The tale of the eroding Elkhorn
The law of unforeseen consequences again reared its head last
weekend.
We were visiting Moss Landing, and we briefly watched five brant
paddling around. Brant are small sea geese.
Once upon a time, seeing brant at Moss Landing was a little of
an event, one that would get birding hotlines buzzing.
The tale of the eroding Elkhorn
The law of unforeseen consequences again reared its head last weekend.
We were visiting Moss Landing, and we briefly watched five brant paddling around. Brant are small sea geese.
Once upon a time, seeing brant at Moss Landing was a little of an event, one that would get birding hotlines buzzing.
But today birders will barely get out of their chairs for a look at a brant in Moss Landing.
Why?
Because there are more of them in Moss Landing. And that’s because there’s more eel grass in Elkhorn Slough and around Moss Landing Harbor. And that’s because the wetlands around the slough are slowly being washed away.
Eelgrass grows in shallow, muddy, protected sea bottoms. It’s not only good food for sea geese, it’s a popular spot for young fish to hang out, protected as they are in its waving green fronds. There’s even a fish that’s evolved to look like nothing so much as eelgrass.
But it’s not all good news. Because what’s eroding around Elkhorn are mudflats and adjacent swaths of areas that are submerged for a few hours during high tides and exposed the rest of the time. The dominant plant there is pickleweed.
Pickleweed is great cover for shorebirds, and mudflats are where dinner is served. Without exposed mudflats, places like Elkhorn Slough have little to offer most migratory fowl.
What’s been happening at Elkhorn is only one chapter in a long novel. The slough was an arm of the Salinas River for eons. The river ran nearly to the sea, then turned north behind barrier dunes to run through what is now Moss Landing Harbor before entering the Pacific. Farmers, seeing cash in the rich earth beneath the river, pushed its outlet to where the river met the dunes.
That made Elkhorn a saltwater estuary, and it remains one today.
But in 1947, the present mouth of the Moss Landing Harbor was opened. Located precisely at the mouth of the slough, its main channel became more directly subject to tidal influence, and the erosion began.
There are certainly a host of other factors, agricultural runoff to encroaching development probably among them.
Once upon a time, the slough was eyed for conversion to a deep-water port, and there were various plans for a Marina del Rey-style development, heavy industry and banks of condos.
In that context, the slough is a tremendous environmental success story. Today it functions as a living classroom, a priceless slice of once-dwindling habitat and a great recreational resource.
Moss Landing is one of the West Coast’s busiest commercial fishing ports. No one is proposing to close the harbor.
But it’s worth considering – again – the far-reaching impacts of our actions. The same minds that can turn a river into farmland, or a backwater into a thriving port, can probably figure out how to hold erosion in check.
I’d say that’s reason enough to be hopeful, even if you’re not a brant.
