Ocean Routes Research Articles

Revisionist Study of Cross-Cultural Commercial Competition on the Vietnam Coastline in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries and Its Wider Implications

New archaeological discoveries since the 1990s mandate the rereading of primary sources that have been foundational to the understanding of pre-1500 Asian history. While this study is specific to the revisionist history of fifteenth-century Vietnam, it has wider regional and international implications, notably as the new evidence necessitates the rethinking of Indian Ocean networking prior to the Portuguese seizure of Melaka in 1511. This study evaluates the rise and fall of the Champa coastline of southern and central Vietnam, where a series of ports were the major Indian Ocean route stopovers between the Straits of Melaka and South China’s ports from earliest times until the Vietnamese Dai Viet polity (using new gunpowder weaponry) defeated the Chams in 1471 and temporarily recentered the international maritime passageway stopover on the Vietnam coastline in Dai Viet’s Red River delta ports. This study also addresses recent scholarship that has promoted the South China Sea passageway as an “Asian Mediterranean.”

Ambivalent Blues: Woad and Indigo in Tension in Early Modern Europe

In early modern Europe, blue textile dye was principally obtained from two dye plants, woad and indigo. Of these two dye sources, woad was native in the temperate climes of Europe, while tropical indigo became widely available only after Europe established commercial oceanic trade routes with India and the Americas. Indigo soon became a highly valued import, undermining woad production by unsettling traditional patterns of wealth circulation. Well-established woad producers took powerful steps to protect their industry, but in spite of their efforts, it ultimately succumbed in the face of indigo imports. In this paper, I examine the ways in which the long lasting conflict between the dyestuffs woad and indigo in early modern Europe evokes the tensions between imported and home-grown commodities.

Imperial crossroads: the great powers and the Persian Gulf

For centuries the world's Great Powers, along with their fleets, armies, and intelligence services, have been drawn to the Persian region. Lying at the junction of three great continents - Asia, Europe, and Africa - and sitting athwart the oceanic trade routes that link the cities of the world, the Gulf, like a magnet, has pulled superpowers into the shallow waters and adjacent lands of the 600 mile long appendage of the Indian Ocean. An observer at Hormuz at the mouth of the would alternately have watched pass in the 15th century the treasure ships of Chinese Admiral Zheng He, in the 16th century the caravels of Portuguese Admiral Afonso de Albuquerqe, in the 17th century the merchant ships of the Dutch East India Company, in the 18th to the 20th centuries the frigates and steamships of the British, and finally in the late 20th century to today, the cruisers and aircraft carriers of the U.S. Fifth Fleet. Perhaps in the future, Americans may be supplanted by the Indians, or perhaps the Chinese. In the Great Powers' comings and goings since the 1400s, several consistent broad interests emerged. For the majority of this time, for example, the superpowers entered the region not to colonize, as the Europeans did in other places, but rather to further trade, which in the 20th century increasingly included oil. They also sought a military presence in the to protect seaborne flanks to colonial possessions further east on the Indian sub-continent and beyond (India, in fact, has long cast a shadow over the Gulf, given its historic trade and cultural ties to the region, strong ties that continue today). In their geo-political jockeying, furthermore, the Great Powers sought to deprive their rivals access to the states bordering the region. In tending to these enduring interests inside the Strait of Hormuz, the Great Powers through history concentrated their trade, political, and military presence along the littorals. Not surprisingly, their navies have played a substantive role. Imperial Crossroads: The Great Powers and the Persian Gulf is a collection of connected chapters, each of which investigates a different perspective in the broader subject of the Great Powers and their involvement with the states of the Persian Gulf. This volume concentrates on four western nations - Portugal, Holland, Britain, and the United States - and concludes with a look at the possible future involvement of two rising Asian powers - China and India.

대양항로에서 장거리 공대지통신을 위한 VHF Relay Network

In oceanic flight routes, HF radio and satellite data links have been used for air-to-ground communication, but these systems have long propagation delay and low data throughput. In this paper, we propose a reliable system to overcome the weakness of current HF radio and satellite communication systems for oceanic aeronautical flight routes. The proposed scheme uses only one aeronautical VHF channel in multi-hop oceanic communication environments and supports a hybrid type of multiple access, which consists of random access and TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) scheme. The proposed system improves performance on delay and throughput as an effective solution to communicate end-to-end on the oceanic flight routes and strengthens the reliability of oceanic aeronautical communication.

Cretaceous Ichthyosaurs: Dwindling Diversity, or the Empire Strikes Back?

Recent descriptions of new taxa and recognition of survivorship of Jurassic genera across the Jurassic–Cretaceous boundary bring the total number of Cretaceous ichthyosaur genera to eight. Taxa currently known from the Cretaceous include Ophthalmosaurus, Caypullisaurus, Aegirosaurus, Platypterygius, Maiaspondylus, Athabascasaurus, Sveltonectes, and Acamptonectes. This review summarizes the occurrence of all Cretaceous genera. A discussion of morphological diversity demonstrates the different, though overlapping, ecological niches occupied by the different taxa, while the comparison of phylogenetic hypotheses shows the problems inherent in understanding the evolutionary relationships between Cretaceous genera. The Late Jurassic radiation indicated in the competing phylogenetic hypotheses may correlate with the opening of the Atlantic Ocean or additional dispersal routes established by the breakup of Gondwana. Inclusion of the stratigraphically oldest Platypterygius species may aid in resolving these evolutionary relationships.

Making Waves: (Dis)Placements, Entanglements, Mo(ve)ments

This paper focuses on Caribbean boat people, who are being victimized by state/society politics at home and abroad, and who seek a line of escape across treacherous ocean routes to the North or South. Migration literature explains these movements, in terms of forms of displacement deriving from the push and pull of development. Such a casting reflects the post-colonial (nation)-states’ pursuit of “freedom’s charms” in the alchemy of becoming “First World.” Yet another reading is possible and necessary. I suggest that these hope-filled mo(ve)ments, often risking tragic encounters with death, also require one to investigate the socio-cultural imaginaries entangled in these (dis) placements and movements. I see these socio-cultural imaginaries as ways of interpreting that reflect lived modes of writing and conducting existence, or one’s place in the world, rather than manifesting “explicit ideologies” (Salazar 8, Gaonkar). By way of rethinking the structuring of migrants’ movements through visual, poetic, and cultural religious practices I seek to explore these imaginaries as quests by Caribbean boat people for elusive dreams of freedom. I also offer to apprehend their movements through an optic of the will-to-place — a certain kind of political consciousness instrumentalized through cultural forms. This approach allows for an exploration of the challenges to the expression of this will in terms of struggles for “citizenness,” or a place in modern freedom, and against the disorders of contemporary neo-liberal governmentalities, marked by the marketization of social relations and the contractualization of citizenship.

Safety Assessment for Reduced Time-Based Separation Minima on Oceanic Routes

Currently, the minimum allowed longitudinal time separation between two aircraft on oceanic routes is set to 15 minutes. However, to deal with heavy traffic, a decrease to 10 minutes has been under consideration. So far, a major disadvantage of the conventional loss distribution method applied to calculate the risk of collision has been that it cannot guarantee safety in the case of reduced separation minima. In this paper, the loss distribution method is refined to avoid over-estimation by considering the relative speed of two aircraft and appropriate data sampling.

機上周辺監視による一方向航空交通流の制御

A decentralized control of an air traffic flow on an oceanic route is discussed. This study aims to clarify a fundamental strategy for unidirectional air traffic flow control. It is assumed that the decentralized control is made using airborne surveillance systems. The separation control between aircraft is made by turning, and 3 types of surveillance are compared: foreside surveillance, omnidirectional surveillance, and extended area omnidirectional surveillance. Through the numerical simulation, where an aircraft merges into the traffic flow, it has been clarified that the separation control by turning always stabilizes the traffic flow. The traffic flow formation is also numerically simulated by giving each aircraft random initial position. The numerical results have revealed that the aircraft control by foreside surveillance leads some aircraft into dead lock states. The aircraft control using the omnidirectional surveillance can avoid such unfavorable situations. The aircraft control by the extended area omnidirectional surveillance can achieve the flow formation with considerably improving safety and pilot workload.

Physical oceanography of the present day Indonesian Throughflow

Abstract The Indonesian Throughflow (ITF) transfers c . 15 Sv (1 Sv=10 6 m 3 s −1 ) of relatively cool, fresh water from the tropical Pacific Ocean to the tropical Indian Ocean. Additionally, the ITF is a key interocean component of the global ocean warm water route, which returns water from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean to close the loop of the thermohaline overturning circulation associated with North Atlantic Deep Water. That flow consequently freshens the Indian Ocean and transports heat between basins. The ITF can also be described by the island rule, which relates the winds over the entire South Pacific Ocean to the magnitude of the ITF. El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) dominates the regional variability in the Pacific Ocean and exerts a strong control over the variability of ITF transport. The Indian Ocean responds to the ENSO signal as well, but is also influenced by the Indian Ocean Dipole, a climate phenomenon that may act independently of ENSO to affect the ITF.

Performance Evaluation of Multi Hop Relay Network for Oceanic Air Traffic Control Communication

This paper proposes a new kind of communication system for air traffic control over the oceans; it is particularly effective at handling high air traffic loads due to many oceanic flights. In this system, each aircraft position report is sent to its relevant ground station by forwardly relaying them via a multi hop ad-hoc network that is formed by the aircraft between this aircraft and the ground station. In addition, an effective multiple access scheme with optimal values is also proposed. This scheme enables the various aircraft involved in relaying the signal to operate autonomously in a flight-route airspace. Furthermore, two useful schemes are proposed for efficient timeslot reuse and timeslot assignment in cases of low aircraft densities: the position aided timeslot reuse (PATR) and distance based timeslot assignment (DBTA), respectively. Finally, another scheme is proposed to improve the achievable relayed packet rate under low aircraft densities, which is called interference-based node selection (IB-NS). In all, the proposed system combined with those three schemes show the availability to utilize this system for air traffic control communications, specifically on high traffic ocean routes.

Archaeological Support for the Three-Stage Expansion of Modern Humans across Northeastern Eurasia and into the Americas

BackgroundUnderstanding the dynamics of the human range expansion across northeastern Eurasia during the late Pleistocene is central to establishing empirical temporal constraints on the colonization of the Americas [1]. Opinions vary widely on how and when the Americas were colonized, with advocates supporting either a pre-[2] or post-[1], [3], [4], [5], [6] last glacial maximum (LGM) colonization, via either a land bridge across Beringia [3], [4], [5], a sea-faring Pacific Rim coastal route [1], [3], a trans-Arctic route [4], or a trans-Atlantic oceanic route [5]. Here we analyze a large sample of radiocarbon dates from the northeast Eurasian Upper Paleolithic to identify the origin of this expansion, and estimate the velocity of colonization wave as it moved across northern Eurasia and into the Americas.Methodology/Principal FindingsWe use diffusion models [6], [7] to quantify these dynamics. Our results show the expansion originated in the Altai region of southern Siberia ∼46kBP , and from there expanded across northern Eurasia at an average velocity of 0.16 km per year. However, the movement of the colonizing wave was not continuous but underwent three distinct phases: 1) an initial expansion from 47-32k calBP; 2) a hiatus from ∼32-16k calBP, and 3) a second expansion after the LGM ∼16k calBP. These results provide archaeological support for the recently proposed three-stage model of the colonization of the Americas [8], [9]. Our results falsify the hypothesis of a pre-LGM terrestrial colonization of the Americas and we discuss the importance of these empirical results in the light of alternative models.Conclusions/SignificanceOur results demonstrate that the radiocarbon record of Upper Paleolithic northeastern Eurasia supports a post-LGM terrestrial colonization of the Americas falsifying the proposed pre-LGM terrestrial colonization of the Americas. We show that this expansion was not a simple process, but proceeded in three phases, consistent with genetic data, largely in response to the variable climatic conditions of late Pleistocene northeast Eurasia. Further, the constraints imposed by the spatiotemporal gradient in the empirical radiocarbon record across this entire region suggests that North America cannot have been colonized much before the existing Clovis radiocarbon record suggests.

(Un)settled states: Indian Ocean passages, performative belonging and restless mobility in post‐apartheid South African fiction

A number of post‐apartheid literary works revisit nineteenth‐ to early twentieth‐century Indian Ocean passages. Bringing into visibility South Africa’s other ocean – until recently largely occluded by the conceptual bedazzlement of the black Atlantic – they unsettle some of the paradigms through which it has been imagined. This article explores five such novels, which articulate or critique various citizenship claims through a poetics of (un)settlement. One strand from this cluster employs rhetorical strategies such as an ‘Atlantic register’ to translate oceanic routes into territorial roots, mobility into autochthony; the other registers a more unsettled state as it scrutinises the gendered politics of home‐making and national belonging, and issues a retort to the multicultural imagination.

Is Gammarus tigrinus (Crustacea, Amphipoda) becoming cosmopolitan through shipping? Predicting its potential invasive range using ecological niche modeling

While the intensity of global shipping has increased dramatically over the last decades, species exchange between continents has likewise intensified. Ballast water of ships is recognized playing a major role in this process. Many of the larger sea ports have become bridgeheads for invasions. Ecological niche modeling is used to investigate the potential invasive range and high invasive risk ports of the North American amphipod Gammarus tigrinus. Sixty-two occurrences of G. tigrinus in its native range (North America) and 34 environmental data sets were compiled. Data on dispersal distances were used via ecological niche modeling to analyze the invasive potential of G. tigrinus. The invasive risk of large ports was analyzed according to modeling result, as well as their salinity in the main oceanic routes of the world. G. tigrinus had a rapid range extension on the British Isles and in the rest of Western Europe. Now it is invading the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea. Worldwide it has a vast potential invasive range. It has a high invasive risk for many large ports along the main oceanic routes, among which the ports of Shanghai, Buenos Aires and Montevideo have the highest invasive risk. G. tigrinus may become cosmopolitan through shipping, and this possibility is increasing. Particular emphasis should be placed on preventing human-mediated dispersal. Ports may be the first places G. tigrinus invades. This study can identify high invasive risk ports, especially those at risk of introduced North America species. More importantly, the water of large ports should be monitored regularly for exotic aquatic organisms that may survive temporarily or permanently.

Siluro-Devonian vertebrate biostratigraphy and biogeography of China

During the past three decades, early vertebrates from the mid-Paleozoic of China have attracted extensive attention on account of their distinctive anatomical features, high diversity, early stratigraphic occurrence, and paleogeographic significance. These new findings have considerably increased our knowledge of vertebrate diversity, helped clarify the interrelationship of early fishes, and provided important data for mid-Paleozoic biostratigraphy and biogeography. In this paper, six Siluro-Devonian vertebrate faunas from China (Xiaoxiyu, Xiaoxiang, Xitun, Jiucheng, Haikou, and Zhongning faunas) and related stratigraphic problems are discussed. Biogeographically, the three main Chinese blocks (South China, North China, and Tarim blocks) constitute the “Pan-Cathaysian Galeaspid Province” during the mid-Paleozoic with highly endemic vertebrate faunas. Some major groups of early vertebrates, such as galeaspids, placoderms, and sarcopterygians, apparently originated and diversified in China. We suggest that three dispersal routes of early vertebrates (Northern Route, Southern Route, and Circum-Panthalassic Ocean Route) bridged the Chinese blocks with the adjacent continents or blocks during the mid-Paleozoic.

Distribution and Migration of Juvenile Chinook Salmon Derived from Coded Wire Tag Recoveries along the Continental Shelf of Western North America

AbstractThe effects of ocean conditions on highly migratory species such as salmon are difficult to assess owing to the diversity of environments they encounter during their marine life. In this study, we reconstructed the initial ocean migration routes of juvenile Chinook salmonOncorhynchus tshawytschaoriginating from Oregon to Southeast Alaska using coded wire tag recovery data from Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans and National Marine Fisheries Service research surveys conducted between 1995 and 2006. Over this 12‐year period, 1,862 coded‐wire‐tagged juvenile Chinook salmon were recovered along the coasts of Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska from March to November. Except for those from the Columbia River, most juvenile Chinook salmon remained within 100–200 km of their natal rivers until their second year at sea, irrespective of their freshwater history and adult run timing. Northward migration of most coastal stocks was initiated during their second or possibly third year at sea, whereas the Strait of Georgia and Puget Sound stocks primarily migrated onto the continental shelf after their first year at sea. In contrast, Columbia River Chinook salmon generally undertook a rapid northward migration that varied among life histories and stocks. Columbia River spring Chinook salmon were recovered as far north as Prince William Sound, Alaska, during their first summer at sea, whereas very few Columbia River fall Chinook salmon were recovered north of Vancouver Island. In addition to northern migrants, a fraction of the Columbia River spring and fall Chinook salmon actively migrated south of the Columbia River. The stock‐specific initial ocean migration routes described in this study will aid in the identification of the appropriate spatial and temporal scales for assessing the processes regulating Chinook salmon recruitment in the marine environment.

Current Research in Australia and New Zealand: An Overview

This issue of Historical Archaeology grew out of a session organized by Alasdair Brooks for the 2005 Annual Meeting for The Society for Historical Archaeology. Delivered in York, England, the papers highlighted research with diverse theoretical perspectives and of broad geographic scope. Participants explored a variety of cultural landscapes and the myriad forms of material culture through which Australian Aboriginals, British colonists, convicts, working class women and children, Chinese miners, Asian divers, and others enacted economic strategies; established, maintained, or contested hierarchical social identities; and created mun dane, sacred, and commemorative places. With the exception of Edward Gonzalez Tennant's contribution on mining in New Zealand, this volume focuses primarily on Australia. After the Dutch seaman Abel Tasman in 1642, early landfalls in the region were followed by British annexation in 1840, before which most trading, missionary, and whaling vessels embarked from Sydney. While perhaps less relevant in today's socio-political relationships between the two settler nation states, New Zealand was essentially, for a period in the early 1800s, an Australian colony. Indeed, the histories of these two nations shared similar structural roots?exploration and contact, colonization, the development of extractive industries, British annexation, and nationhood? yet these processes resulted in two very different places. Perhaps future comparative work will explore this relationship more completely. For much of the 18th and 19th centuries, a handful of British settlements dotted the coastlines of Australia and New Zealand. These colonial outposts served as centers of exchange for the hinterland, where resources were extracted and communities sustained. Among the most geographically isolated settlements of the British Empire, they were nevertheless linked by oceanic trade routes with global reach to British and other European ports in Asia (including Hong Kong and the Indian subcontinent), to the southern tip of Africa, and to Europe. Exchange was not completely controlled by the British. American whalers, for example, frequented the Southern Ocean from the early 1800s, and Chinese migrants populated the late-19th-century goldfields along with many other ethnic groups. The papers in this volume combine evidence from documents, landscapes, extant buildings, archaeological sites, and artifacts to explore colonialism and contact; the creation of identity; the impact of gender, ethnicity, and status on the material record; and the role of consumerism?all important themes in today's historical archaeology. Together, they demonstrate that Australasia provides fertile ground for exploring the increasingly global nature of the modern world. The publication of these studies represents another milestone for Australasian historical archaeology, comprising the second volume of Historical Archaeology dedicated to research from this region, the first having been published in 2003. We recommend those papers and the insightful introduction to that volume (Lawrence and Karskens 2003) to readers; however, rather than revisit their discussion here, we will reflect on Australasian historical archaeology as revealed through the papers in this second collection.

Recent Movements in the Baltic Dry Index

T he Baltic Dry Index (BDI) is an index published daily by the Baltic Exchange in London, the leading global marketplace for brokering shipping contracts. Exchange members include companies from the international bulk-shipping industry, shipbrokers, freight derivative brokers, trading houses, shipowners, and other cargo interests.1 Every day, the Baltic Exchange asks brokers around the world the cost of booking cargo of various sizes to move raw materials across various ocean routes. The exchange uses this information to compute the BDI—an indicator of maritime transportation costs for major raw materials. The BDI has generated interest as a leading indicator of economic activity because manufacturers increase their demand for raw materials to meet expected increases in the demand for finished products.2 Likewise, a slowdown in economic activity reduces the demand for raw materials when manufacturers detect increases in unsold inventory. The BDI can be viewed as the equilibrium price of shipping raw materials, determined by the supply of cargo ships and the demand for transporting raw materials by ship. First, the supply of cargo ships is inelastic relative to demand because cargo ships are costly and time-consuming to build. In contrast, companies can simply stop booking cargo ships when demand drops. Second, the index is sensitive to changes in the price of crude oil. Fuel and port-related charges are significantly large components of the total cost of maritime shipping.3 Although port-related expenses such as dockage charges are relatively stable, oil prices are notoriously volatile. As a result, the BDI is sensitive to changes in the demand for raw materials and oil price changes. Movements in the BDI can be traced to changes in global demand for manufactured goods. In addition, this demand affects the price of crude oil, which in turn affects the cost of maritime shipping. Between January 2006 and October 2007, the BDI increased more than 400 percent, from 2,081 to 10,656 points (see chart). This steady rise was largely due to the significant growth in the global economy for manufactured products. The growth rate of total industrial production (excluding construction) for member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and six major non-members (Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, and South Africa) was more than 6 percent per annum from March 2006 to October 2007. Movements in this data series closely mirror the (lower) growth rate of industrial production of manufactured goods in the United States. Such high growth rates of industrial production around the world are likely to have also contributed to a surge in crude oil prices, which increased from $67 per barrel to $95 per barrel during the same period, thereby exacerbating the rise in the BDI. Recent Movements in the Baltic Dry Index

Editorial introduction Oceanic routes: migrations and mtissages in South Pacific literatures and travelogues

Oceanic routes focuses on the South Pacific region but also reaches beyond simply francophone shores to encompass English-speaking archipelagoes. It examines the labor-driven population transfers that resulted in the extended exchanges of peoples, languages, customs and cultures that reshaped key aspects of the South Pacific. Geographically, refocusing on the indigenous vision of the region valorizes the term Oceania, originally used to reflect a universe which once comprised not just land surfaces but also the ocean surrounding them. Thus the sea links past and future beyond island boundaries through the transmission of cross-cultural connections and intersections. By contrast, enduring colonial divisions based on geography or language tends to further the legacy of colonialist perspectives and praxes and contribute to the fragmentation and distanciation of the region from the unitary vision of its origins. Such a vision of the island as intrinsically linked to other locales and open to the world naturally calls forth the image of the ship. Inverting this relation such that the vessel remains static and the island is seen as moving, is in keeping with alternative oceanic epistemologies of person and place which valorise both roots and routes.

Possible ecological consequences from the Sethu Samudram Canal Project, India

The Sethu Samudram Canal Project (SSCP), considered as a harbinger of economic growth in India, is a mega engineering project being developed to provide a 260 km long, 300 m wide and 12 m deep shipping channel between the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. This project impacts the unique biota and biodiversity of a 10,500 km 2 Marine Biosphere Reserve. This man-made link facilitates exchange of water masses between the less saline Bay of Bengal and the more saline Arabian Sea. Initial construction, subsequent dredging for channel maintenance, and the associated ship traffic would result in irreversible changes to the already over-exploited and stressed environment. Additionally, the channel would form a deep ocean route for future tsunamis. However, to provide assurance to the public, particularly the 50,000 fishing folk, in 47 villages in this area, it would be crucial that a long-term environmental monitoring program is instituted. A thorough evaluation of the impending environmental impacts, similar to those addressed by a Before/After and Control/Impact (BACI model) is recommended.

Maison des Civilisations et de l'Unité Réunionnaise

This piece examines the cultural, hislorical and political contexts surrounding the forthcoming opening of the Maison tics Civilisations et de l'Unite Reunionnaise (MCUR), museum and cultural centre, oil Reunion Island in 2010. The MCUR was conceived around the visualization of memories and the people of the island - especially around the island's history of resistance, repression and the colonial 'denial of the vernacular'. It aims lo offer a space of encounter and interpretation - to present the lives and experiences of marginalized people: slaves, indentured workers and the multi-layered complex of the India-Oceanic world. The MCUR locates the island within the Indian Ocean's routes, contacts and conflicts and strives to represent the enduring connection between Africa, Asia and Islam, as well as to the many and varied responses to European imperialism.