JOHN YANG: Anyone looking for the effects of climate change need look no farther than Tangier Island, Virginia, a tiny speck of land in the Chesapeake Bay, erosion and rising waters due to climate change are diminishing its land mass threatening a centuries old culture fostered by the island's isolation.

Tangier's 23-year old vice mayor is working with the island's 400 or so residents to try to restore their land and preserve their history and traditions, from the NewsHour Student Reporting Labs journalism training program, Sabrina Tomei reports.

CAMERON EVANS, Tangier, Virginia Vice Mayor: Living here isn't easy.

If you find the things that are worth living here for, then you'll begin to understand it as much as I have is one of the reasons why I've stayed.

That's one of the forms of crabbing.

This is crab scraping.

SABRINA TOMEI (voice-over): Cameron Evans is the 23-year old vice mayor of Tangier Island, a small community in the Chesapeake Bay, whose ancestors are direct descendants of some of the earliest English settlers in Virginia.

They continue to honor their traditions of crabbing and seafaring.

CAMERON EVANS: You get a sense of freedom by living here, be on the water, be in nature, just live in a very close, tight, knit community.

It's something that I didn't begin to treasure more until I was older.

We've also seen a lot of land laws due to coastal erosion.

DR. KANTA KUMARI RIGAUD, Lead Environment Specialist, World Bank Group: Their livelihoods are tied to the sea and to the coastal asset, whether it's tourism, whether it's fisheries or whether it's businesses, coastal areas are one of the most exposed.

With the sea level rising and with the storm surges affecting their assets, they lose their property, they lose their infrastructure.

It's eroded.

People tend to move away.

SABRINA TOMEI (voice-over): Since 1850 the land mass has decreased by 67 percent and according to the 2020 census, the population has fallen by nearly half since 2010.

KANTA KUMARI RIGAUD: So they're already climate migrants, but the numbers will increase over time if we do nothing about it.

CAMERON EVANS: In today's world, there's less and less watermen and less and less people want to stick in their own hometowns, especially this one, that it's very hard to, you know, obtain a job for a career, unless you make certain jobs, like I've tried to do here.

SABRINA TOMEI (voice-over): He's the vice mayor, a boat captain, fisherman, tour guide, crabber, and a photographer who's recording the history and capturing the changes on the island.

CAMERON EVANS: I saw that things were changing, you know, not staying the same.

And I said, Why not capture it from, you know, myself and then future generations.

KATNA KUMARI RIGAUD: We need to bring the communities and the planners and others together to make a collective decision.

CAMERON EVANS: I'm very hopeful that we'll get, you know, protection from coastal erosion.

But I want more than that.

I want to see land restoration, rebuild back to habitat.

I just hope for the future generations, if I could speak to them now, you know, to try to appreciate Tangier as much as I have.

SABRINA TOMEI (voice-over): From PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs, this is Sabrina Tomei.