By Earle Kimel
Staff Writer Sarasota Herald Tribune
Posted May 17, 2018 at 3:36 PM
SARASOTA — Uzi Baram decided it was time to start speaking out on the impact of rising sea levels after Hurricane Irma hit Florida last September.
“After Hurricane Irma, I have teenagers, they’re out of school for a week and a half, New College closed for a week and a half, damage was pretty severe, considering it was really far away from us,” said Baram, a professor of anthropology and director of the New College Public Archaeology Lab.
People have been dealing with and adapting to changing sea levels for millennia, Baram said Wednesday evening, shortly after his talk “Archaeology and Rising Sea Levels: Global Perspectives and Local Concerns,” to a crowd of almost 50 people at the May meeting of the Time Sifters Archaeology Society in the Geldbart Auditorium at Selby Library.
“This is the first draft of what I can say for this sort of public audience about these issues,” said Baram, who acknowledged that the presentation was essentially a literature review of available research.
Baram, a lifetime member of Time Sifters, plans to give a more refined version of his talk during the third annual Tidally United Summit, set for Aug. 9-11 at venues including the Mildred Sainer Pavilion at New College on Aug. 9, Payne Park Auditorium Aug. 10 and Historic Spanish Point Aug. 11.
Baram said he hoped candidates for public office would be invited to the summit and perhaps address questions regarding their thoughts on how to best address rising sea levels.
“Hopefully we’ll get some good answers,” Baram said. “We need to put it on the agenda much stronger than it’s been done.”
While Baram points out a variety of challenges, such as the erosion of Egmont Key at the mouth of Tampa Bay — a culturally significant Native American burial ground that also served as a departure point for those banished on the Trail of Tears — he’s concentrating on hopeful lessons learned from the past.
“I don’t think that gloom and doom is the way to talk about this; humans have dealt with this before,” Baram said. “I know that sounds so broad, but there’s nothing about this particular set of challenges that we can’t meet.”
To do so, people have to identify those challenges and make the right choices in finding solutions.
“Part of the archaeology is to show the challenges but also to show there’s a lot of good things going on,” Baram said.
As a modern example, Baram, who lives in the Phillippi Creek drainage basin, recalled that when he first bought his home, a neighbor asked if he owned a kayak, because the neighborhood was prone to flood. But in his time there, the neighborhood hasn’t been inundated, Baram said, because Sarasota County built a stormwater control system at the Celery Fields.
“The system of reservoirs and moving the water away has worked,” Baram said.
From a more global perspective, Baram said over the last 50 years humans have fundamentally changed the planet. The secondary impact of that change — prompted by everything from plastics to an increase in radiation because of nuclear testing — is climate change, while the tertiary change can be seen in rising sea levels.
Florida isn’t the only state feeling the oceans’ push. The village of Shismaref in Alaska voted to move because it is at Sarichef Island, which is disappearing. And in 2016, the federal government authorized a $48 million grant to move the residents of Isle de Jean Charles in Southeast Louisiana because of sea level rise.
“It’s happening. It’s not about to happen, it’s not predicted to happen, it’s happening now,” Baram said.
Baram noted that contractors in coastal areas of Pinellas County are bringing in fill dirt before building new homes, to hedge against rising tides.
“They’re basically doing what the ancient Safety Harbor people did,” he added. “Build a big mound then put the rich person’s house on top of it.”
During the last ice age, the peninsula of Florida was significantly larger, as evidenced by the recent find of a peat burial ground offshore of Manasota Key from the Archaic Period, when sea levels were 30 feet lower.
Steps for preserving, or at least recording those sites are being taken worldwide. Baram highlighted a citizen archaeology program in Scotland, where people can be trained to use a smartphone app to document coastline change to significant areas.
A similar program, The Heritage Monitoring Scouts Program, was established in Florida in 2016 and has found the most success around St. Augustine and Pensacola.
Baram hopes that the present political climate will allow for successful solutions. “The political discourse has become so polarized that people forget that actually getting solutions is the goal, not proving the other side wrong,” he said.
“It’s not just ‘be angry’ — I would prefer driving on dry roads,” he added. “What can we do so the water has a place to go? That’s the challenge.”