Name: Can South Carolina's Salt Marshes Be Saved?
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Beyond being important to both the economy and marine life in the South, salt marshes also serve as buffers, shielding communities on the coast from erosion and dangerous weather events. But in South Carolina, which boasts the largest expanse of salt marsh of any Atlantic state, these ecosystems are in decline.

Many seafood dishes depend on an ecosystem that's easy to overlook: The salt marsh.

Beyond being important to both the economy and  marine life in the South, salt marshes also serve as buffers, shielding communities on the coast from erosion and dangerous weather events. But in South Carolina, which boasts the largest expanse of salt marsh of any Atlantic state, these ecosystems are in decline.

Can South Carolina's Salt Marshes Be Saved?

Many seafood dishes depend on an ecosystem that's easy to overlook: The salt marsh.

Planet Earth

Can South Carolina's Salt Marshes Be Saved?Published: January 27, 2022Narrator: Crab cakes. Gumbo. Shrimp and grits. A lot of seafood depends on something easy to overlook. Salt marsh.Al George: The salt marsh estuary is one of the most important ecological habitats in the world, not just in our part of the world, but in the world.John Carr: The bottom of the food chain starts here. Fish, baby crabs, oysters. All of it starts right in the marsh.Narrator: The adults live offshore, but the babies are carried by the currents into the marsh habitat.Dionne Hoskins-Brown: This is a nursery ground for many of the species that are so commercially important to consumers like me who like seafood. Juvenile shrimp, juvenile crabs, juvenile fish are able to take refuge in these areas. They are more protected from predators and have great access to small invertebrates that they can consume as they develop.Narrator: The seafood economy and the health of the marshes are especially important in the southeastern U.S.Craig Reaves: That's where our shrimp reproduce.Narrator: Craig reaves has worked as a commercial fisherman for the last 35 years, harvesting clams, crabs, oysters, and above all, shrimp. In a good week, he and his crew pack 20 to 30,000 pounds of seafood.Reaves: Fishing is in my blood and in my family's blood, and it's just, we're called to the water. We’re watermen.Narrator: The marsh also plays a crucial role in shielding people living along the coast, says fisheries biologist Dionne Hoskins-Brown.Hoskins-Brown: One of the very important structural functions of the salt marsh is physical protection, being a physical buffer from storm surge.Narrator: But there are signs that marsh habitat across the southeast is changing, including this one. John Carr grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, a coastal community built atop and alongside salt marsh.Carr: This is my backyard. Born and raised right here. When I was a little boy, that was nothing but marsh. The marsh would be at least 5, 6 feet high.Narrator: South Carolina boasts the largest expanse of salt marsh of any state along the Atlantic. But the ecosystem has experienced dieback within the last couple decades, including here in Carr’s backyard.Carr: About 10, 15 years ago, it just started dying out. Where you see the brown, that’s not healthy. It was quite alarming for all this marsh to die out, and it just kept receding, receding, receding.This is my son, John Carr IV.John Carr IV: Yeah, it was off limits, yeah, couldn’t go back there.Carr: The marsh was gone by the time he—all he knows is mud. No root system, no marsh root system. As soon as you step in it, you’re going down. You may go down to your waist. Very dangerous so no, I didn’t let him play in it.Narrator: Along the central Georgia coast, one study found that the mass of marsh plants aboveground fell between 30 and 40% over a 28-year period.Ervin Simmons has noticed changes in the last several decades too. He’s a crabber out of Daufuskie Island, South Carolina, just north of the Georgia border, like his father and grandfather.Ervin Simmons: Yeah, the grass...the marsh had seemed much greener when we were younger compared to now. A lot of it has washed out, just pushed back sort of from where it was.Narrator: Over the years, he says fishing practices have changed. And Simmons has witnessed the results firsthand.Simmons: When I was a young boy, crab often would be that size. We had much more crab, much larger crab. I think that's due in part to crabbing was seasonal. The difference now with year-round crabbing, I think in my judgment, it’s kind of over-crabbed. And with so many people running so many pots, it kind of has thrown everything off. It’s real scarce right now.Narrator: As for the marsh die-off, there are a couple possible explanations. First, drought. Which threw off the balance of the ecosystem.Hoskins-Brown: There were changes in marsh snail populations that made the marsh grass more susceptible to fungal infections. And those snails normally would have been controlled by blue crabs that were in smaller numbers because we were in the middle of a drought. And so consequently, there were large patches of marsh grass that died back along the coast.Narrator: Once the rains returned, the marsh largely recovered.Hoskins-Brown: The marsh ecosystem is pretty resilient and can bounce back typically from different types of natural interruptions.Narrator: But others worry the problem of marsh dieback is linked to rising sea levels—in part a result of climate change.George: Here in the Charleston harbor, we have documented over a foot of sea level rise over the last 85 years. If this rate stays consistent, we can potentially see the next foot of sea level rise over the next 20 to 30 years. There's potential marsh drowning that's already occurring.Narrator: Al George says that if the seas continue to rise faster than marsh grass can colonize slightly higher elevations, large scale die off may result.And it’s a problem compounded by subsidence—the sinking of land, which leads to sea level rise bringing saltier water farther inland.Al George says protecting the marsh is crucial.George: The hope’s that we can keep the marsh safe, viable, and flourishing, even under these different, changing conditions.Narrator: And this brings us back to John Carr and his home along the marsh.Carr: Something is happening, because you can see it’s starting to grow back.Narrator: In partnership with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, a team of researchers, including Al George, is examining which kinds of grasses fare best in these changing conditions.George: We planted different strands in the area to determine: is there another strand that would be better suited to be more capable of handling this different environment that currently exists?Carr: They came in and they planted different strands of marsh to see which one would survive. That’s an area over there they planted, and this right here is new growth — they just planted that like last week.Narrator: The team has found a kind of marsh grass that’s more tolerant of the new conditions, one that’s better suited to the evolving flow patterns of the area.George: And that is the strand that we're using to replant over a half-acre of salt marsh in that community to provide them with some hope that we can regenerate that area sort of more quickly. And it’s on track to continue to grow and hopefully see things turn around in that particular area for the best.We have to figure out how we take care of the salt marshes because ultimately the health of the entire food food web system for the entire Atlantic Ocean, and even our health is dependent on the ecosystem staying intact and staying viable, staying healthy, even under these different changing conditions associated with climate change.Narrator: The marsh is still far from being in the clear. But a solution would mean greater stability for the coastline.John Carr IV: I feel happy about it, I feel like I can have an experience how he had an experience.Carr: In my mind, if I instilled in him the pride of what he has, then he could pass that on to his children. And maybe we get another 150, 200 years more of being on this property. My father swam out here, taught me how to swim in that creek, so I’d like to get that back before I get too old. And teach him so he could bring his children out here.

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