Bottlenose DOLPHINS

BY CANDICE DYER

Bottlenose dolphins have upturned mouths beneath their outsize snouts, giving them a perpetual grin befitting their collegiality. These marine mammals socialize in small, ever-changing groups, but they demonstrate an admirable loyalty to each other.

“When a male decides to mate, he brings along a buddy—kind of a wingman—who helps select the female,” says Clay George, a wildlife biologist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

“Once pregnant, females cluster with other females who are undergoing gestation, or calving, which lasts a year.”

Their families are close-knit and their life-spans long—fifty years or more. Calves nurse for three years and stay with their mothers for up to six years while another single female lingers with them, acting as a sort of spinster governess.

“They’re beautiful, highly intelligent, inquisitive animals,” says Ben Carswell, director of conservation for the Jekyll Island Authority. They aren’t endangered, but they are federally protected.

Visitors of a certain age recalling a fictional bottlenose dolphin, the intrepid Flipper, might feel tempted to stroke or feed dolphins, but experts caution against extending your hands. “They do bite,” Carswell says. They also whistle at each other and use echolocation to stalk fish, crabs, and shrimp. Bottlenose dolphins on this part of the coast have a spectacular way of dining out called strand feeding. They herd schools of fish out of the water and onto mud flats and banks of tidal creeks, then gorge, flopped on their sides in a kind of chorus line. “It’s something to see!” says Carswell.

Dolphins can be sighted anywhere around Jekyll, but the observation deck at St. Andrew’s Beach Park is a prime viewing spot.

“The best way is to get on the water in a fishing boat, which dolphins trail,” George says. Several Jekyll businesses also offer eco-tours; find them at jekyllisland.com/activities.

Jeannie Martin, AmeriCorps and volunteer coordinator with the Georgia Sea Turtle Center, wonders which was more bizarre: a lost love letter with a marriage proposal on it, or the piano discovered on Driftwood Beach, wedged up in the tree line. Both were found by volunteers bagging and logging trash with the center’s Marine Debris Initiative, which launched in 2012 with grants from the broader Southeast Atlantic Marine Debris Initiative. Its aim is to protect shorebird and sea turtle nests while saving myriad other wildlife from untimely deaths by unnatural objects. “No species is immune,” says Martin, “not even the tiniest little filter feeders.”

From cocktail straws to truck tires, the world’s oceans are littered with plastic and other human-made material that might break down but doesn’t biodegrade, creating deadly hazards for animals. Martin applied for grant funding six years ago when she noticed both a growing desire among the general public to help and a lack of educational outreach aimed at gradeschoolers in the Glynn County area. What started as a small initiative with 6,500 data points (that is, pieces of debris recorded in a phone app) has swelled into a multifaceted, collaborative approach along Georgia’s coast. Some 200 regular volunteers are on the books, and about 5,000 others—family groups, churches, corporate teambuilders, Scout troops, various government agencies— have chipped in. The data points, meanwhile, have climbed to more than 300,000 across Jekyll’s marshes and ten miles of beaches, representing tons of discarded tires, plastic bottles, beer cans, and especially cigarette butts, which are commonly mistaken by animals for food.

Globally, ocean debris has become a hot topic—especially as related to the purportedly Texas-sized Great Pacific Garbage Patch, or the so-called Straw Wars urging restaurants to nix the tubular plastics. Thanks in part to media coverage by the likes of National Geographic, public awareness has grown. Jekyll is fortunate, Martin says, in that local government leaders have been proactive for years in safeguarding wildlife through various initiatives, and that “convergence zones” where currents collide and trash accumulates are far away (unlike in, say, India). That’s not to say the problem doesn’t need to be addressed at the root. Marine debris isn’t just an issue for coastal towns; it drifts downstream from cities via rivers. “The amount that keeps entering the ocean—about 13 million metric tons of plastic each year—you’re not going to clean that up,” says Matt Khan, an AmeriCorps Marine Debris member with the center.

“So if we get out to the public, make them aware of the issue, we can at least curb some of that debris that enters in the first place.”

For anyone eager to help, Martin advises visiting the center in person or the website (gstc.jekyllisland.com), and staff will help match volunteer availability to cleanup needs. The website also offers a how-to for downloading and using the tracker app. To help thwart the problem of ocean debris before it begins, the Georgia Sea Turtle Center recommends buying fewer single-use plastics, such as water bottles and food containers, or recycling those that are used.

More than 700 documented marine species have ingested plastic.

An estimated 52 percent of sea turtles have eaten plastic. Debris entanglement, however, is the number one killer for sea turtles.

Albatross frequently mistake plastics for nutritious foods and feel full until they starve to death.

Oysters and blue mussels can ingest microplastics, which have been found in supermarket offerings.

Even sea salt is likely to contain microplastics.

BY JEAN É E LEDOUX

The French name means “worry-free.” That’s just how the early owners of Sans Souci, including the banker J. P. Morgan, intended to spend their winter getaways on Jekyll Island. In 1896, members of the Jekyll Island Club completed the apartment building, characterized by stately turrets and moss-colored cedar shingles, at a time when their exclusive organization owned Georgia’s smallest barrier isle.

Sans Souci was originally divided into six units and is considered, along with the Rembrandt building in Manhattan, to be one of the nation’s first condominiums. The associates broke ground 100 yards from the bustling Jekyll Island Clubhouse, where they relished rounds of billiards and meals cooked by a French chef. In their private condos, they valued views of oyster-rich waters and above all, it seems, some peace and quiet. “They didn’t want kids running around the hallways,” says Taylor Davis, a historic preservationist with the Jekyll Island Authority, so they turned away potential buyers with young children.

The owners visited their vacation homes throughout the Depression, but they were forced to abandon them during World War II, when the Atlantic coast was being patrolled for foreign submarine activity. Sans Souci, still stocked with fine oil paintings and imported carpets, sat mostly vacant until 1986, when two friends embarked on a historically accurate renovation as part of a hotel venture.

Today, Sans Souci is a twenty-four-room property operated by the Jekyll Island Club Resort, which continues to preserve original features such as leaded glass windows, a winding oak staircase, and the octagonal skylight above it. Now anyone can enjoy this time capsule built by millionaires. Guests can even—gasp! bring their children.

As the sun rises on Jekyll Island, the Atlantic Ocean laps at the gnarly, twisted trees of Driftwood Beach. Just another day in paradise—until you see a zombie writhing in the wet sand and the credits roll for The Walking Dead.

When the storyline of the AMC horror series required an otherworldly oceanside locale, executive producer Tom Luse knew just the spot. Stark, evocative, and strewn with toppled trees, the island’s isolated northeastern tip was the ideal location for an episode of the apocalyptic zombie thriller that begins its ninth season in October. In season seven, episode six, a young woman washes up on a beach and is found by a group of isolationists, who abduct and later try to recruit her. “Surreal” is how the Atlanta-based producer describes the setting—not just the driftwood formations but the timeless hush: “There are no planes, trains, automobiles. There are no steamboats, there are no motorboats, there are no Jet Skis. It’s a world that has stopped in many ways.” stands on Jekyll’s south end, in the area now known as Glory Beach Park.

Back then, the Jekyll Island Club Resort had just opened in the century-old clubhouse, and many of the famed millionaires’ cottages were in ruins. “Now it’s spectacular,” says Luse, who is fond of biking the island. Unfortunately, that rules out the historic colony as a future Walking Dead location. “It is manicured and beautiful and has no place in the zombie apocalypse,” he jokes.

That doesn’t mean the show won’t be back. “Last time I was there, we stayed at Jekyll Island Club and took some photographs of some things that we like there. You never know when The Walking Dead might just pop up.”

Besides The Walking Dead and Glory several films and shows have used the island as a setting. Here’s a look at a handful.

View From Pompey’s Head (1955)

Jekyll stood in for fictional Pompey’s Head, South Carolina, in this film about a Manhattan attorney (Richard Egan) who returns to the South to investigate a mystery.

The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000)

The Robert Redford–directed movie starring Will Smith and Matt Damon featured the Jekyll Island Club Resort.

X-Men: First Class (2011)

For the superhero flick’s fifth installment, a plane crash was faked on a spot between Beachview Drive and the ocean.

Magic Mike XXL (2015)

Jekyll’s convention center was used in scenes of a Myrtle Beach strippers’ convention in this Channing Tatum–helmed flick.

The Leisure Seeker (2017)

Helen Mirren received a Golden Globe nod for her work in this film, partly shot on Jekyll, about a terminally ill couple that takes a road trip in a vintage camper.

In addition to the raw beauty of the place, Luse praised the leadership and infrastructure of the state-owned island.

“From the marina people who helped us get a boat to the Jekyll Island Authority, the Department of Natural Resources folks, the people from the Army Corps of Engineers, everyone worked with us beautifully, and that’s the kind of cooperation you want when you are shooting a show like ours.”

For Luse, who earned a master’s degree in film at Georgia State University in 1981, the only downside of filming on Jekyll may be the tides. He learned this back in 1988, when he arrived to work on Glory, the Oscar-winning film about the Civil War battle of Fort Wagner, starring Denzel Washington and Matthew Broderick. “I was instrumental in setting up the boardwalk that led to the beach on Glory,” says Luse, who served as assistant unit production manager on the project. The boardwalk— used to transport hundreds of actors playing soldiers to the waterfront—still

“At our peak we had seventy-five people; usually it’s around fifty-five. We have the same campsites every year. Some tent camp; others have popups, RVs, or sleep in hammocks in the trees. When we get there, we start a campfire the first night and keep it burning all week. I always bring the rope swing, which I made myself. We hang it on a giant live oak and the kids swing on it all week long.” —kevin fannin

Mated pairs of this extraordinary species engage in “unison calling,” singing a complex, synchronized duet. When you hear their loud, distinctive call, look up; their migration high above Jekyll is a spectacle to behold.