Distant Ports Research Articles

A sea change for semiconductors

Skies were blue and trade winds were steady as the SS Semiconductor set sail in early 2001. The previous year's haul had set records, and forecasters were heralding yet another banner year. But powerful forces were to shake even this vessel's sturdy timbers. A low-pressure center caused by the bursting dot-com bubble and warm moist Y2K air from around the globe stirred up a storm so violent that it shredded the mainsail. Gales of corporate malfeasance from the southwest and typhoons of terrorism from the east swept wave after wave of stock-market volatility over the decks. While many of the crew were tossed overboard, cargo destined for distant ports sat idle in the holds. It was a long time before the winds grew calm enough for the crew to repair the battered boat and limp to port. But customers there, who had also been buffeted by the foul weather, were scarce. And the ship's officers were forced to sell their cargo at a fraction of its original value. Now, almost two years after the near-fatal voyage, forecasters are again predicting blue skies, and officers and crew are guardedly optimistic that good fortune awaits in the year ahead.

Black Carp and Sick Cows

T he tragedy befalling livestock and those who raise them in the United Kingdom and Europe is so gripping that it's hard to relate it to the News story on p. [203][1] in this issue, which reports that a new and potentially invasive fish, black carp, is now being cultured in the southern United States. Yet the two—infectious disease epidemics in agriculture and the invasion of ecosystems by alien species—are linked phenomena. Each is driven by social and economic forces that are almost certain to generate future crises. As humans have grown in numbers and mobility, we have become the agents of a biogeographic diaspora. The early European navigators traveled with what Alfred Crosby has called the “portmanteau biota”: livestock, grain seeds, Norway rats—and pathogens such as smallpox, which devastated indigenous populations in the “neo-Europes.” More recent international translocations brought the chestnut blight to North America, rabbits to Australia, and zebra mussels to the Great Lakes. The contemporary explosion of economic globalization has brought us a new and even more troubling array of problems, exemplified by the 230 species of alien marine invertebrates established in San Francisco Bay through ballast water pumped out by ships from distant ports. It may seem odd to equate epidemics of infectious disease with the problem of invasive species. But in the complex distribution chains we humans have created, they become interdependent. Consider the following skein of circumstances. Rubber seedlings, brought in the 19th century from Brazil to Kew Gardens in England and then used to establish plantations in South Asia, came unaccompanied by the South American leaf blight fungus. Those plantations now supply most of the world's natural rubber and fuel several national economies. So if you arrive at Kuala Lumpur airport having visited South America on the same itinerary, you walk in on fungicide-soaked carpet and have your luggage irradiated. Meanwhile, the globalizing trade in radial auto tires, powered by natural rubber from Asia, brought the Asian tiger mosquito ( Aedes albopictus ) to the United States from Japan as a stowaway in used tire casings. It is well established as a nuisance in its new homeland, and because it is a competent vector for dengue fever, it worries public health officials as well. The global economy of rubber has thus created an unusual ecosystem that includes the Amazonian rain forest, Malaysian plantations, Japanese tire factories, and New Jersey marshes. In East Africa, Tony Sinclair has described an equally complex linkage that began with the introduction of rinderpest virus in the late 1800s, probably from Asian cattle brought in to feed the Anglo-Egyptian army of the Sudan. In the Serengeti, it decimated the wildebeeste and other grazing herds, contributing to the conversion of grassland to dense acacia savanna. That provided new breeding grounds for tsetse flies, the vector responsible for nagana in cattle and, in the early 20th century, for epidemics of sleeping sickness in people. The costs have been heavy. Were a careless tourist or an agroterrorist to loose leaf blight fungal spores in Malaysia, the costs could be even heavier. We know that international commerce and domestic economic forces were involved in the reemergence of foot-and-mouth disease in the United Kingdom—as they were, less directly, in the story of rubber above. We also know that the animals we tend and the plants we cultivate inhabit a world full of mobile pathogens, capable of unexpected emergence; sometimes, as in the Serengeti, through invasions that led to secondary ecological changes. The Law of Unintended Consequences is alive and well here, and we have amplified it by artificial selection regimes that favor yield, often at the expense of decreased resistance. We doubt whether agencies such as the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in the United States have the capacity to prevent these epidemics, just as the Malaysian government may not be able to interdict every spore of the fungus it dreads. Are there policy solutions. Modest gestures have already been made, such as special laws regarding ballast pumping and used tire inspection. But there is neither a general strategy for dealing with these invaders nor a widespread awareness of our vulnerability. We have made the globe a biological Cuisinart, and we will either have to deal with the consequences or use our scientific capacity to improve forecasting and monitoring. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.292.5515.203

Love, Violence, and Foreign Wealth: Kinship and History in Biak, Irian Jaya

This article addresses a central problem in the anthropology and history of Southeast Asia, in an unexpected place: Biak, an island off New Guinea's north coast which was long a distant frontier of Southeast Asia's colonial and pre-colonial polities. The article suggests how the islanders' ability to 'localize' foreign influences rests on the character of kinship on the island. Oriented by the 'love' of brothers for their out-married sisters, transactions between affines reproduce an inflationary dynamic that makes the 'Land of the Foreigners' into a source of violence and value. In their pursuit of recognition, Biaks recreate a boundary between their society and the outside world, recreating continuity in the face of historical change. At the turn of this century, in a settlement on the eastern edge of the Netherland Indies, the Johannes van Hasselt Society for Bible Study and Prayer lost a founding member. From the island group of Biak, in the north of what is now the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya, Petrus Kafiar's mother came to New Guinea's first mission post to take her son home. Like other Dutch-speaking Papuans who belonged to the Society, the young Kafiar clansman was a 'freebought' (vrijgekocht) slave, as the Dutch evangelists called the women and children whose freedom they purchased in an effort to expand their tiny native flock. Much to the consternation of Protestant leaders in Holland, former captives made up the vast majority of the small number of 'heathens' who converted to Christianity in northwestern New Guinea during the nineteenth century (see Bergsma et al. 1889; Kamma 1976). Dating from the founding of the post on the Bird's Head peninsula in 1855, the missionaries' practice of buying and manumitting enslaved women and children arguably added to the unrest in this long 'unpacified' region. Warfare was common among the coastal Papuans, who launched surprise raids in their enormous canoes, taking heads, booty and, increasingly, captives to sell in distant ports. Petrus Kafiar was a typical victim. Raiders from a neighbouring village abducted the young Biak when he was seven years old and delivered him to the mission post, where a Moluccan carpenter paid fifty florins for the boy. A Christian convert who was himself married to a 'free-bought' slave, the Moluccan 'foster father' raised young Petrus according to the strictures set by the Dutch pastor and his wife. Baptized, given a new name and educated in the mission school, Petrus and the other 'foster children' enjoyed an odd sort of freedom. Although in theory they were at liberty to leave the compound, in

Timber Inspection and the State: The Tasmanian Experience

C'~'1aveat emptorlet the buyer beware! The ancient ? legal maxim works well enough when buyers can pick over goods to see their quality, but not for timber shipped to distant ports. Timber importers cannot inspect every piece in a shipload. When a single load is made up by several producers, which is the usual case, the consumer cannot relate defective pieces to particular producers even by inspection. Importers must depend on the reputation of an entire area for shipping high-quality timber. But how are producers to guard the reputation of their area against an unscrupulous few who ship bad timber? This age-old problem has led to inspection and grading systems operated sometimes by trade associations and sometimes by the state. This article is a case history of timber inspection in Australia's island state of Tasmania. The case is small and simple, but it illustrates both the usefulness and the limitations of state intervention in timber export.

Hours at work at sea: watchkeeping schedules, circadian rhythms and efficiency.

Abstract This review is concerned with the hours of work of personnel engaged in watchkeeping duties on board ocean-going vessels plying between distant ports. After an introduction to the general problem, existing research findings are considered in the context of the degree of adjustment shown by physiological and performance rhythms to the various watchkeeping systems in use on different types of ship. The findings are discussed in relation to a proposed programme of research aimed at determining the optimal system for maintaining efficiency in crews operating the modern, fully automated vessels now coming into service.

Fisheries in the Orkney area

SynopsisFishing has long played an important part in the economy of Orkney. Local vessels are all small, and fish predominantly inshore for shellfish. Demersal and pelagic fish are abundant in the offshore waters around Orkney, but these exposed waters can be fished only by large vessels from more distant ports, so that few fish are landed in the islands.Gadoids, especially haddock, cod and whiting, form the bulk of the demersal fish caught at Orkney. Stocks of all three are giving cause for concern, with declining spawning stock biomass and reduced recruitment. With the coming of processing, more local landing of demersal fish might occur. The closure of the herring fishery in 1977 was followed by a great expansion of mackerel fishing, but with the lifting of the ban west of 4CW in 1981, herring catches have once again become valuable. Because of fishing pressure, landings of both species are subject to quota restrictions.In recent years, the traditional fisheries for lobsters and crabs have been supplemented by a new fishery for scallops. Lobster stocks are now under some pressure. Conditions around Orkney appear suited to farming filter-feeding bivalve molluscs, and culture and marketing of Pacific oysters has started.