The oceans A deep history

SURFERS, LIKE THEOLOGIANS, must wrestle with the problem of evil. For the theologian, the question is how to reconcile the malevolence and suffering of the world with the existence of an all-good, all-powerful god. For the surfer, the problem is slightly less profound: How do you justify the enjoyment of perfect waves when they are generated by destructive storms hundreds of miles away? In September, Hurricanes Irma and Maria posed this question with some vividness, producing the best run of swell seen in years along the East Coast while unleashing chaos and devastation down in the Caribbean. Surfers, to judge from the throngs who gleefully paddled out from Florida to New England, make for unreflective scholars of the divine. Hurricanes certainly can seem like forces of evil. As the oceanographer Gary Griggs notes in coasts in crisis: a Global Challenge (University of California, paper, $29.95), they "have been responsible for more loss of life in the United States than any other natural hazard." And they continue to lure potential victims: In 2010, almost a fifth of the population of the United States lived in hurricane-exposed counties along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts; by 2020 that number is expected to increase by about 10 percent. In addition to taking lives, hurricanes habitually cause billions of dollars in damage with their high winds, storm surges, torrential rainfall - and, of course, big waves. During Hurricane Sandy in 2012, a buoy off the coast of New York registered a wave 32.5 feet high. A dream wave? No. You don't want to surf too close to a hurricane. In OCEANS: AVery Short Introduction (Oxford University, paper, $11.95), the oceanographer Dorrik Stow reminds us that waves are created when wind blows across the ocean, transferring energy to the water. This leads to a "state of random choppiness, building to larger but still irregular waves with no systematic pattern." Scientists call this "the sea." It is not surfable. And in the case of hurricane-level winds, the sea gets angry. It becomes truly not surfable. Eventually, though, those jumbled waves leave the stretch of ocean over which the wind is blowing, propagating with their own momentum. Because waves of different wavelengths travel at different speeds, long and short waves "fall in" with others of their kind as they travel hundreds or thousands of miles from their source. This results in the elegantly organized groupings of waves that surfers refer to covetously as "lines" of swell. When those waves finally reach the shallow water of a distant shore, the friction with the ocean floor causes them to slow down, bunch together and "jack up" in height. When the water gets too shallow, they topple over. If the slope of the ocean floor is steep enough, you get "plunging waves," Stow explains, "with that characteristic tube of air that surfers love to ride." Hurricanes Irma and Maria arose during the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season, when the ocean water was at its warmest. Because hurricanes draw energy from the temperature of the water, and because the ocean absorbs the bulk of the heat associated with global warming, it stands to reason that hurricanes will become more powerful in the future. But "debate rages," the oceanographer Eelco J. Rohling writes in THE OCEANS: A Deep History (Princeton University, $29.95), "over whether we will see a stormier atmosphere in general, or perhaps fewer but bigger storms." Paleoceanography, Rohling's area of expertise, is the study of ancient oceans and ancient climates as they changed and developed together over geologic time. It involves analyzing data like layers of sediment taken from the seabed. Much alarming information can be learned this way, as Rohling demonstrates, about how today's oceans are likely to respond to climate change - with greater acidification, sea-level rise, mass extinction and so forth. But because storms leave no geological record, the precise effect of global warming on hurricanes is harder to gauge. Still, Rohling is confident that the combination of rising sea levels and some form of increased storm intensity "spells doom" for the world's coastal regions. For surfers, rooting for hurricane swell may be increasingly difficult to rationalize. Along with the moral questions of climate change, the surfer may have to confront the political issue of cultural appropriation. In her essay "Indigenous Surfing" in the CRITICAL SURF STUDIES READER (Duke University, paper, $29.95), edited by Dexter Zavalza Hough-Snee and Alexander Sotelo Eastman, the cultural studies scholar Colleen McGloin observes that a certain conception of surfing - as white, male, competitive and consumer-friendly - has been "integral" to shaping Australia's modern national identity. But that narrative, she reports, is now being challenged: A widespread interest in surfing among indigenous Australians has not only served as a source of pride for them; it has also played a role in their politics by promoting a competing vision of nationhood. The indigenous idea of a nation, McGloin tells us, "can refer to land or sea," and includes geographical borders as well as cultural activities that underscore the commonality of a spiritual home. Apparently, it is not actually known whether indigenous people in Australia used to surf - the loss of such knowledge has been one of the many casualties of colonization - but McGloin finds it "reasonable to assume" that some form of wave riding was a central part of their life before it was disrupted. If so, it is fitting that during the 1990s, when indigenous political issues like land rights and reconciliation were gaining traction in Australia, indigenous surf schools began to pop up nationwide, emphasizing values like community and well-being. Reclaiming surfing as a way to reacquaint oneself with one's Aboriginality, McGloin argues, constitutes a "form of active resistance" to the legacy of colonialism. Perhaps we all give surfing the meaning we need it to have. In PERFECT WAVE: More Essays on Art and Democracy (University of Chicago, $25), an idiosyncratic blend of memoir and pop-culture reflection, the art critic Dave Hickey tells the tale of his youthful infatuation with surfing in the early 1950s. The story serves as a kind of founding myth for his career: a portrait of the critic as a young wave rider. When Hickey was in grade school, his family moved from Dallas to Santa Monica, Calif. Out of place and socially adrift, he "gravitated toward the beach," where he bodysurfed. A neighbor who paid Hickey to sweep his driveway owned a "beautiful red Billabong longboard," which hung in his garage; Hickey spent hours "communing" with it. Finally, his neighbor gave it to him, and Hickey was on his way - "a real surfer who couldn't surf." Limited by meager athletic talent and "stupid feet," he devoted himself to "the juju science of techno-surfing," poring over bathymetric maps of the ocean floor and making a study of the patterns of wave sets. Surfing before and after school, he got good enough. But Hickey was seeking more than the good. A naturalborn aesthete, he "was always looking for anything perfect." And one day, surfing Ocean Beach in San Diego, he found it: a perfect wave, "big and steady and hard out of the north and west." He managed to catch and ride it before losing control, at which point he inadvertently "shot the pier" - surfing under the beach's wharf, skirting collisions with its girders - much to the amazement of onlookers. Unfortunately, his wild ride ended with a crash into the rocks at nearby Sunset Cliffs, sending him to the hospital. Hickey's parents punished him by taking away his board, but he "swore to have his revenge." He had tasted perfection and would now tirelessly pursue it, becoming a connoisseur of beauty. "There would be an accounting soon enough," he says, "and today every word I write, I guess, is part of that revenge." JAMES RYERSON is a senior staff editor for The Times's Op-Ed page.

Rohling, a professor of ocean and climate change at the Australian National University's Research School of Earth Sciences and the University of Southampton's National Oceanography Centre, exhaustively recounts the history of Earth's open waters in this dense volume. The paleoceanographer studies "ancient oceans and their changes through geologic time," as well as the "natural, underlying rhythms and processes of ocean and climate change." In largely academic language, Rohling chronicles both physical and chemical transformations in Earth's oceans. His detailed discussion would suit classrooms well, but general readers may find his presentation stiff and the technical vocabulary unwieldy. Rohling begins with sections on the formation of oceans on planet Earth approximately four billion years ago, noting how their shapes continue to shift because the continents continue to move. But as Rohling progresses into passages on oxygenic photosynthesis, chemosynthesis, and planktonic calcifiers, as well as "predatory reptiles such as mosasaurs, ichthyosaurs, pliosaurs, and plesiosaurs," the material proves significantly more difficult to digest. Though Rohling eventually talks about familiar topics such as carbon emissions, rising sea levels, and ocean acidification, he does not sufficiently address ways in which further damage to the environment could be prevented. Rohling's work is extensive and informative, but is geared toward readers with advanced knowledge of the subject. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.