What it’s like to keep sounding the alarm when no-one is listening
While the sea level rise report got people talking, the issue hasn’t always been taken so seriously, coastal scientist Jeremy Gibb tells Nikki Macdonald.
Jeremy Gibb still remembers the ‘‘please explain’’. He’d mentioned to a reporter that international research suggested global warming could melt the west Antarctic ice sheet, causing sea level rise of 8m. ‘‘Huge rise in seas predicted’’, the resulting front page headline blared.
Gibb – then coastal and marine resources director at the Department of Conservation – called for the government to take a lead on planning for sea level rise, and questioned the sense of more coal-fired power stations.
It was December 1988 and his political overlords were not amused.
‘‘I was called to Parliament and told that if I spoke out again like that I would be sacked. I’ve never forgotten that, because that was like a gauge on the opinion of top decision-makers. You weren’t allowed to speak out about these disturbing things.’’ So Gibb shut up. At least for six weeks. By February 1989, he was back at it, calling for urgent action to prevent lowlying coastal areas being devastated. He name-checked Hokitika, Petone and Days Bay in Wellington, the coast between Paekakariki and Whanganui, Hawke’s Bay and parts of Auckland.
But did it feel like people were listening? ‘‘No they weren’t. Big fat no. That was one of the frustrations.’’
Now 82, Gibb is looking out at a flat calm Kerikeri inlet in Northland, and looking back at 50 years of probing the power of the sea and preparing people for its advance.
During this time he plotted the story of New Zealand’s coast, and mapped whether it was eroding or advancing. He pioneered coastal hazard zones to keep developments clear of storm surges and erosion, and devised a classification system to identify the areas most at risk. And later, as a coastal management consultant, he gave unpopular expert advice.
But at every turn, there was resistance as fierce as those walloping waves.
He hasn’t seen the movie Don’t Look Up, in which scientists discover a comet on a collision-course with Earth and try to rally the world to action.
But he understands what it’s like to be that guy: the guy drawing a line in the sand and telling developers you can’t build there because the sea wants it back; the guy defending his hazard assessments in the Environment Court, trying to convince the unbelievers that the science is real.
‘‘You were damned if you did and damned if you didn’t. The cases were pretty horrendous at times. Incredibly stressful, I found. I was subject to intense crossexamination, sometimes as long as two weeks, day after day. They didn’t like the idea of a setback line, because it meant lost revenue. So I had to battle all these things and they started to get to me after a while. They wouldn’t go away.’’
But he thought of his dad Roger – a Gallipoli survivor who became an architect. ‘‘I think of the sacrifices they made, and sometimes I weep... Dad made it very clear to us that he was doing it for all of us. He was fighting for our freedom. So I felt, in some ways, an obligation, probably very early on, to not give up. I felt like giving up millions of times in my life. I felt like giving up my PhD. I felt like giving up university...the other side of it is, you find a strength within, that allows you to keep going. To do the best you can.’’
Gibb’s Bay of Islands home might have a sea view, but it’s 55m above sea level. It’s also six minutes from the marina where his yacht is moored. Sailing has been one of his life’s loves, but he doesn’t get out so much now he has Parkinson’s.
Growing up in the Hutt Valley, just outside Wellington, Gibb felt hemmed in by the hills. He was drawn to the ocean’s expansive horizons. But he quickly discovered its ruthlessness. After leaving school, he worked for eight years as a technician for the Oceanographic Institute.
They sailed on an old World War II frigate to the point of no return for planes flying from New Zealand to Antarctica. For 10 days to three weeks, they measured salinity and temperature and waves and currents, and learned the power of the Southern Ocean.
‘‘We got hit by a horrendous storm and for three days we were climbing up these mountain ranges of waves. The ship would come right out on the crest and then it would freefall with a huge crash into the back of the waves. The sea would come surging right over the ship, and then the ship would fight for survival. I prayed, because I thought we weren’t going to survive. I was terrified.’’
Then there was the 1965 expedition on USS Glacier – an icebreaker – to the Balleny Islands off Antarctica, to survey the seabed. Gibb’s diaries recall 95 knot winds and a roll of 63 degrees.
The experience didn’t put Gibb off the sea, but it did show him scientists were better paid than technicians. So, at 28, he went to university to study geology.
He’d only just started, in April 1968, when a storm toppled the
Wahine and washed a terrible tide of bodies onto the beach. Walking the coast and seeing how the angry sea had reshaped the land was a lightbulb moment for Gibb. ‘‘What I saw there was just how much a coast could change, literally overnight.’’
Gibb signed on to the Water and Soil Directorate at the Ministry of Works and started working on coastal hazards, which became his life’s work.
He packed up wife Anne, daughter Eylsia, their Hillman Superminx and 2.4m Pioneer Petite caravan and hit the beach.
Four-and-a-half years, 18,000km of snaking coastline and a second daughter later, Gibb produced his PhD – an account of where New Zealand’s coast is eroding and where it’s advancing.
A seminal paper that is only now being updated, it was the starting point for measuring coastal risk – you have to understand how history has changed the land in order to predict its future.
His research brought two influences into sharp relief – the way plate tectonics lift the land or drag it under, and the spectre of sea level rise. So Gibb’s PhD also included a pioneering sea level curve, covering the past 10,000 years. And then came the biggest challenge – working out which bits of coast were at greatest risk and getting someone to do something about them. ‘‘My hardest job was to promote coastal hazard mapping around New Zealand, so that you could ask... ‘If we got a rise of sea level of x mm a year, how much erosion would that cause?’’
Gibb wrote the book on coastal hazard mapping, devising a system to measure risk and plot development setback zones. Then he tried to get councils to buy into
it.
If authorities had really listened when Gibb called for urgent action in 1989, things could have been very different.
‘‘Over the past 40 or 50 years, look at how much new development has occurred in hazardous areas. It’s crazy, but it has. Not only new subdivisions, it’s putting bigger, massive houses on sections. That added a lot more capital value to coastal land. And maybe that’s got to stop.’’
But not all his shouting fell on deaf ears. Commissioner of Works Bob Norman adopted a natural hazards policy; slowly, councils started to commission coastal studies; hazard zones were drawn up for Pauanui, Papamoa and Peka Peka.
‘‘Every time I got little successes like that, I felt good. It kept me going. It was my life’s blood... When I look back, I have no regrets at all. I feel I’ve done everything I can do, whether I’m happy with it or not.’’
Fellow coastal hazard expert, Rob Bell, says Gibb’s contribution has been immense. His national mapping was ‘‘seminal’’ and has stood for more than 40 years. His work defining coastal hazard zones, and charting a historical sea level curve for New Zealand, set the scene for coastal planning. He was one of few scientists who chipped away to turn scepticism into action.
Says Bell, ‘‘It took a while, it took a lot of effort... It’s only recently that the questions have changed from ‘How certain are you?’ to ‘What can we do about it?’’’
Gibb says it’s too late to hold back the tide. But there’s still time to make smart choices. ‘‘I have no doubt about the power of the ocean. And to try and stop it – stop sea level rising – is like pushing whatnot uphill... It’s unstoppable now, so we have to cope with it.’’
Gibb felt vindicated at this week’s study. ‘‘I feel good. But it’s translating that into action . ... There’s no lack of knowledge and ideas, but probably the most important thing is going to be making hard decisions about what areas to pull things back from, what areas to
actually fight.’’