Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs

by Simon Winchester

  Information on the formation and explosive growth of Typhoon Haiyan, which inflicted so much Darwin-like destruction in the Philippines four decades later, came largely from publications written by the team at the U.S. Joint Typhoon Warning Center at Pearl Harbor.

  Kerry Emanuel’s large-format book Divine Wind, an analysis of the atmosphere’s endless capacity for high-velocity ferocity, proved invaluable for my writing of this rather complicated chapter.

  Kevin Hamilton, director of the International Pacific Research Center at the University of Hawaii, has written numerous technical papers on the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO); and Mark Bradford, chief meteorologist on Kwajalein Atoll, is similarly to be regarded as a voice of authority on El Niño and its related complexities. JAMSTEC, the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology in the Tokyo Bay port city of Yokosuka, also issues streams of data on its El Niño researches.

  Much science is being performed throughout the Pacific on this ever more crucial topic. Yet quietly, in the background of all this hubbub, stands the magisterial figure of Sir Gilbert Walker, the ultimate discoverer of the phenomenon: the lengthy entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography provides a justly sympathetic portrait of this eccentric and unforgettable, yet near-forgotten, figure.

  CHAPTER 7: HOW GOES THE LUCKY COUNTRY?

  Paul Kelly’s The Dismissal remains the finest account of the unprecedented sacking of the Australian prime minister, Gough Whitlam. Both Whitlam (The Truth of the Matter) and his nemesis John Kerr (Matters for Judgment) wrote their own, understandably partisan, accounts of the saga, adding to an immense literature on an event that is precious little known beyond Australia’s shores.

  The equally complicated and nuanced story of the building of the Sydney Opera House is perhaps best related in a long-forgotten BBC documentary film Autopsy on a Dream, made by the Australian director John Weiley. The film, highly critical of Sydney’s treatment of the building’s Danish architect, was shown in Britain, but before it could be screened in Australia, it was destroyed, chopped to pieces with a meat cleaver. Thirty years later a misfiled early cut of the film was discovered in London and sent to be shown Down Under, to a mixture of acclaim and cringe. Likewise, an Australian-made TV documentary provided me with some insight into the story of the brief rise to prominence of the politician Pauline Hanson: the ABC 60 Minutes profile of Miss Hanson, who was interviewed with rapier-like skill by journalist Tracey Curro, remains a legendary moment in television.

  CHAPTER 8: THE FIRES IN THE DEEP

  The tireless work of Alvin and her sister submersibles has been the subject of countless reports and publications issued by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. A fine summary of the main findings, of hydrothermal vents and of smokers, black and white, is to be found in Discovering the Deep, by Daniel Fornari, Jeffrey Karson, Deborah Kelley, Michael R. Perfit, and Timothy M. Shank.

  I commend to readers Stephen Hall’s incisive essay on the deep-sea mapmaker Marie Tharp, published in the New York Times Magazine in December 2006.

  Anyone with an interest in the finer points of tectonic theory, which underpins a science central to the formation of the Pacific, could do no better than to read Plate Tectonics, by Naomi Oreskes, published in 2002 and now a classic of the field.

  Robert Ballard’s extended essay on deep-sea exploration, The Eternal Darkness, published in 2000, tells much about Alvin and her work. And Colleen Cavanaugh’s interview with the Harvard Gazette offers considerable information about the role of sulfur in the origination and sustenance of deep-sea life-forms.

  CHAPTER 9: A FRAGILE AND UNCERTAIN SEA

  Personal communications with coral expert Charlie Veron enabled me to fill out the picture of the disastrous beginning of coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef. Iain McCalman’s The Reef: A Passionate History takes the story further, placing this enormous living creature, now very much a threatened creature, in a wider context, both biological and cultural.

  Mary Hagedorn of MarineGEO in Hawaii, a Smithsonian-supported oceanographic research center, is behind a project to try to help coral populations survive the relentless rise in ocean temperature that seems to be doing them so much harm. Her publications, in aggregate, make for fascinating and informative reading. Similarly, papers put out by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority round out the story.

  It was Mark Brazil’s excellent small book The Nature of Japan that first led me to the work of Hiroshi Hasegawa and his heroic rescue of the albatross population of Torishima. Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum publishes an excellent online monograph describing the Hawaiian ceremonial cloaks in its possession.

  Jon Mooallem’s article on Larry Ellison’s purchase of and plans for the Hawaiian island of Lana’i in the New York Times Magazine of September 28, 2014, raised many hackles; much of what he observed confirms the impression I gained when I visited the island six months earlier.

  CHAPTER 10: OF MASTERS AND COMMANDERS

  Three books in particular set the scene for the current Chinese expansion of influence in the far western Pacific and the fretfulness it is causing in Washington: Bill Hayton’s The South China Sea; Robert Haddick’s Fire on the Water; and, by the always reliable Robert Kaplan, Asia’s Cauldron. However, the situation in the region is changing so rapidly that all these studies are in danger of becoming dated—so that interested readers would do well to monitor the near-constant streams of publications from such bodies as the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Asia Society, and the International Crisis Group, among others, to keep properly abreast.

  The International Crisis Group Paper 229 (2012), “Stirring Up the South China Sea,” presents useful background; and for truly ultra-deep background, there are always new editions available of Alfred Mahan’s classic The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783—essential reading for those who might be curious about how these new naval challenges are likely to play themselves out.

  And as a coda: the complexities of the Pacific as battle space are nicely explained in an essay in the Washington Post of August 1, 2012, by the paper’s defense writer Greg Jaffe.

  EPILOGUE

  The journey of the Hawaiian wa’a Hokule‘a is being reported until 2017, and in great daily detail, by the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Honolulu. Much background to the story can be found in Sam Low’s book on the Hawaiian Renaissance, Hawaiki Rising; in Ben Finney’s explanations of Polynesian navigation, Sailing in the Wake of the Ancestors; and most fascinating of all, in David Lewis’s account, We, the Navigators.

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