"Monster Wave" folklore was right all along

[richardm]

ESA satellites have the evidence that humungous waves up to 25m tall are more common than you'd think.


Over the last two decades more than 200 super-carriers - cargo ships over 200m long - have been lost at sea. Eyewitness reports suggest many were sunk by high and violent walls of water that rose up out of calm seas.

But for years these tales of towering beasts were written off as fantasy; and many marine scientists clung to statistical models stating monstrous deviations from the normal sea state occur once every 1,000 years.

...

Around 30,000 separate imagettes were produced by the two satellites during a three-week period in 2001 - and the data was mathematically analysed.

Esa says the survey revealed 10 massive waves - some nearly 30m (100 ft) high.

"The waves exist in higher numbers than anyone expected," said Dr Rosenthal


Scary stuff, really. Although the oceans are big, and presumably the chances of meeting one of these waves must be small, or we'd have had the proof sooner than this (unless most people who see 'em get drowned, of course)

Giant squid, and now monster waves. What's next? Mermaids? ;)

[BPSCG]

Originally posted by richardm

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Over the last two decades more than 200 super-carriers - cargo ships over 200m long - have been lost at sea. ...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Citation? Link? Something smells like rotting fish here. Super-carriers sinking at the rate of one every five weeks for twenty years?

[richardm]

Originally posted by BPSCG
Citation? Link? Something smells like rotting fish here. Super-carriers sinking at the rate of one every five weeks for twenty years?

Oops - Full story (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3917539.stm) .

A recent Horizon programme: (http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/freakwave.shtml)


The world's oceans claim on average one ship a week, often in mysterious circumstances.


An aside, speaking of losing one ship per week. Recently, someone accidentally set fire to his 30 ft wooden yacht off Islay, and had to abandon ship. He watched from his rubber dinghy as it burned down to the waterline then sank, while the lifeboat homed in (he was easy to find, because of the useful smoke plume).

The name of the yacht? "The Spark (http://www.yachtingmonthly.com/auto/newsdesk/20040607100946ymnews.html)". You couldn't make it up.

[Psi Baba]

Another link:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/07/040721084137.htm
This one has someone quoted as saying: " two large ships sink every week on average."

[pgwenthold]

Originally posted by richardm
Scary stuff, really. Although the oceans are big, and presumably the chances of meeting one of these waves must be small, or we'd have had the proof sooner than this (unless most people who see 'em get drowned, of course)
)

How would you avoid such a thing? It's not crazy to say that if you see one, you are going to get hit by it, so I don't think it is unreasonable to figure they are mostly dead.

OTOH, this reminds me a lot of the story about tornados (or water spouts, if you prefer) over the ocean. Every once in a while you will hear that tornados can't form over the ocean. The problem is, if one does, how will you know? You don't have a lot of people around to see them. In fact, there _are_ ship captain logs that do report seeing tornados at such and such a time in such and such a location. Not surprisingly, the number of sighted tornados in the ocean is pretty small.

OTOH, we do know that certain weather conditions that often result in tornados on land are also found over the oceans. Therefore, it is expected that there should be plenty of tornadic activity. You just don't have many tornado chasers out there.

[Khonshu]

I've seen a waterspout off the Georgia coast. Watched it form - neat stuff. Funny thing was all the birds flying around it & diving into the water at the edges of the spout. They didn't seem to be alarmed by the whole thing. Of course, I had left the camera in the room.

So yeah, I know it's ancedotal, but I've seen it. I can provide a witness as well.

[c0rbin]

Water Spout Images from Google (http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=waterspout&spell=1)

Of course some are faked, but not all.

Reagrding surviving a 100 foot wave--the only solution I could think of would be to turn away and gun it if on the open ocean--ride it like a surfer would until it runs its course.

You may have to back-track, but at least you have saved the cargo, the boat, and your lives.

[Correa Neto]

OK, the evidence is good, and the phenomena is proven to exist. But this raises a number of questions...

I wonder why there are no reports of these monsters hitting shores... Could the continental shelves decrease their height? Continental shelves attenuating such waves would perhaps generate occasional surf breakers very far from the shore that probably would also have been sighted. OK, depending on shelf slope, perhaps the waves would loose energy slowly.

If this is so, why there are no reports from areas where there is no huge shelf protecting the shores, such as oceanic islands as Hawaii? Or could shield volcanoes's morphology (small slope angle over a broad area) also decrease them?

I remember hearing about huge (above 5 m tall) waves coming from nowhere in clear blue sky with little wind and calm seas at Trindade island (oceanic island 1500km off Brazillian coast). Could these be "monster waves" attenuated by the island's underwater topography?

Edited to add- depht meters from submarines would also be able to detect such fast changes in the water collumn above the vessel, would`nt they?

[Dragonrock]

Originally posted by Correa Neto
I remember hearing about huge (above 5 m tall) waves coming from nowhere in clear blue sky with little wind and calm seas at Trindade island (oceanic island 1500km off Brazillian coast). Could these be "monster waves" attenuated by the island's underwater topography?

I believe these are commonly referred to as "rogue waves." One theory says that they are basically a "wave harmonic." The idea being that several small waves all traveling in generally the same direction stack up for a short time creating one large wave.

Superstitious sailors view rogue waves as bad luck. This may be due to the idea that they are more common around the edges of storms.

[Virgil]

Originally posted by Correa Neto

Edited to add- depht meters from submarines would also be able to detect such fast changes in the water collumn above the vessel, would`nt they?



Maybe not...


Virgil

[BPSCG]

Originally posted by Psi Baba
Another link:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/07/040721084137.htm
This one has someone quoted as saying: " two large ships sink every week on average." Jeeze... Sounded crazy to me, but...

I ain't never going on a ship again.

[BPSCG]

Originally posted by Dragonrock
I believe these are commonly referred to as "rogue waves." One theory says that they are basically a "wave harmonic." The idea being that several small waves all traveling in generally the same direction stack up for a short time creating one large wave.

Superstitious sailors view rogue waves as bad luck. This may be due to the idea that they are more common around the edges of storms. You mean a wave ten stories high that can turn your ship upside down in a heartbeat is bad luck?

What a silly superstition!

[Dragonrock]

Originally posted by BPSCG
You mean a wave ten stories high that can turn your ship upside down in a heartbeat is bad luck?

What a silly superstition!

No, the smaller giant waves, the ones that are just 15 or 20 feet high. The only real danger is getting washed off of the deck.

[Skeptical Greg]

Originally posted by Dragonrock

Superstitious sailors view rogue waves as bad luck. ..


Is this anything like the superstition among soldiers regarding rogue RPG's?

How do the ones who are not superstitious view them. Providing they are able to tell the story?

[Goshawk]

Apparently these rogue waves only occur out in the open ocean. Somehow they must dissipate their energy before they hit the land at 100 feet high. Current theory says that underwater topography probably has something to do with it.

More info on giant rogue waves here.

http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF2/225.html
http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/res/Task_rpts/2002/ppliu02-3.html
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf066/sf066g14.htm

[davidhorman]

One theory says that they are basically a "wave harmonic."

The Horizon documentary mentioned something about it being related to quantum mechanics. Can anyone shed any light on that? Because wave harmonics are pretty classical, aren't they?

David

[Travis]

I thought I might bring this back up, instead of starting a new thread, to discuss how this relates to the scientific method. Of particular concern is the fact that evidence, both physical and anecdotal, existed that indicated rogue waves we're not legend. Instead of embarking to investigate this and see if the Standard Model's Rayleigh distribution of waves was correct they were dismissed because they were not predicted by such formulas. This seems like a colossal failure of the scientific community. A theory is only as good as its predictive value is substantiated by results. So negative results would seem to be an impetus to reexamine things and not dismiss them outright. If an object is predicted to follow a ballistic trajectory and land at a certain place but it doesn't one must then look for variables that might have influenced it's journey, one does not insist that it didn't land in the wrong place but in fact landed where it didn't.

[Tim Thompson]

... This seems like a colossal failure of the scientific community. ...
I think you oversimplify. The "evidence", for the longest time, was anecdotal only; sailor stories from the high seas. That kind of "evidence" is not really "evidence" in any scientific sense. Consider, for instance, this:

"Seafarer's lore is replete with tales of ships mysteriously disappearing or being battered by terrific waves in fierce storms. It is well known that it is difficult to judge the height of a large wave accurately from the deck of a pitching ship, simply because there is no point of reference, nothing to which the eye can compare it. When eyewitness accounts can be compared to more accurate measurements, it is found that the waves are always smaller than they seem. For this reason, tales of waves 100 feet high have been discounted in the past, except in those few cases in which some type of comparative measurement has been possible."
From the book Extreme Waves; Craig B. Smith, Joseph Henry Press, 2006, page 6

As far as I know, the Draupner Wave (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draupner_wave) on January 1, 1995 was the first time such a wave was instrumentally recorded. But such "rogue waves" were already accepted as real, I think, before that, just rare. The real impact of satellite imaging of the ocean surface was the discovery that such extreme waves were not so rare as previously thought.

Alfred Wegener (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wegener) is famous for proposing the idea of continental drift, but while many scientists thought his work interesting, his central thesis was rejected despite the evidence. It was rejected because his idea of continents plowing through the crust like ships at sea was simply not physically viable. It was not until the idea of plate tectonics came along that the idea of moving continents, riding along on the plates, begins to make sense.

It's the same kind of affair with rogue waves. It's not enough to suggest that there are some "really big" waves. If you combine "there is no known mechanism to generate such a wave" with "we can't trust the source for stories of really big waves" then it is no surprise that there was little scientific effort applied to such waves (remember, most scientists work for a living, and do what they get paid for, not what they feel like doing).

But once the Draupner Wave came along, everything changes in an instant. Now, suddenly, you have an unimpeachable source of quantitative data, not a qualitative story. Now scientists have something to work with. I don't see this as a failure of the scientific method.

The Horizon documentary mentioned something about it being related to quantum mechanics. Can anyone shed any light on that? Because wave harmonics are pretty classical, aren't they?
Wave harmonics are classical, but rogue or extreme waves are not harmonics, which are integer multiples of a fundamental frequency. Rather, they are non-linear features of complex wave fields. These were never heavily studied in classical physics just because there was no real motivation. Nobody thought that such non-linear affairs were of any real importance. But for a long time now, all of the advances in wave mechanics has come out of quantum mechanics and the study of the Schrödinger equation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger_equation). This is where physicists study non-linear waves, so it is no surprise that you want somebody with expertise in quantum non-linear wave mechanics to go after a problem like this. After all, the Schrödinger equation is a wave equation that should be applicable to any wave mechanics problem, classical or quantum.

[Perpetual Student]

I think we need some more documentation for the claim that:

"Over the last two decades more than 200 super-carriers - cargo ships over 200m long - have been lost at sea."

and

" two large ships sink every week on average."

Why is that when two ships collide and a couple of people are killed, the event gets worldwide news coverage but two large ships sink every week and a super carrier a month sink without notice? I don't buy it!

For example: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,506890,00.html

How often do we see these stories? These cargo ships have a crew of 20 to 30 people -- are we to believe they go down without notice? What happens to the media coverage when these two large ships sink every week and a super-carrier disappears once a month?:rolleyes:

[Miss_Kitt]

I would be glad to see some documentation, too, but I do know that commercial shipping and fishing vessels go down with jaw-dropping frequency. Living as I do near the Pacific Coast, and having a brother who lives in Astoria--where the Columbia River enters the Pacific--I have seen the monuments with the many names of ships and sailors on them.

It's more common than we realize. Just as every car accident doesn't make headlines, because unless it ties up a major arterial for hours, kills many people, or involves someone famous, it's just too common an event to be news. Sailors die; ships go down. It has happened for all of known history; all that has changed is that with modern navigation and communication equipment, we are able to save more lives and rescue more distressed vessels.

My connection is being dreadfully slow tonight, but I bet some kind of marine shipping or commercial vessel association website would have some numbers. I have also heard a ship every week or two for a worldwide number, and extrapolating from the fleet sizes and loss rate in Washington/Alaska and Oregon, I believe it to be a reasonable number.

But a cite would be nice.

Rogue waves are absolutely fascinating! A recent TV show on the subject (I think it was Natl Geo channel, but not certain) that we recorded was full of interesting footage, interviews, and theories as to how they form and dissipate.

As to waterspouts, my Mom saw one here in Washington in the 60's, so they can happen even in a place that has few tornadoes!

Just my thoughts, MK

[Travis]

I think you oversimplify. The "evidence", for the longest time, was anecdotal only; sailor stories from the high seas. That kind of "evidence" is not really "evidence" in any scientific sense. Consider, for instance, this:
As far as I know, the Draupner Wave (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draupner_wave) on January 1, 1995 was the first time such a wave was instrumentally recorded. But such "rogue waves" were already accepted as real, I think, before that, just rare. The real impact of satellite imaging of the ocean surface was the discovery that such extreme waves were not so rare as previously thought.

Okay, they were thought to be a 1-10,000 year type of event, extremely rare. What's interesting is that there was a lot more than just anecdotal evidence, there was physical evidence such as the washed away lighthouse and ships with damage 30+ meters above the water. There was even a photograph of a wave from the early 70's I believe.

Alfred Wegener (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wegener) is famous for proposing the idea of continental drift, but while many scientists thought his work interesting, his central thesis was rejected despite the evidence. It was rejected because his idea of continents plowing through the crust like ships at sea was simply not physically viable. It was not until the idea of plate tectonics came along that the idea of moving continents, riding along on the plates, begins to make sense.


That was another historic failure of the scientific community. Instead of dismissing Wegener's ideas totally they should have themselves embarked to look for causes. You don't deny that a tree fell over because you can't think of how it would have. You would take the tree falling over as the starting point and then investigate what might have caused it.

It's the same kind of affair with rogue waves. It's not enough to suggest that there are some "really big" waves. If you combine "there is no known mechanism to generate such a wave" with "we can't trust the source for stories of really big waves" then it is no surprise that there was little scientific effort applied to such waves (remember, most scientists work for a living, and do what they get paid for, not what they feel like doing).

The problem is that no one investigated it. Not even the people who had proposed the mechanisms behind wave formation that might have taken this as an opportunity to falsify, or confirm, their ideas. It seems to me there was a fair amount of classicism involved with this. No university educated intellectual was going to waste their time investigating anything related by lowly seamen.

But once the Draupner Wave came along, everything changes in an instant. Now, suddenly, you have an unimpeachable source of quantitative data, not a qualitative story. Now scientists have something to work with. I don't see this as a failure of the scientific method.

The Draupner wave was discovered by accident so think of how much more we might know about this phenomenon if someone, anyone, had bothered to go and try and get some quantitative data on it at a much earlier time.

Wave harmonics are classical, but rogue or extreme waves are not harmonics, which are integer multiples of a fundamental frequency. Rather, they are non-linear features of complex wave fields. These were never heavily studied in classical physics just because there was no real motivation.

Aha! That's part of the problem too.

Nobody thought that such non-linear affairs were of any real importance. But for a long time now, all of the advances in wave mechanics has come out of quantum mechanics and the study of the Schrödinger equation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger_equation). This is where physicists study non-linear waves, so it is no surprise that you want somebody with expertise in quantum non-linear wave mechanics to go after a problem like this. After all, the Schrödinger equation is a wave equation that should be applicable to any wave mechanics problem, classical or quantum.

So might that area of physics be more advanced now if someone had taken the time to go look into the rogue wave phenomenon a long time ago?

[Megalodon]

We had this discussion before, here. Someone was also outraged at the incompetence of scientists. As before, let me clear up some things.

Ocean science is a very expensive discipline.
Ocean science is a particularly hard discipline.
Until a couple of decades ago, ocean science wasn't a particularly sexy discipline.

Even today simple things, like an adequate bathymetry, are nonexistent for the most of the ocean. Our knowledge of the oceans is still sketchy, and will continue to be for a long time.

Now, picture yourself as a scientist 20 year ago. You have anecdotal evidence of such monster waves, and you want to study them. Against all odds, you manage to get a monster budget of 2 million dollars.

How do you proceed?

[Skwinty]

I recall reading sometime ago, that these monster waves were only prevalent in certain places in the world. I recall the east coast of Africa being one.

I have a number of yachting friends who often sail from Cape Town to Durban. They specifically avoid the deep ocean off the Transkei Wild Coast because of rough seas and large waves.

[Dr. Trintignant]

The TV show "Deadliest Catch" caught a rogue wave on video:

l_8hOai9hGQ

- Dr. Trintignant

[Dr. Trintignant]

Why is that when two ships collide and a couple of people are killed, the event gets worldwide news coverage but two large ships sink every week and a super carrier a month sink without notice? I don't buy it!

Wikipedia claims this in its article on rogue waves:


Loss estimates

A widely spread claim that around 200 large ships have been sunk in recent years by 'freak' waves has never been substantiated.[36] There are a tiny number of cases in recent years where no obvious explanation has been found for the loss of a ship, but according to the Lloyd's Register–Fairplay casualty database, fire or poor maintenance are more likely causes. The claim first appeared in the terms of reference for the EU's Max Wave project in 2001, without any supporting evidence. It was phrased as "200 supertankers or containerships of 200 metres (660 ft) and over sunk in the past 20 years". According to Lloyd's Register, only 124 ships of this size were lost in that time period (1981–2001); the majority being due to the Iran Iraq war.[36] The claim achieved wider currency after it was picked up by the European Space Agency in its 2004 press release about freak waves observed from space (see External Links below).

36 ^ a b The claim of "200 large ships lost to freak waves in the past two decades" was published in The Times (May 2006). The earliest reference seems to be in the press release by the European Space Agency (cited at the page bottom), and first quoted as "200 large ships of 600 ft long or more in the past two decades sunk without trace". At the time the claim was made, there had only been 124 ships of that size lost at sea in the time frame, according to Lloyd's Register, all with clear, known causes. The main culprits were the Iranian and Iraqi air forces in the 1980s; Iran–Iraq War.

Unfortunately, the article does not provide any external sources of its own, although I suppose if one had access to the Lloyd's database, it would be easy enough to verify.

- Dr. Trintignant

[Wauthan]

The ESA has some good information on the subject. Apparently the agency used two sattelites to track monster waves in 2004, in a project called MaxWave:

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMOKQL26WD_index_0.html

Project MaxWave led to the WaveAtlas project. A bit of information on the currect research on the project website:

http://www.oceanor.no/products/software/wwa/index.htm

[Mojo]

Edit: Deleted - I hadn't noticed that this was a revival of an old thread.

[TX50]

The TV show "Deadliest Catch" caught a rogue wave on video:

l_8hOai9hGQ

- Dr. Trintignant

This is what Aberdeen (Scotland) trawlermen used to call a "lump o' water".
They were usually mentioned with a respectful awe in fisher stories.

[Travis]

We had this discussion before, here. Someone was also outraged at the incompetence of scientists. As before, let me clear up some things.

Ocean science is a very expensive discipline.
Ocean science is a particularly hard discipline.
Until a couple of decades ago, ocean science wasn't a particularly sexy discipline.

Even today simple things, like an adequate bathymetry, are nonexistent for the most of the ocean. Our knowledge of the oceans is still sketchy, and will continue to be for a long time.

Now, picture yourself as a scientist 20 year ago. You have anecdotal evidence of such monster waves, and you want to study them. Against all odds, you manage to get a monster budget of 2 million dollars.

How do you proceed?

I think the fist thing to do would be to inventory eyewitness accounts and look for consistent accounts that might indicate key regions where study should be focused. Then examination of ship damage (ideally first hand but also, if the ships have been repaired, their records) along with the emplacement of rudimentary wave monitors on existing offshore structures--like what was eventually done on the Draupner--would follow.

Alternatively one can just get some grad students to tag along on fishing trawlers in storms.

[cj.23]

Giant squid, and now monster waves. What's next? Mermaids? ;)


Perhaps I can set up a profitable business hunting Mermaids off the North Norfolk coast, like the trekkers who pay money to look for Bigfoot in the US? Anyone up for this? :)

Fascinating article, thanks Richard.

cj x

[casebro]

My understanding of rogue wavers is not a harmonic of multiple small waves traveling in one direction at different speeds, all catching up to one another. It is many small waves, all traveling in different directions, which will statistically occasionally all meet, making the "lump o' water". NOT traveling like a tsunami, but just an instantaneous lump that dissipates as quickly as water flows. Think of two sets of waves at right angles. Wouldn't there be peaks at every intersection ? The oceans actually look like the fingers of those waffly "egg crate" foam pads? Now add more sets of waves, coming from every direction.

Unseen along a coast, since the coast stops all waves from coming from inland, cutting the input by 50%. Closeness to an island would also cut the input the same. And perhaps halving the input makes only 1/16 the lump?

A computer simulation shouldn't be too hard to do. Where is that "science guy"?

[Travis]

I should point out that my issue here isn't the lack of resources directed towards investigating this but the obstinate refusal to even consider that it might be possible. It's one thing to say "maybe those waves are real but we don't have the money to investigate" and another to say "there is no way in hell those waves are real because the model doesn't predict them!" I suppose the issue is with when scientific theory turns into an infallible dogma.

[Perpetual Student]

So, here it is; just a bunch of bull:

"Loss estimates
A widely spread claim that around 200 large ships have been sunk in recent years by 'freak' waves has never been substantiated.[36] There are a tiny number of cases in recent years where no obvious explanation has been found for the loss of a ship, but according to the Lloyd's Register–Fairplay casualty database, fire or poor maintenance are more likely causes. The claim first appeared in the terms of reference for the EU's Max Wave project in 2001, without any supporting evidence. It was phrased as "200 supertankers or containerships of 200 metres (660 ft) and over sunk in the past 20 years". According to Lloyd's Register, only 124 ships of this size were lost in that time period (1981–2001); the majority being due to the Iran Iraq war.[36] The claim achieved wider currency after it was picked up by the European Space Agency in its 2004 press release about freak waves observed from space (see External Links below)."
Wikipedia

[Megalodon]

I should point out that my issue here isn't the lack of resources directed towards investigating this but the obstinate refusal to even consider that it might be possible.

I don't think it was so much "obstinate refusal" as "casual dismissal". Sailors don't make the most trustworthy eyewitnesses, and the cases where ships are hit and survive are, if I remember the last discussion correctly, one or two.

Also it's good not to confuse big waves with rogue waves. Big waves are normal, specially in a storm. Rogue waves are monstrous, and appear out of nowhere. It stretches the imagination, and it's no surprise for me that reliable data was needed before looking deeper into the matter.

It's one thing to say "maybe those waves are real but we don't have the money to investigate" and another to say "there is no way in hell those waves are real because the model doesn't predict them!" I suppose the issue is with when scientific theory turns into an infallible dogma.

Actually the model said that the waves were real but extremely rare. New information came in, the models were revised. That's how it's supposed to work. I am glad that someone picked it up and started working on it, but don't think for a moment that this is a very important topic that was somehow overlooked out of sheer stubbornness. It was, and is, of marginal importance, wickedly cool as it might be.

[Toke]

I recall reading sometime ago, that these monster waves were only prevalent in certain places in the world. I recall the east coast of Africa being one.

I have a number of yachting friends who often sail from Cape Town to Durban. They specifically avoid the deep ocean off the Transkei Wild Coast because of rough seas and large waves.

[sailor annecdote]
I have only heard of them off South Africa.
To avoid them you are supposed to either hug the coast or stay out on deep water.
Older bulkcarriers are supposed to be particulary vulnerable, the stress of loading them leads to metal fatigue in the hull. [/sailor annecdote]

[cj.23]

[sailor annecdote]
I have only heard of them off South Africa.
To avoid them you are supposed to either hug the coast or stay out on deep water.
Older bulkcarriers are supposed to be particulary vulnerable, the stress of loading them leads to metal fatigue in the hull. [/sailor annecdote]


There was a Discovery Europe show called I believe "Monster Waves" on this whole thing last year, and yes they explained the oceanography of that. I'll see if I can find it anywhere on the web

cj x

[Skwinty]

This is especially true in the case of the notoriously dangerous Agulhas current off the east coast of South Africa, but rogue wave associations are also found with other currents such as the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic, interacting with waves coming down from the Labrador Sea.

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMOKQL26WD_index_0.html link posted by Wauthan

[MG1962]

[sailor annecdote]
I have only heard of them off South Africa.
To avoid them you are supposed to either hug the coast or stay out on deep water.
Older bulkcarriers are supposed to be particulary vulnerable, the stress of loading them leads to metal fatigue in the hull. [/sailor annecdote]

Some forms of bulk cargos like bauxite are extremely abrassive and have been known to literally rub the bottom of a ship away. The USS Cyclops, claimed to be the largest ship lost in the Bermuda triangle is thought to have been lost this way during a storm of Norfolk.

To combat this a lot of carriers have ridges and baffles built into the hull to stop the movement of the material

[mhaze]

How would you avoid such a thing? It's not crazy to say that if you see one, you are going to get hit by it, so I don't think it is unreasonable to figure they are mostly dead.

OTOH, this reminds me a lot of the story about tornados (or water spouts, if you prefer) over the ocean. Every once in a while you will hear that tornados can't form over the ocean. The problem is, if one does, how will you know?.... Because I've seen them.

[BenBurch]

Some forms of bulk cargos like bauxite are extremely abrassive and have been known to literally rub the bottom of a ship away. The USS Cyclops, claimed to be the largest ship lost in the Bermuda triangle is thought to have been lost this way during a storm of Norfolk.

To combat this a lot of carriers have ridges and baffles built into the hull to stop the movement of the material

Grain can destroy a ship if it gets wet. The grain malts and expands and literally bursts the ship.

[fuelair]

We had this discussion before, here. Someone was also outraged at the incompetence of scientists. As before, let me clear up some things.

Ocean science is a very expensive discipline.
Ocean science is a particularly hard discipline.
Until a couple of decades ago, ocean science wasn't a particularly sexy discipline.

Even today simple things, like an adequate bathymetry, are nonexistent for the most of the ocean. Our knowledge of the oceans is still sketchy, and will continue to be for a long time.

Now, picture yourself as a scientist 20 year ago. You have anecdotal evidence of such monster waves, and you want to study them. Against all odds, you manage to get a monster budget of 2 million dollars.

How do you proceed?Humorously, I was about to respond to Travis in pretty much those words. Even many big fans of science do not truly understand the costs and difficulty of doing many of these types of hunts/experiments.

That is also why real scientists do not go off trying to find bigfoots/Loch Ness style things, etc. Evidence first, then hunt/research.:):)

[Tim Thompson]

... but the obstinate refusal to even consider that it might be possible. ... I suppose the issue is with when scientific theory turns into an infallible dogma.
This is entirely wrong. There was never any "refusal", obstinate or otherwise, to consider that it might be possible. Quite the opposite, it only takes about 10 seconds to realize that it must be possible. The evidence was that there were rare large waves in the open ocean. Simple linear wave interference will generate rare large waves in the open ocean. Problem solved and that's all the research necessary to solve it. So, far from "obstinate refusal to even consider", scientists considered and solved the problem that was presented.

It was only after the advent of satellite imagery that waves in the open ocean could be globally mapped, and only then was it even possible to know that the actual frequency of such large waves was significantly in excess of what was thought possible. So it was not until then that scientists were even confronted with a real problem to solve, which they went to work on at once.

Remember, I said before that scientists "work for a living". There is a lot of money in the global shipping business, so once a real rogue wave problem presented itself, there was plenty of money and plenty of resources available to work on it. If that were not the case, who knows, maybe scientists would still not be working on it. Don't fool yourself into thinking that scientists can just drop what they are doing and run off to study every story everybody tells. Quite apart from science, society does not work that way.

That was another historic failure of the scientific community. Instead of dismissing Wegener's ideas totally they should have themselves embarked to look for causes. You don't deny that a tree fell over because you can't think of how it would have. You would take the tree falling over as the starting point and then investigate what might have caused it.
Wegener's ideas were not dismissed, and they did in fact look for causes. They found none, which is no great surprise, since we now know that it was impossible for scientists at that time ever to discover the real cause. So the result was that nobody could find a cause, even though they accepted the validity of Wegener's evidence. They assumed that there must be some other explanation than continental drift, since they could find no way to make continents drift. And that is what they should have done.

Only the advent of the technology required to map the bottom of the ocean, and the motivation to use that technology extensively (WWII), made it possible for scientists to make the key discovery to solve Wegener's problem. That was the discovery of the mid ocean ridge under the Atlantic, which neither Wegener nor any of his contemporaries could possibly have known about. That discovery lead to the discovery of ocean spreading and the concept of plates and plate tectonics.

This is how science really works. Some problems simply cannot be solved, no matter how hard you try, until the tools are available to solve it, be they tools of technology or tools of mathematics & theory. For instance, Isaac Newton was well aware of the problem of general relativity, and tried himself to solve it. But he lacked the tools, and it took over 200 years before Einstein could solve the problem. Likewise, scientists were well aware of the continental drift problem; they did not ignore either Wegener or his data, despite popular tales to the contrary. But they too had to await the advent of the tools necessary, before they could solve the problem. Problems don't get solved just because you want to solve them.

[Toke]

Grain can destroy a ship if it gets wet. The grain malts and expands and literally bursts the ship.


We were alongside the (only) pier in Noachotk in Mauritania and heard an argument over the radio.
It was the russian bulkcarrier behind us, it was halfway unloaded and for some reason the port autorities wanted it to go out at anchor.

It would have been suicide.
They were loaded with grain and there were heavy swells.
Grain flow like water and would have capcised the ship in short order.
After a while with mutual treaths, raising the gangway, and calling of superiurs, they agreed on returning a few hundred tons of grain in sacks to keep the rest down.


The loading of ships subject them to 3 primary kinds of stress.
Bending: If you put all the cargo in the middle, the front and rear end will point up.
Shear: A full cargohold pressing down in front of an emty one lifting.
Torsion: A cargohold with only containers in one side, the next with containers in the other side.

These are calculated based on the cargo weigths supplyed from shore, and then compensated with ballastwater.

A bulkcarrier is usually loaded/unloaded one or two holds at a time. That gives high stres on the hull.
The loading itself is unhealty too, the cargo is dropped from high up and impact the hullplates pretty hard.

The construction itself with large open holds is also rather vulnerable to water.

All in all, old bulkcarriers are the most likely to dissapear in a storm.

[BenBurch]

A really good book on the things that can take ships is "Great Lakes Shipwrecks and Survivals" by William. Ratigan. (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0802870104?ie=UTF8&tag=thewhiteroses-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0802870104)

[mhaze]

ESA satellites have the evidence that humungous waves up to 25m tall are more common than you'd think.



Scary stuff, really. Although the oceans are big, and presumably the chances of meeting one of these waves must be small, or we'd have had the proof sooner than this (unless most people who see 'em get drowned, of course)

Giant squid, and now monster waves. What's next? Mermaids? ;)What's next?

Lituya Bay. Wave 1700+ feet high.

Where's that surfboard?

[Bjorn]

The claim of "200 large ships lost to freak waves in the past two decades" was published in The Times (May 2006). The earliest reference seems to be in the press release by the European Space Agency (cited at the page bottom), and first quoted as "200 large ships of 600 ft long or more in the past two decades sunk without trace". At the time the claim was made, there had only been 124 ships of that size lost at sea in the time frame, according to Lloyd's Register, all with clear, known causes. The main culprits were the Iranian and Iraqi air forces in the 1980s; Iran–Iraq War.

At the time this thread was started I actually had access to the Lloyd's register and there is no way the claim "200 large ships lost to freak waves in the past two decades" could be true.

Big waves, on the other hand, exist - I have sailed around Cape the Good Hope and it was scary at times.

(And what happened to my posts in the old part of this thread :confused:)

[Megalodon]

Sorry, I missed your reply to my question.

I think the fist thing to do would be to inventory eyewitness accounts and look for consistent accounts that might indicate key regions where study should be focused.

Eyewitness accounts are, in general, worthless. If you put belief on eyewitness accounts you can roam the american forests in search of Bigfoot.

Then examination of ship damage (ideally first hand but also, if the ships have been repaired, their records)

This is more feasible, but it gives you what, 3 points of data? A dozen? Your time is running, and you have that money to justify.

along with the emplacement of rudimentary wave monitors on existing offshore structures--like what was eventually done on the Draupner--would follow.

Ok, now we're talking. How many wave monitors? Where? It's a very big pond out there, and no amount of focusing the scope changes that. Put 10k for each monitor, plus 50k/day of ship time, to deploy them. The numbers are very conservative, sale price for you. Of course, if you want the data to be relayed by satellite, forget about it, it's 20 years ago. Better factor in the ship time to retrieve the buoys. I can also tell you that around one fifth (again, very conservative) will be lost, either destroyed by the sea, lost to a malfunctioning beacon or taken by fishermen that think it makes a great buoy for them (we had fishermen trying to take an array of experiments out of the coast of Vigo in 97. Luckily it was a short-time incubation, and we returned for retrieval on time to catch them). Also factor in at least one grad-student to do the lifting, although you can't really justify such budget with only one grad.

My point is that you don't start these kind of enterprise without reliable data to back it up, and without the proper tools to do it. In this case, you need to use satellite imagery. Nothing else will do for this sampling, period. Twenty years ago, no amount of money thrown at it would have made a difference. The only result would have been to burn a couple of grads and your career.


Alternatively one can just get some grad students to tag along on fishing trawlers in storms.

Fishing trawlers that see rogue waves normally don't live to tell the tale. We are talking >25m here. There are big storm waves out there, I've seen them and felt them. Not really rare. But rogues are a different league, and they are rare. The chances of visual observation are slim to none, and if you do see them then, in the immortal words of Chief Brody, you're gonna need a bigger boat...