Culture & Community | Environment | Long Wharf | New Haven Climate Movement | Canal Dock Boathouse
Contributed Photos.
A dozen people sat together in a circle, facing the waters of Long Island Sound just before sunset. Intergenerational conversation filled the air. Industrial buildings and oil tanks loomed in the distance. Sounds of cars whirring past on the nearby highway were just as present as the sounds of seagulls calling and breaking clam shells against the pavement for their dinner.
Last Sunday, members of the New Haven Climate Movement (NHCM) hosted a post-Thanksgiving reflection outside of the Canal Dock Boathouse focused on fostering kinship between humans and marine life. The approach draws from North American Indigenous worldviews that view other living beings as equals and relatives.
Organizers chpse the site of the event for several reasons, including that Indigenous people historically went fishing and oystering during the warmer seasons in the Long Island Sound. New Haven's Long Wharf will also soon be the site of a $200 million seawall, living shore, and pump system to help protect the area from sea level rise and flooding.
The focus on kinship comes at an urgent time for the earth and its oceans. Increasing levels of carbon dioxide from human activities threaten the world’s oceans by leading to accelerated sea level rise, disruption of marine ecosystems, and ocean warming and acidification that endangers marine organisms and ocean health. The sea is expected to rise one foot and eight inches in Connecticut by 2050, which would cause significant damage to coastal infrastructure and wildlife habitats.
Despite being harmed by climate impacts, the oceans also provide valuable carbon sequestration, storing 25 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions each year.
Chris Schweitzer, director of the New Haven/Leon Sister City Project, opened the event and provided context about how New Haveners’ ancestors lived off the land and had a sense of stewardship towards nature, an attitude which only in recent centuries has shifted.
One by one, participants went around the circle, sharing reflections on kinship with oceans or shared information about a species that lives in the Long Island Sound. The event’s organizers—NHCM interns Andy Chen, Marta Bartnicka, and Bahati Mulungula—each read out reflective remarks to the group.
Chen, a senior at Metropolitan Business Academy, first led the group in a mindfulness activity to set the tone and ground the group in their surroundings.
Mulungula, a senior at Hill Regional Career High School, focused on the significance of listening to “nature’s heartbeat,” or the ocean’s wave patterns. “To truly listen is to realize we are connected…each wave is a gentle reminder to stop, to think, and to protect what we love,” she said.
“Close your eyes and hear it: the gentle crash of waves meeting the shore, the whisper of wind through salt-sprayed air, the soft rustle of water against rocks,” Mulungula read out as others closed their eyes. “This is the ocean’s voice—steady, persistent, carrying the stories of currents that have journeyed for centuries.” This voice also carries the grave reality of species loss and extinction.
Bartnicka, a senior at High School in the Community, expanded on the meaning of kinship and how humans are failing to honor this relationship.
“Kinship is more than just a sense of connection; it’s understanding that we are connected with the natural world, through relationships of mutual dependence, respect, and care,” Bartnicka said. “It’s therefore recognition that the health and well-being of the oceans are inseparable from our own.”
“When we pollute the waters, overfish, or disrupt ecosystems, we break the relationship of kinship,” she continued. “We take without giving back, and in doing so, we harm not only the oceans but ourselves.”
She pointed to coral die-off from ocean acidification, plastic pollution, and rising sea levels as indicators that humans have not always acted as responsible partners. To work towards rebuilding kinship, Bartnicka pointed to appreciation being the first step.
Around the circle, participants shared information about animal species living in the Sound ranging from razor clams to winter flounders and even plants and organisms. Following each reflection, participants nodded, offered light applause, and sat in silence for a few moments before continuing.
To close the event, participants went around the circle sharing a takeaway from the event or something they believed the oceans would tell humans if they had a voice. Some reflected on the ways humans have both harmed and tried to minimize their impacts on species like the osprey.
This event is part of a broader campaign NHCM launched this June titled DeCARbonize the Oceans focused on public education about the impacts that emissions from our car-centric transportation sector have on the oceans and calling for city policy change via their Transportation Transformation Resolution.
NHCM’s next event will be held on December 10th at 4 p.m. in front of New Haven City Hall in observance of International Human Rights Day.
Learn more about NHCM through its website. You can also keep up to date on their work through their Instagram and Facebook. In the interest of full transparency, this writer is a cofounder of the New Haven Climate Movement Youth Action Team.