killed by a shark in Okinawa since the island's reversion to Japanese control in 1972. That was in 1996, more than 10 years ago, when a Miyako resident (scroll down) was bitten during a coral reef survey.

The great white that bit this unfortunate gentleman was similar in size to our pregnant beastie -- five meters in length, about 16.5 feet long. For a more poignant comparison, the smaller of the two whale sharks I swam with last week was four meters. Watch those YouTube videos and imagine a great white shark about three-and-a-half feet longer than the little one.

Usually, I try to share pictures of the incredible creatures I encounter while diving. Intellectually, I understand that I'll probably never see a great white in the wild, and if I were to see one of these toothy monsters, it would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Fundamentally, though, I hope the only great white pictures you see here are from a Google Image search. I always want the great white to roam the ocean's depths. I'd prefer if its journeys kept it a healthy distance from me.

It was almost enough to make a guy feel guilty. After taking two batches of visitors snorkeling under sub-optimal weather and tide circumstances, today the skies cleared and the currents cooperated. Perfection for snorkeling, and I had the beach all to myself.

Yeah, I felt guilt. Not enough to keep me dry, though.

The sun was shining. Almost no wind. The tide was in, making the entry at the Sunabe seawall much easier. I floated out into clear blue seas, watching the unmoving brilliant corals. Today the fish were shy, though.

Fish behavior is unlike human behavior. The prettiest ones rarely want to be the center of attention. Diving is an advantage, since you don't have that old bugaboo called buoyancy keeping you at the surface, nor do you require the occasional breath of oxygen. Despite the excellent conditions, I was having a tough time drawing a bead on any of my scaly brethren, so I had to content myself with paddling around and getting a photo-free gander.

Then I saw it: the invasive species responsible for destroying coral here and in Australia, the Crown-of-Thorns Starfish. Unlike the lovely fish, it doesn't swim away, so I got a shot of it and thought about how to proceed.

During my first encounter with this vile creature, I wasn't certain enough of my identification to take steps. This time, there was no doubt I was looking at the reef-murderer itself.

Multiple means are used to eradicate the Crown-of-Thorns, none of which I had at my disposal. Out here they like to remove the beast from the ocean entirely, but in my snorkeling gear, I didn't even have protective gloves. Still, I wanted to try something.I toed at it with my stiff, long dive flipper. The environmental scourge was softer than you might think, though I had no luck dislodging it at first.

So I did what any responsible ecologist (or drunken redneck) would have done. I kicked the absolute snot out of it.

This is how justice looks. Very blurry, that justice.

These creatures can regenerate, so I wanted to do as much damage to it (and as little damage to the coral) as possible.

After a few minutes of careful kicking -- I didn't want to harm the coral beneath, nor did I want to be accidentally pricked by the star's spines -- my flipper pierced crown, thorns and flesh. Innards became outards.

If I've learned nothing else from The Predator, I've learned that if things can bleed, you can kill them. Spurred on by this encouraging developed, I sprayed the water orange with starfish gall bladder, spleen and pancreas until it gave up the ghost, came loose and went belly up. In poker parlance, let's see the flop:

Starry the Gutted Invasive Species floated away, hopefully to trouble us no more and leave the reef in peace. Here's the coral stand to which it was formerly affixed. You're welcome, coral, just doing my job.

Virtue is its own reward, it is said. But it's always nice when virtue gets one a little something extra. In this case, all those beautiful fish that ran from me before were made ravenous by the sight of starfish guts. Butterflyfish, parrotfish, blennies and angelfish all wandered toward lunch, apparently oblivious of yours truly.

Instant karma. A trip saved by starfish innards.

The weather promises to be even better the next few days, so the forecast calls for more diving and snorkeling posts. Stay tuned: I have some exciting things planned.