America's Seashore Wonderlands

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UNDER A SOMBER WESTERN SKY whitecapped waves crowd together, peak, and tumble with a roar upon the bouldery shore. Sea palms toss and swirl, double over— and hold fast, defying the waves on a stormy outpost of jagged rock____In a tidepool teeming with a strange assortment of life, a sea star locks its rays on a mussel and slowly pulls apart the shell. And all about the chatter and squeal of birds rises above the sea foam.
Birds everywhere: Gulls wheeling, watchful, picking off stray chicks on the Farallón rocks . . . hummingbirds flickering amid die orchid-draped mangroves of Yucatan. . . herons stalking the Sapelo marshes autumn hawks furmeling into Cape May. . . yellowlegs fishing the bayside of Cape Cod . . .... Tovább

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UNDER A SOMBER WESTERN SKY whitecapped waves crowd together, peak, and tumble with a roar upon the bouldery shore. Sea palms toss and swirl, double over— and hold fast, defying the waves on a stormy outpost of jagged rock____In a tidepool teeming with a strange assortment of life, a sea star locks its rays on a mussel and slowly pulls apart the shell. And all about the chatter and squeal of birds rises above the sea foam.
Birds everywhere: Gulls wheeling, watchful, picking off stray chicks on the Farallón rocks . . . hummingbirds flickering amid die orchid-draped mangroves of Yucatan. . . herons stalking the Sapelo marshes autumn hawks furmeling into Cape May. . . yellowlegs fishing the bayside of Cape Cod . . . sandpipers running with the surf, pecking, piping—everywhere.
From Vancouver Island's storm-wracked cliffs to the gray whale lagoons of Baja Califomia, around the Gulf of Mexico with its sandy barrier islands and swampy deltas and blazing coral gardens, firom the hot sands of Florida to the cold granite of Maine, America's Seashore Wonderlands explores what the late Rachel Carson called "the primeval meeting place of the elements of earth and water, a place of compromise and conflict and etemal change."
With scientists and conservationists as their guides, skilled writers and photographers examine the diverse worlds of the shore: Killer whales play on the "mbbing beaches" of British Columbia. Jellyfish glisten like "crystal dinner bells"; along the Califomia coast giant kelp glows "like old gold" as sunlight strikes the canopy of a submarine forest, where 800 kinds of plants and animals reside. Even a blade of eelgrass, plucked firom quiet shallows, may reveal a trove of life. Snails and slugs lay eggs on it, anemones grow on it, crabs crawl on it, sea stars adom it, and clams burrow among its roots. Around Yucatan's Rio Lagartos 12,000 flamingos filter food firom the salt ponds; huddled in midday siesta they look like "overgrown pink mushrooms."
"Mushrooms" also adom the Bay of Fundy—^mushrooms of rock, four stories high, shaped by weather and the world's highest tides, where a human visitor feels like "a pixie wandering a springtime wood."
Amid such wonderlands are odier worlds, where resort developments sprout on islands of migrating sand, with costly, and sometimes tragic, consequences; where worried beach communities await the dark blot of spilled oil; where scientists and govemment officials seek to succor ailing esmaries and marshes, so long abused, so vital to the life of the shore.
While elders take to wing, young royal terns remain grounded, awaiting the growth o/f!ig/it feathers on an island in North Carolina's Cape Fear River estuary. Vissza