Seeing the world through water: transformative change and social tipping pointsPublished on August 28, 2021Paul O'CallaghanStatus is onlinePaul ...
Published on by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network
Published on August 28, 2021
Paul O'CallaghanStatus is online
Paul O'Callaghan
Founder & CEO BlueTech Research | Brave Blue World
37 articles
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There is a saying among bee keepers that once you start to keep bees, you start to see the world like a bee. You see the lines of travel they take, noticing the locations of particular types of flowering plants. Tristan Gooley in his book, Reading Water, describes how you can use the pathways of bees as way to find water when trekking in the wilderness and that certain types of butterflies also provide clues as they are never seen more than 500m from a source of freshwater. I found myself becoming more observant having read this. In another example, he recounts how Pacific Islanders could ‘read the ocean' as way to help them navigate between remote islands dotted across the vast Pacific Ocean, learning to recognise wave interference patterns from distant islands not yet visible on the horizon as they deflected the prevailing currents.
We all see the world differently based on our own experiences. As a water professional, I tend to notice all sorts of details that most other people would either miss or just not find interesting. An extreme example being spotting a wastewater treatment plant 2,000m below me while paragliding this summer. I signed up for this this, despite a morbid fear of heights, while on vacation in Turkey as I thought it would be something exciting I could do with my 14 year old son, good bonding time and all that. I was white knuckled and petrified while he was enjoying doing stunts. Despite that, I couldn’t help but recognise the familiar patterns of small circular and rectangular tanks below me quietly and reassuringly doing their work. For most people looking down at the Blue Lagoon of Oludeniz that is not a detail that jumps out from that picture.
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