WORLD OCEAN Journal

WORLD OCEAN journal

World Ocean Observatory Volume I, No. 1, 2014

Inaugural Issue “I promise you [the blue marble] works. Over and over again, I can see a person’s attention captured, a new idea of the ocean amplified and revalued, an innate curiosity peaked in the questions that follow. I leave the marble behind, as a gift and reminder that by its transfer my new ocean friend accepts an obligation to become a “citizen of the ocean” and to share responsibility for the ocean future. ...” ~ From World Ocean Radio 235: Blue Marble

Editor’s note

Wallace J. Nichols, sea turtle specialist and peripatetic ocean advocate, developed the blue marble as a physical symbol by which to distill and motivate empathy for and understanding of the ocean as an essential element in our lives: a blue marble-a blue glass sphere, when held between thumb and forefinger against the light, glows with an iconic power. It is what earth looks like from space in scale, color and beauty, a planet that might well have been called “Oceanus.” You can carry blue marbles too. Visit wallacejnichols.org/130/ blue-marbles and click on “Play the Blue Marble Game” where you can order your supply of blue marbles...by the hundreds! Local artisanal fishermen unloading their catch from pirogues on the shores of Senegal. Credit: Linda Schonknecht | Marine Photobank

In This Issue

4 THe editor’s contributors notebook 5 THe editor’s the notebook editor’s log An Introduction to the World Ocean Journal by Peter Neill 6 the sea & civilization: an introduction A Maritime History of the World by Lincoln Paine 14 building sustainable communities A Conversation with Wendi Goldsmith of Bioengineering Group by Trisha Badger 22 ocean views Reciprocity: Our Obligation to the Ocean by Peter Neill 26CHANGE IN oceanTHE WEATHER portfolio Mami Wata: Art for Water Spirits in Africa A Photo Exhibit and Essay by Henry John Drewal 33CHANGE INsmall THE WEATHER islands, extreme weather, and a changing climate A Statement by Ambassador Ronnie Jumeau, Seychelles 35CHANGE INocean THE WEATHER solutions The Ocean & Human Ecology: An Exclusive Video Interview with Darron Collins, President, College of the Atlantic 38 An ocean commonplace Video Feature: The Rubens Quartet Performs “Visions of the Sea” Composed by Joey Roukens

Volume 1, No. 1, 2014 3 Contributors

Peter Neill CHRISTOPHER MARTIN lincoln paine

Thoughout his career Peter Neill has Christopher Martin of Alberta, Canada, The author of, most recently, The Sea and contributed to organizations devoted to photographs nature and the cultures Civilization: A Maritime History of the marine affairs, education, and culture. He and people of the world. He is a regular World, which is excerpted in this volume, has written numerous articles and books contributor to a local Alberta magazine, Lincoln Paine lives in Portland, Maine. A on maritime history and art. Peter is Bragg About the Creek, and his images trustee of the Maine Maritime Museum, he Founder and Director of the World Ocean are licensed for a variety of print and can be found online at LincolnPaine.com. Observatory and is host of World Ocean online publications. Find him online at Radio, a weekly series of 5-minute audio christophermartinphotography.com and HENRY john DREWAL essays on a wide range of ocean topics. follow him on Twitter @kananaskisphoto.

Rubens QuarteT wendi goldsmith

Henry John Drewal has served as Curator of African Art at the Neuberger Museum- SUNY-Purchase, the Cleveland Museum Through its rich knowledge of string Wendi Goldsmith is CEO and Founder of Art, and at the Toledo Museum of quartet culture, the Rubens Quartet of Bioengineering Group. Her diverse Art. Since 1991 he has been the Evjue- combines the old with the new, background spans geology, plant and soil Bascom Professor of Art History and interpreting lesser known works of science, ecological planning, water quality Afro-American Studies at the University the past and present and placing them management, and river restoration design. of Wisconsin-Madison and Adjunct alongside the great standards of the In 1999 Wendi led the establishment of Curator of African Art at the Chazen quartet repertoire. The Quartet is: Sarah the Center for Urban Watershed Renewal, Museum of Art, UW-Madison. Find him Kapustin, violin; Tali Goldberg, violin; dedicated to promoting ecological at henrydrewal.com. Roeland Jagers, viola; and Joachim stewardship in the most degraded and Eijlander, cello. Find them online at impacted urban areas from New England RONALD JEAN JUMEAU rubenskwartet.nl. to the West Coast.

JOEY ROUKENS darron collins

After five years as Ambassador of the Republic of the Seychelles to the United Nations and the United States, His Joey Roukens works have been performed A graduate of College of the Atlantic, Excellency Ronny Jumeau was appointed by major ensembles and soloists around Collins now serves as the school’s roving Ambassador for Climate Change the world. His repertoire includes president, the first president of COA to and Small Island Developing States in orchestral works, ensemble works, be born after the college was founded in 2012. He has also served as Minister chamber music, and solo instrumental 1969. Collins, who has a Ph.D from Tulane for the Environment and Natural works. Visit him at joeyroukens.com. University in New Orleans, came to COA Resources, Seychelles Minister for Culture from the World Wildlife Fund, where he and Information, and as Minister for served as the Director of Creative Assets. Agriculture and Marine Resources.

WORLD OCEAN JOURNAL 4 Editor’s Log World Ocean Journal An introduction to the volume 1, No. 1, 2014 World Ocean Journal by Peter Neill

elcome to World Ocean commissioned for the 2013 re- Journal, a new bi-annual opening of the National Maritime publication from the World Museum of The Netherlands; and my WOcean Observatory. As you will see own reflections on “reciprocity” as a in this inaugural issue, we intend to rationale and framework for exchange include essays, interviews, art, music, of value and engagement between us EDitor exhibits and performances in a vital and the ocean, between civil society Peter Neill profile of the impact of the ocean on and the natural world that sustains it. our lives. We will introduce exemplary We will distribute World Ocean Design & Production ocean advocates, describe innovative Journal through presentation to the Trisha Badger projects, and offer perspectives and 1.2 million unique annual visitors ideas to help us understand the to the World Ocean Observatory, full extent of the ocean crisis and through our thousands of program and to suggest solutions and actions to newsletter subscribers, through the mitigate destructive behaviors and to World Ocean Journal is a ever-expanding international audience offer alternative approaches. bi-annual publication of the World for World Ocean Radio, and through Ocean Observatory, a not-for-profit In this first edition, Volume 1, No. 1, our many social media channels. organization based in coastal Maine. 2014, we include education, design, We urge you to share this new art, music, and personal reflection: The mission of the World Ocean publication with your colleagues, old an excerpt from the introduction to Observatory is to communicate the and new friends, and other “citizens Lincoln Paine’s extraordinary one- full spectrum of ocean issues--climate, of the ocean” through your own volume history, The Sea & Civilization; fresh water, food, energy, trade, organizational links and personal a discussion about the ocean and transportation, public health, finance, connections. Let’s distribute the World human ecology with Dr. Darron Ocean Journal worldwide, and see governance, recreation and culture--as Collins, President of the College of the what happens. a realization of the belief that the sea Atlantic; a conversation with Wendi connects all things. Goldsmith on bio-engineering and Join us, and help us evaluate the ecological design; a survey of artistic results. Please do not hesitate to representations of Mami Wata, an contact me ([email protected]) with African goddess of the sea, by Dr. your reactions, comments, suggestions, Henry John Drewal; a performance and ideas for future content. Thank by The Rubens Quartet, “Visions at you for your interest and commitment. Sea,” composed by Joey Roukens,

Open Sea Exhibit, Monterey Bay Aquarium. Credit: Gerick Bergsma, 2010 | Marine Photobank

Volume 1, No. 1, 2014 5 WORLD OCEAN JOURNAL 6 An introduction

by Lincoln Paine

I want to change the way you Portuguese Christians seem like see the world. so many historical surprises. Only the last were absolute newcomers Specifically, I want to change the to the Monsoon Seas that stretch way you see the world map by from the shores of East Africa to historian therefore draws on such focusing your attention on the the coasts of Korea and Japan. disciplines as the arts, religion, blues that shade 70 percent of The others were heirs to ancient, language, the law, and political the image before you, and letting interlinked traditions of seafaring economy. the earth tones fade. This shift in and trade that long ago connected emphasis from land to water makes the shores of East Africa with those An alternative and perhaps simpler many trends and patterns of world of Northeast Asia. This book shows way to approach the question, What history stand out in ways they many similar examples of maritime is maritime history? is to tackle its simply cannot otherwise. Before regions that were quietly exploited unasked twin: What is terrestrial the development of the locomotive before events conspired to thrust history?— the view from the land in the nineteenth century, culture, them into the historical limelight. commerce, contagion, and conflict being our default perspective. Imagine a world of people bound generally moved faster by sea than Two questions merit consideration to the land. The ancient Greek by land. The opening of sea routes before taking on a maritime history diaspora would have taken a sometimes resulted in immediate of the world as either writer or different character and been forced transformation, but more often it reader: What is maritime history? in different directions without laid the groundwork for what was and What is world history? The ships to carry Euboeans, Milesians, later mistaken for sudden change. answers to both have as much to and Athenians to new markets The best example of this is the trade do with perspective as with subject and to sustain contacts between networks of the Indian Ocean, the matter. World history involves colonies and homelands. Without oldest of which were pioneered the synthetic investigation of maritime commerce, neither at least four thousand years ago complex interactions between Indians nor Chinese would have by navigators sailing between people of distinct backgrounds and exerted the substantial influence Mesopotamia and the mouths of orientations. It therefore transcends they did in Southeast Asia, and the Indus River. By the start of the historians’ more traditional focus that region would have been spared Common Era two thousand years on politically, religiously, or the cultural sobriquets of Indo- ago, the Indian subcontinent was a culturally distinct communities China and Indonesia (literally, point of departure and destination seen primarily in their own terms “Indian islands”)—in fact, the latter for merchants and mendicants from at a local, national, or regional level. would have remained unpeopled across the Arabian Sea and the Bay As a subject of interdisciplinary altogether. The Vikings of medieval of Bengal. This is all but unnoticed and interregional inquiry, maritime Scandinavia could never have in the written record, which boasts history is a branch of world history spread as quickly or widely as of no figure comparable to a that covers obvious topics like they did and thereby altered the Gilgamesh or Odysseus, and despite shipbuilding, maritime trade, political landscape of medieval a growing body of archaeological oceanic exploration, human Europe. And without mariners, the evidence, these undertakings migration, and naval history. history of the past five centuries remain largely unrecognized. Considered as a perspective, would have to be reimagined in As a result, the later arrival in however, the premise of maritime its entirety. The age of western Southeast Asia of Muslim traders history is that the study of events European expansion was a result from the Indian subcontinent that take place on or in relation to of maritime enterprise without and Southwest Asia, of Chinese the water offers unique insights which Europe might well have merchants of various faiths, and of into human affairs. The maritime

Volume 1, No. 1, 2014 7 remained a marginalized corner historians’ attention to European, The period of western Europe’s of the Eurasian landmass with its Mediterranean, and modern North maritime dominance was critical, back to what Latinate Europe called American maritime and naval but it is a misleading standard Mare Tenebrosum and Arabic history. Maritime accomplishment against which to measure other speakers Bahr al-Zulamat, “the was almost always viewed as a eras. peculiarly European phenomenon that only attained real importance This Eurocentric worldview was with Columbus’s epochal voyage reinforced by the widespread belief to the Americas in 1492. In this among western historians that telling, the story proceeded directly race was a sufficient explanation and exclusively to an explanation of for “the inequality of various how Europeans used their superior extant human societies.” In the maritime and naval technology to nineteenth and early twentieth impose themselves upon the rest of centuries, the clearest material the world. manifestation of racial superiority writ large was maritime power Taking Europe’s “classic age of sail” and Europeans’ ability to extend from the sixteenth to eighteenth their hegemony overseas to create centuries as a model for the rest and sustain colonial empires half of maritime history is seductive a world away. This gave rise to but inadvisable. While the global the ahistorical generalization that change wrought by mariners and there are maritime people like the dynamics of maritime Europe the Greeks and British and non- Rigged model of a pinnace are of unquestionable importance maritime people like the Romans Credit: National Maritime Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands to a proper understanding of and Chinese. Such assumptions the world since 1500, maritime mask complex realities. Put achievement is more broadly another way, the extent to which spread and its effects more different nations rely on cars or sea of darkness.” The Mughals, complicated than such a narrative planes depends on economics, Chinese, and Ottomans would have suggests. European supremacy industrialization, geography, and overshadowed the divisive and was far from inevitable. More other considerations, and no sectarian polities of Europe, which important, the concentration on one would think of ascribing car would have been unable to settle or Europe’s past five centuries has or plane use to racial or ethnic conquer the Americas, to develop distorted our interpretation of the tendencies. In reaction to this the transatlantic slave trade, or to maritime record of other periods assumption of an innate European have gained an imperial foothold in and places and our appreciation of and North American superiority Asia. its relevance to human progress. at sea, a number of writers No parallels exist for the almost attempted to redress the balance The past century has witnessed a symbiotic relationship between by writing explicitly ethnocentric sea change in how we approach commercial and naval policy—what or nationalist maritime histories maritime history. Formerly a we might call a “naval-commercial about non-Europeans. While preserve of antiquarian interest complex”—characteristic of these valuable correctives exposed whose practitioners lavished their Europe’s maritime expansion. previously untapped indigenous efforts on “ancient ships and boats, There is nothing like it in classical writings and other evidence of ship models, images, ethnography, antiquity, in Asia, or in Europe seafaring by people otherwise lexicographical and bibliographical before the Renaissance, and by the considered to have had little or no matters and flags,” maritime history twenty-first century the close ties maritime heritage, they tended once focused chiefly on preserving between national naval strategy and to create their own versions of and interpreting material that was maritime commerce so prevalent maritime exceptionalism. readily available. This directed in this age had all but vanished.

WORLD OCEAN JOURNAL 8 Even as this tendency was running economics to religion—from one its course, Fernand Braudel’s place to another. While I have not magisterial The Mediterranean and ignored the climactic moments of the Mediterranean World in the maritime history, I have attempted Age of Philip II (1949) ushered in a to put them in a broader context new approach to maritime history. to show how shifting approaches Inspired by his brilliant analysis of to maritime systems can be read the interplay between geography, as indicators of broader change economics, politics, military, and beyond the sea. I have concentrated cultural history, maritime historians on a few themes: how maritime looking past nationalist paradigms enterprise enlarges trading have embraced the validity of realms that share certain kinds treating seas and ocean basins as of knowledge—of markets and coherent units of study and the past commercial practice, or navigation half century has seen a surfeit of and shipbuilding; how the overseas works examining individual oceans spread of language, religion, and seas. This is an enlightening and law facilitates interregional exercise that enables us to consider connections; and how rulers and cross-cultural and transnational governments exploit maritime connections without constant enterprise through taxation, trade reference to the mutable fiction of protection, and other mechanisms political borders. At the same time, to consolidate and augment their we run the risk of replacing a set power. of arbitrary terrestrial boundaries with an equally arbitrary division I have sketched this history as a of the world ocean. There is little narrative to show region by region agreement about how to parcel the the deliberate process by which waters of the world into discrete, maritime regions of the world were named bodies of bays, gulfs, straits, knit together. But this is not a story channels, seas, and oceans, and in of saltwater alone. Maritime activity practice sailors rarely recognize includes not only high seas and such distinctions drafted from coastal voyaging, but also inland afar. An ancient Greek epigram navigation.* Islanders may have acknowledges the unity of the obvious reasons to put to sea, but world ocean with stark simplicity: the exploitation of freshwater rivers, lakes, and canals has been critical All sea is sea. . . . to the growth of countries with Pray if you like for a good large continental territories. The voyage home, center of North America became But Aristagoras, buried economically productive thanks to here, has found its accessibility via the St. Lawrence The ocean has the manners and Welland Rivers and the Great Navigational instruments from of an ocean. Lakes, and by the Mississippi the National Maritime Museum, River and its tributaries. Neither Amsterdam, Netherlands. This book is an attempt to examine corridor could have reached its Credit: Peter Neill how people came into contact potential without the development with one another by sea and of maritime technologies—steam river, and so spread their crops, power in the case of the Mississippi, their manufactures, and their and locks and dams in the case of social systems—from language to the Great Lakes.

Volume 1, No. 1, 2014 9 If the geography of water, wind, day, tens of thousands of people If these two religions are so tightly and land shapes the maritime reached San Francisco by ship, a bound to the land, how did they world in obvious ways, maritime mode of transportation that was manage to cross the ocean? Have endeavor becomes a determining faster, cheaper, and safer than the the religions changed over time? force in history only when the transcontinental journey, although Or are our impressions about the right combination of economic, the distance covered was more nature of these religions wrong? As demographic, and technological than four times longer. The United is written in the Quran, “Do you conditions is met. Few fifteenth- States conquered the interior of the not see how the ships speed upon century observers could have continent—what are today known the ocean by God’s grace, so that imagined the prosperity that would as the fly-over states, but at the He may reveal to you His wonders? accrue to Spain and Portugal time could aptly have been called Surely there are signs in this for as a result of their navigators’ the sail-around territories—in a every steadfast, thankful man.” peregrinations in the eastern pincer movement from both coasts, Atlantic. While they sailed in rather than by a one-way overland These “signs” indicate that search of a route to the spices of movement from the east. mankind’s technological and social Asia, they also came upon the adaptation to life on the water— Americas, a source of untold Yet for the most part, if ships, whether for commerce, warfare, wealth in the form of silver and sailors, ports, and trades exist, exploration, or migration— has gold; of raw materials for European the default tendency among most been a driving force in human markets and new markets for writers is either to celebrate them history. Yet many mainstream European manufacturers; and in isolation from the world ashore, histories are reluctant to embrace territory—“virgin” in Europeans’ or to acknowledge them only to this. Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, eyes—for the cultivation of recently explain particular events such as and Steel: The Fates of Human discovered or transplanted crops the arrival of the Black Death in Societies gives barely a page to like tobacco and sugar. Papal northern Italy; the voyages of the “maritime technology,” by which intervention in disputes over Vikings to the Caspian and Black he means watercraft and not the which lands would be Portuguese Seas (by river) and to western ability to navigate or any associated and which Spanish resulted in a Europe and North America (by abilities. What is curious about series of bulls and treaties that sea); the Mongol invasions of this is that maritime traffic was partitioned the navigation of the Japan and Java in the thirteenth central to the diffusion of many of non-Christian Atlantic and Indian century; or various other diasporas the technologies, ideas, plants, and Oceans between Portugal and of people, flora, and fauna. But by animals that Diamond discusses Spain, and helps explain why the situating our collective relationship in such illuminating detail, not majority of people in South and to oceans, seas, lakes, rivers, and only between continents but also Central America are Spanish- or canals at the center of the historical within and around them. In all but Portuguese-speaking Catholics. narrative, we can see that much of ignoring the maritime aspect of his human history has been shaped story, he essentially overlooks both A maritime perspective by people’s access, or lack of it, to the means of transmission and, in complicates our understanding navigable water. For example, given the cases of some very important of the “westward” expansion non-Muslim westerners’ ingrained inventions, the things transmitted of the United States. California impression of Islam as a religion of as well. achieved statehood in 1851, desert nomads, it seems remarkable two years after the discovery of that the country with the largest To take another example, J. M. gold at Sutter’s Mill, when the Muslim population is actually Roberts’s History of the World territory was virtually unknown spread across the world’s biggest is, according to the author, “the to Americans back east and the archipelago. There are no camels in story of the processes which number of United States citizens Indonesia, but there are Muslims, have brought mankind from on the Pacific coast numbered and also Hindus—especially on the the uncertainties and perils of only a few thousand. Thanks to island of Bali—which is especially primitive life and pre-civilized life the extraordinary capacity of the curious when one considers Hindu to the much more complex and American merchant marine of the prohibitions against going to sea. very different uncertainties and

WORLD OCEAN JOURNAL 10 perils of today. . . . The criterion for the inclusion of factual data has therefore been their historical importance—that is, their effective importance to the major processes of history rather than intrinsic interest or any sort of merit.” Roberts acknowledges inland and saltwater navigation, stressing the importance of the former, for instance, in Russia’s eastward colonization of Siberia in the seventeenth century. However, he jumps to the ends without reference to the means, or the processes. He notes that from Tobolsk to the Pacific port of Okhotsk three thousand miles away there were only three portages; there is no discussion of the vessels used, the foundation of intermediate settlements, or the impact of river trade on the development of Siberia. He does not even name the rivers, which is rather like talking about the water route from Pittsburgh to New Orleans without mentioning the Ohio or Mississippi.

Had Diamond or Roberts written a century ago, their works “Old Salt of the Sixth Fleet” by Frank E. Zuccarelli, 1972. likely would have incorporated Credit: Navy Art Collection, Washington, D.C. considerably more maritime content. That they do not reflects shipping has led to the relocation Although airplanes have replaced changes in the public perception of cargo-handling facilities to ships in most long-distance of the maritime world, for the places remote from traditional port passenger trades—transatlantic, merchant marine and naval cities, while a growing proportion between Europe and ports “east of services no longer hold the of the world’s merchant fleets has Suez,” or transpacific—more than attraction for people that they been put under so-called flags of fourteen million people annually once did, when ocean liners and convenience—that is, owners in embark on a sea cruise. This is far freighters crowded the piers of search of less regulation and lower more than ocean liners carried Manhattan, Hamburg, Sydney, taxes have registered their ships in before the passenger jet rendered and Hong Kong. At the start of countries not their own. As a result, them obsolete in the 1950s, when the twenty-first century, ships and ships no longer stand as emblems the names of shipping companies shipping lines are the warp and of national progress and prestige as were as familiar as (and far more woof of globalization. Ships carry they did in the nineteenth and early respected than) the names of about 90 percent of world trade twentieth centuries. airlines today. The idea that people and the number of oceangoing would go to sea for pleasure was ships has grown threefold in the almost unthinkable even 150 years past half century. But the nature of ago. The cruise ship industry,

Volume 1, No. 1, 2014 11 to say nothing of yachting and recreational boating, owe their growth to changes in economics and technology, social reform movements that ameliorated the often wretched conditions of sea travel for passengers and crew alike, and shifts in attitudes toward the natural environment of the sea. These also gave rise to the emergence of a conscious appreciation for the sea and seafaring in painting, music, and literature, and set the conditions for people’s interest in the sea as an A collection of maritime instruments historical space interpreted through in the National Maritime Museum, museums, film, and books. Amsterdam. Credit: Peter Neill In fact we live in an age deeply influenced by maritime enterprise, but our perceptions of its importance have shifted almost 180 degrees in only two or three generations. Today we see pleasure where our forebears saw peril, and we can savor the fruits of maritime commerce without being remotely aware of its existence, even when we live in cities that originally grew rich from sea A collection of figureheads in the trade. In considering the course of National Maritime Museum, Amsterdam. maritime history, we must account Credit: Peter Neill for this change and remember that our collective relationship with maritime enterprise has undergone a profound metamorphosis in only half a century.

Excerpted from The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World by Lincoln Paine. Copyright © 2013 by Lincoln Paine. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

WORLD OCEAN JOURNAL 12 Dive site near Koh Lipe, Thailand. This site is covered in soft coral and anemones. It gets the name “Stonehenge” from numerous large stone pinnacles that resemble England's famous historic stone circle. Credit: Jim Catlin | Marine Photobank

Volume 1, No. 1, 2014 13 SOFT EDGES Bioengineering: a soft approach to best practice sustainable development A conversation between Wendi Goldsmith of Bioengineering Group and Trisha Badger of the World Ocean Observatory

Though rooted in traditional methods thousands of years old, bioengineering is relatively new in the United States, is it not? Can you give us a brief overview of what bioengineering is and how it works? Wendi Goldsmith, founder and At its basis, bioengineering CEO, Bioengineering Group, a involves using living Massachusetts-based company plants along with that works with government and other biodegradable materials private sector groups to introduce such as left over brush from sustainability into site planning, forestry operations and other development, transportation, stormwater management, and inert materials all combined to protection of our most vital and accomplish civil engineering vulnerable ecological places. functions, but doing it with a green thumb. It is relatively new in the United States, but not brand new. Some of the most noteworthy bioengineering applications include river-training jetties made of and Engineering funded specific could and should be adopted as a bioengineering treatments with Transportation Research Board best practice development standard? willow and soil placed at the mouth studies to document and share of the Mississippi River over 150 knowledge of the applicability Well, it seems to me the years ago. After the Dust Bowl in and limitations of bioengineering magic is in the climate California, Charles Kraebel was techniques. The report featured change equation. Virtually very active using bioengineering those measures best suited for every kind of engineering and techniques, adapting them to transportation corridors where construction ends up having a local, native species to stabilize greener solutions must meet a huge carbon footprint, whereas mountain roads. It has become degree of rigor to address the bioengineering techniques put in part of the national discussion high-stakes, high-risk, high-safety place plants that locally harvest for conservation and engineering oriented transportation corridors available sun and grow carbon practices illustrated when the around the country. stored in the above ground/below National Resource Conservation ground biomass. They accumulate Service included its first chapter How do we help the concept organic matter forever and they on bioengineering techniques of bioengineering to be better start by accumulating a lot of about twenty years ago. The understood as a sophisticated, organic matter as they’re getting National Academies of Science technically advanced system which established. So they are like little

WORLD OCEAN JOURNAL 14 15

Bioengineering: a soft approach to carbon sponges in a big way. Some of possible and probable outcomes to nature.” In a time when we are best practice sustainable development estimates show large amounts for the future. We have used these increasingly detached from our of carbon can be sequestered whiz-bang computer models to connection to the natural world, how A conversation between Wendi Goldsmith of Bioengineering Group by using green infrastructure, show weather patterns, sea level do we get people to care about the and Trisha Badger of the World Ocean Observatory often in conjunction with forecasts, storm intensity and issues at hand? hard infrastructure so they are probability distribution, and we functioning in a complementary have to use the power of computer My children remind me of way. People that study this in the models to depict the future and this, directly and indirectly, United States say that 10 to 15% use those versions of the future all the time. Most people our carbon emissions could easily to make decisions about how to don’t feel as much a part of the be offset annually. In some places organize engineering to get us from natural world as we once did. And around the globe it could be even now to then. Until recent times, most people are frightened about higher than that. few established what it would look the prospect of climate change, like to use sophisticated computer especially if they spend a lot of time We choose to live and conduct models of the future as a basis for thinking about it, and this can be business near the sea. Coastal design, so everyone was pulling alienating. Also, the best solutions development will continue out old data and using that. Until are ones where we are willing to despite the challenges of climate a project sets a new standard, engage in a dance with natural change and a warming planet. such as our major work down systems and stare down the fact that What are the major impediments in New Orleans after Hurricane there is risk and uncertainty about to coastal communities and Katrina, the engineering industry the future and how we go about development today, and are they had not embraced using models addressing it. So, it’s important to surmountable problems? for engineering basis of design. find ways to help people get over Even while people with a science their fear and maybe to dwell on These are the profound understanding and policy interests the occasions where natural systems questions of our day, and were saying, “The problem with and natural processes have already like any profound social the future is that it’ is not going to been doing us a favor, buffering need, when the challenges are look like the past. Even if we do our us from the impacts of storms and faced, human ingenuity has best to avert carbon emissions, we other kinds of threats to society developed solutions. In the past, are still facing a future that looks as we know it. Once people start human ingenuity developed our radically and dangerously different,” seeing a green infrastructure, typical engineering measures the step where we actually whether it is a restored dune without necessarily understanding proceduralize a new engineering system on a barrier island or a the scale and the scope of approach has been slow to major wetland restoration in change. So now coastal areas in materialize. So that’s our present a national park site outside of particular, but really all areas, challenge. But once we make that New Orleans, they get excited. face vulnerabilities and threats by shift in the way we approach the They actually see how something climate change impacts. Whatever problem, I do think it’s solvable, could be built, how it could then we may have found that worked in large part because we have one look and feel naturalistic but still in the past isn’t necessarily going mega-project complete now in have a sense of predictability to work in the future. Basing New Orleans to demonstrate the because the tame nature of it is design using data from the past approach. also shining through and made is no longer the right way to evident. And it’s that combination proceed. We need a total sea You say in your work that of something that appeals to the change, a true paradigm shift in you are reminded to “stick to human and constructed aspect how engineering is organized, so basics and to resonate with of the built environment. “Built that we’re basing our decisions on peoples’ emotional connection environment” almost sounds like clear understanding of the range

Volume 1, No. 1, 2014 15 an oxymoron, but it starts to reflect Everything you just the combination of intentionally mentioned in this human-serving places that are downstream world is understandable by humans, but all about single purpose, one- also some of the aspects of natural way decision making. It’s like systems and ecological functions. the after-effects of Roman-style The combination allows for the infrastructure: one piece to provide major excitement, when people central heating, one piece to take feel it’s civilized enough, that they your sewage away, another to bring can understand it, can believe it, fresh water via the aqueduct. We that it can have some predictability haven’t evolved much since. The or some functionality. People natural systems are all about cycles Lake Whitney, Hamden, Connecticut often miss the notion of the whole and networks where everything gets Watershed, Stormwater & Integrated ecosystem services idea, or that used over and over. Our current Water Management: South Central natural systems—if we leave them idea of the built environment Connecticut Regional Water Authority’s alone—could actually do a lot on has one piece of infrastructure New Water Purification Facility. our behalf. Many people don’t get invested to do one thing after that idea, and there are some people which the resource is considered who think that natural systems a waste product. Basically, we need a hands-off approach in order need to rewire the infrastructure to function. We should know that diagram. Some examples of that there isn’t an untouched, unaffected are as simple as the beneficial use part of the planet, so I feel we’ve of dredged material, putting it back been hands-on in an unintentional, in play in the coastal environment oblivious way. The challenge is to where it can act as a buffer against intervene and do the dance with rising seas. And waste water can be natural systems in a way that meets reused for cooling towers, irrigation Bayou Dupre Sector Gate Control, human need while allowing for and other purposes. I think that Structure Reach LPV 144, the continuation or the restoration we should get rid of the concept of New Orleans, Louisiana of natural function. In every case “waste.” Any time you use the word Flood Control and Hurricane I’ve looked thus far, there is ample you should ask yourself, “What are Protection Infrastructure post-Katrina. opportunity for that to take place. we doing wrong?” If there is waste we should be asking, “How can we The World Ocean not waste it?” and there is usually Observatory often speaks an answer and a solution for reuse. of the downstream—major When you are reusing things there problems and hurdles for cities & is no downstream. towns experiencing downstream effects (over-fertilization, Why do you think it is that industrialization, re-routing the level of sophistication waterways, diminished reserves, in standards and practices Mill Creek at Center Hill Landfill erosion, urban runoff, damaged and throughout much of Europe are so Cincinnati, Ohio destroyed wetland and tidal areas.) slow to catch on in the United States? Bioengineering Group was brought What would be your advice for Are you seeing encouraging changes in to identify a cost-effective, communities wishing to implement which nurture this symbiosis environmentally-sensitive bank some sustainability practices into between nature and engineering? stabilization plan to halt erosion. their local infrastructures?

WORLD OCEAN JOURNAL 16 Yes, there are some big completed in the summer of 2011. of that, the whole forward-looking strides being made. What have you learned from this and system was built with future Sometimes the way this what are some of the outstanding scenarios driving the design. It happens is through pointed achievements that came from that was built in an unprecedented technology transfer visits. For project? four years from the concept of, instance, after Katrina hit there was “What about a system built like a renewed effort to have knowledge I’m so glad you are asking. this?” to something that was not traded among the Dutch, Danish, Right after Katrina hit only engineered in four years Germans and others that have been there were a lot of repairs, but executed in that time. When looking at this whole sea defense putting things back the way there Hurricane Isaac hit in 2012 it had question because some places were were so that a next storm wouldn’t a 35-foot storm surge which didn’t dealing with it before we started hit an even less-prepared region. harm New Orleans at all. So the looking down the barrel of climate After that was done, about a year system was generally understood change. The EPA is doing a lot with later, people took a deep breath to have avoided flood damage costs water and solid waste infrastructure and said, “OK. We are going to that far exceeded the $14 billion it and looking overseas for models start this whole process and come took to get the infrastructure built. of how it’s done. So there is much up with a better plan, and we that is happening here in the U.S. are going to make sure that this What are some of the largest by people really, truly recognizing ultimately accounts for future risk.” environmental oversights of the need while also recognizing For instance, during the forensic our day? that perhaps we don’t have to be study phase to look at what went the ones to develop the technology. wrong during Katrina, one of the The big elephant in the Places like Denmark and Germany issues that clearly had not been room is the fact that we which for decades have had strong correctly considered was localized regularly pull out the conservation-oriented policies have extreme rates of land subsidence. FEMA-based flood elevation been enormous investors in some Some people liken Louisiana to maps and use them as a basis pioneering technical approaches. the “canary in the coal mine” for design. This is such a short- Even China: on the one hand you because of their tremendous land sighted move that I’d like to go can count all the ways that they subsidence rates. We have sea on record to state my belief that it are doing some very old fashioned level rise happening everywhere, represents professional negligence and short-sighted things in the but they have it at an extremely for anyone in the design field or built environment, while on the accelerated rate because their land public agency review roles to be other hand there are ways in which is dropping. So this begged the doing it. The minute the National they are trying some radically question, “What procedures do we Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) efficient ideas which promise need in order to be able to develop came into existence, professional some breakthrough sustainability an infrastructure that throughout societies involved in the world of achievements. I think the bar is the decades of its service life engineering cautioned that any map starting to get raised. We are finally will not become obsolete as sea that purports to outline something realizing that our own national levels rise and/or land subsides?” with a 1% annual risk is not telling competitiveness depends on being We worked on developing the you information that is useful at the cutting edge of how to methodology for that; moreover for public health and safety. The operate our business, our public we worked to shorten the time NFIP’s purpose for outlining the infrastructures, and our nation as a frame to get things built. We did 100-year flood plain is to negotiate whole. that by introducing the idea for a one-year insurance contract and smoothing out the effective rate—it should never be the thing Your Storm Damage Risk adoption of design-build practices people reach for and use when Reduction System post-Katrina for some of the major time-critical making public health and safety in New Orleans was officially infrastructure elements. Because decisions. Furthermore, despite that

Volume 1, No. 1, 2014 17 Red mangroves create a barrier between land and sea, filtering sediment from coastal runoff and protecting the coastline from storms. Benner Bay Mangrove Lagoon Marine Sanctuary, St. Thomas, USVI. Credit: Katie Fuller, 2009 | Marine Photobank

WORLD OCEAN JOURNAL 18 even when flood plain maps are and New Jersey have been slow to reasonably accurate, it is actually roll out any substantial or sweeping the case that half of the flood claims adaptive strategies post-Sandy. in the United States each year fall What are your thoughts about the outside of the map. So those maps scope of the adaptation efforts are not telling us the whole picture, by those communities and their and much is not addressed. You can governments? say that they have a 50% accuracy rate of telling you the 1% annual Having recently spent an risk. There is no other important hour with Daniel Zarrilli, Broad Meadows Marsh Restoration, decision you would make in your New York’s Director of Quincy, Massachusetts life where you would rely on that Resiliency, I can tell you that 106 acres of tidal salt marsh habitat level of certainty. The FEMA maps they are moving pretty quickly to previously utilized for dredging spoils are the only tool we now have to have developed and published a disposal. Bioengineering Group was give us any sense of the risks so plan that is actionable and has an retained by the Army Corps of Engineers to conduct an alternative feasibility study. we reach for those maps time and awful lot of near-term, practical again. We need to stop doing it and feasibility. I think they deserve a we need to come up with well- huge amount of credit for that. I founded, regionally-appropriate also think that the challenge is that maps of flood conditions and risk. there is no mechanism to address When Hurricane Sandy struck the known flood risk—they are New Jersey, the FEMA maps dated lacking a clear long-term vision from the 1980s but the survey of exactly what the flood risks are. data that went into those maps And, more importantly, there has dated from the 1950s. There was not been any detailed modeling not anything near approximating showing how those flood risks current, accurate representation. could be reduced. Neponset River Dam Removal, They were better than nothing, for Milton & Boston, Massachusetts sure, but what we need is clarity What is Bioengineering Group A feasibility study assessed options for on what future conditions are working on now? restoring fish passage, aquatic habitat most likely to be based on the best and riparian habitat upstream of the Baker and T&H Dams on the Neponset available tools. And to be honest, One project that we are the cost of generating those tools is very proud of that had a not all that high. What makes the ribbon-cutting ceremony FEMA program very expensive to in October is a regional storm do their mapping is administrative water management basin built and bureaucratic, including the in a state park that is part of the fact that people come in and say, Frederick Law Olmsted Emerald “Hey, we don’t like your map. We Necklace greenway corridor system think you should come up with a around Boston. The project has lower elevation than this.” Sure, been dubbed the crown jewel in Algiers Lock, Orleans and you can make a map say something the Boston Harbor clean-up effort. Plaquemine’s Parish, Louisiana different but it is not going to The engineered wetland treats Bioengineering Group performed change the reality: it’s not going to a large volume of storm water feasibility-level designs for alternative keep the flood out of your home. from a combined sewer overflow methods of raising the existing hurricane separation program; it does it in a protection to 100-year levels along the Well, that takes us right into way that restores alewife spawning east side of the Algiers Canal. our next question: New York habitat, performs invasive species

Volume 1, No. 1, 2014 19 control, sets in place many acres of to serve as an intermediary to allow that is woven together with risk newly-established riparian wetland the lands to be transferred back to management strategy, including and forest, and does everything the people of California in good insurance as we know it today. with a keen eye toward public condition that everyone was happy recreation and education. We with. CUWR is currently working You worked closely for many have worked with local teachers in New York with a consortium years with Peter Feuerbach to outline what kinds of classes of insurance and finance industry who died tragically in June of and students they would like to professionals as well as state 2013. Could you speculate what his bring out there. The boardwalks, and municipal representatives thoughts would be on the topics we overlooks, boulder seating, and and various NGOs to create an discussed today, and what do you see outdoor amphitheater were all outside-the-box visioning session of his legacy? sized and configured to meet those to explore all the different ways needs. We also supplied some that adaptation and resilience can places for bird watchers and a missing link of the regional bike path. All of this has been part of the project.

In 1999 you co-founded the Center for Urban Watershed Renewal. What are some of the projects they are currently involved with?

The Center for Urban Watershed Renewal (CUWR) has worked on some first-of-a-kind transactions, often involving a combination Alewife Reservation Storm Water and Wetlands Restoration of municipal, state, and federal This green infrastructure project prevents overflow and flooding, provides agencies. For instance, we worked excellent retention, flood protection, and creates biodiversity on the Reservation. to conserve over 60,000 acres of land in the High Sierras of California by arranging for a be conducted--not just for New Peter was trained as a restoration-focused plan to provide York City, but for the region as geologist engaged in field risk reduction and clean up on a a whole--and how it can look in research, including time site that had been used to blow the near term, how it can look spent in Antarctica. He layered up old munitions. We worked in the long term, and where the this expertise with policy training with the local tribes, county and money can come from including from the Yale School of Forestry town officials, the state agencies from somewhere other than and later went on to earn his law of California, the Army Corps Federal coffers and after-the-fact degree. In conversations with him of Engineers, and the U.S. Army disaster response. We are looking about his trajectory, I found that to make this whole arrangement to push the envelope of how his drive was due to an intense happen. CUWR helped redefine risks can be managed, not just by passion for the outdoors and for how the agencies could work covering your financial bases with being a proactive steward in all together. CUWR stepped in and insurance, but by helping make things. We generated the idea to took ownership of vast tracts of infrastructure solutions, including form Center for Urban Watershed land in the meantime and helped green infrastructure, something Renewal (CUWR) in the late 90s

WORLD OCEAN JOURNAL 20 as interim property owner before turning sites over to public agencies or owners for perpetual access and watershed benefit. Peter was a virtuoso at targeting and executing solutions that encompassed science, policy, creative planning and rigorous legal strategy. We all miss him, but we learned a lot from him.

He was a true inter- disciplinarian then, wasn’t he? Cambridge Stormwater Wetland System Earthen levees and spillway structures interface with trails, boardwalks, Yes, he really knitted overlooks, an amphitheater, native plants, and wetlands. much together. He wasn’t made up of just one skein when we both recognized a gap: of yarn. In addition to living this something was needed to address way, Peter believed all the more in the places people had given up helping others do it, too. As much on: the degraded, contaminated, as CUWR relied on Peter’s brilliant stigmatized, and legally inter-disciplinary leadership, he encumbered spaces important to also ensured that CUWR was strong us and our communities. Most in its own right. And indeed it communities have areas like this: is: just this month we named his old mill sites, abandoned corridors organizational successor. We are between rail and river, or any run- confident that Peter has left CUWR down derelict site with potential in good stead for the future, and we to connect water quality and are dedicated to honoring his legacy habitat function with recreation, by carrying on its work the way storm water management, and Peter would appreciate. opportunities for young people to enjoy and learn from their natural environments and outdoor spaces. We recognized a need to not just talk policy and protect special land, but to actually do something, getting our hands dirty on sites with truly daunting environmental and legal problems. Working with Peter, CUWR was responsible for more than 63,000 acres of project work from New England to California, including urban brownfield sites and former military lands. CUWR’s preferred role has been to serve as catalyst by furnishing a planning process and Upper Connecticut River Habitat Restoration Plan vision, and at times stepping in to the chain of title, taking on liability Volume 1, No. 1, 2014 21 ocean views reciprocity: our obligation to the ocean by Peter Neill

hen considering how has been defined by historical events unilaterally and independently for we must deal with the and cultural traditions that are hard to unlimited profit, and will reorganize W myriad challenges to the deny, an evolution of behaviors based ourselves to maintain and nurture the world ocean, the conversation comes on religious assumptions, economic natural systems that have sustained us, always to questions of behavior and theories, and sometimes tumultuous and can continue to sustain us, even values. What must change in how we governance. The world wants to be as we grow in number, over time if we interact with ocean systems, with the organized around a collective global will make it so. marine environment, with exploitation desire for political order, growth as a of marine resources, with coastal path to well being, and capital defined But what can we do more to convince protection and development, and with first by the exploitation of natural us at every level that sustainability the economic and social necessities we resources and their transformation is an essential core value for our expect the ocean to provide? Given the through manufacture, and second, future? Smarter folks than I are immensity of the challenge, and the more recently, by scientific innovation struggling with this problem. And impossibility of a single fix that will and technology. We debate the clearly the struggle is necessary to make it all better, what specific interim dichotomies -- guns versus butter, counter those who will not consider steps must we take to move, with all free market versus managed economy, or accept even the idea, much less the deliberate speed, in the right direction? consumption versus conservation concomitant action, required to make – and we conduct the arguments sustainability succeed. What else is The ocean community has defined to a point now when we suffer required to convince the body politic various short-term strategies: from ideological adamancy, class that such destructive indifference, mitigation, for example, the direct differentiation, and political paralysis. by individuals, corporations, and tactical response to certain problems It seems a critical moment. We can governments, is no longer acceptable? to negate or neutralize their effect. continue to suffer failed consensus Adaptation is a second approach, one and social stasis; we can experience Let me suggest the concept of for which there is some logic but which continuing decline to collapse, chaos, reciprocity. This is not a new idea to be nonetheless compromises response by even revolution; or we can regain our sure, but perhaps it might be useful if settling for the existing circumstance capacity for civilization by facing our applied in a new context. Reciprocity as the new normal, accommodating problems, accepting the alternatives, is a state of mutual exchange, the the lesser condition, lowering the bar, and moving forward and away from categorization of an action by its giving in. Elsewhere, I have argued default and defeat. motivation and consequence in for a third response: invention, the relationship to another. Indigenous pro-active, creative approach that Sustainability is a new value that is peoples have practiced reciprocity applies present and future technology, advanced to this end. It accepts the as cultural behavior through direct financial incentive, and political action finite capacity of Nature to support barter and giving of gifts. The cultural to new ideas, new instruments, new a burgeoning world population. It anthropologist, Claude Levi-Straus, behaviors, new values. But this too proposes new behaviors predicated identified levels of such exchange, may not be totally sufficient in that, on this knowledge, that we will through language, kinship, and while it presents novel strategies and only exploit resources to an extent economics, a process that created applications, it may still not have the that allows for their renewal and bonds of social obligation present and underlying power to shift people’s sustainability over time. We will future, an idea familiar through the values. incentivize and promote this new value popular notion of the Mafia “favor system through financial tools, price bank,” a value on deposit that must be Value changes are the most ephemeral, structures, legislative action, regulatory paid back in kind. most important aspects of the enforcement, and cooperative action. discussion. We live in a society that We will stop taking it all, acting

WORLD OCEAN JOURNAL 22 23

Artisinal fishermen on Inle Lake, Myanmar. Credit: Christopher Martin

What if we accepted the power for others, a collective choice that protection and sustainability of reciprocity as a standard of taken to scale will extend or conserve outcomes. behavior at all levels, in all areas of that resource at a sustainable level. exchange, with Nature? What if we Third: acknowledged that the land and sea Second: By acting and applying these values, provide us value, not for the taking By paying a fair price for what we we are giving back. Modify personal, and exhausting as an entitlement, need and use, we are giving back. family, and community behaviors in but as the giving of a gift, the If we pay for our consumption every way possible to affirm these making of a loan, with a consequent at a level of true cost – withdraw values through action. Become a obligation that we pay back that value subsidies for fossil fuels, reinvest such “sustainability” citizen, A Citizen of the through complementary behavior, underwriting in clean technology, Ocean. Set an example. Sign petitions. equitable patterns of consumption, price water as the most valuable Vote. Demonstrate when necessary. and forms of exchange that sustain commodity on earth, include Communicate your commitment Nature through accepted future insurance payment for disaster at every level, and hold others obligation? What if we accept such response and reparation from accountable in your daily purchases, a reciprocal relationship and system environmental destruction as part of your employment, your investments, of connection with Nature as our regulatory requirement and permit civic organizations of which you are contribution -- our obligation -- to fees, evaluate government investment a member, schools that you attend ourselves, our children, and the projects based on a neutral or or have attended, churches that you public good? Let me offer three positive comparison of public benefit belong to, recreational activities that illustrative statements, with examples versus private profit, increase taxes you enjoy, and politicians that you of what I mean. and royalties to establish financial support. Communicate. Advocate disincentives for polluting industries, by example. And amplify your voice First: allocate penalties to support of by joining other exemplars into a By not taking, we are giving back. If non-polluting alternatives, and movement of giving back. we choose to forego or reduce our many other financial calculations consumption of fossil fuels or plastic and market applications based on bags or tuna, we are leaving that value the value added by environmental

Volume 1, No. 1, 2014 23 Now, of course, I can easily anticipate the reaction to these ideas: as politically naïve, impractical and impossible, too radical, too whatever – all the predictable response by those who don’t care, whose personal benefit is threatened, or who are afraid of any change. But in fact, it is their behavior that exemplifies these accusations: the simplistic political recalcitrance that sustains the status quo, the impracticality, indeed impossibility, of sustaining our way of life at present levels of consumption, the radical inflexibility and fearfulness that have brought governance to a standstill. What I am describing is a democratic process and expression of popular will based not on narrow ideology but on our understanding of the consequences for us all if we fail to act.

Reciprocity makes every one a winner, everyone a builder, everyone a giver. It is a simple framework that allows us to understand another way of being, how to support, individually and collectively, a shift from our present way that is making us all losers, all destroyers, and all takers until we have nothing left. Is that really what we want for the land, for the ocean, for our children and their future?

Reciprocity. It seems so clear. Think what the land gives us. Think what the ocean gives us. Are we not obligated to respond?

Let’s start giving back.

WORLD OCEAN JOURNAL 24 What if...

...we accept reciprocity as a standard of behavior at all levels, in all areas of exchange, with Nature? What if we accept such a reciprocal relationship and system of connection as our contribution—our obligation—to ourselves, our children, and the public good?

Volume 1, No. 1, 2014 25 OCEAN PORTFOLIO Mami Wata: Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and its diasporas

by Henry John Drewal

t once beautiful, protective, arts honoring water spirits such Mami Wata, examining the world seductive, and dangerous, as Mami Wata. Reestablished, of water deities and their seductive the water spirit Mami revisualized, and revitalized in powers. It demonstrates how art AWata (Mother Water) is celebrated the African Atlantic, Mami Wata reflects and actively contributes throughout much of Africa and emerged in new communities to beliefs and religious practices, the African Atlantic. A rich array and under different guises, globalization, and capitalism. of arts surrounds her, as well as among them Lasirèn, Yemanja, Most of all, it reveals the potency a host of other aquatic spirits-- Santa Marta la Dominadora, of images and ideas to shape the all honoring the essential, sacred and Oxum. African-based faiths lives of people, communities, and nature of water. Mami Wata is honoring these manifestations of societies. often portrayed as a mermaid, a Mami Wata continue to flourish snake charmer, or a combination in communities throughout the of both. She is widely believed to Americas, including Haiti, Brazil, Figurehead from an unidentified vessel have “overseas” origins, and her and Dominican Republic. Circa 1900-1925 | Wood, gilt, pigment. depictions have been profoundly This photo exhibition explores The Mariners’ Museum, Newport influenced by representations of the visual cultures and histories of News, VA ancient, indigenous African water spirits, European mermaids, Hindu gods and goddesses, and Christian and Muslim saints. She is not only sexy, jealous, and beguiling but also exists in the plural, as the mami watas and papi watas who comprise part of the vast and uncountable “school” of African water spirits.

Mami Wata’s presence is pervasive partly because she can bring good fortune in the form of money. As a “capitalist” deity par excellence, her persona developed between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries, the era of growing trade between Africa and the rest of the world. Her very name, which may be translated as “Mother Water,” is pidgin English, a language developed to facilitate trade. Countless enslaved Africans forcibly brought to the Americas as part of this “trade” carried with them their beliefs, practices, and

WORLD OCEAN JOURNAL 26 27

Mami Wata: Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and its diasporas Who is Mami Wata? Mami Wata is a complex symbol with so many resonances that she feeds the imagination, generating, rather than limiting, meanings and significances. She is at once a nurturing mother; sexy mama; provider of riches; healer of physical and spiritual ills; and embodiment of dangers and desires, risks and challenges, dreams and aspirations, fears and forebodings. People are attracted to the seemingly endless possibilities she represents and, at the same time, frightened by her destructive potential. She inspires a vast array of emotions, attitudes, and actions among those who worship her, fear her, study her, and create works of art about her.

Often appearing with the head and torso of a woman and the tail of a fish, Mami Wata straddles earth and water, culture and nature. She may also take the form of a snake charmer, sometimes in combination with her mermaid attributes and sometimes separate from them. She can exist in the Zoumana Sane (dates unknown, Senegal) form of indigenous African water Mami Wata, circa 1987 spirits known as mami watas and Pigment, glass. Collection of Herbert M. papi watas or assume aspects of a & Shelley Cole. Photo by Don Cole Hindu deity or a Christian saint without sacrificing her identity.

Volume 1, No. 1, 2014 27 Dona Fish | Ovimbundu peoples, Angola, Circa 1950s-1960s. Wood, pigment, metal, mixed media. Fowler Museum, UCLA. Photo by Don Cole

The images included in this exhibition present a broad overview of some of the movements, images, and ideas that have played major roles in the arts for Mami Wata. These include African images celebrating ancient and indigenous water spirits, global examples that demonstrate transcultural nature, and contemporary ideological and theological controversies concerning good and evil.

WORLD OCEAN JOURNAL 28 Mami Wata in Cultural Context

Mami Wata and the innumerable mami and papi wata spirits have many faces, and their identities rarely remain constant. As conditions change, so do the attributes, personalities, and actions of these fascinating and enigmatic water spirits. When taken together, the case studies presented in this section reveal striking differences, as well as remarkable similarities, in the beliefs and expressive arts for Mami Wata and her cohorts in Africa.

As with the arts dedicated to her, the worship of Mami Wata as a specific spiritual entity is not a unified, homogenous phenomenon. Instead, it reveals an extremely diverse and fluid set of beliefs and practices that both reflect and guide social and religious worlds. There are many expressions of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and other faiths, and this is perhaps even more true of the worship of Mami Wata and water spirits in Africa.

Images top to bottom: 1. John Goba (b. 1944, Mattru Jong, Sierra Leone) Headdress, ca.1980s. Wood, pigment, fabric, netting, beads, metal fiber. Collection of Mr. & Mrs. Jeremiah Cole. 2. Yaure peoples, Côte d’Ivoire ca 1970. Wood, paint, rubber . Fowler Museum, UCLA. Photo by Don Cole 3. Abdal 22 (active 1980s-early 1990s, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo) Mami Wata, 1989. Acrylic on canvas. Private Collection.

Volume 1, No. 1, 2014 29 Mami Wata as Artists’ Muse

In addition to their continually transforming histories of influence in Africa and its diasporas, Mami Wata and other African and African Atlantic water spirits have gained an even wider audience, as well as new meanings and import, by capturing the imaginations of a number of contemporary artists. This section of the exhibition features the work of several artists- -men and women from Africa, Europe, North America, and the Caribbean--who have found in Roudy Azor (b. 1980, Port-au-Prince, Haiti) Mami Wata and her cohorts a Lasirene-marassas trois (Lasirèn-Twins [and the One Who Follows the Twins Making highly intriguing subject matter. Three]), 2006. Satin, beads, sequins. Even though they may not worship Private Collection. Photo by Don Cole her, Mami Wata has entered the dreams and waking hours of these artists, seducing them into creating extraordinary works that open our eyes, minds, and imaginations to wonderful possibilities. The unique understandings and involvements of contemporary artists with water spirits also allow them to employ Mami Wata and other underwater denizens to address issues of gender, race, morality, identity, economics, environment, and politics.

Moyo Ogundipe (b. 1948, Ijesha-Ishu, Nigeria; active Denver, Colorado) Mami Wata, 1999. Acrylic on canvas. Collection of Chike Obianwu. Photo by Don Cole

WORLD OCEAN JOURNAL 30 Mami Wata’s Sisters in the African Atlantic

Sacred waters bathe the histories of African peoples--waters of life, departure, and return. Sometimes they appear as tears of deep sorrow, sometimes as soothing and cooling streams sustaining existence and hope. Water connects world with otherworld, life with afterlife. Among Africans dispersed across vast oceans, these waters are emblematic of the ultimate journey back home to Africa and all those distant yet living ancestors. In Haiti, it is the journey home to Guinee across the rippling Alison Saar (b. 1956, Los Angeles, California), La Pitonisa, 1987. Wood, boundary of existence, imagined as copper, tin. Collection of Justine I. a vast expanse of water that exists Linforth. Photo by Don Cole between life and afterlife. This is the abode of Lasirèn, La Baleine, Agwe, Simbi, Yemanja, Watra Mama, and all the water divinities of Africa and the African Atlantic. Their names are regularly invoked to strengthen the determination needed to endure the hardships and challenges of lives scattered and torn asunder by the avarice, arrogance, and brutality of those who would enslave others for their own benefit. The arts for African Atlantic gods and goddesses evoke complex emotions, hopes, and dreams as well as fears and nightmares. They may recall a Henry John Drewal is Evjue-Bascom sorrowful, troubled past, yet they Professor of Art History and Afro- offer hope and inspiration for a American Studies at the University better future and the promise of an of Wisconsin-Madison. He was the afterlife. guest curator at the Fowler Museum at UCLA for a major traveling exhibition of “Mami Wata, Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and Its Diasporas” and is the editor of the book which was developed from the exhibit and published by Indiana University Press in 2008. Volume 1, No. 1, 2014 31 Available at Amazon.com. ocean climate Extreme Weather, Small Island Nations And A Changing Climate

A Statement by Ronnie Jumeau, Seychelles Ambassador to the U.N. Carbon emissions are changing the ocean’s pH, polar ice is melting in the Arctic, the ocean is absorbing solar radiation, warming seas are generating more severe and more frequent weather events. All of this is affecting the ocean resources which sustain us, and the densly populated coastal zones where two-thirds of the world’s inhabitants live. Many bottom-up efforts are transforming the ways in which we adapt and live, but is it too liitle, too late? Are governments working hard enough and quickly enough to make the changes that are needed to alter our current course?

Children returning from school through flood water during a tidal surge in Chittagong, post-Cyclone Aila in Bangladesh, 2009. Credit: Jashim Salam | Marine Photobank WORLD OCEAN JOURNAL 32 small island nations face a challenging future

In this 3:07 video produced by World Ocean Observatory and Compass Light Productions, Ronnie (Ronald Jean) Jumeau, Seychelles Ambassador to the United Nations and the United States, discusses the shared story of small island nations and the effects of climate change. Ambassador Jumeau was interviewed by World Ocean Observatory at the Copenhagen Climate Talks in 2009.

Small Island Nations are the first and most vulnerable societies to face the challenging conditions of sea level rise, acidification, extreme weather and other dramatic manifestations of climate change and the ocean. Some island nations already face the His Excellency Ronnie Jumeau, Seychelles Ambassador to the U.N. and the prospect of complete submersion United States, in a World Ocean Observatory exclusive interview during the and loss of place and national 2009 Climate Talks in Copenhagen, Denmark. identity. Many are now engaged in Credit: World Ocean Observatory & Compass Light Productions innovative strategies to respond to these challenges, and to them we may look to see the future. See more at worldoceanobservatory.org/content/ ocean-climate.

Volume 1, No. 1, 2014 33 OCEAN solutions

The Ocean & Human Ecology

An Exclusive Video Interview with Darron Collins, President, College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine Produced by Molly Bedell | Edited by Trisha Badger

WORLD OCEAN JOURNAL 34 35

The Ocean & Human Ecology

An Exclusive Video Interview with Darron Collins, President, College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine Produced by Molly Bedell | Edited by Trisha Badger

An Exclusive Interview with Darron Collins, President, The College of the Atlantic

In July of 2013, Peter Neill, Director of the World Ocean Observatory, sat down with Darron Collins, President of the College of the Atlantic (COA) at the Bar Harbor, Maine campus to discuss human ecology, ocean issues, and ways in which sustainable disciplines can be implemented on a local level, scaled up, and applied to urban settlements.

Collins, a graduate of COA and Tulane University, and former Director of Creative Assets for the World Wildlife Fund, offers a unique perspective on how we as humans relate to our natural July, 2013: Darron Collins speaks with Peter Neill at the College of the world and ways in which we are Atlantic campus in Bar Harbor, Maine. impacting our world today and the potential for a sustainable future.

This exclusive interview between Peter Neill and Darron Collins was recorded in July of 2013 in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Produced by Molly Bedell Edited by Trisha Badger

Volume 1, No. 1, 2014 35 an OCEAN commonplace

visions at sea

Composed by Joey Roukens. Performed by the Rubens Quartet

In 2011 a unique collaboration took place between composer-in- residence Joey Roukens and the Rubens Quartet. In 2011 Roukens put the finishing touches on his newest composition Visions at Sea, written for the Rubens Quartet and commissioned by the Scheepvaartmuseum in Amsterdam for the re-opening of the Het Scheepvaartmuseum, the National Maritime Museum of the Netherlands. The world-premiere took place on October 1, 2011 with Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands in attendance. This video was recorded in Bimhuis Amsterdam for VPRO Virje Geluiden.

In 2012 the Quartet launched a new CD featuring two new works by Roukens. Learn more at www. rubenskwartet.nl

The Rubens Quartet is: Sarah Kapustin, violin; Tali Goldberg, violin; Roeland Jagers, viola; and Joachim Eijlander, cello.

Special thanks to Vrije Geluiden, VPRO television for permission to use this video.

WORLD OCEAN JOURNAL 36 visions at sea

Composed by Joey Roukens. Performed by the Rubens Quartet

Artificial Reef Sunken Ship: Large schools of fish inhabit an artificial reef--an intentionally sunken United States Coast Guard cutter. Morehead City, North Carolina. Credit: Brandon Puckett | Marine Photobank

Volume 1, No. 1, 2014 37 I Pledge: To only consume seafood that has been raised or harvested sustainably; To refuse plastic containers when possible and to only choose those that can be reused or recycled; To avoid non-biodegradable packaging, Styrofoam, and plastic wrap; To conserve, harvest, and recycle fresh water at home, at work, and at organizations with which I am associated;

To reduce my dependence on fossil fuels and production of CO2 emissions and to try and reduce my annual consumption by 25% using alternative transportation and conserving energy at home; To adopt alternative technology, more fuel-efficient, hybrid or electric vehicles, solar and wind energy production, and other options whenever possible; To stop using chemical lawn fertilizers and pesticides and to advocate against industrial waste into streams, rivers, ponds, lakes and watersheds; To leave natural areas, waterways, and beaches cleaner than I found them; To oppose development within the coastal zone that compromises the environmental health of the shoreline and associated maritime resources; To encourage local schools and civic organizations to support environmental study, programs and values; To support local conservation and advocacy organizations involved in community- based activities working toward a sustainable ocean; To require my local, state, and national political candidates and leaders to commit to these outcomes as part of their political agenda before they are elected; To build the “Citizens of the Ocean” network by sharing this pledge with my family, neighbors, and friends worldwide.

SIGN THE PLEDGE

WORLD OCEAN JOURNAL 38