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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