Adventure in Virginia: Part 1

I arrived in Norfolk Virginia on October 22, 2022 where I met up with Rachael. I am living at Rachael’s house childhood house right now. I’m staying with her family until Dan gets here. Once Dan is here, we’re going to go stay on the boat at the Marina and in our car. 

On October 24 we were supposed to get the boat hauled out. That didn't happen because the swell was too high on our scheduled departure date. We attempted, nonetheless, to sail the boat in 30 mph winds, with 3-7.5 foot waves in a small craft advisory. After getting out three miles with the wind and waves against us, black smoke coming out of the engine...and rain, we turned around, deciding the conditions were too intense, and our engine's stamina was too uncertain. 

The process of getting the boat taken out of the water consists of a 6(ish?) mile send around the Grandview Nature Preserve.The Grandview Nature Preserve covers 500 out of 950,000 square miles of wetlands in the United States. It can be accessed on foot through a herbaceous marsh melted between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. 

Under a sky of altostratus and altocumulus clouds, and in a soft Southeastern wind, Rachael and I walked the 0.5 mile trail to the beach at the Grandview Nature Preserve. To our left sand and sediments (as well as litter) builds up by forces of wind and water to form natural dunes where animals stay hidden and birds nest. In the same beachy-dune area, there were white crabs I had never seen before. They seemed to take shelter in small hole formations in the sand, much like an ant does. Later, I find out these are called Ghost Crabs. What’s interesting about these guys, is that they don’t have to go to the water to wet their gills. They use hairs on the base of their legs to wick up water from the sand and wetlands. Their

average lifespan? Three years.

To our right of the ghost crab burrows is the Chesapeake Bay where more than 150

streams and rivers from six states drain into. Nutrient pollution and urban

runoff are two threats to the water quality. In particular, these issues are

exacerbated by excess nitrogen, sediment, and phosphorus. 

On the shoreline we found a Knobbed Whelk (Konch) Egg Case. It turns out Knobbed Whelks are actually

fascinating creatures. Also understood as a “sea snail” they are carnivores and

eat clams, oysters, mussels and other bivalves. A bivalve is “an aquatic mollusk

which has a compressed body enclosed within a hinged shell, such as oysters,

mussels, and scallops. Also called pelecypod or lamellibranch” (Ecosia). Knobbed

Whelks are prey to animals like crabs, sea urchins, and sea stars. Knobbed

whelks reproduce by sexual reproduction with internal fertilization. Adult

whelks lay chains in the late Spring seasons of egg-casings that can reach up to

three feet long. Each chain can contain up to 175 (give or take) disc-shaped

capsules, creating this twisty-cord shaped that are also known as “mermaid

necklaces”. Each disc provides safety and conditions for embryos to develop and

eventually hatch.

The beach and dunes do not comprise the entire preserve. There are also swamps,
marshes, Marshes are wetlands, but generally speaking, wetlands also consist of
bogs, fens, and swamps. North America has more than 950,000 square miles worth
of wetland ecosystems. Many of North America’s tidal marshes are threatened by
the dual pressures of coastal development and sea-level rise. Marshes are
defined by plants having little or no woody tissue and presenting themselves
usually for a single growing season meanwhile swamps are dominated by woody
plants and “characterized by saturated soils during the growing season and
standing water during certain times of the year”. Growing degree days are a
measure of yearly heat accumulation used to predict plant and animal
development, and defined as the integral of warmth above a base temperature,
discarding any excess above a maximum temperature. Empirical reports in the area
use a base of 50°F and a cap of 86°F. 

The grass in marshes on the preserve in dunes offer coverage for birds, probably helping to support the largest colony of least terns along the east coast at Grandview Nature Preserve. April 1 to September 15 the park is closed to protect migratory birds that nest in colonies of hundreds, with a few in mind: oystercatchers, black skimmers, and of course, least terns. Oystercatchers typically have worse breeding success than the others because of high levels of human disturbance and predators. Because oystercatchers in the state nest on marsh islands, it has been more difficult to collect data about population or productivity levels.

On a walk down the beach at the Grandview Nature Preserve you can see a rock island, not far offshore, marking where the old Back River lighthouse was built in 1829 for $4,250 decommissioned in 1936, and destroyed in 1956 by Hurricane Flossy.  Hurricanes have had more damaging implications since the 1956 hurricane so long ago. Andrew Wulfeck of Fox News reports Hurricane Ian “will go down as one of the strongest hurricanes ever to strike Florida” Hurricane Ian hit Virginia hard as well resulting in high flooding, damage to infrastructure, inability to drive and school closings.

Further down the beach from the lighthouse it becomes quieter and more private.

“In the nineties…” a hiker from tripadvisor reminisces “...gay men would meet up

and get together behind the dunes in the pine forest” today others enjoy the

sandy peninsula as a nude beach towards the more secluded end. One user

expresses distaste warning: it’s “suppose(d) to be a nature preserve but

people….leave trash everywhere and let their dogs run destroying nesting

bird(s)”. In discordance with the dog restriction, one user in 2017 stated that

this is “one of the few beaches you can take your dog all year round” and Bring

Fido advertises on google that Grandview Nature Preserve is a popular dog

friendly hike in Hampton....even though that’s not the case. Dogs are allowed

only from September to April.

(Random thoughts:--Something I’m wondering about this is: Does Bring Fido introduce the preserve as available for dogs all year round to get more traffic on their website? If so, is this backed up with data? If yes, how is the business incentivized to advertise “dog permitted” in the google ad description? What are those statistics like? In order to find out, I think I’d need to talk to someone at Bring Fido about how data teams are collecting data. How could land preservation teams pair with Bring Fido to promote dog walking policies that help sustainability efforts/birdnesting? What else could encourage someone to visit ethically or change their behavior? Does Bring Fido benefit by advertising with other misleading callouts? Providing misleading information about how the land is being protected? What is the land protection agency doing to protect the land– who do they need to work with to minimize human traffic and destruction? Are other companies doing this and sending misinformation that impedes land-protection policies?--)

The lands in the surrounding area are not only home to migrating bird colonies, recreation sites for nudists or dog-walkers, but also are the stomping fields for native American tribes. Land treaties between colonists and natives date back to the 1600s. The Englishmen first arrived in May 1607 where the Chickahominy, The Coarse Ground Corn People, and other tribes greeted the settlers, teaching them how to use the rich soil and vibrant waterways for agriculture. Later (this information based on relatively brief, not-comprehensive google searches...there are probably different perspectives on this depending what you read), the Chickahominy tribe allied themselves to settlers by promising to provide the Englishmen with hundreds of bowmen, pledging fidelity to the British Crown in exchange for protection. The treaty in effect was no longer recognized when the United States was established, and the tribe never voiced disputes with the USA, so a treaty was never signed with the newly independent state.

In the 1920s, Virginia passed the racial integrity act which forced Native Americans to classify themselves as colored, which in turn, erased identity and culture of the tribes, compromising the tribes’ abilities to be federally recognized. This is an issue because the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Department of the Interior requires documentation about government to government relationships when tribes petition for their federal recognition. Not only that, because of slavery, many native American tribes employed a survival strategy to hide and make themselves invisible in society, leading to even less documentation. 

“To accommodate elite Virginians who claimed Pocahontas and John Rolfe as ancestors, the law allowed for those who had ‘one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian and have no other non-Caucasic blood [to] be deemed to be white persons.’ The law essentially erased Virginia Indians as a category of people.” 

In the civil war, many southern courthouses were destroyed, as well as the contents inside, which likely contained some of this already diluted documentation. After a 20 year effort, in 2018, the Monacan, Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy, Nansemond and Upper Mattaponi tribes in the area became federally recognized. Federal recognition is important for these people because it makes them eligible for federal assistance in education, healthcare, and housing. The DOI, if the tribe requests it, will take their lands into trust and will not alter hunting, fishing, trapping, gathering or water rights of the tribes and their members. 

In the middle of October, 2022, the Nansemond Indian Nation got back 504 acres of their incestral lands. In 2018 Ducks Unlimited, a 501(c) non-profit dedicated to the conservation of wetlands and upland habitats, coordinated with the Virginia Outdoors Foundation when they had an offer by a family to buy and conserve forested wetlands known as Cross Swamp. The Virginia Outdoors Foundation suggested rather than the federal agency or state getting the land, to return it to the Nansemond, which is the first time the Southeast For Ducks Unlimited has worked with a tribal nation. With the help of the Enviva Forest Conservation Fund, the North American Wetlands Conservation Act grant program, and The Mary Morton Parsons Foundation, the swamp was bought for $1.1 million for the Nansemond tribe. Alike the efforts to protect birds at the Grandview Nature Preserve, this land management will provide habitat for birds to live in. But yes, birds will be hunted, with measures in place to maintain population and sustainability goals.

The postured birds of the Chesapeake Bay wetlands welcomed us into the marina standing on the channel markers that line the shallow shoals. We were able to motor around the sandy peninsula with relative ease with the comfort of high tide in our presence. Now that we have gotten acquainted with the area, we can really begin the hard work to build our boat!

Hurricane Photo: https://www.wric.com/news/virginia-news/photos-hurricane-ian-destruction-in-virginia/