The Southern Edge Magazine - Spring 2022

Words by Tom Poland / Photos by Robert C. Clark

Standing in the savanna, I heard frantic buzzing. A life or death struggle was underway. For twenty minutes, I watched a red wasp do its best to escape a pitcher plant. A nectar-like scent had attracted the wasp and entering the plant was easy. Too easy. Coming up? Near impossible. The step-like filaments that coaxed it downward form jail-like crossbars that make escape up and out difficult. The wasp’s frantic buzzing would exhaust it, and it would fall into the plant’s acid pit, die, and dissolve, a casualty to a carnivorous plant’s need for sustenance.

I witnessed this grapple in a Carolina bay’s savanna in the Francis Marion National Forest. It’s not every day that you witness a life or death struggle but I knew similar death struggles were underway in Carolina bays from New Jersey to coastal Alabama. Few people witness these struggles because few venture into one of Earth’s more mysterious landforms. A Carolina bay features a pond cypress swamp and savanna. Some feature a rim of white sand along their southeastern edge. Depending on what people see at ground level they think, “A swamp or ancient sand dune.” Fly over them, however, and bays resemble the Moon’s craters.

Perhaps a million elliptical depressions dimple the Atlantic Coastal Plain. They vary from a few square feet to thousands of acres. Their northwest to southeast orientation lines them up parallel. That astonishing orientation gave rise to meteorite origins. Even more astonishing is exploring them on foot. The shallow basins hold seasonal rains, and temporary water gives amphibians and other species prime breeding habitat. Lush plants grow in bays. Think of undisturbed bays as dish gardens.

And that puzzling name? They’re called“Carolina bays” because the larger and better examples occur in the Carolinas. “Bays” arises from the abundant species of bay trees in them. It’s an unfortunate name that suggests an inlet or cove, not one of Earth’s more mysterious landforms.

In 1930 the Ocean Forest Company of Myrtle Beach contracted Fairchild Aerial Surveys to take aerial photos of the area. Fairchild’s FC-2 Cabin Monoplane crisscrossed the coastal plain taking photograph after photograph. Elliptical depressions dimpled the land. They looked as if a giant chef had reached down and pressed spoons of various sizes into Coastal Plain sands.

Later, when Roosevelt’s Department of Agriculture studied East Coast aerial photography, a staggering finding surfaced: the egg-shaped landforms all ran northwest to southeast. The similarity to craters on Mars and the moon amazed people. Did a celestial bombardment gouge out Earth’s most mystifying landforms?

In an ongoing mystery science has yet to prove what created the depressions, the shallow basins themselves. Theories range from the ridiculous to bizarre to plausible. Consider these theories: thrashing stranded whales, beaver ponds, a meteorite bombardment, comet impact, retreating glaciers, shallow ocean currents, spawning fish, ancient buffalo wallows, hydrogen gas “seep” bubbles, melting ice boulders, and dinosaur footprints.

Ancient volcano activity makes the list. Still other theories include spring basins, sandbar dams of drowned valleys, depressions dammed by giant sand ripples, submarine scour by eddies, currents, or undertow, and wind blowouts. Want more? Peat burning by paleo-Indians, basins scooped out by giant turtles, sinkholes, and solution basins related to artesian springs’ activity.

Two theorists have South Carolina ties. In 1977, Ray T. Kaczorowski developed a thesis, “The Carolina Bays And Their Relationship To Modern Oriented Lakes” while working on his Ph. D. in Geology at the University of South Carolina. Kaczorowski’s work proposed the oriented wind and water theory in which prevailing winds over vast periods aligned and gave the bays their elliptical shapes. No theory, however, explains just what crated the depressions in the first place.

Henry Savage, a Camden naturalist and attorney, authored a book in 1982,The Mysterious Carolina Bays, (University of South Carolina Press). Savage’s theory that meteorites created the bays got a lot of attention. The late attorney’s theory had a big problem though. A meteorite impact would produce shatter cones, shocked crystal rock, meteorite fragments, and iron or nickel elements, crucial evidence that distinguishes extraterrestrial impacts from terrestrial processes like erosion. In the end, science dismissed Savage’s theory. His natural history work, however, earned him the honor of having a bay named after him, Savage Bay Heritage Preserve.

The meteorite theory remains part of the bays’ allure. Much later, Christopher R. Moore of the Savannah River Archaeological Research Program, South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina, refuted the meteorite hypothesis.

“More recent work reveals that bays reflect long-term, pervasive and evolving environmental and climatological factors over millennia, not sudden or catastrophic events. Carolina bays are neither enigmatic, nor mysterious, but rather are relatively wellunderstood oriented lakes. Kaczorowski was right!”

Theories aside, the bays serve as repositories of wildlife habitat. James Luken, Ph.D., biologist and associate provost at Coastal Carolina University studies wetland ecology and carnivorous and aquatic plants.

“What makes bays unique are the different habitats, wild plants, and wildlife.” Luken refers to Lewis Ocean Bay, a complex of bays. “There are a dozen or so habitats in this 9,000-acre preserve. The interior parts are thickets of evergreen shrubs that create great habitat for black bears and bobcats. In fact it’s prime habitat for black bears. They spend the winter in the dense vegetation and seek refuge there in summer.”

Carolina bays’ varying water depths, sand rims, and peat mats nurture botanical riches—water lilies, sedges, red bay, sweet bay, butterworts, sundews, gallberry, whiteand yellow-fringed and rosebud orchids, and the rare Wells pixie moss.

What I best like about the bays are their beauty and serenity. For seven years I worked on a book about the bays. Along with photographer RobertC. Clark, I explored bays in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Consider these passages from Carolina Bays, Wild, Mysterious, and Majestic Landforms, Poland and Clark,2020, University of South Carolina Press.

Time traveler is right. Years ago I helped make a film that explored the bays’ origins and extolled them as conservatories of flora and fauna. I shot footage at Woods Bay near Olanta. Serene and isolated. Those words describe Woods Bay. No, three words—all with equal weight—serene, isolated, and primeval. I captured ancient creatures on now-obsolete 16-millimeter film. An anhinga drying its wings. A gator gliding past water lilies. A stubby cottonmouth braiding through cypress knees. Turtles sunbathing on logs.

From a boardwalk I filmed wildlife ... osprey, carnivorous plants, wood ducks, and otter. Aerial filming came next. I would see what the Fairchild Survey photographers saw. I boarded a Cessna 180. Near the coast, oval depressions peppered the landscape. I passed over freestanding bays, interlocking bays, and bays within bays like nesting Russian dolls.

Mysteries Of The Carolina Bays supported the wind and wave origin theory. I found it hard, though, to forsake the notion that something alien created Carolina Bays. I spent many a day alone shooting film at Woods Bay. Many years later, my film days behind me, longing sent me back to Woods Bay one autumn afternoon. As blue light lit up orange cypress needles their reflections danced across black waters.

I too reflected. Over 30 years my life had changed in unforeseen ways, but the bay had not. Woods Bay and its fellow bays were quietly doing what they’ve always done: controlling floods, purifying water, stockpiling carbon, and giving man a place to sort out things. Add clean air, sediment retention, and nutrient recycling to the benefits. Add two things that banish humdrum: beauty and mystery, especially mystery.

Friends and I were discussing these strange ellipses one night when a fellow broke into our conversation. “Those bays are beautiful sure enough. Grew up next to one.”

Then this. “Meteorites really did create them you know,” he said. “Venus Flytraps prove it. A plant like that had to come from outer space.”

You my fellow Earthlings, when you tire of sirens, horns, and motorcycles, trade that din for the sounds of nature. What might you hear? Creatures’ cries and calls. Among buttressed cypresses a frog sounds like a man chopping wood. What seems to be a large frog, judging by the volume of its call, sounds like a stack of planks dropping to the ground. A bird looking much like a robin is not, for its call sounds like that of a rainforest bird in the Amazon or Congo Basin. The trills of frogs and repetitious hammering of woodpeckers accompany the chorus of songbirds. A flash of gold disappears into the pocosin. A prothonotary warbler? The wind coos through the pine tops and birdsong fills the air. Frogs override the buzz of flying insects.

Think of undisturbed Carolina bays as sanctuaries. As smart as man thinks he is, Earth still holds secrets. Among those secrets are how and what formed the Carolina bays. The 1930’s aerials opened our eyes to the bays and LiDAR promises more discoveries. The future may tell us just what created Carolina bays, but it’s my hope that their creation remains a mystery. Were we to fully comprehend how Carolina bays formed, they’d lose the mystique that surrounds them. Lose the mystique and complacency would surface and complacency never leads to good things. These dish gardens, these sanctuaries offer man and wildlife alike sanctuary. I can’t stress enough how vital it is to foster an awareness of Carolina bays’ uniqueness and place in the natural world.

From the days in the early 1980s when I first learned of Carolina bays to today, one thing consistently amazes me: few people know anything about them. Here’s hoping our populace and leaders in government and industry understand just what a rare and beautiful thing Carolina bays are. In the time to come, I hope people will spread the word as to how Carolina bays serve as wildlife repositories.

Here’s hoping that we see less asphalt and cement; that we see more carnivorous plants and sedges; that the future brings more wildness to our part of the world, and that the mystique of the Carolina bays fascinates future generations.

In his fine foreword to our book, “Carolina Bays … Mystery Solved,” Stephen H. Bennett wrote, “The periodic nature of the Carolina bays’ water cycle is the key to the mysteries that intrigued and still intrigue me. Numerous species of amphibians, frogs and salamanders, breed either exclusively or preferentially in temporary ponds, which include Carolina bays. Because most of them fill and dry on some cycle, they seldom have predatory fish present to eat their eggs and larvae … and even if fish do get in during particularly wet periods they will disappear as soon as the bay dries out. The same goes for other water-borne predators such as dragonfly larvae. Along with the amphibians, my favorites, these small ecosystems support numerous species of birds, reptiles, other wildlife, and native plants. And, a number of these species are quite rare.

“So, while I can’t solve the mystery of ‘where they came from’ I do understand, somewhat, the mystery of Carolina bays as it pertains to their ecological role and their importance in our landscape … and we can still discuss and debate their origin in our spare time.”

One final thing. That wasp. What became of it? It flew up and out, a rare escape from a plant evolution perfected into an insect deathtrap. Apparently, the wasp’s size kept it from sliding beneath the hairs that act like the crossbars of a jail cell. It survived to live another day in the world’s most mysterious landform.

To learn more about Carolina bays, contact the University of South Carolina Press. Carolina Bays, Wild, Mysterious, and Majestic Landforms Tom Poland and Robert C. Clark 2020, University of South Carolina Press

Note: Thanks to an unfortunate U.S. Supreme Courtruling, bays are not protected by the Clean Water Act as they’re considered isolated wetlands with noinflowing our outflowing streams. It’s hoped this situation will be corrected.