Summaries

Synopsis

Shored Up is an urgent call to action in the face of accelerating sea-level rise. Set in Long Beach Island, NJ and the Outer Banks of NC, the film explores the political conflicts and personal stakes of communities along the shore. Shored Up talks to scientists, politicians, residents and a wide range of experts to expose major shortcomings in coastal management and the immediate need for change. Filmed over three years and culminating in the impact of Hurricane Sandy, it becomes an eerie foretelling of the storm's devastation and a witness to its dramatic aftermath. Shored Up is a look at what happens when we ignore the realities of geology in our drive to inhabit and profit from our coastlines.

If our love affair with a view of the horizon and our urge to build bigger and higher are a cocktail leading coastal communities to the edge of disaster, then Shored Up is a tonic to awaken us to the crisis we face. From a feature documentary to an interactive website, mobile app and game, Shored Up develops across platforms to immerse us in the sand, waves, storms and history of our romance with the wild. It is a story told by the people and communities who are witness to rising seas on barrier islands, the most dynamic land-form in nature, the thin strips of sand where climate science and politics collide. For surfers and activists like Jon Coen and John Weber the force and impact of the ocean is clear: the storms that create the best surfing waves are also the storms that threaten to drown their communities. From the surfers of Long Beach Island to the scientists and politicians of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Shored Up tells a complex story that will surprise and engage viewers and users all along our coasts. You can only tread water for so long on a coast thats going under, and Shored Up is provocative look at the choices we have to make where human nature and the force of nature collide.

Our story begins on the barrier island Long Beach Island (LBI), one of New Jerseys first beach resort communities. On a typical summer day waves lap gently on beaches covered with sunbathers while ice cream and sunblock flow by the gallon. But during the winter nature takes over as Noreasters and an occasional hurricane batter the island, shifting mountains of sand, destroying homes and sometimes cutting the island to pieces. And on LBI, behind the tourist shops, ice cream parlors and sheen of happiness the decade-old battle between surfers and the Army Corps of Engineers over beach replenishment is playing out. As an engineering approach, beach replenishment is designed to protect property and infrastructure from erosion. But replenishment, like many engineering solutions has unexpected consequences like buried and altered surf breaks, dramatic increases in neck and back injuries and a scoured and damaged sea floor ecosystem. For surfer/conservationists like Coen and Weber these impacts are bad enough. But beach replenishment also masks a much larger problem. Replenishment and other forms of coastal engineering (like groins and jetties) are part of massive cycle of unsustainable development which is leaving us exposed to unimaginable risk up and down the coast. As legislatures re-write laws to ignore sea level rise, beach replenishment has morphed from a method to keep sand on the beach and tourists on their towels into a dangerous game of chicken with nature.

From LBI Shored Up travels to the Outer Banks of North Carolina to explore the issue that is the wild card in any conversation about beach erosion and the coasts: sea level rise. For decades progressive regulations in North Carolina have limited coastal engineering projects to protect and preserve coastal inlets and islands from overdevelopment. But as an ascendant Tea Party flexes its newfound political muscles in the state those policies are now under assault. The drama unfolds during the Coastal Resource Committees annual meeting as pro-development lobbyists bury the Committees own science panel recommendations, ignoring scientific consensus in favor of pro-development policies. Prominent scientists including Orrin Pilkey, Stan Riggs and Rob Young parry with mayors and business advocates Harry Simmons and Tommy Thompson as the science panels role in policy-making is methodically undermined. As the debate intensifies, national press coverage from Scientific American to the Colbert Report brings this once obscure skirmish to light. But as a thoughtful policy debate is engulfed in nonsensical political rhetoric, consensus implodes and the waves keep creeping closer.

Along its journey between LBI and the Outer Banks Shored Up interweaves the history of development along the Atlantic coast through interviews with historians, citizens and mayors including Deborah Whitcraft, Margaret Schram and Jonathon Oldham. With its broad scope and specific storyline Shored Up identifies a new flash point in the politics of climate change on the local, regional and national stage. With millions of citizens living at or near sea level there is an urgent need for a plan. Few of those living on the coast would deny that the seas are rising, so whats standing in the way of a common sense, shared vision for the future of our coasts? Shored Up is there to find out.