Dear Editor,
Your commendable editorial of March 14 on `Guyana’s porous coastline’ alluded to the complete unexpectedness of the intensity of the tides at certain places. And while your final paragraph correctly points to simple things that we can do, it begins by assuming more ignorance than is necessary.
The reason is that we do not “try as we might”. If we had kept as much pace with our civilizational obligations as with its perks, like plastic bottles and styrofoam packaging, we would have been collecting and recycling the stuff away from litter … and we would have been closer to divining what the sea will do next.
The tides are caused by the movements of the Sun and Moon relative to the Earth. Not because it takes rocket science to reach them means it needs similar expertise to know these movements. I have grumbled often for more than 30 years, and also in your letter columns, that farmers and fishermen know as much but the politicians are not up to systematically recording and preserving the phenomena for posterity and their scientists to study. So, despite not being funded by taxpayers to advise on governance I will spell out what has to be done while the social scientists solve the litter problem.
The elders of every coastal and riverain municipality must identify from their experience at least one place where a vertical ruler can be driven into the shore or bank to measure water height. Pile drive the ruler all the way down to rock. The height of this ruler must be established by a qualified (sworn) surveyor from 3 different (as far as possible) unsinking points and checked annually.
Fasten horizontal bars pointing in known directions, N, NE, E, etc. The surveyor must direct this.
Employ someone who will read and record the maximum and minimum water heights and times every day, and the shore level relative to the ruler every day at low tide. A koker operator or assistant may be suitable. It is a serious job and requires honesty. The Hydrometeorological Service employs people to measure rainfall at different locations in the country. We can learn from their experiences.
The same person must also record the direction from which the water appears to be coming towards the ruler.
The natural scientists will collect the data every so often and look for correlations between the water observations and the movements of the Sun and Moon which pull the tides not only with varying strengths from different distances but also at different angles at different times. They should also use the shore heights to study accretions, erosions and shoal migration.
If we had started 30 years ago we would have had 30 years data. If we don’t start now, 30 years later we still won’t have 30 years data to remedy ignorance of our own land of many waters.
Despite the claims of the evolutionists, no science or technology has been invented to indisputably describe the unrecorded past. So no amount of money borrowed today will tell us what we had failed to record. And likewise no amount of money in the future can buy knowledge of what we ignore today.
Yours faithfully,
Alfred Bhulai