Rising Seawater Disrupting Life on Grenada Island

Grenada, in the south Caribbean, is losing its battle with the sea.

Rising water levels have already encroached on the island's communities, prompting dozens of families to consider relocating, according to the Associated Press.

The removal of sand, as well as storm surges, have pushed saltwater past breakwaters of truck tires and bundles of driftwood.

 "The sea will take this whole place down," Desmond Augustin, a local fisherman, was quoted saying by the AP. "There's not a lot we can do except move higher up."

Should climate change predictions come true, the number of people impacted by the affected weather patterns by could grow to as much as 70 percent of Grenada's population.

"It's a massive threat to the economies of these islands," said Owen Day, a marine biologist with the environmental nonprofit Caribsave Partnership. "I would say the region's coastal areas will be very severely impacted in the next 50 to 100 years."

Coastal wetlands are among the ecosystems that scientists say are threatened most by rising levels of saltwater.

A World Bank study estimates 60 percent of the wetlands that exist in the Caribbean and developing world could be destroyed in the future, with annual economic losses of $630 million suffered by associated communities.

Another economic result will be a decrease of tourism in the Caribbean, since raising sea levels in the are projected to hurt the islands' aesthetics, according to a study released by Caribsave, which also estimates as many as 21 of the 64 regional airports there could also be lost.

While places like Grenada are currently facing a loss of land measured in feet, scientists estimate that if nearly all the ice on Earth melts, as it did 40 million years ago, sea levels could rise as much as 70 meters higher than today's levels.