Monday, April 18, 2016

Mangroves are Everywhere (For Now): Redux

Annamaria on Monday

Today, I am posting a repeat from a few years ago.

Here are my excuses for not having a new subject today:  Three weeks of dental woes which have included nine visit to two dentists, one of which was emergency surgery this (SUNDAY!) morning.  {I have renamed my dentist's office GUM-tanimo} The accountant forgetting about my tax return which is due as you read this.  The people downstairs returning last Wednesday after five months in Florida to report a hole in their ceiling from a leak in my radiator, which never showed as water in my living room; along with concomitant insurance adjusters, plumbers, and building managers visiting and tsk-tsking.  The deadline for Tolliver 2 and a long meeting with my publisher.  Trying to untangle some long-term family financial issues with a great deal of finger pointing.  And finally, having my brain freeze after learning of Ted Cruz's incomprehensible campaign against sex toys as a public nuisance.

Anyway, my publisher says (and I believe her) that I have to make clear in the story of THE IDOL OF MOMBASA what a mangrove forest is all about, because most people don't know much about those marvelous places.  She is right.  So, if you haven't already read this, BooBoo, here is your chance to be smarter than the average bear.


At the shoreline of land masses, the earth wears, around its middle, a green belt of perhaps the most adaptive living things on the planet.


In my research into Mombasa, British East Africa (now Kenya), I found them growing along a beach in 1905.  I set a few scenes in my book near Mombasa's coastline mangrove forest.  In one my hero has to tell his new wife some provocative news.  In an attempt to break it to her gently, he takes her for a romantic walk along the beach.  I liked having the mangroves nearby them as they stroll and talk, because they symbolize the tangle of trouble that awaits the young couple.


All along the earth’s beaches within about 30 degrees of the Equator, mangroves form an largely impenetrable shield between the salt water and the land.  They are not one species of plant but somewhere around seventy depending on which continent.  The forests include palms, acanthus, myrtle, even relatives of holly.  Some are timber trees  two-hundred-feet tall; others are mere undergrowth.  The thing all the plants have in common is that they have adapted to growing half in and half out of salt water.  Typically they are partially under water in high tide and in swampy land during low tide—when their environment becomes even more salty than the sea, which would kill ordinary plants in hours.  They have all sorts of magical ways to rid themselves of salt, even a way of “sweating” it from their leaves.


Around the globe these fascinating ecosystems nourish or provide habitats for many creatures:  fish, monkeys, deer, kangaroos.  Crabs climb up them to eat their fruit and bats and honeybees take nectar from their flowers.

Some have roots like flying buttresses that hold the tree trunks upright in soft muddy soil.  All have roots that trap silt and build up land.  They stabilize shorelines and protect them from erosion, especially in storm surges.  They act as a buffer against tsunamis.  In 2004 during the tidal waves in the Indian Ocean, mangrove forests protected lives and property.  Damage was far worse where mangroves no longer existed.

Unfortunately, these strategically important plants are threatened around the globe.  The deadliest creatures—human beings—are bulldozing them to create salt pans, fish (largely shrimp) farms, and a bunch of other development projects that could easily be located elsewhere—like housing, golf courses, hotels, and roads.  In poor areas—many of which are in the tropics—the move toward development often means an end to mangroves.


Then there is death from pollution—oil spills, agricultural chemicals, and the predicted danger of rising sea levels.  The push back against this destruction is insufficient so far, but it has begun.  Notably in Kenya, fishing villagers along the Indian Ocean are using discarded tin cans pressed into damp sand  to plant seedlings and build up new forests .  Those fisherman know that without the mangroves to harbor fish eggs, there will soon be no fish in the sea for them to catch.  Optimistic efforts are underway also in Eretria and Bangladesh.   Sadly in South America, both on the west coast in Ecuador and on the eastern shores in Brazil, mangroves are falling prey to shrimp farmers who are in it for the quick buck.


As with other potential environmental disasters, it is difficult to fight off the commercial interests in favor of long-term good for the local people and for the planet.

   

21 comments:

  1. Nice!! Great info great people great blog. Thank you for all the great sharing that is being done here. Thanks!

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  2. Nice post, Annamaria! We often hear of environmental problems, but the loss of mangroves (while not surprising) is something I'd not heard of before.

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    1. Everett, one of the reasons I decided to write about them is that their usefulness and endangered status are not well known. I discovered all that when I looked them up as part of my research.

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  3. Once more you've inspired me Annamaria. I'm going to go out right this moment and hug the very first mangrove I see. Whoops, correction: the very first wo-mangrove. Hugs from Mykonos...

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    1. Womangroves are all you will find. If there ever were any on Mykonos, I am sure by now, being on the beaches, they would have died of embarrassment

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  4. FYI: Australian author, Angela Savage's third book in the Jayne Keeney series is The Dying Beach. Mangrove forests in Thailand are a key element in this story, or the deforestation therein. Shrimp farming is a culprit in this book.

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  5. Great post, Annamaria, and well worth reading again! But I would have thought you'd brush aside those few minor inconveniences of the last week. Seriously, I'm holding thumbs that things will improve for you starting this second!

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    1. Thank you for your kind wishes, Michael. My approach to woes is to power through them. One of the daunting things at this moment is that Dentist 2, broke the gizmo that is supposed to make me look as if I still have all my teeth. I am having to go about my life looking like a cross between the Vanguard of the Vampire Apocalypse and one of the Beverly Hillbillies. TOO much.

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    2. Fortunately your sense of humor is still intact!

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    3. M, I f you notice that I have lost my sense of humor, tell them to put me in hole an throw dirt on me. If I can't make a joke, the real me will have died.

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  6. Hi Annamaria

    Great post. I, too, was not aware of the particular threat to the mangrove swamps. I'm so sorry your dental woes are continuing. I had to do a bit of DIY dentistry recently to keep me going until I could get to my dentist. When I did, he was surprised at my skill with temporary filler!

    I saw the news item about Ted Cruz's mission to make the dildo extinct. Good job there are no more important problems for him to concentrate on, then, eh?

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    1. Is it just me, Zoe, or does he sound like a psychopath? Irrational does not begin to describe his diatribes.

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  7. My God, you sound more like Job's sister than mine! Let's get all this crazy karma out of town...perhaps after Tuesday. Speaking of tomorrow's New York Presidential primary, I'm not surprised at how Cruz chooses to position himself on dildos. Some might even see it as fitting in nicely with the topic of your post: A candidate desperately hoping to obtain his own satisfying election result amid the man groves.

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    1. Bro, PEOPLE ARE GOING TO VOTE FOR HIM???? Come quick, Nurse Ratched. We've got another victim for you!

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  8. Dental woes, my sympathy. I have a rather common approach: denial until the problem is a crisis.
    Hope your situation is resolved soon.

    Paul Krugman, economist, NYT columnist, says that Cruz wants to bring back the Spanish Inquisition. Many have said he's to the right of narcissistic, xenophobic, racist, misogynist Trump.
    It's hard to believe there are two of them running for president.

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    1. FYI: Copy the long URL and paste it into your browser.
      http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/04/13/1514818/-Call-of-the-Dildos-The-Ted-Cruz-Story?detail=emailclassic&link_id=2&can_id=2e6bfdab0b39e66c9f04b1140ff03e71&source=email-cartoon-trump-beats-trump-3&email_referrer=cartoon-trump-beats-trump-3&email_subject=cartoon-trump-beats-trump

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    2. This piece is hilarious, Stan Thank you! I needed it after the month I've had so far, all I have been able to contemplate when it comes toTed Cruz is how scary it is that a mind that small and sick has gotten this close to th presidency of the United States. You are right. Satire is the only sane response.

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    3. Kathy, in the time I spent in Europe earlier this year, I was constantly asked, by anxious and disbelieving friends and family, the French or Italian equivalent of "What the f**k is going on with the Republican Party?" The ensuing discussions were long, interesting, and of no avail in comforting any is us.

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  9. I think what is going on in the GOP has been brewing for a long time.
    I remember that before Romney became the candidate there were several Republicans aiming at the presidency, blasting away with misogynistic, anti-poor and racist comments, like Santorum, Huckebee, several others.
    Nixon used the "Southern strategy," which was a racist appeal to Southern whites. Reagan attacked poor women receiving public assistance and some other racist classics.
    They've been this way for years, only it's more outfront now. And they're competing for white right-wing votes.

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  10. You have my 200% sympathy in all those woes. Thelma Straw in Manhattan

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  11. And also Congress has barely done anything to help U.S. residents since the Republicans decided to obstruct any progress -- and even stooped so low as to shut down the federal government a few years ago.

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