Rowboat in a Hurricane (16 page)
I nodded in full agreement. I knew all that, but somehow I couldn’t shift thirty years of conditioning so easily.
“No matter what happens, we’ll have each other,” Colin added.
It was sweet and corny and true all at the same time. It reminded me of the Tom Waits song “House Where Nobody Lives.” The lyrics “If there’s love in the house . . . ” went through my head, and I couldn’t help but smile. At least we had a seven-metre palace.
TWO DAYS LATER
we found ourselves in the middle of the
120
-kilometre passage between Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura. A microclimate in the region, created by the uneven heating of the land and ocean, affected both the weather and wind direction. The winds shifted early in the day, and we now had headwinds from the south, decreasing our progress to that of a slow walk. The wildlife continued to entertain; we saw a small pod of dolphins and a mid-sized shark in addition to the dorado, tuna, petrels, and shearwaters that we now saw on a daily basis. But the wildlife was not the only thing that multiplied; we also saw numerous boats, both local fishing trawlers and freighters, transporting goods to the islands. The memory of our near collision with the tanker was all too vivid, and I felt apprehensive as the waters became increasingly congested.
Before heading off to bed, I noticed that a thick cloud cover obscured the stars, but that numerous lights shone from non-celestial sources. Off in the distance, the city lights of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria emitted more illumination than a full moon. Several other towns and villages on the islands gave off muted yellowish glows that reflected on the clouds above. And at any given time, we could see between five and ten green or red lights, the running lights of nearby boats.
By law, powered boats on the water must display running lights at night, which announce both their presence and direction of heading. A green light shines from the starboard side, red off the port, and white off the stern. Knowing this, boats can determine one another’s orientations and approximate heading. For example, if we saw a green light, we knew that we were seeing the right side of a ship and that its direction of movement would be rightward. If we saw both red and green lights together, we knew that the ship was coming directly towards us. Upon departing Lisbon, we had had this unsettling experience a few times, but invariably the vessel would change course when it saw our own navigation light. Colin had cynically dubbed this disturbing display of green and red lights “a Christmas treat.”
Because of our boat’s slow speed and its erratic movement in big waves, we displayed a bright flashing strobe light instead of the typical red, green, and white display. So far this had been very effective in alerting nearby boats of our presence at night.
At
1
:
50 AM
Colin woke me from a deep sleep. He was outside rowing and I could hear him talking loudly, probably to some dolphins splashing around the boat. I couldn’t help feeling annoyed that he was interrupting my precious few hours of sleep. Trying to ignore him, I slid my head under the pillow.
“We’ve got a Christmas treat,” he said.
My bed was warm and cozy. I was still groggy with sleep and certainly not ready for the bow of a ship to come crashing through the wall. I quickly threw on a shirt and opened the hatch.
“Where is it?”
“Straight over there,” Colin said, pointing off the starboard side.
I could clearly see the bright green and red lights.
“It’s been coming at us for a while. It’s a calm, clear night. I’ve got no idea why they can’t see our strobe light,” Colin said.
“Maybe it’s our strobe that’s attracting them,” I said nervously. “I’ll try calling them on the
VHF
.”
I dug out the
VHF
radio and a package of signalling flares. Colin propelled the rowboat with all his might in an attempt to move us out of the ship’s path.
“This is
Ondine,
a small rowing vessel displaying a strobe light; we are calling an unidentified vessel bearing straight for us. Do you copy?” I said into the
VHF
.
I waited for an answer. Silence. I checked the radio to make sure it was functioning and on channel sixteen. The
LED
function light shone brightly. I tried again but with more urgency in my voice. Nothing.
Colin had turned the boat several degrees and was rowing a course perpendicular to the lights. Our speed was almost four knots, and
Ondine
cut smoothly through the flat waters. It soon became apparent that the other ship was changing course to keep coming towards us. The navigation lights were now very bright, and we could also hear the rumble of a diesel engine. We doubted it was an official vessel. If it was, both the coast guard and the police would be monitoring the radio.
It was impossible to gauge the distance of the vessel until the hull suddenly became discernable one or two hundred metres away. We were terrified. In moments, it would slam into us.
“
STOP! YOU’RE GOING TO RUN US OVER!
” I screamed into the radio.
I ripped the flare out of the pouch. The ship was so close. I could see the form of the boat illuminated by the pulses of our strobe. It was a wooden fishboat, about twenty-four metres long, with a high wheelhouse. Something was wrong. The flare wouldn’t go off.
“I can’t light it!” I screamed.
The wooden fishboat was now twenty-five metres from us, moving at full cruising speed. Impact would be in seconds. Colin was in the midst of a turn, trying to avoid the impending collision. Our carbon-fibre oars looked like they were going to snap under the stress.
Suddenly the fishing vessel turned sharply. They were taking evasive action. It seemed too late, and I braced for the impact. But the vessel missed us by less than two metres. Colin tucked the starboard oar against our boat to avoid having it sheared off. A wave rocked our vessel violently, and then the fishboat continued full speed into the distance, the rumble of its engine slowly fading to silence.
Colin dropped his oars in relief and exhaustion. He was panting heavily.
“That was too close,” he gasped. “There was a glow inside the wheelhouse—probably from the instrument panels. I could see two guys peering through the window. The fellow who saw us first wasn’t the one at the helm. He grabbed the wheel out of the helmsman’s hands and cranked it hard.”
My heart kept racing as I watched the boat’s white stern light fading into the distance. I wondered if they would have stopped if they’d run us over.
“They may have thought our strobe was marking something of interest, maybe fishing nets,” Colin said. “A strobe doesn’t allow for any depth perception, so they wouldn’t have known how far away we were. They probably figured the light was still miles away.”
Several boats were still in sight, and we worried about another incident. We pondered turning off the strobe, but instead kept a vigilant watch. The night passed without further incident.
A
NY FLOATING OBJECT
on the ocean quickly collects a thick mat of barnacles, seaweed, and algae. Our boat was no exception, and the growth on our hull was significantly decreasing our speed. The antifouling paint we had applied in Lisbon was doing very little to prevent barnacle buildup.
One day Colin decided to jump overboard to scrub the hull. Armed with a snorkel, mask, and bristle brush, he scraped away five weeks of crustacean growth and algal slime. I peered into the water, watching dislodged crustaceans plummet into the blue abyss and the occasional fish dart after the sinking loot. My job was to scan for sharks and to alert Colin if I saw one. We knew the likelihood of an attack was low but felt it was best to be prudent. After all, our chance of being hit by a hurricane had been statistically less likely than being eaten by a shark, too.
After an hour and a half, Colin finished scraping and clambered back into the boat. “She’s cleaner than a nun’s bum,” he said.
I rolled my eyes at his analogy, and Colin’s grin broadened.
“No wonder we were going so slowly. Some of those barnacles were four inches long.”
I climbed back onto the rowing seat and put Colin’s efforts to the test. It took a few minutes to overcome inertia and bring the boat to cruising speed. We were travelling at
1
.
5
knots, just under three kilometres an hour, which was pretty good considering we still had stiff headwinds.
“Awesome work, Tiger,” I said. “We’re moving much faster.”
“We’ll have to do this every week.”
It was amazing how quickly the barnacles had formed on the bottom of our boat. I had read earlier that they float on the ocean currents in their larval stage until they find a suitable home. Then they attach themselves, metamorphose into small shellfish, and stay put for the rest of their lives. Each barnacle builds a shell and reaches out with a series of sieve-like fingers that strain plankton from the seawater. As I watched them feed, I thought of a cluster of fiddlehead ferns unfurling themselves with tiny feathery arms instead of leaves.
Although barnacles are a well-known headache for boaters, humans are a greater threat to them—and not just to those that make their home on the boat hulls. Because the ocean is becoming more acidic, barnacles’ shells are getting weaker and weaker. The increased acidity of the ocean is a threat not only to barnacles, but to oysters, snails, coral reefs, starfish, sea urchins, shrimp, certain types of plankton, and all ocean organisms that build a calcium carbonate shell or skeleton. In fact, a third of all marine life is in peril.
According to U.S. scientist Scott C. Doney, the acidity of the ocean has increased
30
per cent since the industrial revolution began because of increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. The oceans have absorbed half the carbon dioxide emissions, dampening the impact of climate change at a great cost. When carbon dioxide dissolves in the ocean, it becomes carbonic acid and causes the ocean’s pH to drop. Usually the ocean is kept in balance by marine organisms, which convert the dissolved carbon dioxide products into calcium carbonate skeletons or shells. When carbon dioxide levels are slightly higher, these creatures become more prolific. But now that humans emit
27
billion tonnes of
CO
2
a year, the oceans simply cannot keep up.
All marine animals that build their skeletons or shells with calcium carbonate (
C
a
CO
3
) need to create it from building materials in the ocean—namely calcium and carbonate ions. (They cannot use existing
C
a
CO
3
deposits to build their structures.) But carbonate ions, which are naturally found at supersaturated levels, are dwindling as oceans absorb more carbon dioxide. Like brick-layers running low on bricks, crustaceans have a more difficult time building a structure. By
2050
, some areas of the ocean will have too little carbonate for animals to create shells. And with increasing acidity, animals will struggle to build their chalky skeletons and shells; like pearls in vinegar, their calcium carbonate structures will dissolve.
This is bad news for the people who rely on the ocean for survival, too. The last time the ocean reached such acidic levels may have been when dinosaurs became extinct. Sixty-five million years ago, the dinosaurs were killed off by what most experts believe was an enormous meteorite or a comet that slammed into the Yucatán Peninsula, a portion of Mexico where the earth has high concentrations of calcium sulphate. The heat and pressure created by the impact caused the calcium sulphate to convert into sulphuric compounds, which reacted with oxygen and water to form sulphuric acid. If as little as
5
per cent of these sulphuric compounds rained down into the oceans, the environment created would have been lethally corrosive. When the dinosaurs died, almost all marine animals that created calcium carbonate shells or skeletons also disappeared. Most species of calcium carbonate-shelled plankton disappeared, as did mussels. Coral reefs vanished and did not reappear for at least two million years.
According to research by the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Dr. Ken Caldeira, if rising carbon dioxide levels continue unabated, oceans may face a mass extinction similar to that which occurred when dinosaurs disappeared. When Dr. Caldeira presented his findings at the
AGU
/
ASLO
Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu in
2006
, they created headlines around the world. If a similar mass extinction should happen, recovery will not be easy. The geologic record demonstrates that the chemical effects of ocean acidification would last tens of thousands of years, and the recovery of species would take millions.
But for now at least, the barnacles in our neck of the woods seemed to be doing just fine. Their biggest worry was a guy in a snorkelling mask with a bristle brush.
AFTER MY ROWING
shift, I relaxed in the cabin and fixed myself a lunch of brochette, cheese, and crackers. I washed it all down with some black tea that Colin had left simmering in a pot. I was just about to start writing in my journal when Colin called for me to come out and see some dolphins.