Changing Climate & Changing Islands
Author: Judy Olson
As people from around the nation flocked to Washington, DC, urging action on climate change, we quietly slipped 5 tandem kayaks into the calm waters of Tedious Creek at the Crocheron boat ramp.
Our group came together from near and far to question, experience, and reflect on coastal resilience to climate change. We anticipated watching the sun set, both live and metaphorically, over the remnants of several Chesapeake Bay islands (Hollands, South Marsh, Smith) that are feeling the extreme impacts of climate change. Tidal flats, eel grass beds, and marshes are damaged by rising tides and severe storms, and the land that once supported vibrant communities is disappearing. How do people hold on to their way of life, when the waters are swallowing the cemeteries of their ancestors?
The first stop on our adventure, Hoopers Island Oyster Company, exemplified how a resourceful group of people adapted to changing circumstances in order to sustain the oyster industry in Maryland. We learned how the company, guided by science, is using the clean local waters to raise oysters from larvae to restaurant-size oysters. Oyster aquaculture is very much alive on the Eastern Shore.
We paddled across Hooper Strait, gawking at the diving pelicans and soaring bald eagles. Reaching Bloodsworth Island, we paused for lunch and a swim. As we snaked our way through the creeks and guts of Bloodsworth, terrapin heads peeked at us and we caught the first fish of the weekend. Pelicans, whose breeding range moved north into the Bay about 30 years ago, put on a diving show as we crossed healthy eel and widgeon grass beds to Hollands Island–signs of a thriving ecosystem and biological resilience.
Nosing in to the eastern side of Hollands Island, we climbed out and tramped around salt pans to reach the cemetery. Clumps of high-tide bush hid the tilting gravestones of people who had lived there just a few generations ago. For only a hundred years, Hollands Island existed as a place where people lived their entire lives, cradle to grave. Some in our group recalled the last house standing on Hollands Island and remembered talking with the owner, who tried desperately to prevent the inevitable.
Friday night, we perched our camp atop the thin vestige of a ridge. Thankfully, a fresh breeze kept bugs at bay. We mellowed with the sunset and relaxed around the fire with dinner, which included fresh oysters. Certainly, this was the life that attracted people here in the first place!
Time slowed down as we left high-speed communications behind, and instead connected with our paddling partners, and the rhythm of the marsh. Yet, ironically, geologic time here felt rushed. A whole community, complete with cows, corn, and a candy store, had washed away. The lifespan of a home should be more than a hundred years.
In the morning, we delighted in beachcombing the intertidal zone, finding ceramic shards, colored glass bottles, leather soles of toddler shoes, and stone flakes from arrowheads. Two-hundred-year-old broken bits of rubbish fascinated us at the same time floating pieces of modern plastic disgusted us.
Pieces left from someone knapping a stone projectile point was the oldest litter we found—perhaps 10,000 years old! The shoreline would have extended out much farther at that time and the ecosystem would have been different. Sea level has been rising ever since.
At noon on the autumnal equinox, we relaxed on the sunny, sandy beach of South Marsh Island, and heard an explanation of how tracking the sun’s path across the sky is critical to energy-efficient dwelling design. People can’t change the sun, but they can use its predictable path to design homes better. Diamondback terrapins rely on the predictability of the sun and tides to dig depressions in the sand as nests for their eggs. On this beach, and many others we stopped at on the trip, we found pieces of leathery egg shells, suggesting that Maryland’s state reptile was doing fine.
Saturday night, Smith Island offered the most awesome camping, swimming, birding, and fishing spot. We fished with the backdrop of the sunset sinking into the water. Herons and egrets glowed in the low-angle light as they cruised to their raucous rookery roosts.
Throughout the weekend, we caught speckled trout, rockfish, croaker, spot and flounder. Eating doesn’t get any better than fresh fish, crab cakes, and periwinkle snails.
This section of the Bay teemed with life. Terrapins, once threatened by development and over-harvesting, were abundant, with now uninhabited islands providing new places to nest. Thanks to fishery management, striped bass have rebounded from severe declines in the 1970’s and 1980’s. (It gave us great enjoyment to eat our catch.) Pelicans had found fine fishing grounds, and once-rare eagles hunted marsh mammals. The animals that depended on clean water and open marshland appeared resilient here.
The human ecosystems on the islands are not doing as well.
The string of islands that once supported fishing communities is disappearing. rapidly. It would seem to be only a matter of time before the last of the remaining islands will become uninhabitable. People will be forced to move, but culture and history, and a sense of place, won’t go away. Future generations will still be able to enjoy a slice of chocolate fig Smith Island cake with the breeze in their hair, sun in their faces, salt drying on their skin, and sand between their toes.
Those of us on this equinox adventure shared a common commitment to addressing human response to climate change. That’s what drew us together to paddle these beautiful islands. (The promise of Smith Island cake helped, too).
