{"id":2514,"date":"2018-09-23T15:22:31","date_gmt":"2018-09-23T15:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/?p=2514"},"modified":"2018-09-23T15:22:46","modified_gmt":"2018-09-23T15:22:46","slug":"notes-on-turbidity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/newecologies\/notes-on-turbidity\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes on Turbidity (The Bay as It Is)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Image<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n

I. The Turbidity of Classification<\/strong><\/p>\n

Turbid.<\/strong> Latin\u00a0turbidus<\/em>\u00a0confused, turbid, from\u00a0turba<\/em>, confusion, crowd, probably from Greek\u00a0tyrb\u0113, <\/em>confusion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Measuring turbidity, defined as the cloudiness or haziness of a liquid, is relatively straightforward. Submerge a Secchi disk in a body of water; the depth at which it can no longer be seen yields the Secchi depth value. Additionally, to determine light attenuation, divide this number (in meters) by 1.7 to yield the extinction coefficient\u00a0<\/em>(k)\u00a0<\/em>of the sample.<\/p>\n

Though the classification of turbidity is straightforward, classifications systems themselves become turbid, troubled, confounded. Such is the case of Ed \u201cDoc\u201d Ricketts\u2019 unwritten handbook of the marine invertebrates of San Francisco Bay, The Bay Book<\/em>, which exists only as a ten-page proposal in the Department of Special Collections and University Archives at Stanford University. Proposing to investigate \u201cthe Bay as it is, considering \u2028the sociological implications of what lives where,\u201d The Bay Book\u00a0<\/em>promised to take a novel look at the intertidal zone by organizing the space sociologically rather than taxonomically, by habitat rather than by phylum.<\/p>\n

Just shy of one\u00a0year ago, some 77 years after The Bay Book <\/em>was proposed, I took part in a remarkable cross-disciplinary symposium inspired both by Ricketts\u2019 unfinished work troubling taxonomies and the multiple turbidities of San Francisco Bay.\u00a0There was a talk by\u00a0marine biologist John Pearse, a screening of Steve and Mary Albert’s Ricketts documentary “The Great Tidepool,” a concert of sea shanties by The Fishwives Trio, a boat tour aboard the Derek M. Baylis of the Richmond shoreline, which looked\u00a0at Indigenous and settler histories of the\u00a0bay and shore, and a Ricketts-inspired Bay Cabaret at the very site of\u00a0Ricketts’ former salon in North Beach.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Screenshot<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1939, one year before he proposed The Bay Book<\/em>, Ricketts was able to publish Between Pacific Tides<\/em>, a guidebook to the intertidal zone, whose taxonomic disarray was met with extreme skepticism from the establishment and was only published by Stanford University Press after many interventions by Ricketts\u2019 advocates, including John Steinbeck. But its popularity was unmatched by any intertidal guidebook of its time, and it has inspired generations of marine enthusiasts. And behind all of these insights into marine life\u2014and into the ideal form of documentation for the non-specialist\u2014was Ricketts\u2019 attempts to reorganize and reclassify the inter-tidal zone by habitat, <\/i>beginning with his survey cards.<\/p>\n

\"Echinoidea_card\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Filmmakers Steve and Mary Albert discuss Ricketts\u2019 elaborate\u00a0and diagram Rickett’s scientific system\u00a0here.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Screenshot\u00a0II.<\/strong>\u00a0Disturbed Landscapes\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Disturb.<\/strong> Middle English\u00a0disturben, destourben<\/em>, from Anglo-French & Latin; Anglo-French\u00a0destorber<\/em>, from Latin\u00a0disturbare<\/em>, from\u00a0dis-<\/em>\u00a0+\u00a0turbare<\/em>, to throw into disorder, from\u00a0turba<\/em>, disorder.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A different form of turbidity emerges a few steps inland. Vessel and Wong\u2019s Natural History of Vacant Lots<\/em>, which marked the 50th\u00a0<\/sup>volume of the\u00a0California Natural History Guide series at UC Press, offers a guide to plants and animals in disturbed urban sites\u00a0<\/em>in California and in particularly the East Bay area. As of the time of publication in 1987 a federal study had found that up to twenty percent of urban land was \u201cuncommitted\u201d open space: surplus military property, abandoned land, derelict property adjacent to waterfronts, and waysides and roadsides including building frontages, edges of cemeteries, playgrounds, and parking areas.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot<\/a><\/p>\n

Vessel and Wong show that these disturbed sites, particularly so-called vacant lots, form a vibrant ecosystem and that their accessibility for most urban and suburban dwellers makes them of special interest: \u201cthis availability makes these sites excellent places to learn of the interrelationship of man with his environment and to gain an appreciation of ecosystems.\u201d Though no mention is made of Ricketts in this volume, their \u201csociological\u201d approach (in Ricketts\u2019 sense: \u201cthe relation of given organisms and societies of organisms to other nearby organisms and societies, and in the relations of this complex to the almost equal complexity of the physical environment\u201d) and their focus on habit over taxonomic orders very much follows the kind of study pioneered by Ricketts.<\/p>\n

Their guide takes measure of a biogeographical turbidity characteristic not only of vacant lots but potentially any site, visibly disturbed or otherwise: communities of aliens, of escaped cultivated and ornamental plants distributed via impurities in seed packs, ballast from boats and sweepings from freight cars, packing materials, wind water, and animals.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"87286100312000L\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

III. Staying with the Trouble\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Trouble.<\/strong> Middle English, from Anglo-French\u00a0trubler<\/em>, from Vulgar Latin\u00a0*turbulare<\/em>, from\u00a0*turbulus<\/em>, agitated, alteration of Latin\u00a0turbulentus<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of Vessel and Wong\u2019s many suggested activities\u2014identifying plants, observing life histories of insects, recording observations of ecological interrelationships, such as other species\u2019 effects on seed germination, checking the impact of humans, dogs, and cats, and studying seasonal changes\u2014none involve the\u00a0restoration of a pre-disturbed landscape. In this way they advocate a form of what Donna Haraway, in her new book that was launched around the corner from the Exploratorium at City Lights books<\/a>, calls \u201cstaying with the trouble\u201d:<\/p>\n

Our task is to make trouble, to stir up potent response to devastating events, as well as to settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places [\u2026]In fact, staying with the trouble requires learning to be truly present, not as a vanishing pivot between awful or edenic pasts and apocalyptic or salvific futures, but as mortal critters entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, meanings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A guide book to the aftermath of the devastating anthroturbation<\/a> of the planet’s surface and subsurface might not be the most potent of responses, but the minimal ethics of care involved in such observation facilitates the rebuilding of a more-than-human oikos by these nonhuman agents. Here I suspect that the postcolonial writer and poet \u00c9douard Glissant\u2019s \u201caesthetics of turbulence,\u201d with its emphasis on the encounter of difference and the rejection of totalizing systems, might offer an impetus for the kinds of transformation that Ricketts, Vessel, Wong, and even Haraway observe but struggle to theorize.<\/p>\n

\"u3Y7lq8z_400x400\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Incidentally, the freshwater Secchi disk also forms the extinction symbol<\/a>: a pictogram of an hourglass within a sphere. A memento mori rather than a meter, reminding us that freshwater is running out and saltwater intrusions proceed apace. However, this misreading of the disk\u2014perhaps yet another\u00a0of the many misuses of \u201cextinction\u201d in settler histories\u2014 is a useful way of taking a reading of an anthroturbated planet marked by \u201cdiminished expectations\u201d (Anna Tsing) and \u201creduced ecologies\u201d (Ursula Heise). Extinction as coefficient of anthropoturbation. It involves attending to the small (like Haraway\u2019s Pimoa cthulhu <\/em>or Rickett\u2019s Strongylocentrotus\u00a0purpuratus<\/em>), the apparently insignificant (like Vessel and Wong\u2019s vacant lot), suspended sediment particles\u2014all of which partake in a much larger commotion and the co-motion of myriad unfinished configurations and undetermined coefficients. Including those philo-turbations of language.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I. The Turbidity of Classification Turbid. Latin\u00a0turbidus\u00a0confused, turbid, from\u00a0turba, confusion, crowd, probably from Greek\u00a0tyrb\u0113, confusion. Measuring turbidity, defined as the cloudiness or haziness of a liquid, is relatively straightforward. Submerge a Secchi […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2515,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,21,14,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newecologies","category-science-technology","category-theory","category-urbanities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2514"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2542,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2514\/revisions\/2542"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}