Hawaii Travel

Archive for August, 2009

Tropical Storm Hilda jogged southward, away from the Islands, in the last 24 hours, and although it is strengthening, even the most widely diverging forecasts keep it away from the Islands.

(Image: The track of Tropical Storm Hilda in recent days shows the jog to the south in recent hours. The Big Island is displayed in upper left. Sourced: NOAA.)

Although the storm, now less than 500 miles from Hilo, is expected to take a slightly northward curve starting tomorrow, Thursday, it is now likely far enough south that the National Weather Service figures it will remain well away from the Islands.

Translation: We may get some south swell, but little wind from Hilda.

The current route takes it across Johnston Atoll on Monday, but forecasts now don’t anticipate Hilda will ever reach hurricane strength. Johnston, now uninhabited, should not be endangered by the storm.

That’s still not to say Hilda couldn’t change direction and bite us. Hurricane Iwa in 1982 swept northward from the southwest to slam Kaua’i.

But forecasters don’t anticipate that will happen.

In what is turning out to be a very active hurricane season, Hawai’i may dodge another bullet.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2009

Go to Source

you know, these events were a lot more fun when i was sneaking in to them….

…now i gotta be all professional and stuff. and get people like Cecilio Rodriguez all toasty warm on our wines

don’t worry about me! it’s no biggie. i’m such a chef groupie anyway, and they are all usually there

and you all [...]
Go to Source

Hawaii media cheerily announced this morning that Hurricane-to-be Hilda is unlikely to impact the Hawaiian Islands.

That, of course, is so misleading that it’s scary.

(Image: The National Weather Service’s Mariner’s 1-2-3 rule for Tropical Storm Hilda. Source: NOAA.)

First, the Islands certainly won’t avoid pounding hurricane-generated surf on southern shores. Might not be as big as surf from some other hurricanes, but there will be surf.

Second, there is a chance the Islands will feel some wind if the the storm center tracks along the northern edge of its forecast path.

Hurricanes are often depicted as dots on a map, representing the center of the storm.

But these cyclones are major features on the surface of the planet, hundreds of miles wide, spreading swaths of destruction along their paths. And in the Northern Hemisphere (that’s us) the winds are stronger and extend farther out on the right side of their path—in the case of Hilda, the northern side.

The National Weather Service’s favored estimate has its center passing several hundred miles to the south of the main Hawaiian Islands. If it stays down there, there will be some accuracy to the Star-Bulletin’s “at this point it is not expected to have much impact on Hawaii’s weather,” and The Advertiser’s “Isles unlikely to feel Hilda’s passing.”

The news reports might be right, but would you bet your house on that?

This is a strengthening tropical cyclone, running parallel to the island chain, at this writing about 525 miles from Hilo, and moving at more than 200 miles a day. Right now, tropical storm force winds cover a swath 150 miles wide, and that will increase as it reaches hurricane strength sometime Thursday.

Some sailors—cautious for good reason; their lives and their vessels are at risk—use what’s called the Mariner’s 1-2-3 Rule. They take the forecast storm center positions and apply a 100-mile circle of possible error at 24 hours out, then 200 miles at 48 hours, and 300 miles at 72 hours. Then they push the circles farther to reflect how far tropical storm force winds extend. Tropical storm winds are 39 miles an hour and more.

If you apply the Mariner’s 1-2-3 rule to Hilda, the southern Big Island is within the zone. See the image above.

Media reports unfortunately often shuttle between panic and calming reassurance. The best indications are that Tropical Storm Hilda will remain far enough south to have minimal impacts, but Hawai’i residents need to heed the lesson of ‘opihi pickers—go about your business, but don’t turn your back to the ocean.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2009

Go to Source

Just when you thought it was safe to get a little sniffle, the swine flu virus has taken another potentially scary turn.

This bug known as H1N1, which has pieces of human, bird and pig flu in its genetic makeup, and which jumped earlier this year from hogs to humans, has now jumped again into birds.

In this case turkeys—specifically turkeys at a commercial turkey operation in Chile.

(Image: A Centers for Disease Control map shows Hawai’i has “regional” H1N1 flu, along with the southwestern states and the southeast. Only Alaska and Maine, with “widespread” flu, rank higher. Credit: CDC.)

Just what this means is not yet clear, and it might not be trouble, but it could be a step toward something bad. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are monitoring.

Meanwhile, the swine flu virus we’re familiar with has continued to spread. It is in all parts of the United States, and 522 people have died—mostly people with other underlying health issues that became fatal when the flu virus was added to them.

This flu has comparatively mild symptoms, but it spreads more readily than normal seasonal flu. One of its interesting characteristics is that it is still around in August, when flu is comparatively rare.

“Most state health officials are reporting local or sporadic influenza activity. Two states are reporting widespread influenza activity at this time. Any reports of widespread influenza activity in August are very unusual,” says the CDC.

Most of the people who catch the flu tend to be younger, suggesting some previous flu bug provided older humans with some level of resistance. And most people who do get the flu are over it in a week.

In the swine-to-turkey story, the infected turkeys don’t suffer serious symptoms, either.

International health officials can’t seem to decide whether this transmittal to birds is curious or ominous. In the reporting, you get a little of both.

There are a few citations that express fear for a “superflu” which spreads as easily as H1N1 swine flu, but is also more frequently fatal. But while that has always been a possibility, there is no evidence that there’s a new bug like that now.

An Associated Press story included this cautious note: “What the turkeys have is the human virus — there is no mutation at all,” Deputy Health Minister Jeannette Vega told Chile’s Radio Cooperativa on Friday.

Stay tuned.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2009

Go to Source

Plastic lasts a long time, but new research indicates that in the ocean, it changes form and can become even more of a threat to marine life with time.

A team of researchers reported that plastics break down comparatively quickly at sea—but even as they change appearance, they remain or become even more dangerous to marine life.

(Image: Hawai’i residents know that tons of plastic debris washes up on our beaches, but the rest of the North Pacific is also a target for this marine debris. Here, a Japanese boy stands by a huge chunk of Styrofoam. Katsuhiko Saido photo.)

Larger plastic objects can be a choking hazard to sea creatures. An example is a plastic shopping bag mistaken by a sea turtle for a jellyfish.

Smaller pieces—toothbrushes, bottle caps, cigarette lighters—can kill young seabirds like Laysan albatrosses, whose bellies are so full of plastic trash that they can’t eat real food. At the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands rookeries, you find their dried up bodies decomposing, with fist-sized clutches of plastic debris where there bellies were.

But as these pieces pf [plastic crack and break up into smaller and smaller pieces over time, they release man-made chemicals into the ocean. These chemicals can be even more hazardous to marine life than the larger pieces, said Katsuhiko Saido, a chemist at Nihon University in Japan.

“Plastics in daily use are generally assumed to be quite stable,” said study lead researcher Katsuhiko Saido, speaking at an American Chemical Society meeting in Washington. “We found that plastic in the ocean actually decomposes as it is exposed to the rain and sun and other environmental conditions, giving rise to yet another source of global contamination that will continue into the future.”

His team studied decomposing polystyrene plastics in a lab, and were able to measure the production of a range of chemical compounds. The decomposition occurs even in cool ocean waters and does not require high heat.

“When the study team was able to degrade the plastic, it discovered that three new compounds not found in nature formed. They are styrene monomer (SM), styrene dimer (SD) and styrene trimer (ST). SM is a known carcinogen and SD and ST are suspected in causing cancer,” said the American Chemical Society release on the report.

Other stories on this research here and here.

Here is the American Chemical Society release on the work.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2009

Go to Source

oh ya, did you hear? we had a hurricane like crazy huge headed STRAIGHT FOR US! it was the only thing you’d hear about on the news or twitter or at the water fountain or in the girls bathroom. Felicia! Felicia! sales of bottled water, canned soup and whatever the hell you would buy at [...]
Go to Source

It turns out corals can be transplanted, just like garden plants.

(Image: The latest major coral transplanting effort in Hawai’i followed the grounding off Honolulu Harbor of the USS Port Royal in February 2009. Credit: Navy.)

This is a little of an open secret. Aquarium aficionados have known for a long time that they could crowbar a chunk of live coral from the wild and grow it in their salt-water containers.

But increasingly, the trend is going the other way. And it’s a major conservation story.

Florida students a couple of years ago were able to grow threatened staghorn corals in captivity and transplant them into the wild.

Those corals are still doing well.

Early coral transplanting research was done at ship grounding sites in the Florida keys. And some of the seminal work in this field has been done in Hawai’i.

In the mid-90s, when a new small boat harbor threatened to destroy corals at Kawaihae on the Big Island, a project led by Paul Jokiel rescued some of those corals and transplanted them to 10 other locations. They survived well.

When coral growth threatened to interfere with marine traffic in the boat channel leading to Coconut Island in Kane’ohe Bay, rice and finger corals were transplanted out of the boat channel leading, and successfully transplanted to locations nearby.

By 2003 it was an established enough technique that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was developing a system to require coral transplanting as a means of dealing with damage to the environment.

The technology is pretty basic. It involves glue and wire to stabilize transplanted coral heads into their new locations and simply letting them grow. Sometimes the glue is hydraulic cement and sometimes the wire is plastic, and occasionally some bolts and screws are involved, but the theory is elegantly simple.

Like transplanting a koa tree in a forest: stick it in an appropriate location where it ought to do well, make sure it’s secure, and watch it grow.

When the Cape Flattery went aground off Barbers Point in 2005, teams quickly began collecting the busted corals before they had rolled around so much their coral colonies were killed, and began sticking back to the ocean floor.

And when the Navy warship USS Port Royal went aground off Honolulu in February this year, crushing a large field of corals off Honolulu Airport, it took a little while to get started, but the concept was the same. Thousands of corals were reattached to the substrate before the first big south swell came in to halt work.

It would seem that an issue now is to shorten the time before restoration starts. When there’s a ship grounding or other coral damage incident, the coral restoration teams ought to be on site and working the moment it’s safe to do so.

The reason for quick action is simple. Ships ground in shallow water, where there are both corals and waves. Broken corals rolled around in the surf for a few days are quickly converted from living colonies into chunks of dead, white rock.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2009

Go to Source

no i don’t have photoshop, mister professional tons of time and money on your hands website guy. yes i watermark all my photos by hand before i blog them. yes that’s why it takes me longer to get these out for you. no i don’t have time or money to use/learn photoshop to do it [...]
Go to Source

The missing link in Hawai’i energy research may be tidal power.

In the Islands, besides the various fossil fuel plants, there is hydroelectric, geothermal, solar, wind, ocean thermal, and even wave power in either utility scale or experimental operation.

(Image: OpenHydro’s system has enclosed blades and is designed to be sunk onto the sea floor without the need for drilling. Credit: www.openhydro.com)

In a candidate forum a few months ago, Kauai Island Utility Co-op board member Stu Burley argued for an ocean current power system in the channel between Kaua’i and Ni’ihau.

Nobody got up and cheered that news, but ocean currents are getting increasing interest outside Hawai’i.

Across the pond, the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center (NNMREC) , is actively studying what it calls in-stream energy or hydrokinetic energy. The center is a joint project of Oregon State and the University of Washington, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. They split the business this way: Oregon State works on wave energy, while UWash works with tidal systems.

The tidal work is focused on the tricky waters of Puget Sound, where tides whip around the various islands and rocks. The university researchers plan to install three actual systems on the ocean floor within the next two years.

The power will be purchased by the Snohomish County Public Utility District.

The technology of tidal energy is young enough that there are no standard “looks” to the systems. They’re still in flux, ranging from bizarre spider-like windmill knockoffs to squat, hefty systems whose blades are enclosed to protect marine life.

The British are doing a great deal of work on tidal energy.

The theory is basically this: The tides are steady, predictable, and in certain locations can drive water at significant speeds. They generally flow in, and then out, twice a day, so a tide system needs to be able to turn itself around to face the oncoming flow—or it needs to be able to produce power with water flowing through it either forward or backward.

Using tidal energy isn’t new. Tide were used to turn waterwheels hundreds of years ago. But the technology to produce utility-scale power is still quite young.

That said, it’s being studied. Hawaiian Electric has looked into the possibility and has identified some of the best places around the Islands to make power out of tidal flow.

Some of the most promising locations are at the pointy places on the islands that face east and west, where the big ocean currents surge around the edges of land masses. Among the best appear to be Makapu’u and Ka’ena and La’au on Moloka’i.

Canoe paddlers and anglers know them and their currents well.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2009

Go to Source

The passing of Felicia, now downgraded to a tropical depression and continuing to weaken, is being celebrated in the Islands mainly with rain.

(Image: Satellite view of the central Pacific shows the tiny Felicia with significant moisture just north of Maui and the Big Island. By contrast, the big patch of activity in the lower left of the picture is Tropical Depression Maka, which is comparatively a lot bigger. Credit: NOAA.)

The National Weather Service is reporting rain of an inch per hour on the leeward side of the Big Island. There was steady but not too heavy rain on Maui late Tuesday, and increased rain was expected for O’ahu and Kaua’i.

The most significant wind activity was strong gusts—some as strong as 50 miles an hour—but steady winds were much weaker and in most areas, even gusts were significantly less than that. The winds, and surf activity, continue to support small craft warnings statewide.

Felicia, said the weather service, “has lost all of the key characteristics of a tropical cyclone.”

So it’s just the rain, which in some areas may have the potential to cause significant flooding.

Meanwhile, the Islands are bracketed by two other tropical cyclones, neither of which appears to pose any immediate threat.

There’s Nine-E, a tropical depression that is expected to pass westward from the Eastern into the Central Pacific as a tropical storm about Saturday. It could develop into a powerful storm, or not. It’s not showing much punch right now.

And to the west, there is Tropical Depression Maka, which could grow to tropical storm strength today. It is well west of the Islands, but curving northward. At this time, it does not appear to be any kind of threat to the main populated islands.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2009

Go to Source