December 14. 2017

A disaster, be it hurricane, tornado, earthquake, wildfire, engenders a response. This is not as easy as it might seem.

Any response requires fuel, for emergency vehicles, utility crews, road clearing, telecommunication repairs. But if power is out, that it is not easy. Gas stations, while perhaps undamaged, need power for the pumps to dispense fuel. No power, no fuel. How about emergency generators, to provide power to provide fuel? They need fuel to generate power to dispense fuel. No fuel, no generators, no fuel for emergency vehicles.

That was the situation here right after Hurricane Maria. Power was out over the entire island. Things came pretty much to a standstill. Dock workers did not have the fuel to get to the ports to off load the ships, some carrying fuel. In the states, adjoining areas would send supplies over the highways to the areas in need. That is not easy here. As our fearless President pointed out, Puerto Rico is in the middle of a big ocean.

But, in the true capitalist spirit, where some see difficulties, others see opportunities. That is playing out in port right now, in view from our balcony. I had wondered about some of the equipment and activities I had been observing.

The ship and tanker trucks were here when I arrived, on November 15. The white rectangular trailers were as well. During the course of a day, several tanker trucks would fill up from the ship and head off to somewhere on the island. There were far fewer of the white trailers then; their numbers have been gradually increasing over the past few weeks.

I also noticed a parking lot dedicated to pick up trucks, which entered and left at all hours of the day and night. Mini busses brought people here around the clock, presumably from their billets. The workers got into their trucks and rode off to somewhere on the island. Each truck appeared to have a small generator in its bed, as well as other tools.

I did a little more research and discovered the white trailers were in fact diesel generators, big enough to provide power for a sizeable building. They run on diesel fuel; when operating at full load, they need to be refueled every day or two. So it began to make a bit of sense. The generators were hauled to places on the island that needed electricity – a hospital, clinic, gas station, whatever. The fuel trucks refueled them every day of two. The pick up trucks probably carried technicians to the various sites to maintain the big generators. All in all, a big operation.

The activity seems to have slowed down a bit since I’ve been here, which suggests to me that fewer and fewer generators are needed. That also explains why the white trailers have increased in number – generators are brought back from sites as power is restored.

It turns out that there are specialized companies designed to provide these specialized services. The logo on the pick up trucks I see tells me the company is Cat5 Resources, with headquarters in Nederland, Texas, and a Caribbean office in Bayamon, close to San Juan. They, according to their website, are a young company, having been in business now for a little over four years. Cat5 offers a variety of services, generator management, emergency fuel supplies, cell tower management and repair – pretty much anything one can think of. I suspect, but I don’t know, that they contract with businesses before any storm and provide emergency generators and fuel to those customers as needed. If that is the case, it seems to me our building management might want to contact them.

There are other companies here as well. A Signal National Disaster Team truck has been parked outside of the still-closed Caribe Hilton since I’ve been here. According to their website, they specialize in restoration of properties that have suffered fire and water damages. They are a mainland US company. Their website does not mention a Caribbean presence. Perhaps the Hilton chain has them on some kind of retainer.

I don’t know the extent of the damages at the Caribe Hilton or at the Condado Plaza, also closed since I’ve been here. I wonder if winds blew out some windows on the ocean side with consequent damages.

I would have to guess these are good examples of growth industries. If I had a spare thousand bucks or so, I’d probably invest in them. Of course, we could start an investment club. I’d be happy to manage your money. Just let me know.

 

 

I arrived in Puerto Rico on November 15. My timing was propitious – power had been restored to our building three days before. Our apartment suffered some minor damage. Water seeped in from the hallway and a bit of flooring needs to be replaced. Our balcony awning was destroyed, as was the exterior light fixture on the balcony. No surprise there – wind gusts greater than 125 mph were measured not far from here.

While I was fortunate, power had not been restored in many parts of the city, including major parts of Old San Juan. Our friend Vionette, who stayed there during and after the storm, had no power even a week after my arrival. That was soon to change. She told me there were utility trucks swarming over Old San Juan, from ConEd, the power utility in New York City. One crew worked on her side street for three days. She could not remember their names so she called one of them Brooklyn. She had power back before Thanksgiving.

I’m not sure what program or authority caused ConEd to be here, but they came in force, and they were certainly welcome. There must have been 50 utility trucks and associated support vehicles. They were shipped here by freighter; their crews flew in a few days later to marry up with their equipment and start to work. The crews were on the streets starting on Veteran’s Day. They usually, by my sporadic observation, worked independently, although I did notice a very few instances of cooperation between ConEd and the PREPA, the Puerto Rican utility.

I talked to several of the ConEd people. They found the work gratifying and challenging, especially in Old San Juan. There, the electrical system had to be imposed on a city four centuries old. Narrow streets and sidewalks meant distribution poles were mounted on roof tops and hard to access. Several of them told me the system, while workable, had clearly not been upgraded in a while, and routine maintenance had sometimes been neglected.

One team of five or six trucks was assigned to La Perla, a poor neighborhood outside the city walls on the north side of Old San Juan, nestled between the city walls and the Atlantic Ocean. The crews (these crews were from Rockland and Orange Counties and they were technically a subsidiary of ConEd) had to dismantle some of their equipment to gain access to the streets there, as the only road in goes through an old gate in the wall. After reassembling their trucks, it took them five days to ‘knock it back together’ as one of them said. One guy bought a bottle of water from a woman in a convenience store there. She broke down in tears. The residents threw a party for the workers as they were leaving. I’m not sure what kind of party exactly, but the ConEd guys were impressed.

After finishing their work in Old San Juan, the crews moved steadily eastward, into Puerta de Tierra, Condado, Santurce, Miramar, Ocean Park, Hato Rey. One guy, working in Condado, told me they were frustrated because, while they could knot things back together and restore power, they did not have the material, like utility poles and transformers, to replace things that needed replacement. One friend of mine, in Hato Rey, had his power restored on November 30, another woman I know who lives there was still waiting as of December 4. She did say utility trucks were in her neighborhood and she hoped to have power back that evening or the next day.

I will say the crews are putting in the time.  Every morning from my balcony I see convoys, five of six trucks at a time, leaving from their staging area in Old San Juan and headed east. The start about 6 30 every morning, and usually return in the early evening, just after sunset. One crew told me they expected ConED, and perhaps other utilities, to be here until mid-January. The crews apparently work in five week rotations, so the first crews should be going home soon, to be replaced by new crews coming in.

There are other signs that things are returning to what might be a new normal. According to the paper (we subscribe to the San Juan Star, a daily published in English) the other day, 93% of the island’s public schools are back in session. Thousands of utility poles, 35, 50 and 70 feet in length, are supposed to start arriving in the Port of San Juan, starting today. Contracts have been let around the island for debris removal. Cruise ships are again making port calls; there are three cruise ships in port as I write this. We went to a movie yesterday, and dinner afterwards. The restaurant (Pizza e Barre in Miramar, for those who might know it) was doing a good early evening  business.

But there are, and will continue to be nagging questions about the recovery effort. Most of the people I have talked to think the contract between PREPA and Whitefish, out of Montana, was a disaster. The hospital ship USNS Hope just left, and the feeling is she was underutilized, mostly because of lack of communication and bureaucratic red tape.

One anecdote, I think, captures some of this frustration. A small town somewhere in the middle of the island banded together within a week after the storm and cleaned the school building. They restarted their school, with volunteer teachers and cooks, to provide their children with an education and a good lunch. The government closed it down. They said the town had to wait until building inspectors deemed the building safe.

Now, I’m a big fan of safe buildings. I understand the need for inspections. But this seems a case where the government, rather than quashing this effort, could have expedited the inspection, and worked with the community.

Maybe the story is apocryphal, but it rings true. And I have not yet seen any utility poles coming into port.

A couple of years ago a young friend mine, then a pre-med student at the University of Puerto Rico, told me of some of the projects going on there. I was intrigued by one. A professor was studying mitochondrial DNA composition across the Puerto Rican population. I was surprised to learn that a typical analysis showed a Puerto Rican had 50 % Spanish (or other southern European), 35% African, and 15% Taino heritage. I would have thought the fraction for the Taino, the peoples that populated the islands now known as the Greater Antilles prior to and during the Spanish arrival, would have been less. That it was as high as 15% indicates there must have been significant interactions among the Spanish and the Tainos after the Spanish got here, enough to overcome the effects of disease and war.

The Taino were in fact a generally peaceful people with a complex social structure. They were, at the time of the Spanish arrival, under stress from the more war-like Caribs to the east. Perhaps the Taino saw the Spaniards as allies against them. Their belief system included zemis, spirits or ancestors. One zemi, Artabey, had control over natural disasters, aided by his two assistants: Guatauba, in charge of hurricane winds, and Coatrisquie, creator of floodwaters. It is unclear whether Juracan was a zemi, or just the Taino word for hurricane. In any case, it is likely hurricane is derived from the Taino Juracan made known to the Spanish. It first entered English in Richard Eden’s Decades of the New World, published in 1555:

These tempestes of the ayer (which the Grecians caule Tiphones …) they caule furacanes.

Perhaps some mystic forces disturbed Guatauba, Coatrisquie and Juracan this year, an explanation perhaps better suited to climate change deniers than continually trying to downplay the effects of human-induced global warming. Puerto Rico suffered from two large hurricanes, but the devastation here was largely overshadowed by Hurricane Harvey in Texas, Irma in Florida, and wild fires in California. Even now, late November, 2017, two months after Maria, damages are apparent and recovery efforts are continuing.

Hurricanes Irma and Maria were both so-called Cape Verde hurricanes. These storms begin as a low pressure wave that exits the West African coast near the Cape Verde Islands. If storm development continues, the wave is tracked as an invest, then a tropical depression graduating to a tropical storm to a hurricane. Developing systems track westward across the tropical Atlantic, over large distances of warm water which favors storm development. Cape Verde hurricanes are usually the largest and longest-lived hurricanes of the season. This year the surface sea temperatures in the Atlantic were one to two degrees Celsius higher than long term average temperatures; this was a source of energy for the developing hurricanes.

Hurricane Irma began as a tropical wave, invest 93L, first noticed on August 27 or 28. It was identified as a possible hurricane early on and various model runs showed it hitting or passing north of the Lesser Antilles. But that was still five or six days in the future, and model uncertainty is great over that time frame. Irma reached tropical storm status (and earned her name) on Wednesday, August 30. The next day, Irma’s eye became visible and she had intensified into a Category 2 hurricane. Model forecasts continued to show the Lesser Antilles at risk, and a strike on Florida not out of the question.

Irma intensified rapidly and by September 4 was a Category 5 hurricane. Irma, in fact, became the strongest hurricane ever recorded north of the Caribbean and east of the Gulf of Mexico, with sustained winds of 185 mph. She slammed into Antigua, Barbuda,  and St. Maarten, causing great damage. Irma was the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in these islands. A wind gauge on Barbuda recorded a gust of 155 mph before it failed.

Irma passed just north of Puerto Rico on September 2 and 3. The image at the top of this post shows Irma north of the Dominican Republic heading for the north shore of Cuba. The image also shows Katia (Category 1) to the left and Jose (Category 3) to the right. After pounding Cuba’s north coast, Irma would then veer more northerly and strike Key West and Florida. I’ll leave it to others to describe the consequences of that.

Puerto Rico was lucky. Not only did Irma not make a direct hit on the island, but the storm track was such that the weaker, left (with front as the direction of travel) quadrant affected the northeastern coast. But is was enough to cause damage. San Juan lost power for several days, as did other communities on the northeastern coast. The local power utility was able to get things back together in fairly short order. But by this time, Maria was lurking.

Tropical Invest 96L was noted on September 13 or 14. By the 15th, it showed more organization; the National Hurricane Center gave it a high probability of developing into a hurricane. Computer models forecast potential tracks and growth in intensity even as early as September 15th. The figure below shows potential storm tracks for the developing storm. Note that most of the solutions put Puerto Rico right in the cross hairs for a direct hit.

Like Irma, Maria intensified rapidly. She grew from a low end Category 1 storm to a Category 5 in less than one day. Her track took her a bit further south than Irma; Maria made a direct hit on Dominica as a full-fledged Category 5  on the evening of September 18. Maria was only the fifth hurricane to make landfall in Dominica since the 1830s. Cool ocean temperatures to the east typically prevent storms for strengthening to hurricane status before reaching Dominica. But, as noted above, ocean temperatures were warmer than usual along Maria’s track, abetting rapid storm intensification.

By this time, it was clear Maria was headed to Saint Croix (of the US Virgin Islands) and then Puerto Rico, with a track taking across the island from the southeast to the northwest. This in fact happened, with well-documented catastrophic results. Maria was a devil. Other hurricanes have struck here, but never has one so devastated the whole island. In the past, the population could shift to the undamaged parts as the damaged portions were rebuilt, That was not an option with Maria.

I will leave it to another post to describe the government response, both federal and local. I note in anticipation of that, if I remember correctly,  the federal government did not mention Puerto Rico in any briefing until four days after the storm. The President was golfing, as I recall. When President Trump did come, he tossed paper towels into a crowd gathered within a gated community. Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist, wrote a column with the title ‘Let Them Eat Paper” a few days after that performance.

I arrived here November 15, almost two months after Maria. Fortunately, the power in my building had been restored three days before my arrival. Power is slowly being restored through San Juan – a friend of ours in Old San Juan got her power back 60 days after the storm.

I’ll end this post with some images I’ve collected over the past few days.

Utilities from New York State have recently sent crews and equipment here. I don’t yet know why or how, or why they are here now and not sooner, but I’ll find out. I saw seven or eight ConEd trucks in Old San Juan the Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I’ve also seen convoys of the same utility heading into other parts of San Juan. Needless to say, the residents are most grateful.

Banyan trees, both in Old San Juan but especially in Parc Luis Munoz Rivera, were especially hard hit.

Many if not most of the street lights are not working. This seems to have made no difference in traffic flow. But is does make a bus ride through an intersection interesting.

You may be happy to know that some things are as normal as ever.

Notes and Sources: See Wikipedia entries for Taino culture, Decades of the New World, and Cape Verde hurricanes.

The meteorology information came mostly from the excellent blog posts on Weather Undergound, www.wunderground.com. The blogs, by Dr, Jeff Masters and Bob Henson, are clear and informative. See the blog archives for more information about the satellite images I used.

The sea temperature graphic came from a NOAA website: http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Products/ocean/sst/anomaly/.

February 2017

I saw an iguana, a male about 2 feet long, along the wall in back of our building the other day. I used to see several each day, especially on my walks to Old San Juan but there seem to be far fewer now. I wonder why that is.

The iguanas here are green iguanas, also known as the American iguana, of the genus Iguana. It is native to Central and South America and some of the Caribbean islands. It was accidentally introduced to Puerto Rico in the 1970s as a result of the pet trade. It has also been introduced into Florida, Texas, Hawaii, and the US Virgin Islands. Presumably, owners allowed their pet iguanas to escape. The reptiles found the conditions ideal; there are now as estimated 4 million on the island. Locally they are called Gallina de palo and are considered an invasive species. Populations densities of up to 225 iguanas per hectare have been observed. That’s about 58,000 per square mile. That’s a lot of iguanas.

The invaders, with no natural predators here, are altering the ecosystem, burrowing into and weakening dikes, disrupting power lines (and getting fried in the process), destroying native vegetation and ornamental plantings. Two years ago there was a professional golf tournament here. Iguanas on one of the greens became intrigued with the golf balls and butted them around with their snouts. I’m not sure how the rules of golf dealt with that situation. Iguanas are harmless so this is certainly better than running into a cobra on a golf course, as has happened to Australian golfers in Vietnam.

I’m not sure why anyone would want a pet iguana. On the positive side, they are docile and do not require an elaborate diet. They are colorful, often displaying reddish hues. On the negative side, they require special lighting and constant heat. And they are ugly, in a reptilian kind of way. I cringe every time I see one. They remind me of the monsters in the 1950s science fiction movies I used to watch – Godzilla, The Monster That Devoured Cleveland, and the like.

They are ugly for a couple of reasons. The spines along their back are formidable. The dewlap, the longitudinal flap of skin under the chin, can be attractive only to another iguana. The dewlap is thought to have a role in thermoregulation. They are arboreal but can fall to the ground – and land – from as high as 50 feet without apparent injury. An iguana, about three feet long, once landed about ten feet from me as I was walking across a shaded lawn. Scared the hell out of me.

The iguanas in Puerto Rico are one example of the world wide problem of introduced species that become invasive. The forests of Central New York, our summer home, are being altered by the two invasive insects. The hemlock woolly adelgid, introduced from Japan in the 1950s, feeds by sucking sap from native hemlock and spruce trees. The Emerald Ash Borer, a beetle introduced from China in the early 2000s, destroys ash trees when larval feeding girdles the tree and disrupts the flow of water and nutrients. Aquatic ecosystems there have been disrupted by the introduction of zebra mussels, native to Russian waters. They were first discovered in the Great Lakes in the 1980s and have spread quickly since then. I once worked with a team of aquatic scientists to analyze the effects of zebra mussel introduction to the Seneca River. See the Notes and Sources section for a full attribution.

Once an introduced species is identified as invasive, i.e., causing ecological and economic damages, the question of management and controls comes up. This has often proved difficult. Consider the case of the lamprey in the Great Lakes. The lamprey (which is a fish, not an eel) was introduced into the Great Lakes (and Lake Champlain, and the Finger Lakes in New York) sometime in the early twentieth century. This ugly fish swims upstream to breed; after two or three years, the adults emerge and swim downstream into the lakes. Their mouths are adapted to stick onto a prey fish and eat through the skin until it can suck blood and other body fluids from the host fish.

The population of lampreys exploded after their introduction and as a consequence, the numbers of commercially important fish like the lake trout dropped. Management efforts (use of lampricides, placement of nets to prevent upstream migration to spawn) reduced their population and the population of lake trout rebounded but not to pre-lamprey levels. The case of the lamprey illustrates one important fact in invasive species management: the intruder’s population might be reduced by various means, but it is next to impossible to achieve complete eradication. There will thus continue to be Burmese pythons in the Everglades, lampreys in the Great Lakes, and purple loose strife in wet meadows and marshes in the northeastern US.

So is there a management strategy for the iguanas in Puerto Rico? Maybe. It turns out that iguanas are edible, and in fact, in some countries are known as “chickens of the trees.” In Honduras, for example, iguanas are hunted and their population is dwindling. The Puerto Rico government has assisted a start-up business to slaughter iguanas and sell the meat to countries, like Honduras, where iguanas are a food source. The initial goal was 2,000 lbs of iguana meat a week.

How do you cook iguana? Here is one recipe.

IGUANA EN PINOL

1 Iguana – female 3 sour oranges (acid) 1 garlic bulb 4 lg. onions 1 tsp. black pepper (grain) 12 c. water 1 lb. dry corn (powdered) 1 tsp. REO PEPPER 3/4 bottle of pork grease Salt to taste The first day: After the Iguana has been killed, open the stomach and below, take out the eggs and intestines. Clean the eggs very well with the sour oranges. Put the eggs in the arms with the Iguana in all its skin. Later in the day cook the eggs in salt water for 10 minutes, then let them sit in the water until they are cold. Store them in refrigerator. Early the following day soak the Iguana in cold water. Skin it and wash it once more. Cut the Iguana into small pieces and cook it with 8 cups of water with salt, garlic, sliced onion, and black pepper. Grind it into a “Soft Mass” and mix it with the gravy. Cook the corn in water until soft, then brown it (not too darkly) and grind to a lumpy mass. Take 4 cups of this corn, mix with the gravy and Iguana and cook, stirring constantly until it is well cooked. In 2 1/2 cups of pork grease, fry 3 onions (chopped fine) until clear and light brown. Set aside a few onions. With the rest, add the powdered pepper, Iguana mixture, more salt, sour oranges, and, if necessary, more pork grease. Do not let get too dry. Form a large rounded shape in a serving dish and create an indentation in the center.

Iguana can also be served fried, stewed, curried, boiled, or pretty much any way you can cook chicken. It is said to taste a bit like chicken but with the consistency of crab meat.

There are rumors here in Puerto Rico that sometimes iguana meat replaces chicken in some local recipes. It is rumored that, while you think you’re eating chicken on a skewer (pincho de pollo) it might actually be pincho de iguana.

Is this why the numbers of iguanas seem to be decreasing? I don’t know, but I’m going to be real careful the next time I think of having a pincho de pollo.

 

Notes and Sources: See Wikipedia entries for Green Iguana, Lamprey, Godzilla, Hemlock Woolly Adelgid, Emerald Ash Borer, and Zebra Mussel for more information.

The iquana recipe is from www.cooks.com – search for iguana recipes. I haven’t tried this one yet.

The lake trout image is from Wikimedia Commons. The original link is http://www.nwrc.usgs.gov/world/images/lamprey.jpg

The Godzilla image is a poster advertising the 2014 movie of that name. The poster art copyright is believed to belong to the distributor of the film, Warner Bros., the publisher of the film or the graphic artist.

The zebra mussel paper I referred to is Water Quality Impacts and Indicators of Metabolic Activity of the Zebra Mussel Invasion of the Seneca River, published June 2007 in the JAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources Association. The authors were Steven W. Effler, David A. Matthews, Carol M. Brooks-Matthews, MaryGail Perkins, Clifford A. Siegfried and James M. Hassett

February 2017

            There was a minor lunar eclipse visible here the other night. We observed it walking to the Old San Juan bus station after listening to a woodwind quintet (flute, clarinet, oboe, English horn and bassoon) in one of the city’s many plazas. The mega yacht Eclipse is in port. If anyone on the yacht had been interested, they would have had a good view of the lunar eclipse. They would have missed the quintet though. Their loss.

I wonder if the two events are related. Do they show Russian attempts to meddle in solar system affairs? These sorts of questions keep me awake at night.

The Eclipse is the second largest privately owned yacht yet built. It is said to have an anti-missile warning system, an armored cabin, and a laser system to interfere with paparazzi’s cameras. I took the image at the top of the page; the system must not have activated. She was built by the Bloom + Voss shipyard in Hamburg, where, prior to World War II, the battleship Bismarck was built. More recently, the shipyard built the super yacht A. (See my earlier posts about A).

Eclipse is 533 feet long and displaces 13,000 tons. By comparison, a US Navy Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer is 504 feet long, and displaces about 9,800 tons. The Eclipse was designed by the naval architecture firm Francis Design; the exterior and interior were designed by Terence Tisdale Design. She carries a crew of about 70, a three-person submarine, three landing boats. Her guests use 23 guest cabins, three swimming pools (one can be converted to a dance floor), several hot tubs, a disco hall, and two helicopter pads. At an estimated $1.5 billion, she cost about as much as an Arleigh Burke destroyer. And they, to the best of my knowledge, don’t have hot tubs.

Eclipse was launched in 2009 and is registered in Bermuda. She is listed for charters through SuperYachtsMonaco, although this may be a tax dodge since charter yachts are exempt from European property tax. The Eclipse comes to the Caribbean each winter to pick up guests arriving at the international airport in St, Martin. She then travels to the owner’s estate on nearby St. Bart, close to St. Martin and about 150 miles east of Puerto Rico. By the way, St. Barts is one of five French overseas collectives and as such is a French state with representation in the French legislature. The Euro is the official currency there, as it is on the French side of St. Martin.

The Russian multibillionaire Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich (born 1966) owns Eclipse. For all his money, Abramovich had a rather modest start, selling imported rubber duckies with his first wife, Olga, from a Moscow apartment. I wonder if his business was in anyway connected with the release of 28,800 yellow rubber duckies and other floatable bathtub toys in the Pacific. That was the result of a container ship accident and is documented in Moby Duck, by Donovan Hohn, which was a New York Times notable book of the year, in 2011.

Abramovich’s horizons soon broadened, aided by perestroika, which lead to the privatization of Russian state-owned enterprises. After forays into several small businesses in the early 1990s, (body guard recruitment, doll manufacture, tire retreading), he, together with entrepreneur Boris Berezovsky, purchased controlling interests in the Russian oil company Sibfnet, in 1995. It is alleged they, by means of bribes and other forms of persuasion, bought the company for far less than the market value. They each paid US$100 million for a company whose net worth was estimated to be US$2.7 billion. They both turned their purchase into multibillion dollar profits. Their purchase was no doubt assisted by then Russian Prime Minister Boris Yeltsin, who invited Abramovich and his family to live in a Kremlin apartment.

Abramovich had a falling out with Beresovsky when , in 2000, Abramovich gained 100% interest in Several Russian aluminum mines and smelters and formed Rusal, the world’s largest aluminum company. Beresovsky felt he had been cheated by Abramovich during the so called Russian aluminum wars, and responded with a multibillion dollar lawsuit heard in a London court. The case was dismissed in August 2012, after the High Court judge found Berezovsky to be “an unimpressive, and inherently unreliable witness, who regarded truth as a transitory, flexible concept, which could be moulded to suit his current purposes”, whereas Abramovich was seen as “a truthful, and on the whole reliable, witness”.

The aluminum wars did not keep Abramovich away from politics. In 1999, he was elected governor of the remote Russian province of Chukotka, in far western Siberia, just across the Bering Strait from Alaska. Given their close proximity, I wonder if he and Sarah Palin got to know each other. Abramovich, unlike Palin, showed a philanthropic streak as he donated an estimated US$1.3 billion to various projects there.

Abramovich has been a close confidant of Vladimir Putin. He recommended to Yeltsin, in 1999, that Putin be his successor as the Russian president, and interviewed each candidate for a cabinet post in Putin’s government. Chris Hutchins, a Putin biographer, states that Putin treats Abramovich like a favorite son. His influence on Putin presumably continues to this day.

Outside of Russia, Abramovich is known as the owner of the Chelsea F.C., a team in the English premier soccer league. Abramovich purchased the company that owns the football club in 2003 and immediately embarked upon a program to bring Chelsea to the same international prominence as Manchester United and Real Madrid.

Chelsea finished their first season under the new ownership in second place, up from fourth the previous year. Abramovich rules Chelsea as George Steinbrenner once ruled the New York Yankees, with expensive free agents, frequent changes in managers, and success on the field.

So there, in a nutshell, is the owner of Eclipse, which left port the day before yesterday. I wonder how much Russian influence she left behind.

 

Notes and Sources: See Wikipedia entries for Yacht Eclipse, Roman Abramovich, Russian aluminum wars, Vladimir Putin, and Chukotka.

The image of the USS Arleigh Burke is by Petty Officer 1st Class RJ Stratchko – https://www.dvidshub.net/image/1023190.

Moby Duck: The True Story of 28.800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea & of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists & Fools Including the Author Who Went in Search of Them by Donovan Hohn is a worthy read. I enjoyed it immensely.

A new governor was sworn in just after midnight on January 2, 2017. This marks a new chapter in the complex US – Puerto Rican relationship.

Governor Ricardo Rossello of the Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP- New Progressive Party) replaced Alejandro Garcia Padilla of the Partido Popular Democrático  (PPD – Popular Democratic Party). Padilla chose not to run for reelection. Historically, the PNP has been pro-statehood and loosely associated with the mainland Republican party. The PPD, loosely associated with the Democrats, has been pro-commonwealth. There is a pro-independence party (Partida Independentista Puertorriqueño, PIP) but it receives too few votes to be registered in general elections.

The inauguration is a day long celebration. People travel from around the island to attend. They gather at the Capitol and along the route to La Fortalezza, the governor’s mansion. After addressing both houses of the legislature, the governor and his family, in accordance with long-standing tradition, walk from the Capitol to the mansion. As you can imagine, this is a challenge for the security detail.

Security was evident everywhere. There were patrol boats off shore, just to the north of the Capitol. Motorcycle police where everywhere. Helicopters and drones kept an eye on things from above. And former US Presidents kept a watchful eye on the proceedings.

The procession started from the north side of the Capitol, passed the south side of Castillo San Cristobal, wound around Plaza Colon, and then headed up Calle Fortalezza to the mansion. A group of students from an arts high school in Bayamon provided entertainment. They were dressed in period costumes and performed Puerto Rican dances, some with a distinct Afro-Caribbean flavor, There were four cruise ships in port; the visitors must have been impressed as they kept asking to have their pictures taken with students.

The procession began with a 21 gun salute from 105 mm howitzers on the north side of the Capitol. I knew the Governor was getting close when the TV truck showed up. He greeted and mingled with the crowd along the way. That must have given the security detail apoplexy.

 

Governor Rossello’s first actions demonstrate his interest in statehood for Puerto Rico. He asked his government’s Resident Counselor (a non-voting member of Congress representing Puerto Rican interests) to introduce a bill in the House of Representatives to start the statehood process. He stated he would conduct an island-wide referendum with two choices: statehood or independence. There will be no option for an improved Commonwealth status. And he promised to hold an election to help force the issue, the Tennessee Gambit.

Now, the US Constitution is not very clear as to the process for a new state to join the union. Congress is given the authority in Article IV, Section s, clause 2:  “The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States…”

Typically, Congress has adopted the following steps:

• The territory holds a referendum to determine the people’s desire for or against statehood.
• If a majority votes for statehood, the territory petitions Congress
• Both the House and the Senate agree to statehood via a simple majority vote.
• The President signs the resolution granting statehood.

So, Governor Rossello has started the process by asking for a referendum and petitioning Congress for a statehood resolution. He plans on more. The population of Puerto Rico is about 3.5 million, roughly the same as Connecticut. Puerto Rico would thus become the 29th or 30th most populous state. The Nutmeg State has, like all states, two senators, and, apportioned by population, five congressional districts; Puerto Rico would have the same number of representatives. Governor Rossello proposes to create five congressional districts and hold elections for two senators and five representative prior to statehood, a move seen here as designed to force the issue in Washington. This tactic has been called, here in Puerto Rico, the Tennessee gambit.

This may not work. Tennessee elected two senators before being admitted to the union, but the US Senate did not recognize them.  William Blount and William Cocke had to be reelected after statehood was granted, on July 1, 1796. Andrew Jackson was elected the state’s lone representative, but only after statehood had been granted.

By the way, it cannot be said that Rossello won a ringing endorsement for his plans. In a four way race, he won 42% of the vote. His closest rival, from the PPD, won about 38% of the vote, with the remainder going to two candidates representing minor parties.

These are interesting times here in Puerto Rico. Of course, they are also interesting on the mainland. Stay tuned.

 

Sources: See Wikipedia entries for Tennessee statehood, US States’ populations, and various news stories.

 

 

San Juan has wonderful events during the holiday season – concerts, tree lightings, visits from Santa. The annual parade of yachts from the marina and around the harbor is a major part of the season. Families crowd into Old San Juan for the event, Many stay for food and drink and make an evening of it.

The yachts start leaving the marina just before dark, and travel down the channel in single file, led by a Coast Guard ship. They pass two cruise ships getting ready for their weekly departure. The passengers must have a great view of the armada as it passes by.

The parade route takes the single file of yachts into the main bay, where they turn back towards the marina. One their return, they pass close – 20 to 30 feet – to the shore of the Urban Bahia, San Juan’s waterfront park. This is the best viewing location. Families come with folding chair and coolers and stake out a place along the railing. The thousands of viewers are in a festive mood; I heard several spontaneous renditions of Feliz Naviad, in both Spanish and English.

The yachts are elaborately decorated and they make for an impressive sight. Here are a few of the 75 or so yachts in the parade.

As you can see, the yacht owners invest a good deal of time and thought into their decorative schemes.

All in all, a fun night. I’ll describe other aspects of Christmas in San Juan in a subsequent post. In the meantime, happy holidays to all!

Two ships from the Royal Netherlands Navy were in port the other day, docked at Pier 18. The port call was presumably a friendly visit, but that has not always been the case. The Dutch invaded Puerto Rico in 1625 and almost took the island. The Netherlands, like other European naval powers, have a long history in the Caribbean.

The Dutch Navy dates from the Eighty Years’ War (1568 – 1648), also known as the Dutch War of Independence. The seventeen Dutch provinces revolted against the political and religious rule of Philip II of Spain, who was the sovereign over the Habsburg Netherlands. The Dutch forces, led by William the Silent, eventually defeated the Spanish. In 1581, they formed the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, the existence of which was codified in the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648.

The Dutch invested in their navy and soon became a world power, challenging especially the English, but also the French and Spanish navies for trade and overseas possessions. It was during this period that pejorative terms – Dutch courage (fueled by alcohol), Dutch cap (contraceptive diaphragm), Dutch wife (prostitute), Dutch concert (uproar from a drunken crowd) – entered the English language. Some phrases are still current – Dutch date, Dutch treat, Dutch uncle, for example.

The Dutch, like other European naval powers, recognized the strategic importance of Puerto Rico. The Enchanted Isle is the first island sailing ships from Europe, traveling on the trade winds, encounter with both ample fresh water and an excellent harbor. The Spanish had recognized this early on and had begun to fortify the harbor area by constructing El Morro, the iconic fortress at the harbor entrance. In fact, San Juan is one of only seven cities in the New World the Spanish considered important enough to fortify.

The Dutch arrived off San Juan on September 24, 1625, with an armada of 17 ships and 2,000 men. The Dutch took advantage of favorable winds and forced their way into the harbor. The Spanish cannons at El Morro were in poor repair, and the cannoneers ill-prepared. The Dutch commander, know to history as Captain Boudewijn Hendricksz or Boudoyno Henrico or Balduino Enrico, demanded a surrender from Juan de Haros, the Spanish Governor. He refused, and the Dutch invaded at La Puntilla, the site of the current US Coast Guard station in San Juan Bay.  de Haros recognized the threat and ordered San Juan evacuated. He commanded Captain Juan de Amezquita with 300 men to defend the island from El Morro. He also ordered former governor Juan de Vargas to lead the island’s militia against the Dutch.

The Dutch took possession of San Juan on September 25, 1625, and established their headquarters in Fortaleza, the governor’s mansion. Their attacks on El Morro were unsuccessful, and they also suffered attacks from the militia. After a siege of about a month, the Dutch were driven from the island by a series of counterattacks. They fled after setting fire to the city and looting the cathedral, The Spanish victory is depicted in a  painting by Eugenio Caxes, the royal artist for Philip III. The painting was completed shortly after the battle and is currently on display at the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

The Spanish learned that San Juan could be defended from an attack, and that the island’s militia could be trusted in the defense of Spanish interests. The Dutch, however, did capture a Spanish fleet on its way to the Iberian peninsula. That, and the near defeat in San Juan, caused the Spanish to rethink the defense of their empire. Money was allocated to make San Juan a more readily defensible walled city. Construction began in 1630 and, with various fits and starts, was completed in 1780.

The Netherlands governs six islands in the Lesser Antilles. Three – Aruba, Curacao, and Sint Maarten are countries in the Netherlands, with the Netherlands being the fourth and largest constituent country in the Kingdom. The other three – Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba – are special municipalities of the Netherlands alone. As shown on the map below, three of these islands are in the Leeward Islands, and three in the Leeward Antilles. The Windward and Leeward designation comes from the days of sail; the reasons for these designations merits its own post.

The Dutch thus have good reason for a naval presence in the Caribbean. The warship that visited is P840, the HNLMS Holland, one of a class of four offshore patrol vessels constructed for the Royal Netherlands Navy. They fulfill patrol and intervention tasks against smugglers and other lightly armed adversaries. They carry one helicopter, flown from the rear deck. The main armament is an Otto Melara Super Rapid gun which can fire 76 mm rounds at 120 rounds per minute at a range of about 10 miles.

The second ship is the HNLMS Pelikaan (A804), a logistics support ship permanently based at Curacao. She is used primarily for humanitarian relief efforts. I wonder if she is here from Haiti. The Pelikaan was the first ship there after the 2010 earthquake.

I’m glad the Dutch came in peace this time. The main gun on the Holland could have done a real number on our balcony furniture.

Notes and sources. See Wikipedia articles on the Royal Netherlands Navy, the Dutch invasion of Puerto Rico, Eugenio Caxes, and the Netherlands in the Caribbean for more information.

I downloaded the map of the Caribbean, created by Kmusser, from Wikimedia Commons. It is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported  agreement,

 

 

 

The Glovis Summit came to port on Friday, November 18, 2016. Two harbor tugboats assisted her as she docked at Pier 14. Ships like this come into San Juan harbor once or twice a week, but usually dock on the far side of the port.

The Summit is a vehicle carrier, a PTPC (pure truck, pure car), one of a fleet of 38 owned and operated by Hyundai Industries of Korea. Hyundai manufactures vehicles (KIAs, Hyundais) in Korea and elsewhere. The vehicle carriers transport the finished vehicles around the world. There are, for example, five or six vehicle carrier sailings per month between Korea and the US west coast ports of Tacoma and Portland. Glovis has routes to Europe, Africa, South America, the Red Sea, Australia, New Zealand – pretty much everywhere in the world.

The Summit came here directly from Ulsan, Korea, across the Pacific and through the Panama Canal, if information from an independent shipping website is to be believed. Once docked, the rear ramp was lowered and vehicles began to spit out of her. Dockworkers (I presume they are longshoremen) drove the cars and trucks down the ramp (the Summit is a RORO –  roll on, roll off vehicle carrier), though some kind of scanner set up by port officials, and then were directed to one of several areas of the pier. Vans collected the drivers and took them back up the ramp for more cars and trucks.

It is hard to know how many KIAs, Hyundais, and trucks came off the Summit. I would guess close to a thousand. Since the Summit can carry about 6,000 cars and trucks, there are still vehicles for the next ports.

I find it hard to believe that the Puerto Rican market can absorb that many new vehicles. And remember, a ship like the Summit arrives in port two or three times a week, presumably carrying other brands – Subarus. Lincolns, BMWs, Nissans. For example, an NYK carrier arrived this morning, Sunday, two days after the Summit came and left. The NYK ship (NYK stands for Nippon Yusen Kaisha; it is a Japanese logistics company) arrived either from Europe on its way to the US west coast and then to Japan, or from Veracruz, Mexico after stops at US east coast ports. If the NYK ship is on that route, it will call at Venezuelan, Colombian and Central American ports before returning to Veracruz. That city is home to several automobile manufacturing plants, including Ford, Chrysler, Honda, Land Rover, etc.

I would have to guess that San Juan transships some of the cars and trucks to smaller Caribbean islands, with less capable port facilities. I don’t know how that occurs. I do know that there will be a steady stream of trucks transporting the new arrivals, eight or ten at a time, to somewhere, auto dealers around the island, car rental companies, etc., for the next several days.

The Summit left after about 12 hours in port, headed for Galveston, if a shipping website is to be believed. I did discover that another logistics company, Ghanem Forwarding LLC out of Baltimore, rents space on the Summit. You can take your vehicle to Galveston, Jacksonville, Baltimore, Port Newark, or Boston, and have it loaded onto the ship as it heads for West Africa, So if you want to tour Ghana or Nigeria, or Benin or Senegal with your own car, this is how you can do it.

As the image above suggests, the Zika virus is of concern here in Puerto Rico, as it is in Brazil, other parts of South America, other Caribbean islands, and the US mainland. Zika’s rapid spread around the world represents an object lesson in globalization, and the complex interactions among environmental factors, disease vector(s), and humans. Still, by a fortunate series of events, the Zika virus is reasonably well understood, and two vaccines are now or soon will be in clinical trials.

The current Zika outbreak seems to have begun in the South Pacific. A woman and her husband returned to Australia after travel to a funeral in the Cook Islands. She went to the local hospital, outside of Melbourne, complaining of a fever, headaches, and an unusual rash. Australia has a particularly well developed system with regards to travel-related diseases. Nenad Acesic, a fellow in infectious diseases, took the call.

Acesic first considered the usual suspects, including dengue and chikungunya, both mosquito-borne viral diseases (and both present in the Caribbean now, as well). However, the patient’s symptoms were milder and spontaneously cleared within a day or two. Acesic’s forays into the medical literature caused him to suspect Zika. A blood test showed the presence of the virus.

Acesic learned that Zika had shown up in 2013 in a cluster of cases, perhaps as many as 32,000, in French Polynesia, again with typical symptoms similar to but milder than dengue and chikungunya. There were, however, some cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a debilitating but temporary paralysis, at the same time as the Zika outbreak, a bizarre premonition of more serious complications to come. What Acesic did not know was that the Tahiti soccer team had, in 2013, with many supporters, traveled to Brazil for the Confederate Cup tournament. It is possible, but cannot be proven, that Zika entered Brazil then.

Zika was first isolated in 1947 from a rhesus monkey in a forest in Uganda. Its name derives from that region. The monkey was infected as a part of a naturally occurring mosquito – monkey – mosquito cycle. At some point, the virus jumped to humans and became part of a mosquito – human – mosquito cycle. The map below, derived from serological data, shows the spread of Zika since the early 1950s.

Brazil is the epicenter of the Zika virus in the Western Hemisphere. In 2015, health workers noted an increase in Zika cases in the northeastern parts of Brazil. Again, the cases were mild and seemed self-clearing. Some weeks later, however, health workers noted an increase in children born with small heads, a tragic condition known as microcephaly. In the Brazilian state of Bahia, the background rate for microcephaly before Zika was about 0.02 percent. After Zika was introduced, the rate rose to between 0.88 and 13.2 percent of women who had been infected with Zika in the first trimester of their pregnancy. The incidence of patients with Guillain-Barre syndrome rose as well.

Mosquitos were implicated in the spread of the disease, and two invasive species, originally from Africa, Aedes aegypti and Aedes allopictus, seemed primarily responsible. Both species are sip-feeders, that is, they take a little bit of blood per bite from multiple victims. The mosquitos are unwitting carriers – they seem to derive no benefit from their hosting activities. After a sip of blood from an infected individual, the virus replicates and, over a 5 to 10 day span, moves to the salivary glands, where it can be injected into the next bite victim.

The ecological habits of A. aegypti and A. allopictus overlap such that one or the other species is around most of any day. Their habitat requirements are modest –they can breed in small pools of standing water such as bird feeders, gutters, flower vases, shower stalls, and toilet tanks, all close to or within houses. Females require blood meals for egg development; males do not feed on blood. (I am trying very hard here to not be anthropomorphic). They both have characteristic black and white bands on their legs.

The Zika virus is relatively simple, as viruses go. It is an RNA virus of the Flaviviridae family and the Flavivirus genus. It is related to the dengue, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis, and West Nile viruses. There are two Zika lineages: African and Asian. The Zika responsible for the current outbreak in the Americas is most closely related to the Asian, the same lineage found in the French Polynesian outbreak.

The Zika virus congregates in the semen of infected men; transmission by sexual contact has been observed during the current outbreak. And that the virus can move from mother to fetus, with devastating results, is of great concern. While cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome have increased during Zika outbreaks, there is as yet no clear understanding as to how this occurs.

So there is the Zika Troika – susceptible human hosts, mosquito vectors well adapted to human habitats, and an agent whose clinical manifestation is sometimes benign, sometimes horrific. The possibility of sexual transmission, not of the classic host – agent – vector troika, adds complexity to the picture.

Public health responses to a disease outbreak focus on one of more components of the troika. In the case of Zika, one could hope for a readily available vaccine to prevent infection by the virus. Or, mosquito control efforts might reduce the population of infected mosquitos. Perhaps a genetically-modified virus released in the environment can, as it spreads, act as an inoculating agent and confer disease resistance. Of course, public health education efforts can reduce the incidence of Zika spread by sexual contact. Individual actions – use of effective insect repellent, vigilance in clearing suspected breeding areas – can help.

There are good reasons to hope a Zika vaccine will soon be available. Researchers quickly noted that the Zika viral strains were genetically similar. They also noted that the disease is often self-clearing, and that a previous Zika infection confers resistance to continued exposure. Several virology laboratories around the world were able to shift their focus to Zika research, using skills and methods derived during research into HIV, among other diseases. As I write this, it appears two Zika vaccines are ready for clinical trials starting some time in 2017, a remarkable feat made possible by the relative simplicity of the Zika virus, and the ability of labs around the world to shift their skills and attention to this new disease.

Mosquito control efforts for species as wide-spread as A. aegypti and A. allopictus have proven difficult. Chemical insecticide sprays may be effective in the short term, but are often met with opposition from the public. A more promising method involves mosquitos genetically modified to carry a self-limiting gene. Modified male mosquitos (remember, male mosquitos neither bite nor carry disease) are released in large numbers. They mate with females; the offspring inherit a gene that causes them to die before reaching maturity. Early trials showed a greater than 90% target species reduction. The modified mosquitos have been approved for use in Brazil, and the US Food and Drug Administration has, in 2016, approved their use in the US.

The genetically-modified insect technique can presumably be applied to other mosquito species – perhaps the Anopheles that spreads malaria.

In any case, I’ll be using insect repellent, just as I have all along. I think I am a poster boy for DEET. And, I’m sure I’ll be an early adopter of a Zika vaccine when it comes out. Perhaps, if we’re really lucky, the vaccine will also confer immunity to dengue and chikungunya. If so, the vaccine might be know as the CDZ vaccine.

In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy life here as I always have. Happy hour – time for a beer.

Notes and Sources

I relied on two general articles. First, Siddhartha Mukherjee, “The Race for a Zika Vaccine’, New Yorker, August 22, 2016. See that article for more details as to the development of a Zika vaccine. Mukherjee wrote The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2011 for General Non-Fiction. I am now reading his latest book The Gene: An Intimate History, which I am  enjoying immensely.

See also Robert L. Dorit: ”Zika Goes Viral”, American Scientist, September-October 2016. Dorit’s emphasizes public health considerations and writes of Zika as an example of an emerging epidemic.

See Wikipedia entries for Zika virus and Aedes aegyptii for general information.

The map showing Zika spread is from Wikimedia Commons. The complete attribution is: Faye O, Freire C, Iamarino A, Faye O, de Oliveira J, Diallo M, Zanotto P, Sall A (2014). “Molecular Evolution of Zika Virus during Its Emergence in the 20th Century“. PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. DOI:10.1371/journal.pntd.0002636. PMID 24421913. PMC: 3888466.

The image of the Aedes aegyptii mosquito is in the public domain, having originated at the US Center for Disease Control.

The image of the Zika virus from Wikimedia Commons. The full attribution is: David Goodwill (RCSB Molecule of the Month 197, June 2016) [CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. See it at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A197-Zika_Virus-ZikaVirus.tif

The modified male mosquitos, known as OX513A, were developed by Oxitec, an offshoot of Oxford University. This seems promising as A. aegypti is a vector of dengue and chikungunya as well as Zika – a three for one benefit. Google OX513A for more information.