Author: Anthony Turton

Professor Tony Turton Weighs In About Water Quality in SA

Professor Tony Turton Weighs In About Water Quality in SA: I have been writing to educate the general public to the point where they can make an informed decision when confronted by a municipal statement that the beaches are safe from sewage contamination. In one recent statement, a municipality claimed that 30 of it’s beaches are safe, citing 300 samples on which this conclusion is based.
From a forensic perspective, we have two variables that need verification. Variables 1 is the claim that 30 beaches are safe. Variables 2 is that this conclusion is derived from 300 samples.
The numbers 30 and 300 are relevant to this assessment, and nothing else. So the question is whether the conclusion that 30 beaches are safe is valid, when the answer has been extrapolated from 300 samples? Stated differently, can 300 samples reliably tell us that 30 beaches are safe?
To answer this question we have to get technical, so please bear with me as I explain.
For argument sake, let us assume that we are sampling one site only. Let’s assume this site is in the middle of the deepest channel of an estuary. Then let’s assume that this single sampling point as shown on a map is two metres deep. Let us assume that most sewage contamination comes from rivers.
Now it gets interesting, because an estuary is the place where freshwater and salt-water meet. Freshwater comes from the run-off over the land, and salt-water comes from the ocean. To better understand this interaction between freshwater and salt-water, we need to grasp some basic physics and chemistry.
Here goes. Please bear with me.
Freshwater is less dense than salt-water so it will always result in stratification in an estuary. Freshwater will flow on top of the salt-water, so to take a representative sample we must capture data from BOTH the freshwater and the salt-water at that one single point in the deepest part of the two metre channel.
The freshwater sample will tell us if the sewage is coming down rivers, and the seawater sample will tell us if it’s coming from offshore pipelines.
But we don’t know how deep the freshwater lens is as it floats over the top of the seawater. We know that freshwater floats so a surface sample will capture data only from the river fraction. We can also assume that the very bottom of the channel is most likely to be just salt-water. Note that we can’t say for sure that it will be salt-water, because if the river is in flood, it’s possible that the entire flow at that single point will be fresh. But we also know that most of our rivers in South Africa have been dammed, so flooding is attenuated to the point where its safe to assume that the sample taken at two metres below surface, in a channel two metres deep, is likely to be saline.
So we can easily conclude that two samples, one at the surface, and another at the bottom of the two metre deep channel will probably capture both the freshwater and salt-water fractions of the total water column.
This means that at a minimum we need 2 samples from that one point if we are to draw valid conclusions. But, we also know that different laboratories give different readings for various valid reasons, so at a minimum we need four samples from that single point of measurement in the deepest channel of the estuary.
So we now have 4 samples from one place. Two go to Labarotary A and two go to Labarotary B. They don’t know about each other, so they can’t collude to manipulate the results. Can we draw conclusions from four samples taken at one point to safely determine that 30 beaches are safe?
Let’s dig deeper.
Estuaries are dynamic environments because seawater meets freshwater. But the ocean has a tidal pulse. Therefore to fully understand our estuary, we have to sample everyday for a lunar cycle, if we are to understand how the tidal pulse distributes the flow between freshwater and salt-water fractions. Lets call this a calendar month, so 4 samples daily multiplied by 30 equals 120 samples that will be required to understand that single estuary.
But what about seasonal changes? What about spring tides versus neap tides? What about rainy seasons versus dry seasons. What about summer and winter? To understand these complex issues in the most primitive way, we need to capture at a minimum three months worth of data. This will at least tell us what the spring tide impact is, and it might start to suggest seasonal variations. Suddenly our 120 samples now become 360.
Now the next question is whether the samples taken in the deepest portion of the estuary accurately capture data from offshore pipelines discharging untreated sewage into the ocean a kilometer away? To understand this we need at a minimum to capture data at the surface and at the point of discharge at depth. Let’s say we have only one sewage discharge pipeline. This doubles the number of samples needed, so we now face the need for 720 samples.
In our theoretical model we now have 720 samples, taken from just two sampling points, so we can now ask if we can safely extrapolate the results from 720 samples, taken from just two points a kilometre apart, to conclude that 30 beaches are safe?
The logical answer is no.
It’s not possible to reliably conclude that 30 beaches are safe, after analysing 720 samples. Therefore such claims cannot be substantiated by the data captured from the two sites. In reality, it would require thousands of samples, captured over time scales measured in months, or even years, to reliably make such claims.
I am not saying that these officials are deliberately misleading the public. What I am saying is that the claims being made citing the precise number of samples used, cannot be statistically relevant. Therefore the legal term Caveat Emptor applies. Buyer beware.
Take appropriate precautions. Have a lovely holiday. But never be afraid of applying logic to sweeping statements made by municipal officials. The beaches are probably safe, but not because of voodoo science being cited by municipal officials who assume that the public is gullible enough believe their slick spin.
To vaguely conclude that 30 beaches are safe would require at least 3 000 samples. But to reliably conclude that 30 beaches are safe would require closer to 30 000 samples.
Caveat Emptor.
Be savvy. Stay safe.

THANK YOU TONY!

Sardines and Sighting Maps

It has been a fantastic sardine run this memorable 2024. And all the action has been logged right here on The Sardine News. This year’s map has been viewed 200 000 times and just keeps growing.

Which led us to decide to keep the map live. And keep adding unique marine animal sightings and events. That occurs non-stop all year round. This year we started to log more whale and dolphin sightings. And we even had a shipwreck! And a freaking tornado! And recently a capsized KZNSB boat! We have been updating the map with recent catches too…

These events will from now on be included in the Sardine News Sightings Map for 2024. And on the 1 January 2025, we shall start all over again.

Here are the links to existing and past Sardine Sighting Maps. Great for a windy day like today to research. With instructions to install The Sardine News right on your phone or desktop.

2024 Sardine Map

2023 Sardine Map

2022 Sardine Map

2021 Sardine Map

Channels

Brucifire Surf Retorts – highly entertaining  surf reporting

Master Watermen – news from way down deep

The Sardine News – neva miss a single  sardine

FishBazaruto – 1000 pounds plus

MYDO Tackle Talk – highly technical  sport fishing

Surf Launching Southern Africa – getting out there safely

Water Woes – complain about your municipality here

Websites

umzimkulu.co.za – self-catering right on the Umzimkulu River
umzimkuluadrenalin.co.za –  will get you right out and onto the edge
thesardine.co.za – never miss a single sardine
masterwatermen.co.za – news from under water
fishbazaruto.com – dreams
brucifire.co.za – surf retorts

A Reflection on our Long Slow Descent into Anarchy

A Reflection on our Long Slow Descent into Anarchy: © Dr Anthony Turton 25 February 2023

I watch the sun rising over the ocean. The rays of light splay out across the water, in a display reminiscent of images that my Sunday school teacher used to show us kids. The Vanishing Forest is very tranquil as the shrill call of the birds proclaim the presence of life. The scene is one of great tranquility, but I know that the real world out there is anything but calm and orderly.

Against the backdrop of the Loerie, recently renamed a Turacao, I reflect on the juxtaposition of serenity and our long slow descent into anarchy. Here I am confronted with two pieces of reality, and neither speaks to each other. It is surreal. I wonder if I am losing my mind. Is this air of serenity genuine? How can it be so tranquil, when I know that out there, undercurrents of discontent advance like the relentless ooze of a lava flow across the landscape, consuming all in its path. Unstoppable. Predictable in its destruction, yet at the same time underpinned by the hope that our community will somehow be spared.

Miracles happen. I have witnessed them in my own life, when we rose as a nation and collectively decided to end a protracted conflict by negotiating a new constitution that was inclusive of all. That was certainly a moment of triumph, for a nation teetering on the edge of the abyss, fighting for all it was worth not to fall into the terrifyingly uncharted void below.

South Africa has always lived with the seething undercurrents of anarchy, deftly masked by the undeniable beauty of the landscape, and the mythical belief in utopian ideals like ubuntu. As a cloud parts above the sea in front of me, a shaft of light descends like a vision from God, and for a moment I watch in awe. I am alone with my thoughts. A jumble of emotions flowing through my veins, my mind randomly throwing up memories long suppressed, but now running rampant in the wee hours of the morning when I am alone. Totally alone, except for my constant companion, the Black Dog.

On this surreal stage before me, I find myself asking whether ubuntu is real. We throw the concept around in everyday discourse, as if it actually exists, but like the elusive tokoloshe, many know of it but few have ever seen it. Is ubuntu my own tokoloshe? In the pre-dawn darkness, I find myself flashing back to the 1980s and 1990s, for that is where I think we are heading in the near future. I recall, as a young soldier, called out in support of the riot police, to an incident in which a person had been necklaced. I have written a short story about that incident, which I called the Thousand Yard Stare, so there is no need to rehash all of the gory details. But today I remember that in the crowd of thousands, not one person lifted a finger to help that poor victim. I distinctly recall, the shock I experienced, when witnessing the total lack of empathy in the milling crowd, all of whom were profoundly aware that a human being was being burned to death in their presence. It was there that I realized ubuntu is nothing but a myth that we have conjured up, like a security blanket, to make us feel good about ourselves.

Where is the ubuntu in our present leadership structure? Where is the empathy for the plight of the growing number of unemployed? Where is the ubuntu in the decision to invest tourism budget into a British Premier League football club? Where is the moral high ground that allows our embattled regime to publicly align themselves with Russia, an international pariah shunned by the law-abiding citizens of the free world, ostensibly on our behalf? Where is the empathy when we are once again seduced into compliance by the words, “my fellow South Africans”, that starts a rambling conversation expressing shock at not knowing how yet another catastrophe could have befallen the hapless people, but delivered by a billionaire Oligarch devoid of integrity. We live our lives under the manipulation of propaganda, delivered by a predatory government, whose sole purpose is to plunder the public purse at the direct expense of the growing army of destitute citizens. These unfortunate victims have no realistic chance of ever living a life of quality, held in miserable bondage by an uncaring regime, intent only on self-enrichment of the elite, and those Cadres with “connections”.

Ubuntu is but a figment of our collective imagination. It is nothing more than an instrument of control, in an arsenal of subliminal weapons of mass destruction that pacify the population, preventing the seething lava from spontaneously erupting into a real live volcano of discontent. The myth of ubuntu is the lever that controls the Stockholm Syndrome, which is what holds us all in perpetual bondage. We are hostage to a system of sophisticated extortion, over which we have no control as individuals, wrapped up in a blanket of soothing language that has filtered out the sharp edges of words of criticism, replacing them with the blunter edged concepts like ubuntu.

That security blanket is not our friend, for it preselects what we can say, think and articulate. It soothes our inflamed rash of discontent, by attenuating the worst of our impulses to shout out – enough!

Today I am shouting out by saying that ubuntu is dead, and probably never really existed in anything other than fairy stories conjured up by our own minds, and deftly manipulated by our handlers whose task it is to pacify us. Today I am shouting out by saying injustice knows no colour, so to trivialize discontent by calling it racist, is nothing more than the deliberate blunting of the sharp edges of words of criticism. For, I learned many years ago, when I was a young and impressionable student, that “a word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, but the skin of a living thought” (Justice MT Steyn). Today I am saying that our central dilemma as a nation, is our false belief in ubuntu, which has given legitimacy to the Armani suited predators who call themselves Comrade, possessing a divine right “to feed” without hindrance.

As a new shaft of light descends from the heavens, I feel truly inspired today. In fact, I feel profoundly liberated, for I know what needs to be done. For South Africa to prosper once again, we must reclaim our right to use words with sharp edges. Words designed to cut. Words that are capable of precision messaging. As Africans we must be guided by what we observe in the bush, when the hyaenas approach a fresh kill made by a pride of lions, and contestation over the spoils becomes literally a question of survival. Those spoils are being dominated by predators who have blunted the only weapon we have in that melee called just allocation of the resources on which an entire society needs to feed.

We must rise and break the shackles of the Stockholm Syndrome, for they hold us in perpetual bondage. We must call it out the way we see it. Theft is theft, no matter what it is called by our Thief in Chief, when next he tries to soothe the irritation on our skins. Right is right, and wrong is wrong, but wrong can never be right. We need to rediscover our moral compass as a nation. We need to recognize leadership for what it really is, for most of our current leaders are weak and predatory, but we also have latent leadership with growing credibility, possibly ready to throw their hat into the ring.

South Africans are incredible people. We are the only nation in the world, where a sitting government voluntarily relinquished power in the belief that it would prevent a civil war. We are the only nation where a prisoner of conscience looked at his jailer, saying you are as much a victim of the system as I am. We are the only nation that possessed weapons of mass destruction – chemical, biological and nuclear – which we voluntarily relinquished in the interests of a better future for all. We are the only nation that attempted to reconcile, by bringing victim and perpetrator face to face, in the quest for justice, even if the final result disappointed many.

We are a remarkable people, but we have been lulled into a dangerous sense of complacency. The verbal balm, a potent cocktail of guilt and false belief in the normative values of a mythical ubuntu, has lulled us into compliant submission. The seething rage of the masses can only be bottled up temporarily before the flowing lava erupts into a volcano of unstoppable destruction.

We are enabling our long slow descent into anarchy, by allowing ourselves to be deceived by vicious predators, dressed in Armani, disarming us by blunting our sharp words of effervescent criticism. The only thing we truly own are our thoughts, and the way we weaponize those is through the messaging we use, packaged in words. So, words matter, and we need to claim back the right to use them wisely, no longer fearful of any backlash.

© Dr Anthony Turton 25 February 2023

Antibiotics, antiretrovirals, estrogen and drug-resistant pathogens now available in an estuary near you

Antibiotics, antiretrovirals, estrogen, and drug-resistant pathogens now available in an estuary near you: KZN especially pay attention. And vote accordingly.

Transcription of Professor Anthony Turtons narrative from this Video on YouTube…

“When looking at the human population growth trajectory over the last hundred of thousands of years we are taken by two very important facts. The first is that the human growth population trajectory was very flat until the Industrial Revolution. Once the Industrial Revolution happened it literally unleashed a series of technological possibilities and processes. That propelled the human population into very rapid growth.

But this was accelerated by the second factor in the 1960s when antibiotics became commonplace. Prior to that antibiotics were only discovered between the first and second world wars and they were mainstream during WWII. They became publicly accessible on a wide scale only in the 1960s. And once we had antibiotics of course then human life was less at risk. Because ordinary infections that would normally have killed people, could now be brought under control. At a very very early stage. And that propelled human population growth into an exponential trajectory.

However on the wastewater side what we also need to remember is that all drugs that are taken including your antibiotics, but also antiretrovirals and antidepressants, hormone replacement medications such as estrogen – all of that comes back in the return flow in rivers and its only because of the Industrial Revolution that we now have massive amounts of sewage return flows that all go back into our rivers and eventually accumulate in the estuaries. And those sewage return flows are laden with

• antibiotics.
• with antiretrovirals.
• with oestrogen and oestrogen mimikers.
• with a range of other medications

All of which are now starting to generate the next generation of multi-drug-resistant pathogens.

So it’s not inconceivable that in the very near future we go to start seeing things come out of our estuaries in particular. Where we get drug-resistant pathogens and we starting to see early evidence of that now in the form of something known as Necrotizing Fasciitis which is the most technical word for flesh-eating bacteria.

And we start to see this happen in our oceans and we already had some cases in the Umhlanga Rocks area. We are also starting to see it in our lagoons. We’ve had one or two cases in the lagoon areas. And we also see it inland in some of our rivers. We’ve had a few cases now in the Vaal River system.

And in all cases, these bacteria survive in saline water that gets contaminated by sewage and of course these bacteria these pathogens are now proliferating in the presence of antiretroviral and antibiotics so they are becoming multidrug-resistant. This is a huge problem that we are going t have to start setting our sights on – over the next decade.

Because this is the timeline that it’s likely to hit us.”

By Professor Anthony Turton

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