Previous post
Our climate changes rapidly in the middle Atlantic, with sea levels rising faster and to a greater height than expected. Throughout the Atlantic coast, storms become more frequent and stronger. Livelihoods, homes, ecosystems hang by a thread while as a nation, we ignore these threats. Instead, to go whistling into the dark future spread before us hoping for the best. Without leadership or experience, we see little room for optimism. Many feel only a sad resignation.
I feel it sharply with each new record or unpreceded climatic event. This week the temperature went from a balmy 70 degrees to a subfreezing 21 in less than 24 hours. I know that the cylinder of the loaded gun we spin in a climatic Russian roulette has no empty chambers. But how best to respond? Yes, we should vote, join, argue – anything to move politicians to do what we all know is right for our children or grandchildren.
We can also try to create change.
Small gestures and determination
I don’t mean we can solve climate change in all its mighty malevolence with our small gestures and personal determination. Even our collective effort will take decades to create meaningful change. And it depends on the area. Unfortunately, some places will suffer more than others.
Delaware Bay has suffered the mistreatment of people for centuries, so climate impacts are in some ways, just more of the same. The abundant oysters of the 19th century gave way to disease and overharvest. At one time, the bay supported the largest population of Atlantic Sturgeon. Fishers took them with unrelenting effort, putting the last nail in the coffin in the 1980s. Horseshoe crabs once laid eggs so dense, windrows of eggs piled up on beaches. That ended with an overharvest in the early oughts and has not returned. The shoreline erodes faster than one might expect because no one repaired the damage done by centuries of diking and the subsequent abandonment of farmed intertidal marsh. Lost marsh invites lost beaches. And so it goes.
Restoring habitat as Climate therapy
Until about six years ago. That’s when the American Littoral Society and my company, Wildlife Restoration Partnerships, started restoring beaches and wetlands on Delaware Bay. Trucks move sand in the thousands of tons to rebuild beaches damaged by rising seas and odd storms. We focus the repair by building beaches that provide excellent breeding conditions for horseshoe crabs. We alter sand grain size or beach profile and see how the spawning horseshoe crabs respond. For example, does the improved development of horseshoe crabs eggs justify the cost of big grain sand (about 25% more)?
Division of Fish and Wildlife and Conserve Wildlife Foundation make sure birds eat the crab eggs that accumulate on the surface whenever crabs bred densely. If people walk the beach, wild Arctic breeding shorebirds will fly away. Keep disturbing the birds, and they will stay away. To prevent this, volunteers organized by CWF help visitors understand the need for staying off beaches just during the time the birds need them. Red knots feeding without interruption can gain 10% of body weight in one day. In 10 days they can double their body weight.
At the same time, the restoration of beaches provides better long-term protection for the beaches and the communities adjacent to them. We adaptively manage these beaches to ensure long term resilience to storms with subtle changes in sand grain size and better structure to fend over overwash. We have also experimented with new oyster reefs offshore of the beaches to protect beaches from destructive wind-driven waves. In other words, our work improves breeding conditions for horseshoe crabs, helps migrant shorebirds get to the Arctic and breed successfully, protects beaches by making them more resilient, which benefits storm-weary communities.
This photo oyster reefs at Reeds Beach on Delaware Bay at low tide shows how sand builds behind the reefs and horseshoe crabs resting and feeding between high tides.
The oyster reef at Reeds Beach helps attenuate wind-driven waves on Delaware Bay
Dense crab eggs feed fish too.
Habitat restoration improves in other ways. Increasing the number of crabs increases the eggs on the beach, and the number grows disproportionately. Why? Because at a certain threshold of breeding density, breeding female horseshoe crabs dig up the eggs buried by other breeding crabs. Digging up existing egg masses increases the density of surface eggs substantially. Migrant shorebirds eat the eggs; this is well known.
Few understand fish eat the eggs too. We can see why in the video presented in my first blog taken before the overharvesting of crabs in the 1990s. The video shows how crab eggs once accumulated all along the Bayshore where horseshoe crabs breed. At that time, the bay supported at least twice the crab population that now exists. Egg densities, however, were five times what they are now. Today’s egg density of about 8000 eggs/square meter pales when compared to the 50,000 eggs/square meter of the 1980s
Carl Shuster, the namesake for the Shuster Preserve established for crabs at the mouth of the bay, studied horseshoe crabs all his life. In an overlooked but essential study from 1962, he found that nearly all finfish eat crab eggs and larvae, including weakfish and stripers. But he also found the newly hatched young of these sport fish feasting on eggs as well and the larvae that crawl into the sea after hatching a month later. Most importantly, he found forage fish, the minnows on which the entire fishery depends, gorged themselves with both the eggs and larvae of horseshoe crabs.
All of this occurs during the breeding period of the fish, so the bump from crabs eggs materially improved the sport fishery of Delaware Bay. We cannot know now how the ecosystem of the bay suffered from this vanishing largess; no one studied the impact despite clear evidence from Shuster one would occur. The decline of horseshoe crabs probably had a profound effect on the productivity of the bay’s fishery. Its no accident that nearly all sportfish of Delaware Bay are depleted or overfished. Lacking the productivity boost of horseshoe crab eggs, the fish populations could not take the pressure.
A Thriving Ecosystem and Hope for the Future
All these benefits: The restoration of a species, its habitat, an ecosystem overflowing with resources, a thriving fishery, a resilient shoreline – all possible in the immediate future.
What are we missing? Hope. Our country faces existential threats, real ones that we cannot avoid. Today two days of northeast winds will whip up a nearly full moon tide to flood many of our low lying bridges and waterfronts. It’s becoming a regular occurrence that can whip into a deadly flood with one flick of the weather roulette we’ve created.
It’s like the flooding in Italy this past week. The same moon tide flooding Delaware Bay coasts mixed with a freak low-pressure cell creating a once-in-50- year flood. Unfortunately, the last one was less than a year ago.
three men enjoy a bottle of wine in the tides that flooded Venice 11/15/19 . Photo from Washington Post
Self-interested politicians, religious leaders, and business people spin stories meant to distract us away from the harsh reality before us. We all know the truth and pretend the unimportance of climate change. Secretly we fear its overwhelming influence and what it portends for our children’s future. I fear this most of all and see evidence growing every day. I, like many people, read the papers first thing every morning to see first, if the president has finally caused Armageddon and second what new threat climate change poses for the day.
This summer, a new UN report described how the changing climate would imprison most people in the deathly grip of heat, drought, flood, or fire while the rich will skate to safety, presumably laughing at all of us. Plant scientists now urge actions to reduce emissions because the planet’s crops slowly grow less nutritious. This week a story about how the West Antarctica Ice Sheet slides into the ocean perceptibly increasing the height of the ocean. In just one event!
Compassion for the earth
Cara Buckley, in a NY Times piece on this climate change anxiety, wrote about the best way to act. She wrote, “The key is to channel it, through everyday actions or joining wider movements, and also to figure out a way to face it without being controlled by it because operating out of fear, anger, and blame burns us out. That is where the spiritual component comes in — to find a way to move to a place not of tacit acceptance, but of fierce, roaring compassion”.
Hopefully, our beach restoration meets this standard. It helps wildlife navigate the increasingly dangerous future, it improves resiliency for communities struggling against the literal winds of change. It might even give an entire ecosystem resources to flourish.
Ms. Buckley helps us see it more clearly. ” that the crisis could force us to heal our relationship with the natural world, and there is no room for despair in that.”
