Changing Coastline

Conducting Ethnographic Fieldwork

Over the course of a year I immersed myself in studying coastal change, conducting interviews and spending time talking with the people that had formerly been my neighbors, friends and employers, now turned informants. Conducting fieldwork on this subject was a richly informative process because my area of inquiry is one that almost every resident of the Cape has strong opinions and personal experiences with. Armed with a video camera, I spent months conducting numerous formal and informal interviews with specialists like oceanographers and marine researchers, as well as local historians, tourists, organic farmers, fellow surfers, and a cadre of other individuals who have carefully observed these coastal processes. I also collected footage of tidal cycles, blustery walks around lighthouses, dune vistas and many other Cape Cod scenes, of which many video stills have been included in this project.

This project is visually anchored by numerous images, diagrams and maps that I have used to help narrate this story. The visual content I have compiled serves as an ethnographic medium that parallel the stories, impressions, and research that I garnered from informants. I acquired these visual components by making maps for the National Park Service, sorting through image archives, choosing stills from filmed interviews, scanning local newspapers for relevant articles, etc. to collect images that could help readers visualize coastal change. Understanding how abstract processes like erosion affect the Cape can be best contextualized by visual evidence, which accounts for the abundant visual component of this project.

Lessons Learned from the Coastline

I would like to provide a nomenclatural note about the difference between the Upper, Mid and Lower Cape, as it will be relevant to know the distinction in proceeding chapters. The Upper Cape is actually the geographically lowest part of the Cape, closest to the mainland spanning from Bourne to Falmouth. The Mid-Cape includes Barnstable, Yarmouth and Dennis, while the Lower Cape extends North through Chatham to Provincetown. For a reference of the various towns of the Cape please refer to the first map. The seemingly upside down designation of these terms harkens back to an old maritime reference of traveling up or down the longitudinal scale. For example, when one took a boat Easterly from Sandwich to Wellfleet, they would be traveling down longitudinally to the “Lower Cape”. These terms are still used today to designate different parts of the Cape, but as the historical reference is no longer widely known, the Lower Cape is often more commonly referred to as the Outer Cape. The majority of information in this project is concentrated around the Lower Cape because of where I have lived and established my social network. Despite the regional specificity that informed this project, lessons learned regarding appropriate coastal management can be extrapolated to the entire Cape and even other coastal communities that are experiencing similar changes.

This project is not only pertinent to coastal changes on Cape Cod but also to present climatic and oceanic changes that are occurring around the world because of global warming. Cape Cod is a unique subject for studying coastal change because of the presence of the National Seashore, which spans the majority of the ocean side of the Cape and tries to enforce a policy of non-interference in processes like erosion. This policy is unusual considering the development that has occurred in coastal communities along the Eastern seaboard. Studying a coastline that is not allowed to be encumbered or manipulated by anthropogenic forces provides a rare opportunity to examine what will be happening to our oceans around the world as global warming threatens to intensify processes like erosion, impinging upon our fragile sense of stability in coastal communities.