As noted in our recent review, I found Susan Casey’s The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean to be very disappointing because it spends far more time with extreme surfer dudes than it does examining rogue or freak waves. The same can not be said of a BBC documentary first aired on November 14, 2002 called “Freak Waves.” In addition to an in depth look at ships struck by rogue waves, it also features a fascinating discussion, in wholly accessible language, of how the nonlinear Schrödinger equation can closely approximate rogue waves, an outcome that surprised even the mathematicians. This could explain why all the equations, which oceanographers have used to explain that rogue waves cannot exist, may be all wrong.
By the magic of Youtube, the documentary is available as five 10 minute clips:
Watch the rest of the documentary after the jump.
Freak Waves part 2/5
My only criticism of the documentary is that they create the implication that many more ships have been sunk by rogue waves than may have been the case. They are careful with their language not to overstate the know figures but the implication thee leave is clear. Others have not been so careful. From Wikipedia: The story that “200 large ships lost to freak waves in the past two decades” was published in The Times (May 2006). The earliest reference seems to be in the press release by the European Space Agency (cited at the page bottom), and first quoted as “200 large ships of 600ft long or more in the past two decades sunk without trace”. At the time the claim was made, there had only been 142 ships of that size lost at sea in the time frame, all with clear, known causes (source: Lloyd’s Register – Fairplay). The main culprits were the Iranian and Iraqi air forces in the 1980s.
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I tend to disagree on your thoughts with Susan’s book. Don’t get me wrong the 2002 BBC Documentary was excellent and from that I have reviewed it several times. However, Susan’s latest book opens the door and mind on the possibility of finding the answer to rogue formation. These extreme surfers can be our eyes and ears for scientific input. They are as much a frontline of wave dynamics as let’s say a buoy, oil platform or an occasional ship encounter. This unique and different approach goes back to finding the answer to a problem by thinking out of the box or in a parallel field of study. Thanks Susan, I learned a great deal more from your research.