Ocean Wave Refraction Pattern Navigation

[Mergie Master]

This is pretty interesting stuff. The Polynesians used to navigate the ocean, even the open ocean using these wave refraction patterns. Below the picture are a few posts where people explain sort of how this was done.

Wave Refraction Patterns (Google Maps)




• I lived in the Marshall Islands for a long time. They use these patterns to navigate. Or they used to anyway. While there I learned that the rite of passage for young male navigators back in the day was to lie in the bottom of a boat, blindfolded, and by feeling the waves patterns, they'd have to describe where they were in relation to which islands. Their techniques were so good that they would be able to know if an island was over the horizon, the size and rough shape, and where it was...just by the waves bouncing off it.

They would make these stick charts to illustrate the patterns waves would take as they came off various islands and intersected with each other. Those were their only "maps."

Besides that they used a navigation method called "moving island" navigation and natural things like bird species and weather patterns-- that's how they reckoned their position in the open ocean. Neat stuff.

Edit: They didn't use just a wave coming off an island. More related to this image: they would read the refraction/diffraction/interference patterns, as there are a lot of islands around. That would tell them how many islands there were and where they were located. The stick charts were not a map of islands that waves bounced off...but a map of refraction patterns as the island's wave signatures interacted and moved into the open ocean.

• The 'Polynesian Voyaging Society' went down to Micronesia back in the 70's as our culture had lost the skill of open ocean navigation to time. A man named Mau Piailug, a master navigator from Satawal, guided Hokulea's first voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti and taught our navigators the ins and outs of open ocean navigation. Since that time the Hokulea has made dozens of open ocean trips across the Pacific from tiny island to tiny island using only the stars, sky, sea and animals to navigate. Think about that, no compass, no GPS, no sextant, no maps, nothing. My dad was on her for a leg of nearly 1,400 miles of open ocean a few years back, I am still very proud of him for doing it.

• I read a book years ago that tells Mau Piailug's story and how the navigation techniques used to populate much of the Pacific is a slowly dying art form. If you get the chance pick it up:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7...Last_Navigator

• The Polynesian Voyaging Society is planning a historic 3-year Worldwide Voyage, launching in 2014 and they will be training the newest group of navigators (they've already trained maybe a dozen navigators from all over the Pacific to perpetuate the traditions).

They are fundraising, so my whole family joined, bought stuff, went to their presentations, etc. And they are looking for crew members... you should think about going-- gotta keep up those family traditions! They are planning for 30-day legs, to swap out crew members and visit communities to spread the message of protecting the earth and ensuring a sustainable future. All with no modern navigational instruments!

• They used everything observable: currents, wave patterns, wind, clouds, stars, sun and moon, temperature, animal and plant life, even the smell of the breezes. I saw a video that said the navigator, Nainoa Thompson, would wake up if he felt the current change in the middle of the night.

• Check out Wade Davis' Massey Lecture: "The Wayfinders". http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/mas...-modern-world/

In one of the episodes he goes into some detail about lost forms of navigation.


• The photo is of lagoon waves diffracting out into the ocean through a pass between tiny islands making up an atoll. As I understand it, the Marshallese navigated on the ocean using diffraction patterns of ocean waves passing between atolls, not waves coming out of lagoons through passes--though the lagoon waves coming out of the passes were used to locate the passes at night. While sailing, I often observed the patterns between Kwajalein and Namu, the next atoll to the south, and the waves diffracting around the north end of Kwajalein Atoll. Source: I lived on Roi-Namur at the north end of Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands for nearly twenty years, owning two different sailboats during that time.


• Another interesting fact, the Polynesian found that their scrotum was the best thing to use to sense these wave patterns against the boat.