The Big Blue

The oceans cover 70% of Earth's surface.  We have technology (the Hubble Space Telescope) that can form images made from light that has travelled over 10 billion trillion kilometres from the edge of our known Universe, and yet we can see less than a hundred metres under the surface of the ocean because of the way that seawater absorbs and scatters light.  We just don't know all that much about our oceans considering how influential they are to life on this planet.  We know more about space and that strikes me as being a touch ridiculous.

We exist on a watery planet, and we rely on that core element.  But the oceans are big; perhaps bigger than we can easily comprehend.  Only a few hundred years ago, nothing in terms of the duration of human evolution, we still believed that the waters of the world's oceans just poured straight off the edge of our flat planet - they were that infinite that the water just kept on coming.  And so because they are so enormous, often stretching as far as the eye can see in every direction, some people still believe that their vast ability to dilute and distribute whatever we put in them makes them cheap and easy dumping grounds.  But this abuse of our planets largest ecosystems is catching up with us, and the ability of the oceans to absorb our excess carbon dioxide and maintain the status quo is starting to tip and our actions are altering the delicate chemical balance maintained by them.     

We are all emotionally attached to the oceans - some more strongly than others but nonetheless every single human being has an unquestionable and deep affinity for these massive bodies of water far larger, greater, and mysterious than we can comprehend.  We all lose ourselves staring at them given half an opportunity.  Why?  Maybe it's because, depending on what you believe and where you place your faith, several million years ago our ancient, ancient, predecessors flapped out of them when they became too crowded and adapted to life on "Earth".  Perhaps, considering this, we were a bit wide of the mark when naming this planet of ours.  Now there's something to consider on World Oceans Day.  

Beneath The Waves

Brad running a pro-lap back along a remote beach (just a seasonal fishing settlement) littered with debris following a tropical cyclone.  Al-Ashkara, Oman, 2010.

I checked my e-mails on Thursday afternoon and found, to my great delight, that one of my images (shown above) had won the best image award at the Beneath The Waves Film Festival Falmouth event.  I was really made up…I think it's perhaps the second time that I've submitted images to a photography competition so to win and have my work exhibited was a real honour.  The e-mail was to check that I would be attending the event, which was starting in less than four hours...  Luckily Falmouth is just down the road so I made it there in time for the intermission between films and got to enjoy the second half of the evening before making a brief, awkward, appearance on stage next to a wall-size projection of one of my images.  

Better on the other side of the camera. 

The Beneath the Waves Film Festival is an annual event held in Savannah, Georgia, USA, with the aim of encouraging, inspiring and educating scientists, advocates and the general public to produce and promote open-access, engaging marine issue documentaries.  It shows documentary films covering topics such as marine conservation, plastic pollution and ocean ecology whilst providing a platform for scientific discussion.  Each year there are a series of mini festivals held internationally, with the Falmouth festival coinciding with World Oceans Day (yesterday, June 8th).

Looking around the exhibition space at The Poly, Falmouth, I was really astounded that my image had been selected for the top honour; there were some incredible underwater images and marine photography that captured such a wide range of the issues found around the coastline of the UK.  The winning short movie is well worth checking out, and I would really encourage you to click this link through to Sonia Shomalzadeh's website to watch it.  Sonia is an artist based in Falmouth who produces enormous and beautiful images of whales drawn in the sand on local beaches; visible for just a single turn of the tide.  The video captures her working close-up, walking the beach with just a pointed stick, before pulling back to a viewpoint on the cliffs above from where the grand enormity of her efforts can be appreciated. Her work is spectacular, take a look.

The incredible sand art of Sonia Shomalzadeh.

This was the first year that Beneath the Waves has been hosted in the UK and, judging by the packed cinema, it was a resounding success.  Enormous thanks to Lucie, Sarah, and Phil (who is the brother of an old friend of mine and who I haven't seen in perhaps fifteen years, small world huh) who organised the event, and congratulations for putting on such a great show.  If you're around any of the cities listed on the poster below on the dates that the festival is being hosted then please go along and help to support and spread the word of marine conservation.

Repeat After Me: "I Am An Islomaniac"

The sunset before the storm, Nusa Lembongan, Indonesia.

Newland, due just North West of my front room window.

You can set me down just here thanks. The Maldives, appearing out of the blue.

My name is Mat and I am an islomaniac.

Ok, it’s your turn to say it too. It feels better to have got it off your chest no?

I’ve been putting off admitting my fascination with islands for a while now, I kept telling myself that I needed to wait until I had visited just a few more; a couple more photos of an island from the bow of a boat, maybe another image of a rocky outcrop silhouetted against the sunset. But it’s time to lay it out: I have a thing for islands. I can’t define it but their mysterious charm has cast a spell on me. The list of islands (and groups of) that I want to visit just keeps growing, and at this rate I’d never get around to writing this so strikes me there’s no time like the present.

There are thousands of islands on the planet. Trying to find out just how many depends on how you define an island and how you categorize them; The Vikings would only class land as an island if they could pass a ship with a rudder between it and the mainland, whilst the 1861 Scottish census defined an island as “an area of land surrounded by water and inhabited by man, and where at least one sheep can graze. Some are prisons, others holy, some are glorified cruise ship docks or have been razed and re-turfed as golf resorts, some are owned by film stars, some support the world’s biggest cities, some of them are islands at high tide and linked to the mainland at low tide, and a lot of them are knee deep in bird crap.

Big, small, sandy, rocky, volcanic, coral atolls; a lone palm tree, jungle, desert or bleak and windswept; cold, tropical, temperate; oceanic, freshwater, river; remote or a stones-throw from the mainland; there are so many variables that actually coming up with a definitive number of islands on planet Earth is nigh on impossible.

But why are so many of us entranced by islands? After all, they’re just bits of land restricted by water. But maybe that’s it; are they are reflection of us as human beings, individual and often isolated? “No man is an island”? Perhaps not John Donne. Perhaps we see a bit of ourselves in them and are comforted by the fact that when we view them in our minds eye we usually see an island that’s manageably small - the sort that you could walk around and get to know.

When I was little there were times when I exclusively read books about islands: Treasure Island, The Coral Island, Swallows and Amazons, Peter Pan, Swiss Family Robinson and later Robinson Crusoe, Lord of the Flies and The Beach all fuelled my over-active imagination. There was a pond near where I grew up which had a little island in the middle of it that my friends and I used to gaze at, but never swam out to it because we all knew that it would never live up to our expectations and imaginations. And these days when I look out of my window I stare straight at Newland, a rocky outcrop straight offshore from where I live. In the summer when the ocean’s flat some of us will paddle out to it but there’s nothing much to do when you get there; it’s just a lump of rock. At least one of us will still make the paddle year on year though. One day I’m sure that one of my friends will find pirate treasure out there though and make it all worth it.

George Orwell argued that we need solitude, creative work, and a sense of wonder as much as warmth, society, leisure, comfort, and security, and that “man only stays human by preserving large patches of simplicity in his life.”

It would appear that it is often much easier to gain and maintain this simplicity on an island than on a comparatively sized chunk of continental land (Thurston Clarke).

Simply put, we’re more human when on an island.

Tavarua, Fiji, as previously featured in a Desert Island Discs post.

My friend Jack casting for mackerel in front of Mouls Island, Cornwall.

St Michaels Mount, Cornwall. A mythical giant used to live on it according to Cornish folklore.

Prison island: Alcatraz, shot from the ferry from San Francisco to Sausilito.

Bay of Islands, North Island, New Zealand.

A friend of mine found this on the wonder of the interweb. There's no way it hasn't be photoshopped to turn it into every surfer's daydream, but who cares if it fuels some searching?

If islands are your thing too then take a peek at this book, be warned though, it'll only pour fuel on the fire.

A Letter of Thanks

Dear Mother Ocean/The Seven Seas/The Big Blue,

This letter is long overdue, because in all this time I don’t think I’ve ever stopped to say thank you.

Thanks for all the good times. Thanks for all the good waves.

Thanks for being so enthralling and for captivating me ever since I can remember, for being so full of wonder and living up to all of the hype. Thanks for always keeping a little back to keep me guessing though, wondering what’s still hiding beneath the surface.

Thank you for always being there, wherever I go; you’re always there when I look out of the window in the morning and you’re still there at the end of the day and I find your constant presence comforting. It’s so nice of you to give the sun a place to sleep at night.

Thank you for making the “sea air” and the positive ions that blow on the wind, keeping me cheerful.

Thank you for being so floaty.

Thank you for getting me from A to B so often, for allowing me to get around a bit and see other places.

Thanks for being so accepting, supportive and accommodating, but thanks also for scaring me. Whenever I get a bit too big for my boots you’re always there to put me back in my box and keep me humble. Sometimes you terrify me, other times you bounce me off the bottom, hold me under, pull my limbs in wrong directions and disorientate me, but I know that it’s all for my own good. I have enormous respect for you, more than I can articulate here.

When we have a bad day and don’t quite see eye to eye I know that more often than not it’s the wind’s fault, not yours.

Thanks for making my landings soft.

Thanks for dinner the other night, and for all those other times that you’ve provided me with something to eat.

Cheers for letting me wash in your waves. And for being such a good wake-up, I’d rather you than a cup of coffee any day.

I really like the way you’re always cool on a hot day and, most of the time, not as cold as the air in winter. You’re never as extreme in your temperatures and I really like that. On that note, nice one for regulating global temperatures.

Good work absorbing all of the carbon that humans release, I’m sorry that the job has fallen largely on you to do. I’m sorry too, on behalf of the human race, for all of the plastic. For what it’s worth I try to do my bit to remove the bits that I see from in and around you and I know many others do too.

Thank you for being there when I need a bit of quiet time to sit and reflect, for helping me to find the answers that I seek and not passing judgment on me.

Thanks for always being more interesting to watch than TV.

Thanks for all of the beach treasure, the shells and the seaglass and webbles that you make, the flotsam and jetsam that you carry to shore. Thanks for making sand, even though it fills my pockets and always ends up in my bed. It’s a nice little reminder that I always take away with me.

Thank you for delivering messages in bottles.

Thanks for being such a great horizon.

Thank you for giving me focus, drive and purpose. Thank you for giving me so many good memories.

Thanks for being such a good friend.

I appreciate it all more than you know.

Images, from the top down:

• Quiet Sunday afternoon, Playa Garza, Costa Rica
• Under the sea, North Shore Oahu, Hawaii
• Geographe Bay, WA
• School of baitfish, Hawaii
• Serenity, Sri Lanka
• Playing with the waves, Cabarita, Australia
• Sunset at Playa Guiones, Costa Rica
• The infamous "Neptune at Horta" - better than TV.