TANGIER, Va. — Terry Parks was standing at the back of a boat passing by on the west coast of Tangier Island.
The Chesapeake Bay island native pointed to an area of large rocks withered and wispy green grass in the sun. A blue water tower stood in the distance.
“That’s Grandma’s house,” Parks said, pointing to the house’s gray peaked roof. “When I was a kid, there was a place I used to play about 100 yards from shore. Now the water there is about 5 feet deep.”
Under a blue sky, a gust of wind pushed the choppy sea into the ship, causing seawater to splash onto the deck and shake people. Crab traps located deep below the surface are marked with buoys. The waterway that runs through the center of the archipelago to which this island belongs is lined with shacks on stilts.
As water flooded the island, Parks toured Tangier with the nonprofit Chesapeake Bay Foundation and local, state, federal and other non-governmental partners. They gathered to get updates on how to save the island. The island could be one of the first inhabited areas of the United States that people have to leave before being swallowed up by rising sea levels. A 2015 study found that the island and its archipelago have lost two-thirds of their land mass since 1850, and predicted that the region could become uninhabitable by 2065.
Some locals leave the island’s fate in the hands of God, blaming it on natural erosion, where land is lost as waves wash sand and soil out to sea. In 2017, Mayor James “Oker” Eskridge debated former Vice President Al Gore, arguing that what was happening to the island was not due to rising sea levels. Following the report, President Donald Trump called Eskridge and promised support. But even the mayor acknowledges that the climate is changing, from different wind directions to extreme low and high tides, even as he says fossil fuel emissions are putting people at risk.
But science shows that the cause is sea level rise due to climate change. Tens of millions of dollars are being spent to buy more time on the 1.2 square mile island, first settled by Europeans in the 18th century.
During the War of 1812, enslaved people fled to British-controlled islands in search of freedom. The battles of this war, including those around Tangier, led to the writing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
A pile of crab fishing gear on Tangier Island. Credit: Charles Paullin/Inside Climate News
Crabbing, oyster harvesting and tourism have long been big business on the island. Conversation with the islanders brings out Tangier’s unique, old-fashioned dialect, which uses multiple syllables in single-syllable words. The island has a town council, schools, police station, and public infrastructure, all of which are susceptible to flooding. Generations of residents are buried on this island.
“It’s reassuring to see so many people come together, but it’s a process,” Eskridge said. “Many people are disappointed. We see the effects of land loss being felt week after week.”
Tangier Island, southeast of Washington, DC, is about a 50-minute boat ride west from the Delmarva Peninsula. This island forms the southern part of the archipelago. The northern part of the wetland is called the Uppers. To the east is Port Isobel, an island and environmental education center already abandoned by permanent residents. Six years ago, 436 people lived in Tangier. About 250 people currently do so. At the same time that older residents are dying, young people are moving to the mainland in search of job opportunities.
“It’s going to end up affecting more people than it already has. People don’t really pay attention to it until it actually affects them,” Eskridge said of the flooding. “The climate is definitely changing, and it’s changing rapidly…We have to adapt. If we can’t adapt, we’re going to have problems.”
sinking land, rising water
Tangier Island is disappearing due to various weather phenomena.
This includes the melting ice sheets that covered North America tens of thousands of years ago. Beneath the sheets, the country’s interior sank. That, in turn, supported areas on the opposite shore, such as the Chesapeake Bay. Like a seesaw on a playground, the inland region bounced upwards as the sheets melted, and the bay sank again. It’s been calming down since then.
Sea levels are rising due to climate change, and the amount of water in oceans and bays is increasing. Emissions trap heat in the atmosphere, melting ice sheets and providing more water to the Atlantic Ocean, which flows into the Chesapeake Bay. Heat causes water molecules to expand, causing waves to crash against shorelines and storms of wind and rain to be more intense than before.
Conditions can change quickly when high tides or nor’easters occur. In such a case, Eskridge said, he and his boat from the east side of the island could have “an open door into the harbor.” Usually, you have to use the waterways in the middle of the archipelago to get there.
A study by Bayland, an engineering and consulting firm working with Tangier Island, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, found that parts of the island are losing land at a rate of 32 feet a year. Currently about 750 acres remain. At the peak of land subsidence and water rise, sea levels could be 1.71 feet higher than they were in 1992 by 2050, said Evan Mazur, Bayland’s water resources engineer.
“When you walk along the beach here, it’s quite an unpleasant sound, but now it doesn’t exist,” Mazur said. And as sea levels rise further, Bayland coastal engineer Anna Johnson said, “wetland loss will continue to increase.”
Naturally derived vs. artificial
To cope with changes in Tangier’s natural conditions, islanders and external partners are using man-made solutions, but also continuing to work towards the environment.
Parts of the western part of the island are considered to be at the lowest risk of losing land, homes, important sites and roads. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built a 5,700-foot sea wall on its shoreline in 1990. A pier was built in 2021 on the west side of the strait.
This story is funded by readers like you.
Our nonprofit newsroom provides free advertising for our award-winning climate coverage. We rely on donations from readers like you to continue our work. Donate now to support our work.
donate now
The Corps also has an operations and maintenance budget to periodically dredge portions of the canal every 18 months, and more often during emergencies after storms push materials and clog the canal. More comprehensive dredging work will occur on a four- to five-year schedule.
The dredged material has traditionally been returned to the ocean west of the Uppers to act as a breakwater and dissipate wave energy before encroaching on the wetland known as Tom’s Gat. The Army is currently considering a technology called geotubes, which traps excavated material in the undercurrent rather than deploying it.
“Once a barrier island is breached like that, we’re going to see more wave action here,” said Jeff Swallow, director of operations for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Norfolk District, pointing to a map. “It’s not good for the interior swamp. This swamp is all starting to erode.”
From 2023 to 2025, the Army Corps received approximately $17.1 million for dredging work. Raising legislative funding is difficult due to the lack of Eastern Virginia representation on the House Appropriations Committee.
Tangier Island welcome sign. Credit: Charles Paullin/Inside Climate News
Additionally, other groups, such as the Accomack-Northampton Planning District Commission, are seeking to dredge waterways to clear land near the island’s airstrip. A new state law, House Bill 52, by Rep. Rob Bloxom could increase opportunities for beneficial reuse by prioritizing dredged material rather than treating it as waste.
Dredged materials can also be used to solve environmental problems. The dredged material can be used to build up land, where trees will regrow, as was done at Port Isobel on the east of the island. This material can create a pathway for the swamp to migrate into instead of drowning. The nature-based solutions promoted by BayLand also provide habitat for wildlife.
“They’re the most effective in the long run,” Beiland’s Johnson said. “Wetlands grow as vegetation dies and actually increase elevation. Environmentally, we move closer to a more sustainable future.”
Bayland received $356,000 from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for its original plan. Due to timing issues, we missed the deadline to receive $1.2 million for additional work. My goal is to apply again in February. In the meantime, funding may be available through the state’s Regional Flood Protection Fund, which uses revenue from participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
The need for funding is urgent. As shoreline continues to be lost, Mayor Eskridge said additional breakwaters or more frequent emergency dredging will be needed.
“That’s going to continue,” Eskridge said. “The situation will get worse every year.”
About this story
As you may have noticed, this article, like all news we publish, is free to read. That’s because Inside Climate News is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We don’t charge subscription fees, keep our news behind paywalls, or fill our website with ads. We provide climate and environmental news free to you and anyone who wants it.
That’s not all. We also share our news for free with dozens of other news organizations across the country. Many of them cannot afford to do their own environmental journalism. We’ve established bureaus across the country to report on local news, partner with local newsrooms and co-publish stories to ensure this important work is shared as widely as possible.
The two of us started ICN in 2007. Six years later, we won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting and now run the nation’s oldest and largest dedicated climate newsroom. We tell the story in its entirety. We hold polluters accountable. We expose environmental injustice. We debunk misinformation. We explore solutions and inspire action.
Donations from readers like you fund all aspects of our work. If you haven’t already, will you support our ongoing work, our coverage of the biggest crises facing our planet, and help us reach more readers in more places?
Please make a tax-deductible donation. Each one makes a difference.
thank you,
charles poulin
virginia correspondent
Charles Poulin is an energy and environmental reporter based in Richmond, Virginia. He has received several awards for his work covering state policy for the Virginia Mercury and local news for the Northern Virginia Daily in the northern Shenandoah Valley. His first reporting job was with the New Britain Herald in Connecticut, a few years after attending the University of Hartford, where he first studied sports journalism.
