Microscale Awareness

As a pilot my mind is trained to think a lot differently when compared to someone who drives a car. Ever since I was a boy I  learned to build spatial pictures in my mind that look like the view from a helicopter similar to what you might see in a movie or TV show.

When I was really young, 6, 7, 8 years old, my father would take me out to sea and we would work together to navigate using dead reckoning. The main concept is simple. If you don't reckon correctly, you're dead!

I learned to sail a course and hold it steady so the boat would end up where we planned. But most importantly I learned to take the pieces of data like the heading and speed and build a mental image of our position in space and then correlate that image to the two dimensional navigational chart onboard. I could take a mental flight from our tiny little boat and "fly" out into space above until I could imagine the little boat AND the coastline and our desired destination back at the safe harbor. Then I could mentally fly back down and look across the top of the ship's compass and imagine the harbor waiting for me just over the curving horizon where it lay out of view. I even understood that the true vector direction to the harbor was actually a straight line slightly down into the water.

BlogTheBlackSea is designed to take you on similar mental "flights" to the wonderful aspects of the Black Sea region. Part of it is geography. Looking at these fantastic GoogleEarth images that have only recently become available to everyman. We will also look deep into the cultures and economic conditions that make the Black Sea so vibrant.

But before we go on too many "flights" from a "high altitude" perspective and then zoom in on particular geographic features or cultural oddities, I want to encourage you to consider an additional simultaneous perspective. The view from the microbiotic reality of Planet Ocean.

Imagine that you are not just "flying" above the landscape, or seascape in the case of the Black Sea itself, but imagine that you are simultaneously flying within the microscape. The tiny world of micro organisms. For example, the Black Sea sometimes experiences huge algae blooms that are so large that they are visible from space. You can see algae blooms swirling around in the image above. Click on the image to zoom in and you will see both greenish algae blooms and brownish sediments dumped from rivers.

When I used to work as an Airline Captain in Hawaii I learned something very interesting about the scale of your vision. See when tourists come to Hawaii, they all arrive with their own preconceptions of "Paradise." They might have seen some pretty pictures in a travel brochure or seen a Babe-Watch episode or two. If you look at Hawaii from just the correct distance and at the optimal scale, it does look like paradise. You typically see the view from your hotel room and some palm trees about one hundred yards away and maybe a pretty landscape view of a corner of the island, for example the world-famous view of Diamond Head from Waikiki Beach.

But what I realized is that you have to be careful what scale you use for your investigation. If you look too close, you might see some trash thrown in the bushes or floating in the water just offshore from your fancy hotel. You might look at a fantastic view of the white sandy beaches and swoon with the natural beauty of the Hawaiian experience, but you also might notice some criminals stealing a tourist's backpack from their beachtowel if you look too close. Worst of all, you might take a leisurely romantic stroll along the beach at Waikiki and be enamored with the warm salty breeze, blue water and natural energy. But if you look too close you would notice the flesh-eating bacteria and pollution spewing out of the Ala Wai canal directly onto Waikiki Beach!!! 

Check out this video of E.O. Wilson, the famous biologist as he explains the need for us to become more aware of the diversity of life on Planet Ocean and the need to document it and preserve it.

As we continue our explorations of the Black Sea region in this blog you will be able to gain a more broad awareness of the true nature of reality of this magical region.

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Turkish Straits

The "Turkish Straits" are one of the most strategically important waterways in the world.

The order of importance is generally set by the amount of oil that is shipped through a particular area. Other shipping is also important but oil is the most critical factor.

This image shows the Sea of Marmara near the bottom of the Black Sea.

Here is the Bosporus Strait again.

Here is the Dardanelle

In this image you can see the entire length of the Sea of Marmara.

It would be difficult to explain the critical importance of this area of the world for the oil business, international shipping and international politics.

Just to give you an idea of how important this place is, consider that during a Military Style Strategic War Game exercise conducted at Harvard University in early 2008 to "simulate" a so-called "Oil Shockwave" event impacting the security of the United States, a simulated newsfeed supplying information to the panel of experts selected the Turkish Straits as the location for a simulated terrorist strike against international commerce. The news report begins by explaining that the event has occurred in the Sea of Marmara.

I think this is an excellent indicator of how important this area is, the fact that it was selected to be the key geographical and political focus point for a serious war games excercise.

You can check out this fascinating video here: http://www.iop.harvard.edu/Multimedia-Center/All-Videos/OIL-SHOCKWAVE-An-Oil-Crisis-Simulation

The Turkish Straits are considered to be the 5th most important "oil chokepoint" in the world behind #1 Strait of Hormuz, #2 Malacca Strait, #3 Suez Canal, #4 Bab el Mandab Strait where the Red Sea connects to the Indian Ocean.

About 2.4 million barrels per day of the world's 87 million barrel per day demand are shipped through the Turkish Straits.

Dardanelle Strait

The Dardanelle Strait is where the Sea of Marmara links to the Mediterranean.

Click on the image to see more detail of the strait.

Sea of Marmara

In this image the Sea of Marmara is visible to the bottom right of the southwestern edge of the Black Sea.

Bosporus Strait

The Black Sea has only one outlet. It is the Bosporus Strait.

This image shows a close up view of the entire length of the Bosporus.

The Black Sea is at the top of the image.

The Sea of Marmara is at the bottom of the image.

If you click on the image you can zoom in and see other details like the City of Istanbul in Turkey and several bridges the span the Bosporus.

 You can also see the wakes from several ships in the upper part of the image as they navigate the strait into the Black.

The thing I find most interesting about the Bosporus is that the water is stratified. There is an upper layer and a lower layer. The upper layer is much less salty than the lower layer that gets it's salt from the Mediterranean.

The really weird thing is that the lower salty layer flows INTO the Black Sea and the upper less saline layer is where most of the water in the Black Sea flows out.

Kuban River

The Kuban river is about 523 miles long.

Click on the map to zoom in.

The Kuban starts on the north face of Mt. Elbruz, the highest mountain in Russia at 5642 meters/ 18,511 ft.

The Kuban then flows across beautiful plains on the north side of the Caucasus mountains in Krasnodar Province and empties into the Sea of Azov.

Check out this image of the Elbruz massif and the grazing area below.

A lot of the water from the Kuban is diverted for irrigation on the rich farmlands of Stavropol and Krasnodar.

The upper Kuban is a relatively quiet and little traveled area of the Black Sea region. No huge cities. No big tourist centers. Just natural beauty.

But farther down the Kuban is the city of Krasnodar with 640,000 people the 18th largest city in Russia.

In 1792 after the Russo-Turkish war of 1787-1792, Tzarina Catherine II rewarded the Black Sea Cossacks with the lands around the Kuban. About 25,000 people moved from Ukraine to settle the area which at the time was largely uninhabited steppe.

The Kuban is extremely important because it drains such a vast area.

The Kuban river valley and the nearby areas are incredibly rich forests. More about the forests in a later post, right now we are just trying to figure out where all the water comes from to form the Black Sea.

By the way, please subscribe to this blog by using the subscription tool to the right. Thanks. Until next time......

Kerch Strait

The Kerch Strait connects the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.

The Sea of Azov is really beautiful and has a lot of interesting features. We will revisit the Sea of Azov soon but today we will continue to focus on the question of where the water comes from to fill the Black Sea

In this image you can see the Crimean Peninsula sticking out into the Black Sea. The Kerch Strait lies between Crimea and the Russian mainland to the East.

Crimea looks sort of triangular with it's three prominent sections.

The city of Kerch is located on the far eastern point of Crimea on a cool bay on the Black Sea side.

The water from the Don river comes into the Sea of Azov on the top right and exits through the Kerch Strait.

In this close up of Crimea you can see the Kerch Strait at the bottom of the Sea of Azov.

There are some incredibly beautiful beaches on the inside of the Kerch Strait on the Sea of Azov on the Crimea side to the west of the strait. This is on the Ukraine side.

On the other side, the Russian Side, there are some neat marshes with lots of wildlife.

In this last image you can see the yellow border line between Ukraine on the left and Russia on the right.

Notice the interesting bays including the one on the left where the city of Kerch lies.

You can click on the image to get a closer view.

You can see the patterns of the fields under cultivation.

The Kerch Strait is some tricky water. Lots of swirling currents and cross-winds.

There were a few serious maritime incidents in the Kerch Strait this last winter including an oil spill and several ships that sank in a big storm. More on that later.

There are quite a few shipwrecks in this area.

From here the water swirls around in the Black Sea and eventually empties into the Mediterranean through the Bosporus Strait at the bottom left part of the Black Sea.

Next time we will explore more about the many interesting rivers that fill up the Black Sea.