The future of this Australian island is in danger. How its residents are fighting back

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Yessie Mosby paces down the beach near his home on Masig, a teardrop-shaped island in the Torres Strait.

As he walks, he points to the crimson fruit of a wongai tree, a marooned yellow rowboat and a tree trunk full of hiding holes — hallmarks of his generations-long connection to this spot.

The Kulkalgal man recalls a day in 2017, when his son recovered the washed-up remains of his great-great-grandmother while playing in the sand.

"They were picking up her bones like shells off the beach. My son grabbed her skull and placed her in a bucket," he says.

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Less than three metres above sea level, Masig's sandy shores are slowly being eaten away by rising tides. Areas once safely inland, such as burial sites, playgrounds, roads and family gardens, are receding before its residents' eyes.

The most dire scientific predictions give the Torres Strait's low-lying islands, including Masig, until 2050 before they become uninhabitable. But Mosby, a climate advocate and chair of the Masigalgal Prescribed Body Corporate (a legal entity that holds and manages native title rights on behalf of Traditional Owners), has taken to measuring the encroaching tides in real time.

"When I was young, the island was here," the 43-year-old says, using the sand as a slate to draw a line.

But with the birth of each of his seven children, now aged five to 15 years, that mark has edged further inland.

"That loved one should be resting in peace. She shouldn't be washed out into the sea," he says.

Five years later, in 2022, Mosby was among eight Torres Strait Islanders who won a landmark UN human rights ruling against the Australian government over climate change inaction. The group have been calling for urgent action to protect Masig and its neighbouring islands.

Over the past decade, the federal and Queensland governments have invested millions in the Torres Strait Seawalls Program, installing thousands of sandbags to mitigate coastal erosion. On Masig, they wrap around the island's northwestern side to form a seawall.

But so far, external efforts to hold back the tide have been inadequate.