'Time and Tide wait for no man', even here on the high (mostly) coast of Maine.

[Charlie Jones s/v Tehani]

My marina has 12 inch diameter steel pilings, that rise 12 feet above normal high tide (which is usually a 1 foot range). We also have floating docks. During Harvey there was a 7 foot storm surge, with three foot waves on top- ONE finger pier was damaged, and it due to the boat tired to it.. Many boats sunk, but due to winds, not high water.

 

[kloudie1]

A warning Morning !

 

[Brian D]

Interesting @TomY, the characteristics of the photo scream 200+mm.

 

[jssailem]

because of the compressed background.

Brian, trying to understand what you mean by compressed background.
I see a different focus (softer) but that would be depth of field.
It doesn’t appear fisheyed.

 

[TomY]

There are quite a few places in the area we sail of the Caribbean that the rising water has impacted severely. In just 5 years one dinghy dock in Trinidad is now below the water's surface more than 50% of the time.
Other places, beaches that were there since I first arrived in the Caribbean (in 1978) have completely disappeared over the last 7 years, and it has nothing to do with hurricanes or storms. Many concrete docks are now awash at high tide almost daily, that were only so once or twice a year, some years back.
Either the islands are sinking at an alarming rate or the water here is rising much faster than the scientists have recorded elsewhere.

While the documented rise in sea level seems manageable, (about an 1/8"/yr. - ), the effect must be wildly variable due to location and circumstances.

Sounds like you're seeing maxed out infrastructure in parts of the Caribbean. Once you're awash at HW, storms become more destructive for that infrastructure.

In my harbor, I'm thinking sea level is beginning to max out our design level that is likely traced back at least a century, maybe more. In the last 3 decades, the rise has accelerated (satellite data) so I'm surprised you're the only one that has seen an effect.

Docks and sea walls don't last that long so replacement simply goes up over the years. Some places (as Dave mentions, Micronesia), that is not so simple.

Thanks!

 

[Rick486]

Red sky in Morning sailor take warning
Red Sky at night ...Sailors Delight
Alrighty now. Let's have some fun. Do you know why this is a sailor's saying?

Generally, hereabouts at least, poor weather comes from the east. The weather systems generally move from west to east, but locally northeast movement means weather coming. Thus if the morning sky is red in the east, the rising sun is reflecting off the clouds bringing the weather. On the other hand, red at night means the sunset is reflecting off clouds in the west, which are generally fair weather clouds. More or less....

 

[Brian D]

Brian, trying to understand what you mean by compressed background.
I see a different focus (softer) but that would be depth of field.
It doesn’t appear fisheyed.

JS! Depth of Field is usually a result of aperture setting. Wide lens opening (f1.2 or 2.8) gives short DoF whereas tiny lens opening (f16 and higher) give long DoF. Compression is the results of focal length. The farther you are away from your subject AND the longer the lens focal length (>300mm, like Justin's equivalent 2000mm) will compress the distance between the subject and the background. It makes the background appear much larger, something "larger than life".

http://www.disognophoto.com/portraits/shooting-for-a-class.html

As an example, if you want a marina to look crowded, use a long focal length, get some distance and take a photo. The boats will look like they are stacked up on each other. If you want the marina to look spacious, use a short focal length and... you get the point.

Sorry, @TomY for OT.

 

[LeeandRick]

Insurance. I just wished all of you folks who live in these places that have sea level problems, hurricanes, fires, tornadoes, high crime, and the list could fill the page, would just pay your fair share. Nothing has happened here in 12,000 years except an occasional garage fire yet my premiums continue to rise after every one of "your" disasters. Then it really PsMO when someone in a high risk area tells me they pay 15% more than me for the same value. Then to top it off the high profit insurance companies don't want to pay for you guys, so then I bail you out with my tax dollars. T-Bird you want to talk about socialism.

But then for the most part I'm an optimist and will be thinking of all you guys pushing snow and freezing your butts off while I'm sailing tomorrow.

Wait am I on the right forum, politics, cameras, climate change, weather, hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm It's time for a or .

 

[TomY]

JS! Depth of Field is usually a result of aperture setting. Wide lens opening (f1.2 or 2.8) gives short DoF whereas tiny lens opening (f16 and higher) give long DoF. Compression is the results of focal length. The farther you are away from your subject AND the longer the lens focal length (>300mm, like Justin's equivalent 2000mm) will compress the distance between the subject and the background. It makes the background appear much larger, something "larger than life".

View attachment 158860
http://www.disognophoto.com/portraits/shooting-for-a-class.html

As an example, if you want a marina to look crowded, use a long focal length, get some distance and take a photo. The boat will look like they are stacked up on each other. If you want the marina to look spacious, use a short focal length and... you get the point.

Sorry, @TomY for OT.

Not at all, the thread quickly went political and that puts me to sleep. The more I shoot on the water the more I reach for the wide angle.

As you say, to compress your field of view to contain more subject, you have to be off the boat. Some good shots to be had from off the boat, but from onboard a wide angle lens helps me - sometimes - get a feeling of being in the environment of the photo and on the boat. Often, a wide angle shots are total blow outs due to lens distortion!

The distortion of a wide angle (10mm for me) is tricky. You have some ability to correct the distortion in editing software (I use Adobe Lightroom), but not much.

You could take this shot with a 300mm from a boat, a hundred feet or so away, and compress the background (Rockport Mass. YC), and side deck. It might be a better shot but I don't think you can achieve being on the boat as the viewer, as well as the wide angle, here, 10mm with just minor adjustments to distortion.

The cost: The background appears farther away than it was in reality. But who knows that? BTW, this shot was taken just after 5am. It's the light, it's always the light that makes a shot.

 

[jssailem]

The cute dog looking at the view that is being presented in the image helps.

 

[Scott T-Bird]

Not at all, the thread quickly went political and that puts me to sleep.

I hope you had a good rest. The thread looked like an invitation to me! I like SBO because the threads are often like an informal conversation that can lead anywhere. I learned something about red sky in the morning and photography. What could be better! I generally fall asleep in business meetings when you have to rigidly stick to the agenda (and wear a tie and all that $&it).

I'm struck by the height of tides you have in Maine. 12' or more? How do we know the tides aren't changing in height? Maybe there is aberrating forces in the moon's gravitational pull that is having an effect. You certainly don't have problems at mean tide, I suppose. Perhaps, locations where tide differentials aren't so dramatic are less affected by sea level. Barnegat Inlet has only about 2.5' differential. The difficulties seem to be more related to shallow water than they are about rising water. In NYC, tide range seems to be about 6'. Maybe I am oblivious, but I never hear anything about unusual flooding, except during dramatic weather events. So far, it still seems like much ado about nothing. At least, nothing new. All of the hand-wringing about storm intensities seems way overblown to me. What, we never had hurricanes, thunderstorms and droughts before? It seems that the more remote we become from nature, the more comfortable our existence becomes, the more hysterical we become over anything unusual that affects our comfort.

 

[jssailem]

It seems that the more remote we become from nature, the more comfortable our existence becomes, the more despair we have for anything unusual that affects our comfort.

I think this is an extension on this thought.
Many folk stay in close proximity to their home environs. This gives them an opportunity to measure and record or remember the small changes that are occurring. Like looking at your space with a 200mm lens. I have learned that this can compress even distort images.
Getting out of your environs (for the computer/phone focused may mean going for a walk) - travel opens your eyes to a much larger image/experience.
I had the opportunity to travel to Venice. I had heard all about the "sinking" of the city. The changing rain patterns the flood tides, the rising waters. What I had not heard about were the winter winds. The Sirocco winds off the Sahara blow north in fall and winter. This constant flow over the waters of the Mediterranean causes the waters at the north end of the Adriatic Sea to bunch up and stay bunched up for the duration of the winter. I was told on average this changes the sea level by up to 1 meter. When combined with the fall/winter/spring rains in the Po river basin impact Venice sea level. Yes Venice is built on a march and the foundations are sinking.
The point being, only by opening our field of view and seeking beyond the immediate can we hope to begin our understanding of most experiences/mysteries that confound us.

The leap to sea rise being caused by ice melting as a result of CO emissions is a convenient cause.

More challenging is to look at the heat gain/loss over hundreds of years from solar radiation that cause pressure changes that influence storm development that change the heat patterns of the oceans that drive currents that affect winds over long distances that influence tidal levels that cause the waves to be an inch higher this winter that destroy the infrastructure to our boat slips.
All we wanted was to be able to go to our boat and not worry that it would be gone due to the dock being destroyed.

 

[Cowpokee]

Great observation Scott, I will go one step further and claim that the media recognizes this fact and plays on it to boost their ratings.

When some, sitting in their environmentally controlled high rise apartment isolated from the elements, watches their TV showing for example: “the worst snowstorm in history with car wrecks everywhere” they might feel empathy for those poor saps out in the elements having to deal with such harsh conditions.

Myself on the other hand has no concern for someone in a far off land who has to walk 10 miles each day (uphill both ways of course) just to carry water back for cooking.

I also wouldn’t expect anyone to show concern for me having to go out in sub freezing temperatures to break ice from the stock tanks so my cows can get a drink. But numerous people I discuss this with show signs of empathy even though I choose this location to live. Because you know what? Even though I may be out breaking ice early Tuesday morning, I might have agreeable enough conditions to enjoy a pleasant sail that Saturday afternoon.

 

[nat55]

https://me.usharbors.com/monthly-tides/Maine-Midcoast/Belfast/2018-11?print=true

Scott T, tides in Midcoast Maine avg around 10'-12', move east a bit more to say Eastport......and the range is 16'-21'
https://me.usharbors.com/monthly-tides/Maine-Downeast/Eastport/2018-11
Keep moving into the Bay of Fundy, well some places record ranges up to 50' !

I suspect that there are numerous factors contributing to the changes we see not least of which is weather. What Tom saw in the original post was in part due to a pretty intense low that was pushing water up Penobscot bay.....despite the protection that Rockport harbor has the water that was being brought our way didn't care about the protection, its all about volume.
"Maybe I am oblivious, but I never hear anything about unusual flooding, except during dramatic weather events." I think that we can blame the media for that one, not very exciting to see Jim Cantore in Rockport harbor during a high tide cycle. Storms are newsworthy not high tides.
Recently NOAA was doing some surveys here abouts and were picking up supplies where I work, I asked the guys doing the work what they were observing and without hesitation their consensus was that the average depths have increased in every survey area, not due to ground sinking, granted there is lots of old data out there and honestly it wasn't very good compared to what tools they are working with now. I still watch my depth gauge very closely when navigating some of the areas around here though.

 

[TomY]

Again, when I started this thread, I made sure to leave out climate change, predictions, etc. I didn't want to get into the debate, mostly political, about that.

I just stuck to facts: Sea level rise has/is recorded by scientists over the last century. For the last few decades accuracy has gone up with satellite tools.

The scientific community on Earth is in agreement: Sea level is rising. I didn't mention global warming's effect on SLR due to the melting ice caps (but I got resistance on that theme anyway!), thermal expansion by warming oceans(more facts there), etc.

And I didn't even open predictions by the scientific community on Planet Earth(a hint: nobody is predicting a reversal).

I was actually surprised that I still triggered a debate: Sea level rise: True or False? No thanks, I'd sooner debate flat Earth theory.

Land goes up - land goes down, that's no problem for science measuring sea level rise.

But we can all agree on lenses. Another reason I use a wide angle (short focal) lens is it's usually faster in low light. Still with this light, I used a tripod. The fastest shutter speed the camera would do (zoomed to 20mm) was 1/3rd of a second. That never works with people. But this group actually froze on command for me: Not a blur in sight(they broke out laughing a second later).

 

[Scott T-Bird]

I just stuck to facts: Sea level rise has/is recorded by scientists over the last century. For the last few decades accuracy has gone up with satellite tools.

The scientific community on Earth is in agreement: Sea level is rising. I didn't mention global warming's effect on SLR due to the melting ice caps (but I got resistance on that theme anyway!), thermal expansion by warming oceans(more facts there), etc.

I don't think anybody is interpreting sea level rise - true/false scenario. The question was (or seemed to be): is it affecting anybody?
I looked at your photographs and see high water at the wharfs and high water splashing on the ground and I'm wondering, is this really related to rising sea level? We're dealing with tides that rise and fall over 12' (some say up to 50'). We have wind driven waves that are said to be up to 10 footers. Perhaps the wharves and breakwaters aren't high enough? So what? If you don't like the water splashing around, build them higher? I don't really care what it costs. If you like to have pretty wharfs on the water front, do what you need to do. I guess my point is, I don't see anything unusual. I don't see any impact caused exclusively by rising sea level. It seems to be more related to high tide and high wind. Perhaps the city planners didn't plan correctly. Perhaps the facilities are simply outdated and need to be raised for the updated conditions to make everybody feel better and more comfortable.

I suppose I sound a little snide, and perhaps I am. You showed the photographs and led with "Rising Sea Levels". It is suspiciously like the tricks the media likes to play (perhaps unwittingly). Why didn't you show the photographs and write the headline "High tides and high winds cause temporary flooding" Then you could follow-up with sea level rise of 3" in the past 20 years contribute to unusual flooding. But basically, I don't believe that there is anything unusual about the circumstances shown in the photographs.

edited: Well, I do have egg on my face! You did lead with Tides! But for some reason it still seems to lead toward Sea Level Rise, so I'll let my point stand.

 

[Gunni]

Well, the Chesapeake Bay has seen drastic sea level rise. Nearly 2 feet in the last two generations - 40 years. You can read about Tangier Isl., Deal Isl, National Geo documented the loss of Holland Isl. I have watched the James Islands disappear in the last 15 years. This area is seeing the biggest sea level rise in the CONUS. Regular flooding swamps historic Annapolis, Norfolk, Hampton and shorelines in between.

Further afield, I never saw a hurricane as big as H.Sandy. 250 miles across! Then came H. Michael. Huge. Climate change is real, and our part in it is just as clear as the famous Hockey Stick graph of atmospheric CO2 green-house gas.

 

[jssailem]

Not a blur in sight

That could be the new version of "Twas the Night before Christmas..." "not a creature was stirring, not a blue in sight...."
Pretty powerful control you have to stop everyone from eating that great looking food on the table.

 

[Brian D]

No argument there, light IS everything. I much prefer controlled studio light, but natural light will work. I notice a lack of "gold" in the marina photo. This goes to the red skies at morn (photog's golden hour). LOL

 

[Scott T-Bird]

Well, the Chesapeake Bay has seen drastic sea level rise. Nearly 2 feet in the last two generations - 40 years. You can read about Tangier Isl., Deal Isl, National Geo documented the loss of Holland Isl. I have watched the James Islands disappear in the last 15 years. This area is seeing the biggest sea level rise in the CONUS. Regular flooding swamps historic Annapolis, Norfolk, Hampton and shorelines in between.

Sinking land, see studies. They say sinking land is the largest factor in sea level rise along the Chesapeake. It has to do with a "fore bulge" caused by glaciers during the ice age and it is receding. So many complicating issues. I also would never expect sand bars in the bay to have any semblance of permanence. We're less than an insignificant speck in time.