The photgrah above was taken at Hastings on the islands south coast facing the open Atlantic Ocean. You can see boulders along the beach with a boardwalk just above them. Some stretches of the boardwalk are visibly underpinned by a concrete wall. I strongly suspect the wall runs the whole length of it but in most places is buried under the sand.
As we walked along the boardwalk we were often showered by spray from the waves breaking on the beach and bolders.
I estimated that in some places, the mean sea level was just a couple of metres below the land to the left of the boardwalk. That strip of land comprises a mixture of restaurants, hotels (and green spaces). On a calm day therefore, the ocean is two metres below their front/back doors. I pondered on what it would be like on a stormy day with the full brunt of an Atlantic gale or worse still a hurricane? I also thought it unlikely the boardwalk would have been deliberately constructed so as to provide impromptu sea-water showers to those promanading it's length!
Was I witnessing another example of rising sea levels? Later in the evening I did some very cursory research on the internet and found out a little more about Barbados' precarious predicament.
It turns out that Barbados is slowly rising from the seabead. Almost uniquely, it consists of coral which over millenea have been forced up from the ocean floor by tectonic plate movements. Even its highest areas are made of ancient coral.
However, further research confirmed that as in so many other places, Barbados is 'slowly' being consumed by rising sea levels. It's rising alright, but not as fast as the ocean is! I found a video from 2021 of a visit by the UN Secretary General Antanio Gutteras, being shown around by local politicians/officials who explained that if it wasn't for the rock sea defences along the very same beach we walked along, the whole area would have been swallowed by the sea.
I gained the distinct impression that three years further on, those defences along that same stretch of land were at severe risk of being overwhelmed!
It's not just that coast either. The beaches along the north west coast where we are staying, have only a narrow strip of sand that doesn't get soaked at high tide. This coast is not exposed to the full brunt of the prevailing Atlantic weather systems and so the affects of the rising sea levels will probably be less severe and slower, but it seems inevitable that they too will sucum in the end.
A little way along the coast from the slim strip of our local beach, there's a complex of posh apartments with gardens down to the beach. Each has its own private path with a gate and steps down to the beach. I walked, or rather waded past them a few days ago. The waves were breaking on the steps. There was no dry beach left on which the occupants could set out their beach loungers!
The photo below was taken when the tide was lower, but as you can see, there's precious little beach that doesn't get soaked by the sea... The foundations of the steps on the left have clearly been eroded by the action of breaking waves.
Compared with most other Carribean islands, Barbados is wealthy. BUT almost half of that wealth comes from tourism (offshore banking is apparently responsible for most of the other half). What will happen if/when the sea reclaims the beaches and the valuable real estate alongside them?
Before our walk along Hastings' boradwalk, we'd been to visit the Barbados museum - a former prison on the outskirts of Bridgetown.
It provided an insight into its natural history, the history of the island including it's early settlement by Carib indians and of course the appalling period of the slave trade.
Shortly after arriving at Port St Charles, I found myself swimming alongside a leatherback turtle. A truly wonderful experience!
By coincidence, I have been watching the film "The Sound of Freedom" - based on a true and harrowing account of the modern trade in human sex trafficking. It's an excellent film. At the end, the star of the film talks about this awful trade and tells us that worldwide, there are more enslaved people than at any other time in human history, including millions of child sex slaves!
He reminds us all that "God's children are not for sale".
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