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also re ect shock waves. A blast even re ectsfrom within a soldier’s helmet to his head.Every feature in a landscape, every gesture aperson makes, shapes a blast event.

A terse conclusion of the original 2008 breacherinjury study cited “clear evidence” that recom-mended safe standoff distances required revision.“We … found errors of more than a factor of twoin some of those training manuals,” Needham said,referring to breacher instructions: As a result, themanuals were modi ed in 2012. Encompassing amultitude of variables, calculations about blastevents are elaborately difficult, and only in recentyears has it been possible to make the kind of mod-els Needham is now devising. “ hese are largecalculations and take a lot of computer time,” hesaid. Or, as another blast authority put it, “Until very recently, the dominant force that caused allthis damage was basically magic.”

began inWorld War I, when the signature mechanism ofinjury was—as in the wars in Iraq and Afghani-

stan—blast force, mostly in the form of explod-ing artillery shells. Te term “shell shock” rstappeared in February 1915 in an article in theLancet that examined the case studies of threeBritish soldiers exposed to blast events who

complained of sleeplessness, reduced visual eld,and loss of taste, hearing, and memory. Initiallytheir affliction was believed to be a “commotion-al disorder,” referring to agitation of the braincaused by a blast shock wave. A leading theorywas that the shock wave traveled to the brainthrough spinal uid.

But as the war continued, the condition wasattributed to weakness of nerves, given the factthat many men appeared to be otherwise unin- jured. Te term “shell shock,” implying that theshell burst itself was the cause of the damage, fellout of favor. Te revision of diagnosis had pro-found consequences. In the following decades theshell-shocked soldier came to symbolize the emo-tional damage that is the cost of war, and medi-cal research ceased to investigate the possibilitythat blast-force injury might be physical. “WhenI was in medical school, we were told about shellshock in World War I, that people then believedthe brain could be damaged by blast waves fromexploding shells,” Colonel Macedonia said. “It wastold as a story about how ignorant the medical

profession was a hundred years ago.”Te shell-shocked soldiers of that war canbe tracked through British Ministry of Pension

les into the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s, and beyond. Casereports give details of veterans sunk in lethargy



Army Staff Sgt. Perry HopmanIraq -

Wearing his mask—half patriotic, halfdeath’s-head—Hopman confronts thebattery of medications he takes dailyfor blast-force injuries he sustainedwhile treating soldiers as a ightmedic. “I know my name, but I don’tknow the man who used to back upthat name … I never thought I wouldhave to set a reminder to take a shower,you know. I’m years old. I’ve gotto set a reminder to take medicine,set a reminder to do anything …My daughter, she’s only four, so thisis the only dad she’s ever known,whereas my son knew me before.”



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or melancholy, “muddled” in thought, shaking

convulsively on street corners, or going “aroundthe bend” and exploding in paranoid acts oanger. Growing up in England, my parents knewo men whom they were told had “been ‘ unny’since the war.” Tese reports represent the bestdata available on the long-term ate o the shell-shocked veteran.

Afer World War II, in 1951, the U.S. AtomicEnergy Commission created the Blast BiologyProgram to test on various animals very large

explosions that simulated the effects o nuclear

in antry officer who served two tours in A ghan-

istan, where he saw and elt the effects o blastorce. “Tere was a ash in the sky, and I turned

back toward the mountains where the ghtingwas,” Parker said, recalling the day in January2003 when, in the hills o Kandahar, the shockwave rom a distant explosion passed throughhis body. “It just elt like it lifed my innards andput them back down.”

Mostly he was made aware o the range odamage blast in icted. “When bombs are going

off, it’s easier to orget about the guy who’s been

events. Oxen, sheep, pigs, goats, dogs, cats, mon-keys, rats, hamsters, rabbits, mice, and guineapigs were subjected to live blasts or placed inshock tubes. (A shock tube is a long tube ttedwith an internal membrane through which pres-surized air bursts. Tis lab simulation, strippedo heat, debris, chemical allout, and back-blast variables, creates a “pure” blast shock wave.) Inthe early 1980s the ocus o research shifed romnuclear blasts to the low-level explosives char-acteristic o today’s war theaters.

“ on blast injuries was either on ragmentation wounds orwhat happens in gas- lled organs—everyonewas always concerned in a thermonuclear explo-sion what happened to your lungs and your gas-trointestinal tract,” Lt. Col. Kevin “Kit” Parker,the arr Family Pro essor o Bioengineering andApplied Physics at Harvard, told me. “We com-

pletely overlooked the brain. oday the enemyhas developed a weapon system that is targetedtoward our scienti c weak spot.”

Parker, a towering gure with a shaved headand booming voice, is also a ormer U.S. Army

a little out o sorts than the guy who’s sittingnear him and got both his legs blown off,” Parkersaid. “But the guy who’s going to have the moreserious long-term issues probably is going to bethe guy who had the brain injury.”

In 2005 Parker, who was then involved incardiac tissue engineering, turned his attentionto blast-induced neurotrauma. He began byreviewing the science or a class o proteins—integrins—that transmit mechanical orcesinto cells. Using specially designed magnetictweezers and a device resembling a miniature jackhammer to simulate the abrupt stretchingand high-velocity compression o blast effects,Parker and a small team o students subjectedengineered tissues o rat neurons, or nerve cells,to blastlike assault. Te integrins on the cell sur-

ace initiated a cascade o effects culminating ina dramatic retraction o axons, the long tendrilsthat serve as a neuron’s signaling mechanism.

By working at the cellular level, Parker’steam sidestepped two central di iculties oany blast research—namely, that one cannotexpose humans to blast events and that animalsare poor substitutes or humans. On the other

The shock wave from a distantexplosion “felt like it lifted my innardsand put them back down.” —Kevin Parker



hand, results rom cells in a petri dish cannot

be extrapolated to a human being.

neurologists are activelypursuing stands as eloquent testimony to howwide open blast-induced neurotrauma researchis. Lee Goldstein, o Boston University School oMedicine, has taken a very different approach.“People ocus on the pressure wave,” Goldsteintold me. “What’s behind it is the wind.” Gold-stein’s range o expertise can be read in his ull

title: associate pro essor o psychiatry, neurology,ophthalmology, pathology and laboratory medi-cine, and biomedical, computer, and electricalengineering. At 52, he has the lean build, longdark hair and beard, and intensity o purpose oa desert prophet.

In May 2012 he published the results o stud-ies that examined a possible association betweenblast-induced neurotrauma and chronic trau-matic encephalopathy (C E), a neurodegenera-tive disease that he and his team discovered inthe autopsied brains o our military veteranswith blast exposure. Goldstein’s co-author, AnnMcKee, o VA Boston, had been studying C E inthe autopsied brains o ootball players and otherathletes. First reported as a “punch drunk” syn-drome in boxers in 1928, C E is associated withathletes who sustain repetitive head trauma. Anincurable and ultimately atal neurodegenerativedisease, C E leads to cognitive disability anddementia. Te disease can be detected only atautopsy and is revealed by abnormal tangles oa protein called tau.

o test the theory that blast exposure mayhave triggered C E pathology, Goldstein’s teamexposed mice to a single shock-tube blast thatsimulated the effects o a moderate-size explo-sive. High-speed cameras captured the results—arapid bobblehead effect, as the heads o the miceshook back and orth in reaction to the orce. In30 milliseconds, ar less than the blink o an eye,

the oscillating wind had spiked and dipped ninetimes. “In one blast you’re really getting multiplehits,” Goldstein said. “So it’s like you’re packinga whole bunch o hits into a very short time.”

wo weeks afer exposure to the blast, the

mice brains showed an accumulation o chemi-

cally modi ed tau protein and other damage.Critics o the study, however, point out thatthree o the our human cases that inspired theshock-tube experiments had experienced addi-tional trauma unrelated to blast and that tests onmannequin models indicated that the bobble-head effect was not usual in the eld.

Some researchers believe that it’s a mistaketo ocus only on the head. “ he whole bodyis exposed to huge kinetic energy,” said Ibolja

Cernak, describing the impact o a blast event.“Athletes do not have this kind o whole bodyexposure.” Te chair o Canadian military and veterans’ clinical rehabilitation research at theUniversity o Alberta, Cernak began her researchon the battle elds o Kosovo, when she noticedthat some soldiers and civilians exposed to blastexhibited symptoms reminiscent o certain neu-rodegenerative diseases. Te blast pressure wavehits the chest and abdomen “like a huge st,”Cernak says, trans erring its kinetic energy tothe body. “Tat kinetic energy generates oscillat-ing pressure waves in the blood, which serves asa per ect medium to urther trans er that kineticenergy to all organs, including the brain.”

Experiments she conducted on mice revealedthat in ammation occurred in the brain whetherthe head had been protected rom blast or not—in ammation, she argues, that starts a process odamage comparable to that seen in Alzheimer’sdisease. By contrast, protection o the thorax sig-ni cantly reduced in ammation in the brain,suggesting that the blast-body interaction has acrucial role in blast-induced brain injury.

, the only wholly reliable method odirectly examining the biological effects o blast

orce on the human brain is autopsy. In 2013 theDepartment o De ense established a brain tissuerepository to advance the study o blast-inducedneurotrauma in service members. Overseen by

Daniel Perl, pro essor o pathology at the Uni-ormed Services University o the Health Sci-ences, in Bethesda, Maryland, the repository hasbeen receiving brains donated by service mem-bers’ amilies. Tis has allowed researchers, Perl



•

At the National Intrepid Center ofExcellence (NICoE), part of WalterReed National Military MedicalCenter, in Bethesda, Maryland,treatment for traumatic braininjury and psychological healthconcerns—including post-traumatic

stress disorder—draws on an interdisciplinarycare model that incorporates traditional and

alternative medicine. Art therapist MelissaWalker works with service members to createmasks that illustrate hidden feelings. A numberof themes occur repeatedly in their choice ofimages, among them death (often representedby skulls), inability to express themselves(mouths stitched, gagged, or locked shut),physical pain (facial wounds), and patrioticfeelings (American ags).

“I thought this was a joke,” recalled SergeantHopman. “I wanted no part of it because,number one, I’m a man, and I don’t like holdinga dainty little paintbrush. Number two, I’m notan artist. And number three, I’m not in kinder-garten. Well, I was ignorant, and I was wrong,because it’s great. I think this is what startedme kind of opening up and talking about stuffand actually trying to get better.”

BEHIND THE MASK

REBECCA HALE ALL



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Marine Gunnery Sgt. Aaron Tam (Ret.)Iraq - , -

“Detonation happened, and I was right there in the blast seat. I got blownup. And all this medical study—nobody ever thought that they [blast events]

were very harmful, and so we didn’t log them, which we should becauseall blast forces are cumulative to the body. On a grade number for me, itwould probably be -plus explosions … I’m not going to not play with mychildren. I’m not going to let my injuries stop them from having a good life.”PHOTOGRAPHED WITH HIS WIFE, ANGELA, AND THEIR TWO CHILDREN



Marine Gunnery Sgt. Tiffany H.Iraq - , Afghanistan -

Tiffany H., as she prefers to be known, was “blown up”while helping women in a remote Afghan village earn

additional income for their families. Memory loss,balance difculties, and anxiety are among her manysymptoms. The blinded eye and sealed lips on her maskare common symbols used by blast-injured soldiers.



Army Maj. Jeff Hall (Ret.)Iraq - ,

Sheri Hall: “I told him, ‘I’m not clean-ing your mess. I’m not cleaning yourbrains off the bedroom wall. You killyourself, you better leave a lengthyexplanation as to why, because I can’texplain to your kids, to your girls wholove you, why you would make sucha mess of our lives.’ Still, to this dayI wake up some mornings and go,OK, what’s today going to be like?How’s Jeff going to be when hewakes? You know, how’s he going tobe after his rst cup of coffee? How’sit going to be for him today? I knowhe dreads going to work every day.There’s that anxiety that goes with

that. How bad is it going to be? Whatcan I do to set the morning off on agood foot? So I do still think aboutthat every day, but I don’t walk aroundon eggshells anymore.”PHOTOGRAPHED WITH HIS WIFE, SHERI AT LEFT ,AND THEIR TWO DAUGHTERS



•

says, to get “to the tissue level to really see what’s

going on.” As he points out, magnetic resonanceimaging (MRI) o the living brain has a resolu-tion a thousand times less than what can be seenwhen the brain is examined under a microscope.

Perl’s expertise extends rom work on C E,Alzheimer’s, and other age-related neurodegen-erative diseases to research on a unique complexo neurological disorders in a small populationin Guam (a mystery described in Oliver Sacks’spopular book The Island of the Colorblind ).

Perl has also written o shell shock and its

abnormalities in the brains o blast-exposed

soldiers by using an advanced orm o MRI.Although hailed as a landmark in an accompa-nying editorial, the paper was weakened by the

act that every participant had also experiencedother traumas, such as being struck by a bluntobject or being in a motor vehicle crash.

A number o studies investigating possiblebiomarkers may have indings that will aid

uture diagnosis: A blood test or unique pro-tein markers indicative o brain cell damage

has proved promising, or example, and is now

relationship to modern blast-induced brain inju-ries, noting that despite a hundred years’ use oexplosive orce in war are, there have been “nodetailed neuropathology studies …in the humanbrain afer blast exposure.”

Now, 18 months into the brain tissue study,Perl said he’s seeing revelatory results. “We be-lieve we’re getting close to identi ying uniquechanges in the brains o blast-exposed soldiersthat are not seen in brain injuries o civilians,” hesaid, re erring to common blunt- orce traumasuch as athletes sustain. “What we’re seeing ap-pears to be unique to blast. Tis is an injury thatappears to be unique to military experience.”

I he’s correct, the ndings will have majorimplications not only or treatment but also ordiagnosis and prevention. “I think we’ll have tosit down with the helmet-design people and thebody-armor people,” he predicted. “A lot o de-signs were based on very different assumptions.”

For living soldiers, meanwhile, reliable meth-ods o diagnosis remain tragically elusive. InJune 2011 the New England Journal of Medi-cine published the results o a study that orthe rst time succeeded in detecting structural

being tested by the military. (It is effective onlyi administered within a ew days o the injury.)And in 2014 a small study o 52 veterans suc-cess ully used an MRI technique called mac-romolecular proton raction (MPF) mapping,which examines levels o myelin, a major com-ponent o brain white matter; MPF mappinghas been used to study patients with multiplesclerosis, who have reduced levels o myelin,the atty sheathing that protects and insulatesneurons. Evidence o brain white-matter dam-age was detected in 34 veterans with exposureto one or more blast events, compared with 18 veterans without blast exposure.

“We’d told the veterans to give us their bestestimates o how many blast-related mild trau-matic brain injuries they had sustained duringtheir military careers,” said Eric Petrie, a pro es-sor o psychiatry at the University o Washingtonand the lead author o the study. “But how accu-

rately can veterans recall these events? Some inthe study were ve to six years out rom the timeo their last blast exposure,” he said, summingup one o the undamental problems o all di-agnostic studies that depend on sel -reporting.

“What we’re seeing appears to beunique to blast—an injury uniqueto military experience.” —Daniel Perl



In the uture, photonic crystalline materials that

change color when exposed to blast waves, wornas stickers on uni orms and helmets, may providean objective measurement o blast exposure.

Despite the array o promising strategies, orthe time being diagnosis still depends, as it did inWWI, on clinical assessment, which may now in- volve computer-administered examinations suchas the Automated Neuropsychological Assess-ment Metrics: “Did you experience any o the ol-lowing: Dazed, con used, saw stars? How much

does this word describe how you eel? ‘Shaky.’ ” , a blast event can be cre-

ated or very little money and with minimal ex-pertise. Explosively ormed penetrators, a typeo IED used to pierce armored vehicles, can beassembled or a ew dollars. Disks that becomebullet-shaped and molten hot as they y throughthe air, these explosive projectiles can, in thewords o one ordnance expert, cut through anarmored car “like a hot butter kni e.” In this way25 dollars’ worth o technology can take out amillion-dollar armored vehicle and kill or in ictgrievous injury on the soldiers in it. Te cost otheir medical care—possibly over decades—willadd signi cantly to the economic disparity. Giventhis cost-effectiveness, explosive orce is likely toremain a signature weapon o modern war are.

oday, while researchers strive to gure outwhat goes on when blast orce encounters the hu-man brain, untold numbers o soldiers are strug-gling with the afermath o their own encounters.

BOOM. On patrol in Iraq in 2009, RobertAnetz elt the immense pressure against his body.Ten everything went numb. “Everybody startedshouting, ‘Are you good? Are you good?’ Youcheck or blood,” Anetz said. Tere was no blood,so he thought he was good. But seven monthsafer returning rom Iraq, he had a seizure whiledriving, and a grand mal seizure six months a -ter that. Now rebuilding his li e as a student and

volunteer re ghter, his daunting regimen o 15different medications is down to three, but theheadaches and migraines have not gone away.

Enrique revino, who at the age o 21 sur- vived a massive IED ambush in A ghanistan one

night two weeks be ore he was to return home,

remembers only the bright ash and his buddiesscreaming his name. “I’ll never orget that ash,”he said. “It almost looked like a lightning strike.”When he nally awoke in Fort Hood, exas, helearned the explosion that had knocked out hisnight optics had also knocked out his power ospeech and his peripheral vision. He now worksto rebuild his mind with mental tasks like count-ing backward rom 50, but he suffers daily rommigraines and nightly rom his dreams.

About a year afer his return home, revinosaid, “it all came crashing down on me.” Hesurvived a suicide attempt. A riend o his whohad also served in A ghanistan did not. “Tey

ound him in his home,” revino said. “He, he—nobody would have ever thought—nobodywould have ever been—nobody ever, nobody,no one, nobody saw that. Nobody saw.”

And nobody saw it or my brother-in-law, RonHaskins, rom whom I rst learned about breach-ers. Afer retiring rom the Army Special Forces,he worked with a private security orce in Iraq.He sustained two IED attacks that lef him withheadaches and ringing in his ears so loud he wasunable to sleep. On his return to the United States,he worked or the Department o Homeland Se-curity and conducted breacher training courses

or a security company o his own. One night inthe summer o 2011, or reasons no one could

athom, he picked up a gun and ended his li e.“We should get you guys to come out to New

Mexico so you can see the devices, have explo-sions go off,” Ron had told me about a trainingcourse he led. “You’ll be hal a mile away, andyou’ll be amazed at how a couple o pounds willrattle the earth around you.” j

MORE ONLINE ngm.com/more

“ If my hand or arm had just

been blown off, then peoplewould understand. They’d seethere’s something wrong.”

—DAVID GRIEGO

MULTIMEDIA

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Air Force Staff Sgt. Robert “Bo” Wester (Ret.)Iraq , - , Afghanistan

Suiting up before attempting ordnance disposal “is the last line. There’s noone else to call … It’s the person and the IED … and if a mistake is made at

that point, then death is almost certain. They call it the long walk becauseonce you get that bomb suit on, number one, everything is harder whenyou’re wearing that pounds … Two, the stress of knowing what you’reabout to do. And three, it’s quiet, and it seems like it takes an hour to walk.”



Army First Sgt. David GriegoIraq , Afghanistan

“One bad thing about the NICoE [program] is that you have to talkabout what happened. And so one of the things I know—and not to

deter you from asking questions here—but any time I have to talk aboutit for a while, I can tell I may have or may not have some images andnightmares tonight … Sometimes you nd yourself saying, I wish I hadlost a body part, so people will see—they’ll get it.”PHOTOGRAPHED WITH HIS WIFE, TRACY



Best friends Ha‘a Keaulana, at right, and MailiMakana dive under a wave on their way to asurng spot near their hometown of Makaha. Likegenerations before them, they visit these watersalmost every day to refresh both body and spirit.



Hawaııan Beyond the glitz of tourist beaches,locals cling to the spirit of the ocean.

Pure



It takes an expert to ride the famous Pipeline, where jagged coral lurks just below the surface. Compet-itive surfers come here, to the North Shore of Oahu,from around the world. The vibe at Makaha, on thewest coast, is more about the families that live there.



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For hal an hour I loated near the takeozone, waiting or my chance, be ore I inallyspotted what appeared to be an unclaimed wave.I spun my board toward the beach and paddledhard. But just as I gained speed, a stone- acedteenager on a bodyboard nned up the samewave. He planted his hand rmly on my shoul-der and pushed me off the wave, simultaneouslypropelling himsel down its ace. I gave up andpaddled in. So much or “aloha,” I thought.

But over several weeks in Makaha I came tograsp that what looked like thuggish protection-ism was in act more complicated. Hawaiians,afer all, are the original sur ng anatics, havingembraced the sport since roughly the time o theCrusades. Tey are also, in some sense, survi- vors. Since the coming o the rst white men inthe late 18th century, their history has been col-ored by loss— rst o numbers, as imported dis-eases burned through their ranks, then o land,nationhood, and culture. Even hula dancing allbut vanished. For Hawaiians—an increasingly

imprecise term afer waves o immigration tothe islands and generations o intermarriage—sur ng is a tangible link to the precolonial pastand a last remaining shard o cultural iden-tity. It’s also a testament to Hawaiians’ almost

By John Lancaster

Photographs by Paul Nicklen

In the islands where surfing began, the waves on that particular day

were a disappointment—mushy, chest high, and annoyingly infrequent. Still,

Hawaiians have never needed much of an excuse to grab a board and hit the

ocean, and the takeoff zone was packed. Teens on shortboards. Moms on long-

boards. Grade-schoolers on bodyboards. A guy with a gray ponytail on a stand-up

paddleboard. Some had tribal tattoos in the styleo Polynesian warriors. Straddling my sur oardin the deep water beside the ree , I surveyed thecrowd with a knot in my stomach, eeling that Ididn’t belong.

Makaha has long been known as a beachwhere haoles, a Hawaiian term or white peo-ple and other outsiders, venture at their peril.Located on Oahu’s west coast, ar rom the glitzyNorth Shore crowds o Sunset Beach or Pipelineor the package tourists at Waikiki Beach, it hasa reputation as a tightly cloistered communitydominated by descendants o the ancient Poly-nesian sea arers who settled the islands.

Even those Makaha residents who have cometo terms with the United States takeover o Ha-waii in 1898—and some still have not—are deter-mined to prevent the same thing rom happeningto their waves. Stories are legion o visiting sur -ers being chased rom the water here, a ew withbroken noses, afer breaching some unwrittenrule. I was eager to avoid the same ate.

John Lancaster pro led Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, in the February 2012 issue. PhotographerPaul Nicklen’s most recent story was “Yukon:Canada’s Wild West,” for the February 2014 issue.



Wearing a malo, or loincloth, constructionworker Keli‘iokalani Makua revealstraditional tattoos that tell his life story.Body art is a popular sign of Hawaiianidentity, but including the face is rare.



0 mi 30

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Honolulu

Lihue

Wailuku

Makaha

NanakuliWaianae

Kailua-KonaHilo

Mauna Kea13,796 ft4, 5 m

Kaena Point

ort ore

Waikiki Beach

Sunset Beach

Maui

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Niihau

Oahu

Kauai

Hawaii

P A

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Pearl Harbor

mystical connection to the ocean. No wonderthey can get a little prickly about their waves.

“We got nice people here, but i you treat thembad, they’ll treat you bad.” It wasn’t a threat, justa simple statement o act. Te man who utteredit was sitting on a tree limb that had washed upon the beach. Tough well past retirement age,he looked like someone you didn’t want to cross,a thick-chested guy in board shorts, sunglasses,and a black sun visor. His hair was a luxuriantwhite, and the slablike planes o his ace evokedthe ancient Hawaiian alii, or chie s, he countsamong his orebears.

“Te guys, i they tell you they’re going to dosomething to you, they will do something toyou,” he said. “Just remember where you’re at.”

On the subject o Makaha and its customs,there is no higher authority than Richard “Bu -

alo” Keaulana, a rare ull-blooded Hawaiianwho has spent most o his 80 years on Oahu’s

West Side. His standing in the community isclosely linked to the ocean. Keaulana was a pre-ternaturally gifed sur er as well as Makaha’s rst

ull-time li eguard and the ounder o a well-known sur ng competition called the Buffalo

Big Board Sur ng Classic. He remains the mostprominent o Makaha’s amous “uncles”—themostly Hawaiian elders who serve as guardianso the community—and is revered throughoutthe islands as the apotheosis o the “waterman,”an aquatic all-rounder who combines reverence

or the ocean with deep knowledge, skill, andcourage. “Last o the traditionalists,” one ad-mirer told me.

Te waterman ethos dates to the rst Hawai-ians, who are believed to have sailed to the islandsin double-hulled canoes rom the Marquesasaround . . 700, ollowed by similar mariners

rom ahiti ve centuries later. Tese settlersprobably brought with them some amiliaritywith sur ing, at least in rudimentary orm,but only in their new homeland did the sportbecome an important part o the culture, em-braced by chie s and commoners o both gen-ders on most o Hawaii’s eight major islands.

here were sur ing temples, sur ing deities,sur ng contests with crowds o onlookers gam-bling on the outcome. Te royals rode massiveolo boards hewed rom the wood o the wiliwilior the koa tree, while their subjects typically

Hawaii’s surf spotsOral histories identify ancientsurng locations throughout themain Hawaiian Islands. Many ofthose places attract modernsurfers, especially from Novem-ber to March, when wave heightspeak on the northern shores.

25

5

Breaker heights are for high season,which varies on different sides of theislands. Some gures are estimates.

*

Pre-European-contact surf location Average breaker height in feet* Average breaker height in feet,extreme conditions only

HAWAII(U.S.)

U.S.

PACIFICOCEAN

E Q UA T O R

JEROME N. COO KSON, NGM STAFF; PATRICIA HEALY

SOURCES: JOHN CLARK; PAT CALDWELL, NOAA’S NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPH IC DATA CENTER



Makaha became a laboratory for new surng techniquesand board designs.

sur ed on shorter, thinner alaia boards. A new

swell could empty a village or days.New England missionaries, who ollowed the

1778 landing o British explorer James Cook,ofen have been blamed or putting a damperon the sport the natives called he‘e nalu. Teirprincipal objection, it seems, was to the locals’pre erence or sur ing in the nude. Far moreharm ul to sur ng, as to Hawaiian society it-sel , was the arrival o European diseases suchas smallpox. By the time Congress ormally an-

nexed Hawaii in 1898, the native population hadallen to about 40,000 rom as many as 800,000at the time o Cook’s landing.

Te bitter legacy o colonization lef an indel-ible stamp on Hawaiians o Keaulana’s genera-tion. He spent his childhood in poverty, mucho it on state-provided “homestead” land—Hawaii’s version o an Indian reservation—in theWest Side community o Nanakuli. Te nativelanguage had been purged rom public schoolsin avor o English, though in practice the localsspoke pidgin, an English-based creole still com-mon in the area.

Keaulana ran away rom home at the age oten, afer his abusive step ather chased him intoa taro plot with a kni e. He bounced among rela-tives and riends, dropped out o school afer theeighth grade, and endured periods o homeless-ness, sleeping in cardboard boxes and stealingchickens to survive.

Te ocean proved his salvation—“a place toget away,” he called it. A power ul swimmer, helearned to sh with a speargun made rom asharpened coat hanger and a length o rubbertubing. As a teenager, he worked as a diver, un-snagging the nets o Filipino shing sampans

rom coral ree s. Ten he discovered sur ng.O course Keaulana wasn’t entirely un amiliar

with the sport that had so obsessed his ancestors.Since the turn o the century Hawaiian beach-boys had been teaching tourists how to sur

on the gentle breakers o Waikiki, and duringKeaulana’s childhood a ew Hawaiians could stillbe ound riding V-bottom redwood boards ona break near Nanakuli. He learned to sur ona crude sur oard made rom glued-together

railroad ties. But he didn’t truly embrace the

sport until he ell in with a hand ul o pioneer-ing haole sur ers, some rom Cali ornia, whoarrived at Makaha in the early 1950s.

Te newcomers rode lightweight boards maderom berglass and balsa wood (soon replaced

with polystyrene oam) and out tted with nsso they could be turned easily. Makaha became alaboratory or new sur ng techniques and boarddesigns as well as the setting or what was billedas the rst international sur ng contest, in 1954.

Keaulana joined the party and soon emerged asone o the best sur ers o his generation, witha uid, ambidextrous style that he would latershowcase in sur ng movies and contests as araway as Peru.

Afer stints in the Army and as a beachboy atWaikiki, Keaulana returned to Makaha in 1960with a wi e and a job as parkkeeper and then li e-guard, bringing up our children in an apartmentabove a public bathhouse on the beach. Eventu-ally Keaulana was able to build a house, afer herescued a wealthy exan who was knocked sense-less while sur ng in big waves. Te man gaveKeaulana $30,000 as an expression o gratitude.

Keaulana’s renowned waterman skills earnedhim a prominent role in the Hawaiian culturaland political awakening that came to be knownas the Second Hawaiian Renaissance. In 1977 hekicked off his eponymous sur ng contest, whoseparty atmosphere and multiple events—canoesur ng, tandem sur ng, longboarding—recallthe ancient Makahiki estival held in honor othe Hawaiian god Lono. Keaulana’s chie like

status was enhanced by his burly physique and,when necessary, “a look that chills your bones,”in the words o his eldest son, Brian, who added,“Every local kid knows that look.”

At the same time, “Uncle Buff” was nothing i



In his workshop at home in Makaha, retired busdriver Bruce DeSoto sculpts a foam board byhand. “My shaping is pretty old style,” he says.“Nowadays there are computers that shape theboards. They pop them out in factories.”



Evoking the original community spirit of surf-riding,paddlers work together to catch a wave with aninatable board called a Supsquatch. On at water“you can just go sightseeing, enjoy it with yourfamily,” says Eli Smith, steering at the back.



•

not pragmatic, as he showed in the running o

his contest. ourists who drove up rom Honolu-lu ofen returned to their rental cars to nd win-dows smashed and wallets missing. “Tat’s thestupid thing they do. Tey bring a lot o mon-ey,” Keaulana said. So he identi ed the localsresponsible or the break-ins—“all the thievesand make-trouble guys”—and hired them assecurity guards. Te thefs mostly stopped.

In recent years resorts have begun spread-ing up the West Side, and vacation homes

have sprouted amid the modest plantation-stylehouses that cluster on either end o Makaha’sgolden beach. But in other ways little haschanged. At a beachside picnic table in the shadeo amilo tree, Keaulana and his ellow uncles

In the main town o Waianae the highway is lined

with ast- ood outlets, pawnshops, and scruffyshopping plazas. Homeless people camp in athicket near the boat basin. I went to Waianaeto meet one o Keaulana’s “make-trouble guys,”a sur ng prodigy with a troubled past namedSheldon Paishon.

I turned in to a neighborhood o ramshacklehouses, one o which had a bedsheet hanging inthe ront door. Paishon poked his head throughthe opening and joined me in my car.

Born on the West Side in 1993, Paishon hada pain ully thin build and a crest o oppy, sun-bleached hair that he calls a “ rohawk.” I askedwhether he wanted break ast. He declined, ex-plaining that he had eaten well the night be ore.He told me that his mother had been panhan-dling at the Waianae Mall, where someone hadbought her a bucket o Kentucky Fried Chickenthat she brought home to her amily. “She metthe right person,” Paishon said. “She got blessed.”

We drove north to Makaha, stopping brie yso that Paishon could retrieve his sur boardo the moment—a sorry-looking thing with abusted-off nose— rom the bushes where he’dstashed it the day be ore. We continued in thesame direction and a ew minutes later parkedalong the beach at Yokohama Bay.

“Yokes” is considered the heaviest break onthe West Side, and on this morning it was easyto see why. hick, power ul waves un urledacross a shallow ree . But Paishon didn’t hesi-tate be ore joining the dozen or so sur ers al-ready in the water, and within moments he wasdominating the eld. Effortless, devil-may-caretakeoffs, casual tube rides, soaring aerial ma-neuvers—he sur ed with a grace and audacityI had rarely seen outside o pro-sur ng videos.Afer hal an hour, he snapped his board in haland swam back to the beach, holding a piece oit in one hand.

A li eguard who had been watching wagged

his head and observed, “You shouldn’t judge ash by his ability to climb a tree.”It seemed like a cryptic statement, but to

anyone who knew Paishon and his history, itmade per ect sense: Few sur ers on the West

For the most partthis is not the Hawaiiof tourist brochures.

while away the hours “talking story” or play-ing dominoes, and outsiders are received warily,at least at rst. “You got any ID?” one o theuncles demanded when I rst appeared with mynotebook and questions. I later asked the sameman i he worried about the in ux o nonlocalscompeting or waves, and he assured me that hedidn’t. “We regulate that to death, brah.”

collectively known as theWest Side are situated along Oahu’s FarringtonHighway, which begins west o Pearl Harbor andpasses through Makaha be ore terminating nearthe island’s northwestern tip, called Kaena Point.Running along the base o the Waianae Range, it’sa rain-starved coastal strip that’s one o the oldestsettled parts o Oahu. Here and there are ruinso stone temples and shponds, along with more

contemporary echoes o Hawaii’s past: roadsidestands selling poke (raw sh) and laulaus (porkwrapped in taro leaves), outrigger canoes hauledup on the beach at Pokai Bay. But or the mostpart this is not the Hawaii o tourist brochures.



Modern boards

Slower and lesssteep glide zone

Faster and steeperglide zone

Curl

Commonposition

Old Modern

Peak

Shoulder

6

12

0 ft.

18

5 lbs 6 lbs 20 lbs150 lbs40 lbs10 lbs

W a t e r d i r e c t i o n

Deepwater

Shallowwater

viewabove

For centuries Hawaiians of all social classes participated in he‘e nalu, orwave sliding, a sport with social and ritual importance. Modern surfers useboards made from synthetic materials that echo earlier wooden shapes.

Long ago women and children rode theseboards, paddling with their arms andkicking to catch a wave. Today the use ofswim ns increases the force of the kick.

Ancient surfers used these boards onsteep, fast-breaking waves. The moderncurved prole improves maneuverability,aided by ns on the underside of the tail.

Reserved for chiefs in the old days, thebiggest boards are good for riding long,rolling waves. Under the right conditions,a surfer can glide for about 400 yards.

The Glide ZoneAs gravity pulls the boarddownward, the rising waterpushes it forward. A surfer getsthe best ride by angling alongthe fastest, smoothest line.

Wave ActionThe water in a swell moves in circles, rising as itrolls ashore. The water on the bottom slows whenit hits the slope of the seaoor, but the top keepsgoing, causing a wave to curl and break.

At the start of a ride, a surfer paddles force-fully to match the speed of the swell. Ashortboard is designed for catching a waveas it breaks and then staying close to thecurl. A longboard, which is more buoyant, cancatch the rising wave long before it breaks.

FERNANDO G. BAPTISTA, NGM STAFF; PATRICIA HEALY

SOURCES: JOHN CLARK; PAT CALDWELL, NOAA’S NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHICDATA CENTER; KEN BRADSHAW; BEN PLAYER

Riding the Waves

Paipo/Bodyboard Alaia/Shortboard Olo/Longboard1 2 3

12

3



•

Side have shown as much talent in the waterwhile struggling against such long odds on land.Tere are obvious parallels between Paishon’sstory and Buffalo Keaulana’s. Both were raisedamid poverty and homelessness, and both foundtheir calling in the ocean. But while Keaulanaparlayed his waterman’s talents into fame and a

comfortable living, Paishon struggles to nd hisplace in the world, dreaming of a career in prosur ng but with no obvious path to get there.You had to worry about his future.

Like many on the West Side, Paishon has an

ambiguous ethnic heritage. His mother, Sharon,is a haole from New Jersey. His pidgin-speakingfather, Don, is descended from Portuguese im-migrants who came to the islands more than acentury ago—along with Chinese, Japanese, andFilipinos—to work on sugarcane plantations.Te line between native and non-native has long

since blurred, and Don Paishon assumes thathe and his son carry traces of Hawaiian blood,though he cannot say for sure. Even so, whenI asked Sheldon whether he considers himselfHawaiian, he nodded emphatically. “In here,” he

Moroni Naho‘oikaika, a musician who lives near Makaha, hikes south of KaenaPoint with his son Ezekiel. He wears tattoos of things that are close to his heart:

the outline of Hawaii, footprints of an older son, a shark for protection, and versethat speaks to his faith. “Jah is God,” he says. “God’s word is the music.”



said, tapping himsel on the chest. “In the heart.”But as Paishon takes pride in his Hawaiian

identity, he aces many o the challenges thata lict the native population—especially onthe West Side, one o the state’s most disadvan-taged communities.

When he was 12, his unemployed parents

could no longer a ord their apartment. Forthe next several years, the amily lived in a tent just north o Makaha in what was then one oHawaii’s largest homeless encampments. Shar-on struggled with depression, and Don smoked

“ice,” the popular name or methamphetamine.

(“I like the rev and the high,” Don told me.)For their child it was sheer misery, an ex-

tended camping trip rom hell. “Horrible, stinky,rainy, cold, scary,” Paishon recalled. “Big centi-pedes crawling in your tent. Sand all over yourbed. It’s not what people think.” A bucket servedas the toilet, and a typical dinner was pork andbeans heated over an open re.

Like Keaulana be ore him, Paishon oundsolace in the ocean, graduating rom a body-

board to a succession o borrowed or discardedsurfoards. He was a natural at the sport, andit wasn’t long be ore he caught the eye o theuncles. Tey supported him with more sur -boards (Paishon’s aggressive style means that

The line betweennative and non-native haslong since blurred.

he breaks them on a regular basis) as well asood, clothing, and advice—a modern twist on

Hawaii’s ancient hānai system, in which amiliesin ormally adopted the children o riends orrelatives and raised them as their own. “We hisreal amily over here,” one o the uncles told me.

By the time Paishon was in his early teens,he was a regular on Oahu’s highly competitive junior sur ng circuit. His rivals turned up atevents with their parents, equipped with beachcanopies, video cameras, coolers, and surfoardsplastered with logos rom sponsors. Paishon hadno sponsors and was lucky i his mom showedup with a beach towel. But that didn’t stop him

rom winning, sometimes against kids who havegone on to lucrative pro essional careers. At 15,he was eatured inSur ng magazine.

It was a di erent story at school, where

Paishon struggled with basic math and read-ing and was mocked by his classmates or hismildewed clothes. “Everyone would tease mebecause they knew I was homeless,” he said.“Tey called me the slum-dog sur er.” He began



Keone Nunes tattoos Napu Hamasaki the old-fashioned way, by tapping on a sharp comb dippedin ink. This was a lost art for more than a century inHawaii. “I was taught by a Samoan,” Nunes says,“the best traditional tattooist of his time.”



Ha‘a Keaulana prepares for one of the worstsurng mishaps—a wipeout that would hold herunderwater—by running on the ocean oor whilecarrying a rock and pulling her friends. Her father,Brian, pioneered this technique to train lifeguards.



•

skipping school to sur . When he did show up,

teachers yelled at him or reading sur ng maga-zines in class. He dropped out entirely during hissecond attempt at completing the ninth grade.

People who knew Paishon were sympa-thetic to his plight, but there was only so muchthey could do. A couple whose son competedwith Paishon on the junior circuit o ered totake him into their home and pay his way tosur ing contests in Cali ornia and elsewhere,but Paishon’s mother declined to sign a power o

attorney orm. “Maybe it would have been bet-ter,” Paishon told me. “I would be a world cham-pion by now, probably.”

Some wounds were sel -in icted. Paishon ad-mits he ran with the wrong crowd and smoked

me different now because I’m working,” he toldme. “It’s my step orward.” He said he plannedto use his earnings to nance a sur ng trip toIndonesia and then return to Hawaii or a newround o contests that he hoped would win theattention o sponsors. “I didn’t know what Iwanted be ore,” he said. “Now I know. Be a pro

sur er. Tat’s my dream.”

sur ing misadventure atMakaha, I went to see Bruce DeSoto, a membero one o Makaha’s most prominent amilies.

“The bottom line is respect.You respect, you comesurf anytime.” —Bruce DeSoto

pakalolo—marijuana—sometimes paying orthe drug by selling one o the surfoards he hadbeen given. Bene actors began to lose patience.“I slapped his head,” one o the uncles told me. “Itold him, ‘You’re wasted talent, another wastedtalent on the Waianae side, another lost soul.’ ”

Te biggest setback came when Paishon wasaccused o stealing $1,200 rom the girl riend oa contest organizer. Paishon was never charged,but his reputation was damaged. Potential spon-sors turned away. “Tey think, He’s a punk, he’s

rom Waianae,” Paishon said bitterly.One late-spring night I drove with him past

Waianae High School, where the commence-ment ceremony or the class o 2013—Paishon’sclass, had he stayed in school—had just con-cluded. Paishon watched silently as joy ul gradu-ates spilled into the street with their parents and

siblings. Several minutes passed. Finally he said,“I wish I would have graduated.”Six months later I learned that Paishon had

ound a job. A riend had hired him to clean carsor eight dollars an hour. “Everyone is looking at



Surfers cross busy Kalakaua Avenue after a day of riding the long, gentle wavesthat roll into Waikiki Beach. Upscale stores, luxury condos, and grand hotels now

line the shore in this neighborhood, but passages between the buildings allow publicaccess to a stretch of sand and surf that’s popular with locals as well as tourists.

I asked him for advice on avoiding any furtherunpleasantness in the water. He leaned back inhis armchair and replied, “When somebodynew comes in the lineup, we expect them tointroduce themselves and say hi, at least.” Hecontinued, “Te bottom line is respect. You re-spect, you’re welcome, then you come surf our

place anytime you want. But if you don’t respect,then you got a problem.”A few days later I got a chance to put his

advice into practice. A fresh swell had rolled in,and the waves were bigger than I’d seen them. I

paddled out and struck up a conversation witha stocky Hawaiian in his early 40s. It turned outhe was a lifeguard in Makaha who shaped surf-boards on the side. Bobbing on one of his owncreations, he told me proudly about his threekids and their plans to compete in a weekendsur ng contest in Honolulu.

hen we both spotted a peak. I looked athim. Mine? His nod was subtle to the point oftelepathy. I paddled hard and dropped in on thewave, a glorious, eight-foot wall of cobalt bluethat carried me past the reef. j



Just after dawn two sisters and their cousin headinto the surf at Makaha to warm up before acompetition. Participating from an early age in thisancient sport of Hawaiian chiefs teaches childrento take pride in the culture they’ve inherited.



Mighty Mites

They hide in your bed andbreed on your face . They’resmaller than the period at theend of this sentence . They are …

Magnied hundreds of times, this predatorysoil mite is the terror of its microscopic world.PARAZERCON SP. , MAGNIFIED 556 TIMES



into your ollicles by day to eat. In those cavesmother mites give birth to a ew relatively largemite-shaped eggs. Te eggs hatch, and then, likeall mites, the babies go through molts in whichthey shed their external skeleton and emergeslightly larger. Once they’re ull size, their entireadult li e lasts only a ew weeks. Death comesat the precise moment when the mites, lackingan anus, ll up with eces, die, and decomposeon your head.

Currently two species o ace mites areknown; at least one o them appear to be pres-ent on all adult humans. My bet was that even amodest sampling o adults would turn up morespecies o these mites, ones that are totally newto science.

Biologists ofen make bets; they call them pre-dictions to sound ancier. My bet was based onan understanding o the tendencies o evolutionand o humans. Evolution tends to engender itsgreatest richness in small orms. Humans, on theother hand, tend to ignore small things. Aquaticmites, or example, live in most lakes, ponds, andeven puddles, ofen in densities o hundreds or

thousands per cubic meter. Tey can even be

ound in drinking water, yet ew people haveever heard o aquatic mites, including, until re-cently, me. And I study tiny things or a living.

Mites also live in dust, where they have oundunwelcome ame by eating the bits o dead skinthat trail behind us everyplace we go. Our shad-ows o shed li e sustain multitudes.

Some o the real monsters o the mite worldlive in soil, where one can nd predatory mitesarmed with a medieval arsenal o mouthparts.Some have jaws with sharklike teeth; others bearsmooth blades that snap together with tremen-dous orce; still others stab with sharp and deadlysabers. Tese beasts stalk the tunnels o wormsand the tiny holes between grains o sand.

Other mites live in rain orest canopies, onleaves and in the soil that accumulates in thenooks and crannies where branches meet trunks,and in the cups o epiphytic plants.

Even some o our ood is mity. Te avor oMimolette cheese comes rom their tunneling,eating, excreting, and coupling. In act, it’s noexaggeration to say that mites alter the world.Tey can make soil turn over aster or slower,

decomposition speed up or slow down, cropsgrow sick or healthy. Teir little limbs punch arabove their weight.

Just how many species o mites exist in theworld today is not well understood. Probably

everal years ago I made a bet about

face mites, animals that live in hair follicles. They are so small that a dozen of

them could dance on the head of a pin. They are more likely, though, to dance

on your face, which they do at night when they mate, before crawling back

S

By Rob Dunn

Photographs by Martin Oeggerli

Rob Dunn is an evolutionary biologist at NorthCarolina State University. Swiss photographer Martin Oeggerli specializes in scienti c microscopy.

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS MADE WITH SUPPORT FROM SCHOOL OF LIFE SCIENCES FHNW, SWITZERLAND.SOURCES: HEATHER PROCTOR, UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA, CANADA; ELKE M C CULLOUGH, UNIVERSITY OF GRAZ, AUSTRIA



Supersize foot pads enablefeather mites to hold fast totheir avian hosts. This speciestrails sensory hairs, used fornavigating and nding mates.

ALLEUSTATHIA SP., 194 X



•



Heavily armored scutacarid mites hitch rides on larger arthropods

(including other mites) in their search for food, tumbling off whenthey arrive at a source of fresh fungi and other microbes.SCUTACARIDAE, 629 X



The eating end of an oribatid soil mite is equipped with “more tools

than a Swiss army knife,” says photographer Martin Oeggerli. Theyinclude short pincerlike appendages and tiny limbs for handling food.HERMANNIELLA SP. , 1,500 X



•

at least a million, but no one knows enough to

say with con dence, nor will anyone know ordecades. Museum collections are lled with mitespecies no one has yet had a chance to study. Someundoubtedly offer ascinating evolutionary stories.Others eat herbivorous insects and could bene tagriculture or medicine. Still others may be vec-tors or deadly pathogens.

Another reason or my bet: Mites are special-ists that occupy every conceivable niche, includ-ing the trachea o bees, the shafs o eathers,

the anuses o turtles, the stink glands o bugs,the digestive systems o sea urchins, the lungso snakes, the at o pigeons, the eyeballs o ruitbats, the ur around vampire bat penises. Liv-ing in these habitats necessitates special hairs,chemicals, oot pads, mouthparts, and tricks. Italso requires a way to get rom one patch o goodhabitat to the next.

Some mites ride rom ower to ower in thenostrils o hummingbirds. When the bird hoversat a ower, the mite sniffs the blossom to see iit’s the right kind or nding a mate among thepetals. I it is, the mite runs down the bird’s beakat speeds that are, in terms o body lengths trav-eled, some o the astest on Earth.

Other mites hitch rides on the backs o beetlesor ants; some y in the ears o moths. One spe-cies o mite hangs on to the hind oot o thearmy ant Eciton dulcius, and its hind legs serveas surrogates or the ant’s own claw. Others oatthrough the clouds or on loops o silk that theyproduce and un url into the wind.

All o this is to say that i one can imagine ahabitat, however narrow, mites are there, even ithat habitat is hard to reach on legs just micronslong and a tenth the thickness o a human hair.

Yet the marvels o mite transport pale in com-parison with the idiosyncrasies o mite repro-duction. Some clone themselves. Others eat theirmothers. Others mate with their sisters whilestill inside their mothers and then, during birth,

kill their mothers. In the nostrils o humming-birds and the ears o moths lurk Greek tragedieso small, strange lives.

Te habitats that offer mites the most advan-tages are bodies, whether o mammals, birds,

insects, or any other creature larger than a mite.

Bodies are the buffet bus o li e, providing oodand transportation. Mites that live on bodies arespecially adapted to hold ast to their host, evenwhen it runs, swims, or ies.

Most bird species host more than one special-ized mite ound nowhere else. One species oparakeet has 25 different species o mites livingon its body and in its eathers, each in a differ-ent microhabitat. Rabbits host several specieso mites, mice as many as six. Even seals have

their own mites.Given such diversity and specialization, it’seasy to imagine that a room ul o people (thinko all the habitats!) would be ertile ground ordiscovering mites—and or making good on mybet. For a long time this was just a conversa-tion starter at slow parties. But recently somecollaborators and I gathered a group o olksand asked them to sample their own skin. Afersome swabbing, poking, and DNA sequencing,we ound mites on every adult we sampled, in-cluding one species new to science that seemsto live mainly on people o Asian descent. Tinko it: A mite that probably lives on millions ohumans, maybe even billions, and yet it was to-tally unknown until that moment. I was thrilled.

How did mite systematists—scientists whoname new species—respond? A ew were ex-cited; the rest shrugged. Tey knew that my bet

or mite diversity was an easy one, a act o li ethey witness every time they examine a scoopo soil, peer into moss, or swab a riend. In act,one need look no arther than the mites picturedin this article, most o which are unnamed spe-cies. In all likelihood they will long remain thatway, mysteries in plain view, like most o li e.j

MORE ONLINE ngm.com/more

VIDEOINTERVIEW

Your Face: Mating Ground

for Mites

A Scientistand His Art Photographer Martin Oeggerlitalks about how he createsand colors his images andwhy he refers to himself as a“micronaut”—an astronautfor the microcosmos.

http://ngm.com/more

http://ngm.com/more



Rabbit ear mites (top) chew on their unwitting host. The rabbitscratches, its ear oozes, and the mite feasts on the uid. Box mites(above) retract their limbs and snap shut when threatened.PSOROPTES CUNICULI TOP , 428 X; ATROPACARUS STRICULUS , 262 X



Scientists are discovering that mites are exquisitely adapted to

nature’s every niche. Case in point: Colorful beads of water-repellentwax ensure that a moss mite stays dry in its damp world.EOBRACHYCHTHONIUS SP., 996 X

The photographs in this article were made with a scanning electron microscope.The resulting black-and-white images were then colored to reect the mites’ natural appearance.



A placid pond high in the Graian Alpsmirrors the snow-crowned peaks ofGran Paradiso—the oldest protectedarea in a country known more forculture than for conservation.



ParadiseFound

Once a royal hunting retreat,Gran Paradiso National Park preserves

a wild side of Italy.



Late winter snow cascades down therocky slopes of Valsavarenche valley.Ruinous avalanches are rare in GranParadiso, but in 2008 one destroyedseveral houses in two park villages.



•

“Tree nests!” exclaims Jocollè. His riendsmurmur and nod. “Tree nests in a single kilo-meter! Extraordinary.”

Tey’re talking about their neighbors. A pairo bearded vultures—breeding again in the wilda hundred years afer the last one vanished romthe Alps—has taken up residence near two pairso golden eagles. Te return o a majestic spe-cies, and the sight o two top predators living soclose together, might be cheered in many places.But in Gran Paradiso National Park, where wil-derness and culture live in care ul balance, it’s amatter o daily consequence.

Gran Paradiso is Italy’s oldest national park.Established in , it’s tiny by American stan-dards: square miles in the Graian Alps,straddling the Piedmont and Aosta Valley re-gions in the country’s rugged northwestern cor-ner. But taken together with France’s adjoiningVanoise National Park, it’s one o the largestprotected areas in Western Europe.

Drive an hour rom urin and you’ll knowwhen you’ve arrived. Highways become switch-backs climbing steeply into Sound of Musiccountry—snowcapped mountains, alpine mead-ows, larch- orested valleys carved by rivers and

glaciers. Te sound o water is constant. Te

scent o pine is everywhere. In the heart o civi-lized Europe, the park Italians call “big heaven”blooms like an earthly Eden. No wonder the pasttwo popes vacationed here.

But human hands have shaped the landscapetoo, leaving ngerprints old and new: Neolithicrock etchings, Roman ruins and medieval cas-tles, solar panels and hydroelectric dams. SinceWorld War II many people have lef the area

or jobs in cities. Yet some , still live in thepark’s municipalities, sharing space with morethan species o mammals, a hundred kinds obirds, and nearly a thousand types o plants and

owers. Plus . million tourists a year.Dominated by its namesake , - oot-tall

massi , Gran Paradiso today is a high-altitudehub o wildli e conservation, scienti c research,and cultural preservation. But its ironic storybegins in the th century. And it starts with amountain goat.

“ ,” says Pietro Passerind’Entrèves, “there would be no Gran Paradiso.”

Te urin University zoology pro essor is ahistorian o the region, where his amily haslived since . On a cloudy day in Cogne, the

park’s unofficial capital, he tucks into a plate ognocchi and unpacks the past.From the th century to the th, he says,

alpine ibex were hunted or their meat, horns,blood (said to boost virility), and a bone rom

By Jeremy Berlin

Photographs by Stefano Unterthiner

On a crisp summer morning in Degioz, a slate-roofed village in

northern Italy, Luigino Jocollè is sharing the local news. He

and four other gray-haired men are sitting in a tiny café, sip-

ping cappuccino as espresso machines whir and pastry sugar

perfumes the air. But they’re not discussing sports or politics.

Jeremy Berlin is a staff writer for the magazine.Photographer Stefano Unterthiner lives near GranParadiso. He’ll publish a book on the park this year.



which the superstitious made amulets. By ewer than were lef. So in , afer one pro-

tective measure had ailed, Victor Emmanuel IIset aside a royal reserve to save the species— orhimsel . Te Savoy king loved to hunt, and thegrace ul ibex were his avorite quarry.

Soon paths were cleared, lodges built, villagesabsorbed into the new territory. Hunters andpoachers were hired as game wardens. And lo-cals were paid to organize the king’s annual hunt.

By , when Victor Emmanuel III tookthe throne, the ibex population had swelled to

, . But as war engul ed Europe, the new kingwas too busy to hunt. So in he turned thehunting preserve into a true sanctuary, whichhe donated to the state. wo years later the areawas granted national park status.

Te park’s creation has led to state-landowner

squabbles, but ibex poaching is no longer an is-sue: Tere have been just a hand ul o reportedcases in the past ten years. Tat’s because thelocal economy is vested in ecotourism—andbecause the park assigns wardens to patrol

, acres spread over ve valleys.As the sun burns off the last tatters o morn-

ing cloud, one o those wardens climbs an oldhunting path rom the pine-thick Valsavarenche valley to the boulder-strewn Nivolet Plateau. Ahulking man with a mourn ul ace, GiovanniBracotto pauses at the pass to point out stoneruins o cattle barns dotting the slopes and pas-tures that sit above a tumble o scree.

“A hundred years ago,” he says, “the economyhere was agricultural. Te grass had more nutri-ents then, so the milk was better. Te summer

cheese was too. But many things have changed.”Including the wardens’ jobs. Working alonerom dawn to dusk— hours in summer—they

repair trails, assist hikers, and monitor the park’s (shrinking) glaciers. Tey also keep tabs on

Flanked by his retinue, Italy’s King VictorEmmanuel II (seated) takes a break duringan ibex hunt around . Before ,when it became a national park, this areawas the king’s exclusive hunting ground.

PHOTO: LUIGI MONTABONE, PIETRO PASSERIN D’ENTRÈVES COLLECTION



A red fox lies in wait, camouagedin the autumn woods. Like all foxes,those in Gran Paradiso are adaptableopportunists; they’ll catch sh, huntrabbits, or scavenge picnic scraps.



•

wildli e. Using GPS, computer tablets, telescopes,

and thermographic cameras, Bracotto and hiscrew help the park’s scientists tag, collar, and tallyibex and chamois, the park’s other wild goat. LastSeptember their ibex count— , —con rmeda -year trend: When it comes to the park’sspirit animal, there’s trouble in Gran Paradiso.

the Alps in shadow, Achaz vonHardenberg lowers his binoculars.

Te park’s air-skinned, German-born biolo-

gist is standing on the rim o a peace ul valleycalled Levionaz, waiting to weigh ibex. Earlier,during the ne warm day, herds o our and vewere loping elegantly across the plateau andgrazing high on the cirque’s slopes. But tonightthey’re ignoring the salt lick von Hardenberg hasset up next to an electronic scale. “I don’t knowwhere they could be,” he mutters.

indicated that ibex meat was part o his last meal.

“Yet afer all this time they’re still not welladapted to li e up here,” says von Hardenberg.“ hey were hunted in the lowlands duringprehistoric times, which may have been whatpushed them to the highlands. Over thousandso years they’ve adjusted to the harsh climate,but they still don’t thrive in deep winter snow.”

As the night wears on in Levionaz, the valleystirs. A marmot sips rom a rushing stream. A

ox nds a dead chamois in a crevasse and enjoys

a hasty dinner. But ibex are nowhere to be seen. ’ raison d’être, but

they aren’t the only inhabitants o note.In the gneiss hills above Nivolet, a researcher

named Luca Corlatti is tracking chamois, lessamous but more populous than ibex—latest

count, about , —with numbers remaining

Some call the wolves a monstrous threat to livestock.Others sell cute wolf T-shirts alongside prosciutto.

In you couldn’t miss them: Tere werenearly , in the park, a high-water mark.Teir numbers have been dwindling ever since.

No one is sure why, but theories abound. VonHardenberg has two o his own. One is that old-er emales are breeding now, producing weakerkids that are less equipped to thrive. His othertheory is rooted in climate change: Grass usedto peak here in high summer, when ibex kids areborn. Now, because there’s less snow, the grassgrows earlier in the year. Tat means newbornshave less to eat, less nutritious milk to drink—and less chance o living long enough to claimmates and have kids o their own.

Von Hardenberg is hoping an analysis o satel-lite data—showing how alpine-meadow vegeta-tion has changed over three decades—will help

solve the mystery. But ibex are an age-old puzzle,he says. In coastal Puglia, the heel o Italy’s boot,ossil remains reveal the animals’ ancient pres-

ence. So did the guts o Ötzi, the , -year-oldpreserved mummy ound in ; DNA analysis

stable. On the green slopes o Orvieille, Cateri-na Ferrari is deciphering the personalities andsocial structures o marmots— urry, bearlikerodents that lumber comically through the tallgrass, whistling coded warnings to each other.And on a raf in Lake Djouan, Rocco ibertihas netted thousands o brook trout, removing aspecies that’s gobbled up insects and other nativeorganisms since it was imported in the s.

Ten there’s the wol . In , more than acentury afer the species was exterminated here,a pack o seven appeared in Aosta Valley. Whena ew shepherds lost sheep, the wolves wereblamed. In the pack vanished—“probablyshot,” says von Hardenberg—but the next yearanother pair arrived, this time in the lush SoanaValley. By last all there were at least ve again.

Bruno Bassano, the park’s veterinarian andscienti c manager, says the wolves are a boon:Tey cull oxes and wild boars, balancing theecology. But locals are divided. Some call theanimals a monstrous threat to their livestock.



Others monetize them. In a delicatessen in the village o Piamprato, -shirts with cute wol car-toons hang or sale alongside strips o prosciutto.

Anna Rotella is untroubled. On a bright Julymorning in Valsavarenche, she and her partner,Claudio Duguet, milk dozens o white sheep andgoats, then lead the ock across the turbulentSavara River, where the grass is good. “Onlythe ignorant people ear the wol ,” Rotella says.“Educated armers and shepherds know it is notevil. It is just hungry, like anything else.”

Over on the Piedmont side o the park, theruddy- aced Longo amily—Beppe, Lina, andtheir grown son, Claudio, plus his girl riend,Licia—say the wolves don’t bother them ei-ther. Tey live in a stone house with a leaningA- rame, ringed by emerald slopes veined with

water alls and avalanche stains. Everything hereis done by hand, as it was a hundred years ago. Acell phone is the only concession to modernity.

As chickens squawk and cowbells clonk,Beppe and Claudio pull six round blocks o

cheese rom a rusted iron cauldron boilingwith reshly drawn milk. Lina scoops sofball-size chunks o butter rom an old churn, thenpounds the yellow globs into a bricklike block.Licia washes clothes in a bathtub, using a scrub,a rock, and water delivered by a Rube Goldberg–esque sluice system that snakes up the hill.

About ten other amilies in the valley livesimilarly. It’s a break-even existence: Te pro tthey make rom selling their dairy products atmarket covers rent and little else. But, says Lina,it’s a li estyle that’s as priceless as it is timeless.

, Luigino Jocollèsays there’s not enough money or national parksthese days, and too much bureaucracy. As envi-ronmental laws clash with building codes and

business interests, it can be hard to maintain thepark’s unique blend o culture and conservation.Which is nothing new.

“In Gran Paradiso,” says Jocollè, “we alwayshave to balance social and natural priorities.” j

VIRGINIA W. MASON, NGM STAFF. SOURCE: GEO4MAP

0 mi 500

0 km 500

AREAENLARGED

ITALY

Turin

FRANCE A L P S

E U

R O P E

] [

0 mi 5

0 km 5BuildingsIbex range inGran Paradiso Park

Trail

Ceresole Reale

Locana

Orvieille

NoascaIngria

Arvier

Sparone Alpette

PontCanavese

Pont

Cogne

BruilValnontey

La Thuile

Piamprato

Valsavarenche

Ribordone

Degioz

Valprato Soana

Ronco Canavese

I T A L Y

F R A N C E

VALLE D’AOSTA

PIEDMONT

Levionaz

S a v a r a

Lake Djouan

Ceresole Lake

MONT AVIC

NATURAL

PARK

G r

a i a

n A l p s

S o a n

a V

a l

l

e y

C o g

n e

V a l l e y

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e s

V a

l l e

y

V a l

s

a v a r

e n

c h e

O r c o V a l l e

y

Nivolet Pass

GRAN PARADISO NATIONAL PARK Gran Paradiso

Mont Avic

V A N O I S E

N A T I O N A L P AR K

7 ° 30 ′7 °E

45 ° 30 ′N

9,862 ft 3,006 m

13,324 ft4,061 m



With Gran Paradiso’s massif loomingbeyond a cloud bank, a yellow-billedAlpine chough swoops and soars onther mals and updrafts. The park is hometo some hundred species of birds.



Ibex are Gran Paradiso’s spirit animal. Their fateand the park’s have been entwined for centuries.



A park for all seasons: In spring male ibex establish theirhie rarchy by locking three-foot-long horns (left). Springtimeis also when high-foraging chamois (top) give birth; there arenow about 8,000 in Gran Paradiso. In cold weather, a normallyreddish brown ermine changes into its white winter coat.



Summer night falls over an alpinemeadow stippled with wildowers.In a busy country on a crowdedcontinent, Gran Paradiso’s unspoiledlandscape is an arcadian oasis.



T R E A D I N



Florida’s bill is coming due,as the costs of climate change

add up around the globe.

Adaptations will buy time, but can they save Miami?

New luxury towers crowd Sunny Isles Beach, Florida.Miami and its suburbs face a bigger nancial risk from

ooding in 2050 than any other urban area in the world.

G W A T E R



Canal merges with cul-de-sac in Fort Lauderdaleduring a “king tide,” when the Earth, moon, and sunare in an unusual alignment. This October king tide, which was a foot above the typical hightide, offers a preview of the new normal.



Naples

BonitaSprings

MarcoIsland

Key West

transforming Miami’s skyline. From our boat wecan see construction cranes cluttering the skyalong the barrier island of Sunny Isles, wherecrème de la crème luxury is the hot trend. Ina real estate market that celebrates opulence—the million Porsche Design ower featuresglass-walled car elevators that stop at everyapartment—it was probably inevitable that thegreatest threat to South Florida’s existence wouldbe used as a promotional strategy.

Te Dutch project sounds like one more loopydevelopment in a long history of loopy Floridadevelopments. But its climate-conscious designsets it apart from most of the surrounding high-rises, which are going up with little considerationfor the rising seas projected to frequently oodSouth Florida in the coming decades and to sub-merge much of it by the end of the century.

hese contradictory approaches—plungeahead, even if only for one more mortgage cycle,or look ahead, preparing for what’s coming—re ect a turning point in the discussion aboutclimate change. As warnings about global warm-ing become more dire and the consequences in-creasingly evident, more and more businesses,and local officials, are factoring climate changeinto their decisions about the future. Tey’refocused less on reducing the carbon emissionsthat are warming the planet—that’s for politicalleaders—and more on adapting to severe weath-

er and ooding, which is already occurring asseas rise. And in towns like Miami, where realestate development is an economic engine, busi-nesses are focused on how to keep that growthgrowing for as long as they can.

By Laura Parker

Photographs by George Steinmetz

Maps and graphics by Ryan Morris, Alexander Stegmaier, and John Tomanio

Frank Behrens, a gregariouspitchman for a Dutchdevelopment company thatsees prot, not loss, in climatechange, cuts the engine on our22-foot Hurricane runabout. We drift through brackish water toward the middle ofprivately owned Maule Lakein North Miami Beach.

It’s not quite paradise.Te lake, like so many others in Florida, beganas a rock quarry. In the years since, it has servedas a venue for boat races, a swimming hole formanatees, and a set for the s V showFlip- per. More recently, as if to underscore the im-permanence of South Florida’s geography, morethan one developer has toyed with partially ll-ing in the lake to build condos. Behrens is pro-moting a floating village with private,artificial islands, each with a sleek, four-bedroom villa, a sandy beach, a pool, palm trees,and a dock long enough to accommodate an

-foot yacht. Te price: . million apiece.Dutch Docklands, Behrens’s rm, has op-

tioned the lake and is marketing the islands asa rich man’s antidote to climate change. As forthe risks from rising sea levels, well, that’s thebeauty of oating homes. Te islands would beanchored to the lake bottom with a telescoping

tether similar to those that enable oating oilrigs to ride out the roughest hurricanes.Te oating-village plan is part of a frenetic

building boom, fueled by wealthy South Ameri-cans and Europeans buying with cash, that is

•



75

95

41

1

27

0 mi 15

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F L O R I D A

F l o r i d a

K e y s

A T

L A

N T

I C

O

C E

A N

Biscayne

Bay

Maule Lake

G u

l f o f M

e x i c o

T H E E V

E R

G L

A D

E S

TurkeyPointnuclearpowerplant

Miami-DadeCountysewage-treatmentplant

Virginia Key

NorthMiamiBeach

MiamiBeach

SunnyIslesBeach

CoralGables

Davie

Sunrise

PompanoBeach

Plantation

BocaRaton

DeerfieldBeach

Everglades City

Flamingo

Homestead

MiamiGardens

Hialeah

Hollywood

CoralSprings

Pembroke Pines

FortLauderdale

Miami

Urban area

Flood-prone urban area

Land below high-tideline with ve-footsea-level rise

AN ALTERED SOUTH FLORIDA

The coast would be radically changed byve feet of sea-level rise in , as shownhere. This projection is on the high end ofthe plausible scenarios—though not thehighest—under consideration by multipleagencies planning for Florida’s future.

SOURCES: CLIMATE CENTRAL; U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS; NOAA



•

Home on the Water Some , miles of canals built over the past century to drain the Evergladesempty into the Atlantic Ocean. Higher seas have already allowed salt water toow inland through the canals. Gates now keep out most salt water, and massivepumps, including on the Miami River (above), keep canals from overowing bypushing excess rainwater out to the ocean. Given just two feet of sea-level rise,more than percent of the gates will no longer work. In Biscayne Bay theVenetian Causeway connects Miami Beach to Miami (in the distance, top right)by way of the six man-made Venetian Islands, which epitomize waterfront living.The canals have made developments at the edge of the swampland possiblein places like west Palm Beach County (bottom right).



Pensacola

Panama City

potential pro ts—o climate change emerginginto sharper view. Many coastal places are atrisk, but Florida is one o the most vulnerable.While government leaders around the world, in

Washington, and even in Florida’s statehousein allahassee dither over climate change, hereon Florida’s southern tip more than a ew civicleaders are preparing. Florida’s uture will be de-

ned by a noisy, contentious public debate overtaxes, zoning, public works projects, and prop-erty rights—a debate orced by rising waters.

ALONG WITH RISING SEAS, Florida willbe battered in the coming decades by extremeweather—dry-season drought and rainy-seasondeluges—the U.S. government’s National Cli-mate Assessment predicts. Heat and droughtthreaten an agricultural industry that suppliesthe East Coast with winter vegetables, and theycould undermine the three mainstays o Florida

arming—tomatoes, sugarcane, and citrus. Terainy season will be stormier, with ercer hur-ricanes and higher storm surges.

he most pro ound disruption will occuralong the state’s , miles o coastline. Tree-quarters o Florida’s million people live incoastal counties, which generate our- fhs othe economy. Coastal development, includingbuildings, roads, and bridges, was valued in at two trillion dollars. Already more than hal thestate’s miles o sandy beaches are eroding.

Four southern counties—Monroe, Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach—are hometo about one-third o Florida’s population, andabout . million people live less than our eet

above the high-tide line. Te streets o Fort Lau-derdale, Hollywood, and Miami Beach o tenood during the occasional “king tides,” which

are much higher than normal high tides.he oceans could rise two eet by ,

Behrens, who spent his boyhood in Aruba,

moved to Miami a decade ago. He signed onwith Dutch Docklands in , afer it becameclear that the region’s civic leaders were awak-ening to the depth o their impending disaster.

Te rm’s visionaries in Amsterdam osterno illusion that their oating village could saveSouth Florida. It’s only one innovative waterproject among many in the Dutch tool kit thathas preserved the low-lying Netherlands sincethe Middle Ages. Still, Behrens says, the project’s

value as a high-end venture appeals to investorsin a region that will have to be reimagined inthe coming decades. And i the oating villagesucceeds, a range o other possibilities opens up:

oating communities with oating parks andoating schools. A oating hospital. “You name

Laura Parker is a staff writer for the magazine.George Steinmetz is a longtime contributor whospecializes in aerial photography.

“ We’re in for it.

We have reallydone a job warmingour ocean, andit’s going to payus back.”

— HAL WANLESSUniversity of Miami geology professor

it,” says the man whose company built a oatingprison outside Amsterdam.

“People only see the negative effects o ood-ing,” Behrens says, without a trace o irony. “Weneed to show people there is a way to makemoney out o this. For the government, thereare tax dollars. For developers, their investmentis secured or the next years. Tere is a lot omoney involved in this climate change. It willbe a whole new industry.”

Florida is a good place to see the costs—and

•



0 mi 25

0 km 25

Orlando

Gainesville

Tallahassee

Orlando

Key West

Gainesville

Tallahassee

Daytona Beach

LakeOkeechobee

Land below high-tideline with ve-footsea-level rise

JACKSONVILLE

13,200$5.7 billion

FORTLAUDERDALE45,700$20.7 billion

CAPE CORAL

9,900$4.2 billion

MIAMI**

98,500$31.4 billion

ST. PETERSBURG

28,400$7.6 billion

TAMPA

9,200$5.6 billion

*INCLUDES RESIDENTIAL, COMMERCIAL, AND PUBLIC FACILITIES IN DOLLARS**INCLUDES MIAMI, PEMBROKE PINES, HOLLYWOOD, AND HIALEAH. SOURCES: CLIMATE CENTRAL; SOUTH FLORIDA WATER MANAGEMENT DISTRICT

FLORIDA IN 2100

A SHRINKINGCOASTLINEIf sea levels rise ve feet,nearly one million of thecurrent homes near the coastwill be below the averageday’s high tide.

Other structures at risk include power plants, hospitals,

schools, and sewage plants.

In total, some $ billion worthof property could be damagedor lost—a sum ve times as greatas Florida’s state budget.

Hurricanes

Storm surges—thequick rise of sealevel caused byheavy winds—willbe signicantlymore damagingby , climatescientists predict.They’re often thebiggest threat tolife and property.

Homes affectedValue of property*



Pensacola+3.7 ˚

Panama City+3.6 ˚

according to the National Climate Assessment,

as their waters warm and expand and as theGreenland and polar ice sheets melt. By seas could rise as much as . feet. Tat wouldput much of Miami-Dade underwater. For everyfoot the seas rise, the shoreline would move in-land to , feet.

A two-foot rise would be enough to strandthe Miami-Dade County sewage-treatment planton Virginia Key and the nuclear power plant at

urkey Point, both on Biscayne Bay.

“At two feet they will be sitting out in theocean,” says Hal Wanless, chairman of the Uni- versity of Miami’s geology department. “Mostof the barrier islands will be uninhabitable. Teairport is going to have problems at four feet. Wewill not be able to keep freshwater above ocean

used to calculate sea-level rise hadn’t fully ac-counted for accelerating ice melt. Last year theUnited Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Cli-mate Change gave greater weight to ice-sheet

melt in its calculations, raising its projectionsfor sea-level rise.Florida’s long, low coastline may make it more

vulnerable, but no region is immune. In ,ooding, wild res, drought, and storms around

the country caused more than billion indamages, the second costliest year in U.S. his-tory. In a foreshadowing of severe weather tocome globally, yphoon Haiyan spiraled acrossSoutheast Asia in and struck the Philip-pines, killing , people. Tat year also sawcrop-destroying droughts on nearly every con-tinent, most notably in Africa and South Asia.Te Brazilian Highlands, the center of SouthAmerica’s monsoon region, experienced theworst drought since , prompting waterrationing. Rapid glacial melting in the Andesand Himalaya will exacerbate water shortagesin Peru, India, and Nepal.

Te coming decades, the World Bank predicts,will see political instability, food shortages, andfamine, leading to the displacement of millions ofpeople. South Asia’s and Southeast Asia’s heavilypopulated coasts, particularly those in Bangla-desh and Vietnam, could be inundated. Worse,rising seas could invade major river deltas, poi-soning them with salt water and destroying someof the world’s richest agricultural land. Te Me-kong River Delta in Vietnam, where millionpeople live and half the country’s rice supply isgrown, is already battling saltwater intrusion.

IN SOUTH FLORIDA civic leaders have be-gun to map out their future on their own. Littlehelp has come from the state legislature, whichis controlled by Republicans, many of whom

levels, so we’re going to have saltwater intrusioninto our drinking-water supply. Everyone wantsa nice happy ending. But that’s not reality. We’rein for it. We have really done a job warming ourocean, and it’s going to pay us back.”

Wanless, who is , didn’t think he’d witnessthe serious effects of climate change in his life-time. For three decades he was a lonely voicewarning that the warming ocean could inundateSouth Florida. In the s he documented that

barnacles were attaching themselves higher onbridge piers in Coral Gables, where he lives, thanthey were in the s. In recent years he ana-lyzed the shrinking glaciers in Greenland andconcluded that the main scientific modeling

The watchwords

are “protect,”“accommodate,” and“retreat,” whichsound a lot like a civilengineer’s versionof the stages of grief.

•



0 mi 25

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Tampa+3.5 ˚

Miami+2.8 ˚

Orlando+3.6 ˚

Clearwater+3.2 ˚

Cape Coral+3.5 ˚

Key West+2.9 ˚

Tallahassee+4.0 ˚ Jacksonville

+3.7 ˚

Coral Springs

+3.2 ˚Fort Lauderdale+3.0 ˚

St. Petersburg+3.3 ˚

Gainesville

+3.8 ˚

+4.5° Fahrenheit

+2.5° F

FLORIDA IN 2100

EXTREME HEATTemperature swings willbecome more volatile bycentury’s end, climate scien-tists say. Residents of thesoutheastern United Statescurrently endure about eightdays of temperatures at orabove °F every year. By they could face an additional

to days. Changes inFlorida’s rainfall patterns “areone of the big unknowns,” saysLeonard Berry, a geoscientistat Florida Atlantic University.

Electricity CostsData from a Tufts University studyindicate that electricity costscould jump $ a year per personfor each degree of temperaturerise over Florida’s current seasonalaverages. That would be an extrathree billion dollars a year for eachdegree of warming by .

*RELATIVE TO ANNUAL AVERAGE, 1986 2005. SOURCE: NCAR GIS PROGRAM STATISTICAL DOWNSCALING OFINTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE FIFTH ASSESSMENT RCP 6.0 SCENARIO, CCSM4

Climatevs. weather

A small increasein average tem-

perature canmultiply the risk ofextreme eventsmany timesover—making forlonger and moreintense heatwaves, droughts,and wildres.

Increase in airtemperature, annualaverage, - *



Panama City Beachremain skeptical o climate science. Rick Scott,

the Republican governor, has mostly avoided thesubject, repeatedly declaring, “I’m not a scientist.”Last summer, afer ve o Florida’s top climatescientists, including Wanless, brie ed Scott, hethanked them and said nothing else.

Te our southern counties have drafed ageneral to-do list that would “reengineer” theregion, step-by-step, through . A detailedblueprint will be years in the making. But theapproach is largely amiliar.

“We will do what we always have done,” saysJoe Fleming, a Miami land-use attorney. “Wewill dredge and prop everything up.”

Harvey Ruvin, a ormer county commissionerwho headed a sea-level-rise task orce or Miami-Dade County, lays out the thinking so ar: “Te

operates on capturing short-term gains. “Howdo you take this to the voters or a bond issuewhen the county commissioners are a raid toincrease property taxes a hair to und libraries?”

Now the Miami-Dade County Court clerk,Ruvin, at , is one o the region’s most skill ulpoliticians. He has tried to use the consequenceso doing nothing on climate change to prod oot-draggers. It’s the same strategy used by MichaelBloomberg, a ormer mayor o New York City,and Henry Paulson, a ormer U.S. reasury sec-retary; in they assembled nancial heavy-weights to catalog the cost o inaction on climatechange in every region o the country.

Last year Ruvin invited two executives romSwiss Re, the global reinsurance giant, to briehis task orce about Florida’s precarious uture.Te hard-nosed number crunchers created apredictive model that showed the region couldexpect annual losses rom storm-related eventsto reach billion by , up rom billionin . Tey also said those losses could bereduced by percent i the region acted soonto protect vulnerable real estate. “Tese kinds oissues cannot just be lef or another , , or

years’ time,” says Mark Way, a sustainabilityspecialist or Swiss Re.

Another actor, Way says, is that subsidizedgovernment insurance programs in Florida haveskewed the marketplace, leading to underpricedrates that don’t re ect the actual risks. “Tat hasthe net effect o basically encouraging develop-ment directly or indirectly in areas that other-wise don’t make any sense.”

Already civic leaders are orti ying seawalls

and installing pumps. Later come more daunt-ing projects: moving utilities rom the coastsand protecting high-value real estate—univer-sities, hospitals, airports, and tourist areas thatdrive Florida’s economy. Teir watchwords are

It will take

technology not yet imagined toovercome thechallenges posed by South Florida’sunusual geology.

whole idea is to do this comprehensive capitalplan that would include all kinds o things—desalination plants, the lifing o roads, whereto raise land, where to create canals. Part o the

uture has to be raising some land at the expenseo other land.”

Ruvin knows what he’s up against. Procrasti-nation. Disputes over property rights. Long bat-tles over changing zoning and building codes toprohibit building in areas that can’t be protected.

And he doesn’t want to talk about the cost oall that reengineering. “I can’t even give you areal number. Maybe billion?” Ruvin muses,though he knows that’s low. He’s ocused onhow to pay or long-term projects in a place that

•



LakeOkeechobee

Amelia

Island

Orlando

Fort Lauderdale

Tampa

DaytonaBeach

Sanibel

Island

THE ECONOMIC TOLL

THREATENEDINDUSTRIESThe effects of climate changeon the state’s major industrieswill be felt nationwide. Floridawas the fourth largest con-

tributor to the U.S. economyin .

AgricultureTwo key agricultural crops inFlorida, oranges and sugarcane,were worth $ million and$ million respectively in the

- growing season.

TourismSome million tourists visitedin ; together with in-statetourists, they spent $ billion.

Construction$ . billion worth of housing hasbeen built in Florida since the U.S.housing bubble burst in . Thestate is now the eighth fastestgrowing in the nation.

CAPECANAVERAL

$ . billionRising seasthreaten launch-pads and otherinfrastructure.

MIAMI

$22.8 billionThe megalopolisfaces a destructiveone-two punch:

rising seas anddrought.

ST. AUGUSTINE

$ millionThe centuries-old historicdistrict could beinundated.

KEY WEST

$ billionMany of theKeys are lessthan 5 feet

above sea level.

Eroding beaches

More than halfof Florida’s miles of beachesare alreadyerod ing. The U.S.

Army Corps ofEngineers spent$ million in

replenishing just miles ofsandy shoreline.

*REVENUE INCLUDES ENTIRE COUNTY. SOURCES: USGS; USDA; U.S. CENSUS BUREAU;COUNTY GOVERNMENTS; JULIE HARRINGTON, FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

Tourismrevenue

*

At risk

Oranges Sugarcane

Touristdestination

Share by county of the, housing units

added -

to % up to % Less than %

0 mi 25

0 km 25



Powerful water jets keep pleasure-seekers aloftin Biscayne Bay, near downtown Miami. They’re thelatest toys in a city that embraces an exuberantaquatic lifestyle, even as rising seas threaten itslong-term survival.



•

or vulnerable areas.

“Our delta is one o the best places to investyour money,” he says. “Rotterdam is a showcase

or the world or being an adaptive city. Singa-pore, Copenhagen, Stockholm—these are allcities that emphasize their water identity andmake it a sales objective. Miami could becomea water city.”

It will take technology not yet imagined toovercome the challenges posed by South Flori-da’s unusual geology: the limestone bedrock that

is both a blessing and a curse. Mined, limestoneprovides ll to build roads and create what con-stitutes high ground. In its natural state, it’s aporous sponge. Water runs through it. It can’tbe plugged. Seawalls can be raised—as the cityo Miami Beach has ordered. But seawalls, nomatter how high, can’t stop water that bubblesup rom beneath.

Even the Dutch would have difficulty protect-ing the narrow, seven-mile barrier island that isMiami Beach, a top tourist destination.

“Welcome to ground zero o ground zero,”says Bruce Mowry, the city engineer, when Imeet him at the corner o th Street and Pur-dy Avenue, one o the lowest points in MiamiBeach. He’s basking in the aferglow o success:

million and new pumps kept the citymostly dry during the October king tide. A yearearlier a kayaker had paddled along Purdy—notexactly the kind o image that attracts tourists.

Te new pumps are part o a millionoverhaul o the city’s antiquated storm drainagesystem. With new pumps, Mowry hopes tobuy Miami Beach another two or three decades.By then, according to the Union o ConcernedScientists, the city could ace oods a year.

“Miami Beach will never not exist,” he says.“But it will exist in a different way. We may have

oating residential areas. We could have elevatedroads built up on pilings. We could convert atransportation corridor to water. People ask me,

‘Bruce, can this be done?’ I say, ‘It can be done,but can you afford it?’ ”Te city has begun an experiment in elevat-

ing roads and sidewalks, starting with PurdyAvenue, where a building with a ca é, liquor

“protect,” “accommodate,” and “retreat,” which

sound a lot like a civil engineer’s version o thestages o grie . But the group is an optimistic one.

“It doesn’t do any good to set your hair on reor something that’s years out,” says Kristin

Jacobs, a ormer Broward County commissionerand member o President Barack Obama’s cli-mate change task orce who was elected to theFlorida legislature last all.

She puts her aith in technology. “I you lookat settlement across the planet since time began,

we evolve to what we need,” she says. “Othercountries, like Holland, have gured out a wayto be resilient. We are looking to be resilient.”

THE DUTCH HAVE BEEN TRAWLING orbusiness in coastal cities rom Jakarta to San

Francisco. Tey established a beachhead in SouthFlorida several years ago when Behrens oundeda Dutch chamber o commerce in Miami.

In the Netherlands, where two-thirds o thepopulation lives at or below sea level, about companies make water their business, account-ing or about percent o the economy. Tat’s ona par with the auto industry in the United States.

Piet Dircke, whose irm, Arcadis, helpedNew Orleans design new levees afer Hurricane

Katrina, made his ourth trip rom Hollandto Miami last summer to participate in a work-shop with architects and engineers. Dircke andrepresentatives o our other Dutch rms drewbeauti ul sketches showing adaptive designs

“These kinds

of issues cannot just be left for another 10, 20, or30 years’ time.”

— MARK WAYSwiss Re sustainability expert



it’s going to cost one billion dollars to redo U.S. ,

and that’s only going to buy us more years.’Te question is, What will it cost us to buy timeso we can keep on keeping on?”

he end o the line is Key West, closer toHavana than to Miami. At City Hall we meetup with Don Craig, a planner who’s worked orthe city or more than two decades. Te city hasspent millions in recent years to add pumps,construct a re station at a higher elevation,and rebuild portions o the seawall that nearly

encircles the island. But options are limited.Raising elevations on any large scale is outo reach. “We do not have a nearby source o

ll material,” he says. “We’re miles rom themajor rock quarries.”

When Craig tells people that the Keys’ li e-line, the highway, will lie underwater someday,it elicits our responses. “Some become ear ul,”he says. “Some say, ‘Well, I’ll be dead, so I don’tcare.’ Others say, ‘Tere is not a consensus thatthis is going to happen, so why are you telling usthis?’ Te other reaction is mute silence.”

Craig’s own response: migrate.He knows something about that. “My parents

were Okies,” he says. During the Dust Bowl yearsthey lost the amily arm in Oklahoma and movedto Cali ornia, where Craig was born. Some .million people lef the Great Plains in the sto escape the largest man-made environmentalcatastrophe in American history to date.

THERE’S SOMETHING SURREAL aboutthe pace o construction in a region that maybe inundated by . On an early morning

ight over northwest Broward County, I watcha dredge scooping up ll to orm nger penin-sulas on a man-made lake in a housing tract be-ing built against the Everglades. On a boat rideup the Miami River in downtown Miami, I passa . -acre parcel right on the river’s edge thatsold or million last spring—a record price

here. Nearby, the one-billion-dollar BrickellCity Centre, under construction on nine acres,is so enormous it has a cement plant on-site.Across town a million convention centerwith an , -room hotel is planned.

store, and dress shop ooded badly in . Te

sidewalk and street will be raised by two eet,which should keep water rom sloshing into theshops. wo eet won’t solve the problem. Butwith unding and community support uncertain,city officials decided to start small. “ wo eetbuys the li e o this building,” Mowry says. “Youcan’t come in and make radical changes.”

IF MIAMI HAS A FUTURE as one o theworld’s water cities, it probably will look more

like the Florida Keys than Stockholm. And so Imake the trip down the Overseas Highway to KeyWest, past houses on stilts, marine- equipmentshops, and pine trees dying rom saltwater poi-soning. Gol courses in the Keys are now plantedwith salt-tolerant grass.

Te islands are the exposed remnants o anancient coral ree . Most are less than ve eetabove sea level. Ree s can protect coastal regions

rom storm surges. I healthy, ree s can keep upwith sea-level rise, growing higher as the oceanrises. But much o the ree off Florida died in thelate s rom disease.

“When you dive on the ree today, it’s anabsolute boneyard o dead coral,” says ChrisLangdon, a University o Miami oceanographer.Warmer, more acidic oceans are keeping the ree

rom recovering. Langdon is working to identi ya coral that can tolerate those conditions.

“One way to think o their economic value isto imagine i this job went to the Army Corps,and they had to build a seawall miles long,and every ew years they had to build it a littlehigher,” he says. “Te ree s do that or ree.”

Te highway, also known as U.S. , stringstogether the island chain with bridges. Tepopulation in the Keys is limited to the numbero people who can be evacuated by vehicle with-in hours, ahead o approaching hurricanes.

Chris Bergh o the Nature Conservancy joinsme at Big Pine Key. He arrived in the Keys rom

Pennsylvania as a toddler in the back o his par-ents’ Volkswagen bus and has no plans tomove. “I’ve got a six-year-old,” he says. “I expectI’ll live out my days here, and he will not. Atsome point an economist is going to say, ‘Look,



•

Just a few feet of sea-level rise would shrinkthe Florida Keys to a fraction of their currentsize and submerge portions of the OverseasHighway, which links them to the mainland.

rates are not sustainable and people may be lefwith no recourse but to leave Miami or go un-insured, which is not an option or those withmortgages,” says Kerri Barsh, a Miami land-useattorney who represents Dutch Docklands. “Iinsurance costs continue to spiral upward, theycould have a negative cascading effect on theSouth Florida economy and beyond.”

Una ordable insurance could trigger aneconomic calamity that would make the housing-market collapse here seem like an incon- venience. I homeowners couldn’t get insurance,

bankers would stop lending, which would createa shortage o cash, which would cause property values to decline and the region’s economy to tank.

One way to keep the building boom goingis or civic leaders to not look too ar into the

Te biggest economic challenge posed by cli-mate change in South Florida may be one thatbusiness leaders are loath to discuss—that earo this slow-speed crisis could stall development.

“It’s almost like, ‘Shhhh. Don’t talk about it,’and so it’s not real,” says Richard Grasso, an en- vironmental law pro essor at Fort Lauderdale’sNova Southeastern University.

But privately, quietly, conversations are un-der way. Last all executives rom the region’sbig banks, insurers, and development compa-nies convened an invitation-only roundtable in

Miami with Lloyd’s o London. One insuranceexecutive told the group that homeowners insome vulnerable areas already pay premiumsthat are higher than their mortgage payments.

“ here was concern that rising insurance



future. Tus the four southern counties’ focuson instead of . Tere’s a certain logicto that. Te average life span of most buildingsis years, and Miami, a mere years old, iscontinuously rebuilding itself.

“Tey don’t want to look beyond two feet ofsea-level rise. Tis was a deliberate thing not tobe too scary,” Wanless says. “So there’s going tobe a lot of throwing money in the ocean beforewe realize it’s time to move on.”

Phil Stoddard, in his third term as mayor ofSouth Miami, is one of the few politicians will-

ing to talk about when that time might come.He met me at his house, a one-story stucco bun-galow with stone oors (Flood Prep ), solarpanels on the roof, and a large pond that takesup most of the backyard, where he and his wife

swim with Lola the koi and an eight-year-old

bass named Ackwards.“I tell people to buy high, sell low,” he says

drily, pausing to allow the joke to sink in.Stoddard, also a biology professor at Florida

International University in Miami, came up withhis own scenario, doodled during a long, dullmeeting about climate change that dwelled onsea oats, a native grass whose roots hold dunesin place. “I said to myself, We’re looking at some-thing majorly disastrous here—and we’re talking

about sea oats?” he recalls.He drew a graph with three lines that showpopulation, property values, and sea level allrising. Ten abruptly, population growth andproperty values plummet.

“Something is going to upset the applecart,”he says. “A hurricane, a ood, another foot ofsea rise, the loss of freshwater. People are goingto stop coming here and bail.”

He thinks a real estate sell-off is inevitable.Before that happens, he wants his constituents tobe informed. “People ask me this question, ‘I’mX years old. I have X amount of net worth in myhouse. What should I do?’ I say, ‘If you need the value of that house to retire or to live on, thenyou want to cash out at some point. It doesn’thave to be this year. But don’t wait years.’ ”

Not long ago Stoddard attended a meetingwhere Wanless presented his analysis show-ing that the accelerating disintegration of theice sheets will lead to a more rapid rise of sealevels—faster and higherthan the federal govern-ment’s projections. Tatnight, as Stoddard andhis teenage daughterwalked on moonlit Mi-ami Beach, he sharedwhat he’d heard.

“She went silent, andthen said to me, ‘I won’t

be living here, will I?’And I said, ‘No, youwon’t.’ Kids get it. Do youthink we should tell theirparents?” j

NG NEWS

Reef Revival? Florida’s coral reef,which protectsthe southern coastfrom storm surges,has been severely

stressed sincethe late 1970s. Canscientists at theUniversity of Miamirestore nature’sbarrier?

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A F R I C A

A U S T R A L I A

A S I A E U R O P E

6. Mumbai

2. Guangzhou

5. Hong Kong

10. Ho Chi Minh City

7. Osaka-Kobe

8. Shanghai

9. Amsterdam

LowHigh

POPULATION DENSITY, 2013

LOSSES IN 2050 IF AN EXTREME WEATHEREVENT OVERWHELMS SEA-LEVEL-RISEDEFENSES OF URBAN AREAS*

Miami $278 billionGuangzhou 268New York-Newark 209New Orleans 191Hong Kong 140

Mumbai (Bombay) 132Osaka-Kobe 108Shanghai 100Amsterdam 96Ho Chi Minh City 95

More than $140 billion$70 billion to $140 billion$35 billion to $70 billion$17.5 billion to $35 billionLess than $17.5 billion

TOP 10 COASTAL URBAN AREAS

*ASSUMES CITIES CONTINUE TO BUILD PROTECTIONS ON PACE WITH SEA LEVELRISE TO MAINTAIN A CONSTANT RELATIVE RISK OF FLOODING IN 2005 U.S. DOLLARSSOURCE: STÉPHANE HALLEGATTE, ET AL.,NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE, SEPTEMBER 2013



N O R T H

A M E R I C A

S O U T H

A M E R I C A

1. Miami

3. New York-Newark 4. New Orleans

The Costof Climate

Change in2050Higher seas mean greater nancialexposure for coastal cities, wherepopulations are growing and the valueof buildings and infrastructure isincreasing. More frequent oodingwould likely disrupt insurance under-writing and with it the nancing that

drives development in cities such asMiami. If sea levels rose just inchesby , the ood damage in portcities could cost a trillion dollarsa year. With ingenuity and signicantinvestment, new fortications mightlimit ooding, but cities would need tokeep improving and maintaining them.Inevitably an extreme weather eventwould overwhelm defenses. World

Bank researcher Stéphane Hallegatte,who has estimated how much suchevents could cost urban areas at mid-century, says, “Protection protects usuntil it fails.”



In Thailand’s worst oods in years swampedthe village near Bangkok where Wilaiporn Hongjantueklives—but she still went to the store to shop for her family.

DrowningWorld Story and Photographs byGIDEON MENDEL

Extreme weather, sometimes related toclimate change, seems to be everywherethese days. And yet it can be hard to seethe impact on individual lives. I begandocumenting that impact in 2007, when

I photographed two oods that occurred withinweeks o each other, one in the U.K. and the other inIndia. I was deeply struck by the contrasting effectso these oods and the shared vulnerability thatseemed to unite their victims.

Since then I have visited ood zones around theworld, traveling to Haiti, Pakistan, Australia, Tai-land, Nigeria, Germany, the Philippines, and the U.K.again. In ooded landscapes, li e is suddenly turnedupside down, and normality is suspended.

Portraits rest at the heart o this project. I ofenollow my subjects as they return home through deep

waters, and work with them to create an intimateimage in their ooded homes. Tough their poses maybe conventional, their environment is disconcertingly

altered. Ofen they’re angry about their circumstancesor the inadequate response rom the authorities. Manywant their plight to be witnessed and want the worldto know what has happened to them.

I shoot on lm with old Rollei ex cameras. Digitalwould be easier, but the texture o lm has a particu-lar quality or me, and the process o using an oldcamera adds ormality and gravitas to the situation.

Te ood is an ancient metaphor in many cultures,a destructive orce that renders humans powerless.As weather becomes more extreme, the biblical isbecoming literal. j

PROOF A PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL



Storms that swept the British Isles during the winter of -brought record rainfall and widespread ooding to parts of

England. In a plains region locally known as Somerset Levels,thousands of acres of agricultural land were underwater for afew months, including Roger Forgan’s farm.

PROOF A PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL | proof.nationalgeographic.com

•

http://proof.nationalgeographic.com/




In the Somerset village of Burrowbridge, builder Dave Donaldsonand his daughter, Heather, , pose in their ooded home. Though

the rest of his family evacuated for a time, Dave stayed to tryto save the livestock from the watery devastation that he says“looked like something out of a weird disaster movie.”



Joseph and Endurance Edem, with son Godfreedom anddaughter Josephine, stand before their gated home inIgbogene, Nigeria. In Nigeria endured its worst oodingin a half century. “I was scared,” says Josephine, “and thoughtwe were going to die in the water.” At least people did.



Between July and January , of Thailand’s provinces were declared ood disaster zones. The monsoon-

driven oods that deluged his home near Bangkok had“something to do with climate change,” says Sakorn Ponsiri .“It could happen again … We will have to be more prepared.”

PROOF A PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL | proof.nationalgeographic.com

•





Floodwaters surround a house and school building nearMuzaffarpur in the Indian state of Bihar. People described the

oods there as the worst in living memory. The oodingclosed schools, affected millions of people, and claimed morethan a thousand lives.



The oods in England “felt surreal,” says Jeff Waters, herewith his wife, Tracy, in their garden in Staines-upon-Thames. Thewater stopped rising just short of their doorsill. To the west, in thevillage of Moorland, Shirley Armitage wasn’t as lucky: Chest-deepwater lled the house (above) that her father built in .



In the LoupeWith Bill Bonner, National Geographic Archivist

PHOTO: PAUL THOMPSON, MUTUAL FILM COMPANY/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

All Eyes on the Revolution An optometrist’s shop sign looks up from the loupe in this 1914street scene in Zacatecas, Mexico. Rebel leader Pancho Villa’sforces had just taken the crucial railway town from President

Victoriano Huerta’s federal troops. The Battle of Zacatecas wasone of the Mexican Revolution’s bloodiest. Some 7,000 died;thousands more were wounded.

This photograph was likely acquired for, though not pub-lished in, stories on Mexico that ran in the July 1916 issueof National Geographic. The man shown carrying a cofn (atcenter) is perhaps the only clue to the message inscribed on theback of the print: that this picture was once among “the latestwar photos.” —Margaret G. Zackowitz

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S O YO U CAN

Rent a motorbike in Milan

Head f or Cinque TerreWalk along the Via dell’Amore

Seal your love with a padlock on the bridge

And discover the thrill of cliffside dining

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