Sept '07

The southeast coast of the United States has several interesting native fish that do very well in aquariums. Among them are Heterandia formosa, Gambusia affinis, and Fundulus heteroclitus. This last fish was a favorite of mine when I lived in North Carolina. It is a brackish water fish that is easy to breed in captivity. The wild caught ones are very colorful, but they don't normally get quite as colorful in the aquarium. ( Check here for more on Fundulus heteroclitus) During a week on the island of Hilton Head this summer, which is right on the border of South Carolina and Georgia I expected to take a look at the fish native to that area. But it didn't quite work out that way.

When I arrived it was immediately obvious that the population of alligators was huge. It was dark when we arrived at the cottage where we were going to stay, but I went out back onto a deck in the rear and looked over a good sized lake. Even in the dark I could see alligators. In fact they started swimming in my direction from all over the lake. I went back inside and announced that all the children had to have an adult with them any time they went outside.

	The next morning the first alligator I saw was this little one about 18 inches long. The beautiful green on its back is duckweed. As they surface the duckweed sticks to their back, so you often see this.
	This one, a little smaller was also close by. Both were quite shy. You could not get near them. There also was a large one visible out on the lake, but not visible enough that I could get a good photo. You may be able to make out the duckweed in the water.
	As the week went by we must have seen hundreds of Alligators. This large one was resting on the far bank the next morning. I estimated it to be 8 or 9 feet long. In the 60's in North Carolina I spent quite a lot of time in the coastal part of the state, and there were many alligators, but no where near the population I found at Hilton Head.
	Also very obvious in the water were turtles. There were Red Ears like this one, and another type that was all over brown with no other color. All of the turtles I saw were very large, with a diameter of from 8 to 10 inches. At one point there were children feeding the turtles bread and over 30 large turtles gathered. This photo also will give you an idea of the clarity, or should I say, the lack of clarity of the water. This was about as clear as it got. In many of the ponds the water was very black.
	The turtles and gators seemed to get along well, but there was just about no other life in the water. And this was true of all the various ponds, lakes, canals and simply waterholes. I did see a few small fish that looked like gambusia a couple of times, and larger fish, probably 10 inches long occasionally jumped in the water. I think they were mullet, a great fish to eat that is primarily a saltwater fish, that comes up into brackish or freshwater sometimes.
	The gators were very active and very hungry. My seven year old niece wore her "Cinderalla" Outfit out onto a bridge that went across one of the lakes. Once out there she took off her plastic glass slippers and wandered around barefoot. Her little brother ran up and accidentally (I guess) kicked one of them into the water, which was only about 18 inches below the bridge. My brother in law leaned down and reached toward the slipper. Some fortunate impulse caused him to suddenly jerk his arm back up, just as this alligator crabbed the slipper. I don't know that it swallowed the slipper, but we never saw it again.
	Anyway, I suspect that a blip in the balance of nature (or the interference of humans) has caused a probably temporary spike in the ratio of alligators and large turtles to their prey in this area. With the water being so dark that you could not tell what was even six inches under the surface I didn't want to get into the water enough to try to catch any small fish. Just too many alligators to be safe.
	But there was some beautiful wildlife other than fish, such as this Egret.
	There were lots of southern brown squirrels around.
	This raccoon provided a lot of entertainment. It was about 40 feet up in this tree, but the balcony of one of the places some of our family stayed was on the fourth floor and we had a great view of its antics.
	One day we toured Savanna Georgia. It was very close, but the day was incredibly hot and humid. This is a shot of the tourist area along the waterfront.
	I had to have a picture of these fishing boats just across the street from the last shot.
	This is beautiful, lush country. This photo of my brother Mike and myself in a local Savanna Park will give you some idea of the almost jungle nature of the area. Hilton Head was a great place to visit, and the alligators were actually one of the reasons.