(pleasant music) SIGMA is proud to support photographers and filmmakers around the world, and we believe creativity and sustainability go hand in hand.

(pleasant music) (upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for "View Finders" is provided by Troncalli Subaru, located on Highway 9 in Cumming.

Visit Troncalli Subaru or find out more online at troncallisubaru.com.

(pleasant music) - [Announcer] Here at United Community Bank, we are committed to doing the little things to earn customer trust, one customer at a time.

United Community Bank is a proud sponsor of "View Finders."

- [Announcer] Georgia College and State University, Georgia█s designated public liberal arts university, offers online courses and flexible class schedules to help you advance your education.

Learn more at gcsu.edu (soft majestic music) (soft majestic music continues) ♪ Sunlight ♪ I feel warm ♪ 'Cause your eyes ♪ Pointing me home ♪ Shorelines are covered in rows ♪ - Over 16,000 acres in size, accessible only by ferry.

- Home to generations of the Gullah-Geechee people.

- The origination of sugar cane in Georgia.

- This is Sapelo Island.

I'm Paul.

- I'm Chris.

- [Paul And Chris] And we're the View Finders.

(bayou country music) (bayou country music continues) (bayou country music fades) (soft music) ♪ Sunlight ♪ On my mind ♪ Sore eyes, a sign of the times ♪ ♪ There's no rush to cover the road ♪ (gentle music) ♪ Comrades climbing down ♪ Nomads lost and found ♪ But you know how just climb inside ♪ (gentle music continues) ♪ Sunlight, cold eye ♪ Cold heart, cold heart ♪ Sunlight, show me a sign ♪ Sunlight, cold eye ♪ Cold heart, cold heart ♪ Sunlight, show me a sign ♪ Show me a sign (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) - Sapelo Island, such a cool place.

- Yeah, it is, it is.

- I haven't been here in a bit.

And you, have you been here?

- No, this is my first time here, yeah.

- It's got a cool, just everything comes together.

It's like the beauty, the ecology, the history.

There's a lot of research and education that happens here so it's kind of like a hotbed of a lotta different things so it's really neat to do an episode here.

- [Paul] Yeah.

- And, I don't know, what are your thoughts?

Like, what were you thinking when you realize we were gonna be coming here 'cause you haven't been here before?

- No, I haven't been to Sapelo.

I wanted to see what was differences I would find between this and other places we've been to.

This first and biggest one I can think of right now is the history that I've learned in the time we've been here so far, traveling over to the island learning from different people who work out on the island live on the island, commute here, no traffic.

- I know.

- [Paul] No traffic.

A different kind of commute.

- No traffic.

And, you know, somebody said, like, you'll never be early or late 'cause you're on the ferry's schedule.

And whatever that schedule is- - [Paul] Miss the ferry, - [Chris] That's it.

- [Paul] You got a bad day.

- You know?

So to me, it just boggles the mind that if you need to go to the grocery store you gotta go get on a boat.

And it takes you over and you got get in your car and drive maybe 15, 20 miles to the grocery store and then run it all back.

- Bring it all back in here.

- That's pretty bad- - Yeah, there's no modern convenience.

- If you forgot the butter, that's a problem, isn't it?

- [Paul] No Chick-fil-A.

(Chris chuckling) - Definitely no Chick-fil-A, not yet at least.

I'm excited about some of the photography opportunities.

We got a marsh again, we got a lighthouse.

We got the beach, we've got old tabby architecture.

There's a lot of beauty here so I hope we can do it justice.

We got a lot to explore.

We were graciously provided with this van.

You are my Google Map, my Serie, my everything.

Are you gonna get us lost?

- I tell you what, if I get you where we're going hey, I did a good job.

- All right, exactly.

- If I get us lost, it'll be our little secret.

You won't tell anyone about it.

- I like it, I'm totally onboard with that.

Well let's go explore, we'll find some compositions and let's learn about this place.

- There you go.

- All right, man.

(gentle music) ♪ Oh, even when your legs go numb ♪ ♪ Don't stop saying oh ♪ Hold on to where I go, where I go, where I go ♪ ♪ Where I go, where I go ♪ Up now, give you the courage ♪ For front door oh play on ♪ Hold on to where I go, where I go, where I go, where I go ♪ - [Chris] So we're just kind of scouting the island right now, and I've got my Google Maps, AKA, Paul.

- In 100 feet, turn left.

- [Chris] There he goes.

- Ignore that, don't turn left here now.

- But you know, the lost art of map reading fortunately, Paul's still got it.

In our Google Maps heavy society we're used to be told where to go but Paul is actually reading this map to me and we're heading towards the lighthouse right now.

- Hopefully, you feel the same way at the end of the episode.

- [Chris] I hope so, you know?

- Paul was a real good navigator.

- It's like that episode of "The Office" where they just go right into the water 'cause they're following Google Maps.

(gentle music) ♪ Oh, even when your legs go numb ♪ ♪ Don't stop saying oh ♪ Hold on to where I go, where I go, where I go ♪ ♪ Where I go, where I go ♪ Up now give you the courage ♪ For front door oh play on ♪ Hold on to where I go, where I go, where I go ♪ - So this happens sometimes where basically the sun, the light, the beautiful color is somewhere that you don't really want it to be because I want it to be behind this lighthouse right there.

So the lighthouse is a very nice, beautiful, strong subject and I think it could be a gorgeous sunset shot but the light is not really pretty behind it right now.

There's no color.

So I'm just kind of eyeing the sun, it's dropping down.

It's really pretty, but it's not where I want it to be.

I'm crossing my fingers that we'll still get some pink sky behind that lighthouse.

And I did get some drone shots earlier that I'm happy with, so this won't be a total bust.

But it's not quite where I want it to be right now.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music fades) - We've asked young kids, who wants to be a scientist about everyone raises their hand.

You get a high school group or a senior group ask the same question, almost none of 'em raise their hand.

So one of our big focuses is to try to produce those next generation of scientists get 'em out here, show 'em the science we do out here.

We have so much active science out here.

I've always called this science central just so they can get, see this is an occupation, this is kind of fun, and just try to encourage that 'cause we're really, I'd say we do need to produce more scientists in this country.

So that's one of our big focuses on this island.

It makes us unique 'cause environmental education.

- So I am a marine ecologist and I study diseases and parasites that influence aquatic organisms such as marine snails, oysters, mussels, this like that.

And some of the work that I'm doing out here is really trying to understand how these diseases and parasites influence oysters and other invertebrates and how that might influence our ecosystem and our ecosystem health.

So, primarily, one of the projects that I'm working on now is working on a couple different parasites and how they influence the filtration of oysters because oysters provide us this huge ecosystem service of keeping our waters clean and filtering out debris.

And so we want to understand with anthropogenic change and as we're influencing our environment, whether or not increased disease is gonna cause oysters to do a poorer job in providing that ecosystem service for us.

- Modern ecology was invented on this island.

Ecology is a very complex science.

Think about everything in this environment and how it all interacts.

That's mind boggling how you can even describe that.

But one guy did, Dr. Eugene Odum.

So he's considered the father of modern ecology and he did his work down at the University of Georgia at the Odum Extension down there.

So if you like science, this is like hallowed ground.

And we have about 17 to 18, 19 different universities come out here to do research and at any given time, there's probably 100, 115 active research projects going on here.

So if you're a science geek like me, there's always something here, always something here.

(soft rock music) (soft rock music continues) ♪ I don't know if I'm ever gonna leave here ♪ ♪ I don't know where I'll end up ♪ ♪ I don't if I'm every gonna make it ♪ ♪ Tryin' to do what I love ♪ All I know is I'm gonna try, lord ♪ ♪ I'm gonna try, lord, I ain't here at all ♪ (soft rock music continues) ♪ I don't know if I'd be a good father ♪ ♪ 'Cause I don't think that I've been a good son ♪ - We're on Sapelo Island.

We're actually at the chocolate plantation right now.

The chocolate plantation were French royalists that settled this area.

They actually fled from the French Revolution but also from Haiti.

And they were four Frenchmen that had a very large plantation here.

These are tabby ruins behind me.

For those who are not familiar with tabby, tabby is actually a mixture, a three-part mixture of shell, lime, and sand.

Lime is burned shell, so once the shell is all burned up they create the one-third, one-third, one-third mixture.

And this actually, it looks like blocks but they have a structure that they pour it into and let it settle and then they re-pour again and re-pour again, until they can build the building.

(soft guitar music) (soft guitar music continues) (soft guitar music continues) - I'm Maurice Bailey, I'm a native of Sapelo Island.

I'm the ninth generation in this community of Hog Hammock.

Then and now, life in Hog Hammock it's a little more difficult than it was when I was growing up.

See a lot of changes in our community right now.

Gentrification is smothering us at this moment.

Politicians are smothering us at this moment.

So we don't have the support of our local government and some state officials not for the well-being of the community.

So it's a lot different in Hog Hammock now just trying to survive and hold onto your heritage.

We are Geechee people, we are strong, determined people.

We're also proud of where we came from, our way of life.

As far as all our crops, the way we do things, the way we live, we're proud of that.

And we wanna hold onto that 'cause that's part of us.

We don't want that to disappear 'cause once it's gone, it's gone.

Growing up on Sapelo, it was a nice place.

Everybody got along, everybody share with each other.

Everybody got together when it's time for hog killing a chicken killing or any type of barbecue or syrup making.

So it was one, big community that looked out for each other.

So we didn't miss anything, we wasn't deprived of anything that we know of.

Although we didn't have anything, we still felt like we had everything.

(soft guitar music) ♪ When I left Mississippi ♪ Delta blues on my mind ♪ Don't need to know if she missed me ♪ ♪ Just need to know if she's mine ♪ ♪ I laid my head down in Waco ♪ I had the stars to align - Try to balance people versus the environment which is very hard.

There's a long tradition of human use of this island.

At one point, it was pretty all in agriculture.

We're trying to convert a lot of that back but now we have thrown into climate change to make things harder.

One of the most noticeable, I guess it's hard to say noticeable, but is sea level rise.

So we do have some high register tidal gauges.

One's up in Fort Pulaski, one's down in Jacksonville.

And we're talking about a little over 3.5 millimeters of sea level rise per year.

And that doesn't sound scary, but it actually, if you think about it, it's very scary 'cause we're called what, the low country.

And not only that, our rivers are very slow moving rivers so the three millimeter increase, that pushes that salt water way up So you can see the ecology of these river systems changing going from more like your cypress transition over to a salt march.

And it's a big, bad salt marsh.

We have 368,000 acres of salt marsh about a third of all the salt marsh in the country, but second most in the country, overall, next to South Carolina.

But all that salt marsh is gonna be shoved up these river systems.

And that salt marsh is the economic life-blood of the coast.

You know, our shrimpers, there's whole towns like Darien and Eulonia if that shrimping industry goes away those towns go away.

And that all depends on the ecology and health of this salt marsh.

(stark sustained musical note) (soft majestic music) (soft majestic music continues) (waves softly crashing) (stark soft sustained musical note) (soft majestic music continues) (waves softly crashing) (tranquil slow piano music) (waves softly crashing) (soft majestic music continues) (soft majestic music continues) (soft majestic music) (soft majestic music continues) (soft majestic music continues) - Paul?

- Yeah.

- I have literally bathed in gnat spray.

I've sprayed it directly in my face.

- I'm with you, man.

- And they're still landing in my face.

- I need a refund.

- Like, these are some like, genetically modified super gnats that do not care whatsoever about the anti-gnat spray.

- I think they see the spray as a challenge that they're up for.

- I feel like I could just coat myself in 100% DEET.

- This is really crazy, man.

- And it's still, it still not make a dent in these gnats.

- Ugh, god.

- Oh, boy, it's so bad.

Oh, I can hear 'em.

They're in my ears.

- I had some go up my nose.

(Chris chuckling) - You'll find those in a day or so, right?

Yeah, so evidently, we are here during like, the small span of time where the gnats are bad.

It's every spring and fall.

And so we timed this perfectly, Paul.

We couldn't have done a better job because it (Chris laughs) I can't imagine it being any worse.

But, you know, hey, we're on a beach taking pictures of a sunrise, so there could be worse things going on for us.

(soft majestic music resumes) (soft majestic music continues) - The first shot that I saw when we came to scout yesterday was that leading line shot straight down here leading up to those trees there.

And to be honest with you, I think I like that one a little better than the tree coming out of the water.

The sky, the color of the sky was a little bit better but it was just what I was hoping for.

'Cause I knew the sun was not gonna rise this way so to get some interest into the shot, you're gonna need some color in the sky to kind of compliment the leading line the water, and those trees, which aren't really much.

And I think that shot might have done that justice so we'll get it up on the computer and see what we got.

(camera clicking) (soft majestic music continues) (soft majestic music continues) (soft majestic music continues) - So I actually came out here as like an intern after I graduated from undergrad.

And the first day I came out, the other interns took me out to the beach, and we saw a sea turtle nest hatch.

So that was my first instance of being out at Sapelo.

And you see all the baby loggerheads running into the ocean like, hundreds and hundreds of them.

So you just never know what you're gonna see when you're out here.

So one of the things that I think is really remarkable about Georgia, so I did my PhD in Texas where about 95% of the land is privately owned.

And so what's so remarkable about Georgia and what blew me away when I came here was that so much of the coast is protected and publicly owned, which can make it a bit trickier to get out to, but it's so well worth it when you can see the nature that's preserved and the Georgia coast, you know, undeveloped.

- There is really great people here that live in Hog Hammock.

The serenity can't be matched anywhere else.

And the island for its beauty, nothing can matched on the Atlantic coast like Sapelo Island, not Cumberland, not St. Catherines.

It's a very unique island and it's because that you've got about 16 miles of complete wilderness.

There's no one else on the island, so we probably have 20, 25 permanent residents, and that's it.

- Really, the thing that makes Sapelo so special is all these different things we interact and it's just the people out here are awesome.

You feel like, when you come to Sapelo you become part of a family.

Families fight and bicker but at the end of the day, you're still family and really, you feel like that when you come here.

And you eat a lot of food.

- It had been home for many generations.

The fact that we can trace ourself back to enslaved people of Thomas Baldwin, not many people can do that.

And the fact that we've got so much oral history throughout the years, not many people do that so that's what I feel, that's my connection.

And I feel like our ancestor's spirit's still among us.

So the spirit of Sapelo is still here even though we don't have the people.

So that's the beauty of it to me.

- Sapelo Island has been full of experiences for us.

- Some good, some, - Struggles.

- Yeah.

(Paul chuckles) - The struggles were the gnats, by far.

- That was about it, yeah.

- The gnats got us.

It was the wrong time.

We got into that window when the gnats, the super gnats came out.

- It's South Georgia, it's South Georgia.

I mean, it is what it is.

- But, I mean, we bounced around the island.

We've learned a lot about the history and the research that's going on here, you know, just talking to some of the people that live here on the island, getting a better understanding of what it's like to be disconnected from the mainland and only relying on a ferry.

- I mean, you have to make adjustments to come out here to live or to visit.

I mean, there is no I'm hungry let me go grab something to eat.

- No, you gotta plan.

- You know, go to a convenience store, I mean, you have to plan when you leave this island.

- Everything, going to the movies, going shopping, getting your groceries, all of that.

It becomes more of an ordeal.

But the flip side is you have this big island, - Of peace.

- That's almost to yourself.

- Of peace.

- Solitude.

You don't have to deal with the traffic and the noise and the crime, and any of that.

So there's a lot to be said about it.

And it's beautiful.

- Yeah, it sure is.

- I think our cameras were hopefully able to capture that beauty while we were here.

- I think they did.

- So it's been a really rewarding experience and we're about to head off this island and get some good food in us 'cause it's been a little bit.

- I hope these gnats don't follow us.

- I hope not, I hope not.

I won't miss the gnats, I'll miss everything else.

- Yeah.

(Chris chuckles) - All right, well let's get outta here, man.

- Yeah.

(soft bayou music) ♪ Hollows in the woods call out ♪ ♪ Trails up mountains climb ♪ Waves and sand keep beat and time ♪ (soft fiddle music) ♪ Mossy blankets, swirling streams ♪ ♪ Over rocks and dirt ♪ Running pace with all the earth ♪ (soft fiddle music) ♪ Could we capture nature's wonder ♪ ♪ Find our way to getting lost ♪ Freeze a frame to save forever ♪ ♪ Adventure worth the cost ♪ Bees and dandelion grain ♪ Dance in sun-soaked fields ♪ Wind and gleam together yield ♪ ♪ Pocket worries fade to dim ♪ Wait on focus new ♪ Wild is coming into view (soft fiddle music) (soft fiddle music continues) (soft fiddle music continues) ♪ Hues on fire in the clouds ♪ Perfectly exposed ♪ A song first played and then composed ♪ (pleasant music) SIGMA is proud to support photographers and filmmakers around the world, and we believe creativity and sustainability go hand in hand.

(pleasant music) (upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for "View Finders" is provided by Troncalli Subaru, located on Highway 9 in Cumming.

Visit Troncalli Subaru or find out more online at troncallisubaru.com.

(pleasant music) - [Announcer] Here at United Community Bank, we are committed to doing the little things to earn customer trust, one customer at a time.

United Community Bank is a proud sponsor of "View Finders."

- [Announcer] Georgia College and State University, Georgia█s designated public liberal arts university, offers online courses and flexible class schedules to help you advance your educati Learn more at gcsu.edu/graduate.