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Keepers of  the marsh

STORY BY BARRY KAUFMAN + PHOTOGRAPHY BY LISA STAFF

There’s magic in our marshes. Thanks to the sprawling wetlands that curl and entwine themselves around our home, we can always smell what the tide is doing. We can look out across its expanse and watch wildlife on the wing. We can venture out, hip waders on, in search of the delicious bounty that clings to its pluff mud.

There’s a reason Pat Conroy equated living here with the marsh. Writing in The Prince of Tides, he said, “To describe our growing up in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, I would have to take you to the marsh on a spring day, flush the great blue heron from its silent occupation, scatter marsh hens as we sink to our knees in mud, open you an oyster with a pocketknife and feed it to you from the shell and say, ‘There. That taste. That’s the taste of my childhood.’”

The flavors, the smells and the vibrant wildlife coalesce into a potion that makes every day here a little more enchanted. Here we meet three locals who have spent years studying its mystic recipe.

Jody Hayward

Port Royal Sound Foundation

When your kids visit the Port Royal Sound Foundation Maritime Center, they may see it as just another fun field trip. They won’t even realize how much invaluable knowledge they’re absorbing as they move from tank to tank, getting up close and personal with the sea life that calls our waterways and marshes home. They’ll be too busy having fun to notice how much their perspective is expanding — or how much more respect they’ll have for their Lowcountry home by the time they leave.

They may not realize it, but Jody Hayward will. Creating that understanding and expanding that perspective is what drives her.

“School kids on trips have been the bread and butter of what we do — creating a place for kids, families and visitors to come, learn, experience, get a little dirty and enjoy this environment,” she said. “These kids don’t always have the opportunity to do that, and we want to help them connect and understand how special this place is.”

Those field trips are just a small part of what the Port Royal Sound Foundation does to protect our rivers and marshes.

“We love being that resource that connects people to the water. A few years ago we started water quality monitoring, and it has grown into this robust citizen science program, with wonderful volunteers monitoring water quality all around the watershed,” she said. Those volunteers are helping the foundation gauge the health of local waters, comparing new findings to historical data for a more complete picture. “We’re so lucky to have such a pristine body of water, but we definitely have to stay on top of things and be proactive in keeping it in good shape. We’re expanding roads, building new neighborhoods and adding infrastructure to accommodate everyone moving here. We, as a whole, need to make sure we’re doing these things in the right way and in the right place.”

This ambitious broadening of the foundation’s scope has been Hayward’s signature approach since long before she came to the Lowcountry more than 20 years ago. Leaving the “white-knuckle, fast-paced” atmosphere of Atlanta for Beaufort, she quickly got involved in the community. Planning for what would become Riverview Charter School started in 2005, with her serving as co-founder when it opened just four years later.

“That was an amazingly rewarding and difficult endeavor to be a part of, but the school is flourishing. I’m so proud of all it has accomplished,” she said. “That’s really what gave me the bug for doing things that are community-based — because you can see what your hard work is doing for the community.”

Through Mike Long, then chairman of the Port Royal Sound Foundation, she began volunteering and fell in love with the mission. When the opportunity arose to lead as director, she didn’t have to be asked twice.

“That was an amazing moment for me — to jump in and help this wonderful group of founders create a museum for the public and tell the story of the waterways that cover 50 percent of our area,” she said. “We’re saturated by the Sound.”

Conserving the waters that sustain us

The scope of the Port Royal Sound Foundation’s mission extends far beyond the static displays and exciting attractions of its maritime center. Behind the scenes its staff and volunteers are working tirelessly to conserve and protect our waterways in a multitude of ways.

“That combination of education and research is really what drives the mission to conserve the Port Royal Sound. It’s such a cycle — the more you learn, the more it fuels education, and the more people are educated, the more they want to know. That ultimately helps build this culture of conservation,” she said. “And it’s not just us—there are so many great partner organizations doing incredible work in conservation. By combining our efforts, we can accomplish so much more.”

That means initiatives like bringing on Courtney Kimmel, director of conservation, to develop a strategic plan for research. They’ve hosted research symposiums, bringing together the brightest minds in conservation. They’ve organized catch-and-release fishing tournaments to assess fish populations. And they’ve partnered with USCB on Pritchards Island to explore the mysteries of our local ecology.

“Our focus is on painting a picture of what we know — what data we have, what we need to facilitate and who we need to connect with,” she said. “There hasn’t been a lot of research done here. It’s exciting new territory for researchers.”