Bluesky Dreamin

Check out this blog post I wrote while sailing aboard the tall ship Robert C. Seamans (affectionately known as the Bobby C to crew and students) for two months in the South Pacific.  --

"In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand and we will understand only what we are taught."  -- Baba Dioum

Today was another "land day" for the students and crew of the Bobby C. We jumped off the ship at 0745 this morning and onto the waiting bus for a winding ride through the bucolic New Zealand countryside.  A half hour later we landed at Cape Kidnapper's (yes, the name is related to a Captain Cook adventure), jumped on the back of a trailer, and were towed by a vintage Minnesota tractor 5 miles along the beach with spectacular views of the surrounding cliffs. Final destination: A colony of 20,000 nesting gannet birds.  "Sweet As" to say the least.

A few fun facts about these spectacular, gorgeous gannet birds; this particular type is called an Australasian Gannet. They are members of the Booby family, and have an average lifespan of 25 years. And oh yeah, gannet pairs mate for life and return to the exact same nest every year, year after year. Each mating pair works together to hatch one chick each year. And then-and then-once the chick is 16 weeks old it will fly all by itself, entirely by instinct, to the east coast of Australia. This is the only time in their lives that gannets will complete this long journey to Australia-as newborns. Because of the risk involved in this long journey, only about 20% of all the gannet chicks will survive. The surviving chicks then return all grown-up to New Zealand 3-5 years later, and will start anew the cycle of choosing a mate for life, and hatching one chick a year. No returning home to stay with mom and dad after college for this species.

Today we were incredibly lucky to see numerous baby balls of fluff peaking out from underneath their parental unit's body when we reached the colony. The chicks were in various stages of just hatched, to big balls of fluff almost as big as their parents. Sweet as!

As I watched the hustle and bustle of the adult gannets flying to and fro their nests, I thought about how easy it can be to get wrapped up in the many minute details that command our attention every day, whether on shore or out at sea. By stopping each day to watch the wings of a gannet during flight, or to feel the wind blowing past the sails, I am reminded of why it is so important to conserve what we love.

… from the PTT (poetry time) corner  Ship, Shipmate, Self

Two Worlds Apart, One Planet Swirling overhead Approaching 40,000 feet Two worlds fragmented One foot in each I stand poised to join the unfamiliar Uncertainty ahead

Walking the streets of Los Angeles only hours earlier Sun streaming in bursts Beating the top of my head Billboards and palm trees One foot in front of the other Into the world of my fellow human beings Heaps of blankets Sleeping in the streets Unnoticed by most Always, uncertainty ahead Surviving Barely The edge of society

Fast forward A world far removed at the bottom of the earth A community of sailors And fellow human beings Navigating unknown waters A journey in winds Currents Sunny but sometimes stormy Future waves of uncertainty ahead Surviving Thriving Together At the edge of society

Certainly We all see the same stars Certainly This ship is shared by all. Edges and all.

Cocodrie, a tiny town “down the bayou” in south Louisiana, holds a special place in my heart.  Reflections from the Road 2.8.2016

It’s hard to explain how special this place is without seeing it firsthand. Even though Cocodrie was slightly out of the way on our drive from New Orleans to Dallas, I convinced Chris to make a stop here. The degree of environmental degradation, flooding, and land loss over the past 100 years in south Louisiana is staggering. Yet the landscape is still hauntingly beautiful, and the culture and community of the bayou is like nowhere I have ever been before.  

We stopped at my favorite grocery/hardware/antique/anything-you-could-ever-want store in Cocodrie, and listened to one of the owners tell us about the beautiful trees that used to line the bayou back behind the store. Now because of saltwater intrusion and land subsidence many of these trees have died over the past 20 years, and in another 20 years there may be no more trees out behind the store.

Cocodrie is mostly made up of fishing camps built up on stilts to avoid the ever rising water levels in south Louisiana, and LUMCON (the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium). LUMCON is a marine lab utilized by Louisiana universities, colleges, and K-12 schools, and looks like a concrete airport control center. While completing my graduate studies at Duke University, I moved to Cocodrie for a summer internship position that involved researching community resilience in south Louisiana coastal communities. 

When I first arrived in south Louisiana, I wondered why don’t the people here just move? The water is literally lapping at their front doors. Some homes in south Louisiana are now only accessible by boat due to rising water levels. Check out the immense challenges here and here of maintaining Louisiana Highway 1, the two lane highway that leads to Port Fourchon.

So why do people stay in south Louisiana? While I lived in Cocodrie, I learned that one reason is because there is such an incredible “sense of place” for the people that have lived here for generations. They can’t imagine leaving their homes, families, and a unique way of life so ingrained in their culture for generations. It is a gritty way of life, with a sense of hope and resilience pervading everyday life on the bayou, despite such an uncertain future.

And as you drive across the country, you realize that the United States is a network of these small towns, and it’s important to fight for their survival. Whether it’s the small town of Beaufort, NC, Selma, AL, Cocodrie, LA, Ozona, TX or Marfa, TX that you happen to find yourself in along the way.  

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Geography and water is vital to understanding the plight of Cocodrie and other communities in south Louisiana. The Mississippi River snakes through South Louisiana, and is now heavily guarded on both sides by man-made levees, which were built after the horribly destructive flood of 1927. This levee system protected land and homes by preventing flooding. And so the great power of the mighty Mississippi River had been harnessed.

And yet…

The sediment that is carried by the waters of the Mississippi used to flow in all directions into the countryside for thousands of years, re-sedimenting the land and counteracting the natural process of land subsidence in south Louisiana. Now the water and sediments of the Mississippi are ushered straight down into the Gulf of Mexico by the highly effective levee system. Also, many of the upstream dams reduce the amount of sediment flowing downstream. Add in erosion caused by storms that frequently hit the Louisiana coast, erosion from the canals built by the oil and gas companies, and sea level rise. The sum total is that south Louisiana is literally washing away.

For more info about the precipitous rate of land loss occurring in south Louisiana, take a look at some of the blogs I wrote while living in Cocodrie: http://blogs.nicholas.duke.edu/internshipblogs/louisiana/

Also, a fascinating read about the environmental challenges faced by Louisiana is “Bayou Farewell” by Mike Tidwell.  

How can we slow the rate of hardened (non-living) structures being built along our coasts and increase the number of living shorelines?  These quotes are from the February 2016 issue of the Coastal Review:

“The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates that nearly 1/3 of the nation’s contiguous estuarine shoreline will be hardened by 2100 if the structures continue to be built at the current rate and the coastal population continues to grow.”

“As of 2013, 125 living shorelines had been installed along North Carolina’s marsh shorelines, according to information from the N.C. Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Research Reserve. In comparison, more than 9,900 bulkheads were built.”

We can start by:

simplifying the permitting process for #livingshorelines in North Carolina