Between a rock and a very wet place: Man confronts Mother Nature as giant waves batter Australia's Bondi Beach

Daily Mail, By MATT FORTUNE, 16th August 2010

We've all splashed water over our face in a bid to wake up in the morning. But one Australian man has taken it to the extreme.

Standing perilously close to the edge of a rock face, the fearless individual stood head-on with Mother Nature as she threw giant whitewater waves at North Bondi Beach in Sydney yesterday.

Brave but foolish, he was soaked by the explosion of water which erupted over Ben Buckler headland in the Australia's New South Wales region.

Head on: The man stands on the edge of the rock face, bracing himself as the awesome power of a massive wave near Australia's Bondi beach

The man had climbed over protective bars several feet further back from the edge in his pursuit of the ultimate wake-up call and was fortunate to survive as the area was engulfed by water.

Right across New South Wales, coastline was battered by similar waves ramped up by 50mph winds.

Sydney Harbour was turned into a no-go zone for ferries after the Australian Bureau of Meteorology issued warnings of impending gales for most of the coast.

Dangerous: The man had climbed over a set of protective bars further back from the edge of the rock face

Specialist marine forecasting and surf camera service Coastalwatch said a rare weather event and the closeness of the low pressure system was the reason for the ocean's violence.

'We had something called 'captured fetch' happen and it's pretty rare here,' chief forecaster Ben McCartney said.

Waves are created when wind blows over the a certain area of the seas. This is called the fetch. A 'captured fetch' happens when a storm moves in the same direction of a fetch, so that the wind keeps pushing the same waves following them.

Waves in Java Sea to reach 3.5 meters

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Sun, 01/10/2010 3:47 PM

Waves in the Java Sea will rise from 1.5 to 3.5 meters in the next two days, the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) has warned.

"The wind will blow at high speeds and heavy rain will fall," Sinta Andayani, an official at the Maritim Perak branch office of the BMKG, told kompas.com on Sunday.

High waves will also hit Bawean, Masalembu, and Sumenep waters, she added.

A motorboat was damaged and consequently ran aground after being battered by strong sea waves at the weekend.

The science of catastrophe: tsunamis and how they work

Five years ago, 200,000 lives were wiped out. Experts expect another a huge quake under Indonesia.

Los Angeles Times

Residents of Indonesia's Lampulo community pray in memory of the 2004 tsunami near a house that had a boat come to rest on its roof. (Hotli Simanjuntak, EPA / December 26, 2009)

Reuters, December 26, 2009

The devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, caused by a major earthquake under the seafloor north of Aceh in Sumatra, struck five years ago today, killing more than 200,000 people. Scientists say another massive undersea earthquake is long overdue beneath the Mentawai islands in Indonesia and could trigger another deadly tsunami any time.

Here is some of the science behind the process.

How tsunamis occur

In the Sumatra area, tectonic plates meet in a subduction zone -- a place where the boundaries of one plate are forced beneath the other plate. The Indo-Australian plate is sliding northeastward (about 2.8 inches a year) and dipping under the Eurasian plate, along a fault line called the Sunda megathrust which runs southwest from Myanmar down Indonesia toward Timor.

Tremendous geological strain builds over many decades until a section of the megathrust gives way. This rupture causes the oceanic plates beneath Sumatra to lurch forward suddenly, by many yards, in a big earthquake.

If the ocean floor ruptures, it suddenly moves a massive amount of water. This is what happened in the earthquake that caused the deadly Indian Ocean tsunamis of December 2004.

Major quakes that rupture the ocean floor are usually shallow quakes occurring at a depth of less than 44 miles. The quake that caused the 2004 tsunami was about 20 miles below the seafloor.

Tsunamis rise up

On the ocean surface, tsunamis start as a ripple capable of passing under a ship unnoticed, but they become giants as they approach land and the ocean becomes shallow.

A tsunami is not a single wave, but a series of waves. The waves can travel across the ocean at speeds of up to 620 miles an hour, the speed of a jet aircraft.

The vast size of the Pacific Ocean and the large earthquakes associated with the Ring of Fire combine to produce deadly tsunamis in the Asia-Pacific. A tsunami can travel across the Pacific Ocean in less than a day.

As the waves approach land, the ocean recedes dramatically, exposing reefs as the waves draw the water out.

As the trough of the wave drags along the sea floor, slowing it down, the crest rises up dramatically and sends a giant wall of whitewater onto land. The first wave may not be the biggest.

The destructive force of a tsunami comes not from the height of the wave, but from the volume of water moving.

It is as if the ocean floods the coast, smashing everything in its path, and then just as quickly recedes.

Many people who survive the initial wave impact are washed out to sea as the tsunami recedes.

World's worst

• The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was the world's most deadly, killing about 226,000 people, with a wave height about 100 feet.
  
  
• The world's biggest tsunami, caused by a magnitude 8 quake that caused a massive landslide, hit the remote Lituya Bay in Alaska on July 9, 1958. As the wave swept through Lituya Bay, it was forced to rise up, reaching an estimated height of 1,720 feet on the other side of the bay, becoming a mega-tsunami. The sparsely populated bay was devastated, but damage was localized.
  
  
• The Krakatau island volcanic eruption of 1883 generated giant waves reaching heights of 125 feet, killing some 30,000 people. It was the most violent volcanic eruption in modern history.

Sources: Singapore-based Earth Observatory; School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne; Australia Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, Hawaii; Tsunami Research Center, USC

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Bad weather forces Bengkalis fishermen to stop sailing

The Jakarta Post, Wed, 11/25/2009 1:09 AM

The Bengkalis administration of Riau has urged thousands of fishermen to stop sailing pending stormy sea conditions in the Malacca Strait.

Bad weather coupled with heavy rainfall, storm and strong waves have forced fishermen not to go sea over the past week.

Some ships have canceled their schedules to bring passengers to some destinations to avoid possible sinking.

The administration spokesperson Johansyah Syafri said that his office had told all village heads to monitor the fishermen's activities.

“We expect the fishermen not to force themselves to go to sea amidst bad weather,” Johansyah said.

Didik Sutrisno, a resident of Bantan Air village, said that fishermen who had no skills other than sailing would spend time by repairing their damaged boats or nets.

“They will borrow money from their employees to make ends meet while waiting for weather to be normal again,” Didik said.

One Reported Dead as Ferry Sinks off Indonesia's Sumatra Island; Rescue Underway

The Jakarta Globe

Ferry accidents are common in Indonesian waters. The 'Senopati Nusantara', above, sank off the coast of Java in late 2006 with some 500 people aboard. (Photo: EPA)

A ferry carrying 213 has sunk in rough seas near Indonesia's Riau islands, killing at least one person, police said.

Search teams are looking for survivors from the Dumai Express 10 which was sailing from Batam near Singapore to Dumai island in Riau when it ran into massive waves, Riau police chief Puji Hartanto told Metro TV.

The victim was a small child, according to kompas.com.

Survivors were spotted floating at sea, Hartanto said.

Separately, another ferry, the Dumai Express 15 with 278 people on board, ran aground after it was hit by large waves, said Riau police spokesman Yasin Kosasih.

All passengers and crew survived, he added. The ferry was travelling between Batam and Moro island.

Indonesia relies heavily on ferry services to connect the many islands in the sprawling archipelago, but accidents are common, largely due to years of under-investment in infrastructure and a tendency to overload ferries.

Reuters JG

Related Articles:

Rescuers temporarily stop searching for victims of sunken ferry in Indonesia

Rescuers seek ferry survivors

Officials to Investigate Riau Ferry Disaster

Indonesia passenger ferry sinks off Sumatra

Punishing waves

The Jakarta Post, Mon, 09/07/2009 6:35 PM

Residents of Podiaman, Banda Aceh, observe high waves that brought down a number of trees on a nearby beach. The high waves have destroyed hundreds of houses along the beach, near Banda Aceh. JP/Hotli Simanjuntak

80 whales and dolphins stranded in Australia

The Jakarta Post, The Associated Press, Perth, Australia | Mon, 03/23/2009 11:28 AM

About 80 whales and dolphins were stranded Monday on a remote southwest Australian beach, and most of them died before rescuers could reach them, conservation officials said.

Volunteers and government officers struggled to save about 25 that were being battered by rough seas in Hamelin Bay in Western Australia state, the state Conservation Department said in a statement. The rescuers were trying to stabilize the mammals before freeing them from the sand and guiding them back to sea, it said.

It was the latest mass beaching of whales in Australia. Strandings happen periodically in Tasmania, in the southeast, as whales pass during their migration to and from Antarctic waters, but scientists do not know why it happens. It is unusual, however, for whales and dolphins to become beached together.

The department said the group of false killer whales and bottlenose dolphins became stranded early Monday morning on a stretch of beach about 4 miles (6 kilometers) long.

"Our main priority is to ensure the welfare of the remaining alive whales before we herd them back out to sea," Greg Mair, the departmental officer leading the rescue said in a statement.

Returning the whales to the sea depends on the conditions and the strength of the animals, he said, adding that current "ocean conditions are quite dangerous with rough seas and large waves."

Earlier this month, 194 pilot whales and seven dolphins became stranded on a sandbar in Tasmania and only 54 whales and five dolphins were able to be saved. In January, 45 sperm whales died after becoming beached on a different Tasmanian sandbar. Last November, 150 long-finned pilot whales died after beaching on a rocky coastline one week after a pod of 60 also came ashore on the island state. Only 11 were rescued.

Ketapang Port Closed Due To Strong Wind and Wave

Wednesday, 18 March, 2009 | 17:18 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: Port officials at Ketapang Port in Banyuwangi, East Java, have closed the port as strong wind and high wave disrupted two vessels from Bali on docking at the port.

The port stopped its operation at 13:50 as winds gust up to 20 kilometers per hour and waves raise between 0.2 and 2 meters. Vehicles inside the two boats from Bali reportedly bumped each other as the wave and winds swung the boats in the Bali strait.

Agus Hidayat spokesman for the Sea, Coast, and Port Guard said "we have not decided when the port will be opened." There were 12 ferry boats and six Landing Craft Marines-type cargo vessels at the port according to officials. Dozens of trucks waiting to be transported to Bali have create long queue at the port.

IKA NINGTYAS