Effects of sea level rise hit close to home for Americans as US army corps of engineers report finds that Tangier Island is crumbling into the sea

You don’t have to travel to a balmy Pacific island to hear the anguish of people whose land and culture is under threat from climate change. In Virginia’s portion of the Chesapeake Bay, the idiosyncratic, and historic, community of Tangier Island is facing an uncertain future as the sea gnaws away at the land beneath them.

A bird’s eye view of the island, just three miles long and one mile wide, would once have taken in a hook-shaped piece of land jutting out from the middle of the bay. The shape is more a teardrop these days, with erosion occurring at a bewildering rate.

A new report by the US army corps of engineers, published in Scientific Reports, shows that just 33% of Tangier Island’s landmass in 1850 now remains. The main town of Tangier will be uninhabitable within 50 years if the current rate of sea level rise continues.

The western portion of the island is crumbling into the sea like a wet cake. Around 14ft a year is lost to the sea. The eastern half is being eaten away too, albeit at a slower rate. The creeks that twist their way throughout the island are set to swell and break up the island into fragments, engineers warn.

“The islands are shrinking and unless corrective action is taken they will be lost,” said David Schulte, author of the report. “The whole island won’t be underwater but it will turn into marshland. Tangier is only 1.2m above sea level now so a moderately severe sea level rise will put them in extreme jeopardy of storms and flooding.

“Even under a low sea level rise they will have about a century. So far they’ve been pretty lucky with storms. They were spared the brunt of Hurricane Sandy. I don’t think it would’ve recovered from that. We’ll have to keep our fingers crossed on that score.”

Schulte says Tangier is being swamped by a “perfect storm” that is pushing the sea level increase to almost double the global average of a 3.5mm rise each year. An unhappy confluence of changing Atlantic currents, glacial retreat and sinking soils due to groundwater extraction risks turning this slice of American heritage into washed-out husk.

Tangier Island lies 12 miles from the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay and a mere 91 miles from Washington DC. Congressional delegations need not look far to witness the ravages of climate change. You don’t even need to be a scientist to see what’s happening on Tangier.

Tangier Island was used as a summer camping spot for many years by the Pocomoke. The tribe’s arrowheads are still occasionally unearthed on the beach following a storm. Europeans, led by Captain John Smith, explored the island in 1608. It was settled John Crockett, still a common surname on the island, and his eight sons in 1686.

Along with Crocketts, there are plenty of Pruitts and Parks on Tangier. These families’ link to the island stretch back hundreds of years and are found liberally etched on tombstones that adorn the front yards of many houses, due to a lack of space and fear that they would be washed away – most of Tangier Island lies just four feet above sea level.



Living on Tangier Island, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is a little like stepping back in time. There is no reliable cellphone reception. The island is, officially, alcohol free. Most of the buildings were built before 1930. Doors are left unlocked.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Tangier waterman makes his way through the harbour. Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images

“It’s one of the last true colonial places left in the US,” said Renée Tyler, Tangier’s town manager. “It’s not like Williamsburg, which is all fancied up. We don’t have people bringing money here to fancy us up. We are a proud, hardworking community. There are strong morals and ethics. It’s a religious place.”

Fishing has long provided the backbone, culturally and economically, for Tangier Island. Fishermen, or watermen as they are known now, haul out more Chesapeake Bay blue crab than any other community living on the water, despite having a population that has dropped from about 1,200 in 1900 to an estimated 475 today.

These crabs are consumed with relish in the fine restaurants of Washington DC and along Maryland’s Eastern Shore in crab cakes or cooked whole and smashed with a mallet, but the market isn’t quite what it was. Locals bemoan new regulations that restrict catches in the prime months between May and September. Equipment costs have risen while crab incomes have flatlined.

Tyler’s husband ran a crab operation before his boats and pots were broken by the fury of Hurricane Isabel in 2003. He went back to crabbing for a couple of years before leaving the island to find work on the tugboats that run the nearby shipping lanes, taking oil to refineries.

“He wasn’t the only one,” Tyler said. “So many of them do that now. There aren’t many men on the island for two weeks of each month while they are on the tugboats. It’s an older community now. There isn’t much for younger people here.”

Tyler speaks with a distinctive Tangier accent, a sort of unreconstructed dialect that has its roots in south-west England. Extra syllables are added to words, the word “tourist” (tourism has sadly dropped off in recent years) sounds a little like “terror royalist”.

Saving this outpost will take time, and money. In 1990 a stone jetty was built by the airstrip to prevent it being eroded away. There are further plans for a new seawall around the harbour, which is being opened up to the elements by the disappearing land: “We even have waves in the creeks now, the boats aren’t safe even in a normal wind,” Tyler said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Archaeologist Joanna Wilson, left, and Thomas Klatka work on a grave site being claimed by the sea on the north end of Tangier Island. A child’s coffin is unearthed in the foreground. Photograph: Steve Helber/AP

But more will be needed. The US army corps of engineers estimates it will take up to two years to protect the whole island by building sea walls, new wide beaches and creating a new system of dunes. Wetlands, which are declining in viability as seabird nesting sites, would be replenished by filtering small amounts of sand upon them, elevating them without smothering the vegetation.

“It would cost around $20m to $30m,” Schulte said. “Hopefully Congress will look at this report and decide that this island is worth saving. A lot of people think sea level rise is something a long way off, but this is affecting people now.”

For Tyler, and others born and raised on the island, fleeing isn’t an option, even if the long-term prospects are bleak.

“We are feeling pretty desperate but people won’t be just giving up, we’ll fight to the end,” she said.

“The only time I feel isolated here is when the bay freezes over. Other than that, the storms don’t really scare us, we just roll with it. Obviously if there’s a 200mph hurricane we’ll evacuate but people want to stay. You have to grow up here and live here to love it the way we do.”