Marine Life of the Caribbean Book

Salt marshes are the predominant coastal wetland ecosystems throughout much of the United States. They stretch unbroken'or did at one time'along the more than 2,300 miles of the Atlantic coast stretching from Maine all the way to Florida and parts of the Gulf Coast, where they are replaced by mangrove ecosystems better suited to subtropical temperatures and conditions. They rise in patches again in southern and central California'notably San Francisco Bay'give way to the rocky coasts of northern California, Oregon, and southern Washington, and pop-up again, seemingly from nowhere, in Puget Sound and its environs. They are, by anyone's definition, an ecological success story.

And yet, note Judith Weis and Carol Butler in their excellent primer, Salt Marshes: A Natural and Unnatural History, they have been under assault since the first European colonists hit American shores. Regarded as fallow and unproductive at best, pestilential at worst, salt marshes have been farmed, filled-in, burnt off, polluted, built on, and used as dumping grounds for toxic chemicals too numerous to list. Only in the last half-century or so, have they begun to be appreciated for their many services and critical importance to the ecological (and economic) health of the United States.

As the title implies, Weis, a professor of biology at Rutgers University and an expert in estuarine biology, leads us through both halves of the equation, starting with a brilliant and concise natural history of salt marshes, everything from their basic hydrogeology to the plants and animals that call them home, to the litany of human intervention, mistreatment, and mismanagement of these extraordinary and vital ecosystems over the past few hundred years. Included is a chapter on "Marsh Restoration and Management for Environmental Improvement" that neatly outlines many of the techniques and philosophies guiding coastal wetlands restoration.

The final chapter, "The Death and Rebirth of an Urban Wetland," gives hope to those of us involved in coastal habitat restoration. It chronicles the long decline, virtual death, and renaissance of New Jersey's Hackensack Meadowlands. Seven Superfund sites fed into the Meadowlands. It was used for decades as one of the largest garbage dumps for northern New Jersey and southern New York. Yet, beginning in 1969, the Meadowlands began to rise from the dead, saved by their desirability for development and the beginnings of the environmental movement. Today, while still far from pristine, the Meadowlands stand as a model for urban wetlands restoration.

Weis' deep knowledge of and obvious affection for her subject shine through in thoroughly readable and non-technical prose (aided, one suspects, by co-author Butler). Salt Marshes: A Natural and Unnatural History is an ideal reference for lay readers, students, naturalists, and educators.