 |
 |
 |
|
Monster waves have been on the rise
Posted on Sunday, July 02, 2006 (CDT) by Thoth
 Call anything rogue or monster and it immediately assumes a thrilling unreality found in science-fiction and horror tales. And yet, as we roll into summer and another hurricane season, the talk of rogue and monster ocean waves has been gaining, with scientific researchers in England and Germany recently publishing evidence that these waves might be much larger and more frequent than previously thought.
Technically, a rogue wave occurs when strong wind charges the ocean with its energy. And some rogues seem to derive energy from the depths of the ocean. Inshore boaters would seem immune from such nightmarish conditions.
But on June 7 off Harwichport, a 34-foot fishing boat, Chamy, called the Coast Guard because a rogue slammed into it so hard that its pump system was disabled, and Chamy was taking on water. Since the fishing boat was only about 10 miles from land, the rescue was not difficult, where 100 miles offshore the story might have had a different ending.
Then there
was the case last August of a fishing boat near Nomans Island (off the
southwest corner of Martha's Vineyard) on a day described as moderately
inclement with winds between 10-15 knots out of the south. There was a
small-craft advisory, but those conditions rarely keep boats from going
out.
Scott Terry, a 52-year-old
commercial fisherman from Martha's Vineyard and his teenage mate,
Mitchell Pachico, left the dock before dawn on a 24-foot twin-outboard
fishing boat. As they made their way from Gay Head toward Nomans -- a
former Naval bombing target about 3 miles off Martha's Vineyard --
Terry said a "good swell" began to run, but nothing severe. A
lobsterman pulling his traps in the area, says Terry, who added that
while he goes to the best fishing grounds possible, he would never test
himself, his crew or his boat with conditions he considers dangerous.
Terry and Pachico were
bouncing live eels off the bottom to entice striped bass, when, out of
nowhere, a wall of water 15-20 feet high rolled into them, lifting the
boat to the top just as the wave crested, flipping the boat. Though not
a rogue because of its location, the wave did conform to one rogue
characteristic: It was more than twice the height of any of the other
waves.
Terry and Pacheco saved
themselves by clinging to the bottom of the boat as long as they could,
then making it safely onto the rocky shore of Nomans, where the Coast
Guard picked them up in a helicopter. Luck and clear thinking helped
save them, but if the incident occurred farther offshore, the outcome
might well have been different.
Some people believe the
sudden upheaval of water might have been created by the meeting of a
coastal riptide and a large, incoming swell. Terry, an experienced
fisherman, told the Globe last August:
"I've seen lots of swells
and a lot of big waves. I've fished in a lot of tough conditions
before. But I've never seen anything like that. It just came out of
nowhere."
As the ocean stretches get
exponentially larger offshore, so do the waves, and the rogues
encountered at sea can be as high as 10-story buildings. The scientists
are trying to make out whether there are more such waves today, or
whether they're just being tracked more readily with newer technology.
In September 1995, the
Queen Elizabeth II, en route from Cherbourg, France, to New York City
encountered a pair of rogues, possible spawned by Hurricane Luis, which
had forced the liner to alter its course. Still, it had run into seas
averaging nearly 60 feet before encountering the first wave around 4
a.m. It smashed out the ship's grand lounge windows, over 70 feet above
the water line. Then, according to the ship's log:
"At 0410 the rogue wave was
sighted right ahead, looming out of the darkness from 220 [degrees]. It
looked as though the ship was heading straight for the White Cliffs of
Dover. The wave seemed to take ages to arrive but it was probably less
than a minute before it broke with tremendous force over the bow. An
incredible shudder went through the ship, followed a few minutes later
by two smaller shudders. There seemed to be two waves in succession as
the ship fell into the `hole' behind the first one. The second wave of
28-29 meters [95 feet] whilst breaking, crashed over the foredeck,
carrying away the forward whistle mast."
Once in a decade such a
wave might not be especially threatening. But according to scientists
who have begun using satellite tracking techniques to record rogue or
giant waves, the occurrences are becoming more common as reports of
encounters with ships have increased in the last few years. In one
three-week stretch, 10 rogue waves were tracked on satellite.
"We thought we'd have
difficulties finding so many large waves," Wolfgang Rosenthal, a German
researcher told National Geographic, "but roughly two ships each week
are affected."
This spring, the British
team released a report of storm waves so huge in the North Sea near
Scotland that they exceed the design specifications of safety standards
for ships and oil rigs.
Reported in Spiegel
magazine, a team from the National Oceanography Center of Britain
became pinned down in a Force 9 storm around 155 miles west of Scotland
in which the waves -- according to recording devices aboard their
300-foot ship -- hit heights of 98 feet. Said project leader Naomi
Holliday, not only were the waves much larger than expected, they came
in clusters. "We were shaken up by these waves for 12 hours," said
Holliday who reported that the ship lurched and rolled so violently
that a 50-man lifeboat was torn loose and the chair in her cabin landed
in her bunk.
In "The Perfect Storm," a
fictionalized account of the Gloucester fishing boat Andrea Gail
sinking after a meeting with a giant wave off Sable Island, a very rare
alignment of weather conditions conspired to kick up such freakish
conditions. But according to a growing body of meteorological evidence,
such rogue waves are neither as freakish nor as rare as the boating
world once took comfort in believing.
Copyright: The Boston Globe
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
| |
|
