Did you know that the remains of a wooly mammoth were discovered on Plum Island in the 1800s? Or that up to an acre of sand can flow through the Plum Island jetty when the tide is high?
The geographic, natural and historic significance of Plum Island is fascinating – and author Bill Sargent is excited to share it during a series of 90-minute beach walks, leaving from Plum Island Light House Sundays through the fall.
Sargent has been focused on the coastline of Massachusetts for almost 30 years, starting with Cape Cod, where he wrote a book about a year in Pleasant Bay in conjunction with a NOVA film. He has since penned 20 books about science and the environment, including his latest. Plum Island: 4,000 Years on a Barrier Beach.
Sargent brings visitors on a tour of the island’s fascinating evolution, sharing the dramatic erosion last winter that removed up to 30 feet of the dunes every month from October to April, and the ways the Army Corps of Engineers, the city of Newburyport, universities and colleges have all joined forces to work with nature and find a solution. Other stops during the walk, which travels from North Point Beach to the south jetty and back, include the archeological relics from the old Coast Guard Station that could have been used to set U-boat nets across the Merrimack River, the history of horseshoe crabs and the recent discovery of schools of striped bass that have returned to the North Shore from their Chesapeake breeding grounds, not to mention how on Earth the remains of a wooly mammoth – an animal that went extinct 10,000 years ago – could have been discovered sticking out of a dune on an island that is only 4,000 years old.
Bring a camera, curiosity and a keen sense of humor on these walks, which will run weekly rain or shine for $20 per person July through Columbus day, every Sunday at 9 a.m., except for July 31, when Sargent will be speaking at the Parker River Wildlife Refuge as part of Yankee Homecoming.