South Carolina Tidal Marshes

Look familiar?

After leaving Charleston I headed down to Beaufort and then on to Georgia. I chose to bypass Savannah as the realization that I would rather wander around the Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge then another city. Sticking to the coast I was amazed at how expansive the coastal salt water marshes were. They look much like the Blackwater NWR on the bay, or the marshes around Delaware Bay.  Spartina alterniflora is the primary plant and amazingly ... no phragmites! These marshes look like what the tidal marshes of St. Mary's County must have looked like before the phragmites invasion! Functionally they play the same role in the ecosystem as the estuarine and coastal marshes of Maryland; they are the most productive habitats on earth and may be responsible for providing the food for 95% of the commercially valuable fish we harvest.