“It gives time for the roots to build up.”Įve Zuckoff James Moreis brought his six-year-old daughter Akinah out to plant beach grass. “When you do it now, this time of the year, it’s the wet season,” Moreis explained. With sun and time, these plants will grow to become the green blades common on postcard-worthy Cape and Island vistas. The pair were among 100-plus volunteers who showed up to hand-plant 20,000 stems of beach grass along an 800-foot stretch. “OK, let’s do it together, Daddy,” she said.
“You want me to help you?” Moreis asked his daughter. Into each, the volunteers placed two stiff spears of tan grass that resembled hay.
The holes are spaced about a foot apart at the base of the dune. “This is how I make holes,” she told her dad. The work picked up on a sunny spring morning on Lobsterville Road, where James Moreis and his 6-year-old daughter Akinah moved in tandem: he used a steel rake to poke holes in the sand, and she stepped on it to make the holes deeper. To that end, tribe members and community volunteers are turning to beach grass: planting it one stem at a time to save an eroding sand dune and beach with deep roots in the tribe’s history. The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Aquinnah is determined to protect its homelands on Martha’s Vineyard from the impacts of climate change.
