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Life and Death of the Salt Marsh
"At low tide, the wind blowing across Spartina grass sounds like wind of the prairie. When the tide is in, the gentle music of moving water is added to the prairie rustle.... "
One of nature's greatest gifts is the string of salt marshes that edges the East Coast from Newfoundland to Florida -- a ribbon of green growth, part solid land, part scurrying water. Life and Death of the Salt Marsh shows how these marshes are developed, what kinds of life inhabit them, how enormously they have contributed to man, and how ruthlessly man is destroying them.
One of nature's greatest gifts is the string of salt marshes that edges the East Coast from Newfoundland to Florida -- a ribbon of green growth, part solid land, part scurrying water. Life and Death of the Salt Marsh shows how these marshes are developed, what kinds of life inhabit them, how enormously they have contributed to man, and how ruthlessly man is destroying them.
274 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
June 22, 2013
The salt marsh is probably not an area you would think of as beautiful or interesting, at least if you aren’t already into nature. Thought of by many as the domain of mosquitoes and biting flies, of awful, sulfury rotten egg smells, a place that becomes a dump, a landfill, filled in for more INTERESTING or USEFUL things like marinas, golf courses, housing developments, or industrial parks. It is a MARSH. Why would I want to read about it? Why would you want to visit?
Well, reading this book you might change your mind. None of what I wrote up above is necessarily untrue (well except for the smell part, as it doesn’t by any means always smell of sulfur compounds). The salt marsh is in fact both beautiful and interesting. With some often rather nicely descriptive prose, the authors paint mental pictures (or show actual pictures, through black and white drawings included within the text), of a land at times half land and half water, “a definite but elusive border” between land and sea, a “ribbon of green marshes” that hugs the eastern coast of North America. Using not just sight but also sound and smell, they show the salt marsh being as much prairie as sea, with the wind rustling through the salt marsh grasses, home to myriads of animals in the waving salt hay, redolent with the call of unseen marsh birds like the clapper rail, tiny herds of crabs moving with the tides to feed and retreat from predators, of raccoons, herons, turtles, tiny shrimp, many fishes (including fish that move out to sea when they are adults and become much, much bigger), of ducks and wrens and sparrows and ospreys and eagles and muskrats and a bewildering variety of tiny animals that you need magnification to see, of fascinating plants and animals that master the extreme challenges of not only living but thriving in an realm where you might be submerged or on dry land, immersed in seawater (or water even saltier than the sea) or water that is practically fresh.
The salt marsh is also useful. Written before a time when the term “ecosystem services” existed, the salt marsh can buffer wave action and surges during storms, lessen or usually prevent erosion on the landward side of marshes, act as nurseries if not homes for many commercial valuable fishes, crustaceans, and mollusks, act as wintering ground and migratory stopover points for many species of birds, especially shorebirds, wading birds, and waterfowl, provide countless recreational opportunities for birdwatchers, sport fishermen, and canoeists, provide premium hay for livestock if managed properly, and can in themselves be aesthetically pleasing.
The book veers between chapters with that were almost poetic and with story teller’s feel to it, particularly in the early chapters which tell the story of one particular salt marsh from its beginning to its tragic, sad end, to very scientific chapters that describe just how plant and animal cells (or other parts of their anatomy) deal with getting the amounts of oxygen, salt, and water in their life in the amounts that they needed, to chapters that were a call to action to preserve the salt marsh, particularly those embattled marshes in the northeastern United States.
The book was originally published in 1969 and while I would argue that large parts of it felt timeless, some parts did feel a little dated. Some things were really minor (the word men or man was used a lot when I think a modern recently written book would say people or some other replacement). Some things were by necessity dated, such a list by state of existing salt marshes and laws, regulations, and practices dealing with them (those sections I pretty much just skimmed as they were largely just lists). In the sections on the threats to salt marshes and their inhabitants, DDT loomed very, very large and I completely understand that, given popular, professional, and scientific opinion on DDT when this book was written and the effects it was having on ecosystems and especially birds at the time. Not to say it is not a problem today – it is still used in some parts of the world and even in areas where it is no longer used it effects can linger for years – but it was a much bigger problem back then. Also another section dealt with non-pesticide controls for pests, mentioning biological controls such as brining in parasites to control a pest species. A very laudable notion, but unless very, very carefully done such a parasite (or parasitoid) can prey upon non-targeted species and create just massive problems(for a good popular account of this, though not relating to salt marshes, there is a chapter on this in _Summer World_ by Bernd Heinrich).
One of the things I really liked about reading _Looking for Longleaf_ by Lawrence S. Earley was the balanced approach he took to the use (and abuse) of a particular ecosystem (his subject being longleaf pine forests, not salt marshes). While Earley didn’t defend wasteful or destructive practices by any means, he did try to show economic, social, and historical context to try and explain why in his instance the longleaf forests were used the way they were and explored the culture and technologies used in that exploitation (which made for fascinating reading). Maybe the story of salt marsh use and abuse wasn’t as interesting or maybe that wasn’t the style of books written back then, at the start of the environmental era when just waking people up to the problem was a challenge, but I would have liked a little more of that. There was some of the human dimension (in a not entirely negative light) in their history of one particular salt marsh, describing the plants and animals harvested there and particularly of how salt marsh hay was harvested, largely man’s presence in the salt marshes as described in this book was very, very negative indeed.
My favorite thing about the book was just the neat tidbits of the biology of the salt marshes (and mangrove swamps, which exist in southern Florida and are covered some as well). Many things I didn’t know; why there are no mangroves in the north (sea ice rushing in and out with the tide and waves can just destroy tree seedlings, planning down plants to the bare, cold, winter mud is one reason). What birds in the marsh use for grit in a land with no stones (small snail shells). Organisms such as snails and diatoms, even when removed from the salt marsh, still have inner clocks that respond to the rise and fall of the tides. How parts of the high marsh are only flooded on the highest tides of the month and how some organisms depend upon that occasional flooding. There are some bird’s whose eggs can survive being underwater for a time! Of just how delicate is the constant balancing act, largely the realm of plants but one in which animals have a huge impact, of maintaining just the right level of land; too low and a salt marsh becomes open water, too high and it doesn’t get the life giving tides and dries out and dies. There are plants I had never heard of before, succulent plants that aren’t cacti; the Samphire (genus Salicornia) is a plant that is also called glasswort (due to being full of water and looking slightly translucent) and pickle plant (as apparently it makes delicious pickles). So dominant are two plants in the salt marsh – Thatch or Cord Grass (Spartina alterniflora) and Salt Hay Grass (Spartina patens) – that the salt marsh should be labeled almost the “Kingdom of the Spartinas.” Far from being monotonous or uninteresting, they are the plants without which the salt marsh cannot exist (though not mentioned in the book, in recent years reeds – genus Phragmites – has made in roads and dominates some marshes today) and are fascinating studies of how a plant deals with salt-saturated, low oxygen mud and how it can be a world unto itself for other plants and animals, with plants and animals depending upon it above water, in the ground with the roots and rhizomes, even inside the plant itself.
Well, reading this book you might change your mind. None of what I wrote up above is necessarily untrue (well except for the smell part, as it doesn’t by any means always smell of sulfur compounds). The salt marsh is in fact both beautiful and interesting. With some often rather nicely descriptive prose, the authors paint mental pictures (or show actual pictures, through black and white drawings included within the text), of a land at times half land and half water, “a definite but elusive border” between land and sea, a “ribbon of green marshes” that hugs the eastern coast of North America. Using not just sight but also sound and smell, they show the salt marsh being as much prairie as sea, with the wind rustling through the salt marsh grasses, home to myriads of animals in the waving salt hay, redolent with the call of unseen marsh birds like the clapper rail, tiny herds of crabs moving with the tides to feed and retreat from predators, of raccoons, herons, turtles, tiny shrimp, many fishes (including fish that move out to sea when they are adults and become much, much bigger), of ducks and wrens and sparrows and ospreys and eagles and muskrats and a bewildering variety of tiny animals that you need magnification to see, of fascinating plants and animals that master the extreme challenges of not only living but thriving in an realm where you might be submerged or on dry land, immersed in seawater (or water even saltier than the sea) or water that is practically fresh.
The salt marsh is also useful. Written before a time when the term “ecosystem services” existed, the salt marsh can buffer wave action and surges during storms, lessen or usually prevent erosion on the landward side of marshes, act as nurseries if not homes for many commercial valuable fishes, crustaceans, and mollusks, act as wintering ground and migratory stopover points for many species of birds, especially shorebirds, wading birds, and waterfowl, provide countless recreational opportunities for birdwatchers, sport fishermen, and canoeists, provide premium hay for livestock if managed properly, and can in themselves be aesthetically pleasing.
The book veers between chapters with that were almost poetic and with story teller’s feel to it, particularly in the early chapters which tell the story of one particular salt marsh from its beginning to its tragic, sad end, to very scientific chapters that describe just how plant and animal cells (or other parts of their anatomy) deal with getting the amounts of oxygen, salt, and water in their life in the amounts that they needed, to chapters that were a call to action to preserve the salt marsh, particularly those embattled marshes in the northeastern United States.
The book was originally published in 1969 and while I would argue that large parts of it felt timeless, some parts did feel a little dated. Some things were really minor (the word men or man was used a lot when I think a modern recently written book would say people or some other replacement). Some things were by necessity dated, such a list by state of existing salt marshes and laws, regulations, and practices dealing with them (those sections I pretty much just skimmed as they were largely just lists). In the sections on the threats to salt marshes and their inhabitants, DDT loomed very, very large and I completely understand that, given popular, professional, and scientific opinion on DDT when this book was written and the effects it was having on ecosystems and especially birds at the time. Not to say it is not a problem today – it is still used in some parts of the world and even in areas where it is no longer used it effects can linger for years – but it was a much bigger problem back then. Also another section dealt with non-pesticide controls for pests, mentioning biological controls such as brining in parasites to control a pest species. A very laudable notion, but unless very, very carefully done such a parasite (or parasitoid) can prey upon non-targeted species and create just massive problems(for a good popular account of this, though not relating to salt marshes, there is a chapter on this in _Summer World_ by Bernd Heinrich).
One of the things I really liked about reading _Looking for Longleaf_ by Lawrence S. Earley was the balanced approach he took to the use (and abuse) of a particular ecosystem (his subject being longleaf pine forests, not salt marshes). While Earley didn’t defend wasteful or destructive practices by any means, he did try to show economic, social, and historical context to try and explain why in his instance the longleaf forests were used the way they were and explored the culture and technologies used in that exploitation (which made for fascinating reading). Maybe the story of salt marsh use and abuse wasn’t as interesting or maybe that wasn’t the style of books written back then, at the start of the environmental era when just waking people up to the problem was a challenge, but I would have liked a little more of that. There was some of the human dimension (in a not entirely negative light) in their history of one particular salt marsh, describing the plants and animals harvested there and particularly of how salt marsh hay was harvested, largely man’s presence in the salt marshes as described in this book was very, very negative indeed.
My favorite thing about the book was just the neat tidbits of the biology of the salt marshes (and mangrove swamps, which exist in southern Florida and are covered some as well). Many things I didn’t know; why there are no mangroves in the north (sea ice rushing in and out with the tide and waves can just destroy tree seedlings, planning down plants to the bare, cold, winter mud is one reason). What birds in the marsh use for grit in a land with no stones (small snail shells). Organisms such as snails and diatoms, even when removed from the salt marsh, still have inner clocks that respond to the rise and fall of the tides. How parts of the high marsh are only flooded on the highest tides of the month and how some organisms depend upon that occasional flooding. There are some bird’s whose eggs can survive being underwater for a time! Of just how delicate is the constant balancing act, largely the realm of plants but one in which animals have a huge impact, of maintaining just the right level of land; too low and a salt marsh becomes open water, too high and it doesn’t get the life giving tides and dries out and dies. There are plants I had never heard of before, succulent plants that aren’t cacti; the Samphire (genus Salicornia) is a plant that is also called glasswort (due to being full of water and looking slightly translucent) and pickle plant (as apparently it makes delicious pickles). So dominant are two plants in the salt marsh – Thatch or Cord Grass (Spartina alterniflora) and Salt Hay Grass (Spartina patens) – that the salt marsh should be labeled almost the “Kingdom of the Spartinas.” Far from being monotonous or uninteresting, they are the plants without which the salt marsh cannot exist (though not mentioned in the book, in recent years reeds – genus Phragmites – has made in roads and dominates some marshes today) and are fascinating studies of how a plant deals with salt-saturated, low oxygen mud and how it can be a world unto itself for other plants and animals, with plants and animals depending upon it above water, in the ground with the roots and rhizomes, even inside the plant itself.
September 17, 2018
NF - Science
262 pages
Excellent book! The marshes are a gift of life. The
mud, insects, bacteria, clams, fish, and man etc. is
a circle of life. They are very important and need
to be preserved.
262 pages
Excellent book! The marshes are a gift of life. The
mud, insects, bacteria, clams, fish, and man etc. is
a circle of life. They are very important and need
to be preserved.
March 26, 2023
“The tide giveth and the tide taketh away”
something must be saved almost in it’s entirety if its preservation is to have any real meaning.
something must be saved almost in it’s entirety if its preservation is to have any real meaning.
January 7, 2024
This was wonderful to read and learn from when visiting an area with extensive salt marshes. It was first published in 1969, though, so I would be very interested in an updated edition that reflects current knowledge and conservation trends.
November 7, 2020
The ecology portion of this book was a fascinating read. However, the entire book was textbook style with very strict divisions that were a bit chalky. If struggling at the beginning, skip to Part II. This will give the framework for and the reason to care about the rest of the story.
July 24, 2025
Definitely dated at this point, more than half a century after it was written, but still a nice read if you love a good salt marsh(which I do!). Fairly academic writing, but some of the nature writing portions were lovely.
November 29, 2022
It was fine. Good info. Just super outdated and quite boring as a result. Good as a historic reference.
June 10, 2024
Read for MARS 4160
Super cool book with lots of details about the marsh ecosystems and the influence of humans on our coastlines! Very much enjoyed it!
Super cool book with lots of details about the marsh ecosystems and the influence of humans on our coastlines! Very much enjoyed it!
December 10, 2015
A thorough description of salt marshes biology, conservation and human interaction; written in a very fluid way though still detailed and scientifically accurate. I especially liked the chapters on the biology of marsh plants / animals, where it goes in detail about adaptations to salinity changes and other stressors of marsh life.
March 30, 2009
A really well done book that opens the reader's eyes to both natural and unnatural cycles in the life of a Salt Marsh. Anyone who loves nature will probably like this book.
April 9, 2015
Good insight, but dense... Best part is that it is over 40 years old and could have been written about todays conservation struggle
March 29, 2017
A great read for naturalists; probably would not be very meaningful to anyone who hasn't spent a substantial amount of time in salt marshes.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews