Mangroves are Everywhere (For Now): Redux

Annamaria on Monday

Today, I am posting a repeat from a few years ago.

Here are my excuses for not having a new subject today:  Three weeks of dental woes which have included nine visit to two dentists, one of which was emergency surgery this (SUNDAY!) morning.  {I have renamed my dentist's office GUM-tanimo} The accountant forgetting about my tax return which is due as you read this.  The people downstairs returning last Wednesday after five months in Florida to report a hole in their ceiling from a leak in my radiator, which never showed as water in my living room; along with concomitant insurance adjusters, plumbers, and building managers visiting and tsk-tsking.  The deadline for Tolliver 2 and a long meeting with my publisher.  Trying to untangle some long-term family financial issues with a great deal of finger pointing.  And finally, having my brain freeze after learning of Ted Cruz's incomprehensible campaign against sex toys as a public nuisance.

Anyway, my publisher says (and I believe her) that I have to make clear in the story of THE IDOL OF MOMBASA what a mangrove forest is all about, because most people don't know much about those marvelous places.  She is right.  So, if you haven't already read this, BooBoo, here is your chance to be smarter than the average bear.

At the shoreline of land masses, the earth wears, around its middle, a green belt of perhaps the most adaptive living things on the planet.

In my research into Mombasa, British East Africa (now Kenya), I found them growing along a beach in 1905.  I set a few scenes in my book near Mombasa's coastline mangrove forest.  In one my hero has to tell his new wife some provocative news.  In an attempt to break it to her gently, he takes her for a romantic walk along the beach.  I liked having the mangroves nearby them as they stroll and talk, because they symbolize the tangle of trouble that awaits the young couple.

All along the earth’s beaches within about 30 degrees of the Equator, mangroves form an largely impenetrable shield between the salt water and the land.  They are not one species of plant but somewhere around seventy depending on which continent.  The forests include palms, acanthus, myrtle, even relatives of holly.  Some are timber trees  two-hundred-feet tall; others are mere undergrowth.  The thing all the plants have in common is that they have adapted to growing half in and half out of salt water.  Typically they are partially under water in high tide and in swampy land during low tide—when their environment becomes even more salty than the sea, which would kill ordinary plants in hours.  They have all sorts of magical ways to rid themselves of salt, even a way of “sweating” it from their leaves.

Around the globe these fascinating ecosystems nourish or provide habitats for many creatures:  fish, monkeys, deer, kangaroos.  Crabs climb up them to eat their fruit and bats and honeybees take nectar from their flowers.

Some have roots like flying buttresses that hold the tree trunks upright in soft muddy soil.  All have roots that trap silt and build up land.  They stabilize shorelines and protect them from erosion, especially in storm surges.  They act as a buffer against tsunamis.  In 2004 during the tidal waves in the Indian Ocean, mangrove forests protected lives and property.  Damage was far worse where mangroves no longer existed.

Unfortunately, these strategically important plants are threatened around the globe.  The deadliest creatures—human beings—are bulldozing them to create salt pans, fish (largely shrimp) farms, and a bunch of other development projects that could easily be located elsewhere—like housing, golf courses, hotels, and roads.  In poor areas—many of which are in the tropics—the move toward development often means an end to mangroves.

Then there is death from pollution—oil spills, agricultural chemicals, and the predicted danger of rising sea levels.  The push back against this destruction is insufficient so far, but it has begun.  Notably in Kenya, fishing villagers along the Indian Ocean are using discarded tin cans pressed into damp sand  to plant seedlings and build up new forests .  Those fisherman know that without the mangroves to harbor fish eggs, there will soon be no fish in the sea for them to catch.  Optimistic efforts are underway also in Eretria and Bangladesh.   Sadly in South America, both on the west coast in Ecuador and on the eastern shores in Brazil, mangroves are falling prey to shrimp farmers who are in it for the quick buck.

As with other potential environmental disasters, it is difficult to fight off the commercial interests in favor of long-term good for the local people and for the planet.