Tangier Island

Marshlands, beaches with branches and debris strewn haphazardly, telephone lines leading to a town with a water tower peeking out of the horizon, the glistening ocean. This paints a picture of the Uppards, the northernmost part of Tangier Island.

About 50 yards off of the coast of the Uppards, there used to be a lovely coastal neighborhood of around 100 people called Canaan. Shops, docks, houses, memories, and families all inhabited this place. But, in the 1930s, it had to be abandoned due to the high water level, leaving the houses to mold and be swallowed by the ocean. You can still find sea-battered gravestones of people that had lived there, antiques of a time and place that have since been washed away.

Yet, just a short distance away, Tangier’s remaining 450 residents are facing the same reality that Canaan inhabitants had to face almost a hundred years ago. Their land is drastically shrinking, and the marshlands and the Chesapeake Bay that they sit in the middle of are creeping into their backyards, threatening to drown the whole island. Since 1850, 66% of their land area has gone underwater and the rest, as recent studies have shown, only has 30 years left unless something is done to save it (Schulte et al. 2015). Will Tangier Island’s residents be the first climate refugees in America, or can they be saved?

The lights click on, yellow flooding into the streets, illuminating the simple houses perched next to the tranquil waters. Watermen don their sweatshirts and boots and their bikes and golf carts bounce down West Ridge. West Ridge is one of the three ridges on Tangier, Main and Canton being the other two. These ridges are the only ground high enough to be built on, the rest being marshlands and small beaches.

Watermen drive by the small, family-owned businesses: the oyster shop, the museum, and the Daley and Sons Grocery Store all sit sleepily on the sides of the road. With a timid clink of keys and a growling hum of the boat’s engine, they are off on the water. A sea of lights pierce through the gloom. It is 3:00 a.m.

As water splashes onto the floor of the boat, a crab pot thuds on top of the others stacked next to the side. These blue crabs will be delivered back to the beat-up sheds that rest precariously on top of stilts to molt. They then will be shipped all over the state for people to enjoy for their savory ocean-like taste, mixed with an undercurrent of sweetness. Tangier depends on crabs; watermen dedicate their lives to this difficult and arduous trade, reaping the rewards in times of abundance and suffering when the crabs are few and far in between (Swift 2020).

Crabbing, while the beating heart of Tangier, might assist in its downfall. Parents face an uncomfortable situation. Lots of them do not want their children to endure the hardships of crabbing; they’d rather them go the easier and more reliable route of college. They don't want their kids to have to participate in the financial instability and the hard manual labor. While it pains them and leaves the island’s future in peril, they know it is the right decision for their kids.

However, these smaller problems do not compare to the massive issue that surrounds it, that washes up onto their beaches, and that they depend on for their incomes. The Chesapeake Bay, the greatest friend of Tangier, is, nonetheless, the greatest foe. Seizing an estimated 9 acres of land each year, the bay is quickly advancing, and Tangier Island is not receiving the aid it needs.

Zehao Wu, sitting in the old bean bag chair, computer on his knees, passes a map to his stepfather, David Schulte, to add to the paper they are working on. A senior in the International Baccalaureate (IB) Program at Granby High School, Wu is an avid climate change scientist and activist. His stepfather, David Schulte, is a researcher from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as well as a highly respected voice of the environmental troubles of Tangier Island.

Using a combination of ArcGis, Tidal Gages, and Google Slides, they were able to add to Schulte’s 2015 paper, illustrating the uncertainty of their situation. Tangier is being consumed by sea-level rise and climate change, water engulfing the island, seeping and saturating the soil of the uplands, the land that buildings are built on and lives are lived. This makes it into uninhabitable, soggy, muddy marshland, with long grasses and reeds sitting in the wet and unstable ground. Soon after the transition, it will fully submerge, claimed by the bay.

Wu and Schulte predict that by 2035, West Ridge and Main Ridge will be marshlands, with Canton holding out because of its higher elevation, until 2053 (Wu & Schulte 2021). What will be left is abandoned, aging buildings, splintering docks, an overgrown runway, symbols of a past time. A great culture, a great history, swept away in a wave of our own creation.

Through these challenges, hope still sustains for Tangier Island. To completely save it, the whole island would have to be elevated a full 3 meters high (10 feet), using dredged material from the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay, quite a large task. Accordingly, it would be extortionately expensive at $250-350 million dollars in total, a cost equivalent to about $650 thousand dollars per person. This valuation creates a dilemma, too few people for too much money. Most politicians and government agencies simply think that Tangier isn’t worth it, they don’t believe that they should spend that much taxpayer money for only 436 people.

However, Tangier doesn’t just represent the old and stony watermen, the charming women, and the lively and historic culture, but all of us. Thousands of coastal towns all around the world are going to face the same reality that Tangier is having to. New York, Mumbai, Lagos, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, and even Virginia Beach are all going to have to face this new, climate change driven reality, one where the signature of a bill can decide a city or town’s fate.

Despite its uncertain future, you can always do something to help Tangier and to show your representatives how you care about it, along with climate change as a whole. “Write to your Congressperson,” Zehao Wu says. “Demonstrate that they are an important part of the Virginian community.”

In the meantime, Tangier still feels, as it always has, of small, uniquely Southern-American houses, of church bells ringing on Sunday, of bikes and golf carts parked next to a lively oyster shop. But, the end days of Tangier are, without intervention, near. Just like Canaan, Tangier could become nothing more than washed-up medicine bottles and gravestones. However, like Canaan, Tangier Island will not soon be forgotten. The locals will have to move on, start up new lives on the Eastern Shore, and get new jobs and houses. But, they will always dream of that place in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, where the crab feeds a quiet life on a little island.

Red and orange streak across the sky, the reeds sway in the gentle breeze, the water slowly sloshes against the sand. The sun rises behind the water tower, a blue crab painted onto its side, the houses below illuminated in a warm light. Boats slowly whizz by, small engines powering watermen off to check their crab pots. It is just another day on Tangier Island, a place where time is becoming a scarce commodity.

To learn more, watch this video by the Atlantic, or read this article by the Bitter Southerner.

Special thanks to David Schulte and Zehao Wu for doing an interview with me.

*This was written before it was announced that we would be doing Tangier Island for a Summative Task.