Yucatan Diary Day 12
Merida and Progreso, Yucatan
by Ben White
posted 01/19/05
The Maurice Ewing still rocks off the coast, equipment ready but not deployed. Blow wind blow. This pilgrim meets with the Port Captain. He listens carefully, says to take my evidence of harm to others in government. OK. I will.
I write in my normal internet cafe right off the main square in Merida. Cold fresh-squozen orange juice with a straw at hand, the Beatles playing With Love, >From Me To You. Dark. Photographs of old Merida with Model T�s and guys with Pancho Villa mustaches. Just outside, a busy sidewalk raised over a foot above the cobblestone road, jam packed with businessmen in their guayabera shirts, hustlers, Chiapas indians selling rainbows, moms shepharding kids in classic traditional wear - little boys with hair slicked back, little white panama hats with black bands, no collar white shirts and white pants. The girls with long huipil dresses with gardens of flowers embroidered around their necks.
OK, for those of you just tuning in, here is a brief program to go with the ongoing play:
This is a story about the people of the Mexican state of Yucatan fighting the attempt of a bunch of scientists, mostly from the US, to blast away at their northern Yucatan coast with seismic airguns in order to study the Chicxulub Crater. Such blasting uses sounds up to 255-262 decibels and penetrates many miles down into the Earth's crust. The echo of each blast, when caught by streamers towed by the same ship that makes the noise, gives an image of what the strata of the earth looks like down there. The sound also flies through anything living in its way.
What gives the story poignancy, in my biased opinion, is the lopsided might of the opposing sides. On the one hand we have the taxpayer funded National Science Foundation (4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, Virginia 22230, USA Tel: 703-292-5111, info@nsf.gov ) footing the bill in this ill-advised quest for knowledge. Then we have the Research Vessel Maurice Ewing owned and operated by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University (President- 535 West 116th Street, 202 Low Library, Mail Code 4309, New York, NY 10027 USA Tel: 212-854-9970, Fax: 212-854-9973). These are biggest of bigwigs among the US scientific establishment, the bluest of blue bloods. And, ranked up behind them like the evil hordes in Lord of the Rings are the real sources of resistance to stopping the emission of intense sounds into the oceans: the US military (who likes its sonars and dislikes change- especially when called for by citizen mortals), and the Oil and Gas industry (who, with fifty-dollar-a-barrel oil has great incentive to pound away anywhere they can looking for it, especially if they don�t have to deal with the consequences, like now.)
Ok and on the other, heroic non-Goliath side we have a beautiful ex-dentist in Merida named Rosario Sosa Parra and her little Yucatecan Animal Rights group, a force of Nature disguised as a regular housewife and Hotel owner in Cancun named Araceli Rodriguez and her group the Mayan Ecological Group, a renowned Mexican poet and writer and his once- American wife Homero and Betty Aridjes, a huge fisherman from Progreso who heads up one of the fishermen�s unions- Manuel (El Grande) Jimenez. And one middle aged lunatic (moon-lover) activist from the states thrown into the salsa mix. And all of youse guys up there and over in Japan, and Europe and down in South America rooting for us and blowing up a storm.
The Ewing was permitted to work down here since the 3rd of January and was ready since about the 8th. With a combination of old fashioned flyers spread all along the coastline in almost every fishing village, good luck, lots of prayers, deputies in the Yucatecan legislature, Senators in the federal government, awesome international press coverage, the growth of a rock solid opposition movement in the Yucatan, Rosario�s contacts and poise, Araceli�s magic and positivity, Homero�s editorials, a good man in the position of Port Captain, and lots of wind coming down from the north, the ship has still not emitted one peep from its seismic airguns. And now it looks like the Ewing�s research plans are slowly dying of a thousand cuts. The official word is they have all of the permits they need and can proceed at any time. But when people in Mexico really don�t want something they have a way of being difficult to push around. Like everyone else on earth who eventually gets a bellyful of being told by others what to do, they tend to get the slows. They can see a lot of ways they can be harmed by the Ewing and no way they can be helped.
I met today with the Port Captain of Progreso and the entire Yucatan coast to give him all of the evidence and information that I have showing that the use of twenty seismic airguns banging away at 255 decibels or more will harm fish and fisheries and marine mammals and turtles. Before I went, I was working on the order in which I would present my argument. I picked up this little piece of paper Araceli gave me the other day with the Mayan frog whistle and the little owl feather. On it was written:
"The frog as a goddess represents the vessel of transformation that is initiated by the power of your voice. Your voice can heal your heart, heal others and teach the long-silenced language of the Goddess. Tell your story. Let your own voice, your own rhythm fill the world. Speak the words that can set the energy in motion for global change. Say the words- make it so. And listen carefully to how the wind brings your reward back to you. Speak from the center of your heart, use your voice to import feelings of strength, honor, sensuality, courage, sacredness, joy."
Now I don't know or care if Araceli wrote this. The importance to me was that it was exactly what I needed to hear and resonated just right. Always did love frogs. Maybe that's why I have ended up flapping my mouth for a living.
I went to see the Port Captain bearing just-translated documents showing many studies of how low frequency sound wrecks fish and fisheries. I explained how the Ewing should not legally have received an Incidental Harassment Authorization from the US government because it is a shorthand form of permit only allowed when there is no possibility of severe injury or death. This cannot be honestly asserted in this situation.
I showed him the paper from the prominent US scientists who found the bodies of the beaked whales in 2002 that the Ewing killed, who point out that the level of sound that killed the whales in the Bahamas (138db) extends 15 miles from the Ewing, assuming simple spherical spreading of sound energy. By the way, one of these scientists told me that when they found the whales they radioed out to the Ewing for help in towing the whales in to have their bodies necropsied. Sorry, no, they had said.
I told him of the resolutions in the International Whaling Commission, the European Union, ACCOBAMS, and the World Conservation Union over the last eight months that have unequivocably recommended limiting intense manmade noise released into the oceans.
I spoke the best I could, and I took an interpreter with me to make sure it was clear. I left confident that this man will do the best he can. But he also recommended that I take the same documents to the person in Semarnat- the Mexican Environmental Authority- who signed the permit for the Ewing to work. The Captain also told me, after Ken Hollingshead at NMFS waffled on the issue, that if a body is found he could temporarily halt the project (assuming it is ever allowed to begin.)
The wind is blowing so hard in Progreso that no one is swimming. The tourists off the tour ship rocking at the end of the pier huddle on the concrete benches, heads down below the blowing sand. The grass lays flat, showing its silver backside. Some kind of spiral legume pod blows rolling across the road, looking like big brown worms that have discovered a new and faster mode of transportation than the standard stretch and catchup method. The gulls hunker down above the surf. The palm trees click out a fast telegraph. The flamboyant trees, bereft of their flourescent orange flowers till May, shake and shudder their lacy Mimosa fronds.
Aspects of this long fight against this particular scientific experiment have taken on the feel of both a passion play and a black box problem. Sometimes I feel like I am trying to see without eyes and grasp what can�t be felt, trying to spot that ship out from the coast, when it certainly rides beyond view, trying to read the thoughts of my opponents and get there before them, trying to understand the world like I struggle with fluency in Spanish- looking for hints and gestures.
What I am trying to protect is much more real, concrete, here. These people have it hard enough without having it harder. Unless these really smart scientists can promise the people here that not one creature will die in their quest for more knowledge about the Chicxulub Crater, they should just bugger off. How dare they mess with this place? Precious, fragile, life already on the edge. I am reminded of what Edwin O. Wilson said about the idea that one could rebuild a tropical rainforest in a different place using the components of a wrecked forest. He said that would be like shaking the bible out into all of its component letters into a big pile on the floor and then fitting them back again, with no guide, into how they used to be. Can�t be done. We don�t hardly know anything. (So lets make some kind of killer machine to find out!)
The morality play aspect is this: this little tempest in a teapot down here is one of a million struggles to take back this world from the machine, from the sick psychology that this world can be both our uncontrolled toilet and sacred spring, and that it will still continue to be here if we forget all of the levels of respect that we have been taught by our old ones forever- yep even us gringos. This is one of the thousands of places around the world where we are saying that here we draw the line, just us regular folks. No more dams, no more flooding of ancient villages, no more clearcutting, no more jailing and murdering of our leaders like Martin Luther King and Ang San Su Kyi. We will fight peacefully but with Oriental tenacity. And if we die, more will fight until we win. Remember Dien Bien Phu? It heartens me to think that perhaps only now when the fatcats are at the trough in the United Snakes, and the corporations are going for the whole shebang, that the entire civil movement of the world has been woken up. Maybe the threat needed to become global for the solution and the healing to become global. Don�t try to tell us anymore that seismically blasting a coastline is good for humanity because a few of our scientists might have their curiosity satisfied. Don�t tell us anymore that environmentalism, animal protection, and human rights are different or opposing struggles. We have your number. We don�t believe you any more. Go play with more creative toys.
This diary is now going all over the place and I am very grateful to everyone for their kind wishes and prayers. I walk brushed by the wings of angels. I have never felt more on point and blessed, and I think it is due to your support. I will try each day to deserve your kindnesses.
This campaign, and my salary, is being paid for by the Animal Welfare Institute. Tax exempt contributions (Thanks, Deb!) can be sent to Animal Welfare Institute, Box 3650, Washington, DC., 20027.
Love and revolution,
ben
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