02/07/2006
Large Screws and Tiny Fish
I’m posting this from Marco Island, Florida, where we’ve spent our Februaries for the past 14 years or so. It seems that most people either love Florida or hate Florida. Judging from the huge new developments going up on our drive here from the Fort Myers airport, the balance definitely favors the love category. This year we weren’t sure what to expect since Marco was hit dead center by category 3 hurricane Wilma only three months ago. Thankfully, everything appears pretty much as it was when we left last year. Luckily for Marco, the storm surge was miniscule compared to the one that accompanied Katrina.
This is not to say that Marco did not have its problems. Over the years, we’ve rented units in two different condo developments. This year we’re in a third development that fronts on the very wide beach (it takes me about 5 minutes to reach the water once I set foot on sand). At a Super Bowl party on Sunday, we heard tales of Wilma’s effects in our new abode. Workers had just finished installing new carpeting three days before Wilma’s arrival. Of course, Wilma brought water into the building on the new carpeting. Our unit is on the third floor and I naturally assumed that the damage was confined to the ground floor. Not so. The building has a stairwell that somehow funneled the heavy rain accompanying Wilma into the upper floors, which suffered more water intrusion than the ground floor.
When we first came to Marco, we spent about 7 years renting a unit in a condo building on Collier Boulevard, a divided 4-lane road. The big hotels such as the Marriott, Hilton and Radisson are on the beachfront side of Collier. Our building was on the other side, across the road from high-rise condo buildings. I had expected that our former unit would have been shielded somewhat by those high-rises. I didn’t know that the roof of one of them had a roof covered with gravel. When those 130-mile- an-hour winds came through, they picked up the gravel and flung the stones like bullets across the road into our former building, tearing through screens and shattering windows. Some 29 units in the building were condemned. This morning we drove onto the grounds of that building and found things looking normal so I presume all or most of the units have been repaired.
Most of the tales here deal with loss of trees, loss of power, roof damage, loss of the screened cages around the pools and broken sliding glass doors. Blue tarpaulins cover portions of the roofs on a number of homes. One of the problems is that the roofers, screeners and glass people are so busy that I’ve heard estimates of 8 months to a year before some damage will be repaired. If you’re a roofer, you shouldn’t lack for work in Florida.
I was pleased to find Marco’s beautiful beach here unscathed by Wilma. Longtime readers will know that I usually rhapsodize about my early predawn morning walks on the beach, pelicans skimming over the water and other topics of a marine nature. I’ve had some difficulty rousing myself early enough to beat dawn this year. Some very impressive thunderstorms killed one day’s walk. I notice the TV weather people here now have “live” maps showing lightning strikes as they happen well as areas in which the upper level winds are spinning. As I recall, Florida is the state with the most lightning strikes and places close to the top in tornadoes.
Back to the beach, the most impressive thing I’ve seen so far was an unusually high number of jellyfish, perhaps 20 of them, washed up on the beach one morning. The other days, none! I’m concerned that I’ve only seen a handful of pelicans and other shore birds. In keeping with the marine atmosphere here, let’s turn to a fish. I won’t mention the details of my reaction to a pan seared seafood cake on my second day here. Rather let’s talk about the discovery of what is reported to be the tiniest vertebrate, an animal with a backbone. Brian Trumbore alerted me to a January 25 New York Times article by Mark Henderson on the tiny little critter, Paedocypris progenetica. Paedo is a member of the carp family that lives in the peat swamps of Indonesia; it was discovered in Sumatra by a team led by Ralf Britz of the Natural History Museum in London.
The adult female Paedo is only 7.9 millimeters, or a whisker more than 0.3 inch long, while the adult male only spans 8.6 millimeters, not even 0.4 inch. Its size is not the only thing impressive about Paedo. Its peat swamp habitat is quite acidic, a hundred times more so than rainwater, according to the Times article. (I find it interesting that rainwater is used for comparison. In an ideal world I should think rainwater would be borderline acidic, made so by the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Today, not only is there more CO2 but sulfur oxides play a role.) Paedo is also transparent and the male has overly large fins that seem adapted to grasping. The conjecture is that the male uses those in dalliances with the female. If you’re wondering what the smallest mammal is, it’s Kitt’s hog- nosed bat at 29 millimeters, about the size of a bumblebee.
Some readers may remember that our stay in Marco last year was marred by extensive work involving jackhammering and grinding to get at reinforcing metal rods (rebars) in the concrete on our deck and others. The rods were corroded by water penetrating through the concrete. An article by Jeremy Cox in the February 6 Naples Daily News deals with a major marine problem involving concrete and Marco resident Jim Timmerman’s condemned 80-foot-long seawall. According to the article, Marco Island, although only about 4 miles wide by 6 miles long, is loaded with canals and seawalls that, laid end to end, would stretch some 120 miles. Well, Timmerman’s seawall developed a large crack that a marine contractor proposed to fix by installing a new seawall, a process that would have also required digging up the lawn and removing a dock and boatlift at a cost of $200,000! This was back in 2002.
Well, Timmerman was not the sort of person who takes such an estimate lying down. He recalled that telephone poles are anchored to the ground by sturdy wires that are fastened to the ground with large screws. Why couldn’t wayward seawall panels be fastened to the shore with screws? Although Timmerman had served in the Merchant Marines, he had no expertise in seawall engineering and got in touch with engineer Martin Pinckney, another Marco resident. Together, they came up with a screw and a U.S. patent and Timmerman started up a company, the Dynamic Seawall Maintenance System. The screw is a big one, 12 feet long with three helixes resembling doughnuts that serve to grab onto the dirt and keeping the screw in place.
Inventor Timmerman’s company has now furnished these hefty screws for fixing up seawalls on 20 properties on Marco Island. The installation process involves drilling holes in the deficient seawalls from the water side, with one screw every 10 feet along the seawall. Approaching from the water eliminates the need for any digging up of lawns and such. The fact that the screws must be stainless steel and special skills are required to carry out the operation boosts the cost of installation to at least $1,200 per screw. I calculate that Timmerman’s original 80-foot problem cost him roughly $10 K versus the original estimated $200 K – not a negligible saving.
Ironically, the same contractor who condemned Timmerman’s seawall in 2002 is the only contractor licensed to install Timmerman’s screws. If this seawall preservation method stands the test of time, one can imagine those screws being installed along shorelines all over the country, perhaps the world? Who would have thought that this idyllic little island could be a hotbed of technological innovation?
Allen F. Bortrum
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