Sea Monster

Growing up near the California coast has meant that my family often packs up the Volkswagen bus, dubbed “The Desert Wolf,” and heads down to the Half Moon Bay/Davenport/Pacifica area for a weekend of surfing and camping along the coast. I say surfing, but a majority of the time the waves are much too strong for my brother and me, who are, at our very best, amateur surfers. More common ocean activities for us are boogie boarding or body surfing. On the rare occasion that we are not overpowered by the omnipotent swell, however, my bro and I manage fairly well with the surfboards. It is on these occasions, generally while floating on my board and looking out at the open ocean hoping to see the perfect wave rolling over the horizon, that I sometimes begin to contemplate just what type of sea creature might dwell in the depths below me.

Half Moon Bay, Pacifica, and especially Davenport are known to be sharky beaches. Specifically, great white sharks often choose the waters surrounding those beaches as their breeding grounds. Every time we head out to that area, my dad gives us a lecture on the dangers of surfing in sharky water, reminding us that, no matter how rare or unlikely, there is always the possibility of being attacked by a shark. He once made up a rhyme to help us remember shark safety: “Below the waist, it's a deal. Over the shoulders, you're a meal.” Of course, it's not easy to surf in waist deep water, so we often found ourselves ignoring that particular rule. Another of my father's famous pre-beach speeches was one regarding the size of the sharks. His tone was comforting, seeming to mean “oh, don't worry, they aren't too dangerous,” or something similar to that, but his words conveyed the opposite message. He said to us, “You'll only find the biggest sharks out here. These beaches are very close to elephant seal breeding grounds, and it takes a big shark to take out a 10 foot long, 2,000 pound elephant seal. You won't be seeing any of the smaller types of shark around here.” Luckily for us, we have never seen any shark of any size. However, floating on my board and gazing down into the dark waters below me, I can't help but contemplate the possibility of a shark or some equally large sea creature lurking below me.

Recently, however, there has been talk of a much more terrifying monster haunting the California coast.

I have always loved the ocean: the smell of the salty water, the feeling of the wind coming off the sea and tearing through my hair, the recklessness and total loss of control I feel when I allow myself to be tossed about by the waves. These sensations brought to me by the wild sea always remind me of the strength of nature, and I love the awe inspiring power of the ocean. Hearing the thundering waves brings me back to countless family excursions to the beach. When I came back to Edinburgh in January, I brought with me a small jar filled with sand from a beach in Half Moon Bay to remind me of home. Little did I know that my seemingly innocent ¼ cup of sand was potentially dangerous.

When my dad heard about the jar of sand (which had, to his horror, somehow opened up and spilled in my suitcase), he immediately told me to throw it away, saying it was possibly radioactive. I laughed him off, thinking, “Radioactive sand? What is he talking about? That's crazy, there's no way this little jar of sand is radioactive.” Later, however, he sent me some articles written about the elevated radiation levels found on beaches, especially in the sand, along the California coast. The first two articles I read were on a website called Infowars. One of the articles I looked at had a youtube video of a guy walking in Pacifica with a Geiger counter (which measures ionizing radiation). He starts out on a bluff overlooking the beach and, as he gets closer to the beach, the readings on the Geiger counter get higher and higher and eventually reach the alarm level, which is 99. The reading goes up to the low 150s, which, according to the Infowars website, is 5 times the safe level for humans. The authors speculate that the increase in radiation levels is due to a radiation cloud from Fukushima hitting California. The cloud was scheduled to hit in early 2014. The site then lists numerous times in the past when the government has lied to the public about dangerous pollutants, warning that the government will likely lie again to cover up this new concern regarding radiation levels. Considering that the article basically relies on a youtube video posted by an unknown individual for all of the real information on radiation levels and then goes on to smash the government, I would conclude that Infowars is an unreliable and even alarmist website. In fact, after doing a little research on Infowars, I came to the homepage and found it full of headlines seeming to bash the government and corporations. I'm not saying I approve of everything the government does, but I would be more likely to trust a site with a more balanced array of articles (as if unbiased articles are easy to find...). In another article on Infowars regarding California beach radiation, posted two days after the first one I read, it says that experts found areas where the radiation levels were 1400% over the normal level but that these high levels are not due to Fukushima. In fact, studies conducted on the dirt near the beaches show traces of radium and thorium, which are naturally occurring radioactive elements and not contained in the radioactive material from Fukushima. They found none of the radioactive material used in Fukushima.

A rebuttal to the first of the Infowars articles was posted on rt.com with the headline: “Officials reject concerns over 500 percent radiation increase on California beach.” The article states that while the Geiger counter does measure radiation, the levels it records do not directly equal the hazard level for humans and that, though the levels are unusually high, it is not unsafe for humans to be on the beach or in contact with the radioactive sand I mentioned earlier. They are still unsure why the levels are high, but say that it is not from Fukushima, but something much less ominous such as, and I quote, “red-painted eating utensils buried on the beach.” Personally, I find it extremely unlikely that buried utensils are the culprit for abnormally high radiation levels found in both sand and dirt all along the California coast. This does seem rather like the “experts” trying to cover up any real danger by reassuring an unsuspecting public that all is well, just as Infowars said. Even so, Infowars did the opposite, ratcheting up the angst with headlines such as: “Has Fukushima's Radioactive Wave Already Hit California?” and “1400% Radiation Hot Spot Found on San Francisco Beach.” SF Gate has its own article on the issue, stating that scientists have reported that levels of radiation from Fukushima have been declining ever since their discovery two years ago and remain well below human danger level. The article also stated that it was likely that the cause of the high radiation levels seen in the youtube video are natural, and are perhaps ancient eroded rocks in the cliffs above the beach. Basically, after reading all the articles, I came away with the feeling that no one really knows anything concrete about the high radiation levels. Some say that it poses a huge health risk and people should keep their infants off the beach for fear of their eating sand and ingesting radioactive particles, while others, generally the “experts,” advise the public not to worry. My professional opinion is that the truth lies between the two extremes.

Regardless of radiation levels, it is clear that human activity is harming oceans. Almost weekly I hear reports of oil spills, dolphins, turtles, and other animals caught and killed in fishing nets, and the disappearing coral reefs. What we are doing to the oceans, even if we are doing it unintentionally, is devastating. The human need to conquer, and the arrogance that makes us believe we can conquer, everything around us is, I think, one of the reasons we are destroying the planet. I recently watched the documentary Blackfish, and it pretty much sums up what I mean by human arrogance. The documentary is about the treatment of killer whales in theme parks such as Sea World. It describes the life of a performing killer whale from its capture, or birth in captivity, to its death, and also reveals that the higher ups of these theme parks withheld information and blatantly lied to the whale trainers. The film shows the capture of the orca whales. Only baby killer whales were taken because they are young and therefore both more trainable and much easier to transport and handle. When the babies are taken, the mother whales visibly go into mourning. Once caught, the orcas are removed from the ocean and brought to comparatively tiny pools, where they are kept in a variety of small enclosures, depending on the park, until performance or training time. Removed from their families and essentially kept in storage until they are needed for human entertainment, these highly intelligent creatures can be driven mad by loneliness and boredom. After doing all that to the whales, people are surprised on the rare occasions when the orcas attack and even kill their trainers. Honestly, I'm a little surprised the attacks didn't happen more frequently. It's a testament to the whales that they didn't injure more trainers, given the unnatural conditions they lived in. My point here is that seeing an 8,000 pound killer whale leap out of the ocean and, instead of appreciating its beauty and freedom, wanting to cage it and train it to do our bidding, is arrogant. I don't know why humans feel this need to own and control everything around them, but it is leading us to destroy our world.

There is some consolation in the midst of this tragedy, and that is that people are seeing and acknowledging their treatment of the ocean. Documentaries like Blackfish are examples of people working to spread awareness of these issues. With increasing awareness, the problems are getting air time, and as a result people will hopefully increase their efforts to find solutions.

I love the ocean, but greater than my love is my respect. I respect the ocean for its power, mystery, and beauty, and it disgusts me that others have such blatant disrespect for it. Human pollution in the ocean is terrifying in its vastness and misplacement. There should not be high radiation levels or other human waste in the sand or the water or anywhere near the majestic creatures who call the ocean home. Humans should not think that they can tame the ocean. It makes me wonder, who is the real monster of the sea? Is it the shark, who may well be dangerous, but who has every right to bite us when we enter his domain? Or is it mankind's arrogance, coupled with our inability to control our waste? To me, the answer is glaringly obvious.