It’s that time of the year again: hurricane season. Living on the coast makes us more vulnerable to hurricanes and other tropical storms. Luckily, nature has a tool to help us: our coastal wetlands! In addition to providing habitat for everyone’s favorite seafood, making our water cleaner and storing carbon, wetlands also protect our communities from hurricanes. Coastal wetlands buffer against waves by slowing them down before they reach your property, and they help to drain floodwaters after a storm. These ecosystems are vital to our communities in so many ways!
When preparing for potential hurricanes this year, there are some things we can do to help our wetlands remain clean and strong. Whether you live directly on the water or miles away, there are simple steps you can take to help wetlands and the animals that live there be more resilient to storms.
Helping wetlands from your own home
Being on the coast, we are never too far away from waterways, which almost always have some sort of wetlands along them. In my neighborhood, like many other coastal neighborhoods, we have drainage ditches along every street. These ditches help to drain storm water out of the neighborhood, but when this water drains away it takes with it all sorts of things that can be harmful to wetlands, namely litter and chemicals.
Clear your property of litter and debris
When litter reaches wetlands, it can become a hazard for any animals in the wetlands. Animals can become tangled in things like cloth, fishing line, rings from soda cans, etc. They can mistakenly eat litter, which can damage their health and have cascading effects for the ecosystem. Furthermore, plastic litter can remain in a wetland for essentially forever and become a larger problem over time. Larger debris and litter can bend and break wetland plants, reducing the ability of the wetland to function. To prevent litter from reaching wetlands during storms, the simple solution is to take a bit of time to clean your yard of litter and any debris that could be washed down storm drains into wetlands.
Reduce your use of fertilizers and pesticides
I know that summer is the time to be outside and that we all love for our yards to be bug free and look great. However, yard fertilizers and pesticides can be detrimental to wetlands. Excess yard chemicals are easily washed into storm drains by run-off from rain. When fertilizers reach wetlands, the nutrients can cause algal blooms which deprive the water of oxygen.
These fertilizers can also reduce the ability of wetland plants to protect us from storms by weakening their root systems. Pesticides that keep our yards safe and fun for us can have negative impacts on wildlife if they reach wetlands. Pesticides that target only insects can disrupt the food chain in wetlands and harm aquatic life, and more general pesticides can harm other wildlife if ingested. Reducing the use of these kinds of chemicals in our yards is an easy way to prevent them from reaching wetlands.
Waterfront properties
If you live directly on the water, then there are a few more steps you can take to help protect wetlands. Being right by these ecosystems makes it even more likely that litter and chemicals in your yard will make their way into the wetland. Preventing these things from reaching wetlands is vital, but as a waterfront property owner there are a couple of other steps you can take to reduce storm impact on the wetlands.
First, protect any marsh grasses that are on your property. If you have a natural shoreline, just be mindful of the plants there. Don’t mow them down, walk over them or pull your boat onto the grasses. Repeated impacts to the grasses can prevent them from growing and they lose their ability to break down waves during storms. If you have a bulkhead instead of a natural shoreline, then you could help wetlands by considering a living shoreline! Living shorelines are a method of erosion control that use plants instead of bulkheads. They not only prevent erosion, but they also increase the wildlife at your property (great if you like to fish!), help clean the water and help to re-naturalize our communities. Furthermore, living shorelines perform better during hurricanes than hardened shorelines. You can find more information about living shorelines at www.GulfLivingShorelines.com.
Helping the wetlands where they live
Now that you know how to help wetlands from your own home, there are some things you can do to help wetlands right where they are!
Retrieve your crab traps before storms
If you enjoy fresh crabs and you put out crab traps, then be sure to pick them up before a big storm. Crab traps can get moved by hurricanes and become lost. These traps, if not found, can become litter in wetlands or even trap animals they weren’t intended for. They can become part of a problem called “ghost fishing.”
Ghost fishing is where unattended traps catch things like turtles who get in, can’t find a way out and end up drowning. Also, these traps can make it out into the Gulf where they can become entangled in nets, having detrimental effects on the commercial fishing industry. Through the derelict crab trap program at the Mississippi State University Coastal Research and Extension Center, over 1,400 derelict crab traps have been collected by shrimpers who find them in their nets. Remember to pick up your traps before a storm to reduce these problems.
Hold a coastal cleanup event
To prevent other kinds of litter from entering wetlands during storms, you can hold a cleanup event! Coastal Cleanup through Mississippi State University will provide you with all the tools necessary to go and clean litter from your neighborhood, boat pier, beach or any other area you wish. By doing this you can help prevent trash and debris from entering our local wetlands.
Respect no wake zones
Lastly, there is one easy thing that all of us can do to help wetlands perform their best during hurricanes: respect no wake zones! No wake zones prevent high energy waves from hitting shoreline vegetation. Wind-driven waves can be erosive, but boat wakes in popular spots can cause much more damage. This is because they can be more frequent (think about how many boats are out on the water during the summer) and larger than most wind-driven waves. These boat wakes can wear on wetland plants and reduce their presence over time. By respecting no wake zones, you can help wetlands to thrive and be better able to knock down waves and protect our communities during storms.
Taking care of wetlands improves our community resilience
When wetlands are healthy and expansive, they help protect us from hurricanes. If each of us takes simple steps to reducing our impact on the wetlands, then we can make sure they stay clean and strong well into the future. When we take care of our wetlands, they help to take care of us!
Meet the author
Sara Martin
Wetland Specialist, Mississippi State University
Sara Martin is a wetland specialist and extension associate with the Program for Local Adaptation to Changing Environments and the Mississippi State University (MSU) Coastal Research and Extension... Read more
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