Fate of the Cliffs

For more than 13,000 years, as the last great North American glacier began to retreat, Martha’s Vineyard, or Noepe, has been home to the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), and the legend of Moshup goes that as the benevolent being made his way from the mainland to the headlands of the Gay Head (Aquinnah) Cliffs, his dragged toe created a deep track in the mud, drew water in, and shaped both the Sound and the Island named Noepe.

His influence is also immortalized in the red streaks along the iconic multi-colored Cliffs. Moshup, who taught the Wampanoag how to fish and catch whales, would lure whales to his den at the Cliffs to cook; the blood of the whales stained the clay, and the coals from his fires of large trees, whale bones, shark teeth, and petrified quahogs, all found in the Cliffs today, are refuse from his table.

But as ancient and storied as these cliffs are, they are also a modern victim of resolute erosion brought on by the inevitable forces of nature and the relentless impacts of climate change. The erosion is so pronounced that in June 2015, the Gay Head Lighthouse, erected in 1844, was moved back 129 feet; the structure had come increasingly close to the edge after years of steady erosion. And though the deterioration — from both the prevalence of storm surges and groundwater — isn’t new to the Cliffs, nor the Island, 10 years after the lighthouse move, the tribe received a grant from the state to start the first large-scale study of impact to the area.

The grant doesn’t promise to save the Cliffs — dubbed Dover Cliff by Bartholomew Gosnold and his crew in 1602, because of the white clay similarities to the English coastline — but does offer the potential to prolong preservation of the treasured landmark. 

The Cliffs are hardly alone; the Trustees of Reservations report that 1,400 acres of beach has been lost across the Island over the past 175 years, and that 800 structures are projected to be destroyed by erosion 25 years from now.

But for Bret Stearns, the tribe’s natural resources department director, the 150-foot Cliffs are among, if not the greatest priority of the tribe. They hold the sediment from six glaciers, three of which created the Island’s western hills, and on retreat, created the colorful layers of clay evident today. 

“We can all sit back and say, Well, there’s very little that can be done, but that’s not really what this is about,” Stearns said.

Earlier this month, the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management announced that the tribe was awarded $382,109 to study the effects of erosion on the Cliffs. Though studied before, this is also a larger effort to look at possible measures to protect this specific area — from east of the overlook and west all the way to Pilot’s Landing.

The tribe owns the face of the Cliffs, though not necessarily all the land underneath, which in reality, as erosion exposes new land constantly, is a boundary marker that moves. Above, privately owned, town-owned, and tribe-owned land sit. Bettina Washington, tribal historic preservation officer, said the Cliffs can change daily, and she’s witnessed major pieces fall from the face, and lamented the Cliffs stripped of the vibrant colors she once saw.

The grant, which may last around two years, means that the tribe, through scientific researchers out of Tufts University, can document the historic changes of the Cliffs from photographs and aerial reconnaissance, model future scenarios, and discuss potential options for preservation — possibly nature-based solutions.

Previous efforts to mitigate the effects of erosion, such as transportation of the lighthouse, are no small feat, Stearns said, and cost a lot of money; the lighthouse project cost $3.4 million. A fence that stood near the previous location of the structure is now fallen, forgotten, and lies on the face of the Cliffs.

And Aquinnah’s wasn’t the only lighthouse to be moved because of erosion. West Chop’s was moved twice in the 1800s, and the Cape Pogue Lighthouse on Chappaquiddick has been moved at least five times, even in 1987 by helicopter, newspaper reports said. It is Wasque Beach, though, that actually experiences the highest rate of erosion, the Trustees report, and those cliffs have eroded more than 1,500 feet in the past 50 years.

The move of the Gay Head Lighthouse, however, does promise protection for another century against continued erosion.

“We prepared for that as best we could, but when you look back, you say, Boy, we probably should have had a plan 10 years before that happened,” Stearns said. That’s why the tribe applied for this grant — this is a recognition that there’s a substantial problem up there, he said.

In different areas, Stearns said, the land loses up to five feet per year, and referenced a concrete bunker where observers watched for Nazi submarines or aircraft in the 1940s that fell off the Cliffs and into the sea. He remembers when the bunker sat atop them; the Cliffs also once hosted the original Coast Guard station. Because of storms and storm surges, Stearns said, he’s seen pieces of clay from the Cliffs as big as an SUV on the beach gone a week later: “The ocean doesn’t care how big you are. It just grabs you up.”

The goal is to have a very specific assessment of the erosion rate, but also investigate where, how, and why certain storms make an impact.

“Do I think we’re going to save the Aquinnah Cliffs, the Gay Head Cliffs, from being taken from the ocean? I don’t think so,” Stearns said. “But there are some places that there may be some solutions that could substantially change the longevity of what’s there now.”

“It’s kind of like a wait-and-see,” Washington said.

It’s better to have a plan than to not have a plan, Stearns said.

Erosion of the Cliffs isn’t caused just by waves. A few years before the lighthouse was moved, Patrick Williams, a research professor at San Diego State University and geologist, was briefly employed by the town to study the landslide rate, and found that between 1870 and 2012, the bluff retreated at an average rate of 1.8 feet per year. The Cliffs hold a large water supply fed by aquifers beneath the bluff, and groundwater, which visibly leeches out from the east to the face of the Cliffs, weakens the structure’s layers and causes landslides.

Erosion at the base of the Cliffs separately enhances landslide activity; a single storm can do incredible damage — even 20 feet — in one fell swoop, William said, and landslides are exacerbated by a weakened base.

Williams said that an Island driller suggested that groundwater could be drained to deeper layers present across the continental shelf, but Stearns said they couldn’t make that decision yet.

There’s the risk that water drilled from the aquifers could lower the area’s water table and decrease productivity for private wells, as well as potentially draining the source of a half-dozen permanent and semipermanent ponds near the Cliffs, Williams said.

The law of unintended consequences is important here, said Bill Lake, chairman of the Aquinnah climate and energy committee, which often helps on these projects: “Any time you’re working with a natural system, there are certain things you want to happen, and you have to be very careful that other things happen that you didn’t want or didn’t expect.”

In terms of the grant, Williams said that the best outcome would be “better understanding for planning … Don’t build structures close to the south coast, and the structures you do have, consider what their lifetime is, and maybe plan for management of locations.” He added that erosion has been studied for more than 150 years on the Island, and through the grant, a lot of that information can be brought to modern awareness.

The Cliffs, registered as a national landmark in the 1960s by the federal government, are protected in a way that disallows people to climb, trespass, or take clay from them; only tribal members are allowed to use the clay for cultural purposes.

But that wasn’t always the case. Tourism still draws people to the Cliffs, but previously, clay also drew people as a source of income. In fact, in 1893, there was a short-lived “Gay Head Clay Co.” that leased the white clay resource for an annual fee of $500, and shipped the material to brick kilns on the mainland.

Some Wampanoags continue to carry on tradition and use the clay in their pottery. Heath (Strong Fox) Widdiss, Gay Head Pottery artisan and grandson of the late tribal leader Gladys (Wild Cranberry) Widdiss, only harvests the clay from right where the resource touches the sand, and is about to go into the ocean: “I am literally holding onto what you can no longer see,” he said.

When he used to harvest for his grandmother, from whom he learned his art, he said there used to be colors everywhere. This summer, however, he couldn’t even source yellow.

“I’m very very concerned that we’re going to be looking at some dirty hills there in not too many years,” Widdiss said. “I do hope I’m wrong.”

Most of those involved know that not much can be done to completely stop erosion, but the grant holds hope that the future isn’t so bleak.

“We haven’t seen any increase in the size of the Cliffs since time immemorial, so this is really about understanding what’s happened to date, and what our best options are moving forward,” Stearns said.