In an effort to protect the city of Alexandria against coastal erosion, the local government plants thousands of concrete tetrapods along the remaining beach. This creates a bizarre, futuristic urban landscpae, unlike anything we know: The images are from a German TV...
The Sea Wall in the shape of a Bird
While Jakarta has serious evacuation plans, there are apparently also plans to build a new and unique sea wall. Quote from an article from 2016: "The National Capital Integrated Coastal Development consortium will build a new set of barrier islands and a sea wall that...
Very Large Floating Structures
To answer the never-tiring desire for more space for residential buildings along the coasts - nearly 50% of the industrialized world now lives within a kilometer of the coast - floating structures are repeatedly discussed in urbanization discourse. So called VLFS,...
Mazu: Taoist Goddess of the Sea
The bronze statue in the center depicts Mazu or Matsu, the chinese sea goddess, who is particularly popular in Taiwan and Chinese communities outside of mainland China. This monument is at Chengshan Peak (成山头 Chéngshāntóu), in the harbur city Weihai on the Chinese...
Manimekhala: The Goddess of the Sea
Manimekhala is a budddhist goddess regarded in Southeast Asia as guardian of the Seas.
climate change and human anger
Pak Permadi, an Indonesian expert for paranormalevents from Java made the following statement at a seminar at Jogjakarta University in 1995: »If people are not happy with their treatment by those in power but cannot defend themselves, their anger, which expresses...
Nyai Roro Kidul: The Queen of the Southern Seas
The legends around the mermaid goddess Kidul - also Ratu Kidul - are mostly linked to the 16th century Javanese Mataram Sultanate. However, anthropological studies suggest that the myth of the Queen of Java's Southern Seas probably originated from older...
Picturing disaster in the 18. Century
In 1783 an unsual seismic event sequence occured along the Strait of Messina between the island Sicily and mainland Italy. Katrin Kleemann from LMU Munich writes: "Between 5. February and 28. March 1783, five strong earthquakes shook Calabria and Sicily and were...
Looming and Silent Cities
There is an optical phenomenon called looming in which objects at sea appear to be floating in the air above water level. In Spring 2021 such an image photographed went viral online. (click n the image for article.) Apparently this phenomenon was well known throughout...
The shepherd and Vineta
This is a popular German legend about Vineta and how the city reappears every hundred years for a day. I have not found an author to this version of the legend and also no professional english translation yet. Two motives appear in many versions of the legend: There...