Many seafood dishes depend on an ecosystem that's easy to overlook: the salt marsh.

"This is a nursery ground for many of the species that are so commercially
important to consumers like me who like seafood," Fisheries Biologist Dionne Hoskins-Brown told NOVA. "Juvenile shrimp, juvenile crabs, juvenile fish are able to take refuge in these areas. They are more protected from predators and have great access to small invertebrates that they can consume as they develop." Beyond being important to both the economy and marine life in the South, salt marshes also serve as buffers, shielding communities on the coast from erosion and dangerous weather events. But in South Carolina, which boasts the largest expanse of salt marsh of any Atlantic state, these ecosystems are in decline.

"About 10, 15 years ago, it just started dying out. Where you see the brown, that’s not healthy," Charleston resident John Carr told NOVA. "It was quite alarming for all this marsh to die out, and it just kept receding, receding,
receding."

Can the salt marsh near Carr's home recover?

PRODUCTION CREDITS:
Produced by: Ari Daniel & Emily Zendt
Production Assistance: Christina Monnen

MEDIA CREDITS:
Archival:
Mary Hollinger / Wikimedia / CC BY 2.0
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Music: APM

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