Pirates Tides Of Fortune Hack Tool V37
Kasey Finkenbinder
In 1984 I was on an expedition outside the barrier reef in New Caledonia, an archipelago 750 miles east of Australia. The expedition was formed to study the daily migrations of the nautilus, the longest-lived animal survivor known to science. I was accompanied by, among others, Mike Weekley, a 26-year-old marine biologist, who had worked at the Waikiki Aquarium. Mike was a veteran of nautilus research trips, seemingly fearless, and an expert diver.
On our fifth day of research, we saw thieves approaching one of our holding cages, roped to a buoy, where 10 nautiluses were being kept for future experiments. Nearby, tied to the reef edge, a long piece of rope stretched down to a deep cage, where we were performing a crucial experiment: What was the maximum depth at which the nautilus could empty its chamber?
Two hours later, in the emergency room of a New Caledonian hospital, Mike lay dead on the tiled floor. His would-be rescuer, and possibly his killer, lay naked, wetsuit cut away and copious amounts of blood being pumped out of his stomach. I had involuntarily swallowed blood while doing mouth-to-mouth and heart massage to Mike for what seemed like eternity on the dive boat. I never learned why Mike sunk to the bottom. It is the nightmare of all divers, a sudden loss of consciousness, or a sudden stoppage of the heart, possibilities even for a young man.
I spent the next year on crutches. My left hip, shoulder, and ankle had been destroyed by nitrogen bubbles. In the decades that followed, the left side of my skeleton has become increasingly made of titanium, ceramic, and rubber, as doctors robotized me, joint by necrotic joint.
For 25 years the overarching theme of my work as a paleobiologist has been a need to know the identities of which species lived, and which died, in the great mass extinctions, the five intervals in geological time, going back 540 million years to the dawn of animal life, when a majority of species were killed off. I have been able to tell a very plausible evolutionary story about how the nautilus has survived over 500 million years by sidestepping the dinosaur-killing asteroid and every other menace the earth and cosmos have thrown it. It was not because it was especially adaptable, it was because it had the incredible good fortune to prefer deep waters and a metabolism suited to life in the slow lane.
My scientific journey, now professionally far nearer its end than its beginning, has been more akin to a pinball descending through a field of random bumpers than some ordained conclusion. And not just in the positions I won (and lost), or the books and papers I wrote, or had rejected. The very topic of my research came into my life by a combination of random events combining with a newly grown tool (the brain and body of a young boy) capable of reacting to chance influence and being transformed by it.
Because the nautilus lives in the sea, I needed to be water-wise and water-tested. I had the great fortune to grow up on a lake. A 15-foot dive to its muddy bottom, required in the games of sponge tag that the gang of boys in my neighborhood endlessly played, taught me to respect rather than fear water. From early on I was un-flummoxed by being in the dark, cold wet. At age 16, I built a scuba tank out of an old fire extinguisher bottle, acquired a $15, used regulator and an old hand-me-down (and piss-stinking) wet suit, and began diving in Puget Sound after a single scuba lesson. I went on to teach and certify more than 1,000 people to dive, while putting myself through college as a commercial salvage diver, which led me to one of my most fateful jobs: a diver for Sea World, catching live killer whales.
In 1970 and 1971, I was part of the infamous Penn Cove (Washington) whale hunts. At that time the Puget Sound region, or its salmon-fishing community, despised the orca, which routinely ate half the salmon returning each year to spawn. Trapping was applauded. We encircled pods of 30 to 40 whales with seine nets thrown from fishing boats, and culled and captured with ropes the babies for aquaria. My job was to be in the water with the whales and separate mothers from their young. (I once found my leg down the throat of an enraged mother, who spit me out). Rumor had it the going price for an orca was $50,000. I was paid $50 a day.
Following an expose of the hunts by Seattle TV news reporter Don McGaffin in 1971, some of my fellow divers and I testified to state authorities that our employers had been covering up evidence of whales killed in the hunts. Our proof helped launch a state and then federal law to prevent capturing whales in U.S. territorial waters and giving them a life sentence in solitary confinement. It remains the most important work of my life: helping stop the obscene captures.
My lottery number came up in 1975. One spring day I happened to be on the University of Washington campus, when I saw a poster announcing a scientific talk to be given by a hero of mine, the great physicist-turned-marine biologist Eric Denton, of the famous marine laboratory at Plymouth, England, about the nautilus and buoyancy.
Since the nautilus first came to the attention of European naturalists in the 1600s, there was intense speculation on how it used its chambered shell to attain weightlessness. For almost four centuries it was believed that when each new chamber was formed, the animal secreted gas into it. It was the same principle, or so it was thought, used by submarines: Gas pumped into ballast tanks generates buoyancy.
Our research paid off in other ways too. I learned how the nautilus had lived through the dinosaur-killing asteroid impact, 66 million years ago, when its cephalopodan cousins, the beautiful and extinct group of swimming animals known as ammonites, did not. The shallow-water ammonites, living in and feeding on plankton, were either killed directly or starved to death in a charnel house that the shallow ocean depths had suddenly become. Far below the carnage, at about 1,000 feet, the nautiloids continued a life in the slow lane, rarely feeding, floating through life without the actions and metabolic costs of actively swimming organisms, such as squid and fish. They grow slowly but unlike other cephalopods, do not die after breeding. Some living nautilus might be a century old or older.
My quest ultimately circled back to the present. In 2010, scientists in the United States government asked me to go back to the Pacific to study the nautilus, now being killed off by indigenous fishermen trying to feed their families in the southern Philippines.
In 2011 and 2012 I returned to my old study sites in the Pacific, and collected DNA samples that helped confirm that Nautilus pompilius is many separate species. But I also discovered that unlike in the deep past, perhaps only a few thousand individuals make up each species. A few thousand individuals swimming long distances to be caught in a baited trap, from which they are hauled to the surface, killed, and sold for $1 a shell. For buttons and cheap tourist jewelry.
But as recently as 50 years ago, the comeback hit a roadblock: us. In the Philippines and Indonesia, the distant nautilus species are being harvested to extinction. Between 2007 and 2010, the United States Department of Fish and Wildlife discovered that more than half a million nautilus shells or artifacts were imported into the United States alone. Fleets of nautilus boats now scour the coastlines of the South China Sea.
Peter Ward is a professor of Biology and Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington. He is the author of In Search of Nautilus and, most recently, The Flooded Earth: Our Future in a World Without Ice Caps. He is beloved by his family, students, and dog.
In the tapestry of history, when the horizon shimmered with golden promises of plunder, and the winds carried secrets from mysterious, distant shores, pirates weren't mere adventurers who whimsically took to the seas. Far from relying on luck, these maritime rogues had methodology in their mayhem. Armed with an impressive array of tools, pirates charted courses with precision and intent. Join us as we journey into the world of pirate navigation, debunking myths and unveiling tools that made pirates masters of maritime navigation.
Long before the advent of GPS and digital mapping platforms like Google Maps, both pirates and their law-abiding sailor counterparts leaned on astoundingly precise tools for navigation. The sextant, with its gleaming brass arc, stands out as a prime example. Used to measure the angle between celestial bodies, it was a maritime astrolabe, an ancestor of modern navigational aids. With a sextant in one hand and eyes narrowed in concentration, pirates could determine their latitude, ensuring they remained on course, never straying too far into uncharted waters.
Its close relative, the cross staff, while simpler, was no less vital. This instrument, consisting of a sliding crosspiece, helped mariners gauge the angle of celestial bodies like stars or the sun above the horizon. Such tools might appear basic by today's standards, but in a world without satellites or electronic devices, they were revolutionary. Picture a seasoned pirate, adjusting his cross staff, murmuring anticipatory words to his crew, "We're on the right path."
Before these tools became widespread, there was 'dead reckoning'. Far from the ghostly connotations the name suggests, this method involved estimating a ship's position relative to a previously known point. Sailors would log the ship's course, speed, and the duration of travel. Over time, they'd piece together an estimate of their current position. The technique had its flaws, especially if relied upon for extended periods without celestial checks. Yet, on nights when clouds obscured the stars, it was this method that sailors, pirates included, had to trust.
How did pirates, in an age devoid of digital speedometers, determine their velocity on the vast ocean expanses? The ingenious answer lies in the log line. This device, a rope with systematically spaced knots and a wooden piece, provided the solution. Sailors would cast the wood overboard, letting the rope unwind. By observing the number of knots that passed in a fixed time, they could deduce their speed, a vital piece of the navigational puzzle.
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