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8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/jones-owain-littoral-2010-tides-coasts-and-people-culture-ecology-and 1/37
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]
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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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.
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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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.
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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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).
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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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)
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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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.
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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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¶
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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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.
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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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.
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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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)
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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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
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London sewer system
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Airbus A380
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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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
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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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
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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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)
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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Roughly 20 % of the estuary is intertidal space (100 km sq). 80% of coastline
is modified / engineered (sea walls)
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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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
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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Grazing the salt marshes
A complex pattern of tide driven management
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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Tourist beaches
NOT Weston-super-mare
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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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
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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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
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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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).
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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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
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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
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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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.
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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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)
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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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
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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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
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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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)
8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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Penzhinskaya Guba
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8/8/2019 Jones, Owain - LITTORAL 2010 - Tides, Coasts and People: Culture, Ecology and Sustainability
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The Bay of Fundy
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