A collaboration between the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) and Tufts University to study erosion at the Gay Head cliffs was funded by NASA in 2024, only to have its grant withdrawn the following year after the change in federal administration.
The news was made public Tuesday by Tufts professor of engineering Farshid Vahedifard, speaking at the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center in Vineyard Haven.
“They said that it’s no longer in line with federal priorities,” Mr. Vahedifard told a sold-out audience at the annual Islands Coastal Conference, which takes place on the Vineyard every other year.
The long-term goal of the study is to support the tribe’s stewardship of the cliffs over generations to come, he said.
“The project is led by the tribe.” Mr. Vahedifard said.
Undeterred by NASA’s withdrawal, the tribe applied for and won a grant from the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management to continue the study in partnership with Tufts.
To track the changing cliffs and to model future changes, Mr. Vahedifard said an interdisciplinary team of scientists is using satellite imaging, historic maps and existing geological and archeological studies, including the deeply-researched report prepared for the Gay Head lighthouse move in 2015.
But science is only part of the study, he said. Wampanoag tribal members are making key contributions by sharing not only their observations of the changing cliffs, but their personal memories and cultural traditions as well.
“We are always so impressed by how much the tribe is willing to put in this project,” Mr. Vahedifard said. “It’s so amazing to listen to them.”
He also displayed a diagram of terms that tribal members used most frequently in conversations about the cliffs at the 2026 powwow, with “sacred” and “home” at the forefront followed by “heritage,” “nature” and “clay.”
The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), the state coastal zone management office and the Martha’s Vineyard Commission were the lead co-sponsors of this year’s coastal conference, which is presented by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Sea Grant research foundation.
The all-day event moved briskly through a series of speakers, each of whom outlined a different aspect of environmental research, planning or policy.
Global sea level rise is accelerating, WHOI oceanographer Chris Piecuch said, bringing high-tide flooding and ever-more-damaging storms.
“Everywhere, we’re going to see an increase in frequency of these extreme weather events,” he said.
Specific water level data is scanty for Cape Cod and the Islands, he said, but a project is getting underway to add sensors across the area.
As with the Gay Head Cliffs study, scientists are also looking to laypeople with long experience, such as recreational fishers, to help understand the changing coastline.
“There’s a lot of room for co-produced knowledge,” Mr. Piecuch said.
Mark Borelli, a coastal geologist with the University of Massachusetts, Boston, noted that some stormy weather is essential to life on Earth.
“It’s a climate regulator. It pulls heat out of the tropics and makes it livable for us,” he said.
“Humans could not live on this planet without hurricanes,” said Mr. Borelli, who spoke with disdain of the media term “freak storm.”
“That drives me crazy,’ he said. “The most natural thing in the world is storms.”
Mr. Borelli scorned another weather cliché after noting that Boston saw record-setting winter storms in both 1978 and 2018.
“That’s two ‘hundred-year’ storms in 40 years. We should think about renaming those,” he said.
An even larger storm came through the area in January of 2015, Mr. Borelli said, but failed to register as a major hit because it arrived at low tide, sparing coastal communities the devastating effects of surging water.
“Sea level rise runs the show,” he said.
Islanders also got a sneak preview of the state’s upcoming report on fishing port data from Story Reed, assistant director of the Massachusetts Department of Marine Fisheries.
The Vineyard has about 150 active harvesters of fish and shellfish, Mr. Reed said, down from more than 200 a decade ago.
Shellfish are the most-landed crop, he said, accounting in 2024 for $2.3 million in ex-vessel sales, defined as the first transaction after harvest.
Invertebrates such as lobster and whelk brought in $9.7 million in 2024, according to the fisheries data, and finfish totaled $5.9 million.
The full report will be released later this month, Mr. Story said.
Island biologists and planners also spoke at the coastal conference, which was founded in 2013 and takes place on Nantucket every other year.
Emma Green-Beach, executive director of the Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group, highlighted the non-profit’s successful transformation of the former lobster hatchery on Lagoon Pond into a nursery for eelgrass shoots that have been uprooted by storms, allowing the plants to be preserved and returned to the pond bottom as habitat for shellfish.
Martha’s Vineyard Commission planners Sheri Caseau spoke about the health of Island ponds, which are under mounting environmental pressure from excess nitrogen.
The commission’s climate resilience planner, Sakiko Isomichi, spoke on how to build a stronger supply chain for Islanders’ most essential necessities and also introduced the MVC’s new Marsh Stewards program aimed at assessing and restoring Island wetlands.
Speakers also discussed the science of salt marshes and the plight of the Wampanoag herring fishery, which biologist Maria Abate said is losing much of its herring to commercial boats that scoop them up as bycatch while harvesting other species.
Dukes County manager Martina Thornton, who doubles as the county’s emergency manager, presented a draft strategic plan for emergency management across the Island.
The six towns face common threats, Ms. Thornton said.
“The severe weather, the coastal storms, they do not know the town boundaries. The public emergencies, [such as] COVID, they affect us all,” she said.
At the same time, Ms. Thornton said, each community has limited resources, with emergency managers who have other full-time jobs.
“They are not specifically just thinking every day about emergency management. So that puts a strain on, when there is a big operation, who is actually going to be doing all that emergency management work,” she said.
Ms. Thornton said she is now in the process of asking each select board to approve the strategic plan and contribute to hiring a full-time emergency manager for the Island as a whole.
“Ninety-five per cent of emergency management is in planning. It happens before emergencies arrive,” she said.
The Islands Coastal Conference is scheduled to return to the Vineyard in 2028.