And some (stinky, slithery, scary) critters that are harder to adore
SIMPLE / SMART / SUSTAINABLE / STORIES
Jaws! · Turtles! · Birds! · Bret Stearns · Nancy Aronie Travels · Dinner at North Tabor Farm
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Contributors this Issue Nancy Aronie, Randi Baird, Sadie Dix, Luanne Johnson, Nick Mayer, Lanny McDowell, Kevin McGrath, Sam Moore, Catherine Walthers, David Welch
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Hello Readers!
Can you hear it? Two notes, E and F, played by a solo cello. Dun. Dun Dun. Dun Dun. Dundun. Dundun. Dundun. Dundun dundun. Did you get a tingle down your spine just then?
Most of us have felt varying degrees of terror (or thrills) at those sounds for the last 50 years.
Jaws became what many film historians have called the first big summer blockbuster movie, playing to nonstop crowds at the Strand Theater in Oak Bluffs, and theaters across America in the summer of 1975. Notably, Spielberg created fear and suspense while rarely actually showing the shark (turns out that was because Bruce, the shark machine, didn’t often behave for the filmmakers). Because even the idea of a 25-foot shark seeking dinner and revenge was scary (and the music helped). Jaws set off a furious few years of shark hunting, enough so that both Peter Benchley and Steven Spielberg expressed regrets for demonizing great white sharks in the movie.
Greg Skomal. Read about Greg’s work studying and protecting sharks on page 40. We have lots more critters in this issue — stranded sea turtles (saved!), migrating birds, and an essay by Luanne Johnson about how to love “unloveable” (that is, scary, stinky, slithery) creatures.
Thank you to our readers, contributors, and supporters while we celebrate our fourth anniversary on Martha’s Vineyard. These days, we believe it’s more important than ever to inform and inspire readers with stories about people doing innovative things to address climate change (and just regular everyday tricks to help us live more sustainably.) If you’d like to contribute and help us keep bringing you these stories, visit our website: bluedotliving.com/become-amember/ (Thank you!)
Oh, one more thing: We’d love to hear about any home projects you have going on — solar panels? Geothermal? New sustainable porch furniture or decking? At-home composting? Write us at britt.bowker@bluedotliving.com!
Jaws also inspired careers — including that of biologist
Have a great spring. – Jamie Kageleiry (and Britt Bowker)
Garden Angels
PLANTING WITH PURPOSE in collaboration with
18 Unloveable Creatures
By Luanne Johnson
Some animals and insects — stinky skunks, slithery snakes, scary sharks — are harder to love than others. But they are all our neighbors, and each one of them has a job to do.
23 Saving Cold-Stunned Sea Turtles
By Britt Bowker
Cape and Islands organizations work together to protect loggerheads, Kemp’s ridleys, and green sea turtles.
30 Shorebirds of the Atlantic Flyway
By Sam Moore
It takes a hemisphere’s worth of conservation efforts to protect migrating shorebirds.
40 Did Jaws Make Life Tough for Great White Sharks?
By Lucas Thors
On the 50th anniversary of Jaws, there are more great white sharks than ever off our shores. Shark researcher Greg Skomal (a real-life Matt Hooper) explains why (and what we should do about that).
55 Clearcutting in the State Forest
By Lucas Thors
Foresters, firefighters, conservationists, and nature-lovers debate active versus passive management.
Departments
15 Dear Dot: Is Vegan Leather a More Ethical Fashion Choice?
46 In the Bluedot Kitchen: Dinner at North Tabor Farm
Laura Roosevelt shares a farm-to-family dinner with Rebecca Miller, Matthew Dix, and their friends and kids.
53 Essay: Flying Less
Nancy Aronie explores traveling without leaving home.
64 Local Hero: Bret Stearns
By Lucas Thors
The Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe’s Natural Resource Director has been protecting indigenous resources and land rights for more than two decades.
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DISPATCHES From All Over CONNECTING THE (BLUE)DOTS
The Charles: I Went to Fish
By Caroline Sörbom Cambridge, Massachusetts
While walking near the Charles River one late spring evening, I spotted a kid, maybe eleven, standing on the small rocky beach of Magazine Beach Park, holding a fishing rod with both hands. I watched as, suddenly, his body tensed. A smaller, lookalike boy ran to him. “I think you got something!” he cried. Without losing focus, the older boy reeled in the line, which held a meaty two to three pound fish on its hook. Only with his hand securely holding his prize did the boy smile ear to ear, and holler to a woman in a nearby car. “Mom! Will you take my picture?”
I had lived next to the Charles for nearly four years but had never seen anyone fish, let alone reel in such a healthy-looking catch. It made me wonder: Could I catch a fish from the Charles River and eat it?
Catching fish from the Charles started as a symbolic quest inspired by my interests as a wild food lover. Being able to fish in its waters makes me feel like the river I love is clean and healthy, even if it's not all the way there yet. But in my pursuit
to understand the river’s past and its current ability to provide fish, the quest had also become symbolic in support of food sovereignty and long-term restoration of the river’s health.
Read the full story here: bit.ly/Fishing-the-Charles
Canada’s First Grocery Store Rooftop Garden
By Darcy Rhyno Montreal, Canada
At the IGA in Duchemin, Montreal, store produce starts on the roof. Opened in 2017, Canada’s first grocery store rooftop farm takes up 29,000 square feet and produces 40 varieties of organic vegetables and herbs, as well as flowers. About 7.2 tons, equal to 35,000 to 40,000 units of leafy greens, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers — all grown, washed, and packaged on the roof — are sold in the supermarket’s produce department below, where a TV monitor gives shoppers the chance to see the rooftop farmers hard at work.
“A green roof garden allows us to nourish our passion for food while reducing our environmental footprint, something that is particularly important to us,” says Richard Duchemin, one of four family members who co-own the store.
La Ferme de Rue Montreal, a non-profit carrying out
urban farming in Montreal, does most of the work at the Saint-Laurent neighborhood IGA, planting, growing, and harvesting the crops. The store benefits through a rental agreement with the non-profit, which gets revenue from the sales. Last year, the farm shared over 15 percent of its harvest with local food banks and charities.
Read the full story here: bit.ly/Rooftop-Garden
Creating Community, Before and After the Fire
By Tess Kazenoff
Los Angeles, California
The sky was still gray and particulate matter lingered in the air when the staff of Remainders Creative Reuse, a thrift store for arts and crafts supplies in Pasadena, got the allclear to return to the building. The store, located just three blocks from the borders of the Eaton Fire, quickly turned into a donation center, with staff collecting everything from water, toiletries, and hygiene items to bedding and clothing.
At first, Toban Nichols, Remainders’ director of education and development, planned to run the donation drive for a week. But by the end of the first day, the 700-square-footroom that had been allotted for donations was practically
filled to the top. Not only was Nichols staggered by the volume of the donations, but he was also shocked by the number of people wanting to volunteer.
“I am so proud of L.A.,” Nichols says. “I'm so proud to live here and be a part of this community because of the way people have stepped up after these fires. There was no hesitation in helping across the board, and it's just been incredible.”
Read the full story here: bit.ly/LA-Creative-Reuse
Unique Nursery with Specimen Plants ∙ Botanical Shop
COURTESY OF REMAINDERS CREATIVE REUSE
Harvesting Hope in America’s Hottest Metropolis
By Kris Ann Valdez Phoenix, Arizona
Recommends the
Phoenix, Arizona’s TigerMountain Foundation has a simple mission — empower marginalized people to grow healthy food, gain affordable housing, and create a sustainable community.
On a 100°F May morning, volunteers aged five to 95 mingle with the staff of TigerMountain Foundation (TMF) at the Garden of Tomorrow in South Phoenix, Arizona. Some volunteers live next-door, while others drive 45 minutes or so to participate. Even with the sun beating down, volunteers chat and laugh as they weed and harvest garden beds. They’re part of a team of over 5,000 volunteers and 32 staff who cultivate 45 acres in Phoenix neighborhoods where high incarceration rates, poor health, and low-ranking education systems make life hard.
Among the volunteers this particular morning is the founder and CEO of the non-profit, Darren Chapman. In his late fifties, Darren squats next to a new volunteer and shows him how to pull a weed by the roots from the rich, dark soil. Sweat drips from Darren’s forehead as he unearths a carrot from the ground and hands it to a nearby five-year-old girl. “Here,” he says. “Everything tastes better when it’s fresh.” The child wipes off the dirt and takes a bite. Her eyes widen as she crunches. “Mmm.”
Read the full story here: bit.ly/TigerMountain-Foundation
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CAMILLA RICHARDSON
BEETLEBUNG’S New Farm Store
Story and photos by Catherine Walthers
Since the farm store in the new barn at Beetlebung Farm opened days before Thanksgiving, it’s become an up-Island hub of sorts.
The whole barn came from an old, unused barn in New Hampshire that was disassembled piece by piece, including the stone foundation, and trucked to the Island to be painstakingly reassembled at 410 Middle Road. The first-floor farm store showcases original wood beams and rough-sanded oak floors and ceilings, anchored by a wall of stones from the original foundation rebuilt by local stonemason Eben Armer. The result is a homey, rustic setting, augmented by a small modern wood stove. On the days I visited, the two sheep-skin covered chairs near the stove were invariably occupied by people enjoying coffee and pastries from the new bakery, often surrounded by a steady stream of friends and acquaintances coming and going.
“It's a farm in the center of a community,” says Amy Weinberg, who, with her husband John, purchased the farm from the Fischer family in 2018 with plans to continue the
INDIGO FARM
Beetlebung's new farmstand is a hub for the up-Island community.
Pioneering Progress: Workforce Housing and
Conservation
Martha’s Vineyard Hospital is proud to provide workforce housing for employees at 490 Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road in Edgartown beginning this summer. The hospital acquired 26 acres from the Norton family to support this initiative. The land is also home to Navigator Homes of Martha’s Vineyard, a new skilled nursing facility that will enhance elder care on the Island.
More than half of the property is being preserved to protect natural habitats, managed by Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation. The site will feature hiking trails connected to nearby conservation land, ensuring public access to nature. In addition, the parking lot will include 16 electric vehicle charging stations.
farming operation under the same name. Weinberg, who has done everything from rinsing lettuces to overseeing the barnbuilding and farmstand projects, said she and the staff like that the farm is not somewhere out of sight, but part of everyday life in the small town, sitting as it does at the crossroads of four major roads near the Chilmark’s town hall, fire station, library, community center, and post office. “We wanted it to be yearround for the community. We wanted it to be a small-scale everything, interweaving farm, food, and craft.” And now that the store and bakery are open, she adds: “Every dream we could have ever imagined, it has been more than that.”
The heart of this farm store is food – really good food. It starts with the farm produce that grower Kate Woods oversees with Nick Doherty and Islander Theo Gallagher. Woods and Doherty came from the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in New York, made famous in part because of its chef, Dan Barber. There, the gardeners plant vegetable varieties with chefs in mind, valuing taste above all else. (Woods also worked at Siena Farms in Sudbury, which supplies well-known chef Ana Sortun’s three Boston-area restaurants.)
There’s just over an acre in outdoor production during the growing season at Beetlebung, along with three greenhouses lush with rows and rows of lettuces, greens, and herbs in the winter. Some of that produce goes directly for sale in the store, and some is now turned into value-added prepared foods in
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“It’s a place to meet up-Island, get quality food and see people you love. It’s not only top shelf but top consciousness.”
– Emma MacDonald, customer
the expansive, second-floor commercial kitchen. The kitchen also houses the baking operation, turning out a range of baked goods including several varieties of bread, bialys, apple cake, and various cookies – all made with New England grains milled on-site in a back room in the barn. The farmstand carries plenty of other small-batch products from other independent farms and producers, and to many Islanders’ delight, locally produced Salt Rock Chocolates. I loaded up with farm-produced items from the freezer to try and test at home. There’s a brassica Pesto Bomb containing herbs and edible parts of plants not typically used (like broccoli leaves), mixed with parmesan and garlic, and frozen into easily-used blocks the size of large ice cubes. One night I defrosted two Pesto Bombs (they come eight to a package), and mixed them with spaghetti for dinner. I accompanied this with a salad from the farm’s “Party Mix” of baby greens from the greenhouse. I appreciate that the greens are double-washed and spun dry, so all I needed to do was remove some from the bag.
“It’s part of our mission to capture as much waste internally as we can,” says chef Mirra Sims, referring here to the brassica leaves used in the pesto. “With these building blocks, I’m interested in empowering others to level-up their home cooking.”
Sims also prepares soups and stock for sale. I picked up as many quarts of frozen poultry stock as my small freezer would hold. I was not disappointed. When you have homemade stock, your soups just taste good!
The centerpiece of the new bakery, run by bread baker
Matt Pontarelli and pastry chef Darcy Spence, is the grain mill in a back room. The farm is not large enough to grow their own grains, but they make most purchases from around New England and then turn the grain into flour themselves. Grinding the grains on-site preserves both flavor and all the parts of the grain. In his breads, Pontarelli uses a wide variety of grains like red fife, emmer, and einkorn, all 100 percent whole grain. “There’s no white flour in house,” notes pastry chef Spence, who experiments daily with the best ways to substitute whole grains for white flour in her varied offerings. “You can feel the difference. We forget what really good homemade bread really is – or maybe we’ve never known. When I taste the bread, I can taste the whole story.”
I was excited to see whole wheat English muffins, frozen four to a bag. I really could taste how much better these were than standard English muffins. I topped them with butter and blackberry jam and savored every bite.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the gooey spelt chocolate chip cookies sold already cooked, and also packaged frozen to bake at home. I baked one (just one) each night until, sadly, they were gone.
New customers seem just as happy as I’ve been with the place and the food it offers. Emma MacDonald walks there from home each morning to enjoy coffee and pastry – and see friends. “Especially in the off season, it’s a place to meet upIsland, get quality food, and see people you love. It’s not only top shelf, but top consciousness.”
“It saves my life,” says West Tisbury resident Lynne Whiting, seen picking up a few things. “If they don’t have something at one place, they have it at the next,” she says about shopping for food locally. “We are blessed to have the options. I want to keep you all in business, so you can keep us alive,” she says with a nod to North Tabor Farm owner Rebecca Miller, who was also at Beetlebung, making a few bakery purchases herself.
Beetlebung Farm Store is open Thursday – Saturday, 8 am to 5 pm. Hours may change seasonally. beetlebungfarm.org
Find farm produce, prepared foods, and breads and pastries baked on site.
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dot DEAR
Dear Dot: Is Vegan Leather a More Ethical Fashion Choice?
Dear Dot,
I’m seeing a lot more references to vegan leather. Is leather bad because it’s an animal product? Is vegan leather a more ethical alternative?
– Kylie
Dear Dot,
I’m curious about your take on vegan leather versus genuine leather from an eco perspective but also from a quality perspective.
– Sofia
Dear Kylie and Sofia, When I was pregnant with Eldest Dot Child, I bought myself a pair of black “pleather” maternity pants and snakeskin boots, chasing a Blondie circa 1978 aesthetic. Problem was, those pants were hot … and not in the way Blondie circa 1978 was hot. As both the outdoor temperatures and the numbers on my scale soared, those pants — among the only items in my closet that still fit me — became like a waist-down sauna. If you are unfamiliar with women who are 8 ½ months pregnant, Kylie and Sofia, let me assure you that we are not known for being easy-going. All of which is to say, Dot and vegan leather have a somewhat troubled history.
Back then, however, vegan leather — or “pleather” — was pretty much restricted to a version of plastic, usually either polyurethane (PU) or polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Making my plastic pants took water, chemicals, and energy. PVC is particularly toxic, from creation to long past disposal — the “worst of the worst,” according to Judith Enck,
a policy expert with Beyond Plastics, a nonprofit based at Bennington College in Vermont. “Scientists have established that its precursor chemical is carcinogenic; that some of the additives used to make it flexible can muck with hormones; and that it can spew noxious compounds, especially when burned,” reported Yale Environment 360.
And let’s remember that any plastic brings with it attendant issues. Plastics, after all, are the product of fossil fuels, often generate microplastics, and can poison workers involved in their production. What’s more, my pregnancy pants, like any plastics, will exist in landfill long after both Dot and my now-adult baby are compost.
So if the vegan leather you’re considering is nothing more than fossil-fuel-based plastic, it is neither an environmentally or ethically sound choice. (Not to mention being a terrible choice for maternity wear.)
Genuine leather remains a soughtafter material. But, as you note, it’s an animal product, primarily from cattle, which are a leading cause of
ILLUSTRATION ELISSA TURNBULL
deforestation and methane emissions. That said, leather is a byproduct. We’re raising cattle anyway, so wouldn’t making use of the entire animal be a good thing? In theory, yes. But unused cattle hides — those from about 17% of the cattle raised — are burned or go to landfill, where they rot and contribute to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
The World Wildlife Fund and other organizations have joined to create the Deforestation-Free Call to Action for Leather, which seeks greater transparency in the supply chains so that we can all determine where the leather is coming from. But it isn’t just deforestation that’s an issue. The tanning process for leather often involves the use of toxic chemicals such as chromium, formaldehyde, and other heavy metals, which can have harmful effects on both the environment and the health of workers. An increasing number of companies are becoming committed to a more environmentally sound tanning process (check out the Leather Working Group for a sense of what to look for and what to avoid with traditional leather). But even with these positive initiatives, leather is and will always be an animal product, and that alone makes it off limits to some consumers.
Companies are responding by offering up vegan versions created from cork, apple peels, pineapple leaves, and more. Keep in mind that the designation “vegan” simply means the leather is not the product of an animal. If animal welfare is at the top of your list of values, then any vegan leather is a better alternative. But even vegan leathers, as Bluedot interns Sasha and Holly discovered in their investigations, aren’t necessarily as virtuous as we might believe, as you will discover below. Are they nonetheless better, though, than an actual leather item that could well last decades? Let’s dive in and determine whether Dot wants to give fake leather another go-round.
APPLE
Our sins, eco and otherwise, were first
laid bare thanks to an apple. Millenia later, could an apple offer absolution from our leather sins? In Italy in 2004, Italian inventor Alberto Volcan was looking for ways to use up excess apple skins created by the apple juice industry. Apple leather is produced from apple pomace (the pulpy residue remaining after juice extraction), which is ground up, turned into a fine powder, then mixed with PU and applied to a tearresistant cotton fabric. The roll is then heated and pressed. Voila: apple leather.
Intern Sasha tells us that apple leather has its pros and its cons. On the pro side, it’s made largely from a waste product and requires fewer fossil fuels in its production than both animal and synthetic leather. (And the apple industry as a whole is less harmful environmentally than the cattle industry.) Apple leather is also OEKO-TEX certified, meaning that it's free of harmful toxins. What’s rotten about this apple, however, is that it’s still 50% derived from fossil fuels (the polyurethane). Dot had a pair of Dooey’s “house” shoes (aka fancy slippers) made from apple leather. They did feel like actual leather, and Youngest Dot was happy to inherit them when I realized I don’t really need or want “house” shoes.
PINEAPPLE, AKA PIÑATEX
Sasha stumbled onto another fruit being pulverized to create vegan leather — pineapple! Spanish designer Dr. Carmen Hijosa was a leather goods specialist who noticed that leather demand often outstripped supply. She also knew that leather production harmed not only the planet, but also the people working in the industry, due to the heavy metals involved in tanning leather.
While visiting the Philippines, Dr. Hijosa discovered that people there made fabric from the leftover leaves from pineapples, which would otherwise be burned. This mesh fabric could then be topped with polyurethane and polylactic acid (both plastics) to create something that looks
and feels like the real thing. At first, the product was about 40% plastic, but Dr. Hijosa has managed to get that down to about 5%, putting it way ahead of apple-based fake leather. Piñatex has managed to attract some big names, including Puma and Hugo Boss. Want to explore the world of pineapple leather? You’ll find wallets, Western boots, watch straps and more on Immaculate Vegan.
CACTI
Still in the plant leather realm, prickly pear cactus enters the chat, thanks to Mexican entrepreneurs Adrián López Velarde and Marte Cázarez. What’s unique about this plant leather is that prickly pear cactus can be invasive in some areas, so finding an economic use for it can help keep it in check. In areas where it’s welcome to grow, the necessary mature cactus paddles used to make leather can be harvested without harming the plant itself. After drying in the sun, the paddles are ground into a powder that is then turned into a resin with organic ingredients and sustainable dyes (they call this bio-resin Desserto), which is then poured onto cotton or polyester to create what feels like actual buttery leather. Cacti leather has also attracted some heavy-hitters in the fashion industry, including H&M (which includes it in its Conscious Collection), Mercedes Benz, Fossil, Karl Lagerfeld, and the makers of these super-cool sneaks.
While Desserto claims to be recyclable, it’s neither compostable nor biodegradable, which means that if it’s thrown out, it will be right there next to Dot’s pleather maternity pants in landfill for decades to come.
KOMBUCHA
The new kid leather on the block is made from the cellulose film produced by a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (called a SCOBY) when it is fermented in a sweet tea solution. Our student sleuth Holly reported to me that the exact origins of kombucha
leather seem unclear, but it’s likely that a group of scientists from UC Davis created it in the early 2000s when looking for a sustainable and ecofriendly alternative to leather. Daring DIYers can theoretically produce this leather alternative at home, though I’m not sure I’d trust something I made on my kitchen counter to keep me covered in the outside world. It is available commercially (though not widely) and is typically more expensive than traditional leather — though that might change if it becomes more widespread. Kombucha leather is the only fully biodegradable of the faux alternatives, and it’s described as “breathable,” which Dot’s pleather pregnancy pants most definitely were not.
CORK
While being hailed by our intrepid interns as the most ecologically sound of the leather alternatives, cork is unfortunately also the least leather-like. So if your must-haves include a vegan
leather that looks and feels like the real thing, pop cork off your list. (That said, it still looks pretty neat.) Cork leather is made from the bark of cork oak trees, and harvesting it doesn’t harm the trees.
Once the bark is harvested, it’s dried for six months, and then flattened into sheets. Fabric backing is then placed onto the sheets with suberin, a naturally occurring adhesive from the cork. The result is a durable, lightweight, and fully biodegradable fabric. You can check out cork leather shoes and accessories here.
RUBBER ET AL
Mirum is making its mark in the vegan leather world. A mixture of natural rubber, plant oils and waxes, natural pigments, and minerals, Mirum cites a “patented biocurative — a groundbreaking, nontoxic, plant-based alternative to conventional curing systems” used to create the final product. A bona-fide vegan leather
player, Mirum boasts clients such as BMW and Stella McCartney.
AND THERE’S MORE.
Mango leather and mushroom leather and who knows what else is all coming down the pike. With the exception of kombucha leather and Mirum, all seem to rely to some extent on a type of plastic to provide structure. Are they better than traditional leather? Yep, though, as I’ve noted, each has its pros and cons … the main cons being a lack of wide availability and, frequently, a luxury price tag.
Alternatively, Dot
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Story by Luanne Johnson Illustrations by Kevin McGrath
Back in the days when we humans lived as hunter-gatherers, we were part of a web of life where our relationship with other species was one of interdependence. Knowing the plants and animals that provided food, shelter, or medicine, as well as those that could harm or even kill us, was essential for survival. We have our ancestors to thank for our keen eyes that can detect subtle movement in
these hard-to-love species rather than eradicating them. They were, well, more neighborly than most people are today. The attitudes of indigenous people toward the animals and plants around them were rooted in their knowledge of each species and its role in the natural world. In Pacific cultures, sharks are viewed as guardians of the ocean that manage prey species and help fishermen navigate. Here in North America, indigenous people lived amidst a variety of hazardous animals. Whether it was bears, mountain lions or porcupines, essential knowledge for sharing the land with them was passed along through stories and lessons on wildlife tracks and sign — scrapes on trees from claws, scrapes in the dirt.
Even annoying animals like smelly skunks were respected. An Anishinaabe story tells us the skunk was given its powerful defense weapon because of one who gave its life for the benefit of its kind. The Lakota revered skunks for their bravery in standing their ground
Because skunks are good mousers and eat a variety of insect grubs, they provide natural pest control. So, while the occasional spray of a skunk could be unpleasant, the skunk was known to be brave and helpful.
the periphery of our vision, ears that hear the snap of a twig or a bird call in the distance, and a nose that can lead us to a ripe patch of berries. Being both predator and prey were a normal part of daily life. To be sure, our ancestors were fearful of large carnivores on land and sharks in the water. They knew skunks were smelly, and they experienced poison ivy rashes too, but if you read or listen to the stories from indigenous people, they primarily teach about respecting and living with
when facing bears, so war chiefs lined the heels of their moccasins with skunk skins or tails to give them courage. Their respect for skunks would only have increased if they’d witnessed one digging up a ground hornet or wasp nest. Because skunks are good mousers and eat a variety of insect grubs, they provide natural pest control. So, while the occasional spray of a skunk could be unpleasant, the skunk was known to be brave and helpful. This may not be
your experience with skunks, but if you are having repeated encounters with skunks that result in a skunk spraying, you might investigate which foods or shelters are attracting the skunks, and perhaps remove those or find a way to exclude the skunks from them.
I’m not an indigenous person, so I did not grow up hearing the stories of my people in a culture with traditional ecological knowledge. (See our story: bluedotliving.com/how-to-live-onmother-earth.) Where, then, does my mindset of interdependence, tolerance, and respect towards other species come from? The answer is simple. I’ve spent a lot of time in nature observing, listening, smelling, tasting, and piecing together my understanding of the web of life around me. I’ve learned that every native species has a role in the ecosystem it inhabits. Nature doesn’t produce any junk. So, I’m batty for bats, tolerant of ticks, and silly for snakes. Yup. They are all my neighbors, and each one of them has a job to do. My job is to understand their roles and learn how to live with them so that we can all share this tiny blue dot together. Perhaps I can help you find your footing on this path, too, by helping you see some not-so-easy to love species differently.
Here on Martha’s Vineyard, where I live, poison ivy grows plentifully, and I’ve had many unpleasant encounters with it. Do I loathe it? No. I respect it for reminding me to pay attention. Every time I’ve suffered from a poison ivy rash, it was because I was either too lazy to put on gloves and long sleeves, or I was not paying attention. And poison ivy has benefits beyond its lessons in awareness:
Bats have also suffered terribly from bad publicity. From Dracula to stories about bats wanting to nest in your hair, these little mammals have been maligned, misunderstood, and terrorized by tennis rackets.
I’ve seen at least a dozen bird species and a few mammals feast on the berries of this native plant in the fall and winter, when they offer much-needed nutrients. Walking along the beaches here, I see poison ivy’s roots contributing to dune stabilization, and I’m grateful for its service. I also admire its vibrant fall color. Early European colonists loved poison ivy’s fall color too. So much so that they sent it back to England to be planted in gardens for display.
Snakes have had a bad rap since the serpent appeared as a devious force in the book of Genesis. While venomous snakes can certainly be hazardous, they are typically pretty secretive and would rather bite prey species than you. The majority of snakes that people encounter in North America are harmless and beneficial. They provide excellent rodent control. So, if you have a mouse or rat problem in your barn, or if you live in an area with ticks carried by rodents, think about welcoming some snakes to your property to hunt mice and other rodents. If you have slugs or snails in your garden, there are snakes that can help. Learn about your local snake species and how you might attract them. There might even be a microhabitat program in your area, enabling you to sign up to have someone visit your property and offer advice on how to create habitat. On the Vineyard, check out the BiodiversityWorks site for info on Natural Neighbors.
Bats have also suffered terribly from bad publicity. From Dracula to stories about bats wanting to nest in your hair, these little mammals have
their way into homes and have lots of babies, that isn’t true. The bats you find around your home and in your yard are insectivores, with tiny teeth incapable of chewing wood. They are the only mammal capable of true flight, and in other ways, they are a lot like us. Many bats have only one pup each year that they nurse with milk, and some bats live for more than 20 years. They are excellent neighbors, because a bat can
consume 3,000 - 4,000 insects in a single night. They even prey upon newly arrived invasive insect pests like the spotted lantern fly. How do you live with bats? Hosting bats in a bat colony box on the exterior of your home, or having a colony behind exterior trim boards or shingles or shutters is a great way to share space with them. You can also leave dead trees with cavities or loose bark standing for bats to occupy. One of my favorite summer evening activities is watching bats emerging to feed at dusk.
Mosquitoes and ticks are the hardest to love. It’s much easier to loathe them. These animals carry
serious diseases and can cause considerable harm to humans, but they also play an important role in the food chain. Mosquitoes are a staple food for dragonflies, frogs, fish, toads, birds and bats. Ticks are eaten by birds and some mammals, but their role as a prey species isn’t as easy to see and appreciate. So how do we be good neighbors with mosquitoes and ticks? I dress appropriately when I go out into nature and on trails. My clothes are treated with permethrin (a spray insecticide best used on garments, not skin), and in late summer into fall when larval tick bombs are a risk, I carry duct tape to remove them, and
some DEET spray for anything I miss. I also do a tick check every day. If you need to create a safe space in your yard for you or children, and you decide to spray for ticks, do your homework on what you are spraying. Know that you will be killing non-target insects with any spray, whether it is eco-friendly or not. So, make sure you spray only what you need to spray. Be mindful that no spray is 100% effective, so you still need to do a tick check everyday.
Of course there are many other animals and insects that are hard to love, and some parts of the world have more of them than others. But each one has something to offer, just as
each of us has something to offer the world. I encourage you to spend more time in nature, observing and learning about the plants and animals around you. On Martha’s Vineyard, visit the Martha’s Vineyard Atlas of Life to learn more about our biodiversity and find learning resources. Visit your local nature center. Purchase some field guides or download the iNaturalist app. Given that we are living increasingly isolated lives and spending more and more time indoors and online, is it any surprise that we are in the midst of the Sixth extinction crisis? If there was ever a time for us to focus on being more neighborly, it's now.
I’ve learned that every native species has a role in the ecosystem it inhabits. Nature doesn’t produce any junk. So, I’m batty for bats, tolerant of ticks, and silly for snakes. Yup. They are all my neighbors, and each one of them has a job to do.
• Keepers of the Animals: Native American Stories and Wildlife Activities for Children by Michael J. Caduto and Joseph Bruchac.
• The Secret Lives of Bats: My Adventures with the World’s Most Misunderstood Mammals by Merlin Tuttle.
• In Praise of Poison Ivy by Anita Sanchez
• Martha’s Vineyard Atlas of Life mval.biodiversityworksmv.org/
• iNaturalist inaturalist.org/
• Go Botany gobotany.nativeplanttrust.org/
• Bug Guide bugguide.net/node/view/15740
Saving COLD-STUNNED Sea Turtles
Cape and Islands organizations work together to protect loggerheads, Kemp’s ridleys, and green sea turtles.
By Britt Bowker
It was by chance that Karen Dourdeville was visiting the Vineyard when the calls came in about three juvenile green sea turtles, cold-stunned and stranded, washed up on the shore — two in Tisbury Great Pond and one in Katama Bay. It was the day before Thanksgiving, and Karen, the Sea Turtle Stranding Coordinator typically based at Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, wasted no time. She quickly retrieved the turtles, carefully packed them in boxes, labeled them, and boarded the last ferry to Woods Hole.
“I just sat down on the freight deck with these boxes, each containing a live green turtle,” Karen said in a phone call with Bluedot.
Her swift response is part of a larger, highly coordinated effort to address the number of cold-stunned sea turtles stranded on beaches on Cape Cod, the Vineyard, and Nantucket, as well as on Massachusetts’ north and south shores. Sea turtles are cold-blooded and rely on their external temperatures to regulate their body heat. When air and water temperatures drop, so does their body temperature. The turtles become coldstunned and are weak and unable to swim.
Three species found in New England are vulnerable to cold-stunning: green sea turtles, loggerheads, and the critically endangered Kemp’s ridley. These turtles are found swimming in New England waters all summer through early fall, and are often found cold-stunned from November through mid January. “None of these turtles can stay here all winter. It’s too cold, so they’re trying to go south,” Karen said.
While the islands don’t see nearly as many cold-stunned turtles as the beaches on the Cape, seven cold-stunned sea turtles washed ashore on Nantucket this season, at various places along Coatue: four green sea turtles (two alive, two deceased), and three Kemp's ridleys (two alive, one deceased). On the Vineyard, eight washed up this year — three alive and five dead. Two of the turtles were
Once a turtle is located on the Island, volunteers package it up — usually in a banana box with some seaweed to help keep it warm — and transport it to the ferry terminal. Volunteers then bring the turtle aboard the ferry’s freight deck. “The crew members on the Steamship know about it,” Karen Dourdeville said, adding that a volunteer from her team is ready on the other side in Woods Hole.
Kemp’s ridleys, which were found washed up in Katama Bay and on the north shore of West Tisbury. The other six were juvenile greens — which are less common in New England. It was also unusual to find them in the Tisbury Great Pond.
The Tisbury Great Pond is brackish for most of the year, but a few times a year, based on water levels, the pond is cut at the south end, letting salt water flush in. The pond was opened August 21, and it closed naturally by September 15.
“Presumably, these greens got in during that window,” Karen said, adding that the pond wasn’t reopened again in the fall as it often is because of the drought, and because there was a virus affecting oysters, which are susceptible to higher salt. “So the decision was made not to reopen it,” Karen said. “So these greens, plus another green that came out of the Great Pond, were thriving and living in there until they got stranded.”
Roughly 25% of the cold-stunned turtles Karen’s team responds to don’t survive, but for the ones that do, their journey back to sea represents the efforts of a network of local, regional, and national conservation organizations working together to save these threatened species.
Healthy oceans need sea turtles.
Loggerheads and leatherbacks help control jellyfish populations, while green turtles help maintain healthy seagrass beds by eating and pruning them, increasing their capacity to support biodiversity and carbon storage. Kemp’s ridleys, the smallest and most endangered sea turtles on the planet, play a crucial role in their ecosystems through their unique nesting behavior (large groups of females gather offshore and come onto the beach all at once), making them even more important for scientific study.
Species specifics
Scientists see the most cold stuns with the Kemp’s ridley. Although Kemp’s ridleys primarily nest in the Gulf of Mexico (which, Karen points out, makes them susceptible to oil spills), some get around the southern tip of Florida and travel up the East Coast. At about the size of a dinner plate, Kemp’s ridleys are the smallest of the three species susceptible to cold-stunning. Green sea turtles are roughly the same size when juvenile but grow to be three to four feet long and weigh around 300 pounds when they’re adults. They typically come from Florida or Mexico. “But they may go offshore for a while. The ones we get are anywhere from two to
seven years old. So they’re kind of swimming and floating in Sargassum weed for a couple years, and then at some point, they head inshore,” Karen said. Loggerheads, which are about three feet long and 250 pounds as adults, “do really quite a circumnavigation of the North Atlantic,” Karen said. Many hatch in Florida, travel to Europe and the Mediterranean, and eventually cross the Atlantic to the Northeast.
As air temperatures rise, it becomes harder for turtles to successfully hatch on southern beaches. “There’s been a huge conservation effort by many people and many organizations to protect nests on vulnerable beaches,” Karen said.
The majority of Kemp’s ridleys are born along a 30-mile stretch of beach in northeastern Mexico, where conservation efforts by the U.S. and Mexico in the 1980s boosted nesting numbers, “which was wonderful,” Karen said. “And then the Deepwater Horizon oil spill happened in 2010, and numbers plummeted after that. They have risen again, but not as quickly. Are there more Kemp’s ridleys being put in the system? Yes, but we don’t know how many.”
Karen pointed out that, while nest numbers are an important measure of success, hatching success has become increasingly important. “As the beaches are warming with climate change, the nests can get too hot and not as many eggs hatch. So that’s another parameter people are considering.”
In addition to Kemp’s ridleys, greens, and loggerheads, leatherback turtles also inhabit New England waters from summer to early fall. These giant turtles, measuring six to eight feet long, are not susceptible to cold-stunning due to their size and other physical adaptations. The Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary also monitors leatherback turtles, which are more prone to summer strandings.
“Leatherbacks sometimes are the most common summer stranding,” Karen said. “Many of them get hit by a vessel, which can be fatal, and they wash in.”
Responding to cold stuns
In the past year, Karen’s team responded to around 820 cold-stunned turtles, with the majority found along Cape Cod, where turtles often get trapped in the bay’s “arm” during their migration south. Sea turtles, like many species of fish, are moving further north along the western North Atlantic due to climate change and warming waters stretching as far north as the Gulf of Maine. Not only are our warming water temperatures more hospitable to them, but also, they like to eat here, because our waters are “very nutrient rich,” Karen said. Cold-stunned turtles have been on
MASS AUDUBON WELLFLEET BAY WILDLIFE SANCTUARY. USFWS PERMIT ES60415D
One of the cold-stunned green sea turtles found washed up on the Tisbury Great Pond shore.
Rescued turtles are packaged and placed on the Steamship's freight deck.
Roughly 25% of the cold-stunned turtles Karen’s team responds to don’t survive, but for the ones that do, their journey back to sea represents the efforts of a network of local, regional, and national conservation organizations working together to save these threatened species.
the rise for over a decade, with a record 1,400 turtles stranded in 2014 and numbers nearly that high in several years since. Though the numbers rise and fall from one year to the next, the general trend upward remains concerning.
This past season, the eight coldstunned turtles found on the Vineyard represented more than double the average range of one to four per season. Adam Kennedy, Director of Rescue and Rehabilitation at the New England Aquarium Sea Turtle Hospital in Quincy, said this number might even be a record for the Island. The Aquarium cared for 518 turtles this season, compared to 394 last season, including the three found alive on the Vineyard this year.
All reports about cold-stunned turtles in the region go through Karen’s team
at the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, whose work is conducted under a permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. When Karen or her staff aren’t already on the islands (which is most of the time) they rely on trained volunteers to respond. On the Vineyard, these volunteers come from the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) Environmental Laboratory, under the jurisdiction of the Tribe’s Natural Resource Department, and Mass Audubon’s Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary. Mass Audubon also trains volunteers on Nantucket, who are members of the Marine Mammal Alliance Nantucket and Nantucket Animal Rescue.
“Sometimes we’ll get calls from the public, or they’ll come through the police departments, but we make sure that we coordinate everything with Karen,” said
Andrew Jacobs, Laboratory Manager of the Wampanoag Environmental Laboratory, who has been responding to cold-stunned turtles on the Island for the last 16 years. “When we get to the scene, we’ll take photos before getting a little closer to the animal. We try to minimize stress and look for signs of human interaction, which could be entanglements, or maybe there’s [been] a vessel strike. And then we go a little bit closer. You can usually tell with a cold stun — they look like they’re basically a stone statue. At that point, there are very few signs of life. But sometimes you can see some flippers or eye movements. Basically, they’re shutting down to conserve what little body heat and energy they have left.”
Once a turtle is located on the Island, volunteers package it up — usually in a banana box with some seaweed to help keep it warm — and transport it to the ferry terminal. During the drive, volunteers turn off their car’s heat to keep the turtles at around 55 degrees Fahrenheit, as raising the temperature too quickly could put the body into shock and kill the animal. Volunteers then bring the turtle aboard the ferry’s freight deck. “The crew members on the Steamship know about it,” Karen said, adding that a volunteer from her team is ready on the other side in Woods Hole.
COURTESY NEW ENGLAND AQUARIUM
A green sea turtle gets a health exam.
Each turtle is given an ID number.
“Everyone knows who’s going to be there, and there’s a lot of coordination.”
“We'll do it as quickly as possible, so that way they can get the turtle to a rehabilitation center,” Andrew said.
Depending on the time of day and capacity at the rehab facilities, some turtles are taken to Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary for overnight care, while others are brought to the New England Aquarium Sea Turtle Hospital or the National Marine Life Center (NMLC) in Buzzards Bay for short- to long-term treatment. With so many turtles to rescue, Karen’s team conducts around two transports per day, and capacity at these centers is often stretched thin.
Cold-stunning is “the same thing as a person getting hypothermia in cold water,” said Beth Sobiloff, Interim Executive Director of the NMLC, which cares for turtles for about one to two weeks before transferring them to another rehab center for secondary care. The first step with a cold-stunned turtle, Beth explained, is to give it an ID number and gradually warm it. “We keep them at 55°F for 24 hours, then up to 64°F for
another 24 hours, and after that, they can go up to 75°F, and they pretty much stay at that temperature,” Beth said. Treatment center staff give turtles a comprehensive physical exam, including bloodwork analysis. This year, they treated many for pneumonia. The team helps the turtles with their first swims in fresh water, providing hydration and removing any debris such as barnacles that may have accumulated during dormancy. “They’ll kind of gradually stimulate the system, maybe rub their flippers and try to warm them,” Beth said. The turtles then move to warmer saltwater environments, where they swim for longer periods. “We make sure their shells stay moist when they’re not in the water because they can’t be in the water 24/7 right away. They’re closely monitored for the first few days.” In the final stage of the warming process, turtles graduate to the 75 degree zone, where they swim around the clock. The team continues to give them daily checkups and medical treatments until they are well enough to move to secondary rehabilitation facilities, and eventually to go back into the ocean.
At the NMLC, Beth and her team are looking to provide longer-term care to sea turtles and hope to raise funds to add a tank to the two they currently have. “We tend to get gray seal pups earlier now, so it overlaps with the sea turtle season,” she said. “You can’t have seals and sea turtles in the same tank, so we’re looking to get more tanks and life support. It’s a very expensive proposition, but we have to have space at every level.” The NMLC had 49 sea turtles in their care this season.
Karen’s team and volunteers at Felix Neck and the Wampanoag Environmental Laboratory also respond to leatherback and loggerhead strandings in the summer. Last year, the Vineyard saw five summer strandings. Karen encouraged people to report live turtle sightings through the website seaturtlesightings.org.
“That’s aimed at boaters to report sightings of sea turtles, and then we vet these sightings,” Karen said. “The goal is to educate boaters that sea turtles are here and to watch ahead of their boat and avoid hitting them, which is usually fatal.” The Wellfleet Bay
COURTESY NEW ENGLAND AQUARIUM
A sea turtle swims around its tank at the New England Aquarium's Sea Turtle Hospital in Quincy.
Wildlife Sanctuary also partners with the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby to educate boaters and anglers, especially during peak fishing season from August through October.
What happens to the dead turtles?
When cold-stunned turtles die, staff and volunteers freeze the carcasses and store them at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, where scientists later perform necropsy, or an animal autopsy. “That’s really an important piece of the whole story, because that’s where a lot of sea turtle science happens,” Karen said. “We invite scientists, we collect samples for other researchers — there are a number of research projects that those deceased sea turtles contribute to.” These studies are years in the making and include one looking at heavy metal in sea turtle tissue; another looking at microbiome makeup or the fauna in the gut of the turtles; another examining the level of PFAS in sea turtle tissues; and there’s a developing study about aging and sexing turtles — both important parameters for understanding population dynamics.
“It’s not until they become sexually mature that you know the sex,” Karen said, adding that researchers can, however, identify the sex of dead juvenile turtles during necropsis. They can also get a better idea of how old the turtles were during necropsis by severing the front flipper bone. “The turtles deposit rings of calcium there. You can count the rings to determine age,” Karen said. Otherwise, scientists only know a turtle’s approximate age range based on their size. “You get a range of age from size, but more specifically from dead sea turtles,” Karen said.
Back to the sea
When the cold-stunned turtles are stable, healthy, and ready for release, they are usually flown or driven down south to be released into warmer waters. Through a partnership between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) and the nonprofit Turtles Fly Too, volunteer pilots fly turtles to their southern destinations, such as Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Georgia, or Mexico. Many rehab centers in Florida and North Carolina were impacted by hurricanes and were not operational this year, which increased the burden on the New England Aquarium Sea Turtle Hospital in Quincy. As of late February, the New England Aquarium still had 71 turtles in its care — more than average for this time of year, Adam Kennedy said.
If the New England waters are warm enough, the turtles are released from local beaches, often off West Dennis Beach on the Cape. “It’s a nice, large beach,” Adam Kennedy said, adding that it’s south-facing. “At that point, water in the Nantucket Sound is going to warm up, so we start releasing them there.” They won’t release turtles back into Cape Cod Bay out of concern that they might get stuck again.
“Up to 85 percent of the turtles that remain in our Sea Turtle Hospital are released back into the ocean,” the New England Aquarium website states. People can track the movements of many of these rehabilitated turtles through the Aquarium’s interactive online map (bit.ly/trackseaturtles). Ten
rehabilitated turtles from Cape Cod that were in the Aquarium’s care were recently released off New Smyrna Beach in Florida. Another small group will be sent south in late March or early April, and the next group of healthy turtles will be released in May or June.
Out of the three live sea turtles that were rescued off the Vineyard, two spent about two months at the New England Aquarium Sea Turtle Hospital in Quincy, and they were healthy enough to be transferred to the Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium in early January. Adam said they will likely be released in Florida this spring. The last one, sadly, died overnight on its first night at the Sea Turtle Hospital in November. “That turtle was unfortunately a little too far gone by the time it got to us,” Adam said.
“It’s just really important that we know these turtles are out here, and everyone really does provide that extra hopeful conservation piece that we need to get these turtles back out and released to the wild,” Adam added. “Every turtle that comes in here, that is our ultimate goal to get them back out into the ocean.”
“When you take any animal out of the chain of existence, there’s going to be repercussions down the line,” Beth from the NMLC said. “That’s just the way it is. You change a whole ecosystem when
VANESSA KAHN, NEW ENGLAND AQUARIUM
Satellite tags will track a sea turtle's movements and provide data after its release.
you change one animal, and that’s why conservation efforts are so important for sea turtles as well as for all creatures.”
What should I do
if I see a stranded turtle?
Sea turtles typically don’t come ashore unless they are seriously debilitated. Do not attempt to warm them yourself, as warming too quickly could shock them. Sometimes the best course of action is to bring a turtle up to the shoreline and cover it with some dry seaweed, because if the waves come back in, it could get carried back out to sea and “we might lose the animal,” said Andrew Jacobs at the Wampanoag Environmental Laboratory. He also encourages people to enjoy live sea turtles from afar. “It’s an incredible thing to come across them, but we urge people that when you do see them, just enjoy them from afar. Give them space. Please don’t touch them. Let them be as natural as they possibly can.”
For sea turtles found stranded on beaches along Cape Cod, the South
Shore, and the Islands, call the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary at 508-349-2615 option 2. Visit Mass Audubon’s website (bit.ly/seaturtlesmassaudubon) to learn more about their sea turtle program. For sea turtles found on beaches from Boston north through New Hampshire, call the New England Aquarium’s Sea Turtle Rescue Hotline at 617-973-5247. Live sea turtle sightings can also be reported online at seaturtlesightings.org or by calling 888-SEA-TURT (888-732-8878).
People can support sea turtle conservation in New England through donations to Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, the New England Aquarium, the National Marine Life Center, and Turtles Fly Too.
Sea turtle conservation
Sea turtles in U.S. waters are a federally protected species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA), which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration share
responsibility for implementing.
Last year, federal funds were allocated for the first time for sea turtle rescue and rehabilitation, and Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary was among the organizations that benefited from this funding. However, this funding was not approved for the current year. “Any federal money for sea turtle rescue and rehabilitation is probably gone now,” Karen Dourdeville said, noting that most of Mass Audubon’s funding comes from private donors, which “has never been more important than it is now.”
Both the ESA and the Marine Mammal Protection Act were enacted in the early 1970s to protect endangered species and prevent their extinction. These acts have been the focus of recent congressional oversight hearings. Wildlife advocates fear these hearings could set the stage for weakened protections for biodiversity and could strip species of their protected status. But no matter what, Karen said, “our work will continue.”
VANESSA KAHN, NEW ENGLAND AQUARIUM
Mass Audubon and New England Aquarium staff release many of the rehabilitated turtles back to sea at West Dennis Beach.
Of The Shore
birds
Atlantic Flyway
Setting the stage for conservation on a hemispheric scale.
Story by Sam Moore
If you visit a beach at low tide in the spring or fall, there’s a good chance you’ll encounter a unique group of transients, wheeling about and landing in sync, probing with bills of fantastical shapes in the invertebrate-packed mud, or resting, beak under feather, in moments of calm.
These visitors, a few of whom stay to breed at our mid-latitudes in the summer, are the shorebirds, a diverse group that includes sandpipers, plovers, and oystercatchers. The writer Peter Matthiessen called them “the wind birds” for their legendary migrations.
Every shorebird you see is vitally connected to a flyway, an aerial artery that surges twice a year as thousands of birds travel to and from their breeding grounds in the northern hemisphere. On the East Coast, these routes can extend up past the Arctic circle and down to the southern tip of South America. One famous bird, a red knot known as ‘B95’ or ‘Moonbird,’ spent decades commuting from Tierra del Fuego to an island at the top of the Hudson Bay — 9,000 miles each way, year after year, until he might as well have flown to the moon and back.
“A flyway is an evolutionary consequence,” says biologist Brian Harrington. “Through time, shorebirds have tested all kinds of strategies for living in perpetual summer, so to speak. Different species end up with somewhat different strategies, but it's basically something that has developed through natural selection.”
In 1974, while working at Manomet
Conservation Sciences in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Harrington wanted to learn more about where shorebirds concentrate along their journey. Surveying the whole route was a daunting task for a single scientist, or even a group of them, so he recruited volunteer birders to stake out their own spots along the flyway and count.
By setting out to make an accurate census at least three times each season, and by doing their best to separate sanderlings from semipalmated
sandpipers, willets from yellowlegs, and red knots from dunlin, these volunteers built a huge dataset. Harrington is retired, but the program he started — the International Shorebird Survey — just celebrated its 50th anniversary. One common species, the semipalmated sandpiper, has been counted along its southward migration more than 30 million times in the half century since the survey began.
Like most bird news these days, the shorebird report is dire. Despite more
Many of us are familiar with the passenger pigeon and its dismal fate, chalked up in part to its popularity as a menu item: pigeon pie. But if you had gone to a market in Boston in the 1890s, you would also have seen red knots for ten cents a dozen. All up and down the Atlantic coastline, shorebirds were commodities to be sold, eaten, or sewed into hats.
Black skimmers in Edgartown. MATT
than a hundred years of legal protection, shorebirds are declining in North America, on the East Coast perhaps even more so than elsewhere. In 2023, a team of researchers published a paper that used fall migration surveys to calculate that 16 shorebird species have declined by at least 50% since 1980. Some, like the red knot, have declined by more like 90%. Looking at just the past three generations of each species, the trends are even more troubling.
“The counts of birds are going down,” says Paul A. Smith, a senior research scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada and the lead author of the paper. “We can say that with confidence. The numbers of shorebirds on these beaches are going down. And that alone should be enough to raise concerns.”
cousin, like gulls and skimmers, from an adjacent family.)
Most species nest much further north, and Smith has spent 25 summers on nesting grounds in the Arctic. “I watched the abundance of ruddy turnstones at my
study site go from 30 or 40 pairs in the study area down to just a handful,” he says. “So I've watched the decline in abundance happen in real time."
It’s not the first time shorebirds have been in trouble, but it might be their most extensive crisis yet. The birds we see now returned to a small measure of abundance following a powerful set of laws and
American oystercatcher at Hancock Beach.
Harrington was also an author on the paper, along with scientists from Manomet and the U.S. and Canadian governments. “We know the populations of many species of shorebirds are plummeting, and that's because something has gone very wrong somewhere in their life cycle,” he says. “And so our big need right now is to figure out where in that life cycle — breeding season, south migration, north migration, wintering area — where in that chain of life they are facing issues that are causing them to die.”
To get a handle on why this is happening, researchers use all sorts of techniques to track shorebirds on their long voyages. Leg bands are a time-tested way to re-sight birds along their route, and newer technologies like tiny VHF (very high frequency), cellular, and satellite transmitters can record each flight path in granular detail.
People are also watching shorebirds closely on their summer nesting grounds. In Massachusetts, beachgoers see conspicuous evidence of this as they skirt fenced-off nesting areas for piping plovers, oystercatchers, and terns (a close shorebird
Ruddy turnstone.
Black skimmers in flight.
cooperative strategies up and down their flyways, including landmarks like the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Endangered Species Act, but their future depends on these agreements growing stronger, not weaker.
From the brink and back again
Many of us are familiar with the passenger pigeon and its dismal fate, chalked up in part to its popularity as a menu item: pigeon pie. But if you had gone to a market in Boston in the 1890s, you would also have seen red knots for ten cents a dozen. All up and down the Atlantic coastline, shorebirds were commodities to be sold, eaten, or sewed into hats.
“I mean, you've heard the stories,” says Paul A. Smith, “The punt guns, shooting buckets of nuts and bolts at flocks of birds and then stuffing them into barrels. It's hard to even imagine that kind of abundance. And so it's obvious, with that baseline, that there's been a massive decline.”
Traces of that abundance remain as windows into what we might have encountered along the coast in the early 19th century. “At Johnson’s Mills in New Brunswick,” Smith says, “You can have 120,000 semipalmated sandpipers in an area not even the size of a soccer field. Just one on top of the other. At high tide, they're all right up against the shoreline. That's astonishing, that sight.”
Looking down from the sky, the lingua franca of a shorebird is mudflat and salt panne — open beach and marsh with good visibility for approaching predators, a nutrient-packed substrate of mud and sand, and a safe place to roost at high tide. In other words, waterfront property.
Here one day, gone the next, shorebirds nevertheless have insinuated themselves into the culture of the North Atlantic for millennia. They’ve been given many names, which differ sometimes even from one state to the next. Waldo McAtee, a biologist in the early days of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, had a side hobby collecting colloquial bird names, and for shorebirds he recorded a rich assortment.
People often referred to all shorebirds, collectively, as snipes, graybacks, sandpipers or marsh-birds. In Massachusetts, they could be peckies or peeps, in Maine sand-birds or sandpeeps. Further south, some names were less whimsical — in the Carolinas people called them sand-chickens and seachickens, or even “maggot-eaters.”
Names for the least sandpiper, the smallest shorebird, walked a tightrope between affection and utilitarian scorn; in several places it was known as a “bumble-bee peep,” evocative of its small size. But McAtee recorded another name for it in Virginia: “Gunwad.” Dunlin could be known as “simpletons,” and the semipalmated sandpiper, known as a “pennywinkle” in Virginia, might be nothing more than a “medium seachicken” in North Carolina.
Piping plovers, which I have the strongest affection for, ran the gamut from “tee-o” and “peep-lo” in Massachusetts, in imitation of their inquisitive call, to “butterbird” and yet another “gunwad.” (That one, as with the least sandpiper, seems to indicate some annoyance about a bird’s small size and what it might be good for.)
Black-bellied plovers on coastal rocks in Gloucester.
The long sandy beaches of Martha's Vineyard, often backed by nutrient-rich mud flats in salty coastal ponds, make for great shorebird habitat.
SAM MOORE
A mixture of annoyance and affection still seems to characterize human attitudes toward shorebirds — annoyance on the part of some beachgoers at the restrictions imposed during the prime days of summer, and affection on the part of many others at the dance of small birds along the waterline and the way that huge flocks of them add to the tapestry of our most beloved landscapes.
The sudden, abundant visitation of shorebirds to our beaches, and their departure from them just as suddenly, feels magical. “As we contemplate that sanderling, there by the shining sea,” Peter Matthiessen wrote in The Wind Birds, “one question leads inevitably to another, and all questions come full circle to the questioner, paused momentarily in his own journey under the sun and sky.”
Historically, the great mystery of where shorebirds go when they leave became a scientific quest for some people, but for a great many others it seems to have made shorebirds an abstraction, an almost meteorological event with no source or sink. Certainly 19th century Americans, who treated wildlife as if it would be around forever, felt that way especially about migratory birds. Year after year after year, they reduced a vast cloud of birds to just a wisp, and in some species, to nothing.
But as that crisis reached its crescendo, it catalyzed one of our first and most enduring international conservation laws. “There's a treaty between America and Canada,” says Smith. “Tariff-free, I might add. It’s been in place since 1918: the Migratory Birds Convention Act in Canada and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in the United States. It's always been the case for migratory birds that we collaborate closely.”
Conservation at a hemispheric scale
A flyway is both a strategy for an individual species and an organizing principle for people who work with migratory birds. In 1948, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service created four administrative Flyways for waterfowl (ducks, geese, and swans) and other game species. Flyway Councils were organized
One famous bird, a red knot known as ‘B95’ or ‘Moonbird,’ spent decades commuting from Tierra del Fuego to an island at the top of the Hudson Bay — 9,000 miles each way, year after year, until he might as well have flown to the moon and back.
with committees of experts from the U.S. and Canada to develop conservation plans and hunting regulations.
These government flyways guide research and resources up and down the waterfowl life cycle, funded by billions of dollars in license fees from hunting and taxes on firearms. State and federal agencies conduct aerial breeding counts in the “duck factory” in the northern Great Plains, bird banding operations across the country, and surveys of hunter harvests, which inform wetland protections and habitat improvements at stopover and wintering areas. When trends go down, there’s a well-developed system in place for decisive action.
This large-scale coordination and investment pays off. In the paper that made headlines a few years ago for reporting a loss of 3 billion birds in North America since 1970, waterfowl actually
showed an increase in abundance of 50%.
“These flyway-level conservation plans have been very useful documents to guide shorebird conservation,” says Paul A. Smith, who also worked on the 3 billion birds study.
Shorebirds — except for woodcock and snipe, which are managed as game birds — were late to the planning party, and families like sandpipers and plovers have trended in the exact opposite direction. Some funding is diverted for them, but it’s much less than for waterfowl. Shorebirds do benefit from other laws, like those that protect wetlands and endangered species, but they didn’t get a national strategy until the early 2000s, when an effort began to integrate them into broader conservation goals.
In the meantime, much of the work on shorebirds filtered up from below, supported by a far-flung network of
SAM MOORE
Red knots.
scientists and nonprofit conservation groups across the hemisphere, who in turn rely on passionate volunteers.
“One of the things that I've been so heartened by through time is the willingness of different players in different parts of the world to come together and work toward building a conservation strategy,” Brian Harrington says. “It's been a mutual effort by people from a whole bunch of different countries and a whole bunch of different educational backgrounds. It’s pretty amazing.”
One outcome of this work is the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network (WHSRN), founded in 1985, which coordinates conservation at key sites up and down the flyway. It’s a community that includes places like the Great Marsh north of Boston (bit.ly/ Boston-Great-Marsh) and the barrier islands at Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge in Chatham (bit.ly/WHSRNMONOMOY), but also places like the largest lagoon in Suriname, where a big sign bears some familiar shorebirds along with the word “snippies” (Dutch, for snipe.)
On the East Coast, dots on the WHSRN map begin at the Bay of Fundy and continue down through the Atlantic states and the Caribbean all the way to Argentina, color-coded by how important they are for shorebirds (yellow for regionally important, blue for hemispherically important).
“I mean, departments of state haven't
been able to come up with levels of cooperation like that!” Harrington told me, laughing. “The bottom-up strategy can take decades to put together. But I think ultimately it ends up being perhaps more embraced. It hasn't saved shorebird populations yet, but it's certainly moving in the direction of what seems to be needed.”
Finding problems, looking for solutions
So what do shorebirds actually need, and what are people doing on the ground?
Looking down from the sky, the lingua franca of a shorebird is mudflat and salt panne — open beach and marsh with good visibility for approaching predators, a nutrient-packed substrate of mud and sand, and a safe place to roost at high tide. In other words, waterfront property.
“The roosting place has to be something that affords wide open visibility,”
Brian Harrington says. “To see raptors in time to get flying and then get up to speed, at which point they can evade any raptor. Open beaches are one of the few places where they can do that. And that, of course, is where people want to be.”
Birds’ present-day bid for this real estate is woefully cash poor, and relies on human brokers to co-sign against other more disruptive uses of the beach. Driving, boating, biking, dog-walking, and beach volleyball all take place in areas where shorebirds would prefer to rest or feed. And those are the low-impact options. Birds also compete with condo developments and mitigation projects that harden coastlines against erosion by erecting concrete seawalls and bulkheads.
Needless to say, “hardened” is the opposite of an advertisement for birds who evolved to exploit the soft mud and range of tides. A study last year estimated that 33% of the world’s sandy coastline has been made impermeable, with dire prospects for any beach that tries to move inland as the seas rise. Along the Atlantic flyway, shorebird habitat overlaps with the most densely populated areas of the Eastern Seaboard, and despite proposals to the contrary, houses don’t often migrate.
“Habitat is not just the presence of a beach,” Paul Smith says. “Habitat is areas that are suitable for use by the animals. So yes, maybe there's a beach, but it's covered with people and dogs and trucks. And so it can't be used. Are those acres available or not? If they're not being used by the birds then probably not.”
It’s clear that human disturbance can have a serious impact on shorebirds, especially at staging sites, where “they spend significant time to rebuild their body reserves and prepare for another long distance flight,” Smith says.
Harrington did some of the early research on how disturbance can affect birds physically. “We tried to get a handle on whether it was resulting in mortality in the migration that followed after they left Massachusetts,” he says. “Basically we were able to show that birds that were disturbed a lot weren't able to get up to a threshold weight and were disappearing.”
More recently, scientists have
LANNY MCDOWELL
An American oystercatcher chick gets a metal band from the Nantucket Conservation Foundation.
A banded plover on Dogfish Bar in Aquinnah.
calculated precise and significant weight loss associated with disturbance, and quantified the extra calories burned by birds that are constantly spooked. Birds don’t get these calories back once they start flying, and they need all of the ones they have. In one West Coast species, the bar-tailed godwit, a single calorie sustains about 3 kilometers of flight.
There are now reliable estimates of flushing distance for various species, and hierarchies of which activities cause the most disruption. But the basic facts have remained the same for decades, even as human use of the beach has diversified.
One of the best shorebird habitats on the East Coast is Delaware Bay, which was the first site identified and protected by WHSRN. Its most famous patron is the red knot, possibly our most wellstudied shorebird. Brian Harrington was involved in the early days there, too. “We started putting color markers on them,” Harrington says. “We did it in Massachusetts and we did it in Florida, we did it in Argentina. And we were able to see, just through the re-sightings of these colored banded birds, that virtually all of them were going through Delaware Bay on the North migration.”
“It’s what I sometimes call panmixia,” he says. It’s a term from genetics, referring to the random mixing of a whole population at once. On the one hand, the crab-egg bonanza in Delaware Bay is a blessing that brings nearly all the red knots in the East Coast flyway together at one big, nutritious rest stop. On the other hand, it’s a curse — human intervention, like an overharvest of horseshoe crabs, can just as easily make the bay into a bottleneck, where scarce resources limit the whole species.
Paul Smith told me, “It’s conventional scientific wisdom that for a relatively long-lived species like a shorebird that has a small number of babies and lives a long time, the survival of the adults has the dominant force on the trajectory of the population. But we don't even know that for sure. Ideally, step one would be to define where these bottlenecks are. We have the scientific ability to do that, and we’re in the process of doing that for some really well-
studied species like the red knot.”
For some species, all we know is that some birds leave and don’t come back.
Fantastic voyages
On Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, islands with more than 200 miles of sandy coastline between them, extensive beach habitat means large breeding colonies of shorebirds. Scientists there band some birds annually after they hatch. Oystercatchers
get bands on both islands, and black skimmers get them on the Vineyard.
“We would never have known where our oystercatchers go without these big bands on their legs,” says Danielle O’Dell, Wildlife Research Ecologist at the Nantucket Conservation Foundation. “And they're being reported by the public all the time. So we collect the most amazing information about their wintering territories. Most of them go to Florida, but we've had a few of the juveniles turn up in really fun places like Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Mexico.”
“Then it's like a waiting game to find out if they ever come back to Nantucket,” she continued. “We definitely worry a lot about our birds in the wintertime, because we have no control over that. And the wintering grounds are often not as protected as the nesting territories.”
This data can reveal surprises, like when a 20-year-old Nantucket oystercatcher named F2 got blown far off his annual route from Polpis Harbor to Horseshoe Beach, Florida, and wound up in Kentucky, setting a rare bird record there. “It was a huge deal to the birders in Kentucky because they'd never seen an oystercatcher there before,” says O’Dell.
A more significant finding came in 2011, when surveys identified thousands of federally threatened piping plovers wintering in the Bahamas. These East Coast snowbirds are fewer in number than the human ones who make the same journey, but they represent 30% percent of the Atlantic population. Quickly following this discovery, a key part of their wintering habitat was declared a National Park.
“We had a plover that was banded in the Bahamas in the winter and nested at Dogfish Bar [in Aquinnah] for a few seasons,” says Luanne Johnson, wildlife biologist and director of BiodiversityWorks on Martha’s Vineyard.
“The ways that we can track birds have expanded exponentially in the last 15 years,” Johnson says. “It’s incredible, and it opens up a lot more possibilities.”
The black skimmers that nest at Eel Pond in Edgartown are the northernmost colony in their range. “You wouldn't have thought that skimmers would nest here 20 years ago, but here they are,” says Johnson.
“We decided that we wanted to start banding chicks so that we could track some of these birds and where they were going,” Johnson says. “We don't know their direct path of movement, but it seems that they follow the coast very closely and kind of hopscotch their way down. There are some people who re-sight our birds in Florida and email us. This woman, Ingrid Siegert, she's down in Key West, and she's got two that have been there the past two winters that she sends updates on.”
Willet, Cape Henlopen, Delaware
A willet chick on the move, Crane Beach, Ipswich.
SAM MOORE
SAM MOORE
This can also lead to some friendly local competition. “We really, really want some of the Vineyard skimmers,” O’Dell says. “We know that they come and check out Nantucket pretty much every summer. And we know that some of our oystercatchers pop back and forth between the islands on a day-to-day basis. So, we're hopeful.”
Even very common shorebirds, like the willet, hold mysteries of their own. “We don't see eastern willets in winter plumage on the Atlantic coast, because they're gone — they molt after they migrate,” says Johnson. From 2013 to 2015, BiodiversityWorks tracked a handful by putting small geolocators on one leg.
“We would capture these willets, and then the next year we had to actually recapture that same particular bird and get the tag off and download the data. It was very hard to do because willets are so smart about predators, and they recognize us.”
The trackers, which use time and daylight to calculate latitude and longitude, revealed an incredible journey. “When they leave, they pick up and fly for three and a half, four days straight,” Johnson says. “They're airborne until they land in South America, on the northeast coast of Brazil. But on the way back north, they seem to be hitting South Carolina and North Carolina, not making a straight jump back to their breeding grounds. It's kind of amazing that they make these trips and then come back and nest within a few feet of where they nested last year.”
And the semipalmated plovers, least sandpipers. Dunlin. All of those guys.”
Links in the chain of life
“The idea of birds going from key site to key site is the foundational concept of shorebird conservation,” says Paul A. Smith. “These birds come to these staging sites and spend a couple of weeks to fatten up and prepare for the next leg of their journey. Their annual cycle is just a linking
within our control to ensure that foraging conditions for the birds are good, like with appropriate harvest restrictions on crabs in Delaware Bay.”
“And even if you determine that the lever you'd like to pull is climate change or something super hard,” Smith says, “maybe you pull easier levers first because you have more ability to pull them.”
of these site-to-site movements.”
“You can use banding information and modern statistical techniques to understand at what time of year the birds appear to be dying,” he says. “Are they dying during northward migration or are they dying on the breeding grounds? Are they dying during southward migration? We can try to piece that together with these mark-recapture studies that rely on volunteers to contribute their band sightings into the database.”
For example, attentive stewardship of nesting birds can make a difference. The American Oystercatcher Working Group coordinates an effort to increase reproductive success across the species’ breeding range, which has increased oystercatcher populations by 50% since 2008. It’s an example of “improving what we can to account for the losses we can’t address,” says Smith. In the meantime, the International Shorebird Survey continues, and is always looking for more volunteers. It’s an assignment more challenging than a backyard bird count, since the birds can appear in huge numbers and many of them are alike in stature and coloring. But it’s not so picky as to require a professional ornithologist.
The willet, like many species, relies on the biological abundance of coastal habitats to flourish. “They're fueling up on fiddler crabs in our salt marshes to fuel their migration,” Johnson says. “Whimbrel too: fiddler crabs. Lots of crabs. I see flocks of semipalmated sandpipers out foraging in those salt marshes at low tide. There’s a tremendous amount of resources for them.”
“Lesser and greater yellowlegs move through here and feed,” she says. “Ruddy turnstones move through here both ways.
One thing is already clear: losing even one link in the chain of life can be catastrophic.
“You’re talking to a scientist. Of course I'm going to say more research is needed,” Smith told me. “There are things we need to understand better in order to target our actions efficiently. We still need to do something in the meantime.”
So what are the levers we can pull? “The best things we can do are the things that are within our control,” he says. “It is well within our control to reduce disturbance at key stopover sites. It is well
“We want people to know the difference between a sanderling and a dunlin, basically,” says Lisa Schibley at Manomet, who coordinates the survey now. “I am a birder, and I actually started working at Manomet as a volunteer,” she told me. “Birders like visiting their local patches,” she says. “They know that the seasons will bring new birds, and then some birds leave. So go visit your local patch that has shorebirds, visit it at least three times in a season, and bird it the same time each day. And count all of the shorebirds. That’s the most important part.”
When the survey started, it was almost entirely volunteer, and it stayed that way for decades. That this data exists for scientists to use is an act of community, not an act of law. “It's kind of amazed me that thousands of people have been willing to go out and do the work that needed to be done,” Brian Harrington says. “I guess I'm somewhat floored by that. I always hoped for it, but I didn't expect it.”
The carefully disguised nest of the piping plover.
SAM MOORE
What You Can Do
Check out the Audubon bird migration explorer: explorer.audubon.org
Download the Merlin Bird ID app for help in identifying birds. Once you’re comfortable with your IDs, use eBird.org to submit your sightings, which helps the Cornell Lab of Ornithology track migration patterns.
Keep your eye out for colorful leg bands and flags on shorebirds, and report them to the USGS banding laboratory. Read more about these markers here: on.doi. gov/3DPqOA2
Be mindful of your presence and the presence of your pets on the beach, especially during the spring and fall. Here are some helpful guidelines from Mass Audubon on Nantucket:
• Always keep dogs on leash
• Drive slowly
• Don’t fly kites in shorebird areas
• Pay attention to all fencing and posted signs
Check out this graphic from the Atlantic Shorebird Flyway Initiative: sos.atlanticflywayshorebirds.org/ graphics-and-signage/
Learn more about the International Shorebird Survey at Manomet: manomet.org.
“We monitor like 19 sites around the Island, so
we're all over, and then there's the Trustees and Mass Audubon out here, too,” says Luanne Johnson at BiodiversityWorks. “Sheriff's Meadow lets us keep areas of Little Beach closed during fall migration just to give those birds a place to loaf and feed and rest. They're looking for areas that have a tidal mudflat, or shorelines that have a lot of wrack on them. And so they're changing their foraging depending on what the tide's doing. I think the biggest numbers we usually see are in those protected zones.”
“We've also been having a mass of roseate terns staging out on Norton Point. It’s a huge proportion of the population. So it's really quite a precious resource to protect, so that those birds can stage together, gain weight and be ready to make their move to South America.”
On Martha’s Vineyard, BiodiversityWorks coordinates with Manomet for an annual volunteer Shorebird Blitz. Support the organizations that make conservation work happen, and advocate for federal funding for bird conservation, which is threatened more than ever.
On the Vineyard, you can support BiodiversityWorks: biodiversityworksmv.org/support-us
And Mass Audubon at Felix Neck: massaudubon.org/ take-action/donate
American oystercatchers.
Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider, and Richard Dreyfuss hunt the shark in the waters off Martha's Vineyard in the film Jaws.
Fifty Years After Jaws,
There Are More Great White Sharks In Our Waters Than Ever
And that’s good for scientists like Greg Skomal, a real-life Matt Hooper.
By Lucas Thors
In the years after he directed Jaws, Steven Spielberg came to have regrets about the film. He said to the BBC a few years ago that he thought the 1975 summer blockbuster about a great white shark terrorizing Amity Island had harmed the shark population.
“That's one of the things I still fear,” Spielberg said. “That sharks are somehow mad at me for the feeding frenzy of crazy sport fishermen that happened after 1975, which I truly, and to this day, regret the decimation of the shark population because of the book and the film. I really truly regret that.”
Wendy Benchley is a marine conservationist and the wife of the late Peter Benchley, who wrote the book Jaws in 1974. Benchley has worked for decades to promote the health of the world’s oceans. She told Bluedot that when her husband’s book came out, it had a mixed effect on the public’s perception of great white sharks. During the middle and late ’70s, the
number of shark tournaments in the Northeast began to ramp up, and bounties were being placed on the giant “monster” great white sharks. People saw sharks as a trophy, and didn’t regard them as important elements of the ocean ecosystem.
Jaws spearheaded a “collective testosterone rush” among fishers in the East Coast of the United States, leading thousands to hunt sharks for sport, as George Burgess, former director of the Florida Program for Shark Research, told the BBC in 2015. In the years following the film’s release, the number of large sharks in the waters east of North America declined by about 50 percent.
“But whoever read the book or saw the movie was intrigued about these animals,” Benchley said. “Jaws got many people tuned in, excited, and curious about life in the ocean.” She said the late Samuel “Sonny” Gruber, who led the marine biology department at the University of Miami, told her that after Jaws
was released, the number of students applying to the department increased by 30 percent. Many other notable marine scientists have reported the same thing.
Jacques Cousteau, a French naval officer, oceanographer, and explorer, had been one of the first people to galvanize public interest around the oceans and the creatures that call them home. But after people were captivated by a different scientist. In the film, Richard Dreyfuss played Matt Hooper, the fictional oceanographer chosen to track down the massive great white. Hooper gave readers and viewers a lens into the mind of a scientist with an unwavering and singular passion for sharks. “Many people have said to me that’s all they wanted, to be Hooper out on that boat scanning the waves,” Benchley said.
shark research. He moved to the Vineyard in 1987 and ran the first shark research program for Massachusetts. His office was in Menemsha — a place where fishermen, shark enthusiasts, divers, and other community members could go to report a sighting, ask questions, or just chat about sharks. According to Skomal, much of the data he records while tagging or dissecting
As a kid Greg Skomal never missed an episode of Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau Fifty years ago, watching Jaws as a teenager, he thought Matt Hooper embodied the same sense of curiosity for exploring the depths of the ocean that Jacques Cousteau had. He made up his mind: He would become a shark researcher, like Hooper.
“I always had a love for the ocean, and was always totally
like most kids — I just never outgrew that passion,” Skomal said.
By the early 1980s, Skomal was a marine biologist living on the Cape and began to zero in on white
Skomal helped tournament organizers tighten regulations while collecting as much information as he could about great whites and other species.
In his book Chasing Shadows: My Life Tracking the Great White Shark, Skomal describes how he came to be one of the world’s most pre-eminent shark researchers. “My professional goal has always been to be not only a good shark biologist, but also a public ambassador for white sharks.”
In the years following the film’s release, the number of large sharks in the waters east of North America declined by about 50 percent.
, 1975.
Steven Spielberg on the set of Jaws
So why do we have more sharks?
In the past, much of what scientists understood about Atlantic white sharks came from specimens fishermen brought in — there were no living sharks to track or study. “At that time it was extremely rare for anyone to see a great white — if even one fisherman reported a sighting per year, that was considered a lot,” Skomal told me about the early days of his career.
“When I started the Massachusetts Shark Research Program in 1987, I never in my wildest dreams thought I would be doing white shark research,” Skomal said of the ability to study these apex predators in our waters.
“But when seals started recolonizing the Massachusetts coastline, the white sharks followed. I was clearly in the right place at the right time.”
“My professional goal has always been to be not only a good shark biologist, but also a public ambassador for white sharks.”
— Greg Skomal, marine biologist
COURTESY WENDY BENCHLEY
ELIAS LEVY
Peter and Wendy Benchley during a white shark dive in the early '70s.
Late May marks the beginning of white shark season on the Cape.
Over the last two centuries, human activity, including fishermen’s culling efforts due to perceived competition, has driven seal populations to the brink of extinction. In turn, white sharks all but disappeared from coastal New England. The population of both animals remained depressed until the Marine Mammal Protection Act was passed in 1972, which protected seals along our shores. “Seals are perceived by many folks locally as a new phenomenon, but it’s actually what we think is a recolonization of preexisting territory,” Skomal said.
Seals typically have one pup per year, but they can live up to 40 years in the wild, which means it took a long time for the population to recover after hunting was prohibited. Seals from places like Sable Island in Canada eventually repopulated the Cape and islands, and their numbers began to grow exponentially. “The adults don’t die after pupping — they live another year to pup again and again. Two goes to four, then to eight, now you look around and the species have reestablished themselves,” Skomal said.
Historically, white sharks were distributed along the Eastern Seaboard, as far north as Newfoundland. The rapid expansion of commercial longlining beginning in the early ’70s had decimated the shark population. But after shark fishing was banned in 1997, the sharks began to repopulate and return to their original hunting grounds.
As white sharks mature, they shift their focus from smaller fish to larger prey — seals, sea lions, and porpoises. Once the sharks grow to more than 10 feet, “it’s like a new [seal] restaurant has opened in town, and all the big sharks are flocking to it,” Skomal said. The sharks slowly start
What does this mean for coastal residents?
Late May marks the beginning of white shark season in Cape Cod waters, though these apex predators are elusive. But drive up to any beach on Monomoy Island, Chatman, Orleans, or Truro as the weather warms and the first couple bass are caught, and you’ll see long stretches of beach dotted with tens of thousands of harbor seals and gray seals. It’s easy to understand why white sharks are drawn here.
“We are using drone technology and camera tag technology, as well as looking at our massive data sets of acoustic detection data, to try and look for patterns in how these animals hunt and how they travel,” Skomal said.
to match their movement patterns with the seasonal seal migration. Researchers are seeing a dramatic boost in white shark sightings. “We are actually seeing this all along the Northeastern United States from Cape Cod to Newfoundland: the Gulf of St Lawrence, the Bay of Fundy, the Scotian Shelf, all parts North,” Skomal said. By understanding the relationship great whites have with seals, Skomal said, humans can learn to coexist peacefully with these animals.
As white shark numbers increase, interactions between humans and sharks will likely become more common. Since 2012, there have been a few great white shark attacks on humans, including a fatal one in 2018.
Peter Benchley would often state what scientists know: that sharks don’t actually target human beings and, unlike the shark in Jaws, they “Don’t hold grudges.” “There’s no such thing as a rogue man-eater shark with a taste for human flesh,” he told the London Daily Express in 2006. “In fact, sharks rarely take more than one bite out of people, because we’re so lean and unappetizing to them.”
Though shark attacks are statistically rare, Skomal notes that even a single bite can shock entire communities. “The mere presence of big sharks in our nearshore waters gets a lot of people nervous, and understandably so,” he said.
To prevent human-shark interactions, Skomal and other researchers are working to better understand shark behavior along our coastlines. With the larger marine ecosystem facing
LUCAS THORS
Shark expert and longtime Vineyarder Greg Skomal spoke at the Martha's Vineyard Performing Arts Center about his career studying great white sharks.
challenges like climate change and habitat disruption, it’s difficult to predict how sharks will adjust their movement and hunting patterns. “Right now the sharks are swimming past the Vineyard and Nantucket for the most part, and heading right for the seals on the Cape,” Skomal said. “But that can always change if the seals decide to move in.”
Currently, the Division of Marine Fisheries and the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy are working to improve white shark detection. Skomal pointed out that the Vineyard doesn’t have adequate levels of coverage, so he hopes to deploy additional acoustic receivers off South Beach and Moshup Beach to monitor sharks that have been tagged. Currently, the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy has acoustic receivers that record data transmitted from tagged sharks off Noman’s Island, South Beach in Katama, and Oyster Pond in Edgartown. “We are using drone technology and camera tag technology, as well as looking at our massive data sets of acoustic detection data, to try and look for patterns in how these animals hunt and how they travel,” Skomal said. “We are hoping to wrap that work up this summer — how do these sharks spend
their day from minute to minute, second to second?”
Public education and safety measures
Local officials in Cape Cod towns are focused on educating the community about white sharks and their behaviors. Lifeguards and first responders are trained to address shark attacks, however unlikely they may be. All are trained in Stop The Bleed techniques, which are offered regularly across the Cape. Beachgoers are encouraged to participate in these classes.
The Shark Working Group, established in 2012, has been working on education and outreach. This regional effort provides information on how to reduce the risk of a shark interaction; what to do if you spot a shark in the water; how to administer first aid for shark bite victims (bit.ly/ Shark-Bite-Training); and how to use a shark bite kit.
In collaboration with the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, a group of Cape towns are funding a study by the Woods Hole Group to assess the effectiveness of shark deterrent systems and detection devices.
According to the town of Chatham,
COURTESY WENDY BENCHLEY
Wendy and Peter Benchley celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary, cage diving with great white sharks in Guadalupe.
while sharks and seals are in their natural habitat, humans must modify their behavior when venturing into these areas and acknowledge the risks.
Sharks aren’t the bad guys after all
In the ’70s, Benchley said little attention was paid to ocean pollution and overfishing. “We all thought the ocean was invincible,” she said. “We could fish to our hearts’ content and throw garbage in, nothing was ever going to hurt it.” But over the last 30 years, 85 percent of billfish and large pelagic fish (fish that reside in the middle of the water column) have disappeared.
When the Benchleys realized the importance of protecting sharks, they began to educate the public about the majesty of white sharks and worked to dispel the myths surrounding their danger to public safety. “As we worked to use Jaws as a way to reframe the narrative about sharks,
the scientific community was doing the very same thing,” Benchley said.
The Benchleys and other conservationists worked with National Geographic to raise awareness, and shark tagging expeditions became more popular as scientists and researchers sought to understand these elusive creatures. In 2004, the Benchleys founded the Peter Benchley Ocean Awards, which recognize those who have made significant contributions to ocean conservation. “To me it’s an especially powerful tribute to Peter and to all the effort that goes into protecting our oceans, because the aquariums consider Jaws to have had a positive impact on our marine life,” Benchley said.
“I often think about Matt Hooper and Captain Quint and all those great characters,” Skomal said, “and I think about my job chasing great whites, and it’s like my childhood dream is still coming true.”
What Can You Do?
You don’t have to be a Jacques Cousteau, a Matt Hooper, or a Greg Skomal to help protect sharks and other marine life. Benchley encourages those who want to support sharks and marine life to get involved with environmental groups like WildAid and Beneath The Waves, and Greg Skomal’s Save our Seas Foundation.
Benchley said anyone who wants to help can participate in a beach cleanup, or use responsible fishing practices. “It’s all very connected,” Benchley said. “If you are being a good steward of our Earth, of our oceans, then you are doing your small but important part.”
Check out these organizations that support ocean health and shark conservation.
• Save Our Seas (Greg Skomal’s foundation) saveourseas.com
• Shark Angels - Atlantic White Shark Conservancy sharkangels.org
• WildAid wildaid.org
• Beneath The Waves beneaththewaves.org
• Blue Frontier bluefront.org
• Sea Shepherd seashepherd.org
Illustration of a great white shark by Nick Mayer, marine biologist, fisherman, and artist. You can see Nick's work at nickmayerart.com
Dinner at North Tabor Farm
Thirty years of farm-to-family dinner.
By Laura D. Roosevelt Photos by Sadie Dix
Last Thanksgiving, Rebecca Miller, Matthew Dix, and their offspring — the family who own and run North Tabor Farm in Chilmark — experienced a textbook case of the cobbler’s children having no shoes. “We had twenty-something people to dinner,” Rebecca says, “and a five-pound turkey.” Matthew, who manages the farm’s livestock operations, generally raises 30 to 35 turkeys each year, and last year, he sold all but the one-legged runt of the bunch, which had to suffice as the family’s Thanksgiving bird.
“Well, we had a chicken, too,” says Matthew’s and Rebecca’s middle child, Ruby Dix, by way of clarification. “And a duck.”
No doubt, the meal also included plentiful helpings of vegetables grown on the farm — some butternut squash, perhaps, and likely some carrots, collard greens, and turnips. Probably a salad made from their popular baby greens mixture.
Rebecca and Matthew bought North Tabor Farm 31 years ago when the property was up for special sale to a low-tomoderate-income buyer, and their business plan beat out nine others. They had been living in Vineyard Haven, growing as many flowers and vegetables as their third-of-an-acre lot would allow, but they both felt that they’d outgrown their yard. Matthew was working for the Land Bank at the time, and Rebecca was in partnership with Prudy Burt, growing and selling flowers and salad greens. While Matthew was raised on a farm in Vermont and knew a bit about growing
vegetables, Rebecca says, “I grew up in suburban Connecticut and didn’t know anything about it. But I wanted to learn.”
At first, they assumed that they wouldn’t be able to afford a farm on Martha’s Vineyard, so they tried looking in southern Vermont and western Massachusetts.
“But nothing felt the same as it felt here,” Rebecca says. “It didn’t have what I call that ‘home’ feeling.” Six-acre North Tabor Farm, with additional acreage nearby for rent or lease, came on the market at precisely the right moment.
Initially, for income and insurance purposes, Matthew kept his day job at the Land Bank. The plan was for him to be full time on the farm after five years, but in the end, it was just two years ago — nearly 30 years after he and Rebecca moved to the farm — that Matthew retired from the Island Grown Initiative and became a full-time farmer.
“The thing is, he always worked on the farm,” Rebecca says, noting that he’s the most skilled family member when it comes to maintaining the farm’s machinery. “He just worked two jobs.”
A lot happened during those nearly 30 years. North Tabor Farm became a major Island producer of baby salad greens, growing more than 400 pounds of them a year. For the first fifteen years or so, Rebecca says, “we harvested the salad greens on our hands and knees with scissors. It was inefficient; it took so long.” Eventually,
COURTESY NORTH TABOR FARM
The six-acre farm in 1996.
to everyone’s relief, they mechanized the operation.
The couple’s three children, Sadie, Ruby, and Joshua, all worked on the farm while growing up, beginning with simple chores like sticking labels on bags of greens. Now, Joshua “helps with the horse-powered stuff,” Rebecca says. “He doesn’t like getting dirty, but fortunately, he knows how to fix things really well.” And Sadie, who never liked farm work as a child, has taken over systems analysis for the operation, creating spreadsheets and other tools to help figure out what’s working, and what’s not. She also maintains the computer and online payment systems at the farmstand, creates the farm’s newsletters, and manages its social media presence. Ruby, who loved farming from the get-go, majored in food studies at Bennington. Now, she’s North Tabor’s Farm Manager, shouldering the responsibility for crop planning, produce production, and management of the crew of extra summertime helpers.
The farm pays attention to environmental and climate concerns. They practice as much low-till farming as possible, and Ruby notes that they closely monitor soil health, making sure that they’re always putting nutrients back into the soil, rather than just taking them out through crop production. Using raked leaves from Island landscapers and horse manure from other local farms, they’ve upped their compost production (which also benefits from the wood shavings and chicken manure from the coops that house Matthew’s more than 350 egg-laying chickens). In addition, their annual, lateseason cover crop of peas, oats, daikon radish, and winter rye is designed to restore an array of nutrients to the soil while also increasing organic matter, improving soil structure, and enhancing water absorption. They also engage in regular crop rotation, which is both good for soil health and essential for pest control on a farm that doesn’t use chemical pesticides.
whackers, hedge trimmers, and hand tools; they also use a hybrid electric vehicle for making deliveries.)
In addition, Ruby says, “farming has a lot of materials associated with it, and a lot of them are made of plastic, so we’re really trying to lower our consumption, to mend and reuse things rather than ordering new, and borrowing tools from other farmers so we’re not buying new stuff that already exists on the Island.”
Until 2020, North Tabor was primarily a wholesale operation, selling salad greens, shiitake mushrooms, and other items mainly to restaurants and grocery stores. They also sold directly to individual consumers at the farmers’ market, and they maintained a small, honor-system, roadside farmstand at the bottom of their driveway on North Road, where passersby could pull over, pick up some beets, carrots, or whatever else might be available, depositing payment into a locked wooden box with a slit on top.
“It was almost an afterthought,” Rebecca says. “We stocked it with whatever we had extra of. Whatever was out there, was out there.”
But when the Covid pandemic hit, Rebecca realized that more was needed.
“I, myself, really struggled with going to the grocery store then,” she says. “It was so stressful. I’d see my friends, and my eyes would well up, because you couldn’t talk to people, and everybody was just so scared. I wanted to have a place where people could feel safe shopping for food, and I told Matthew I thought we needed to build a more permanent farmstand on our property.”
So, that spring, the family ordered a 10 x 16-foot building kit from Jamaica Cottage Shop in Vermont, and, with everyone pitching in on construction, they had it up and running by July 4th weekend.
“We use row covering,” Rebecca says, referring to their methodology of covering rows of plants with long strips of porous agricultural fabric. “We basically hide from the insects.”
Two years ago, the farm put in a large solar array that now generates all of the energy the farm needs for refrigeration, lights, and powering electric tools. (They have an electric lawn mower, plus electric weed
“We put in two doors so people could come in one way and exit the other,” Rebecca says. “People could wait outside while someone else was in there, until it was their turn. It became really popular.” They offered poultry, pork, eggs, and vegetables from the farm, along with other staples like milk and dairy, pasta, and crackers, and the stand became some Islanders’ primary grocery store during the pandemic. Though the original plan was for the stand to be three-season, when fall arrived, customers begged the family not to shut it for the winter. They added some insulation and inside heaters, and the
COURTESY NORTH TABOR FARM
Rebecca Miller and Matthew Dix in the early days at North Tabor Farm.
Family and friends enjoy a farm-to-table meal.
“I love the authenticity of food that’s lightly cooked,” Rebecca says, “and because we grow what we eat, we know what good food can taste like. I feel that food should taste like itself, and like the energy that’s put into it.”
stand became the year-round operation it’s been ever since.
Selling from the stand transformed North Tabor’s entire growing system. The product focus shifted more toward retail sales to individuals, though the farm still sells wholesale to a few, mostly up-Island restaurants and grocery stores. Because farm stand patrons wanted variety, the farm began growing a wider array of vegetables, cutting back the salad greens operation to about half its previous size.
“It was really tough on our soil to grow that quantity of salad greens,” Ruby says, “and we were struggling. Growing more diverse things allowed us to give our fields a rest. Also, we don’t have to spend eight hours a week driving around delivering things.”
Rebecca notes that opening a significant retail operation inside the farm property resulted in a certain loss of privacy, and they had to get electric collars for their dogs to keep them from running out to greet every customer who drove into the seven-space parking area. “We don’t want it to get any bigger,” she says, “but now that it’s established, and we’ve put in refrigeration for our meat [and other items], I figured we should take it to the next level and think about building a kitchen.”
When this family decides to do something big, big things
seem to fall into place serendipitously. As soon as they decided to look into creating a commercial kitchen, a friend referred them to some people who’d done something similar in New Hampshire. “They’d started with this little trailer, and then they built their commercial kitchen,” Rebecca says. “So we went to see them, and they said, ‘You can buy the trailer from us if you want; it’s just been sitting there.’ So we went in January of 2022 and picked it up out of the ice and snow and hauled it back here.” Now, hooked up to the septic system and Boardof-Health-approved, the trailer is in its third year of operation, turning out soups, grain bowls, several kinds of pesto, and other items for sale at the farmstand. Rebecca does the cooking in the off-season, but they hire chefs in the summertime.
“We’re working with different chefs to get ideas,” Rebecca says, “but we know that we always want it to stay as close as possible to the essence of our farm food, highlighting the flavors of our vegetables. Because our farm stand is open a lot, people call it ‘the health food 7-11,’ and we want our food to reflect that.” One chef suggested putting pickled farm vegetables in the farmstand’s egg salad, and the result has become a customer favorite. Currently, the team is developing a savory umami spice blend, using the farm’s dried
herbs mixed into a base made from their dried shiitakes.
At home, both Rebecca and Ruby like to cook. Rebecca, a self-described health-conscious eater, has been a vegetarian since she was 16.
“I love the authenticity of food that’s lightly cooked,” she says, “and because we grow what we eat, we know what good food can taste like. I feel that food should taste like itself, and like the energy that’s put into it. So, when I cook, it’s simple, rustic.” She adds that her children, who are “foodies,” tend to gravitate toward more complex flavors.
“Because I also eat meat,” Ruby agrees, “the variety is wider for me. I like trying different recipes, and baking, and I love using our wood-fired grill and our wood-fired oven. My favorite flavors come from outdoor cooking.”
Especially when it comes to meat, she says, farmgrown always outshines what can be bought in a grocery store. “Our chicken has a much different taste, because
it’s grown so differently than what you’re used to. Which makes it very hard for me to eat anywhere but here.”
Ruby also notes the importance of eating seasonally, because freshly picked produce has the best flavor and the highest nutritional value. “You have to be willing to not have corn until August,” she says, “but then, when you do, it’s way more exciting.”
The recipes below are the result of collaborative cooking by Rebecca and Ruby. “They’re a hybrid of things that we’ve adapted to what works for us,” Ruby says. Because both women love fresh herbs, the recipes have what Rebecca calls “a big, strong, herby flavor.”
Ruby offers permission to make substitutions at will. “Instead of green garlic, you can use scallions. If you don’t like it spicy, leave out the hot peppers. If you make the chicken and you don’t eat dairy, use nutritional yeast.” These recipes, she says, should be considered guidelines on how to make the dishes.
Egg Salad
With
Pickles
Serves 4
A visiting chef in North Tabor Farm’s kitchen suggested introducing pickles into the farm’s popular egg salad. The result? It’s become even more popular. Any pickles will work, but the farm often substitutes pickled turnips, radishes, and other vegetables for cucumbers, since pickling is a good way to use up excess produce. This recipe also benefits from the addition of fresh farm herbs and alliums.
INGREDIENTS
12 hard-boiled eggs
2/3 cup chopped pickles (any type of pickled veggie — we use hakurei turnips, radish, or dill pickles)
Farm-raised, pasture-grown chickens have a richer, more “chickeny” flavor than those you buy in a grocery store. North Tabor farm pasture raises all of its chickens, and the birds’ consumption of insects, grass, and weeds is good for their health as well as their flavor. The farm’s meat chickens practically fly out of the freezer: last year, they raised 1,500 and sold them all, so this year they will raise more. The recipe below showcases the flavor of a pasture-raised bird, enhancing it with a green sauce made largely from farm-grown herbs.
Serves 4
INGREDIENTS
The Chicken
6 garlic cloves, finely grated or minced
3 Tbsps soy sauce
1 Tbsp chili paste (Sriracha or sambal)
1 Tbsp lime juice
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp black pepper
1/2–1 tsp sea salt
1 (3 1/2–4 1/2 pound) chicken, spatchcocked (See note)
Olive oil, as needed
The sauce
1 cup cilantro, leaves and stems
2–4 jalapeños, seeded and roughly chopped
1/4 cup feta cheese (optional, or substitute 1 Tbsp of nutritional yeast)
1 garlic clove, peeled
1 1/2 Tbsps lime juice
Small handful of roughly chopped fresh oregano or basil (use a smaller quantity of dried if you do not have fresh)
Sea salt to taste
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
1/2 tsp chili paste
1/2 tsp honey
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 cup olive oil
Lime wedges for garnish
INSTRUCTIONS
1. For the marinade: In a large bowl or 8 x 12-inch pan, whisk together the garlic, soy sauce, chili paste, lime juice, chili powder, mustard, cumin, pepper, and salt.
2. Add the spatchcocked chicken, turning to coat it all over with marinade. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours and up to 12 hours.
3. Heat the oven to 450°. Remove the chicken from the marinade and pat it dry with paper towels. Arrange the chicken skin side up on a rimmed baking sheet, and drizzle it with oil.
4. Roast the chicken until the skin is crispy and the meat is cooked through, 35 minutes to 1 hour, depending on the size of the chicken.
5. Make the sauce while the chicken is roasting. In a food processor, blend the cilantro, jalapeños, feta, garlic, lime juice, oregano, salt, mustard, chili paste, honey, and cumin until smooth. While the motor is running, drizzle in the olive oil until emulsified. Taste, and adjust seasonings as needed.
6. Carve the chicken and serve with the sauce and lime wedges on the side.
Note “Spatchcoking” a chicken (or other poultry bird) is the same thing as butterflying it. It involves removing the backbone so the whole bird can lie flat, with the breasts in the center.
Green Garlic Soup
Recipe by Rebecca Miller and Ruby Dix
“I make this soup a lot when I’m sick,” says North Tabor Farm’s Farm Manager, Ruby Dix, “because it’s really good for you.” Green garlic, a relatively new addition to farm stand offerings, is very young garlic harvested when it’s the height of a scallion, and used in its entirety. Incorporating tofu, chicken, rice, and a variety of fresh vegetables and herbs, this soup is a meal unto itself.
Serves 4
INGREDIENTS
4 cups vegetable or chicken broth
1 lb spinach
1 cup heaping of cooked rice
1 cup cooked, shredded chicken (or one block of firm tofu, cubed and seasoned — see note)
2 medium cloves garlic
2 inches fresh ginger, peeled
3 stalks of green garlic (see note)
1 cup parsley
Roughly chopped jalapeños, to taste (optional)
Salt to taste
Soy sauce to taste
Lime juice to taste
Crispy onions or toasted cashews for garnish (optional)
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Bring the broth to a boil and add the spinach. Cook until the spinach is wilted. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the spinach to a blender and set aside to cool.
2. Add the rice to the broth and reduce to a simmer.
3. Add the garlic, ginger, green garlic, parsley, and jalapeños (if using) into the blender with the spinach. Add 1/4 cup water and 1 tsp salt, and blend until smooth.
4. Add the chicken or tofu to the broth and rice. Pour in the spinach mixture and stir to combine. Taste, and add salt if needed.
5. Serve with a drizzle of soy sauce and a squeeze of lime juice. Top with crispy onions or cashews if you want a bit of crunch.
NOTES
• We season our tofu cubes with “everything but the bagel” seasoning and roast in the oven for about 20 minutes at 400°.
• Green garlic is young, fresh garlic, picked while the bulb is still very small and hasn’t yet formed cloves. The entirety of the plant is used in this recipe.
FLYING
How Far Am I Willing to Go?
A writer wonders how to balance adventure with responsibility.
By Nancy Aronie
“I WON'T FEEL GOOD ABOUT FLYING UNTIL THE AIRLINES SOLVE THIS.”
About ten people sent an article with that headline to my husband when it came out in last year’s December 28th issue of New York Times.
The author did his PhD dissertation on jet engines 13 years ago and says he doesn't see a credible path for the aviation industry to make flying sustainable in the near term. And as soon as he realized that fact, he stopped flying for leisure.
My husband wishes everyone had the same resolve.
The article points out that flying results in 4% of human-made climate change (which sounds teeny to me but apparently is actually a huge number), and that only 10% of the population flies regularly (which sounds teeny to me and is).
I’m surprised that Joel Aronie (that’s my husband) didn’t get sent a thousand copies of this article, considering that for the last five years he has been ranting to everyone who would listen (and some who wouldn't) about what the author calls leisure and what my husband calls willy nilly travel. Translation: jumping on a plane to go to a class reunion or a bar mitzvah or an NBA basketball game, a funeral, a workshop, even a business meeting that isn’t urgent. And if you ask my man what he considers “urgent,” he will say that nothing is all that urgent (even the workshop I teach).
Our friends have learned not to tell him about their plans to go to Japan or Thailand or Spain. These days, they hesitate before sending photos of themselves on exotic vacations, because when my husband saw the picture one
poor friend sent of herself standing on a bridge in Amsterdam, smiling and giving the peace sign, he screamed “‘Peace’???” into the air, my air, the one I am also breathing and which he is polluting with his rage and his worry. (But that's another story. Or maybe the same story.)
One of our friends calls him a “Debbie Downer,” and another asked him to stop talking about thorium, the energy-producing element that he feels could save the planet. And another asked him to stop sending doomsday YouTubes about how once we can’t grow grains anymore (which he sees as imminent), dystopia is right around the corner.
Most of our close friends know his lecture about wind and solar not being anywhere close to being able to power the world. And they can quote his take on why he thinks the plug-in hybrid is the only
way to go, that the 100% electric vehicle batteries require too much mining of rare earth metals to make them worth it.
But luckily for me, included in that lecture is his admission that he’s a hypocrite. He says, with apology in his
and we write checks to Green Peace and the Sierra Club; and over here, we’re making reservations to go to Dubai.
Another little factoid Joel throws out at dinner parties is that every day there are 100,000 flights in the air. He
he might have succumbed.
But the fact is, over the years, we have swum in the Aegean sea in Greece and we have climbed Masada in Israel and we have dunked in the Blue Lagoon in Iceland and, on a Bultaco motorcycle, we wove in and out of traffic on the Piazza Venezia. We went to the World’s Fair in Montreal. We were surrounded and serenaded by a Mariachi band in Mexico City on my fortieth birthday, and we toured the factories who were making Joel's inventions in China.
with wood and we have done our fair share of traveling by air (but that was before he knew for sure the damage he was personally doing to the planet by flying).
He constantly asks why people aren’t freaking out and changing the way they live. I answer (repeatedly): because we are human.
We compartmentalize. Over here, we’re aware that the planet is burning,
That always brings the expected gasps. But right after we pass the asparagus, someone excitedly shares their plans for their trip to Tulum.
I almost got Joel to accept an invitation from friends whose house is sitting empty right on Lake Geneva. I knew he would love to see the Super Collider in Cern, Switzerland, and I think if I had worked on him a bit more
So, he understands the seduction of going places and seeing other cultures and learning other customs and eating other foods. He gets it. He really does. But he says times are different now. The paradigm must shift.
The response he hears is always the same: the plane is taking off anyway. How would it help if I didn't go?
If I were married to someone else, and my mate said, “Hey, do you want to go to Paris for our anniversary?”, would I go? Me, who has never been to Paris, would I go? In a New York minute.
But I know he’s right, and at 83, I don’t really feel like I'm missing out on anything. In fact, we have begun to travel again. We used to watch Rick Steves, the travel guru, but we have upgraded: now we’re taking virtual tours online. We recently “went” to Mumbai, and after the tour, we cooked an Indian dinner together, sat down, savored our putter paneer, and marveled how not tired we were from the flight.
Next, we’re thinking of visiting the Fjords in Norway.
I know there are some who would think we've gone off the deep end, but I have one thing to say: we are feeling really good about not flying.
Nancy and Joel Aronie's travels from over the years: Scotland (top), Ireland, and Pisa.
The Manuel F. Correllus State Forest spans more than 5,300 acres.
CLEARCUTTING in the State Forest
Foresters, firefighters, conservationists, and nature lovers debate active versus passive management.
By Lucas Thors
The future of the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest, Martha’s Vineyard’s largest woodland reserve, is again under debate. Purchased by the state in 1908 to protect the now-extinct heath hen, the forest was converted into a resource for the public in 1932. The state introduced non-native white pine plantations (clusters of trees that have been planted, often for commercial purposes) to promote reforestation, biodiversity, and timber production. After decades of continued planting and spreading, those trees now cover 500 acres of forest.
In 2022, working to fulfill its obligations under a 2001 Conservation Permit issued by the Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program (NHESP), the Massachusetts
Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) proposed removing white pines susceptible to overgrowth, wildfire, and disease. The permit requires restoring grassland and scrubland habitats to support rare species. The DCR now plans to cut 45 acres of white pines in the first phase of the project, aiming to eventually restore 175 acres to sandplain heathland and scrub oak barrens. Reports of the project, and long-term land management, have ignited responses from all over the Island, with supporters and critics alike debating its merits. Some are concerned about the scope of the project, while others are worried that there would be no follow-through from the state after the cutting. Those advocating for the project have focused on the importance of forest fire prevention, and have stated that
the
will be most beneficial for the Island ecology in the long run.
‘Nobody knows for sure if this is the right move’
Dr. David Foster, West Tisbury resident and Director Emeritus of Harvard Forest, believes that the state has historically mismanaged the Correllus State Forest. “There is a long history of failure to understand the natural landscape,” he said. Foster warns against rushing decisions. “Nobody knows for sure if this is the right move.”
A 1999 study by Foster and Harvard Forest revealed that Vineyard landscapes were originally shaped by natural disturbances and Indigenous land practices but were dramatically altered
desired future condition of the forest
DAVID WELCH
by European colonists who cleared forests for farms. Later, as agriculture declined, forests regrew. Foster now advocates a hands-off approach: “Every time they actively managed it, they made poor decisions. The default should always be to do nothing rather than act impulsively.”(Here’s a conversation with Dr. Foster: bluedotliving.com/toward-awilder-island/).
Martha’s Vineyard Commissioner Ben Robinson agrees. He said he believes it was a mistake to plant the white pines in the State Forest, but now that population of pines has created a successful ecosystem of trees. He said that, although the white pines aren’t truly native to the Vineyard, and they might not support species that are as ecologically special as those that occur in scrub oak barrens, white pines exist in many other parts of New England and should be recognized for the environmental benefits they provide. “It’s hubristic for humans to think it’s a good idea to continue to intervene,” Robinson said.
Robinson is skeptical of continuing to rely on disturbance practices and handson management. “I think everyone is still learning about the long-termness of forest development, and it doesn’t seem like anyone really has a perfect solution to this,” Robinson said. “I think these bright minds on all sides of this should come together and work in a way that will be based on learning from each other and from the forest itself.”
‘It’s never good to have to cut trees,’ but sometimes it’s necessary
David Foster referenced the Phillips Preserve, a Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation property on the west side of Lake Tashmoo in Tisbury, as an example of how drastically an ecosystem can change when human beings intervene. Foster said it shocked him to see the scale of tree removal there due to a southern pine beetle outbreak. But Adam Moore, President of Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation, said that although the preserve looks heavily clearcut now, with large piles of felled trees and excavator tracks lining the property, new growth will soon spread.
The rapidly spreading outbreak of the southern pine beetle at the preserve was first discovered in 2023 by DCR and NHESP, and needed to be quelled before it enveloped the entire property.
(See our story on the southern pine Beetles: bluedotliving.com/southernpine-beetles.) “When I was marking trees to cut, I would buffer around them as recommended by the state,” Moore said. “Then I would come back a day later and more trees would be infected — the beetles were moving very fast, at about 10 feet per day. One day they moved 100 feet, which was pretty startling.”
The foundation burned the treetops to mitigate wildfire risk and create biochar that, according to Moore, could be used as a natural filtering method for rain gardens, and distributed to local farmers as a soil amendment. Additionally, logs that are able to be milled will be used for Sheriff’s Meadow construction projects, and sold or donated to Island organizations that need timber. It’s currently unclear whether the timber from the State Forest clearcutting project will be milled for use on the Vineyard, or whether it will all need to be trucked away.
‘The reality of climate change is, in the bigger picture, an argument in favor of this work, not against’ Jeremy Houser, Director of Science and Policy at the Vineyard Conservation Society, believes that the State Forest needs more thoughtful management. Although white pines and other non-native tree plantations aren’t necessarily bad, Houser said that the monoculture of non-native trees, planted in an “ill-fated attempt to start a local timber industry,” is now crowding out a native ecosystem that is valuable from a conservation standpoint.
Pelikan said he understands the argument that it’s hubristic for humans to attempt to control nature at this scale, but that “nature is beleaguered by human activity,” and it’s equally naive to think that doing nothing is a viable solution.
The State Forest has miles of trails, a paved shared-use path, and a disc golf course.
DAVID WELCH
Ben Robinson said he believes it was a mistake to plant the white pines in the State Forest, but now that population of pines has created a successful ecosystem of trees.
Houser acknowledged that the clearcutting project will inevitably have a significant carbon cost, and he cited a recent study by the Woodwell Climate Center comparing the carbon sequestration potential of various habitats on the Vineyard. According to the study, the white pine plantations store about 50 percent more carbon than the habitat they replaced. “Despite that,” Houser said, “I actually think the reality of climate change is, in the bigger picture, an argument in favor of this work, not against.”
While that might sound counterintuitive, Houser explains that the sandplain habitat in the State Forest exists because of the unique geological and ecological history of that part of the Island. Globally, 90% of this kind of habitat has already been lost to development and to the effects of climate change, whereas the conifers in the plantations are not threatened and not considered a conservation focus. Houser added that much of the sandplain habitat on the Vineyard lies between the State Forest and the great ponds on the south shore. As sea level rise pushes coastal habitats inland, the historical habitat of the State Forest, if restored, could be a strong receiver site for this biodiversity. “Unfortunately, right now there is a wall of tall trees standing square in its migration path,” Houser said. He said the key to the success of this project will lie in what happens after the trees are cut and the area begins to regrow — the regular monitoring and ongoing management that is included in the provisions of the permit issued by NHESP.
BiodiversityWorks naturalist Matt Pelikan said that, while the pines have drawn affection from the community because of their beauty, they are biologically “not very interesting.” In the dense white pine monoculture, light rarely
White pines in the State Forest.
DAVID WELCH
reaches ground level, which makes for a low degree of understory complexity, according to Pelikan. Additionally, many of the unique species that live in the State Forest fare better in grasslands and scrub oak barrens, not dense pine forests.
Pelikan said that the time window during which a hands-off approach would be possible has long since passed us by. “We have totally altered the entire climate of the planet, we have introduced species in certain areas where they do
not conventionally occur, and some of them have become invasive,” Pelikan said. “Not doing active management doesn’t mean that humans aren’t controlling the landscape.” Pelikan said that, while he understands the argument that it’s hubristic for humans to attempt to control nature at this scale, “nature is beleaguered by human activity,” and it’s equally naive to think that doing nothing is a viable solution.
While it’s difficult to anticipate the
If a crown fire does start in the pine plantations, the only assets Island fire departments can summon are mutual aid aircraft that are designed for firefighting.
overall impact on biodiversity following any habitat management practice, Pelikan believes that area plant and animal species will be better off in the future because of the project. He also said that, although the clearing may look ugly to hikers and dog-walkers at first, every ecological restoration project looks ugly at first. “It doesn’t take long before you get regrowth, but a logged landscape is a logged landscape.”
‘This all started with public safety in mind’
While many on the Vineyard are interested in ecological restoration, Edgartown Fire Chief Alex Schaeffer’s main concern with the project is public safety. The Edgartown Fire Department, and every fire department on the Island, wants to see the State Forest managed
more thoughtfully and consistently. Schaeffer said that this tree cutting permit is just another phase of a multistage, long-term management plan that will mitigate forest fire risk. “This permit issued to DCR 20 years ago all started with public safety in mind — it started with the widening of the fire lanes in the State Forest so our response assets could reach where they needed to go,” Schaeffer said. When a dry canopy of white pines is set aflame, it can be a perilous situation. Schaeffer said local fire departments don’t have ready access to the equipment needed to extinguish this kind of fire. If a crown fire does start in the pine plantations, the only assets Island fire departments can summon are mutual aid aircraft that are designed for firefighting. During the dry months, when forests are most vulnerable to fire, the rest of the state will also be busy fighting fires, leaving those mutual aid resources indisposed. “Those aircraft that we would desperately need would already be in the air, and the priority order might leave us without any response for some time,” Schaeffer said.
Apart from the lack of a self-sufficient wildfire response plan for crown fires, fire department memberships Islandwide are dropping fast. For Schaeffer and other fire chiefs, the Island needs to take advantage of any opportunity to mitigate fuel loads in the State Forest. The anticipated future of the State Forest, according to
Schaeffer, will allow firefighters to better manage the land through prescribed burns, and defend lives and property against an active fire. “Oak woodlands and grasslands do have a potential for wildfire, but we have the equipment to stop those fires, whereas a serious crown fire would exceed our local response capabilities,” he said.
The debate continues Remember the debate that raged about the proposed roundabout at the intersection of the Vineyard HavenEdgartown Road and Barnes Road? There were experts and others who made good cases for why it would ruin the Island, and still others who made equally good arguments for how it would save us. In the end, those who favored the roundabout turned out to be right. But in the debate about the fate of the pine plantations in the State Forest, we likely won't know who's right for some time, regardless of whether or not the decision to cut is approved.
The ongoing discussions around forest management on the Island illustrate how different groups of people with varying degrees of expertise can take vastly different approaches to environmental issues. The people involved in this debate — experts and advocates from the fields of forestry, conservation, forest ecology, and fire safety — all hold the future best interests of the Island in mind. Here’s hoping they can work together to make the best out of whatever decision is finally made.
One of the goals of the clearcutting project is to reduce the risk of forest fires.
LUCAS THORS
LUCAS THORS
Sheriff's Meadow made lumber from trees that were cut down to stop the spread of a southern pine beetle outbreak.
Biochar made from Phillips Preserve trees that were cut down.
A white pine tree in the State Forest.
Continued from page 64
When Bret Stearns, the director of natural resources of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe, arrived on Martha’s Vineyard in 1994, the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) had just constructed their town building and community center. The tribal Natural Resources Department consisted of one person, who had little ability to enforce indigenous land and sustenance rights.
Now the Wampanoag Environmental Laboratory is pioneering new research and public education initiatives. The lab tests water and air quality and utilizes one of the most advanced fish monitoring systems in the Northeast to record local herring numbers. Town residents and visitors are more aware of the environmental and cultural significance of the clay cliffs, and of the herring that have been harvested by the Wampanoags for thousands of years. Stearns and his team have built the Natural Resources Program into an innovative resource that the rest of the Island can learn from. He has taken on additional roles as a law enforcement officer and a wildlife manager as a means of helping to educate locals and visitors alike about the importance of protecting indigenous resource rights and preserving the ancient knowledge and connection to the land that is held sacred by the Wampanoag people.
speak even when I’m not asked to, so I piped in and suggested they build a presence like the National Parks system, with rangers out there telling people what the rules are. Cully told me, “Well if it’s so easy, why don’t you figure it out?”
LOCAL
Bluedot Living spoke with Stearns about the important work he and his team have done to protect the vitality and sovereignty of tribal resources in Aquinnah.
LUCAS THORS: When did you first come to the Vineyard? How did you get involved with the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah)?
BRET STEARNS: I first came to the Island and to the Tribe in May of 1994. I graduated from Unity College in Maine in environmental science. My emphasis in college was conservation law enforcement. I did work with Mass Fish and Wildlife, dealing with stocking fish, beaver issues, some wildlife management stuff. I’d gone to college to become a game warden — I knew I wanted to be in that field. Completely by chance, I met the former director of natural resources for the Tribe, Matthew “Cully” Vanderhoop, at an environmental conference in Maine. He was talking in the hallway to a group of people about the problems the Tribe was having with visitor management: people messing around with the clay [at the cliffs] and just not respecting the resource rights of the Tribe. I have a tendency to
Cully called me a couple weeks later on the payphone in the hall of my dorm. He said he went to the tribal council and got some money together to hire me if I was willing to come to the Vineyard. When I first met Cully, I told him that I was a fly fisherman. He asked me if I had ever caught a striped bass on a fly — I said no. He told me his brother was Buddy Vanderhoop, the most famous striped bass fisherman in the country, and said if I went to the Island I was guaranteed a 36-inch striped bass on a fly. Out of all the things, that’s really the reason I first came down here.
LUCAS: What was it like when you first showed up in Aquinnah? What did the Tribe’s [natural resource protection] operation look like?
BRET: When I came here, the tribal building was still down a dirt road, and there was no housing. They had a Natural
“… every time that I take the boat and go out past the Gay Head Cliffs, I stop and I take a picture, I look at the lighthouse, and I think to myself this is the most special place in the world.”
HEROES
Bret Stearns first arrived on the Island in 1994.
Resources Department of one person, and there was no lab. The first couple years there was very little funding, but the goal was to ensure that tribal rights were being respected among local and federal agencies, protecting tribal property and ensuring a clean ecosystem and future environmental health for the Tribe and for Aquinnah. It all started as a wildlife program and an education program.
At that time, the tribal building was the main hub of activity for tribal citizens: the people that made this community, who worked their whole lives to make this building possible. People proudly drove down this road in the morning and would be waiting for me to make a cup of coffee for them — [it was where the tribal population spent so much of their time]. People had communal dinners at night, and during the day there were meetings all the time because everyone was trying to scope out the future.
LUCAS: What other roles did you serve in town and on the Island?
BRET: Some people only know me in one role. I do want to give a shout out to the Chilmark Police Department and Aquinnah police and Tri-Town Ambulance. Those entities are incredibly important to the fabric of this Island, and they have given me the breadth of experience I’ve needed to do the job I do.
LUCAS: Did you have some initial objectives to work on when you first started working in the natural resources office?
BRET: At the time there was a big problem with people taking the clay. Certainly from a conservation point of view, but also from a cultural perspective, the Tribe didn’t want that happening. We wanted to make it clear what the rules are, but we needed to get people certified so we could legally enforce those rules and
engage in a visitor management process. Myself and the other guy I came down here with, Jeff Day, we became special officers for the town of Aquinnah — the town owns the cliffs but not the beach, so there are jurisdictional boundaries that we were able to merge by getting certified to a level of municipal officer, but working for the Tribe.
Some other reservations are very large properties where you have full authority, but Aquinnah is what you call a checkerboard reservation, so you have properties in different locations and you have to traverse tribal property to state property to town property to local property to get to those other places.
In the summer of ’94 we had a presence; by ’95 I got my law enforcement certification and we started to really work on some of these issues. By ’95 we had also joined Tri-Town Ambulance service. We wrapped that into our program where we were working for the Tribe but responding alongside tri-town.
LUCAS: How did the process of creating the lab go? What caused the Tribe to want their own lab?
BRET: The Tribe wanted to engage in aquaculture, and when you build that you are bringing in water to feed these animals. I knew the kind of equipment we needed, I knew the kind of people we needed.
I never planned on being in the lab business, but we knew we had to get water quality data. We were shipping water off the Island [to get it tested], and sometimes it would take a year before you got your data back. We knew we had to be in charge of this information. The hatchery was built and there was aquaculture happening. Now I have this incredible staff down there, we do air quality, water quality, fisheries research. Everything that we built has come from necessity.
I originally hired Andrew (Jacobs) to grow scallops — we were doing a bay scallop restoration project. My lab manager Kendra Newick ended up taking a job in British Columbia, and so we didn’t have a lab manager. Kendra had a masters degree so she was able to hold the lab at a high level of certification. I had a talk with Andrew and I said “I think you could run the lab.” I changed the level of certification to meet what he had, and now he has managed the lab for many years.
There is a very high level of cross-certification here because everyone is constantly filling in for each other. There is nobody on this team who won’t clean the scallop cages if they need cleaning. Our purpose here is to protect and enhance the resources of the Tribe, and everyone is really passionate about that. It’s tackling a stack of paperwork, but it’s also going down to the creek and catching herring at midnight.
LUCAS: In your view, what are some of the most important aspects of working for the Tribe?
BRET: I have people who are really passionate about what they do, and you get these other people who are incredibly proud about their tribal citizenship. I have had some incredible tribal
Bret Stearns and his team work to test water quality, monitor air quality, and conduct fisheries research.
members work here who aren’t only proud of what they do, they’re proud of who they are. They are proud to excel in the place that represents them. Most of what I’ve done here, and what I’m most proud of, is being the liaison between those two elements, and to bring the culture and the science together as someone who is sort of in the middle.
“I have had some incredible tribal members work here who aren’t only proud of what they do, they’re proud of who they are. They are proud to excel in the place that represents them.”
My role has been to be as neutral as I can. It’s fair to say that Chilmark and Aquinnah don’t always get along, and the same thing can be said of the Tribe and the town. There are lots of boundary issues and water rights issues. I have been a uniformed officer for the town of Chilmark since ’96, but I work for the Tribe also, and I have been a volunteer for Tri-Town Ambulance since ’95.
You cannot replicate a quality of life, you have to keep it alive and own it. Once it’s lost it’s lost. That’s one thing about these wind farm issues. Obviously it’s upsetting to see those flashing lights on the horizon, but to the Tribe it’s more than a big deal, because you are the People of First Light. When something breaches that first light that shines on your land, that is a deep issue. If this place did not have a strong ecosystem and swimmable, fishable waters, nobody would be here.
LUCAS: What are some projects that you think made a lasting impact within the tribal community and on the Island
BRET: One big thing that stands out to me is the Lobsterville Beach restoration after Hurricane Sandy. That was seven years of our lives, and it’s better than it was before. That storm was so devastating that even the town recognized it was probably best if the Tribe took the lead. Having that confidence in the ability to work so seamlessly with the conservation commission and the town and the Army Corps of Engineers and the federal agencies, that was done with almost no regulatory burden locally. Everyone knew that this needed to get fixed.
Another thing that resonates with me is work that was done to foster recognition in the state and with the federal government regarding sustenance rights. Cultural uses of resources are a natural right of the Tribe. The federal government didn’t understand why these people didn’t need a permit to harvest these resources — none of that was sussed out yet.
LUCAS: Why do you think it’s important to preserve the sustenance and resource rights of tribal communities, and specifically the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head?
BRET: Even today, every time that I take the boat and go out past the Gay Head Cliffs, I stop and I take a picture, I look at the lighthouse, and I think to myself, “this is the most special place in the world.” I have been lucky enough to raise my kids out here, my boys, who love the outdoors. This Island has provided way more for me than I have for it. I knew when I left college that I never wanted to live in a place where you are [stranded] on the side of the road and someone doesn’t stop. And I want to be the guy that stops.
I have learned how easily it is to lose that knowledge and that connection with the natural world. It relates to the fisheries work we are doing where it seems like yesterday there was a half million herring and today there’s less than 11,000. If you don’t pay attention and make sure you are being proactive, it can happen right under your nose.
If you stand at the bottom of the cliffs, you are looking up at 100 million years, thousands of years of people living off this land, and living with the land. I think that is something worth honoring and preserving.
LOCAL HERO BRET STEARNS
The Director of Natural Resources for the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe has been protecting indigenous resources and land rights for more than two decades.
Interview by Lucas Thors
by Randi Baird
“Our purpose here is to protect and enhance the resources of the Tribe, and everyone is really passionate about that. It’s tackling a stack of paperwork, but it’s also going down to the creek and catching herring at midnight.”
Read the story, page 61.
Photos
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