This small Virginia island could be underwater before the next century

Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images

As the ferry approaches Tangier, Captain Steven Thomas tells a well-rehearsed history of the island, where crabbing has shaped the culture.

He points out a handful of tiny buildings on stilts in the water.

"Those are all crab shanties," he says over the boat's loudspeaker. "That's where they shed the softshell crabs during the summer months."

Tangier Island — off the mainland coast of Virginia — is one of the last inhabited islands in the Chesapeake Bay. Before colonial settlers arrived in the 1700s, Indigenous people likely traveled to the island in the summer to take advantage of the abundant fish and crabs, according to the National Park Service . Many descendants of the original settlers — with surnames like Crockett, Parks and Thomas — hav