Latest news with #Cousteau
Irish Times
18-05-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Is four too young to let my daughter go for a walk on her own?
A fortnight ago, my daughter asked if she and her toy dinosaur (Shiny) could go for a walk 'on their own', promising they'd stay on the path in front of our terrace, not cross any roads, or go around the corner beyond this stretch of houses. My daughter is four. I said yes. Given the strident nature of parenting opinion, this admission may be met with everything from 'that's nothing' eyerolls to draft emails to Tusla . I realise there's some risk involved in letting her out of my sight on a public roadway (however briefly – I mostly linger on my front step where I can see her half the time). On the one hand, she's immensely sensible, especially about traffic. On the other, it's riskier than keeping her in the garden or accompanying her. All of which has made me wonder about risk as a principle in parenting and how I'll manage the risk-reward calculation with her as she gets older. My daughter adores nature – she's taken to regaling us with Cousteau -style reports on species of animal she's invented. Currently, she's committed to expanding the family of owls far beyond its existing taxonomy to include 'sea-owls', 'mountain-owls', and, more puzzlingly, 'owlpeckers'. Shiny the dino is an inch-tall red rubber amputee, and, we learned, a 'nectar raptor'. Shiny needs flower-nectar to survive. Until recently both were content to hunt in the garden, but now she wants to go further. READ MORE So I sit in the doorway trying not to run down to her every 45 seconds, to allow her this tiny slice of independence that she finds so thrilling. Stressful though it is, the reward is obvious. I hear delightful snippets of her telling Shiny about the latest flower and what an important dietary source it is. I also see passersby anxiously looking around and relieved when they eventually spot me lurking. Letting her court risk in these semi-independent mini-walks or allowing her to ride her streamer-adorned, stabiliser-enabled bike in the cycle-lane on the trip home from creche – which we also do – reminds me of projects in Iceland aimed at preventing adolescents getting involved in recreational substance abuse. The Icelandic Model was holistic, involving robust parental commitment and considerable infrastructure. It successfully reduced the ages at which kids tried various substances and transformed the antisocial adolescent behavioural culture. One of the scheme's theorists, Harvey Milkman, had done doctoral work on responses to stress and dispositions to react either by numbing (associated with heroin-use) or confronting (associated with amphetamines). Subsequent work examined how people can become addicted to certain changes in brain chemistry associated with risky behaviour, which prompted Milkman to pursue initiatives of replacing bad highs with good highs – or, as I'm conceiving it now, courting good risks to smother bad ones. This is hard to do in our society. For example, my daughter loves climbing, so last time I was bouldering I asked how old she had to be for me to bring her. Eight, apparently. When I asked the guy why this was so different from England (the London wall took kids from four) he frowned and said 'insurance'. In my childhood (mostly in the 1990s), we operated under the premise that the main risk to our safety was a 'man with a van'. I remember this stereotype being so potent that the arrival of a Toyota Hiace to the side of the park elicited suspicion and often a change of location. Of course, the real threat to children was, as ever, closer to home. The following decade, the Sexual Abuse and Violence in Ireland (SAVI) Report told us that, contrary to the stereotype, over 80 per cent of children were abused by people they knew. Turns out the real 'stranger danger' was mischaracterisation of the threat. The conjunction of that fear of the unknown with the rise of cheaper tech meant parents felt safe swapping a lot of unstructured outdoor play for time indoors, often involving screens. However, the screens of the 1990s were very different from today's screens, which connect children to dangers we barely understand, many of which are not even designed to have malign capacities. One of my big take-homes from Jonathan Haidt's writings on 'the anxious generation' is that, alongside the notorious increase in screen-time is a nosedive in the riskier, unstructured outdoor play that defined previous generations' childhoods. [ What's the right age for my daughter to get a smartphone? I asked her older siblings Opens in new window ] Of course, risk is a comparative notion. We live in a relatively safe suburban estate and my daughter is very cautious (her little brother thus far shows no signs of being afforded the same allowances). So far, the risk-reward trade-off seems obvious. I perceive the risk with the walks to be small, but it's obviously non-zero. She could do something vastly out of character, safety-wise, or the wrong person could show up at the wrong time (though, I do think it's important to her ultimate social safety that she comes to know and trust her neighbours in an independent way). Admittedly, these calculations are complex. However, the reward – supporting her fascination with nature and the outdoors – is one we value very highly. And the calculation is not just about exciting risk versus boring safety, independence versus stifling, it's also about opportunity cost. I am increasingly terrified of what technology is doing to human attention and cognitive capacities and am clinging to any and all passions she shows for more tangible aspects of reality. The threat posed by exposure to the online world seems more glaring and troubling every few weeks. I feel desperate to show her an exciting world offline and to try to ignite some passions that will stand to her as she grapples with growing up in the modern world. We need to radically recalculate the idea that a kid is safer behind a closed door inside than out being in the world – and try to summon the courage to act accordingly. Dr Clare Moriarty is a postdoctoral researcher working at Trinity Research in Social Sciences in Trinity College Dublin
Forbes
30-03-2025
- Science
- Forbes
The ‘Great Blue Hole' Mystery — How Jacques Cousteau's 1971 Expedition Took It Mainstream
In the heart of the Caribbean, off the coast of Belize, lies a near-perfect underwater sinkhole. In ... More 1971, Jacques Cousteau's expedition mapped its depths, uncovering clues to its ancient origins. Sinkholes are natural depressions that form when rock dissolves or collapses, creating deep voids in the ground. While they are commonly found on land, they also exist in the ocean, often appearing as deep, circular pits in shallow coastal waters. These oceanic sinkholes typically originate from limestone caves that formed thousands of years ago, when sea levels were much lower. Over time, as rising waters flooded these caves, some collapsed, leaving behind the massive, submerged sinkholes we see today. One of the largest and most famous of these is the Great Blue Hole, located off the coast of Belize. Measuring over 1,043 feet across and about 407 feet deep, this massive submarine sinkhole was known to local fishermen for generations. However, it wasn't until the mid-20th century, as ocean exploration advanced, that it gained international attention. As interest in the world's oceans grew, so did the curiosity surrounding this geological anomaly. By the late 1960s, ocean exploration was undergoing a transformation. Advancements in scuba technology, underwater photography and submersibles were making the deep sea more accessible than ever, while a surge in public fascination — driven by television and scientific curiosity — was pushing marine research into the mainstream. At the forefront of this movement was Jacques Cousteau, a former French naval officer turned oceanographer, filmmaker and conservationist. Having already brought global attention to remote reefs, ancient shipwrecks and ecologically vital marine habitats, Cousteau had become a household name, blending scientific discovery with visual storytelling in ways no one had done before. In 1971, Jacques Cousteau and his crew aboard the research vessel Calypso arrived in Belize to explore the Great Blue Hole — a massive, perfectly circular submarine sinkhole located in the Lighthouse Reef Atoll. This expedition was part of their renowned television series, The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. Though geologists already understood its karstic origins to some degree, Cousteau's approach to exploration was different. He was there to show it to the world. He was so enthralled, in fact, that he subsequently ranked it among his top ten scuba diving sites in the world. Cousteau's expedition provided the first widely publicized visual evidence that the Great Blue Hole had once been a dry limestone cave — formed during the last Ice Age, when sea levels were lower. His team's footage of submerged stalactites supported existing geological theories, showing that the cave had collapsed and flooded as the oceans rose. In the years that followed, the Great Blue Hole became a popular dive site, attracting marine researchers, geologists and adventurers eager to explore its mysteries. While its striking vertical walls and massive submerged stalactites remained a major draw, divers also began documenting the varied marine life that inhabits the sinkhole, including Caribbean reef sharks, giant groupers and other deep-sea species that navigate its depths. However, a true, detailed mapping of the Great Blue Hole wouldn't happen until nearly five decades later, when advancements in sonar technology and submersibles allowed for a complete digital reconstruction of the sinkhole's interior. It wasn't until 2018 that Aquatica Submarines, in collaboration with Fabien Cousteau, Richard Branson and sub pilot Erika Bergman, used advanced sonar technology to create the first complete 3D digital model of its interior. The exploration encountered a thick hydrogen sulfide layer at 300 feet, blocking out oxygen and light, creating a dead zone where no marine life could survive. Below this, the water was completely anoxic, preserving everything that had fallen in — including plastic waste and dead conches, which had sunk to the bottom without decomposing due to the extreme conditions. The mapping also revealed a calcium carbonate layer at 290 feet, evidence that a thriving coral reef had once existed here before being submerged by rising seas. Additionally, divers observed sandfalls cascading down the sinkhole's walls, a process that suggests the Great Blue Hole is slowly filling in over time. The expedition was broadcast live on Discovery Channel. But while the technology had changed, the mission remained the same: to explore, document and inspire a new generation to understand and protect the ocean's wonders. While the 2018 expedition gave us the first complete map of the Great Blue Hole, scientists have since discovered that its greatest secret is what's buried at the bottom. A November 2020 study extracted a nearly 9-meter-long core of sediment from the Great Blue Hole's floor, revealing a 1,885-year-long record of climate change in the Caribbean. Each layer of sediment acts like a page in a history book, showing how sea temperatures, storm activity and even human influence have changed over time. The findings confirmed that sea temperatures have been rising for nearly 2,000 years, with long-term climate patterns like 'El Niño' and the 'Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation' playing a major role. The sediment also shows that hurricane activity peaked between 900 and 1300 CE — during what's known as the Medieval Warm Period — when storms became more intense and frequent, eroding coastlines and washing more material into the Blue Hole. But the most surprising discovery was evidence of modern human impact. The study found a sudden change in carbon composition after 1900, linked to the Industrial Revolution and the rise of fossil fuel emissions — a phenomenon known as the Suess Effect. This means that even this remote underwater sinkhole, first explored for its natural beauty, is now a record of human-caused climate change. Want to see where your own climate concerns fit in to this larger trend? Take the science-backed Climate Change Worry Scale now and find out how your perspective compares.
