Working a dibble isn’t complicated, which is a good thing, because I didn’t know that such a thing as a dibble bar existed until a few minutes ago. The tool is essentially a specialized shovel that terminates in a flattened rectangular blade that can be rocked back and forth to create a perfectly sized wedge-shaped hole for planting small trees and shrubs. Like the hole I’ve just excavated.
I drop a red mangrove seedling into the black cranny and bend down to push sand and mud back into place, anchoring the eighteen-inch-tall seedling. That’s one down, I think, and a lot more to go. It’s up to time and tides to do the rest.
My small sense of accomplishment is fleeting, however. When I straighten up and gaze around, the scope and scale of the task at hand are overwhelming. I’m far out on a tidal flat at the mouth of Romer Creek, on the far eastern end of the East End of Grand Bahama, standing in a vast forest of dead mangroves. To the west, the Caribbean Sea unfurls in a postcard-worthy aquamarine sheet, but in every other direction lie mile upon mile of sun-bleached, desiccated, skeletal dead mangroves that cloak the shorelines and shroud the banks of tidal creeks.
When Hurricane Dorian made landfall in the Bahamas on September 1, 2019, its 185-mile-per-hour winds made it the strongest storm ever to hit the archipelago. Dorian ravaged Marsh Harbour on Great Abaco Island, then crossed open water and stalled over the East End of Grand Bahama for more than twenty-four hours. There, the hurricane pushed an unprecedented twenty-foot storm surge over the small fishing settlements of McLean’s Town, High Rock, and Sweeting’s Cay. Some 60 percent of all of Grand Bahama Island, including Freeport, was under water. When the waters receded, the toll on human life, homes, and commercial buildings was staggering: The official estimate of lives lost stands at seventy-four, but scores more are still missing. Damage estimates soared to
