How Climate is Affecting my Vacation Future
I can feel it now, that feeling once I first step back on the island after not having seen it for a year. The feeling of the cool breeze on my skin, the sound of the waves crashing on the shoreline, the smell of sea salt in the air. The perfect place, Martha’s Vineyard.
Ever since i could remember, I have been going on vacation with my family to this lovely island. Every single summer, we pack up out stuff and head out to the island for a week long, well deserved vacation. We go out and enjoy the lovely trails, the delicious restaurants and town life, and most of all the sandy beaches.
One of my favorite things to do is to go to the beach and ride the waves. I am a great swimmer in general and love to fight the current of the ocean. To ride the waves in while body surfing and sometimes I will even grab a boogie board and ride that into the shore.
One thing in particular has bothered me as I have gotten older however, and i feel that it now is becoming an issue that cannot be ignored. The beaches that I have spent every single summer on are starting to disappear. The shores are getting smaller due to the Earth’s increasing temperatures, and the oceans levels are starting to rise.
It is no secret these days that the Earth is undergoing climate change. Whether you agree with global warming or not, the climate as a whole is changing. More severe storms, more fluctuations of extreme hot and cold temperatures, etc. The temperatures are a huge issue however, because the biggest problem that this causes is the overall rise of the oceans levels.
For most people, this is something that is not affecting them right now so what is the point in worrying about it. I also felt the same way until I went on vacation this past year. Me and my family went to one of the local beaches that was a few miles from the house we were staying at. I felt that everything was normal as usual and I was able to relax. Then the high tide came in and that changed.
When the high tide came in, me and my family had to retreat on the already small beach front all the way to where the beach meets the shrubbery, or rather where the sand and the beach ends. I remembered thinking how odd it was that the waves were getting so far up the beach, and I just thought that it must have just been the winding pushing it further in.
The next day we went to another beach, and I noticed the same exact thing. At another beach that we had been going to for many years, once the high tide came in my family and I did the exact same thing we did the day before. I then realized that it was not a coincidence.
I began to think back to the days where I would go to the beach with my family and I remembered how far I was able to walk out into the water. I could walk a pretty fair distance out into the water, and there were rocks that I could climb onto that were now well beneath the waves. Once the high tide came in, we never would have to even think about moving. So it became obvious to me, the ocean really is rising.
I am now more concerned than ever about climate change, because a place that I have always held dear and close to my heart may be underwater at some point in my life. The ocean is rising at a relatively fast rate and it is really scary to me. This I am sure is not the only place that is being affected by a situation similar to this one. If we do not do anything about the ever changing climate due to global warming, then we may lose places like Martha’s Vineyard.
In the image that is presented above, you can see some of the locations on Martha’s vineyard that are being affecting by rising sea levels. The zones near the ocean that are highlighted in the blue color are places that have been affected by the rising sea levels.
The image may not be much, yet it does show the issue that is at hand, if there is not swift action taken then this map will only start to look more and more blue. We will lose more beaches which is something that we do not want to see gone.
The clock is currently ticking, and we need to do something before it is too late.
