An Ocean Miracle in the Gulf of California – Can We Have More of This, Please?

Davidoff Cool Water have joined forces with National Geographic’s Pristine Seas Mission this summer to launch their “Love the Ocean” campaign. Davidoff Cool Water is the quintessential ocean fragrance, launched in 1988 it introduced a new wave of freshness to the world and is still a best seller today.
The limited edition sleeve on the Davidoff Cool Water bottles will offer a unique access code; enabling buyers to use a geo-localisation application to follow Enric Sala’s (Nat. Geo. explorer) latest expedition to the Pitcairn Islands, online.
The Pristine Seas mission aims to work in collaboration with local communities to conserve ocean’s beauty and create protected marine areas.
For years, human beings have been taking fish out of the sea at a faster rate than the fish can reproduce. As a result we’ve been chasing fewer fish to meet an ever-increasing demand. And all over the oceans of the world, from the deep trenches to the coral reefs and shoreline eco systems, the effects are becoming is clearer.

A recent scientific study has shown that protecting a coral reef area actually creates jobs and increases economic revenue for the local communities simply because it allows sea life to regenerate. This goes against the views of many of who say that protected areas of the ocean take away jobs from fishermen. But here’s an example:
Cabo Pulmo National Park in Baja California, Mexico, was protected in 1995 to save the largest coral community in the Gulf of California. The villagers of Cabo Pulmo had together decided that the waters were going to be a no-take marine reserve, banning fishing in the hope of regenerating more life.
When Enric Sala of National Geographic visited the reef for the first time in 1999 four years after it was declared a protected zone, he says “The corals were nice, but there weren’t many fish. The place wasn’t extraordinary.”
Recently, Enric and his group went back to Cabo Pulmo. He said: “We jumped in the water, and couldn’t believe what we saw – thousands upon thousands of large fish such as snappers, groupers, trevally, and manta rays.
“They were so abundant that we couldn’t see each other if we were 15 meters apart. We saw more sharks in one dive than in 10 years of diving throughout the Gulf of California”
Later, Enric discovered that the fish biomass had increased by 460% – taking it back to a level similar to an untouched, pristine coral reef.
Talking about marine protection projects as a whole, how local sea life can be saved and how it should be applied to seas all over the world, Enric has this to say: “I have seen it with my own eyes and believe me, it’s like a miracle. Only that it’s not – it’s just common business sense.”

Supporting this partnership is Hollywood actor Paul Walker, the face of Davidoff Cool Water. Paul has studied marine biology and is known for his passion for the ocean.
To learn more about the Pristine Seas Mission and the partnership with National Geographic visit www.love-the-ocean.com.

Lat: 13 degrees 15 min N

Long: 059 degrees 33 min W

Frequent readers of our wandering – both geographically and mentally – blogs may be beginning to wonder if we are really doing any sort of studies on the plastic refuse concentrating on our beaches globally. Stories of interesting people, obscure historical references and exciting adventures continually arrive on the website, with only the odd vague reference to garbage, plastics and their destructive effects. Critics could be excused for surmising that we are just sailing and surfing our way around the world but using a green/environmental/ecological message to try and attract attention to ourselves and maybe even secure a some free gear from our sponsors. Well, without some detailed exploration or our website, they would have ample evidence to prove their point. Yet those internet-savvy searchers would have found our page detailing our garbage studies up until South Africa (insert link).

The stories of incredibly friendly and out going people, beautiful beaches, crystalline water and undiscovered paradises all serve as a backdrop to provide contrast to the true polluted nature of our beaches.

For example, take Long Pond Beach, Barbados. Located on the sparsely populated east coast, just north of the infamous Soup Bowls surfing spot, Long Pond is a windswept beach that stretches for mile and miles, complete with all the tropical paradise fixings.

Palm trees, crystal clear water, squeaky white sand and no footprints of others. check.

Imagine a Hollywood movie set of a deserted tropical beach, perhaps with Tom Hanks and Wilson in the movie Castaway as a reference point, and you would have an idea of what Long Pond beach looks like.

Except for the fact that Tom and Wilson’s beach did not seem to have the multicoloured high tide line that we have found on EVERY beach we have visited. So what did we find on Long Pond:

– A toilet seat.

– glow sticks.

– old broken kids toys.

– aerosol containers.

– flip flops.

- 15 pieces of sytrofoam

- A sealed lightbulb

- A bbq scrapper

- 37 plastic bottles

- 85 bottle caps

- 2 forks,

- 2 glow sticks

- 6 flip flops

- 6 plastic buckets

- 59 pieces of fishing line and rope

- 2 lighters filled with lighter fluid

- Wheels from a childs’ toy.

- A knife handle

- Peanut container

- At least 100 random plastic pieces

- Hair mousse container with teeth marks scratched into it

- A toilet seat

- A huge garbage bag

- Plastic shampoo bottle

Remember this was all found on the sandy surface of the beach in just 100m of coastline, on a beach that runs for miles and miles… It is also away from any significant level of population density, on the windward side of Barbados with nothing but.. Africa and Europe upwind. So where did it all come from ? Well, it is a common misconception that most of the garbage on our beaches comes from those dastardly fishermen, container ships and ocean going vessels, when in actuality, 80% of oceanic plastic washes down rivers and creeks from our cities and towns, into the ocean. We are the problem.

The claim that all the garbage has spend months at sea, floating the 3000nm from Africa or Europe seem to be a bit of stretch. Or does it. where else could it come from? It is the end of the dry season here in the Caribbean so no streams, rives, storm water drains were emptying local refuse onto the beach; eliminating one source of pollution. Fisherman and beach users will always be a source of pollution, yet by traveling to an area of deserted beach, we hope to have minimized that local human source. Offshore fishing boats are be a definite source of pollution on Long Pond, but could not account for all the garbage we found.

So where does it all come from ? .. The South East Trade winds and the Northern Equatorial current, running at up to 2 knots, runs slap-bang into Long Pond and will deposit anything and everything moving in its grasp on the beach. Trace the currents and wind back and you find Europe, North and West Africa. As further evidence, the last item of our pollution list, the enclosed plastic shampoo bottle, had no English text on its exterior, only Portuguese. While the bottle may be constructed on PET plastic, which will photodegrade and sink on its own, the PVC screw cap can withstand all the corrosive efforts of the sun and sea, to keep the bottle filled with buoyant air and floating for untold thousands of miles.

The Archipelago of Fernando De Noronha lies about 340km due east from mainland Brazil. Rising steeply out of the ocean depths, these 21 volcanic islands are the direct result of an oceanic hot spot. A hot spot is a localized area of intense magmatic/volcanic activity just below the earth’s crust. When the heat becomes too intense, the hot spot will break through the earth’s crust and spout magma and lava into our oceans creating an island in the process. Once the pressure has been released, the lava will cool and once again choke the gap in the earth’s crust, allowing the island to cool and become stable. As the oceanic tectonic plates move, this process will be repeated creating a chain of islands making the movement of the plate over the centuries. Look at the Hawaiian Islands as a perfect example.

The beauty and unique fauna and flora of Fernando de Noronha inspired the Brazilian government to declare it a National Marine Park in 1988. In 2001, UNESCO furthered the protected status by declaring the islands a World Heritage Site. Each year the number of visitors to the island is heavily regulated with never more than 500 allowed on the island and each is required to pay a daily fee to help maintain the facilities on the island. Not all of the island is park, but the local inhabitants have created their own set of rules to keep their island paradise just that … paradise. They live on approximately 50% of the main island, but it has been designated that only 30% of their section may be developed. The effect of this legislation has made it impossible for any large hotel chains or resort developments that plague paradisical islands the world over. Instead, visitors stay in local “posadas” or guest-houses with the owners. Small and unassuming these lodgings do not cover the coast and tower over the best beaches on the island, but are rather located up in the hills and everyone is forced to walk to the beach through the endemic flora. Beautiful …

The local park administration has been extremely welcoming to the OceanGybe team. Over the past few days, we have been wandering waist-deep through the only island-based mangrove in the South Atlantic, walking kilometers of empty beach picking up garbage with paying volunteers (!), tagging hawksbill and green turtles, and learning about all the conservation efforts on-going in the archipelago. One of the major players in the conservation efforts on the island is the TAMAR Project, as mentioned in the last blog, and they are the most organized, efficient and forward-thinking conservation group I have come across. Their motive is to save and protect turtles, turtle breeding areas, and beaches on which turtles lay eggs. They currently protect 1,100km of Brazilian coastline under the supervision of 22 research stations. They perform all the necessary scientific research to investigate the effects of turtle decline worldwide, including mapping migratory paths, breeding patterns, effects of human occupation, etc and have created co-operative links with almost every major environmental group worldwide to ensure they stay current and up-to-date. However, the difference that struck me about the TAMAR project, was not their research but the methods by which they gain traction within the community.

Traditionally, turtle meat was a form of sustenance to the local population of Fernando (much like the rest of the world) and fishermen would hunt the turtles and their eggs to put food on the table. When TAMAR came to the islands to protect the turtles, one would expect there to be huge clashes and conflict over the new protected status of the turtles. However, TAMAR strives to create a community-run program and does not just tell fisherman not to catch turtles but rather creates other jobs for them within the program so they can assist in the protection of the marine habitat and also still generate incoming. Look it up online at www.projectotamar.org.br. According to the experts, one of the most significant causes of turtle deaths is due to misidentification of plastic bags as jellyfish, ie a food source, by turtles.

The OceanGybe team feels honoured to be allowed to stay on the island, and each morning as we head out for an early morning surf in the vividly blue crystalline water, we are accompanied by spinner dolphins and turtles curious to see what this humans are up to today.

Thought we’d give a quick update of what we’ve been up to since dropping the anchor in Porto Santo Antonio 7 days ago. Usual Khulula goes conspicuously dark once we’ve reach a port, especially when there are waves near by. Well, you’ll be happy to know that we’ve found some of said trans-ocean energy transfer features located on the beaches of Noronha. For the surfers out there, the waves here err on the side of as ‘straight hander close-outs’, but heck, after a month at sea, who’s complaining? Not us.

More importantly though we’ve met with a few of the local marine biologists and researchers on the island and learned a whole bunch about the different projects going on here. Firstly the TAMAR project, Brazil’s turtle conservation group, has an active station here. Last night we attended a presentation given by Luciana Brondizio on the 5 species of turtles that are native to Brazil. We learned that they have tracked turtle’s migration routes from the coast of Brazil to Africa, the Caribbean, Europe all the way to Australia. This explains our encounter with the turtle on the passage here from St. Helena!

Today we went along with a masters student from the mainland to collect water samples from the mangrove here on Noronha. Amazingly this is the only island mangrove in the South Atlantic. We had a great time wading chest-deep through the brackish water learning about the trees, crabs, frogs and other life that inhabits the ‘swamp’… until we had a run-in with tiny red biting ants. I’m a tough guy and all, but wow, that was painful. I had to make a mad dash for the ocean for relief. It was little comfort when Carol, our guide, assured me that the pain only lasted a few hours. She hikes through the mangrove everyday doing research. Now we know why she put long pants on just before we started.

Tomorrow we’re off on a “4 hour” beach hike to one of the remotes beaches on the island. The plan is to do a study of the plastic pollution on this beach as it faces the prevailing winds and currents. Incidentally, the environmental director of the park area told us that a refrigerator washed up on this stretch of coast not long ago!

Combine that with a few more waves and some good old chilling out, and our schedule is packed!

This is a seriously useful site for figuring out which sunscreen is likely to protect you and which might actually cause you harm. The Environmental Working Group is a non-profit, non-partisan research organization that performs studies on products to see how they affect consumers and the environment. According to their Cosmetic Database Sunscreen Report, “An investigation of nearly 1,000 brand-name sunscreen products finds that 4 out of 5 contain chemicals that may pose health hazards or don’t adequately protect skin from the sun’s damaging rays. Some of the worst offenders are leading brands like Coppertone, Banana Boat, and Neutrogena.” The top brand, deemed to pose no risk to the user and which worked best, was Soléo Organics All Natural Sunscreen. Congratulations to them. I’ll be putting in my order right away.

Check out the EWG study and see if your sunscreen is safe: http://www.cosmeticdatabase.com/special/sunscreens2008/findyoursunscreen.php

Part 1

Interview | Joe Roper Part 1 from My Local Lineup on Vimeo.

Part 2

Interview | Joe Roper Part 2 from My Local Lineup on Vimeo.

Part3

Interview | Joe Roper Part 3 from My Local Lineup on Vimeo.

Welcome to sailing in the tropics when the wind dies. When wind doesn’t have the sufficient strength to keep the main sail and genoa full of air, every time the boat rolls with the swell, the wind spills out of the sails and everything goes quiet. Everyone awake waits…. a second or two passes….. WHACK, FLAP, WHACK and the wind fills the sails again and they slam back into place. Repeat all night. Turn the air temperature in the boat to about 32ºC and remove all good ventilation sources. Flogging is the technical term for this sort of sailing. I think I almost would rather be flogged …

Imagine how positive one is when you’re awakened at 3am to this situation. It is tough to suppress all the joy your feel.

Normally in this situation, we would have rolled in all the sails, turned on the iron wind (aka motor) and started chugging along our course at a decent speed. However, we’re currently about 850nm from land and only have enough gas for about 250nm. So we’re forced to conserve.

The other joyful side effect of this noise is the fact that we’re hardly moving anywhere. If we continued to move at the fantastic boat speeds we achieved last night, our crossing from St Helena to Fernando de Noronha would take us only 38 days. Then you really have to start wondering about water and food.

The saving grace of this situation is the spinnaker. As soon as day dawned enough for us to see our sails and rigging, we hoisted our symmetrical spinnaker and started hand steering the boat as best we could. Much better, until the day draws to a close, because we can’t use this sail at night since it requires two people to be awake at all times.

Most cruisers have a cruising spinnaker, DRS, asymmetrical spinnaker, or gennaker (all the same thing – just different names) which you can use night and day in these sorts of conditions without fear of getting yourself in all sorts of trouble if the wind picks up. We don’t have one of these sails, but are on the lookout/search for one.
If you are reading this blog and just wondering what you are going to do with that old gennaker/DRS on the boat, in the shed, under the work desk, in the loft, please wait no longer! Contact us and maybe you will let us borrow it for a while?

Praying for the wind to build, but not too much (Murphy hears these things!).

Frequent blog followers will be privy to our search for a mystical barrelling right hand point break on St Helena Island, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. When we arrived after 12 days at sea, we almost fell over ourselves getting off the boat, into a rental car, Sitka boards on the roof, Globe sandals on, Livity hats on and driving to the beach.

Lets back up a bit, so why did we think there would be waves on St Helena? Generally, in order for there to be waves on a certain island, there are a few prerequisites: swell exposure, favorable bathymetry and lack of wind exposure. There are huge amounts of other factors that come into play but these are the most basic ones.

Well, St Helena sits in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean with an interrupted swell exposure to both Northern and Southern Hemisphere swells. Low-pressure systems forming off Terra Del Fuego, Patagonia are infamous for their strong winds and huge swells. These systems slowly move eastwards around the Southern Ocean, and are responsible for most of the ocean swell in the entire Southern Hemisphere. The rough, tempestuous seas in the actual storm slowly begin to organize themselves as they move away from the creation area (the low pressure). Generally, much of the swell in the South Atlantic ocean travels in a North East direction, referred to as a South West swell (where it comes from). The further the waves travel, the longer the period of the swell (time between each wave crest) and it slowly decreases in size. In the case of St Helena, the swells have almost 4000km to organize themselves into a perfectly groomed long period ground swell. There are no land masses between their generation area and St Helena to cause the swell to bend, refract or generally deteriorate. Prerequisite number 1: Swell exposure, check.

Bathymetry is nothing more than a fancy word for underwater topography. Bathymetry describes the ocean floor elevations, the contours of reefs, the rapid rise and fall of oceanic seamounts, etc. In order for a decent surf break to exist, numerous factors must come all work constructively to create a rideable wave. In the very, very basic sense, you need a curved section of reef/beach /coral for the wave to run along. The orientation of this section of reef will define what swell direction is required for it to break. The slope up to the reef cannot be too steep or too shallow, it must be just right … This section is worthy of it’s own blog, so stay turned for that at a later date, but back to the case at hand. St Helena rises like a tower straight out of the South Atlantic, generally not a good bathymetrical case … Fortunately, according to our charts there were several bays with decreased seafloor slopes that showed some potential. Prerequisite number 2: Favorable Bathymetry, hmmm … well, not perfect but has possibilities.

Lack of Onshore wind exposure: Hmmm… there are two bays on the northern side of St Helena which would have perfect offshore winds 24 hours a day, 10 months of the year. However, the bays with the best bathymetrical possibilities were situated right in the teeth of the trade winds. Oh well, we were more than ready to surf any waves. Prerequisite number 3: Lack of Wind Exposure, less than average situation.

Looking back at our checklist, we have one positive (swell exposure), one maybe (bathymetry) and one bad (wind exposure). The next and maybe most important factor to take into play is the surfer. He/she will sometimes disregard all signs pointing to no surf potential, and waste endless hours of everyday searching for surf that doesn’t exist, at great personal cost, both financially and with regard to relations with his/her significant other. In the case of St Helena, the surfer effect was at an all time high and we were going to find surf no matter what anyone told us.

First step, ask the very official looking Customs agent, if he knows of anywhere to surf on the island. He replies, “No surf on St Helena.” First thought appearing in surfer’s mind, is that he is lying and trying to protect his surf spot from overcrowding seeing as St Helena is only 4000km from nowhere and doesn’t have an airport. Next, ask Immigration official, Port Control officer, Tourism Agency employees, store-keepers, and random pedestrians if there is any surf on the island. All of them trying to protect their secret by saying “no”, but surfer is not deterred.

Finally surfer must take matters into his own hands. He rents a car and gets an accurate map of the island highlights, detailing Napoleons grave site, a waterfall, and all the ancient castles on the island, but no contours, road types, or distances. Off he sets to the other side of the island, waving at all the friendly islanders, smugly smiling to himself secure in the knowledge that soon he/she will soon be riding the waves that all the islanders have worked so hard to protect. After getting lost on many of the unmarked circuitous “roads” on the island, he/she finally begins descending into the bay with the perfect barrelling right hand point break. Along some dusty, dirt roads with definite evidence of other vehicles (probably the guys who got there early for the dawn patrol, he muses), he arrives.

There is no surf on St Helena. Trust me …

Why not ? Surfing is one of those nature-based activities which requires the participants become attuned and aware of natures cycles. It is not played on a concrete court, a dirt field, in an enclosed box of a room, or any other manufactured landscape. The ever changing moods of the ocean ensure the participants to move within the natural rhythms of natures’ movements. Surfers are required to become almost obsessively aware of the changing of tides, seasons, dominant wind patterns and the cyclical nature of global weather phenomenon. In order to perform at even a basic level, participants are required to keep in a constant high level of fitness. You breathe fresh air, you are immersed in clean ocean water (we hope) and when you are done, and you walk away from the beach, waves will continue to break uninterrupted and there will be no sign left from your recreation other than a line of wet footprints on the sand and rocks.

As part of the OceanGybe Expedition, we have been extremely fortunate to be able to pass along this love, passion, healthy addiction to many others as part of the Sitka Surfing Outreach Initiative. Sitka Surfboards kindly provided us with 9 surfboards to distribute along our voyage to persons who have not been fortunate enough to have a surfboard available to them so they too can enjoy the stoke of surfing. An incredible step on their behalf to give something back to the sport that has given all of us so much.

So where to distribute 9 surfboards ? And how to make sure that they do end up getting used and cared for ? How to maximize their impact on the local youth and population?

We decided to break the boards up into two donation packages; one for the Indian Ocean and one for the Atlantic Ocean.

In the Indian Ocean, there are a multitude of small barely inhabited tropical atolls with some basic surf. On one such island we found the perfect location to donate the first set of boards. The local elementary (primary) school on the island is the main focal point for all the youth on the island, they organize events and try to keep the kids up with goings on in the rest of the world. As this school, they had been trying to run a small surf school at the local mushy beach break but the problem of getting enough boards was presenting a huge obstacle. The perfect opportunity for us to donate the first 4 Sitka surfboards. After giving a brief presentation about our trip, oceanic garbage and it’s destructive forces; we handed these four boards over to the principal of the school to use for there surfing program. To say the kids were ecstatic would be a gross under-statement, these boards would allow them to become like Jack or Kelly or another of their heroes.

So now, these 4 Sitka surfboards are carefully stored in an open air shack right on the beach front, available for any kid to come and use at any time (as long as they have cleared it by the school). The school sees to basic surfing training and passes along a message of ocean conservation to all the kids through their PE/PT classes. Such is the nature of this island, that the kids can leave their boardshorts, bikini’s, wax, sunscreen, leashes and all other paraphernalia at the shack with no locks, and just ride their bikes down there after school each day and have everything ready for them. What better place for these Sitka boards to be able to pass along the stoke of riding waves and playing in our incredible oceans?

Thanks to Sitka Surfboards for providing these boards to donate, and all the private individuals who replied to our facebook and website posting asking for fins to put in the boards. Your donations have gone along way to spread the stoke of surfing all over the world. We will be posting pictures and a short movie clip about this donation on www.oceangybe.com, www.sitkasurfboards.com and The Surfer’s Path website in the near future.