5
Blue Mind at Work and Play
Out of water, I am nothing.
—DUKE KAHANAMOKU (1890–1968), FIVE-TIME OLYMPIC SWIMMING MEDALIST, WATER POLO PLAYER, AND ONE OF THE FATHERS OF MODERN SURFING
Open-water swimming champion Bruckner Chase may not be as versatile as Duke Kahanamoku, but his exploits are still pretty impressive. Only the second person in history to successfully swim the 25 jellyfish-strewn miles across Monterey Bay in California, Chase also has swum the length and breadth of Lake Tahoe (22.5 and 12.0 miles), around Pennock Island in Alaska (8.2 miles) and three of the barrier islands in New Jersey (22.5 miles, 19.6 miles, and 16.5 miles), and across the channel from Lanai to Maui (9.6 miles). A retail operations executive by profession and endurance athlete since he was nineteen, Chase has turned his love of the water into a wide-ranging career: a trainer of lifeguards, a developer of open-water swimming programs for the Special Olympics, an ocean advocate sponsored by grants from the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation—and now, a coach to youth in American Samoa teaching teenagers how to become swimming, water safety, and ocean culture mentors. “Something profound happened to me when I started getting into the ocean,” Chase said. “It keeps driving me to help others discover and embrace their own personal connection to water.”
That personal connection is important to anyone who chooses a profession or sport that’s in, on, under, or around the water. And that’s a lot of people. In 2011 in the United States alone, for example, 21.5 million people did some kind of fitness swimming, 56.1 million Americans fished, 2.48 million people surfed, 2.8 million scuba dived, 9.3 million snorkeled, 3.8 million sailed, 7.5 million people jet-skied, 4.6 million water-skied, 10.17 million people canoed, 7.3 million kayaked, 1.38 million windsurfed, and 1.6 million went stand-up paddleboarding. In 2012 recreational motorboating added another 88 million—a full 37.8 percent of the U.S. population.1 Around the world, more than 500 million people choose water-based recreation as a means of exercise, escape, challenge, relaxation, excitement, and play. (The number is much higher if you include those who find spiritual connection via water. For example, tens of millions of people bathe in the Ganges River during the Indian festival called Kumbh Mela, the largest gathering of people for a religious purpose.)
On the professional side, the range of water-based work is equally impressive, from lifeguards to fishers to sailors to scientists, those who teach water skills, or supply seafood for our dinner plates, or provide and maintain the equipment and facilities needed for all forms of water-centric recreation, the men and women who serve their countries’ economic and security interests in the navy, coast guard, and merchant marine. Some of the men and women in these professions face great danger, even death—as TV shows like Deadliest Catch and movies like The Perfect Storm and Captain Phillips remind us. People sailing the waterways can spend months away from dry land, in close quarters, working shifts that result in fragmented sleep and bone-draining fatigue. Why are some people drawn to work in an element that is far more lethal than earth or air?
And make no mistake about it: water is far more lethal. In 2012 only 362 people died in commercial airplane crashes worldwide. In the United States in 2012, there were a total of 1,539 crashes of any kind of civilian aircraft (commercial, commuter, private planes), with 447 fatalities. In contrast, the World Health Organization estimates that worldwide, there are 388,000 people who drown per year. This figure does not take into account people who drown in floods or as a result of marine transport.2 The irresistible pull of water isn’t true for everyone, of course; for some people their water-based professions are simply jobs, just as for some the laps they swim at the local pool are merely a convenient way to exercise. But read or listen to what white-water rafters and kayakers or swimmers or surfers or divers or sailors or fishers say about water, and you’ll hear the language of people who are in love with, if not addicted to, their sport or profession.
In the Water: Swimming
This summer I swam in the ocean,
And I swam in a swimming pool,
Salt my wounds, chlorine my eyes,
I’m a self-destructive fool, a self-destructive fool.
—LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III, “SWIMMING SONG”
There are several reasons why swimming is the fourth most popular recreational activity in the United States, and the one people most aspire to take up if they’re not swimming already.3 First is convenience: all you need is yourself and a body of water. But it’s the ways in which we interact with water that make swimming both healthful and enjoyable for body and brain.
It all comes down to viscosity, pressure, and buoyancy. Archimedes (the Greek philosopher who supposedly came up with the concept of water displacement while getting into a bathtub) stated that when an object enters the water, water moves out of its way. At the same time the water pushes upward against the object with a force equal to the weight of water displaced. That force creates buoyancy, or the ability to float. If an object is compact and dense (like a boat anchor, for example), it’s heavier than the amount of water displaced, and it sinks. If an object is either light (like an inflated beach ball) or its weight is spread out over an area big enough to displace water equal to its weight (like the hull of a boat), it floats.
So why should the human body, which would seem pretty dense and compact for its weight, float? Easy—recall that the body (our blood, bones, organs, skin, and muscle) is up to 78 percent water when we are born (slowly decreasing with age), so we have close to the same density as the medium in which we swim. We’re also around 15 percent fat, which is lighter than water, and we have lungs that are filled with air, which makes us more buoyant (like that beach ball). Therefore, a 200-pound human body actually weighs only around 10 pounds in water.4 (This relative weightlessness is why, since the 1960s, astronauts have used water immersion to train for missions in outer space.) This also explains why such small flotation devices can keep us afloat.
But there’s much more to the experience of swimming than buoyancy. Water has a tangible quality, a weight, and it has 600 times the resistance of air. Unlike earth or air, we can explore water in multiple dimensions—up, down, sideways; as neurologist Oliver Sacks comments, we feel tangibly supported and embraced by this “thick, transparent medium.”5 The resistance and pressure of water contribute to swimming’s role as one of the best forms of both aerobic exercise and muscle toning. Because the pressure of water outside the body is greater than the pressure inside, explains Bruce E. Becker, director of the National Aquatics and Sports Medicine Institute at Washington State University, water forces blood away from the extremities and toward the heart and lungs.6 The heart responds by upping its effort, pushing this extra volume of blood more efficiently with each heartbeat, and thus circulating upwards of 30 percent more blood volume than normal throughout the body. To cope with this increased load, the arterial blood vessels relax and create less resistance to blood flow.
Here’s the intriguing part: one of the hormones that regulates arterial function is catecholamine, and catecholamines are part of the body’s response to stress. As Becker describes it, “During immersion, the body sends out a signal to alter the balance of catecholamines in a manner that is similar to the balance found during relaxation or meditation.” In other words, just being in the water can create a feeling of relaxation and a decrease in stress.
But that’s not all. The lungs are receiving a greater volume of blood as well, which, combined with the pressure that water exerts on the chest wall, makes them work harder to breathe—approximately 60 percent harder than on land. This means that aquatic exercise can strengthen the respiratory muscles and improve their efficiency. In one study that compared aquatic aerobics with “dry” aerobics, Becker discovered that while various forms of aerobics improved fitness levels and some respiratory capacity, only aquatic exercise improved respiratory endurance. The muscles, too, are benefiting from the increased circulation as they receive greater amounts of blood and oxygen. And it’s a good thing, too, because it requires effort to propel the body through water; in swimming, every muscle is benefiting from what is essentially resistance training (one of the best ways to increase both tone and strength). In addition, swimming works the large, smooth muscles of the body, stretching and lengthening the muscles, joints, and ligaments with each stroke, while the head and spine get a good workout with every breath you take. It all means that stroking through the water not only puts you into a psychologically relaxed state, but also makes you physically stronger.
Like other forms of aerobic exercise, swimming can produce the release of endorphins and endocannabinoids (the brain’s natural cannabis-like substances), which reduce the brain’s response to stress and anxiety.7 Some theorize that the feel-good effects of swimming are related to the same “relaxation response” triggered by activities like hatha yoga. In swimming, the muscles are constantly stretching and relaxing in a rhythmic manner, and this movement is accompanied by deep, rhythmic breathing, all of which help to put swimmers into a quasi-meditative state. (We’re going to talk a lot more about this state in a bit.) As one of the greatest competitive swimmers of our time, Michael Phelps, describes it, “I feel most at home in the water. I disappear. That’s where I belong.”
That sense of belonging increases with exposure. Recent studies have shown that regular exercise is associated with an increase in the number of new neurons in the hippocampus, the area of the brain linked to learning and memory.8 More neurons means greater cognitive functionality; this may be the reason why regular aerobic exercise, like swimming, has been shown to help maintain our cognitive abilities as we age.9 But there’s something more going on with the exercise that swimming provides. Even though we spend our first nine months in “water,” we are not born with the ability to swim. We talk about babies “learning” how to crawl, and then walk, and then run, but this happens without instruction. Our brains are designed for the natural emergence of these abilities. But the ways we use our bodies in water—having to time our breaths consciously, reaching up and over and pulling the water toward us, moving the legs independently of the pace that the arms are setting—is nothing like the way we move on land. We must learn how to swim, and this combination of cognitive effort and aerobic exercise has actually been proven to provide the greatest amount of what is called “cognitive reserve”—that is, the mind’s resilience to damage to the brain.
Sadly, according to a 2010 study commissioned by the USA Swimming Foundation, 40 percent of Caucasian children, 60 percent of Hispanic children, and 70 percent of African American children have low or no swimming ability.10 (Worldwide, drowning remains the leading cause of “unintentional injury” deaths among children under the age of five.) Given what we’re learning about the physical and Blue Mind benefits of swimming, this isn’t just a disappointment—it’s a public health crisis.
And that’s why open-water swimmer Bruckner Chase is in American Samoa, a small U.S. territory that sits 15 degrees above the equator and a six-hour plane flight from Hawaii. To help promote ocean awareness, in 2011 he swam the nine miles from Aunu’u Island to Pago Pago Harbor, something that no one had ever done before—not because it was a challenging open-water swim, but because all of the locals were sure he’d be eaten along the way. “This is a three-thousand-year-old culture, with a strong oral tradition,” Chase remarked. “One shark attack two hundred years ago can be passed down generations and keep people from going into deep water. It’s a culture that has ties to the sea, yet they had marine-patrol first responders who couldn’t swim. Not surprising, the rate of drownings here is very high.” Long memories (especially those involving sharp teeth) mean that fear of the water can transform a concern into a fundamental legacy. So Chase and his wife, Dr. Michelle Evans-Chase, set out to change the culture around swimming. They established a program called Toa o le Tai—Ocean Heroes—in which they trained teenagers to safely be in and around the ocean and then to teach younger kids the same skills. Chase is justly proud of the results of his Ocean Heroes, one of whom is a young man named Tank. “When I first talked to Tank, he wouldn’t go in water over his head, period,” Chase says. “Today, Tank is jumping into water that’s one hundred feet deep and a year ago he thought was full of sharks. And his buddies are all begging to be part of the program.”
My biological father, Jack Hoy, was a “water guy” and an avid, lifelong swimmer. Indeed, he was built to swim: wide shoulders, barrel chest, his body tapering cleanly to his feet. He competed on swim teams in high school and college, and throughout his life he swam, sailed, and fished. Jack’s favorite spot in the world was Cape Rosier, and he returned to that part of Maine’s rocky coast again and again. It was where his family and friends came together to hold his memorial service in August 2013. At Bakeman Beach, Jack’s kids and grandkids stripped down at sunset and plunged into the cold Atlantic. We swam out into the cove, as he loved to do. I felt every stroke. It was cold, yes, but that didn’t matter. Swimming together, in his name, here in this place, was perhaps the best tribute we could offer Jack. Somewhere out in the dimming deep water we naturally gathered in a circle. There really wasn’t much to be said, the ocean and our exposed bodies—similar due to Jack’s DNA but different due to diversity in his mates and spouses and those of his kids—spoke clearly for generations and ancestors, and we were all the same, connected by the thread, connected by water. A love of water was one of his gifts.
Some of the strongest recollections people can have around water are swimming alongside family. The dad who holds his arms out to you as you jump into the pool for the first time. The mom who sits with you on the beach in the shallow water, laughing with you as the waves rush around the two of you. The big brother or sister or cousin who leads you out into deeper water than you might ever attempt on your own. The love of swimming is often passed down through families, and being in the water together can bond you at every stage of life.
But perhaps water provided you with a different, not so happy, even phobic experience. (Two-hundred-year-old shark attack not required.) While my biological mother and father both had strong affinities for water throughout their lives, my adoptive mother has a lifelong fear of water, with a long list of illogical reasons for not getting wet, and would rarely get into a swimming pool with her kids (and never put her head underwater when she did). And she absolutely refused to go into any ocean, lake, or river. My adoptive dad was a little better around water, but no fish himself. Even competitive swimmer Leanne Shapton had a kind of fear of water. She writes:
Being pool-trained, I’m used to seeing four sides and a bottom. When that clarity is removed I get nervous. I imagine things. Sharks, the slippery sides of large fish, shaggy pieces of sunken frigates, dark corroded iron, currents. I can swim along the shore, my usual stroke rolled and tipped by the waves, the ribbed sandy bottom wiggling beneath me, but eventually I get spooked by the open-ended horizon, the cloudy blue thought of that sheer drop—the continental shelf.
In—and On—the Water: Surfing
For a surfer, it’s never-ending. There’s always some wave you want to surf.
—KELLY SLATER, CHAMPION SURFER
Surfing has always been a part of the water studies at our annual Blue Mind conferences. I think it’s because surfers probably exhibit more Blue Mind than anyone. They are attuned to the water, used to watching it carefully for hours on end, reading its changes, looking for the smallest indication that the next wave will be, if not the perfect wave, at least rideable. They are in the water as well as on it—they know the power of a wave to slam them down to the bottom, leaving them scraping the sand, rocks, or reef, holding their breath for dear life, fighting upward against the whirling energy to break through, gasping—yet still looking seaward for the next chance to hop on their boards and take the ultimate fifteen- or thirty- or sixty-second ride.
Recently I’ve been surfing with my buddy Van Curaza near Santa Cruz. Van is addicted to black coffee, helping people, and waves—and he’s among the best in the world at all three. Van has ridden those waves since he was ten years old. He surfed huge breakers off the coast of central California; for a while he turned pro and was sponsored by top brands like O’Neill and Quicksilver. He admits freely that he was drawn to the “aggressive, adrenaline-filled atmosphere” of pro surfing and its lifestyle of too-frequently-associated habits: drinking, pot, coke, prescription pills, meth. Van’s been sober since December 2002, but back when he was an elite surfer, he didn’t realize that the very parts of his brain that were drawn to (and being shaped by) surfing were also producing that addictive urge.
Howard Fields, whom we met earlier, and Dr. David Zald study the neurochemical mechanisms of addiction and substance abuse, and they both see clearly how these mechanisms are at play in surfing. “Addiction occurs when dopamine neurons and the nucleus accumbens (the “pleasure” center of the brain) are stimulated by certain actions… and the brain computes the value of such an action to optimize future selection,” Fields has written. Remember that dopamine release is associated with novelty, risk, desire, and effortful activity; it’s also a key part of the system by which the brain learns. All of these factors, Zald points out, are present in surfing: “As surfers are first learning, there’s an amazing burst of dopamine simply when they stand on the board—‘I didn’t think I could do that!’ And then surfing is never going to be exactly the same. The wave comes, but it’s always somewhat unpredictable.” Novelty? Check. Risk? Check. Learning? Check. Aerobic activity? Check. Dopamine? In spades.
But that’s not all. As we discussed above, aerobic exercises (such as surfing) produce endorphins, the opioids that affect the prefrontal and limbic areas of the brain involved in emotional processing, and create the feeling of euphoria known as runner’s high.11 The beauty of the natural environment where people surf also increases the sense of a peak emotional experience. Add the dopamine, the endorphins, and the natural setting to the adrenaline rush produced by the amygdala’s “fight or flight” impulse when a surfer is faced with a large wave (or a wave of any kind when you’re first starting out), and you’ve got a seriously addictive experience.
Unfortunately, the brain starts to crave this dopamine–endorphin–adrenaline cocktail, and it looks for other ways to produce that same feeling. As one surfer described it, “Once you surf, it’s about the next wave you’re going to catch, because you always want more, like a drug.” That’s why many surfers like my pal Van get drawn to other risky pastimes, including drugs like cocaine, meth, alcohol, and nicotine, all of which flood the dopaminergic system with an instant hit of pleasure.12
But what if this need for dopamine stimulation could be turned to good? What if it’s possible for people to substitute surfing for other, more destructive addictions? That’s exactly what Van has done; one of his motivators to quit drugs and alcohol was the thought, If I keep doing this, I won’t be able to surf anymore. Since 2008 Van has run a program called Operation Surf, in which he shares his love of waves with anyone who stands still long enough for him to get them into a wet suit, onto a surfboard, and out on the ocean. His clients are so-called at-risk youth, people with terminal illnesses or physical limitations that you might imagine would preclude surfing, veterans suffering from PTSD, and folks with surfing on their bucket list. He helps addicts like himself find a different kind of high composed of wind, wave, and ocean—and camaraderie like you’ve rarely witnessed.
It’s extraordinary to see Van’s clients after a session on a board. Many of them are noticeably calmer, quieter, and happier. The theory is this: once the adrenaline has worn off and the dopamine storms in the brain have calmed down, the body is still producing endorphins (runner’s high usually doesn’t kick in until after thirty minutes of aerobic exercise, and can last up to two hours afterward). It’s also been saturated with an abundance of negative ions, which have been shown to lower blood lactate levels and elevate mood. Surfers often report feeling calmer and happier after a session on the water.13 Van’s greenhorns certainly look as if they’re experiencing the Zen-like experience that’s called surfer’s stoke.
Back on the beach after that morning session in Santa Cruz with Van and Operation Surf, one of the instructors told me that he really didn’t like surfing on days like this, when the ocean is so cold (49 degrees), but “this feeling, right now, makes it worth it.” Out of the water, there’s nothing like a hot cup of black coffee and some surf talk about the day’s best waves.
With these kinds of emotion-packed experiences, it’s no wonder that surfing generated more than $6.24 billion in revenue in 2010 and is one of the most popular water sports in the world. It’s practiced on the coasts of six of the seven continents, by people of every race, color, and creed; it’s estimated that 23 million people surf worldwide, more than 1.7 million in the United States alone.14 Even in some of the most challenging circumstances, young men and women are taking up boards and figuring out how to catch a wave, and Farhana Huq is an advocate and champion of young female surfers worldwide. Farhana is a powerhouse: medium height, a warm smile and ready laugh, and a background in dance and martial arts—she was the first South Asian girl on the USA Karate national team. She is used to breaking barriers: her parents are successful Pakistani/Bangladeshi immigrants whose traditional cultures do not usually encourage women to participate in such sports as karate and surfing. But Farhana grew up around surfers in New Jersey, and at age twenty-six, while on a trip to Hawaii, she decided she wanted to learn to surf. “It was the hardest sport I ever tried,” she recalls, but it didn’t take long for her to become as addicted to surfing as had Van Curaza. When she wasn’t running C.E.O. Women (the nonprofit she founded to help low-income immigrant women become entrepreneurs), she started traveling to surfing spots around the world. Instead of simply looking for the next wave, however, Farhana looked around these far-off locations. “I realized that women and girls in the most unlikely places—in Bangladesh, in India and even along the war zone of the Gaza Strip, all very conservative cultures—were starting to surf and were the first to pursue an ocean-loving sport. I wondered about these trailblazers and what gave them the strength to take these risks,” she said.
When she came back home she founded Brown Girl Surf, to honor trailblazing females who are using surfing to empower other women and girls and their communities to be stoked about just being in the water. For example, Nasima Atker from Bangladesh was homeless when she started surfing. Since then she has braved the discouragement of male surfers on the water as well as her community and peers on land to train to become her country’s first female lifeguard. With Brown Girl Surf, Farhana wants to connect with and encourage women around the world to discover the sport that has given her so much. “I had a health scare a few years ago, and my first thought was, If this is serious I want to get in as much surfing as I can now in case I don’t make it,” she said. “It made me realize how much I equated surfing with living.”
Farhana is quick to point out that “surfing isn’t the solution to all one’s woes or social problems… it’s not a cure per se, but there is definitely something there… something that it gives us.” In her case, that “something” is very positive indeed.
Under the Water: Diving
From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free.
—JACQUES-YVES COUSTEAU
Jacques Cousteau’s grandson, Fabien, has been heading deep underwater since he was four years old. He’s scuba dived with humpback whales and sharks, and done free dives with sea lions. This year he plans to spend an entire month at the bottom of the ocean off the Florida Keys in the aqualab Aquarius Reef Base. But Fabien is all too aware of the dangers: his cousin Philippe Cousteau was diving with naturalist and TV star Steve Irwin when a stingray fatally stabbed Irwin in the heart, and his family has experienced countless near-miss ocean accidents through the decades.15 Nevertheless, Fabien, along with dive enthusiasts around the world, is drawn again and again to plunge beneath the surface of seas, oceans, and lakes and experience what the American painter Robert Wyland (known simply as Wyland) called “the world’s finest wilderness.”
If swimming provides a novel environment for the human body, diving is truly entering another world, one that teases yet warps our senses. Submergence puts pressures upon our cells that they were never designed to encounter. Sight and hearing function differently underwater; your movements are slowed, delayed, elongated, magnified; you are literally pushing the water out of your way with your hands, feet, and body as you glide along; colors are distorted, distance perception is uncertain, sound (what there is) travels faster and can seem to come from everywhere at the same time.16 Most of all, we move underwater in a completely unaccustomed way: we are able to hover horizontally above a fish or plant simply by using our breath and a little movement of our fins to keep us stationary. One remarkable woman in Great Britain, Sue Austin, has even turned the unique properties of underwater movement into an art project: she performs underwater ballet while diving in her wheelchair.17
As geographer Elizabeth R. Straughan points out in her study of diving, touch, and emotion,18 it is the tactile sense of being in and moving through water that provides some of the most interesting physical aspects of diving. “Divers are always touching,” she writes. “They are supported, suspended, moved and compressed by the water that encompasses them.… It is through somatic [of and relating to the body, as distinct from the mind] tensions and pressures felt within and around the body that divers experience a material and tangible connection with the water environment.”19
Psychologist David Conradson once defined stillness as “an internal state of calm in which a person becomes more aware of their immediate embodied experience of the world and less concerned with events occurring ‘out there.’ ”20 So it is on a dive: the surface world, with all its obligations and concerns, seems far away, even somewhat unreal. “I’m only forty feet below the everyday world, but I might as well be light years away,” one diver said. The usual noises of the outside world disappear, to be replaced by the steady sound of your own breath in the regulator, the occasional muted grunts from a fish, snapping of shrimp, or bubbles of another diver nearby.”
Yet any kind of diving carries with it risk—not just of drowning, but also of having to adjust to the (literal) pressure placed upon the body. The deeper you descend, the greater the pressure—one atmosphere’s worth for every ten meters—and the more the water compresses the gases inside your body, causing your tissues to absorb more nitrogen, which then has to dissolve out of your tissues as you ascend. Go too far down and the nitrogen enters your cardiovascular and central nervous system, making you light-headed and maybe a little dazed from “nitrogen narcosis.” Ascend too quickly and the nitrogen bubbles don’t have enough time to leave your body, causing the bends. There are also dangers linked to holding your breath underwater, having panic attacks (experienced by almost half of all divers, according to some studies),21 problems with the inner ear, and even issues with too much CO2 in the bloodstream.22 Recent studies also indicate that breath-hold—“free”—diving in extreme conditions may be a contributing factor in the formation of white-matter lesions in the brain.23
Still as with surfing, the awareness of potential danger as well as the opportunity to challenge oneself in an unfamiliar and ever-changing environment can be the very things that attract people to the sport. Divers tend to have a greater appetite for adventure, to be somewhat more aggressive, less inhibited by and prone to anxiety, and healthier.24 And it’s very likely that diving, like surfing, is a way for stimulation-craving individuals to get their emotional/dopamine “fix” and come back to the surface calmer and happier.25 Under the water, divers can push their limits; explore places that are always new, exciting, different, and slightly dangerous; and share these peak experiences with others who are just as enamored of the sport as they are. And if they can do all of this in the middle of the world’s largest, most beautiful, yet unexplored environment, so much the better.
Those surfers hoping to manage waves the size of four-story buildings and the divers hoping to snatch pearls from depths even greater are but a tiny minority of the millions who take to the sea each year. Fortunately for those not interested in risking the bends or a snapped surfboard, it’s still possible to reap the astonishing benefits of immersion. You don’t have to risk your life to improve your life—though sometimes a fish gives up its own along the way.
By the Water: Fishers
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
—HENRY DAVID THOREAU
I’ve spent a lot of time walking coastlines, lakeshores, and riverbanks in the United States and Mexico. Everywhere I travel, I always seek out the water and spend time strolling along its edge, observing it and speaking with the people who love it. I’ve often seen fishers there—men, women, and children—poles in hand or planted in the sand or grass next to them. They’re scanning the water intently, searching for the splash or stir or wavelet that means a fish may be close to the hook. Or perhaps they’re chatting with the fisher next to them, not really paying attention to the task at hand. Maybe they’re simply looking out over the water and enjoying the beauty of the setting. Or perhaps they’ve got their eyes closed, taking a snooze in the middle of a lazy afternoon. I guess it’s not surprising that some of the earliest books on fishing, dating from the fifteenth century onward, talk as much about the personal rewards of fishing as they do about angling techniques.26
Frequently, among the heartening things I see are children with dads, moms, grandpas and grandmas sitting or standing next to them, teaching them how to fish. As a dad, one of my greatest pleasures and responsibilities is to pass along the love of all things water to my daughters. And it’s pretty clear from both anecdotal and sociological research that being introduced to fishing in childhood is a prime indicator that a person will be fishing in adulthood.27 It doesn’t matter what kind of fishing you enjoy—ice fishing, fly-fishing, deep-sea fishing—as Dan Pearce wrote in Single Dad Laughing, “Fishing is much less about the fishing, and much more about the time alone with your kid, away from the hustle and bustle of the everyday.”
Because fishing is so popular,28 there have been several studies in both the United States and Australia investigating the motivations of anglers. Turns out that Thoreau got it right: catching a fish was way down the list of reasons for going fishing. In Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef region of Australia, for example, fishers mentioned the desire for rest and relaxation, to get away from everyday life, and to be outdoors, in a natural environment, as the most important factors of a satisfying fishing trip.29 In Minnesota, a quality environment and a sense of freedom were keys to a great fishing experience, not what ended up on the hook.30 Of course, some of the people I’ve passed on my walks wanted (or needed) to catch their dinner. But I imagine that even for them, the chance to do so next to water, in nature, and to focus simply on one thing and one thing only, gave them a different kind of nourishment.
Think about what’s required to fish. Not the physical equipment—that can be as basic as a pole, string, a hook, and some bait—but the physical and mental wherewithal needed: focus and clear thinking. A steady hand and the ability to handle emotions like elation, disappointment, and boredom. Patience—boy, do you need patience—yet also the ability to respond at a moment’s notice to a tug on the line when a fish snags the bait. And, as in scuba diving, you also need the ability to slow down and appreciate the beauty of the watery setting in which you find yourself. If you do, then you can experience some of the health benefits reported in an Australian study that showed the process of preparing for and then going to fish (preferably with other fishers) can quiet the mind, improve cardiovascular health by reducing stress, and create a general sense of well-being.31
Not surprisingly, fishing of all sorts is used quite successfully as recreational therapy. For example, the casting motions used in fly-fishing are ideally suited to help women recovering from breast cancer surgery to rebuild, strengthen, and increase flexibility of arm and chest muscles, since lymph nodes, muscle lining, and even small chest muscles are often removed in the procedure. Recreational fishing’s pace and calm means it can be enjoyed by numerous people with physical and mental disabilities, as well as those suffering from traumas like PTSD or traumatic brain injury (TBI). One program, called Fishing 4 Therapy, in Sydney, Australia, gives individuals with cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, visual impairment, brain injury, hyperactivity, or motor skills difficulties, and their families, the opportunity to enjoy an afternoon’s fishing trip. Sure, it takes some adaptation of equipment and a little patience, but for many of the program’s clients, fishing is one of the few ways for them to get outside and to participate in recreational sport. The barriers to entry are lower and the basic skills are rather simple. For some clients, “just the act of holding a fishing rod and attempting to turn the reel handle can be a major therapy accomplishment,” according to the authors of a 2011 Australian report on the benefits of fishing. “Specific benefits include: a positive impact on mental health; perceived well-being; prevention of chronic disease; and reductions in health care burden.”32 Being outside, in motion, with those we love, engaged in a new activity while floating on or standing by water sounds idyllic no matter where or who you are.
Ultimately, fishing is a water sport that can be enjoyed by anyone who is old enough, or not too old, to hold a pole. “It is a very democratic kind of activity,” pop-culture pundit Faith Salie wrote. “You don’t need to be tall or strong or agile. You just need to be patient, or drunk… on the beauty of nature. It’s kind of a metaphor for a good life. Try your best, hope for the best, have days when you catch something and days when you don’t, but always, always be thankful for the sound of the water and the sun in the sky and the chance to cast another reel.”33
On the Water: Boaters, Paddleboarders, Kayakers, and Canoers
Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.
—KENNETH GRAHAME, THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS
According to the Outdoor Industry Association, 1.24 million people tried stand-up paddleboarding last year, up 18 percent from 2010. Sales of stand-up paddleboards doubled between 2010 and 2011. While stand-up paddleboards have led to a fitness craze only in the past decade, in truth they’re the most ancient and basic form of boat. Our distant ancestors probably used boats that were not much more sophisticated to journey from island to island in Southeast Asia and then on to Australia more than 50,000 years ago.34 Of course, nowadays most boating—from self-propelled personal watercraft such as paddleboards, rowboats, rafts, kayaks, and canoes, to wind-powered sailboats of every size, to engine-powered jet skis, motorboats, and yachts that require multiperson crews—is less about transportation and more about enjoying the water. If you talk to recreational boaters about why they chose their particular sport, you hear some of the same reasons that fishers and surfers offer: it’s the chance to be on the water in a very intimate way. Those who use self-propelled vessels also extol the health benefits, the cardiovascular exercise, the upper-body workouts of paddling for hours, the decidedly meditative state that arises with the rhythmic strokes of paddle dipping into water. But motorized or not, a boat offers a chance to get away from it all, to immerse yourself in the sights and sounds and the feel of whatever body of water you’re on, to enjoy the fresh air.
With larger sailboats and other vessels that require more than one person, you hear about teamwork, trust, and shared adventure. Research shows that the combination of gaining self-confidence while working in a team is valuable for troubled youth. Today programs around the world use boats and sailing as rehabilitative therapy for those with physical disabilities (including paralysis, blindness, deafness, and amputation); developmental disabilities like ADHD, autism, and Down syndrome; those with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and other injuries; as well as people who have experienced emotional trauma. In Newport, Rhode Island, and Nantucket, Massachusetts, Sail to Prevail has a fleet of specially adapted sailboats, ranging from twenty to sixty-six feet, in which more than fifteen hundred people with disabilities learn the basics of sailing. Vessels include Easterner, a one-of-a-kind sixty-six-foot handicapped-accessible America’s Cup racing boat. Sail to Prevail reports significant improvements for its clients: 91 percent have more confidence, 90 percent feel they increased their teamwork skills, and an incredible 99 percent say they have a more positive outlook on life. No doubt the super-neurohormone oxytocin is at play during these novel, enjoyable, yet mildly stressful experiences, fine-tuning the brain’s social instincts, priming participants to crave social contact, enhancing empathy, and increasing willingness to be helpful and supportive. Of course, there are many other ways to develop teamwork, but the water factor adds remarkable potency to the effort. So too does a quality you hear mentioned most often from boaters of all kinds when they describe their reason for taking to the water: freedom. In a boat, you feel as if you are “the master of your fate, captain of your soul,” to paraphrase William Ernest Henley. For children who through no fault of their own are forced to live a difficult life, constricted by circumstance, freedom is a profoundly uplifting liberation.
Just like marathon open-water swimmers and big-wave surfers, there are those who choose to take that sense of freedom and independence to the extreme—by rowing or sailing solo across the oceans and sometimes around the world. There are two premier circumnavigation races for sailing yachts: the Velux 5 Oceans race (sailed in stages) held every four years, and the Vendée Globe, sailed nonstop around the world. These races put incredible strains on the men and women who sail; the nonstop stress of storms, high seas, difficult conditions, food and sleep snatched whenever possible (and never enough of either). And above all, the isolation—anywhere from 78 to 1,152 days spent at sea, alone. Extended isolation is both psychologically and emotionally taxing, even destructive, producing hallucinations, depression, anxiety, impaired thinking, rage, and despair. In a 2012 experiment, the brains of rats isolated for eight weeks had a reduced ability to produce myelin in the area responsible for complex emotional and cognitive behavior.35 (Myelin coats and insulates axons in the nervous system.) A 1968 solo nonstop circumnavigation race had nine competitors, only one of whom finished the race. Of the remainder, five dropped out after just two months at sea, one killed himself after he returned home, another was believed to have committed suicide before he landed (he had spent most of the contest holed up by the coast of Brazil rather than racing, and was terrified his deception would be found out), and the final competitor abandoned the race and turned up several months later in Tahiti.36 But despite all the dangers and obstacles, something draws these men and women to boats and the sea: “… sailing is a dance, and your partner is the sea,” writes Michael Morpurgo, author of Alone on a Wide Wide Sea. “And with the sea you never take liberties. You ask her, you don’t tell her. You have to remember always that she’s the leader, not you. You and your boat are dancing to her tune.”37
That music is sweet in its melody. And for every sailor destroyed by extreme conditions, there are hundreds of millions who discover that the ocean not only resuscitates but also enhances.
Working the Water: Professional Watermen and -women
There comes a time in a man’s life when he hears the call of the sea. If the man has a brain in his head, he will hang up the phone immediately.
—DAVE BARRY
It takes a special kind of person to make a living from being on the water—maybe just a little bit crazy, or a little bit obsessed, or a lot in love with the big blue. I’ve certainly seen all three among the professional watermen and -women I’ve hung around with over the years. I’m not talking here about those fortunate few who have turned their love into a professional sports career (rare indeed) or become a teacher, coach, or supplier of equipment for water sports. Nor am I talking about my fellow scientists who study plants, animals, weather, psychology, physiology, oceanography, and a wide range of other-ologies related to water. And I’m leaving out those who sell or prepare seafood or aquatic plants for humans to eat. The ones I mean are the sailors who steer barges through canals and rivers, or who work the huge ships that constantly cross the lakes and oceans of the world. I’m also talking about the commercial fishers (including those who trawl for or trap shrimp, mussels, clams, and crabs) who go out on boats rather than run fish farms to feed their families by feeding us. These men (and a few women) have chosen careers that take them far away from homes and families, sometimes for weeks and months at a time, in difficult conditions that put them in danger of injury or death. (While maritime disasters are relatively rare and in decline, each year approximately one hundred commercial ships sink. And commercial fishing still ranks as the most dangerous profession in the world.)38
You see many of the same stressors that solo sailors face in the lives of those who make their living from water. They are subject to all the vicissitudes of weather, wind, and wave. Boats are designed to stay upright, sure—but the amount of energy produced by some waves is sometimes more than even the biggest ships can handle. Water also transfers energy more than land or air, so the swells of the sea combined with gusts of wind make any storm very, very serious. It also gets cold on the water, and the dampness of spray makes you feel colder still. The combination of chill, wet, waves, corrosion, and the kind of heavy equipment common on ships and fishing boats is incredibly dangerous. (Jeff Denholm, a “Surf Ambassador” for the clothing company Patagonia, lost most of his right arm on a fishing boat in Alaska—the boat lurched, and his arm was sucked into an exposed driveshaft. It took twelve hours to get him to the nearest medical center.) Plus, as any sailor or fisher will tell you, on most voyages sleep is in short supply and bone-wearying fatigue is all too common. Because many of a ship’s critical jobs (for example, navigation and engineering) must be manned 24/7, most large ships divide the day into watches of anywhere from three to five hours, and sailors will stand at least two watches every day, usually in the pattern of three hours on, nine off, or four hours on, eight off, and so on. This means that most mariners get to sleep less than five hours at a time, and they may have to stand watch in the middle of the night one day and in the middle of the afternoon the next. Chronic lack of sleep adversely affects the brain and cognitive function. Researchers at the Stanford Center for Sleep Sciences and Medicine advise that the average amount of sleep needed to avoid the adverse effects of sleep deprivation is about eight hours. Of course, being a fisher can be even worse. Many fishing boats stay out until they have gotten their catch, whether that takes a few hours or much, much longer. Then they turn around and go out again. As one fisherman remarked, “You goes three to four o’clock in the morning, and you don’t be in till one or two in the day. When you gets in then you gets rid of your fish… you’re baiting up till seven in the evening.”39
So what makes sailors and fishers stay on the water? Like many tradition-based professions, jobs are often passed down from generation to generation. In a 2000 study of fishers in British Columbia, eleven out of twelve had close relatives who were fishers. In some places—the small coastal villages in Baja California, Mexico, where I studied sea turtles, for example—fishing or maritime jobs are the main sources of income and, often, food. In many poorer countries, a job on a ship is seen as an opportunity to earn more money than could ever be possible at home. But ultimately, when you sit with fishers and sailors and talk to them about their lives on the water, after the tall tales and the grousing about shrinking fish supplies or stingy owners and corrupt middlemen, or bad food or little sleep, you hear something else: a pride in their work, an enjoyment of the adventure of entering a challenging environment every day, and a pleasure in the sense of freedom and occasional awe that being on the water gives them. Many of them, frankly, can’t imagine doing anything else. Even many fishers in Japan, whose homes and boats were destroyed in the 2011 tsunami, returned to the water because, as one named Koichi Nagasako said, “I love being on the boat. I love the sea and I love fishing.”
But there’s a problem. Overfishing and inefficient fishing in many rivers, lakes, and seas have decimated stocks and forced many governments to put restrictions on catches—or to ban fishing altogether in some locations. As a result, the number of maritime jobs available is steadily decreasing. In 2013 the New England Fishery Management Council, which oversees fishing in an area once famous for the abundance of its cod, had to cut back catch quotas by 61 to 80 percent in an effort to restore decimated cod stocks. In many locations, fishing boats that could make a good living now struggle to catch enough to keep themselves in business. Luckily, fishers are coming together to save their jobs by changing their ways. Some have shifted from trawling (which produces a lot of collateral by-catch, as they call species of fish and other creatures that are not their targets) to using hook and line or traps, which net a smaller number of fish but usually more commercial varieties. Globally, in places like Mexico, India, and China, by-catch remains an enormous problem with known but politically untenable solutions. But in Morro Bay, California, a group of individual fishing boat owners have joined with government agencies and the Nature Conservancy in “a collaborative model for sustainable fishing.” Boats are given quotas of how much of different fish stocks they are allowed to catch. If they catch too much, they report where the catch occurred so that other boats will know to stay away from that area. The partnership helps to protect overfished species, gives fishers known targets of what they can catch, and helps to keep by-catch to a minimum.40 Fishers are saving their livelihoods while protecting fish stocks for the future.
Years ago, I saw a version of this same process along the bays and beaches of Baja California Sur. I was a graduate student who’d been told by his advisors not to bother trying to study sea turtles in Mexico because their numbers had already been decimated by years of poaching, pollution, overfishing, and habitat destruction. Most experts considered it too late to save the black sea turtles of Pacific Mexico. But I was young and idealistic, so my friend Jeff Seminoff (now leader of the Marine Turtle Ecology and Assessment Program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency focused on—surprise—the oceans and atmosphere) and I hopped into my sun-faded 1972 International Harvester Travelall and hit the road. We drove from Tucson down the long spine of the Baja California peninsula and the Pacific coast of mainland Mexico to visit the waters where turtles lived and grew, and the beaches where sea turtles had come to lay their eggs for millennia.
This was not the tourist part of Mexico’s Pacific coast. Bahia de los Angeles, Punta Abreojos, Santa Rosalita, and Bahia Magdalena are areas occupied by small fishing communities inhabited and connected by people whose fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers made their livings from the sea. Over the course of two decades we talked with the local fishermen, made friends of them, hired them to teach and ferry us—and later our students—out into the ocean in their pangas (twenty-two-foot fishing boats with little outboard motors) to find the turtles as they basked on the surface or foraged in the sea-grass beds and tag them so we could track their movements. We explained that we were not with the government, not there to catch turtle poachers or to make trouble for anyone. We simply wanted to measure and track the turtles and learn more about them.
But in truth, I also had another motive: I wanted to change the way people thought about turtles as part of an effort to ensure their continued existence (both turtles and fishers). It seemed like a long shot, and all of the turtle experts I consulted in the States and Mexico considered it a lost cause. In these small coastal communities, sea turtles were considered an important food source and part of the traditional local diet. The fishermen who didn’t eat the turtles they caught could make a tidy profit selling turtle meat illegally to consumers and restaurants in other parts of Mexico. Anyone who might even mention the idea of protecting turtles instead of eating them faced accusations of eliminating a mainstay of the local way of life. And as is the case for many fishermen around the world, the idea of abandoning the only way they knew how to make a living—as well as a profession they loved—was not an attractive, or even a feasible, option. Early on I realized that if I’d been born in their town, I’d be doing the work they did, and if they’d been born where I was, some would likely have become marine biologists. (We certainly overlapped in our devotion to watching Animal Planet on TV.)
We started small and slowly, because we knew we needed to understand the fishers’ world and its practical constraints. These men were not our opponents, nor were they malicious; they were people just like us, and we all needed to be able to look into each other’s eyes and see our common humanity. Juan de la Cruz Villalejos, Julio Solis, Rodrigo Rangel, Francisco Mayoral, Isidro Arce, Javier Villavicencio, and Jesus Lucero—we fished with them and stayed in their homes. We had long conversations, asking them about their lives and occupations. We learned about the challenges of supporting families on what these men could catch, and yet we also discovered their enormous love of the sea and pride in their profession. (At one point I even ate turtle and attended a traditional turtle slaughter with them—pretty tough for a turtle biologist.) We agreed about the beauty of this part of Mexico, with its beaches and abundance of wildlife.
As we worked with them, talked with them, lived with them, we developed a sense of mutual respect and trust with their community. With that trust, it was possible to start asking the question “How can we work together to protect the turtles so they will be there for your sons and daughters, and their sons and daughters?” After several years of steady collaboration, we asked dozens of the fishers from the villages around the region to come together and share their extensive knowledge of turtles and their habitats. We talked about the reality of a dwindling number of turtles and the fact that if something wasn’t done, there would be no more turtles to catch. With the backdrop of an unreliable, corrupt government and severely limited funds for environmental enforcement, a creative and participatory approach was the only solution. What if they agreed not to stop eating turtles, but to cut back on the number they caught each year? Could they help us protect the turtle population and habitat? Maybe there were other ways to earn a living from the sea that didn’t require fishing many species to extinction or causing enormous yet unintentional harm by using nets that catch many nontarget animals.
It has taken more than twenty years, but those simple questions and, more important, the relationships built with Mexican fishermen and costeños (people of the coast) have resulted in the protection of tens of thousands of adult sea turtles in the ocean, restoration of miles of turtle-nesting beaches, an enormous reduction in sea turtle deaths, and strong signs of a revival of the numbers of sea turtles, from the sea-grass beds of Baja to the nesting beaches of Michoacán. Many of the fishermen have become dedicated conservationists and are helping preserve the natural wonders and traditions of their communities. (One of them, Julio Solis, is executive director of a local chapter of Waterkeepers that is fighting unsustainable development projects in Baja California while championing the causes of clean water and restoring sea turtles.) Others are participating in a thriving ecotourism industry, leading trips that allow people from around the world to get “up close and personal” with turtles and other marine wildlife. Still others, such as Grupo Tortuguero and the indigenous Nahuat community of Colola, Michoacán, are inspiring the next generation in their villages by speaking in schools, holding sea turtle festivals, and taking children on overnight turtle monitoring expeditions. I am grateful that they can link their new professions with the love of water they’ve had all along—the love that’s shared by those who enjoy water sports (and water jobs) of all kinds.
Water sports and water careers build better brain chemistry and confer therapeutic benefits on both well-bodied and disabled (emotionally, genetically, experientially, and environmentally) alike. For those of us fortunate to live, recreate, or make our living on or near water, this wellspring of health, well-being, and therapeutic utility may be obvious, mildly apparent, or waiting to be illuminated. What is clear is that the more we recognize and appreciate what we have, the more we can multiply the benefits we can derive. This is a new kind of water cycle, one that tracks water’s cognitive and emotional services, generates new conversations, businesses, and policies, and, together, an even greater affinity for the water. For my colleagues in Baja, the virtuous circle is playing out in practical terms. A shared love of the ocean built a successful and diverse conservation team. The survival of many more sea turtles enhanced a sense of pride and teamwork. The return of the animals promoted ecotourism and jobs. Young Mexican biologists and guides helped to grow the ranks of the pro–sea turtle movement even further. As my dear friend Chuy Lucero, a fisherman turned leading turtle-saver, is fond of saying, “En el mar la vida es más sabrosa”—life by the sea is sweeter. We have pledged to each other that one day when we are both great-grandfathers, we’ll gather our clans on that shore and raise a toast to the sea turtles.
Adrift
Today, when we talk of conservation, the assumption is that we’re talking about trying to save sea turtles, old buildings, endangered ecosystems, electricity, and so on. But we don’t think enough about a more internal conservation, conserving our attention for what matters, conserving our engagement for what’s important, conserving our acuity for decisions that make a positive difference. If you don’t know what you want to save, you can’t know how to save it. In the next section of this book we’re going to look at what we’re losing, and how to bring it back—and not surprisingly, that restoration is all about getting your Blue Mind on.