Kayaks coast downstream and boots slog through chilly creeks as snow blankets the landscape. No, this isn’t an Arctic river, but rather a completely inundated street in Seaport, Boston.

Boston is not just a coastal city but a peninsula, meaning it is surrounded by water on three sides. It is also partially built on manmade land. This makes it more susceptible to flooding and rising sea levels as climate change continues its upward slope towards the inevitable tipping point.

In the 1600s, puritans settled on a small peninsula that became partially submerged during high tide. To even out the tidal flats, locals filled the area with landfill and wooden scaffolding. Nowadays, as sea levels continue to rise, the wood is below the water table and is subject to rot as the landfill is slowly eaten away by the persistent ocean.

Walking through the streets of Boston, you’d never even know about the looming danger of flooding, but it’s a growing issue. The lack of common knowledge and education about flooding dangers in Boston is exactly why David Abel, a Boston Globe journalist and Boston University professor, created and directed “Inundation District.” Abel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Boston Globe and a professor of climate change at Boston University.

This 79-minute documentary won multiple awards such as the Mystic Film Festival Best Conservation Film and the Monadnock International Film Festival’s Jonathan Daniels Award. The film explores the impact of flooding on local lives and businesses through both statistics and personal stories, as well as some possible proposed solutions.

Boston’s Seaport is home to the Innovation District, an urban area that has emerged over the past decade. Although this commercial center is crucial to revenue and tourism, it is also at a great risk of flooding, and is speeding up rising sea levels.

“Inundation District” not only delves into the effects of the developing area, but the overarching problem of flooding in the world on real people as well.

The documentary features multiple emotional interviews and personal stories which help bring Abel’s point across. One of the most prominent was Nathan Wyatt, who was experiencing homelessness and was living on the dock. Due to the rising sea levels, Wyatt would have to act quickly and move out of the way before he and his belongings became submerged in water.

“As I was walking underneath the bridge, I saw this man sleeping along the water’s edge,” Abel said. “I knew that there was going to be a king tide and thought that he was about to get soaked. As I got closer, I saw that he had an orange life preserver as a pillow.”

The inclusion of Wyatt’s story was informational and emotional. It helped portray the emotional aspect of the impacts flooding can have on real people, which helped the film stand out.

“I couldn’t have scripted it,” Abel said. “I was blown away by how articulate he is, and was so grateful he was willing to talk to me.”

Abel said that his goal with “Inundation District” was to educate people and show them that climate change and rising sea levels are a real problem all over the world.

“This film was my effort to try to do a few things,” Abel said. “One, reconcile that cognitive dissonance, and two, reflect how climate change is not some distant, abstract threat, but one that very much presents a clear and present danger. And finally, it was to reflect a lot of the issues about environmental justice and also to show something that is hard for people to appreciate, which is the steady rising of the seas.”