Charting the Consequences

The catastrophic events following the Asian tsunami last Christmas have captured the world's attention. Governments and agencies are rushing to introduce a tsunami warning system mirroring the excellent system extant in the Pacific. Countless lessons have, or will be, learned from this disaster. One British scientist, Dr R. Wynn (SOC-UK), told BBC News, "This really was a grey area of seabed; we didn't have any information at all of any quality."

Later in the same report, however, came the suggestion that oil companies might indeed have surveyed the area but that such information was not in the public domain. Of course, the best information available could not have predicted the tsunami - although an early warning system such as now proposed would have detected it in its early stages.

HMS SCOTT, fortuitously undertaking military surveys off Madagascar, was very quickly on task. Detailed swath bathymetry was broadcast throughout the world early in February (I think this is about the first time that I can recall a hydrographic story leading our main TV news broadcast!) Ordinary citizens marvelled at the 'three-dimensional pictures which detail the deformed seabed 150km (94 miles) off the Sumatran coast and reveal huge underwater landslides'. The excellent BBC report is one of the few recently published pieces pointing to our need of sound knowledge of the seabed to be able to position the necessary instruments to help us to detect tsunamis.

Hydrographers and other ocean scientists are all too well aware that there are vast areas of the world's oceans that are poorly charted, and in the South Pacific there are immense areas about which the 'square root of not very much at all' is known. Unfortunately, in New Zealand at least, financial strictures have over recent years reduced the funding available for pure hydrography, much of its traditional funding being diverted towards defining the continental shelf in support of our UNCLOS bids. This is both laudable and understandable, given the potential financial and political benefits. But surveying for charting purposes has been limited over the past five years, at least, to reasonably narrow coastal shipping routes, whilst there are still large portions of reasonably shallow areas around the NZ coast which are, by modern standards, poorly charted. The situation around the smaller nations of the South Pacific is even worse.

As a friend of mine is wont to say, "Good and bad comes of all things." We've seen the bad things to come from the Christmas tsunami; we've seen the wonderful acts of humanity in the responses. We can but hope that some good will also come from careful study of the disaster. This might include increased understanding of the need for modern charting of areas not necessarily of immediate benefit; increased hydrographic and scientific effort; an effective warning system for the Indian Ocean and an effective system for promulgation and response to warnings.