Racing to save Stone Harbor's Scotch Bonnet Island before it's swallowed by rising seas

Frank Kummer The Philadelphia Inquirer

Lenore Tedesco doesn’t need to venture far to witness sea-level rise. She tracks its relentless advance from her window at work.

Tedesco, executive director of the Wetlands Institute in Stone Harbor, stood by the nonprofit’s large conference room window in late May, surveying an expanse of salt marsh known as Scotch Bonnet Island. It was a idyllic Jersey Shore scene: osprey hovering over thousands of acres of spartina grass rippling in the breeze.

But over the years, her view has transformed into something more unsettling. Once-solid marshland has been fractured by new channels of encroaching water.

“These open water areas used to be marsh,” Tedesco said, gesturing out toward the grass. “It’s marsh that converted to mudflats and open water. All th