177
domain, and the resulting responses and changes through time. Their focus ranged
from the small scale, trying to understand the dynamics of an incipient dune forming behind a beer can, to an algal mat surface being undercut by an eroding tidal
current, to a beach spit prograding over a mega-ripple field in response to a rising
tide, to the large-scale influence of the increasing magnitude of a newly formed set
of refracting waves.
We started early in the morning with a period of individual exploration. This time
period was always awkward as the students slowly realized that their fiefdom was a
piece of the beach and things were really great—so let’s kick back and enjoy. They
thought being king of their beach was a piece of cake; they did not know what to
look for or even how to begin observing and measuring process and response.
During this period, I would take the students one by one and run them back and
forth with the swash of each wave, wildly swinging my machete at rapidly changing
features accompanied by a machine gun flow of questions. Soon they were putting
in control stakes, marker flags, and lines on their own. This was followed by a frantic period when they realized that things were happening too fast and that there were
so many things to measure and describe they couldn’t keep up. Their frustration
forced an evaluation of what was important and so they had to make some personal
decisions on how to make their measurements and descriptions considering the
rapid rates of change. By the evening light of a campfire or a Coleman lantern, they
were beginning to design and set up experiments to test ideas concerning the
responses to changing environmental variables.
By the time the sun rose out of the Atlantic, the students had developed a critical
self confidence that there was an understandable order to the multitude of processes
operating in their fiefdoms and there were predictable patterns to the responses.
These things could be described, measured and, more importantly, understood. It
now became an individual challenge to determine new and better ways to measure
the different processes and responses. Equipment was invented and it quickly
evolved for measuring everything from wind intensity and direction to bed-load
transport. The tools were always simple, often crude, and many times very innovative, and they provided critical information on the changes that were taking place
and a solid basis for understanding the basic operating processes.
The following day we returned to the inlet for the second part of the soggy
groggy, an exercise in scale. Students were now anointed kings of the entire inlet
flats over which they were to roam to determine how their little fiefdoms fit into the
scheme of the larger kingdom of the inlet system. Now they addressed the questions
of changing type and flow of energies through the inlet as they trekked from the
ocean-side beach across the barrier island to the estuarine beach, from the flanking
tidal channel over the shell-lag surfaces, algal flats, and into the stranded ponds surrounded by Spartina marshes (Fig. 11.5), filled with hot hypersaline waters, and
floored by muddy sand that represented another world dominated by worms and
algae. And always the question, how do each of these diverse components interrelate and interact?
After this initial phase, we could begin our basic mapping exercises of the sedimentary environments within the extensive flats on both flanks of Oregon Inlet.
11 A Scientist’s Personal 70-Year Discourse with Past, Present and Future Coastal…
domain, and the resulting responses and changes through time. Their focus ranged
from the small scale, trying to understand the dynamics of an incipient dune forming behind a beer can, to an algal mat surface being undercut by an eroding tidal
current, to a beach spit prograding over a mega-ripple field in response to a rising
tide, to the large-scale influence of the increasing magnitude of a newly formed set
of refracting waves.
We started early in the morning with a period of individual exploration. This time
period was always awkward as the students slowly realized that their fiefdom was a
piece of the beach and things were really great—so let’s kick back and enjoy. They
thought being king of their beach was a piece of cake; they did not know what to
look for or even how to begin observing and measuring process and response.
During this period, I would take the students one by one and run them back and
forth with the swash of each wave, wildly swinging my machete at rapidly changing
features accompanied by a machine gun flow of questions. Soon they were putting
in control stakes, marker flags, and lines on their own. This was followed by a frantic period when they realized that things were happening too fast and that there were
so many things to measure and describe they couldn’t keep up. Their frustration
forced an evaluation of what was important and so they had to make some personal
decisions on how to make their measurements and descriptions considering the
rapid rates of change. By the evening light of a campfire or a Coleman lantern, they
were beginning to design and set up experiments to test ideas concerning the
responses to changing environmental variables.
By the time the sun rose out of the Atlantic, the students had developed a critical
self confidence that there was an understandable order to the multitude of processes
operating in their fiefdoms and there were predictable patterns to the responses.
These things could be described, measured and, more importantly, understood. It
now became an individual challenge to determine new and better ways to measure
the different processes and responses. Equipment was invented and it quickly
evolved for measuring everything from wind intensity and direction to bed-load
transport. The tools were always simple, often crude, and many times very innovative, and they provided critical information on the changes that were taking place
and a solid basis for understanding the basic operating processes.
The following day we returned to the inlet for the second part of the soggy
groggy, an exercise in scale. Students were now anointed kings of the entire inlet
flats over which they were to roam to determine how their little fiefdoms fit into the
scheme of the larger kingdom of the inlet system. Now they addressed the questions
of changing type and flow of energies through the inlet as they trekked from the
ocean-side beach across the barrier island to the estuarine beach, from the flanking
tidal channel over the shell-lag surfaces, algal flats, and into the stranded ponds surrounded by Spartina marshes (Fig. 11.5), filled with hot hypersaline waters, and
floored by muddy sand that represented another world dominated by worms and
algae. And always the question, how do each of these diverse components interrelate and interact?
After this initial phase, we could begin our basic mapping exercises of the sedimentary environments within the extensive flats on both flanks of Oregon Inlet.
11 A Scientist’s Personal 70-Year Discourse with Past, Present and Future Coastal…