Blue Bloods

With spring now well underway, our beaches become prime destinations for a host of newly active marine life, from nesting loggerhead turtles to migrating red knots. Often overlooked, though, are the animals that have lived on earth longer than almost any other species - horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus), which begin coming ashore in great numbers during the late spring and early summer to mate and lay eggs.

A horseshoe crab fossil from the early Triassic period

They aren't crabs, of course, but arthropods related to spiders and scorpions, which first appeared in the fossil records of 400-million years ago, surviving shifting continents, ice ages and dinosaurs to earn the nickname "living fossils." Despite their formidable appearance, especially the long whip-like tail, horseshoe crabs are harmless and stingless. The tail is used to right themselves if they become flipped over by surf.

Red knots and other migrating birds depend on the crabs' fat and protein-rich eggs to bulk up before continuing on to summer nesting sites; loggerheads, particularly egg-bearing females, prey on them for their calcium-rich exoskeltons. And humans have harvested them as fertilizer and cattle feed, but

Copper gives the crab's blood its distinctive blue color

especially prize them nowadays for their copper-laden blue blood, which contains a chemical used as a component of vaccines and intravenous medicines to detect toxic impurities. If you've received any vaccination or infusion, you have horseshoe crabs to thank for the drugs' safety.

Our Atlantic horseshoe crabs belong to one of four species found throughout the world. Along with their useful blood, another unique feature is a set of ten eyes - two compound eyes on the top of the shell, with more photoreceptive cells than any other animal, and eight simpler eyes around the shell's perimeter which are sensitive to the length of daylight and to ultraviolet light, giving horseshoe crabs exceptional night vision and allowing them to minimize predation by being most active at night.

In May and June, especially on full-moon nights, males and females come ashore in great numbers to mate. Each female lays about 4,000 eggs in each of multiple nests she digs in the sand between high and low tide marks. Two to four weeks later, the hatchlings claw their way out of the sand at high tide, to be carried out to deeper water where they'll live on the seabed during multiple moltings as they grow to adult size.

Harvesting for biomedical use

Although horseshoe crabs are not considered endangered, harvesting them for their blood is somewhat controversial, even though only a third of the blood is removed from each animal before it's returned to the ocean, where the lost blood is regenerated in about a week. But disrupting populations on beaches and tidal marshes, however temporarily, can affect the food supply upon which other migrating and nesting species depend. South Carolina's DNR and federal wildlife officials are considering denying permits for harvesting at the Cape Romaine Wildlife Refuge to the north, and permanent bans are in place on several islands that form part of the ACE Basin to the south. With spawning season just around the corner, harvesting's future continues under negotiation.

Whose Hair Is It?

There's an amusing story about one of the South's most emblematic sights, one so common that Lowcountry residents hardly notice it. During the Spanish - French exploration and rivalry for control of Lowcountry ports in the 17th century, French explorers asked their Native American guides about the scraggly growths dangling from live oaks and bald cypresses. Their guides' name for it translated as "tree hair", prompting the French to think of the ragged beards many of their Spanish rivals sported and leading them to name the stuff "barbe espagnol". The Spanish, on the other hand, preferred to call it "cabello francés"; but it was the French explorers' name that stuck and that, over the centuries, morphed into Spanish Moss.

An eastern Phoebe checks out nesting material

Spanish Moss (Tillandsia usneoides), of course, is neither Spanish in origin nor a member of the moss family. Its closest relatives are bromeliads. It's common throughout the South and Southeast, as far south as Argentina and, to the north, Virginia. Nor is it a parasite, as commonly believed, but a flowering epiphyte that attaches itself to live oaks, cypresses and sweetgums but obtains its own nutrients and water from the air around it and from rain. It has no roots, produces tiny green or yellow flowers, and propagates itself via wind-borne seeds or fragments that break off and are carried by wind or by birds to surrounding trees. Also contrary to popular belief, the plant doesn't harm its host tree in any way, although thick populations on one tree may affect the amount of sun the tree receives and thus slow its growth.

During the Depression, sterilized Spanish Moss provided income as mattress stuffing.

Both humans and animals have found uses for Spanish Moss. Birds and squirrels use it to to line their nests; snakes, bats and spiders find it makes a congenial home or resting place. In Gullah-Geechee culture, it's said that putting fresh green Spanish Moss in one's shoes relieves high blood pressure; made into a poultice, it can be used to heal wounds, lower fevers and relieve chills. The plant's been used at various times as building insulation, padding for car seats and even as an ingredient in the manufacture of wallpaper. During the Depression, it was picked clean, steamed for sterilization, and used as mattress stuffing.

And there's one other story about Spanish Moss' origins, shorn of nationalistic jargon. It's the story of "The Meanest Man Who Ever Lived", who was so mean that no one wanted to cut his hair. It grew so long, it began to get caught on trees and gave us yet another name for the plant - Old Man's Beard.

Camp Tales

Eighty-five years ago, a handwritten document was signed that would decide the future of Seabrook Island and the preservation of its natural beauty. It was in 1938 that Victor Morawetz, once a high-powered New York lawyer who had counted Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan among his clients, signed a handwritten codicil to his will directing that at the death of his younger wife Marjorie, the couple's several hundred acres of Seabrook Island would be deeded to the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina for use as a summer camp for Charleston-area young people.

The Morawetz "Clubhouse" on the beach

The couple, who had arrived in Charleston in the late 1920's, famously bought and restored Fenwick Hall as a winter residence. But in 1937, they purchased several hundred acres of the southern portion of Seabrook Island, then completely undeveloped, and converted an old Boys Club camp building on "Seabrook Beach", near where today's Pelican Watch Villas stand, into a cottage for beach weekends. Both Victor and Marjorie were ardent conservationists and feared Seabrook would be decimated by unregulated timbering if it wasn't protected.

Marjorie Morawetz

Victor died a month after making his bequest to the Episcopal church. Thirteen years later, in 1951, Marjorie Morawetz honored her husband's wish and deeded over eight hundred acres of Seabrook Island to the church and its new Camp St. Christopher, reserving the couple's by-then substantial beach "Clubhouse" for her use during her lifetime. She passed away in 1958, leaving the ownership of Seabrook Island to the diocese, which set about creating Camp St. Christopher. With mounting maintenance costs and tax assessments, the diocese in 1970 sold all but 314 acres to the Seabrook Island Development Partnership, the ancestor of succeeding development entities that eventually led to the Town of Seabrook's incorporation in 1987.

SINHG members visit a slough at the Camp

SINHG has enjoyed a long relationship with Camp St. Christopher and its Barrier Island Environmental Education Center. Not long after SINHG was established in the early 1980's, members funded the first boardwalks along the Camp's fresh-water sloughs and provided reference materials for the Camp's library, along with the first computers ever used at the Camp. SINHG continues to partner with Camp St. Christopher and the Barrier Island Center by periodically including the Camp in its annual schedule of SINHG Trips for members. We're fortunate to have this reminder of Seabrook's less-developed past literally on our doorstep, thanks to the foresight and generosity of a northern couple who, like so many of us, fell in love with the Lowcountry.