[15] Drop a line in a deep gap between tetrapods and hits can be frequent, especially in Okinawan waters where a relative abundance of fish thrive (figure 27). But, when touring the island, analog film camera slung over my shoulder,[2] I have not always been a typical visitor. Most commonly associated with obsessive zeal for manga, anime, video games, computers, and garage kits (scale models, often of anime characters), otaku hobbyiststypically male, but not alwaysare distinguished by the extreme lengths to which they will go to master the data and details of their chosen subject. There was no indication why one lone tetrapod had been placed on the pavement, but it acted almost like a signpost or display piece (figure 21). Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Modern Japan. We have some national parks where were trying not to use the concrete sea walls or anything like that in order to preserve the scenery. [2] For starters, I almost always use analog film cameras of many varieties and formats. "Tetrapods and other types of [concrete] armoring can cause more damage than they prevent, because they alter ocean currents and disrupt the natural cycles of erosion and deposition that form and. The founder and mastermind behind the company Maniapparelwho asked that his name and likeness not revealed due to a strict day jobhas made it his off-the-clock mission to make the Tetrapod feel accessible to the masses. It might be only a matter of time until we see tetrapods featured in a travel guide to Okinawa. Its function is twofold: (1) to protect the finer material below it against severe wave action; (2) to dissipate the wave energy to reduce the wave run-up, overtopping and reflection. Public outcry over the concrete encasing Japans coasts is something I expected to find when doing this research; a vibrant community of tetrapod lovers was not. Split yourselves up into nine groups and each group will be assigned to work on one coastal protection measure. Follow along with her on Twitter: @scbaird. #Tetrapods #Coastal erosion protection - YouTube [7] Japanese Registered Trademark 1184901. Reversion opened the floodgates to mainland businesses and brought massive construction to Okinawa, buoyed by special development funds and finance loans from Tokyo. What are the advantages and disadvantages of coastal Defences? More than 1,000 of these Tetrapods cushions have been sold at shops across Japan since the companys quest began, and happy plushy owners include former Tetrapod engineers and coastal workers looking for a kawaii (read: twee) way to honor their profession. tetrapods coastal protection advantages and disadvantages After various preliminary studies the outline took shape: a sort of sea monster with four tentacles which was patented under the name tetrapod., Pierre Danel, at the Fourth Conference on Coastal Engineering, Chicago, October 1953. [16] Nihon Shha Nagatame Burokku Kykai, http://www.shouha.jp/about/ (my translation). I intend to explore the full impact and sustainability of such formations in future research. Tetrapod Evolution - Evolutionary Biology - Oxford Bibliographies Tetrapods represent the latest refinementor evolutionary step, if you willto this particular approach to securing coastlines for human life and exploitation. In any case, locals looking to cool off from city heat, though perhaps chagrinned at having to share the shoreline with so much concrete, seem to accept the circumstances and make the best of such bits of beach in urban areas. [7] Fudo Tetra is one of fifteen major companies in Japan that manufacture some form of shha burokku (wave-dissipating block; or, shha negatame burokku , wave-dissipating foundation block), the trademark-neutral term for any block designed for armoring coastal structures against wave action. This large coastal protection structures can be built using different types of construction materials such as rubble mound, granite masonry, or reinforced concrete. The answer is likely economic. (PDF) Impact of coastal defence structures (tetrapods - ResearchGate With the aid of your textbook and creative minds, present the coastal protection measure on the blankA4-sized paper given to you in any creative way you can think of. Conditions are so different, its almost impossible to compare the two places, Kato says. Fudo Tetra exists today as a general contractor for civil engineering projects and has a portfolio that includes expressway interchanges, viaducts, railway tunnels, dams and levees, sewer systems and waste water processing plants, gas and electrical power facilities, airports and artificial islands, ports, and coastline facilities. For example, coral reefs are some of the most effective barriers to coastal damage and erosion. The key phrase here is kanky no seibi (improvement of the environment). Tetrapods and other types of [concrete] armoring can cause more damage than they prevent, because they alter ocean currents and disrupt the natural cycles of erosion and deposition that form and reshape coasts, Stephen Hesse argues in a 2007 Japan Times article. Covering Coasts with Concrete: Japan Looks to Tetrapods to Battle Elements. https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/covering-coasts-with-concrete-japan-looks-to-tetrapods-to-battle-elements. In this kind of deployment, the most visible material is the more natural-lookingbut more erosion-pronequarried natural stone that forms the foundation of the visible structure, while the potential eyesore of the concrete tetrapod armoring is practically invisible from the beach. I am not the first to consider tetrapods as infrastructure for new, unintended ecologies. [26] Tetogurumi Official Web Store is at https://tetogurumi.thebase.in/. Tetrapods and their role in the maritime industry It stops the waves from beating down on the shore, whether during a gales of a tsunami or the daily lap of erosion. Also is lethally dangerous to swimmers and surfers as well as shipping and recreational boaters 14 Q What is the meaning of hold the line? Nonetheless, aside from situations where their rough concrete bulk might seem especially incongruous, tetrapods exist in plain public view on miles of Okinawas coastlines, and one is never too far from a coast. She is currently serving as a US-Japan Fellow with the International Center for Journalists. Tetrapods fall into a more specific category of object that captures me and vice versa: odd artifacts. As in the case of Kansai International Airport (for which Fudo Tetra provided the seawall armoring), the runway is being built on an artificial island created by landfill secured with a perimeter of seawalls reinforced by tetrapods. With limited local timber suitable for construction and a rise in prices in the mid-1960s for timber imported from mainland Japanlimited by U.S. policy on Japanese business in Okinawaconcrete became more cost-effective than timber. Coastal areas are used for tourism, fishing, industry, trade and transport. concrete tetrapods advantages and disadvantages Presenting raw photographs of concrete-hardened stretches of coastline as if they speak for themselves risks limiting them to the role of evidence in a critique of the environmental degradation of Okinawas natural shoreline. With promises to close the gap between development of Okinawa and that of the mainland, the Japanese government has, since reversion, provided Okinawa Prefecture support for infrastructure construction that has arguably gone beyond what is needed. As a piece of engineering, its design represents a brilliant example of midcentury modern form and function. The middle ear was modified in early tetrapods. These safety concernsfalls against the concrete, cuts from barnacles, slipping and getting trapped under water and drowningare also cited by those who oppose tetrapods for environmental and aesthetic reasons. ADVANTAGES. I had noticedeven photographedtetrapods during trips to Okinawa but had never really looked at them closely, let alone clamber among them. Coastal Element Release : Tetrapods VS Seawalls [Real PGeog 09 SA 2 tetrapods coastal protection advantages and disadvantages . Construction and design of three-dimensional geometry of concrete The tetrapod is a symbol of artificiality. Sea walls usually have promenades so people can walk along them. The elegant combination of its physics, fabrication, installation, economics, and effectiveness is seductive to engineers, contractors, policymakers, and artists alike. For as many photos I have taken of picture-postcard landscapes, seascapes, and cultural sites, there are as many images of urban ephemera, coastal effluvia, and junkyards. His publications include Civilization and Monsters: Spirits of Modernity in Meiji Japan (2000) and Beachheads: War, Peace, and Tourism in Postwar Okinawa (2012). Fudo Tetra sponsors educational events to familiarize children with tetrapods, including the opportunity to make your own miniature concrete specimens (figure 31). They are used to protect marinas, sea wall defences and waterfronts all over the globe. And combined with sea level rise, significant erosion can be devastating to a coastline. A 1995. Not all love for tetrapods is technical. The six sample photos, supplied by the Okinawa General Bureau that oversees development projects in Okinawa, were taken in 1997, 1999, and 2005 from between one meter above water and 5 meters below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZJRFwJMFqE. The weight and interlocking design of tetrapods work effectively against extreme weather conditions, dissipating the force of the water well. That puts things in a tenuous position when a hurricane or other natural disaster arrives as a one-off tool for destruction. He did not blame yama for passing the publicly posted pattern to others (yama posted an apology for presenting the pattern as his own creation), but he did hold the makers of Tetogurumi responsible for seeking proper licensing from its true inventor. The efforts by the industry to cast wave blocks as environment-friendly and even environment-enhancing correlate with growing general public awareness of the environmental impact of coastal development. Naha: Okinawa-ken. Tetrapods still form a core of Fudo Tetras business, and the company holds the rights to the trademark Tetrapod, which was originally applied for in 1971 and granted in 1976. Today, the structures have an almost omnipresence anywhere land meets the sea. This, of course, hasnt stopped some people from lamenting about the jarring nature of the visually bleak coastal additions. Because of their enormous weight and the large numbers needed for any given project, tetrapods are not factory-made and distributed. Labeled compensation politics, these funds appear to many as de-facto bribes in exchange for hosting U.S. bases. Those giant jacks aren't merely artistic. The first phase of this 200-billion (approximately US$1.8-billion) project funded by the central Japanese government began in 2014after environmental impact studies and transplantation of existing coral and grassy seabedand is on track to be completed in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Life with Tetrapods: The Nature of Concrete in Okinawa. Photos of their beaches are often highlighted in tourism promotion for the entire prefecture. The well-prepared mainstream visitor to Okinawathe kind who pores over standard travel guides and promotional materialwill likely know about the famed hoshizuna (star sand), minuscule exoskeletons of a tiny marine organism. Such a critique is as legitimate as it is common, and I share in the sense of loss it implies, but stopping short at the surface of the image does little to advance insights into how tetrapods have proliferated and how they have been accommodated and exploited by life around them. Like its seagrass-green and ocean-blue company logo, Fudo Tetras public face exudes environmental friendliness as it presents itself as a steward of Japans beautiful natural patrimony. In their surveys of typhoon damage, Japans coastal engineers of the 1950s had brought attention to an issue that policymakers of the 1960s saw in terms of national economic development; they also, in effect, identified a market opening. When the balance breaks down between the sand flowing in and out, thats when the erosion startsand the waters in the Gulf are already shallow.. 1960). Baird, Sarah. Figal, Gerald. Eroding Diversity Away: The Ogimi Seawall. Presentation at the 21st Meeting of the Japanese Coral Reef Society, November 2018. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329164306_Eroding_diversity_away_The_Ogimi_seawall. In places like Sendai, coastal engineers are creating more holistic systems to help fend off environmental threats, incorporating various layers of breakwater barriersTetrapod clusters a few miles out to sea, sturdier sea walls lined with native trees and vegetationin order to provide multiple stop gaps against the tempests of wind and water. The occupation did, however, introduce to postwar Okinawa the widespread use of concrete and cement blocks for military base construction, public facilities, and commercial buildings in the early 1950s. Tetrapods work by allowing water to flow around them instead of against them. Coastal . Sarah Baird Hom-ma, Masashi, and Kiyoshi Horikawa. Nakagusuku-wank wank kanky hozen keikaku ni kansuru akushonpuran [Action plan concerning the Nakagusuku Harbor port environmental protection plan]. . Okuyama, pictured here with a colleague from the Sendai Bay South Coast Office, proves there is a lot of literature on the topic. If concrete had a life, I think a tetrapod is the orthodox way that concrete should evolve (quoted in Hesse 2007, 9). Absorbs and deflects wave energy back to sea. This is the core message of the NSNBK website, which gives dozens of detailed examples of the flow of natural symbiosis between marine life and wave blocks throughout Japan. And boy, arent they popular. These tiny star-shaped grains represent a bit of bottled paradise. They provided an argument for the adoption of tetrapods: the dikes that suffered the least damage in 1953 had their back sides sheathed in concrete slabs, rather than leaving the usual packed clay, turf, or sand bags exposed, but even they were breached in 1959 because of the excessive storm surge and resulting water pressure in the backflow that scoured and cracked the slabs (Hosoi et al. Tetrapods have a bony endoskeleton that forms four limbs built under the plan of the pentadactyly (five fingers). [11] Onsite Journal of the Naha Airport Project website maintained by the Okinawa General Bureau overseeing the project at http://www.dc.ogb.go.jp/Kyoku/information/nahakuukou/genbanikki.html. The impression is that although tetrapods were known at the time, they were not in widespread standard use yet. After the earthquake and tsunami hit [in 2011], weve been rebuilding everything, but a lot hasnt come back yet, Yoshinori Okuyama, Director General of the Sendai Bay South Coast Office, noted. A reader recognized the pattern as the one that he had posted on another website before yamas post on Daily Portal Z. Tetrapod casting for coastal protection picks up steam - The Hindu Although there are rods, lures, hooks, and jigs specially designed and marketed for ana-zuri among tetrapods (such as the Tetora DamaTetra Ballin figure 26), a hook, line, and sinker will do. Originally created in France in the late 1940s, theyve found a real home in Japan thanks to their mother company, Fudo Tetra. [8] Sometimes the first two characters are reversedand pronounced namikeshi. A good example appears in a pamphlet (figure 30) produced by the NSNBK to explain the function and value of coastal armoring to elementary schoolchildren. It is simultaneously majestic and odd. All fifteen major manufacturers of shha burokku and their molds are NSNBK members. The title and the cross-section drawing included in the patent application highlight the first important thing to understand about tetrapods: they were designed as secondary structures to shield primary structures (seawalls, jetties, rubble-mound breakwaters, and building foundations) against deterioration caused by wave action. Danel, Pierre, and Louis Greslou. In Japan, this technique can be found in some locations, but the severity and frequency of natural disaster means that it simply cant provide enough support to be used as a primary means of protection. Gerald Figal is Professor of History and Asian Studies at Vanderbilt University where he teaches and conducts research on modern Japanese cultural history. tetrapods coastal protection advantages and disadvantages Amniotes appeared no later than about 317 . Kato visited New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to help assess damage. The material of a tetrapod is concrete and its shape is formal, which cant be found in nature. Trapping sand to rebuild eroded shorelines or maintain current shoreline form. What is strikingbesides the early success of the tetrapodis its quick adoption worldwide. But the wall itself holds less interest to me than its supporting cast members a few hundred yards out into the water. That means domestic areas arent as prone to the type of seismic activity that propagate earthquakes and tsunamis. It is able to be beautiful and effective at the same time.. Demand for concrete even for residential construction doubled between 1965 and 1971, the year before Okinawa reverted to Japanese rule (Chinen and Shiba 2015, 148150). He gestured to a scrubby patch of trees where a veritable forest once stood. Only by reading the text does the viewer realize that what at first glance appears to be a visual record of environmental damage caused by artificial marine structures is the oppositeit is presented as proof of side benefits to nature, of collateral undamage. That is not to say they do not possess their own brutalist beauty in an industrial setting (figures 9 and 10), incite geometrical wonder through sheer scale of deployment to a vanishing point (figures 11 and 12), or offer opportunities for provoking ironic and un-ironic juxtapositions (figures 13 and 14). Xbloc - Wikipedia clearwater, bc restaurants; jeffreys prior python. It also includes the animal without four feet like a snake as they descend from a common tetrapod ancestor. I dont share this groups self-interested, uncritical positionor more precisely, its sidestepping of legitimate critique through aggressive promotion of benefits without addressing environmental costsbut I view its research projects and public relations campaigns as a fascinating intersection of culture, media, politics, economics, science, and technology worthy of closer study. The first Japanese presenters appeared at the Seventh Conference held in The Hague, Netherlands, in August 1960. By contrast, little attempt is made to mask the vast majority of tetrapods at industrial sites and commercial ports (sea and air) or along miles of coastal roads and walkways where function precedes aesthetics (figure 8). In his spare time, he enjoys film and wet plate collodion photography using a wide range of vintage analog cameras. [18] An outline map shows the breakwaters in relation to the port and area shoreline, accompanied by a cross-section drawing of construction type. All of the images are mine unless otherwise indicated. 1961. The presenters shared a scenario in which Japanese national survival is naturally dependent on securing and protecting coasts for human livelihood.
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