Nesting

Some of the summer visitors we most look forward to are due to start arriving in the coming weeks. It's nesting season for loggerhead turtles, and we're fortunate to be among the north and mid-Atlantic sites favored by loggerheads. Our friends at the Seabrook Island Turle Patrol are preparing for the arrivals, with the season officially starting on May 1st and continuing through September.

Loggerheads are named for their large heads and powerful jaws that allow them to crack through the shells of crabs, whelks and conch on their carnivorous diet. Except for the brief time females dig and lay their nests, loggerheads spend all their time in the oceans and coastal waters on both sides of the Atlantic, the Pacific, and in the eastern Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, migrating thousands of miles during their life spans, which an be up to eighty years. Females lay eggs every two to three years and return to the general area they themselves hatched from to dig their nests. On our side of the Atlantic, south Florida typically ranks each year with the highest number of nests, up to 10,000 of them in some years. The South Carolina coast averages six-thousand or so sites annually. Here on Seabrook Island, 2020 was a peak year for nesting sites, with more than ninety nests identified. Last year, tropical storm Idalia washed away many nests.

Loggerhead populations have been in decline for some years worldwide, although the NOAA recently reported that the slide seems to have slowed in some parts of the globe. Dangers to loggerheads include as fishing boat bycatch, loss of nesting habitat due to coastal development, and marine pollution and trash. That's all on top of the hazardous journey to the ocean that hatchlings must make under the watchful eyes of predators like shorebirds, coyotes and foxes. Hatchlings, who navigate from nests to the water by fixing on the brightest light of the horizon, can become disoriented by bright lighting from beachside homes and roadways, causing them to head landward instead of seaward.

You can help our loggerheads survive by observing "lights out" on the beach, taking trash away with you when you leave the beach, and filling in any holes in the sand that can trap a female turtle. Even better, join the Turtle Patrol!

Red Gold

With warming temperatures, one of Johns Island's most famous foods will begin appearing at farm stands all over the Lowcountry soon. Planting has already begun for the first tomato harvests in June, including popular heirloom varieties like Purple Cherokees and Brandywines, those huge, oddly shaped ones, which have been grown here for at least fifty years. Johns Island tomatoes are famously delicious, but what makes our tomatoes so much more delectable than the bland supermarket ones from who knows where?

One theory is the trace amounts of salt in the local water used for irrigation, which acts as a mild stressor for the plant and provokes a protective response that leads to higher than usual levels of compounds like lycopene, vitamins C and E, and certain flavonoids - all of which not only protect the fruit but make it more nutritious and flavorful. The sandy, porous Lowcountry soil plays a big part, too, helping to saturate the plant bed without trapping water too close to the roots.

Whatever the reason, our Johns Island tomatoes (and Wadmalaw Island's, too) account for the largest share of produce sales during the summer. Limehouse Produce, for example, once estimated that it sold 1.8 million pounds of local tomatoes to restaurant kitchens and produce markets in one year alone.

Although tomatoes, native to South America, were first reported under cultivation in the Carolinas in the early 17th century, they weren’t always popular with European settlers, who noted the tomato's lineage in the nightshade family and regarded them as poisonous. It wasn't until the Civil War that tomatoes proved to be an easily grown, preserved and transported food for troops in the field, starting the tomato's climb to the top of the summer menu. There's even a song about them, "Homegrown Tomatoes", which begins "Plant 'em in the spring/eat 'em in the summer/All winter without em's a culinary bummer."

Summer's Sting

Now that it's starting to feel like summer and we're spending more time at the beach, we're likely to see more of the cannonball jellyfish (stomolophus meleagris) washed up and stranded at the tideline. They're the most common jellyfish on our stretch of coastline, but fortunately also the least venomous; even so, it's best not to handle them, especially by the truncated tentacles below the bell, as they can still deliver a very mild sting.

Cannonballs appear offshore and in the mouths of estuaries starting in late spring and continuing into summer, abundant enough at times that commercial trawl fishermen consider them a nuisance for clogging and damaging nets. But some cultures, especially in Asia and the Pacific Rim, consider them a great delicacy served pickled or dried.

Among the most mysterious and beautiful of marine creatures, jellyfish of course aren't fish at all, but belong to a group of marine animals that includes corals and sea anemones. Their bells can be as small as an inch or so in diameter or more than a foot across. All jellyfish species are carnivorous and feed using their tentacles to carry prey - small organisms like plankton and krill, minnows, and even other jellyfish - to their mouths within the bell. They're in turn preyed upon by fish, turtles and other, larger jelly fish.

A Man O'War with its distinctive "sail"

The most recognizable jellyfish to most people is the Portuguese Man O'War (Physalia physalis), highly venomous but only rarely seen in our waters, occasionally drifting inshore. Unlike other jellyfish, the Man O'War is actually a colony of many separate organisms. Tentacles may extend underwater up to sixty feet and inflict a very painful shock to muscles and joints that can require medical attention.

The Lions Mane, or "winter jelly"

You're more likely to see, besides the cannonball, the Lions Mane (Cyanea capillata), although this variety usually only appears in colder weather, thus its alternate name of "winter jelly." Its tentacles can cause a mild burning sensation which usually dissipates in a few minutes.

Also common during warmer months is the Southern Moon Jelly (Aurelia marginalis), with its

Southern Moon Jelly

transparent saucer-shaped bell and distinctive "horseshoe" shapes. Contact can produce a mild but temporary burning sensation.

Most important for treating jelly fish stings is removing any tentacles that remain attached to the skin. After that, recommended treatments, all with varied success, include sugar, vinegar and bicarbonate of soda. (Note that a common folk remedy, urine, can actually increase the intensity of the pain.) It's best to give these ethereal animals a wide berth. Learn more about them here.

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