The storm surge from the Blizzard of ’78 split this Rockport, MA house in half. Photo from the Mass.gov Blizzard of ’78 Gallery

Originally posted Tuesday, February 5th

Sometimes hardy New Englanders take perverse pride in the bad weather we endure. But that didn’t stop us from getting very concerned when Sandy headed our way last October. And it didn’t help to prevent the tragic losses that piled up during the Blizzard of ’78, which formed off the coast of South Carolina 35 years ago today, then pounded New England for two days after that.

The Blizzard of ’78 was really more of a winter hurricane than a blizzard. And not just a hurricane, but a “bomb”  – a meteorological term that refers to how quickly pressure fell during the storm’s formation. People were caught unprepared for the rapidly deteriorating conditions, leading to dozens of fatalities on land and at sea. Not only were thousands of people stranded on the roads, unable to get to safety, but the suddenness of the storm took mariners by surprise as well. In his bestseller Ten Hours Until Dawn, New England author Michael Tougias tells the riveting and tragic story of what occurred as several vessels rushed to the aid of a heating oil tanker that was taking on water after running aground in Salem Sound. The tanker was fine in the end, but the Can Do, one of the boats that attempted to provide assistance, was not – sinking with all hands lost.

The overall devastation from the storm was enormous. Tougias describes the aftermath well:

“In Rockport, cars were flung into the Old Harbor along with a house. Bearskin Neck houses were crushed, then ripped by the seas, including the red wooden building known as Motif #1, a popular subject for artists.”

“Up and down the Massachusetts coast, seawalls were flattened and hundreds of residents became trapped in their houses, encircled by swirling water that prevented them from running to higher ground.”

“Particularly hard hit was Revere, just north of Boston and south of Salem… Three homes were totally leveled and several others suffered extensive damage from fire. However, it was the breaching of the seawall that did the most damage… The Beachmont section of Revere saw the worst devastation. Homes were bobbing down the streets, and many people thought they would literally be swallowed up by the sea.”

One of the reasons the destruction was so extensive from the Blizzard of ’78 was its horribly timed concurrence with an astronomical high tide. You may recall a more recent storm that visited our shores with the same bad timing.

Sandy reset our collective notion of “storm damage” in the Northeast. Most of us will never forget the images that scrolled across our screens that awful night (those of us that didn’t lose power, anyway), of subway tunnels flooding and horrible fires and a dark, so dark, New York City. More than three months later thousands of people are still suffering without heat or homes in Sandy’s aftermath. Nobody was really prepared for the scale of Sandy’s ravages. But Sandy was not a complete surprise. There have been some notable forerunners.

We’ve had our share of big storms on the East Coast. The Blizzard of ’78, of course, stands out. And 1938 is legendary for the Hurricane of 1938, or “The Long Island Express,” which rocketed up the coast at an unprecedented 70 miles per hour, taking out communications as it went, preventing people in its path from getting warning about the cataclysm that was headed their way.

1991 was an especially bad year – bringing us Hurricane Bob, the second costliest hurricane in U.S. history at the time, in mid-August, and the unnamed hurricane that sprang, very bizarrely, from the “Perfect Storm” that fall, which damaged parts of New England even worse than Bob had.

We know these big storms will come our way from time to time. We also know that our seas are rising – simply put, as they get warmer they expand. Disturbingly, we have recently come to understand that the sea is rising much faster in the Northeast than the global average. The ocean is coming closer, and the big storms will keep coming as well.  It’s time to get our act together and plan better for these big storms. We are weather-hardy in New England, but we are also smart enough to get prepared.

We can and should plan ahead. Employing the principles of regional ocean planning will help our coastal communities prepare for the next storm, using tools like the Boston Harbor Association’s model for “no regrets” adaptation to sea level rise, Massachusetts’ Storm Smart Coasts, and NOAA’s Hazard-Resilient Coastal & Waterfront Smart Growth, and building on lessons we are learning from our tempestuous history. We need a comprehensive, science-based, and participatory process that allows everyone who will be affected by decisions about our coastal areas to have a say in how we prepare for storms and sea level rise, and how we respond in the aftermath.

Hopefully it will be a very long time before we have to find out how ready we are for the next big storm – how well we have learned from the Blizzard of ’78, from Sandy, Bob, and the others. But, just in case we don’t have long to wait, let’s roll up our sleeves, get prepared, and make a plan for the worst.

Have you ever been at a noisy party and couldn’t hear the guy next to you? Or been on your phone when a fire truck went by and you couldn’t hear the conversation? Or gone to a rock concert and had a “hearing hangover” for hours afterwards? This sort of thing happens in the ocean, too, except marine life can’t just leave the party or put in earplugs (well, most of them can’t, anyway).

Sound travels really well in seawater, but light does not, so ocean animals rely on sound for a variety of reasons. For example, New England’s oyster toadfish will signal his mate that he’s got a nest ready for spawning by making a “boat-whistle” call. Lots of other fish make and use noise not only to attract a mate, but to scare off predators, or tell other fish to stay out of their territory. Check out this fun set of fish calls to hear more. Marine mammals make noise, too – whales use sound to hunt, navigate, avoid predators, bond with their young, and generally communicate with each other.

But our oceans are getting noisier and it’s harder for marine life to use sound they way they need to. Too much noise can harm ocean animals in a variety of ways. It can cause temporary or permanent hearing loss, make it hard for the animal to find food, separate a mother and calf, or even lead to strandings or death. Shipping, ocean dredging, seismic surveys for energy development or seafloor mapping, military exercises, and fishing – all can make for a noisy ocean environment.

Researchers are only just starting to make progress in mapping out our ocean noise, to help us get a handle on how to reduce the impact of it on wildlife. For an example, look at these new maps of ocean noise in the North Atlantic. Unfortunately there is a lot of uncertainty about what kinds of sound are worst for marine life, and at what levels.

There is not a robust regulatory mechanism for addressing ocean noise pollution in a comprehensive way. The procedures for addressing harm to marine mammals differ among various sound producers—for example, commercial shippers, fishermen and aquaculture operators, the military, the oil and gas industry, and the academic community. In general, ocean and coastal resources are currently managed by more than 20 federal agencies and administered through a web of more than 140 different and often-conflicting laws and regulations.

We need to do better, and we can.

An example of how we can learn to better coordinate ocean noise and wild animals is right here in the Gulf of Maine. Our critically endangered North Atlantic right whales need to be able to hear and use sound even more than they need to be able to see. Researchers from the Cornell University Bioacoustics Research Program have spent the past few years studying whales and noise in Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. They have found that today’s whales, as compared to 50 years ago, live in a world of “acoustic smog,” and that “cumulative noise from all the shipping traffic is making it difficult for all the right whales in the area to hear each other most of the time, not just once in a while.”

The researchers suggest that this new knowledge can help adapt current management tools and be used as part of “comprehensive plans that seek to manage the cumulative effects of offshore human activities on marine species and their habitats.”

They are on to something. This call for collaborative, data-driven, practical management is at the heart of Regional Ocean Planning. A good regional ocean planning process can help us coordinate our activities while minimizing and mitigating conflicts among ocean users and protecting healthy ecosystems. It is the process that recently helped researchers in Stellwagen Bank better protect whales from vessel strikes by shipping traffic. And it’s a process that can help us unravel the ocean noise puzzle – and better protect our hearing marine life, while continuing to develop our maritime economy.