THE DROWNING ISLES
The landscape of the Solomon Islands is the stuff of travel brochures. But as beautiful as the scenery may be, the country is steadily losing land to rising sea levels. Not far from this island, five other islands have been completely swallowed by the ocean.
FROM the window seat of our small aircraft, the islands 13,000 feet beneath us looked like uncut emeralds poking out of a vibrant azure pool. I pressed my nose up against the Plexiglas to study the contours of each one. Dense forests blanketed the isles, bisected by brown, winding rivers. On their perimeters sat palm-fringed, white-sand beaches. The only signs of human development here in this remote, northern region of the Solomon Islands — a 1,000-island archipelago located just northeast of Australia, between Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu — were small clusters of houses settled along the coastlines, their corrugated tin roofs reflecting the sun back up at us.
Across the aisle from me, surfers Torren Martyn and Leila Hurst and photographer Ryan Craig had their eyes glued on trails of whitewater below. They were pointing out the seemingly endless number of breaking waves, feverishly tapping on the windows at the sight of any potential setup.
“Mate, look at that one over there,” yelled Martyn over the roar of the engine, spotting an offshore reef pass that was reeling amid the solid north swell. Whitewater spilled over a chunk of reef, tracing what looked to be an empty A-frame.
Much of the Solomon Islands are remote and hard to access, leaving large swaths of coastlines — mainly along two of the biggest north-facing islands, Choiseul and Santa Isabel — empty, unexplored and full of surf potential.
From cruising altitude, the Solomon Islands looked like a Technicolor slice of untouched paradise, a tropical playground for visiting surfers. But as plentiful as the waves appeared to be, getting barreled in empty lineups was only half the reason we were here. The other was to visit these islands before any more of them disappeared into the ocean.
A few months prior to our visit, I came in contact with Dr. Simon Albert, a marine scientist at the University of Queensland. He and his colleagues had recently discovered, using time series and satellite imagery, that five Solomon Islands had been swallowed by the sea over the last 70 years, and another six islands had severely eroded. The cause was determined to be accelerated sea-level rise.
“Over the last 20 years, the rates of sea-level rise in the Solomon Islands have been three times higher than the global
