Stonington ― Mason’s Island is in the crosshairs of rising sea levels due to climate change, but its residents are taking proactive steps to help others and themselves by launching an innovative pilot program.

On Chippechaug Cove, members of the Masons Island Fire District’s Shoreline Protection Task Force have been tracking erosion along Chippechaug Trail, the only egress from the southern part of the island. Over the last two years they say they have seen a startling loss of land.

“We’ve lost over four feet of lawn since July of 2020 when we started tracking this,” said task force Chairperson Kristin Foster. “We know once that marsh is gone, then our road is going to be vulnerable to sea level rise and storm damage.”

The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection estimates that sea levels along the Connecticut coast will rise 20 inches in by 2050, which, in turn, will speed erosion along the shores.

With only 33 feet between the cove and the road, the task force’s concern is that over the next 15 years, the road will begin to be undermined and eventually, will be lost.

“There are 120 houses south of this vulnerability spot, plus Enders Island, plus Masons Island Yacht Club, so a lot of people need access to the lower part of the island. There’s no other road, that’s it,” she said.

To find a solution, the task force entered into a collaboration with a National Science Foundation award-winning small business, Emerald Tutu. Teams from the task force and the company anchored a prototype biomass, or floating marsh mat which the company calls a Tutu, in the cove in late October.

The spherical ball of marine-grade foam, surrounded by woodchips and coconut fibers, wrapped in nylon mesh and seeded with salt marsh grass, can be adjusted as sea levels rise, and, once in place, various underwater plants, and potentially animal life such as oysters or mussels, will attach to it and create a micro-ecosystem beneath the waves as well as above the waves.

Louiza Wise, Emerald Tutu’s ecological engineer for the project, said, “the basic idea is, a network of these floating marsh mats can be interconnected and help to dampen wave energy, reducing the energy and protecting the shoreline behind it.”

The Tutu is one of only three that the company has installed—one in New Haven Harbor, and one on the Atlantic Coast of Massachusetts.

Wise explained the biomass in Massachusetts faces the full force of the Atlantic Ocean, while the one in New Haven Harbor faces much less wave action but is in water that is significantly dirtier. The prototype in Chippechaug Cove is in cleaner water than New Haven Harbor has, and is also more protected from waves than the Massachusetts’ prototype sees.

“The idea is that these individual full-scale prototypes can give us a sense of how well the unit does in these different water and wave conditions,” said Wise.

Foster explained that the task force will be collecting data for the company.

“We’re going to track it for them over the next couple of years. The Emerald Tutu team will come in the spring to check plant growth and get a baseline on that, and then they’ll come monthly in the summer months,” she said.

A single Tutu will not solve the issue, and Foster said the cove would require approximately 50 to protect the cove, but they are pleased to be part of advancing the science that may protect the road and island in the future.