A Light In The Dark

With winter darkness arriving earlier in the afternoons and lasting longer in the mornings, Charleston Harbor can be especially dangerous for late-arriving ship traffic. It means one of the harbor's longest-serving beacons, the Morris Island Lighthouse at the mouth of the Harbor, is especially welcome. Even though it's officially decommissioned, this landmark off the tip of Folly Beach continues to flash a welcome to arriving traffic.

There's been a beacon at the site since Charleston's earliest days, when English settlers kept a fire burning, fed by oakum and pitch, to guide arriving harbor traffic. It was followed by a towered beacon which rose on the island in the early decades of the 18th century, replaced by a much taller one with a Fresnel lens beacon erected in the 1850's, only to be torn down by the Confederacy when South Carolina seceded to prevent it from falling into the hands of Union troops during the Civil War.

The lighthouse and keeper's cottage in 1935. (Courtesy U.S. Coast Guard)

The present lighthouse dates from 1876, and was fully automated in 1938 when beach erosion and rising water levels threatened the keeper's lodging, which was torn down. But by 1962 the Coast Guard had decommissioned the lighthouse as continuing erosion threatened the structure's stability. It passed through several private hands until being acquired in 1999 by Save The Light, which leases the lighthouse from the state's Department of Natural Resources and works works to maintain and preserve the lighthouse. You can learn more about the lighthouse's long history here.

The lighthouse has been a popular destination on our SINHG Trips calendar for several years, and is on the schedule for a visit late this spring.

Silver Shells

With Thanksgiving behind us, the holiday season is in full swing. Adding to the holiday spirit for shellfish lovers is the start of peak season for oysters and oyster roasts, with "r" months stretching ahead into next spring. Some less traditional oyster lovers may scoff at what seems like another quaint custom, but there's actually some proof that this r-restricted dictum may not only be scientifically valid but quite ancient.

Fossilized snail parasites

Research conducted by the Florida Museum of Natural History at a 4,000-year-old shell ring on the Georgia coast shows that the native people responsible for these mysterious rings up and down the southeast coast were harvesting oysters during the fall, winter and early spring, but not during the summer. The timetable was determined by studying the remains of parasitic snails attached to oyster shells. The snails have a known life cycle of twelve months, so by measuring the length of the stylus the snails insert into the oyster shell, researchers could extrapolate when the host oyster had been collected and its shell deposited at the ring.

The ancient nomadic hunter/gatherers responsible for shell rings likely moved inland during the summer, the research suggests, partly because experience had taught them that oysters harvested in the summer months were watery and shrunken, although they might not have known the cause - that the oyster's reproductive cycle peaks during the summer and leaves the mature animals weak and emaciated. The harvesting cycle at these shell rings may be the earliest example of sustainable aquaculture, letting oyster populations replenish before returning to them in the autumn.

Oyster farmers keep sustainability in mind

Written cautions against eating raw oysters during the r-less summer months appear in an English cookbook of 1599, when reliable refrigeration methods were far in the future but sickness from consuming the food in the hot months was well-documented. Modern harvesting and icing methods help get around that danger; but, still, many oyster farmers suspend market shipments in the summer until young oysters spawned during the warmer months help re-establish populations.

So celebrate this r-marked holiday and new year, and be sure to sustainably dispose of oyster shells at designated collection points, where they'll be collected and used to seed new beds. There are two nearby sites managed by the SCDNR - on Wadmalaw Island at Bears Bluff Fish Hatchery, and on Johns Island at Gilligans Restaurant on Main Road.

THE NATIONAL BIRD

That's what Ben Franklin famously thought the turkey should be. It was, he wrote, "a much more respectable bird" than the eagle, which he considered to be "a rank coward". He thought the turkey to be "a true original native of America, and a bird of courage" that would willingly attack any grenadier of the British Guards who dared to invade his farm.

He was correct in thinking that the Tom turkey would aggressively protect itself, as many a stroller or golfer who has come too close to one can attest. But he was wrong in thinking that turkeys were native to the United States, although today they can be found in every state except Alaska. They were first encountered by 16th-century European explorers arriving in Mexico, where turkeys had been bred for centuries, making it one of only two birds native to the Americas (the other being the Muscovy duck). Imported to Europe and the Middle East, the birds reminded traders of the African guinea fowl that came to them along trade routes passing through Turkey, and thus came to be called "Turkey birds."

The bird that may be gracing your Thanksgiving table next week is a descendant of a millennia-long heritage, as fossil records from up to five-million years ago confirm. Although most consumer turkeys are farm-bred and raised, turkeys in the wild, as Franklin declared, are resourceful and agile. They can fly for short distances, with a flank speed of 50 miles an hour on the wing as they seek overnight roosts in trees. On the ground, they can run at 25 miles an hour when danger is sensed. They use their signature gobbles, that can be loud enough to be heard over a mile, to warn others of a threat; otherwise, the communicate with a series of clucks and purring noises. The poults that emerge from the hens' clutches of as many as eighteen eggs are up and foraging on their own within twenty-four hours and mature quickly, abandoned by the hen within a few days.

Lincoln proclaimed a national holiday of thanksgiving in 1863 as the Civil War neared its end, and presidents after him were presented with a turkey as a gift from the nation to mark the day. It wasn't until 1989 that President George H.W. Bush issued the first presidential pardon saving at least one turkey from the oven, a tradition observed by every president since.