A humble request

Received this request by mail.  Though it was a chain mail, as the contents were good we have implemented it in our flat.

Attack of the Freshwater Shark?

I read an interesting article in TIME about how a fisherman in Australia came across a great white shark which was longer than his boat and how he cut the net loose and the shark with it and then watched as it swam away. Some excerpts -

At one time or another, most fishermen have a Jaws moment. For one gnarled veteran trawling Tuggerah Lake, actually a smallish freshwater lagoon situated about 90 km north of Sydney, that moment came just over an hour before sunrise on July 9. It was around 4 degrees Celsius on the lake at 5.30 am on Wednesday, making it the coldest morning of the year in these parts. Wrapped in several layers of clothing, the fisherman was startled by splashing noises coming from underneath his craft, then alarmed by a recurring thudding sound, as though something were striking it. Having rushed to one side of the boat, he peered down to see a gigantic fish trapped in a net.

It so happens he knows a lot about marine life. From this specimen's conical-shaped snout and peculiar coloring — gray dorsal area, white underside — and the size of the beast — clearly longer than his 5.5-m. (18-ft.) boat — he identified it as a great white shark, the world's largest predatory fish. He may or may not have known that it is rare, but not unheard of, for white pointers to attack and even sink boats as long as 10 m. (33 ft.). Whatever the case, he didn't muck about: in a state somewhere between agitation and terror, he cut the net loose and the shark with it, then watched as it swam away.

How would the ocean-going monster have gotten into a freshwater lagoon? Tuggerah Lake is connected to the Pacific Ocean through a tidal channel called The Entrance. It is 12 km long and 4 km. wide, with an average depth of 6-7 m, roughly 20 feet. "It's not a big lake," said Chief Inspector Winmill, "but it's a bloody big shark — if it's true."

Experts have their doubts. Calling on 35 years of experience with sharks and shark attacks in Australian waters, "and my knowledge of shark biology and behavior, I'd say it's highly unlikely that a white shark as large as indicated would get into a lake through a small opening as that at this location," says John West, curator of the Australian Shark Attack File. "

This story reminded me about a fascinating piece titled "Invitation to a Journey" written by Sri Eknath Easwaran. Sri Easwaran writes about a whale (Humphrey, as reporters called him) which on the way to Alaska, got trapped in the Sacramento River Delta and finally how it got out. Some excerpts from this article -

Not long ago, a young forty-foot humpback whale on his way to Alaska became enticed by the lure of San Francisco. He veered off course into the bay, and once inside, instead of deciding he had made a wrong turn and retracing his wake, he chose to push on to Sacramento. By the time I learned of his plight, he had worked his way into fresh waters and got trapped in the shallows of the Sacramento River Delta – a most uncongenial environment for any salt-water creature, but practically a bathtub for one used to thousands of miles of open sea.

Humphrey, as reporters dubbed him, immediately became a media sensation. Every day, news services carried updates on his predicament around the world, while hundreds of whale-lovers flocked to San Francisco to help the Coast Guard try to rescue him. But Humphrey just kept swimming up blind alleys.

Finally someone hit on the idea of luring him back to the sea by the call of recorded whale songs. Humphrey began leaping joyfully, splashing great sheets of water to the delight of spectators, and churned toward the open ocean at a good thirty miles an hour. Traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge backed up in both directions as fans got out of their cars to crowd at the rails and cheer. They paid handsome fines, but as one woman told reporters, “It was worth every penny.”

Something in all of us cheers when a captive creature breaks free. We are born for freedom, even if we don’t understand what that means or how to find it. Somehow we sense that we are not meant to spend our lives in the shallows of pleasure and profit. We are made for vast spaces, to reach beyond boundaries until, as an English mystic put it, we are “clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars.” We are born with intimations of a potential much, much grander than anything we can dream of in the day-to-day world.

While Humphrey’s story was unfolding in the daily news, we human viewers had the advantage of a higher dimension. We could look at maps, watch aerial views on TV, and see the scene whole: the narrow confines of the river delta, the broader bay with its narrow passage in and out, the vast expanse of ocean that Humphrey needed to find. To us it seemed so simple what to do.

But Humphrey had no access to that higher view. All he could have known was that an interesting side trip had turned into a trap. It’s easy to imagine how he must have felt as he found himself alone and boxed in, with no sense of where to turn for help in a situation he could not understand.

The media lost interest in Humphrey once he escaped. But I like to imagine how it must have felt to be free at last, charging out under the Golden Gate Bridge deaf to the cheers of earthbound creatures above him, into the open sea where he belonged.

There’s not much to the continental shelf in northern California, and whales swim fast. Within a few minutes Humphrey would have been in mile-deep waters again, with half a planet of open ocean to roam in as he pleased.

Then, free to go wherever he chose, he must instead have felt a silent command: “North. Go north. Go home.” No details, no map, no companions, no guide, just a direction and a desire in response to an overriding imperative from within: go home.

In case of both Humphrey as well as the Australian white shark, it appears to be a journey from bondage to freedom and to their home.

Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It

Highlights from a book review by Lisa Margonelli in New York Times. Lisa Margonelli is an Irvine fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of “Oil on the Brain: Petroleum’s Long Strange Trip to Your Tank.”

• Why did Americans spend nearly $11 billion on bottled water in 2006, when we could have guzzled tap water at up to about one ten-thousandth the cost? The facile answer is marketing, marketing and more marketing, but Elizabeth Royte goes much deeper into the drink in “Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It,” streaming trends cultural, economic, political and hydrological into an engaging investigation of an unexpectedly murky substance.

• In 1987, Americans drank only 5.7 gallons of bottled water per person per year, but the cumulative impact of ad campaigns and the vision of Madonna fellating a bottle of Evian in “Truth or Dare” more than doubled consumption by 1997. In 2000 the chief executive of Quaker Oats bragged to analysts that “the biggest enemy is tap water.” By 2005, the enemy had become the consumer’s bladder; and in 2006, Pepsi, which owns Aquafina, spent $20 million suggesting that Americans “drink more water.” That year we drank 27.6 gallons each at a rate of about a billion bottles a week.

• But marketing swings both ways. As quickly as bottled water became a symbol of healthy hyperindividualism — sort of an iPod for your kidneys — a backlash turned it into the devil’s drink. one expert tells Royte, “the total energy required for every bottle’s production, transport and disposal is equivalent, on average, to filling that bottle a quarter of the way with oil.” Mayors from San Francisco to New York suddenly became aware of the new symbolism of bottled water as a waste of taxpayer money, a diss of local tap water and a threat to the environment. Some canceled their city’s bottled water contracts.

• By the time I finished “Bottlemania” I thought twice about drinking any water. Among the risks: arsenic, gasoline additives, 82 different pharmaceuticals, fertilizer runoff sufficient to raise nitrate levels so that Iowa communities issue “blue baby” alerts. And in 42 states, Royte notes, “people drink tap water that contains at least 10 different pollutants on the same day.” The privatization of pristine water is part of a larger story, a tragic failure to steward our shared destiny. And if you think buying water will protect you, Royte points out that it too is loosely regulated. And there is more — the dangers of pipes and of plastic bottles, the hazards of filters, and yes, that “toilet to tap” issue. But there is slim comfort: Royte says we don’t really need to drink eight glasses of water a day. Drink when you’re thirsty, an expert says. That’s refreshing.

The Indian Context
This book review caught my attention for various reasons. The protests that erupted in the State of Kerala over excessive water use leading to depletion of ground water resources in the local community is still fresh in the mind. The second issue that comes to mind is the study made by Delhi-based NGO, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), headed by Ms Sunita Narain, revealing that all soft drink brands sold by Coke and Pepsi comprised a cocktail of pesticide residues. This had forced some of the State Governments to restrict sales of cola products. Further, Coca Cola was also in the news being accused of disposing hazardous sludge outside its bottling plant in Palakkad, Kerala.

In the Indian context, people use bottled water especially while travelling, more for health considerations as tap water is considered not safe enough to drink without purification/boiling etc. Thus, many people while travelling consume Coke/Pepsi feeling that its safe - but which subsequent tests proved not so safe. As regards the bottled water, it was interesting to learn recently from a conversation I had with a person who had visited a water bottling plant. He had been told that bacteria is eliminated at the plant stage while bottling, but it develops/grows after 4-5 hours. Thus, even bottled drinking water is not safe, this person was told! But, as we know our Indian conditions, we still feel bottled water is safe - may be, continuous advertisements have reinforced that thought in our minds.

"Drink when you’re thirsty, an expert says. That’s refreshing," concludes the book review. Very true. Only the question is which water - bottled water or tap water? May be if we are at home, tap water - duly boiled would be good for consumption and if we are travelling then we will have no alternative but to consume bottled water.