Dontrece Smith shares how he built trust with community members while working at a world-class research facility on a remote barrier island off the coast of Georgia, USA. He details the first-hand experiences of doing fieldwork in salt marshes and maritime forests there, and even what motivated his journey into shark research.
Transcript
Jess: Sapelo Island is lined by sand dunes and the Atlantic Ocean on its seaward side, and long stretches of salt marsh on the other, closest to the coast of Georgia. It’s also home to the last intact Gullah Geechee community in the Sea Islands of Georgia. These people can trace their lineage back to enslaved descendants from Sierra Leone. They have a very strong culture. What’s it like to be on the island? How does it feel, what does it sound like, smell like?
Dontrece: Life on Sapelo was peace, freedom, a nature lover's paradise. It's hard to put into words until you spend time there being immersed in just being on the island. I loved my eight years. I miss it ‘til this day. It's one of those places where I could go back there at the drop of a penny and be right back in the marsh and driving the boat.
Jess: You can smell the island pretty much anywhere on the island, I think. Or you can at least smell the marsh because it's very organic. I recall when I was doing my dissertation work that I was working in the field, and I called out to one of the other researchers that I was working with, and they couldn't hear me. The sound of the reeds and the wind is so loud, and the marsh soaks up sound, so it's extremely unique. You've got fiddler crabs, snails, buzzards, clams, mussels and oysters, but I think that part was unique. Your published studies include various studies that have taken place on Sapelo Island. You drove researchers to field sites, you helped plan projects, you troubleshot sensor issues. What projects have you been involved in?
Dontrece: Back when I first started on the island in 2014, the first project that I started on, which was my main responsibility, was the SALTEx experiment. That stands for Seawater Addition Long Term Experiment. We took a section of a freshwater tidal wetland, and we were simulating sea level rise over the course of five years. We would measure and look at changes in greenhouse gas emissions, plant communities, plant height, above- and below- ground biomass. We even looked into the inverts that were traditionally there, seeing how they would shift in the area. As I was doing that project, I was gradually introduced to other ones. The high marsh experiment was where we were looking at groundwater exchange in between low marsh, high marsh, and the maritime forest. We had groundwater wells set up at different elevations in a bunch of different sites.
We had our core projects, one of them being the water quality. We were looking at shifts in pH, alkalinity, dissolved inorganic carbon, dissolved organic matter, and other nutrients. Every year we looked at SETs, which are sediment elevation tables; also inverts such as fiddler crabs, snails, clams. There were some other small project sites. [We had a] horizontal acoustic doppler current profiler that was set up for about four years, and that was on the Duplin River on the west side of Sapelo Island. You and I, we actually worked on the flux tower. It was researchers like yourself who would come down maybe four to six times a year. Other researchers I would see at least once a month from UGA, Georgia Tech, Indiana University. Some of my favorites that gave me the most memories was Broughton Island. It was like the halfway point on our study area on the Altamaha River. That site is key because going from salt marsh to a brackish marsh to a fresh water tidal forest, we were looking to see how plant communities on the north, south, east, and west side of the island were actually shifting during hurricane events, seeing if there was sea level rise either before, during, or after those events and just seeing how those plant communities changed over time. That one was very character building.
Jess: Are you saying character building because there's Juncus and it whips your arms as you walk past?
Dontrece: It was character building because of the plants and the distance you would hike to some of those sampling sites. People's characters come out during those samplings. Like, “I thought it was right here!” It's like, “No, we still got another hundred yards to hike through Juncus and Zizaniopsis. When you get out of the boat, you're, like, “Oh, I can't see 10 feet in front of me.” Just keep on trekking until your GPS tracker says that you're in the sampling area. My favorite - site 11 - the tidal forest. Probably one of the most peaceful, beautiful, tranquil places you could ever go to. Also, the only site where there's no sand gnats and no mosquitoes.
Jess: I think people most likely want to hear about the sharks. Why were you shark tagging? Why did you decide to study sharks?
Dontrece: Growing up as a kid, I watched a lot of Animal Planet, watched a lot of Discovery Channel, saw men and women doing shark research. I was always intrigued by it. Went to undergrad, I got my bachelors and eventually, I went to Savannah State. I was going to get a master’s in marine sciences and my thesis advisor, Dr. Mary Carla Curran, she takes all of her graduate students out to a brunch, and she will personally ask, “What project do you want to do?” I was like, “A shark tagging study.” She was like, “I think we can make that happen.” I was like, “Really? Okay.” I knew I wasn't going to be able to tag bull shark or a great hammerhead or anything. The local composite shark species would have been fine for me. I was blessed with the opportunity to do a study looking at the movement of bonnetheads.
Jess: How many sharks have you gotten up close and personal with?
Dontrece: I would say, maximum 10. That was back in 2012. They are a very seasonal species, bonnetheads. Typically, from like April to about September, early October, they'll come up, up the East Coast, and then they go back down south back to Central to Southern Florida waters.
Jess: Did you grow up, kind of, wrangling sharks?
Dontrece: I've always grown up fishing, but I didn't get into saltwater really until I went to graduate school. The majority of my fishing experience was all freshwater, catching bluegill, black crappie, largemouth bass, channel catfish. I just love it. I've had shark encounters while surfing, haven't been bitten or attacked. I've definitely accidentally kicked one. I was surfing, and it thrashed, I thrashed. They aren't out to get us, because if that was the case, I would have been bit every time I've been in the ocean. I've been fishing, pulling the seine net in waist-deep water and the sharks were more concerned about getting the fish from the nets than even me standing there. Actually, stingrays are the ones that you can't really predict them, because you could easily step on them and get stung by the barb.
Jess: Sapelo does have Stingrays.
Dontrece: A lot of stingrays, more than you would imagine. Pulling the seine net with the local Gullah Geechee people on the island, the net was heavy. And we're like, “man, we have a lot of fish in here!” I counted 20+ stingrays that we actually caught.
Jess: How do you get those out of the net?
Dontrece: Well, you can grab them. I was the only really experienced one on the island who knew how to get them out.
Jess: I have a bonnethead tattoo.
Dontrece: Okay, yeah.
Jess: On Sapelo, I was on the beach, getting my feet wet, and saw a bonnethead. So, I got that tattoo. While I do agree that apex predators can be dangerous, it's important to remember that they're where they're supposed to be, which is in the marshes. It's good to let people know that they're not that scary. They're just animals that are very successful where they are in the circle of life, or the food pyramid.
Dontrece: Exactly. One day I was done sampling. There was a bunch of baby alligators right in front of me in the water. I'm like three feet from them. I was that close, and I'm just looking like, “Where is their mom at?” I just happened to glance to my right, and couldn't even see her or him, perfect camouflage. If I were to have reached a hand, and was like, “oh, let me see if I could…” Oh, that would have been…
Jess: I highly encourage listeners to read “God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man”, a memoir by Cornelia Walker Bailey that provides an insight to the unique Gullah Geechee culture that scientists doing work on the island absolutely should be compelled to read. It gave me a better understanding of the traditional values and beliefs held by the island residents, with tales of Afro-descendant lore like the power of root, will-o’-the-wisp, and folk healing. It also detailed the coercive and intimidating methods of land grabbing and labor exploitation from freed slaves and their descendants by former island owners. Cornelia was a Saltwater Geechee, a descendant of enslaved people forcefully brought to America from Sierra Leone, who passed away 8 years ago. Her son, Maurice Bailey, still lives on the island, where he runs a general store and plants heirloom crops like red peas. Maurice is the Director of Sapelo Island Cultural Revitalization Society and Founder of Save Our Legacy Ourself, which aims to achieve food sovereignty for the island community at Hogg Hummock. You can donate to their cause online by going to https://www.saveourlegacyourself.org/donate.
So, how do you suggest that scientists get to know the people living on the island better? And, how did you get to know people living on the island?
Dontrece: When I first started there, my primary supervisor, his name was Dr. Chris Craft. He was like, “they play Spades at the general store over in the back half of it, which is a bar called The Trough.” I got beat on every game, but I kept coming back, just getting to know the men and women who would come down there and play cards. I told them a little bit about me and why I was there. They taught me how to hunt on the island. I was helping on a bunch of research and projects, but I was also helping people in the community if anybody needed help with the project with their house or they were having car issue, or if an elder on the island who couldn't move for some reason, or they were disabled, I would catch some fish for them and drop it off to them. After they got to know me, they were, like, “okay, he's not here to ‘fake’ doing research, and maybe trying to steal our culture and to capitalize on our knowledge or anything”. I was just there because I wanted to be around. I wanted to learn from them.
Jess: So you did see scientists there, at The Trough?
Dontrece: Yes, I did see scientists coming to The Trough, going into the community to make an effort to build a bond and a relationship with people in the community. Not all of them, of course.
Jess: Yeah, I feel like it's hard as an early career scientist to get involved with local communities.
Dontrece: That's kind of one of the struggles with the sciences in general. I think research science is super important. That's how we learn our environment and how we can better adapt, but not being able to communicate how it is impactful or how it is beneficial to people leaves that gray area. That is part of our job, to not only collect data, but to also make it presentable and be able to show, “this is why this is important”.
Bonnetheads, they specialize in feeding on blue crabs. People in the lowcountry all the way up to Maryland love to eat blue crabs. So, if this particular shark species starts to decline in numbers, that's going to have an impact on blue crabs. That could be a positive, or it could be a negative.
Jess: What are your future hopes for research on Sapelo Island or communities like the Gullah Geechee there, related to science, the humanities, or environmental issues?
Dontrece: My hopes for research coming to the island is more focused to the community. We kind of have a general consensus that the climate is changing, and this pertains to Sapelo and other communities of Indigenous people who have descendants still in the area. Whatever we are doing there as far as research is, make sure it is relevant to people. We are a part of this ecosystem as well. If we can gain some knowledge from this research to make our lives better and maintain our ecosystem and restore it somewhat, that is a big win.