Realignment in Asia

Last month, China seized an American drone operating in international waters some small distance from Subic Bay, in the Philippines. China returned the drone shortly thereafter. There was some small amount of diplomatic ranting over the incident, but these things tend not to escalate.

They have been going on for a long time. In the 1980s, Russian ships routinely stole equipment that had been deployed by Canadian research vessels in Canadian waters, most of which were only doing innocuous things like measuring salinity, temperature, and the speed of sound in the water column, much as the Americans' drone is reported to have done.

Of course, even innocuous oceanographic data can have geopolitical implications. There is a lot of speculation that the Chinese were afraid that the drone was to collect information on Chinese submarines. I'm going to go with the American story here--that it was to collect oceanographic information. That doesn't necessarily mean the data was not detrimental to Chinese interests. The question is, what are the Chinese interests?

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

On the Grand Banks, we went from station to station, lowering an instrument at each one, which would be anchored in place. When it came time to recover them, the ship would emit an acoustic signal, which would trigger a cable release and the instrument (which was buoyed) would rise to the surface for collection. On our perambulations, we noticed one or more Russian ships heading to our previous station. When the time came for collection, all the instruments were gone. The Russians had triggered the cable releases and scooped them all up. Rather, that was our interpretation--we weren't close enough to see for certain that they had done this, as the stations were kilometres apart. But no other ships were operating in the area.

We were conducting acoustic surveys as well, including sidescan sonar swaths for mapping the seafloor, as well as profilers and depth sounding. I noticed a number of submarine channels on the Banks--basically underwater fjords--and also noted that their geometry precluded them from being accurately mapped with the instruments we had. In fact there was nothing that we had in Canada that could have done it back in the day, because the issue was not a technical one--it was due to the separation between the instruments we were using and the seafloor. The limitation of standard methods for mapping steeply dipping structures was a significant part of my thesis that I wrote at the time.

In those days, instruments were towed--the umbilical was necessary for power, but towing was difficult from a surface ship through a narrow, and very deep canyon. Particularly when the cost of the instrument was high, and they tended to blow up due to the stresses upon contact with the seafloor. At one time, we had had an instrument that could be towed at a much greater depth, but (as I was told) the Russians stole the prototype in 1981 as it was being deployed, and for whatever reason, the Canadian company that made it didn't make another. (note: I have never found any independent corroboration of this story!!)

Anyway, what could be more innocent than mapping the ocean floor? Well, it turns out that our inability to map these structures properly meant that things near the bottom of the fjords were undetectable from near surface. In those days, antisubmarine detection would be via near-surface towed sonar, which would be ineffective here. Of course, there were other methods that could be used instead, but as long as we Canadians remained ignorant of the existence of these underwater fjords, we would not have the equipment ready to scan them. Does it mean the Russians were preparing an attack? (Probably not--but maybe they would simply like to be the only ones with this information, just in case). Or maybe the Russians were just short of equipment?

There can be a geopolitical element to even innocuous data collection from the seafloor. What threats might the Chinese have inferred from American drones in the South China Sea?

This article suggests the Chinese are worried about Americans tracking their subs. Possible. It's also possible that the Americans are planning for some bit of nastiness involving the Philippines, particularly after Philippine President Duterte's shift towards China. Or maybe they just want the information just in case.

Sometimes, moves like this are meant to send a message. The Americans may want the Philippines to know they are studying approaches to their coastline. The Chinese may want the Americans to know that they are willing to support their new friends.

Do you like Canadian miners?

Do you thrill to read about brave little companies with their gold showings in the romantic Yukon, or Nunavut, or Saskatchewan?

Are you a geologist? Do you know what it takes to make a mine? Do you understand the economics of mining?

If not, then before you invest, you might want to consider the handy table below.

Gold reserves by province and territory, as of December 31, 2011 (tonnes)

  N.L     N.S.    N. B.   P. Q.     ON     MB      SK     BC      Yukon     NWT      Nun

  13        0          0       667     1,101    72       13       96         14            0        69

Source: Natural Resources Canada, Information Bulletin, March 2014, available here

It seems to be very difficult to build reserves anywhere but Ontario and Quebec. And no, I don't know why Alberta isn't on the list.

I get it. I lived in Newfoundland for nearly four years, and I loved the place. I love reading about gold discoveries on the Island (or in Labrador). But I don't invest.

Innovation in earth systems poster presentation

Presented at GAC in St. Johns early last week.

It looks like it can't be enlarged in this format. Later I'll try breaking it up into different panels and posting separately. The 3-d projection at lower right will be the hardest to present.

Update:

This is just the long 3-d image set at original size. Not sure about your best viewing options.

The main issue I note is that after trying to trace particular attractors through all of the different windows all at once, my interpretation of the number of areas of Lyapunov stability is a little different than when I looked at them sequentially. I now think that the ice-minimum attractor in the Early Quaternary is the same as that in the late Quaternary, even though the range of O-18 values represented in it has drifted over the last two million years. In earlier postings I had interpreted these as different attractors on the basis of the different values.

Secular drift in the positions of attractors in phase space speaks to slow changes in governing parameters of the climate system. On the scale of two million years, likely candidates are tectonic uplift (particularly around the North Atlantic), strengthening of the modern oceanographic circulation system after the closing of the Panamanian isthmus, drawdown of atmospheric CO2 due to enhanced erosion of uplifted highlands--at least these occur to me off the top of my head.

Post St. John's

The trip Newfoundland last week was great apart from the snow. You probably didn't realize that it is still winter on the Avalon Peninsula.

It really wasn't the snow so much as the continual 60 knot winds. I don't know why they don't just build 10,000 windmills there--the wind never stops.

The garden spot of the southern Avalon Peninsula, near Trepassey.

My poster presentation on recognizing innovation in geological systems largely went unrecognized. Not exactly an overwhelming response, but due to overflow I was placed outside of the main poster area, where I mostly talked to my neighbour and his students/associates. I think that each of us had about only one paying customer.

This wasn't the worst setting I've had but it was up there. I remember at AGU several years ago being placed in a room with one other presenter, and during the entire session not a single other soul entered the room. We spent the entire time chatting. Bad as it was for me, the other fellow was J. Rial, who was already fairly well known in the field.

Visit to Mistaken Point

Visited Mistaken Point today.

Mistaken Point lies on the southern tip of the Avalon Peninsula, and is famous for its Ediacaran fossils. Ediacaran fossils are extremely rare and are among the first multicellular lifeforms on Earth. As they had no hard parts (skeletons or shells), they are only expected to be preserved under anoxic conditions or in areas where they were rapidly buried (like the early Cambrian fossils of the Burgess Shale), or (as here) where they have been buried by volcanic ash.

The Mistaken Point fossils are exposed on bedding planes, each of which was covered by the ash of a single volcanic eruption. There are numerous such bedding planes, and as the burial event was so rapid, each bedding surface represents a snapshot of the seafloor at a different times all around 565 million years ago.

There is still some uncertainty as to the phylogeny of these fossils. They appear to be different from any known animals. There have been suggestions that these all belong in a separate multicellular kingdom that is no longer extant. Not all of them have been given formal scientific names. The most common type, which are colloquially called "spindles", are assigned to the Fractofusus genera.

Fractofusus sp. on fossil bed at Mistaken Point.

The animals lived on the seafloor, and most of them seem to have lived like barnacles today--anchored on the seafloor, sweeping the seawater for organic material.

Bacteria colony at Mistaken Point.

Charnodiscus procers (left of centre) with recent damage done to the anchoring point- with another Fractofusus at top and possibly Beothikus mistakensis at right, just above the coin.

The animals were probably pretty common 565 million years ago. What makes them rare now is the difficulty of their preservation. These lived in deep water, in a time of frequent volcanic activity, possibly due to rifting of the Iapetus Ocean.

Fossil bed (at bottom) with overlying rocks of the Mistaken Pt. Formation. An ash bed is at most a few cm thick.

Fractofusus surface with thin ash cover (darker areas at upper and lower left, and middle right).

The falling ash (apparently an airborne ash cloud) almost instantaneously killed all the animals at the site, creating a "snapshot" in time.

Edit: This post seems appropriate here.

St. John's

Abstract on computational mechanics and the geologic record has been submitted to GAC for presentation in May in St. John's. See you on George St.

Image of Musson and Passat off Newfoundland

As related here, the ships Passat and Musson were research vessels used by the Soviet Union to find suitable locations for hiding nuclear submarines on the Atlantic margin of North America.

Musson about to enter St. John's harbour in late June, 1986. The main thing

I remember is that they refused to allow the harbour pilot aboard.

Stern view of the Passat in St. John's harbour in early June 1986.