August 10, 2018 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com • 7A
Author examines ‘the human side’ of tides
Sailor and surfer
Jonathan White
journeys the globe
“Tides:
The
Science
and Spirit
of the
Ocean,”
by Jon-
athan
White.
By Rebecca Herren
Cannon Beach Gazette
When Jonathan White and
a group of passengers were
stranded by a 16-foot tide on
a mud flat near Sitka, Alaska,
White was able to get the tide
out of the boat, but not out of
his head. He wanted to know
why and how this happened. To
find the answers, White needed
to understand the dynamics of
tides, so he set out on a near 20-
year journey.
“I thought I would find my
answers in a couple of books,
but tides are really complicat-
ed,” White said. Ten years and
300 publications later, White
admitted, “the more I read, the
more complex, mysterious,
fascinating and poetic tides be-
came.”
White spoke in front of an
attentive audience on July 13
at Beach Books to discuss his
journey on tide study: how
tides travel, their influences,
their effect on rising sea levels
and what they portend for the
future.
His new book, “Tides:
The Science and Spirit of the
Ocean” is a mix of science,
history and ocean lore. White’s
journey took him from the ca-
nals of Venice, Italy and France
to Canada’s Bay of Fundy and
Ungava Bay near the Arctic
Circle. It also includes stories
about the human side of tides.
In his readings, White no-
ticed the lack of any human
BEACH BOOKS
REBECCA HERREN/CANNON BEACH GAZETTE
Jonathan White, author of “Tides: The Science and Spirit of
the Ocean,” at Beach Books.
stories. “There’s a relationship
people have with the tides over
many thousands of years. I
wanted to bring those two sto-
ries together: the deep spiritual,
human story and the science
story.”
“Most of human history be-
fore 1700 believed the Earth
was the center of the universe,
that it didn’t move,” White said.
It wasn’t until Newton’s
planetary motion discovery that
humans became aware of tides.
Because people didn’t un-
derstand the reasons behind
the ebb and flow of tides, they
speculated, creating a rich
mythological history. Some be-
lieved when the tide went out, it
disappeared into a web of vents
below the ocean and came out
through another vent. Leonardo
da Vinci believed it was the six-
hour inhale and six-hour exhale
breathing of a large animal, and
some astrologers thought it was
divine power, citing women’s
menstrual cycles.
“There are a lot of different
ideas about this, but the science
didn’t even begin until about
300 years ago,” he said.
He explained how a crest
takes 12 hours to form from
high tide to high tide and low
tide to low tide. “The tide is
a long, low wave that travels
around the globe at 450 miles.
It has no beginning and no
end.”
Then there is tide friction.
“Any dimple of tension, any
thread of stress you see on the
ocean’s surface is evidence of
friction,” he said. “The tides
rub against the ocean floor and
create heat and some of that is
dissipated into the water, but
most of it is transferred into en-
ergy that acts as a break on the
ocean’s surface.”
Known as a global phenom-
enon, this friction also slows
down the rotation of the Earth,
acts as a torque on the moon’s
rotation and throws it away
from the Earth, and functions as
an accelerator for longer days.
Long journey
White’s journey began af-
ter he graduated from Lewis
and Clark College. He built
a 600-foot sloop and sailed it
through the Caribbean, Pacif-
ic and Atlantic oceans. In the
Environmental group uses North Coast
microplastics data to push for water standards
Cannon Beach Gazette
After years of surveys and
beach cleanups, microplas-
tics data collected at Fort Ste-
vens State Park and Crescent
Beach near Ecola State Park
will be at the forefront of an
environmental group’s push
to influence state policy.
The Center for Biologi-
cal Diversity, a West Coast
nonprofit, is submitting data
from several Oregon beach-
es to the state Department of
Environmental Quality in an
attempt to list the nearby wa-
ter as contaminated.
“If the beach is contami-
nated, there’s good reason to
believe the water nearby is,
too,” said Blake Kopcho, the
center’s oceans campaigner.
Doing so would empower
the U.S. Environmental Pro-
tection Agency to require the
state to find ways keep the
water cleaner. The center ul-
timately hopes this will lead
to reduction efforts to keep
plastics out of the ocean.
“The goal is to get action
to get to the source,” Kop-
cho said. “Beach cleanups
are great, but ultimately we
have to figure out how to stop
(plastic) before it gets into
the waterway.”
No states on the West
Coast have water quality
standards that directly ad-
dress microplastics, which
studies show bioaccumulate
carcinogenic compounds that
can be released into the water
and air.
Microplastics are det-
rimental because they can
transfer into the marine food
chain and eventually into
people.
“There isn’t a narrative
for microplastics. States set
limits on other contaminants,
like mercury, for example. If
levels are exceeded, the state
has to find a way to mitigate,”
Kopcho said. “There are no
water quality standards that
say ‘there can’t be this level
of microplastics in the wa-
ter.’”
Finding solutions
For better or worse, the
North Coast has gained a
reputation for a microplastics
problem, as well as solutions
to address it.
The region is the birth-
place of the first-ever mi-
croplastic filtration system,
which has helped remove
thousands of tiny pieces of
plastic degraded from larger
waste in cleanup drives orga-
nized by the environmental
nonprofit Sea Turtles Forev-
er.
“Trash Talk,” a program
to convert plastics into jew-
elry that is sold to support the
Haystack Rock Awareness
Program, has raised regional
awareness about plastic pol-
lution since last year.
But despite local ef-
forts, the problem continues
to grow. According to the
American Association for the
Advancement of Science, at
least 8 million metric tons
of plastic enters the ocean
each year. About 1.5 million
metric tons of plastic in the
ocean are estimated to be mi-
croplastics.
Surveys have shown plas-
tic accumulation doubling
at Crescent Beach. Fort Ste-
vens State Park has a figure
as high as 11,000 pieces per
square meter, while other Or-
egon Coast beaches sit closer
to 800 per square meter.
In the past two weeks
alone, Sea Turtles Forever
has removed more than 1,000
pounds of microplastics just
from Cannon Beach sands
north of Whale Park.
“Last year it only took
us three days to clean this
section of the beach. This
year, it took 14,” Marc Ward,
the group’s founder, said.
“That’s easily four times as
much from last year. It’s not
getting better.”
Ward said strong tides
pushing up against river cur-
rents could be partly to blame
for high concentrations of
plastics on Clatsop Coun-
ty beaches. Multiple plastic
mold injection companies in
the Portland metro area could
be contributing to more plas-
tic entering local waterways,
he said, but plastic has been
identified from all over the
Pacific Rim.
Regional approach
That’s part of the appeal
of the regional approach to
change water quality stan-
dards, Kopcho said.
“It’s really hard to tell where
this plastic is coming from,” he
said. “Is it coming from a pellet
plant? Is it plastic in the gyre?
But the good part about getting
listed is it gives each state flex-
ibility to address their amount
of pollution.”
Ways to do this, Kopcho
said, include plastic disincen-
tives, like recent bans on plas-
tic straws, or offsetting microfi-
ber plastic pollution that comes
from washing machines.
“We’re creatively looking
for ways to address plastic pol-
lution problems, and we think
this is a powerful avenue to get
there,” Kopcho said.
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capture the essence, setting the
tone for the next few years. “I
invited a theater group from
Chicago to perform a play.” He
anchored the boat in a bay, set
up a do-it-yourself amphithe-
ater for the passengers and the
play was performed on board
the Crusade.
From 1983 to the mid-
1990s, these floating seminars
kept White out at sea for about
seven months of the year, sail-
ing the Inland Passage from
Puget Sound to Alaska. His
seminars attracted a mix of
disciplines: scientists, environ-
mentalists, conservationists,
anthropologists, theologians,
ecologists and writers includ-
ing Ursula K. Le Guin.
(503) 738-9989 • Cell (503) 440-2411 • Fax (503) 738-9337
PO Box 140 Seaside, Oregon 97138
‘IT’S NOT GETTING BETTER’
By Brenna Visser
early 1980s, he wanted to start
a graduate program and saw
a picture of an old wooden
schooner. He said he “felt a
crush coming on” and got into
his Volkswagen bug and drove
to Tillamook.
It was a cold, rainy day and
the boat was in the mud.
“We went down below and
I could smell rotting wood. It
was painted orange, it leaked
about 150 gallons a day and it
was perfect,” White said.
He started a nonprofit or-
ganization on the boat named
Crusade, and for the next 11
years offered floating seminars
on the 65-foot halibut schooner
built in 1923.
His first seminar seemed to
Contact Holly at 503-436-2235