Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability

8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability

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Tides, coasts and people: culture, ecology and sustainability.

Owain Jones, Countryside and Community Research Institute, University of the West of

England, [email protected]

Natasha Barker, Senior Marine Policy Officer, WWF-UK, [email protected]



1 Introduction

Tides are an exciting and dramatic feature of many parts of the UK coast, and

coastal areas globally. They are profoundly important in shaping the physical,economic, social and cultural geographies of the coast, and are so in ways

which connect all these together. Thus they are important for those with

responsibilities for managing the coasts, littoral areas, and sea margins (with

an eye to sustainable management). And for those seeking to deepen our

µsocio-ecological¶ understandings of the coasts more generally ±

understandings which acknowledge the complexity of any environmentalissue and how they are always constructed from interacting natural and social

processes. Intertidal areas - from marshy areas, sand dunes, beaches, to

estuarine mud flats - are subject to a wide range of pressures and loss.

Estuaries are particularly important in the UK context, are highly tidal, have

very powerful and important physical, economic and cultural forces at workwithin them, yet are often seen as empty, ugly, and thus ripe for neglect and

or development of one kind or another.



This paper draws upon my cultural geographical work on what I term µtidal

culture¶, and Natasha Barker¶s work on the culture and management of

estuaries in UK Russia and Canada which have the other highest tides in the

world, which was conducted as part of a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust

Travelling Fellowship (Barker 2008). The Severn Estuary is used as anexample as it familiar to both, and is the subject to the second highest tides

in the world and the highest in Europe.



2 Tides (a brief introduction)

The sun and moon exert "tractive" force on the oceans, drawing the waters

towards their ever moving "sublunar" and "subsolar" points. Tides occur in allthe oceans (to varying degrees) but vary markedly, and becomes very

apparent and significant when more affected water meets land.

Variously, around the world¶s coasts, the all important sea level continually

rises and falls to make either microtidal coasts (under 2 metre range);

mesotidal coasts (2 ± 4 metres); or macrotidal coasts (4 metres and higher)

(Haslett 2008). Tidal areas can be diurnal (tides rise and fall roughly once

every 24 hours, e.g. Gulf of Mexico), semi-diurnal (tide rises and falls roughly

twice in 24 hours, e.g. Atlantic coasts of Europe and North America), or µmixed¶

where the rhythm is more syncopated, as in one low tide followed by two

higher tides (e.g. west coast of Canada and the United States).



Before I give a few examples, I set out the anatomy of the tide

The turn of the tide

High tideLow tide

Slack water (a pause at the turn of the tide)

The flood (tide rising)

The ebb (tide falling)

Highest tides (springs)Lowest tides (neaps)

Lee tide (tide and wind same direction)

Weather tide (tide and wind in opposite direction)

Storm tide (height of tide increased by weather conditions)

(Flotsam and jetsam)



They form complex seasonal and monthly rhythms of changing heights and

times of high and low water.

Within this base rhythm there is local variation caused by factors such as

the shape and orientation of coast, air pressure, wind speed and direction,how they have been µengineered¶ (sea walls etc).

Importantly tides have rhythm signatures which differ for m the more

ubiquitous rhythms of season and day night. The pattern of high and

low tides migrates across the day night timetable.



The temporalities of everyday life are often claimed to be changing (e.g.

Kreitzman, 1999).

Speeding up (Gleick, 1999)

Smoothing out - floating free from the rhythms of natural life - becoming

social, abstract, economic (24/7)

We have µless connection¶ with time as embedded in processes of day night,

the seasons, weather patterns etc, and the corresponding lives of plants and

animals.

Serres (1995: 28) in the Natural Contract puts this down to the retreat of two

ways of life ± µthe peasant¶ and µthe sailor¶ and sees it a defining aspect of

modern life.

µhow they spent their time, hour by hour, depended on the state of the sky andon the seasons. We have lost all memory of what we own these kinds of men. [

] The greatest event of the 20th century incontestably remains the

disappearance of agricultural activity at the helm of human life in general and

of individual cultures¶



There are clearly changes and in some ways we are more isolated from natural

rhythms (some examples comes later).

BUT, for various reasons, life remains much more temporally rhythmic andvarious, than is often acknowledged. Not least because of;

the depth, scale, power and ubiquity of natural temporalities embedded in the

life world. They cannot be so lightly thrown off, they are deeply engrained in our

bodies, our everyday lives and in relational formations which pattern life.

As Harvey (1996. 210) states µNight and day, the seasons, lifecycles in the

animal and plant world, and the biological processes [of the body] are typical

encounters with various kinds of temporality¶ .

These are still very understudied. In the excellent Timespace book by May and

Thrift µnatural times¶ are mentioned in the introduction but all the chapters are

more or less about social/human time. A similar pattern appears in the paperspublished in the journal Time and Society.



Tides

Lefebvre¶s (2004) µrhythmanalysis¶ is a call to study temporality and also the use of

rhythm to analysis everyday spatial practices.

He raises tides as an example. He says that European cities on the Atlantic coast

have differing qualities of life (rhythms) to those on the Mediterranean coast

because of the much more extreme and varied tidal ranges that affect them.

Tides, in the UK, and elsewhere, are a key form of natural temporal process bringing

differing space/time patternings to many aspects of everyday life.

Tides are a response to the relational movement of sun, earth and moon.



They generate extraordinary inter-tidal spaces. (These can be very dangerous and

scene of exploitation and tragedy, e.g. Morcambe Bay).

³Then there is Michael Marten, a photographer who has become fascinated by the

lost tidal land - amphibious, unowned - that exists between the low-water mark andthe high-water mark, and who takes pairs of images from precisely the same position

(the positions of the tripod's feet marked with pebbles and sticks) at high and low

tide.´ (Macfarlane, 2007)



Where significant tides occur they have obvious impact on natural

systems such as erosion and deposition but also on many aspects of

social, cultural, and economic everyday life

Agriculture

Tourism

Sea related industries

Land transport

Sea transportPower generation

Various forms of recreation

Environmental management

Place identity

Material forms (sea walls, boats, bridges, urban and rural water fronts)

Two very brief examples



London sewer system



Airbus A380



Estuaries are particularly influenced by tidal flows

The NCC (1991) identifies 155 estuaries (which by definition are tidal)

around the British coastline and calculates that µthe 9,320 km. of estuarine

shoreline makes up 48% of the longest estimate of the entire coast¶, and

that µ18,186,000 people live in large towns and cites adjacent to estuaries¶.

Make µother¶ space



Tidal landscapes are powerfully affective.

µThese places seem to have a very particular power. This lies in the senseof freedom that beaches offer, their sheer openess, and the novelty of the

life they support¶ (2).

µthese are places that literally have a life of their own, where rhythms of tidesand seasons set an agenda that seems to stand outside human time¶ (3).

Bill Adams:

Future Nature

(1996).

Don MuCullin: (1989)

Open Skies:

Burnham-on-Sea

with Hinkley PointPower Station



Severn Estuary

(second highest

tidal range

in the world ±up to 15 m)

Severn Estuary

Partnership

³Britain¶s longest river brings vast quantities of water into the Severn Estuary.

Europe¶s biggest tide takes masses of water back up into the mainland. The

mighty Severn influences the ways we live in many ways ± and deserves all

the attention we can give it!´ (SEP, 2005, p .2)



Roughly 20 % of the estuary is intertidal space (100 km sq). 80% of coastline

is modified / engineered (sea walls)



All manner of sites around the estuary have polyphonic rhythms of day night and

high low tides (and seasonal changes)

Beaches

Farms

Ports

Cities (rivers, docks and swing bridges)

Power stations

Nature reserves

The rhythm of the tides become part of everyday practice and dwelt life for many

people (to varying degrees)

Local governance has to deal with highly dynamic system which cross

boundaries and intersects with all manner of social/economic/ecological

functions.

Two brief examples



Grazing the salt marshes

A complex pattern of tide driven management



Tourist beaches

NOT Weston-super-mare



Loosing the tides

Sea walls

Land reclamation

Making ports non-tidal

The Taff Barrage

The Severn Barrage??

From ferries to bridges

First Severn Bridge

replaced ferries in 1967 ±

changed rhythm and

speed of transport and

relation to the landscape



Tide, Time and Narrative

The turn of the tide is often used to locate µus¶ and our

stories in time - to mark a point where things can start, andthings can end.

This reflects a need (perhaps) not only for human stories to

embed themselves in (patterns of) space and place, but

also in patterns (rhythms) of time.

Joseph Conrad



Beginnings and Ends

I am collecting a number of examples where the tide, and particular state of the tide, is used as a motif at the opening (and often) the close of novels,

and other writings.Most famously perhaps Conrad set the narration of H eart of Darknessbetween the turn of two tides.

(Opening) The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of

the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and

being bound down to the river, the only thing to do was to come to and waitfor the turn of the tide.

(Close). Marlow ceased, and sat apart [ ] in the pose of a meditating Buddha.

Nobody moved for a time. ³We have lost the first of the ebb´, said the

Director, suddenly. I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bank of

cloud, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earthflowed sombre under an overcast sky ± seemed to lead into the heart of an

immense darkness.

(Conrad published two sets of stories entitled Twixt Land and Sea and

Within the Tides ± the margins of land and sea being a key element in

his form of psychological realism).



Novels

Mill on the Floss - George Elliot

Frenchman¶s Creek - Daphne Du Maurier The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch

The Sea - John Burnside

Travel/place writing

The Kingdom by the Sea - Paul TherouxCoasting ± Jonathan Raban

Modern Nature ± Derek Jarman



Tides and life and death A number of folklore sources tell how key moments in the life cycle (conception,birth and death) were believed to be affected by tidal rhythms.

Shakespeare and Dickens both draw upon this.

'People can't die, along the coast,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'except

when the tide's pretty nigh out. They can't be born, unless it's

pretty nigh in - not properly born, till flood. He's a going out

with the tide. It's ebb at half-arter three, slack water half an

hour. If he lives till it turns, he'll hold his own till past the

flood, and go out with the next tide.'

Dickens; David Copperfield:

the death scene of Barkis



The American poet Walt Whitman, when visiting American

Civil War hospitals in Washington, recorded that the

gravely injured seemed to die more readily and peaceably

when the hour corresponded to the turn of the tide.

Lyall Watson in Supernature (1973) discusses the moon¶s

influence on life on earth, not least via the tides.

Every living animal and plant is made aware of the rhythm. The livesof those that inhabit the margins of the sea depend entirely on this

awareness¶ (22).

He tells of experiments with oysters which, when moved

from the shore to a distant inland location, adjust their dailyopening and closing to what would be their new tidal

rhythm. They can somehow feel the moon¶s pull.



Climax

The Sea: John Burnside (2005)

The H ighest Tide: Jim Lynch (2005)

both use an equinox tide to bring their narrative to a climax

and the tide as a dramatic device more generally.

³They departed, the gods, on the day of the strange tide. All morning

under a milky sky the waters in the bay swelled and swelled, rising to

unheard-of heights«´

(Opening of The Sea)



Renewal

Anne Bronte: Angus Grey

My footsteps were the first to press the firm, unbroken sands; nothingbefore me had trampled them since last night¶s flowing tide had obliterated

the deepest marks of yesterday, and left in fair even, except where the

subsiding water had left behind it the traces of dimpled pools and little

running streams. [ ] Refreshed, delighted, invigorated, I walked along,

forgetting all my cares, feeling as if I had wings on my feet [ ] and

experienced a sense of exhilaration to which I had been an entire stranger since the days of early youth.

Joyce Carey: H orse¶s Mouth

I was walking by the Thames. Half-past morning on an autumn day. Sun in

a mist. Like an orange in a fried fish shop. All bright below. Low tide. [ ]Thames mud turned into a bank of nine carat gold rough from the fire [ ] I

swam in it. I could not take my eyes of the clouds, the water, the mud.

James Joyce: Ulysses



Loss, Threat, Dread

The Riddle of the Sands: Erskine Childers

Peter Grimes (poem): George CrabbeMussel H unter at Rock H arbour (poem): Sylvia Plath

Much more uneasy, even disturbing views of inter-tidal space

µDawn tide stood dead low. I smelt

Mud stench, shell guts, gulls leavings¶ (Plath)

There anchoring, peter chose

From men to hide,

There hang his head, and view

The lazy tide

In its hot slimy channel

slowly glide. (Crabbe)

Causeway at low tide, Severn Estuary



³Another Place´ by Anthony Gormley. 100 cast iron figures on Crosby beach. UK.

(http://weblog.girasol.co.uk/_photos/2%20men%20in%20raging%20sand.jpg)

Tides and art (many examples)



Penzhinskaya Guba



The Bay of Fundy

Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability

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