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Title: Life and Death of the Salt Marsh by John Mildred Teal ISBN: 0-345-02119-3 Publisher: Ballantine Books Format: Paperback |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (4 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A few feet above high tide from Maine to Florida
Comment: The book promotes an awareness of the salt marsh ... from glacial history to the hunting of doughbirds (Eskimo curlews). Though salt marshes don't have high species diversity, the Teal's cover the range from Spartina and Juncus plants (and sawgrass in Florida), to the economically important Blue Crabs, to annoying insects like greenheads and deerfly. From the salt marsh detritus, is the nutrient soup that becomes the basis for the shrimp and mullet we love to eat.
The Teals also offer conservation ideas. When the book was written (1969), DDT was not yet banned. The chapter on mosquito control is enlightening ... and with the occurrence of West Nile Virus, there will be more pressure on mosquito control, so one hopes it is balanced. The history of marsh destruction in Boston is illustrative. The good news is that in the 1950's the rate of coastal wetland loss was about 46,000 acres/year, but today it is around 20-25,000 per year. Unfortunately pressures of coastal development continue. This book helps me feel lucky to live near Florida "Big Bend" with large stretches of Gulf salt marsh from the Ochlockonee River south to St. Petersburg.
Rating: 5
Summary: THEY PRACTICED WHAT THEY PREACHED
Comment: Sometime between 1970 and 1975, my family and I spent a week with friends who lived in Falmouth, on Cape Cod. Because one of our friends was a Marine Biologist at Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institute and worked with John Teal, one of the authors of this book, we were lucky enough to attend a Fourth of July Celebration at the Teal's farm.
John and Mildred had purchased a colonial era Cape Cod farmhouse and the hundred or so acres that surrounded it. Other than hot and cold running water, electricity and natural gas, and a slightly modernized kitchen (i.e. the stove used gas rather than burning wood), the house looked much as it had when it had been built.
As might be expected, the Teal's Independence Day celebration was ecologically sound and reflected the era in which the farmhouse was built. The children got rides on one of the more tame domesticated goats, the women competed in tossing a rolling pin for distance and accuracy, and the men tried out old fashioned farm implements. The food was prepared from hand gathered and harvested local foods. For instance we had mussel salad made from mussels that I had help gather the day before. There were cranberries from one of the Cape's cranberry bogs, and quahogs and oysters dug up just long enough ago to let them naturally filter out the sand.
The point of all this is that the Teals believed in and acted on the ecological and preservationist principles that they espoused in their book. In LIFE AND DEATH OF THE SALT MARSH, they do a wonderful job of discussing how a salt marsh is formed, how long it takes, and how ecologically fragile it is. They make the point that man can, and does, destroy in a decade or less what it has taken nature centuries to build. Since, as they point out, the salt marshes play an important part in nature's food chain and ultimately in the life cycles of many species, when we damage or destroy these natural habitats, the consequences can be disastrous.
If we all could live a little more like the Teals were living, our children and their children might still have some of nature's bounty left to enjoy in future years.
It is my opinion that this is one of those books that ought to be compulsory reading for every thinking human being.
Rating: 5
Summary: Wonderful description of a vanishing paradise
Comment: I often visit salt marshes in my kayak in the Cape May (NJ) area. This book has enhanced my enjoyment by allowing me to more fully understand my experiences in the wetlands. Read the book and get on your kayak!
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Title: The Sea Around Us by Rachel L. Carson, Jeffrey Levinton, Ann H. Zwinger ISBN: 0195069978 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: December, 1991 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: The Way to the Salt Marsh: A John Hay Reader by John Hay, Christopher Merrill ISBN: 0874518644 Publisher: University Press of New England Pub. Date: September, 1998 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Concepts and Controversies in Tidal Marsh Ecology by Michael P. Weinstein, Daniel A. Kreeger ISBN: 0792360192 Publisher: Kluwer Academic Publishers Pub. Date: October, 2000 List Price(USD): $92.00 |
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Title: A Field Guide to the Atlantic Seashore : From the Bay of Fundy to Cape Hatteras by Kenneth L. Gosner, Roger Tory Peterson ISBN: 061800209X Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 01 September, 1999 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown ISBN: 0385504209 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 18 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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