Young photographer documents disappearing salt marshes to inspire action

Geoff Bennett:

Salt marshes exist on every coast of the U.S. but these important wetlands are succumbing quickly to the effects of sea level rise caused by climate change.

Grace Go with the "News Hour"'s journalism training program Student Reporting Labs has the story of how one young photographer from Massachusetts is fighting to protect these places.

Soren Goldsmith, Photo Engineer and National Geographic Young Explorer: Your traditional DSLR. And then in the back, we got a huge battery pack.

Grace Go:

Soren Goldsmith is a 20-year-old photographer who has been named a National Geographic Young Explorer. What makes his photo stand out is not only their beauty, but how he captures them.

Soren Goldsmith:

So, yes, this is the underwater amphibious camera trap. I call it IMPACT, which stands for Intertidal Motion Picture Activated Camera Trap. If it works right, it will go for a week in the marsh.

Grace Go:

Goldsmith is working on a project in the coastal marshes of Wellfleet, Massachusetts, a landscape that presents unique challenges for photography.

Soren Goldsmith:

Salt marshes are intertidal environments, which means that half the day they're going to be dry, but the other half of the day, the water is going to come up and cover this landscape. I had this idea of what if I could build an amphibious camera trap.

Grace Go:

Camera traps, which take photos based on motion detection, have long been a mainstay of wildlife photography. But there are few options for taking the same kinds of photos underwater.

Soren Goldsmith:

I ended up heading to the University of Wisconsin for engineering. And suddenly I had all these resources at my disposal. I had mechanical engineers, environmental engineers, civil engineers, computer engineers that were able to combine their expertise onto one project, because a camera trap is a complex contraption.

We spent many months building this, putting this together, getting everything to fit, getting everything waterproof so it doesn't flood when it's underwater.

Grace Go:

Soren hopes his photos will make people want to protect salt marshes. These biodiverse ecosystems help prevent coastal erosion and store large amounts of carbon, which makes them vital to mitigating climate change.

But they're also particularly susceptible to the effects of climate change.

Soren Goldsmith:

The salt marshes are very low elevation, practically at sea level. So the sea level rising only a little bit, like an inch, has a huge impact on that land. And as a result of this, salt marshes are being flooded more frequently and eroding more quickly than they can replenish.

And you mix in this problem with human development, and a lot of projections are saying that marshes are going to disappear very quickly, by the end of the century.

Grace Go:

Still, Goldsmith is optimistic because of new tools to combat climate change and raise awareness about the threat it poses.

Soren Goldsmith:

Some of the stuff that I have been able to build, 15 years ago would not have been possible. I'm lucky to be young right now, when I have all of these cool technology and opportunities that I can leverage to tell my stories that older people might not have had.

Grace Go:

For PBS News Student Reporting Labs, I'm Grace Go in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.