Throughout the Western history of conservation, protecting nature has often meant removing people. It's what happened during the creation of many of America's national parks. But what if protecting nature didn't have to mean displacing the people who call it home? That's the question that brings us to Culatra, a small fishing island off Portugal's southern coast, and one of the country's seven natural wonders.
For decades, the Portuguese government saw only one way to save the fragile lagoon surrounding Culatra: kick out the residents. This episode follows one woman's decades-long fight for her island — and the unlikely alliance she built along the way with the very scientists once sent to evict her.
CREDITS
This episode was reported and produced by Geert Vlieger. Sound design also by Geert. Johanna Zorn edited the episode with help from Executive Producer Carlyle Calhoun. Fado was performed on acoustic guitar by Ricardo Martins and Cláudio Sousa. All other music in the episode is composed and produced by Geert. Sea Change’s theme music is by Jon Batiste.
Production of this episode was made possible with support from the Walden Collective and Sciaena, and funding from the European Union’s Big Green Project. One brief update: Valentina Munoz is now in Lisbon and is no longer working for the NGO, but hopes to continue working on community-based ocean protection programs.
Sea Change is a WWNO and WRKF production. We are part of the NPR Podcast Network and distributed by PRX. And to help others find our podcast, please share this episode with a friend!
Sea Change is made possible with major support from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. WWNO’s Coastal Desk is supported by the Walton Family Foundation, the Meraux Foundation, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation.
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TRANSCRIPT
INTRO
I’m Carlyle Calhoun and you’re listening to Sea Change.
There's a story we like to tell about national parks.
It goes like this: once upon a time we recognized extraordinary, unique landscapes—forests, mountains, rivers teeming with wildlife—and decided they were too beautiful to lose. So we protected them. National parks have even been called America's best idea.
It's a great story. It's also an incomplete one.
Because if you rewind the tape, before the grand lodges and visitor centers, you don't find untouched wilderness. You find people living there.
To create many of our national parks, like Yellowstone and Yosemite, Indigenous communities were forced from their homes. The government also used eminent domain to kick out farmers in order to establish the Great Smoky Mountains and Shenandoah National Parks. Preservation relied on the belief that nature should be empty of human impact…so protection often began with removal.
But what if protecting nature didn't have to mean displacing the people who call it home?
That's the question that brings us to Culatra, a small island off Portugal's southern coast, where a very different answer may be taking shape.
After the break, Geert Vlieger, an audio documentarian based in Amsterdam, takes us to Culatra.
MIDROLL
Valentina
of course, like it was yesterday
Valentina
it was a Beautiful day.
So it was blue sky the bluest sky
And the bougainvilleas the strong pink flowers at the entrance of the island.
And this little church in the middle
I was like this is pretty Amazing
I started to walk around.
And seeing people
Everyone would say hi to each other
And joke around
And you would see little kids like running around or going around with bikes
Everyone was so cheerful and nice and welcoming
I was like this is nice place
It felt very welcoming
Dog barking, Valentina stepping into an house saying hello
Valetina
When you step foot at the island you feel it immediately, how they are united
Big big family that will take care of each other
They will open their minds and hearts and let people in also me for example
Valentina is from Chile, and she first came to the island of Culatra just 5 years ago. She’s a marine biologist working for an NGO that is trying to improve the marine environment in the Algarve region of Southern Portugal and beyond. She sets up community-based ocean protection programs.
Over the years, Culatra has become a kind of second home for Valentina… she’s gotten used to the rhythm of life in this fishing community… where one side of the island is the Atlantic Ocean, the other side is the Ria Formosa. The Ria is a 40-mile-long lagoon, a shallow area of water that's partly separated from the ocean by 4 barrier islands, one of them being Culatra.
Valentina
And you have a life at the Ria
You have a life at the ocean
Ocean chill and play games
Then you go to the ria side
Everybody’s working
Drinking beer
Getting boats getting fish
Completely different the dynamic
Everything here on the island depends on the moon, the tides, or the weather.
That’s the real boss here.
On Culatra they fish in small motorized boats in the ria and the ocean. They gather shellfish and farm oysters. Fishing is a way of life for the islanders.
Coming in of a building sound 012 WAV
Madelena Conceição, like most of the women on the island, collects shellfish, like cockles, and razor clams. They mostly sell them at auction, and to markets and restaurants on the mainland.
Madelena
Roughly how many generations have been on the island?
On my side?
Yes. (..)
About 5 or 6. (.) 5 or 6 generations? Yes. (...) Ok. (..)
She and her ancestors have lived on Culatra for 5 to 6 generations
Madelena
Ah, my work—I’m a shellfish gatherer. So, since I was very little… I was small, really small, and I already went with my mother, I went with my mother, gathering shellfish just like her. It’s true.
She says, since she was very small. She went along with her mother, who taught her how to gather shellfish.
Madelena
If there’s a morning tide, in the morning, around 9, 9 o'clock, I have to go. If it’s in the afternoon, I also have to go. (..) Always following, let’s say, the clock
She goes out working when the tides say so, so if it’s in the morning, it’s in the morning. If it’s in the afternoon, it’s in the afternoon.
The Ria Formosa is not only a fishing lagoon, it’s also considered one of the 7 natural wonders of Portugal, which is why marine biologists like Valentina, and her colleague Nicolas Blanc spend much of their careers focused on studying and protecting this area.
Nic
Ria Formosa is one of the most important natural areas of Portugal
So it’s created by the presence of what we call barrier islands that separate the ocean from the lagoon
And between are some canals that allow for the water to come out and of the lagoon to the sea
The (coastal) landscape changes constantly with the tides.
And because of this constant influx of water because of the low and high tide there is a continues influx of nutrients with this renewal
So it’s very important for the local bio diversity
The Ria Formosa is a commercially-important nursery area for many species - such as Seabass, Seabream and octopus.
Researcher Claudia Sil is joining us for a bit while we explore the island. Since there are no cars, we travel on foot across the sandy, treeless island. Claudia has been an advisor in water and landscape ecosystems for over 3 decades.
She started coming to Culatra as a child.
Claudia
The world that I knew, for it was an abundance. It was a paradise. Lot’s of colours.
My favorite was called aplysia and – and when I was young it looked to me like a phantom or witch or something is very strange animal like just something from the fantasy world
Aplysia is a large sea slug with a soft body and ear-like tentacles that resemble a rabbit's ears. It releases purple ink to defend itself from predators.
But Aplysia is extinct in the region now…
Claudia
like corals we can't see it anymore and they just disappeared
Also the noble pen shell - a beloved underwater giant that can grow up to four feet - has nearly gone extinct. Just like the sea horses, a fan favorite in the Ria.
We sit down in one of Culatra’s restaurants for lunch, it takes no guessing what's on the menu…all seafood. Claudia advises us to try the local fish stew, it came in a huge stockpot and was generously filled.
She explains how this abundance from her youth came to be. Because of this really special thing that is often ignored, seagrass.
Many species choose sea grasses to hide from predators. — So it protects them. Some species protects the eggs
many people think, I think, that fish reproduce on the open ocean. But it's not true. It's on shore.
So it's really, really, really important.
The seagrass meadows around Culatra are unique. They’re home to three different seagrass species found growing together, unlike anywhere else in the world. And, it absorbs carbon from the water.
Claudia
at a very high rate, much bigger rates than the forests and than Amazonas forests,
Per square meter, seagrass can store up to 10 times more carbon than the amazon rain forest.
Claudia
like 10, 5 to 10 more than forests. It's small plants that are so important for this new reality of climate change and big, huge emissions.
Seagrass needs sunlight to grow, and since the Ria at a low tide is mostly shallow, it grows well here. But in the last decades the amount of seagrass here has declined rapidly. So the Ria Formosa isn’t what it was.
Claudia
it's very sad now that I compare what I see with my memories with what it was.
The culprit, on a global scale, is the warming sea waters… but on a local level, there are many manmade issues at work.. such as pollution from urban wastewater and building on shores. Also fishers’ boats can harm seagrass with their nets. With that also the water becomes murkier, less and less sunlight reaches the seagrass, plants eventually die.
Valentina, the Chilean marine biologist, keeps a close eye on the changes taking place here.
Valentina
All fishes have their own role, algae, even the little particles that are floating around have a role
In this network that works as an ecosystem
And we are immersed in it
And we have a great impact
Yes it needs to be preserved and taken care of.
Starting back in the 1970s after the overthrow of Portugal’s dictatorship there was a big movement to protect nature in Portugal. And the government created 13 natural parks.
Including, in 1987, the Ria Formosa natural park. A 70 square mile coastal lagoon made up of: sand dunes, salt marshes and channels. The 4 islands with their paradise-like feel - one of them being Culatra - are also a part of it.
Once the park was created, strict environmental laws could be used to stop the declining populations of seagrass, clams, fishes, and ocean life in general. But the islands themselves were also a crucial part of the ecosystem, and needed protection too.
Paula Martins has been an employee of the natural Park since the very beginning.
Paula
January of 88 (.) last century (....)
She started out as warden on Culatra.
the islands are very fragile.
This because of the influx of the wind and waves. They take away pieces of land, but tend to also give it back to other parts of the island.
So it's a system that is almost alive.
Paula says, in this way the island walks over years. It’s a natural process that progresses very, very slowly… thanks to the plants growing on the dunes.
Imagine the islands, all the sand that is moving, can stay there if there are plants. (..) The vegetation, the natural one, also moves with the sand,
But if there's men in the equation, always, always us, always us...
if we interact too much with our activities, the dune will be less resilient.
Activities like building houses on top of the dunes.
But if you destroy the houses to preserve the ecosystem, you destroy the community that lives there. Is one more important than the other?
That seemed like an easy question for the Portuguese government at the time. In 1987 not long after the natural park was established, it released a masterplan for the whole Ria: 1000 houses were going to be demolished…
Officials said they were trying to protect the islanders who were at risk of losing their lives to storms, or even a Tsunami.
400 years ago, a tsunami devastated pretty much the whole south coast and scientists say the next big one - is not far away. A tsunami wasn’t the islanders biggest worry though, they just wanted to remain on the island. It’s all they’ve known.
Authorities claimed the families on Culatra were illegally occupying the land. Many homes were built without any formal land ownership or permits. And most people didn’t pay taxes. They were seen as trespassers.
So when the first houses were torn down on a neighbouring island, Culatra knew: they were going to be next.
And this might’ve been the case, If it wasn’t for one person.
Ola bom dia bom dia
Meet Silvia Padinha, an oyster farmer living on the island.
Silvia spends nearly every day under the hot sun, checking and maintaining her oyster beds. She cleans the cages and nets and sorts the oysters. When they are ready, she harvests the mature ones for sale.
When we meet her at her son’s house she’s wearing a black flowy pants and a silky bordeaux red blouse. It’s very clear that Silvia has a sense of style that you might not expect from an oyster farmer. But like all things about Silvia, she should never be underestimated. She welcomes us with a warm smile, and tells us the story of the island’s earliest communities:
The community occupied this place, which is a barrier island, around 1900, 1800... It started with the tuna traps, almost the years, 1857, they started working in the traps and then moved. Some stayed permanently, still had another house, and then built here. And from there, they stayed for survival, for work
Here, the occupation became permanent because they found food. They found fish in the lagoon, they found fish in the sea, they found bivalves in the lagoon, and they found fresh water.
Silvia says there’s proof that people have been living here since at least the 1850’s. So almost 200 years. At first they were here for tuna fishing, which was more seasonal. But as they started to find other types of fish and clams in the lagoon, they started to build homes and put down roots.
Yes, what we can trace, because it’s very difficult, was my grandmother, my paternal grandmother, she was born in 1902.
Her family line goes back to 1902, when her grandmother was born.
As a child, I did here, I was born, I was a child, I was like all the other happy children, because we had freedom. I had primary school...
And she was quite a good student. She went to classes, which wasn’t the case for everyone. Silva did well in school.
And I, at 16, signed up for a government project to teach the Portuguese population to read and write, and I taught my mother and some community members to read and write.
At age 16 she joined a project where kids could teach their parents how to read and write. She was a good teacher, eventually she taught a lot of islanders the basics.
And we didn’t have any living conditions, no light, no TV. The TV was with a battery. There was a lot of difficulty in bringing knowledge to those who lived here. And then, in the summer, we had some relationships with people who came from outside and were on vacation or stayed here or relatives who were there, and from September onwards, we looked out from Culatra to there and saw the city lights on, and we were here in darkness.
Growing up on Culatra. Silvia says that the summers were quite fun - when people visited from the mainland. But then from September onwards she could see the mainland and the cities with all their lights, thinking: we are here in the complete dark.
Beginning at 18, she started to go more often to the mainland. She took typing and accounting classes. She got a boyfriend and a job, and then in 1987, the same year as the natural park was established: she married.
So, in ’87, I got married. So, in ’87, I got married too. It was a time... That year of ’87, everything happened? Everything happened, right?
Everything happened that year. She says with a smile. They had a house, a car, a child. But back home on Culatra, a lot was happening too. And she knew in her heart that her island needed her.
So she joined the Association of Residents of Culatra island, a group formed to protect the island's residents. She was one of the few skilled readers and writers in the group. From her secretary work, she also knew a bit about laws and how the government works. So Silvia quickly became one of the key people in the Association.
In the following years - we are talking the 90’s - her main mission was trying to stop the housing demolitions. She was also determined to get basic infrastructure for the people of Culatra. Since the Portuguese government always saw them as illegal residents, the government didn’t invest in the island. In 1990 Culatra didn’t have electricity, gas, clean drinking water or proper waste management.
To draw attention to their needs, Silvia and the Association organized protests, like a boycott of an upcoming election. She reached out to the European Union to plead her case. And, all the while, Silvia was in contact with politicians and journalists, making sure the islanders weren’t forgotten about.
Eventually efforts like these were successful. Culatra gained access to electricity and clean drinking water. Yet, while there was this constant threat of houses being torn down, throughout the 90’s it didn’t happen.
Silvia was still living on the mainland, but the island continued to pull her closer.
"I had a marriage, I had a child, I had a life within the square, with a house, with a car, with everything.”
Silvia says: I had a marriage, I had a child, I had a life within the square, with a house, with a car, with everything.
But eventually she decided to leave her job, leave her husband and leave the mainland. She moved back to the island where she was born, just in time for the biggest battle the island would face.
That story after the break.
BREAK
In the early 2000’s, the people of Culatra were worried about their future on the island. Would they be able to stay? Or would the government act on its promise to demolish the vast majority of their homes?
If you had asked Paula Martins way back when she started working for the Ria Formosa natural park in the late 80’s what she thought was the right answer, that answer would probably have been simple: protect nature – preserve the rare habitats in and around the islands… tear those houses down and send the islanders packing.
(Paula)…like in Spain areas that were private from the king and now it's a natural park and there's nothing inside so that is great there's no buildings no towns nothing inside that's pure nature, okay.
But, with no bulldozers on the horizon, Paula had to look for another way. Spending time on Culatra, she began to realize that the residents had little knowledge about their negative impact on the Ria.
For instance, they used an industrial fishing method that involves dragging a large net through the water. Trawling. Highly efficient for catching large quantities of fish, but heavily destructive. And the fishing boats also didn’t have trash bins on board, so they threw all of their garbage and old nets into the Ria.
And so the leadership of the park came up with a new strategy to save nature: find ways to work with the islanders… and that meant working with Silvia:
Silvia
Portuguese: Back then, we didn’t understand, which is why the park and the technicians who came to prohibit/open this or that were always seen as the bad guys, because we didn’t understand why we couldn’t pick small clams or why that was our reality.
Silvia says that back then she didn’t understand why the park prohibited certain things. She remembers one time Paula and her colleagues told them not to pick the small clams. The islanders felt like they were spoken to as if they were children. At first they didn’t obey.
Silvia: Ok, ok, ok. So, they were working with people from the Culatra community, (..) in Praia de Faro, to build up the walking paths //S00: the board walks// yes, exactly; to restore the dunes with some plants that they brought from other islands, which were growing strong, to make a stronger system. (...)
But Paula and the Natural Park slowly gained the islanders’ trust. And they were smart about it. When they created a program to protect the dunes by building pathways that floated over the sand, Instead of the Natural Park doing this work, they employed the islanders to do so. The residents were happy to get paid and at the same time improve their island.
Once the Park and the Islanders were working together, the fishermen of Culatra were more inclined to stop their destructive trawling methods and to start clam picking in a more sustainable way.
Silvia
Paula, …If there had been this concern back then from the entities to provide training to a community living inside a natural park area—which isn’t normal in other places and which we had—then we’d certainly have more beneficial actions and live more in harmony with the environment. Because there were many illegal activities, like trawling, and many little things like that.
“Looking back”, Silvia says, it had to do with a lack of training. “We were living and working in a Nature Park but nobody taught us how. When the Natural Park set up learning programs she started to understand how important it was to preserve nature.
And likewise, Paula tells us she learned to expand her ideas about what nature can encompass:
if you have communities we you must live with the communities communities are also part of nature in a way … I think that there are need to be compromises between man and nature there's no other way to do it.
But just as the two sides reached a kind of harmony on the island, demolition orders arrived from the capital.
In 2005, a new parliament was installed, including a new minister of environment. It released a new coastal plan that called for the re-naturalization of the entire south coast of Portugal.
The moment had come.
You remember those 1000 houses the government wanted to demolish in the Ria Formosa? So far, they’d only torn down about a quarter of those, still sparing Culatra. But now they were about to finish their job.
In 2008 Portugal created a task force called: Sociedade Polis Litoral Ria Formosa, Polis for short. They planned a full scale bulldozer operation on all of the islands. A Portuguese newspaper claimed that in Culatra 400 buildings were on the demolition list. That’s almost everything.
The island started protesting again, with Silvia taking the lead. Almost all the islanders traveled with her all the way to Lisbon to the parliament to let their voices be heard.
feature=youtu.be Parlement demonstration tape youtube.com/watch?v=b10QuqgpkjU&
They also demonstrated closer to home, in a flotilla of at least a hundred small fishing boats they stormed through the Ria. Horns blaring. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlahcoINPLo
While protesting slowed down demolition plans, it didn’t stop them. Eventually what all islanders feared happened: The task force set foot on the island.
Video: woman praying before the Poolis arrives.
They arrived by boat, hundreds of islanders awaited them. The task force was escorted by 40 officers. A video shows the police creating a human wall around the task force. It was needed.
Video: Polis walking over island with a lot of islanders around
The Task Force didn’t come to the island with bulldozers… not yet, but something just as scary: Blue spray paint.
Video: Polis walking over island man screams at them (quote below)
We see the task force slowly making their way over the beach accompanied by hundreds of islanders swarming around them while blowing their clam horns. One islander leans in on the human wall, in this way he’s only a few inches away from the task force members. for the rest of your life you will be embarrassed, he screams right in someone's face. Some islanders chant, others can’t do anything but cry.
Video: same as description below
Then members of the task force stop, take out their map and check which houses need to be marked. They walk towards one, but a big group of islanders blocks their way. One woman defends a house by staring down a spray gun. But then she faints in the middle of the crowd. It doesn’t stop the task force from doing their job. They spray the house with a number, 147 in this case, and stick a piece of paper to the wall that reads: this house is repossessed. Then on to the next one.
No one seems to be enjoying this. When the sun sets, the task force has finally left the island. Leaving dozens of home owners in complete distress. Bulldozers were slated to take down their houses within the next couple of weeks..
But Silvia wasn’t going to let this happen. She worked behind the scenes, talking with politicians and journalists. Although the minister of the environment had set a plan in place to put nature before people, Silvia made the point that people are also a part of nature. More politicians started warming up to this idea, becoming sympathetic to the islanders’ plight.
Video of parliament vouching for Culatra https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7ctUk1zhdY
Silvia and the association also set up a legal fund to hire lawyers so that the islanders could fight the demolition orders. And they sued the state: in their eyes the demolitions were illegal.
And finally in 2018, The court ruled in favor of the people. There would be no full scale bulldozing.
Eventually the government also completely pulled the plug on the task force.
In October 2018, the Portuguese government finally officially recognized Culatra. The people could stay. That fight was over.
But the challenges to both the park and the islanders' way of life did not stop there.
Culatra still faced a threat to the delicate balance it was forging between man and nature… mass tourism.
Plane flying over
Trolleys on airport
Scottish Tourist
A lot of drinking, a lot of dancing. Loads of shots. Free shots as well if you’re good. hahaha
In Portugal’s Algarve region - in which Culatra is a part of - 80% of the income is directly or indirectly linked to tourism. The area is well known for golf, water sports, and its beautiful year-round weather. The beloved Ria Formosa was being exploited by it.
This is Nicolas, the Ria Formosa expert, again.
Nico
So when you put this on top of the residents and agricultural and fishing pressure with the nautical tourism with the airport it creates cumulative pressures that are quite significant. And put parts of the ria in jeopardy and some specific species as well.
So yes it makes me worried to see the amount of pressure that we put in the system and how far can we go. But how far can we go you know?
Paula from the natural park
Paula
I think the lines being crossed
She says that she sometimes cries when talking about the Ria. And that the park’s under a lot of pressure from tourist companies to grant permits for all sorts of activities.
She would definitely like to decline them all. But she isn’t allowed. The Ria has a big economic value, tourists are allowed to have fun in it. When asked how she coped with all this, she answered:
With depression, I take a pill every day.
Tourism has been growing in many parts of the Ria for the past decades. Even while the government threatened to tear down homes on Culatra because of their environmental impact, they were allowing huge resorts in other parts of the lagoon.
We spoke with Bruno Inácio, He’s head of cultural and economic development of Faro, the closest city to Culatra island.
Bruno
We cannot say: you cannot come. You can create a lot of things for people to not come here, but it doesn’t make sense. It’s something that you can not stop.
The way he said it, you'd think he was talking about a tsunami, something that can’t be controlled. But this tsunami also brings in money, something this region needs.
We are still a poor country. We are still at the second half of the table. If you have a good life in the north of Europe, you can have a good time here. We have waves. The English, French, Italian. And now the Americans. We work by waves. It’s a reality.
Last summer, the Faro airport - that is right next to the Ria Formosa - started having direct flights to New York city.
So while the park and the islanders began working closely together to preserve the island's natural bounty, tourism pressures threatened to ruin it all. Once again, Silvia felt that she needed to do something about it, to fight again for her beloved Ria Formosa.
Silvia
Portuguese: Back…. Of course, today I understand perfectly, and that’s my role: to make people see that it has to be this way, that there has to be protection of the resources that provide our income.
She feels that this is her role, to protect the island's resources that provide their livelihoods. A healthy Ria, also means it keeps giving fish and clams.
But she can’t do this alone. So she teams up with Universities, environmental NGO’s - like the ones Valentina and Nicolas work for - and deepens her relationship with the Natural Park.
Together they set up programs in which the whole island can participate.
The clam pickers help collect valuable data about water quality. Islanders start planting seagrass, helping protect bird nesting zones and join beach clean ups. Culatra even has a goal to be energy self-sufficient by 2030.
Silvia helped curb the illegal fishing of seahorses. Their population has been increasing ever since.
And here on Culatra, they’ve figured out a way to welcome a reasonable number of tourists.
English tourist:
On our boat trip the captain said this is fishersman island, you can’t stay here as a tourist. Which I think it a good compromise really. Keeps it wild.
Marine biologist Valentina again.
Valentina:
There are no hotels or hostels on the island, because of the permits. Legally there can’t be hotels or hostels or any place that can rent legally for people to stay overnight or a week.
In 2018, when Culatra signed a contract with the government to remain on the island, Silvia made sure that only people with heritage on the island were able to buy a house here.
Silvia
Every house sold is a soldier lost.
Every house sold is a soldier lost Silvia says.
It’s still possible for tourists to come to the island and enjoy it, but only during the daytime. And this is limited by the small number of ferries that come.
But blocking mass tourism means less money for the islanders who are also facing decreasing revenues from fishing. Silvia set up a new way of earning money: oyster farming. And in the last couple of years that has become an important source of income for the island.
Valentina, the marine biologist, credits Culatra’s success to Silvia.
Valentina
Shes a natural leader, a great spokesperson as well. She ‘s very clear about her ideas. when you want to achieve something, sometimes the best way is repeating yourself Until you’re heard. And I think that's what Silvia did. And that's why she still has the support of all her people.
And now Culatra is leading the way
Valentina
you don’t need a huge amount of people, just a few that share a common vision and that actually get to do stuff and work together and make things happen.
The way they live together and work with nature makes them an inspiration for islands around the world. According to Valentina, this is only the beginning.
So I think that's what culatra really is for in terms of example. It can be replicated in other places, not only islands, not only fishing communities. But also neighbourhoods, municipalities, little cities, big cities and so on and so forward.
So with Silvia leading the island, the future’s looking bright, right?
Well. Culatra is still an island. Sea level rise is still a thing. And the Tsunami threat is real. On the mainland there are more road signs warning for Tsunamis than for speed bumps.
So is the future looking bright?
We asked some islanders how they see the future. This is Madalena, the shellfish gatherer again.
Madelena
Portuguese: What do you think? Yes. It has all been very good. Very good. Yes. Because before, well, we had nothing. No electricity. No water. I’m speaking for myself—I was little. My mother, at that time, used a lamp, an oil lamp. That’s how we lived. And nothing like the houses we have now, more comfortable. They were wooden houses, almost without conditions. Now yes—we have a lively, beautiful Culatra. And I hope, with great hope, to see it as it is now, everything better. I’m very happy. Very happy.
She says “it’s all been very good. We have a lively and beautiful Culatra. We used to live in wooden houses with almost no modern comforts. We had nothing, everything is better now
Like others, she tends to avoid the question by looking at the past and how life is now. Claudia, the environmental researcher who has spent a lot time with the islanders explains:
Claudia
it's kind of unpredictable what is going to happen. (...)They say to me… Ah, 50 years ago, it was a very, very poor place. We had nothing. So… For them… You see the different perspectives? They had nothing. Now they have something. Some days… They will have nothing again. They will see. (.)
Silvia agrees:
Silvia: it will be nature that takes us out, not men.
She says, Eventually it will be nature that takes us out, not men. She rests uneasily with that knowledge.
After over 30 years of work, mostly voluntary, Silvia’s retiring as president of the association . Were these years a sacrifice?
No, not a sacrifice, so much so that I always have this feeling of gratitude, thank goodness they gave me this cause, thank goodness they gave me this mission. Everything I gave up, I can’t say I lost.
“It’s not a sacrifice,” she says; she feels gratitude. “Thank God they gave me this mission.’
It’s time for us to leave Culatra.
Tape of catching ferry, Valentina says we are almost missing the boat.
On the ferry back to the mainland, the last one of the day - we are joined by a group of clam pickers. They sing a lot while picking clams, with their feet in the mudflats. Traditional songs that are often from the island and passed on for generations.
One of them joining us is Madelena who learned these songs from her mother. And when she noticed we had our microphones out, she humbly offered to sing for us. The sun was setting in the lagoon.
Singing
Go fishers go, may the sea be pleasant to you.
