Peter
Dykstra
Imagine
a marvel of nature that changes itself every six hours: new views, new sounds,
new smells, four times a day.
Photo by Will Collette
Of
course, that's what the tides do at the shoreline. This is most beautifully
done in salt marshes. That's what captured me.
First, it was the smell—the mix of rotting beach grass and crab shells that, in another context, meant that a first grade classmate had just cut a fart.
How
could that methane smell be so evocative when driving by a salt marsh and so
repulsive when it's issued from the dorsal side of a kid in Miss Von Bargen's
class?
Chalk
up another one to the mysteries of nature.
Two
sprawling salt marshes factored early in my life: Nauset Marsh, a relatively
pristine treasure within the protected confines of the Cape Cod National
Seashore; and the Hackensack Meadowlands, the landfill-choked alleged final
resting place of Jimmy Hoffa and current home of the futile New York Giants and
Jets. But that's another story, and the Giants and Jets are a different aroma
altogether.
Long before Silent Spring, Rachel Carson had a best-selling book called The Sea Around Us. I found a battered paperback copy on my big brother's bookshelf, and salt marshes suddenly made a lot more sense as the nursery for seafood, feeding ground for shorebirds, and so much more. As my horizons broadened,
I found more and more spots with that royal, rancid smell: the tide flats of the Delaware River, where horseshoe crabs rule and Sylvia Earle, one of my saltwater heroes, fell in love with the sea. The blue-blooded horseshoes are also the source of a costly pharmaceutical that may be needed for COVID-19 vaccines.
Others
include the Chesapeake Bay, where a century-long battle over seagrass,
development, farm chemicals, fish and fishers is coming to some kind of
conclusion; and California's Elkhorn Slough, where sea otters loll among the
kelp.
A
lot of people have responded to salt marshes threats, but a much bigger, global
threat looms. The marshes rely on the tenuous balance between land and sea.
Should the ice covering Greenland and Antarctica melt away, our salt marshes
are gone. There's no guarantee that nature can rebuild them. A free-floating
Jimmy Hoffa would be the least of our problems.
Our
friends at Inside Climate News recently reported on
three Superfund sites along
an otherwise beautiful stretch of the Georgia coastline, where wood treatment
chemicals and other carcinogens are stored.
One
thing I've not seen reported is that President-elect Biden's beloved state of
Delaware is the lowest-lying of the 50 states. Worst-case sea level projections
show much of Delaware disappearing.
As
seas rise and salt marshes, mangrove swamps, and barrier islands lose their
ability to protect the mainland worldwide, Miami Beach and Bangladesh could see
the same impacts. The outgoing president's stated goal of "drain(ing) the
swamp" in Washington will instead see our actual swamps get swamped.
And
we'll really miss the smell of that fetid, wonderful swamp.
Peter Dykstra is EHN's weekend editor and columnist and can be reached at pdykstra@ehn.org or @pdykstra.