Note that if you purchase something via one of our links, including Amazon, we may earn a small commission.
Sam Moore has been contributing to Bluedot Living for almost as long as we’ve been around (five years!). I’ve been his editor on most of those stories. He’s a reporter/writer, photographer, and even makes films. We talked with him about a story about droughts and aquifers that he wrote for our 2026 Nantucket Green Guide, Well, Well, Well: All About Nantucket’s Only Water Supply.
–Jamie Kageleiry, Bluedot Living’s Director of Publications
Here’s the lead to his story:
Each spring, as the weather warms and the bustle of summer can be heard in the distance, people begin to arrive on Nantucket. All winter, the island has been preparing for them, and not just the hardy year-round residents, bracing themselves for the onrush of another fifty thousand people; the land itself has been preparing, hydrologically. In its bones, in its sand, silt, clay and gravel, the island has been recharging its aquifer. As rain and snow soak the island, the water table rises. If you know what to look for, you can watch it happen.
“Every month, I go around and measure wells for the U.S. Geological Survey,” says RJ Turcotte, Nantucket’s Waterkeeper and a staff member at the Nantucket Land & Water Council. The aquifer, the island’s sole source of freshwater, is a lens (or layer) of saturated sediment whose upper boundary is typically a few feet beneath the surface, and Turcotte uses a special tool to find out exactly where. “It's basically a tape measure with a probe on the end. You lower it down a pipe into the ground, and when it buzzes you know you’ve hit groundwater.”
And here’s the backstory.
Jamie Kageleiry: Sam, when we first assigned you a story about drought on Nantucket, did you have a sense of how you’d report and write a story that’s so — excuse the pun — dry? Where did you start?
Sam Moore: I don’t typically write about geology or hydrology, so my sense was that I needed to start with the real basics — like, the textbook diagram of an aquifer — and then talk to some experts who could really spell things out for me. Once I got invested in that process (and started to understand a bit more myself), everything became a lot less dry!
JK: Did you yourself know what an aquifer was exactly before you started writing? Or did you just have a vague picture in your mind’s eye? What did you find out that surprised you?
SM: Just a vague picture! As I say in the story, I really did have a sort of cartoon mental image of a cave full of water somewhere beneath Nantucket. I was really surprised to learn how dynamic the movement of groundwater is — that it’s not just sitting there under your well. It flows, and even has currents that hydrogeochemists are getting really good at mapping.
JK: What was complicated about the subject of droughts and aquifers and how did you simplify it in a way that non-scientists could understand it?
SM: I write about Nantucket being a ‘sole source’ aquifer, but my understanding is that it really contains many different layers and pockets, some of which are pretty isolated from the rest — for example, a dense layer of clay can stop water from flowing downward, and create something called a ‘perched aquifer’ that sits above the rest of the water table.
JK: When I read this line of yours: Imagine you were a being that could swim in the fresh water beneath Nantucket. Looking up, these ponds would be your windows to the sky, shimmering portals between aquifer and atmosphere. I immediately thanked my lucky stars for writers (and you!) who can take the wonders of science and make wondrous sentences. Did that sentence … just come to you, or did you struggle to create with words a visual that would get to this pretty abstract notion of fresh water sitting beneath us?
SM: Thanks, Jamie. This was the result of a fight to the death between two analogies — I’m not going to reveal what the other one was, but I’m sure any hydrologist worth their sea salt would take issue with both.
JK: What Bluedot stories have you especially enjoyed reporting, writing, and/or photographing?
SM: I’ve enjoyed anything that lets me learn something new with the help of some really knowledgeable people. Two highlights are: meeting a whale veterinarian who works on endangered right whales, and hearing the life story of the late George Woodwell, a godfather of modern climate science. But really, some of my most enduring memories come from being out with my camera on a sunny day, taking pictures of someone doing their thing, whether it’s taking water samples or feeding a rescued baby bunny.
You can see more of Sam’s stories here.
