Previous proteg s have studied hormonal control in fiddler crabs and the aerosol filtering apparatus in mole crabs. Rittschof will follow his curiosity, and his students, anywhere. And what Rittschof teaches is the organic complexity of nature, as revealed in a set of chemical systems that have evolved to shape animal behavior. For the last 17 years, he has been getting intimately aquainted with his estuary, fascinated by the vital interconnectedness of its parts. Terns and killdeer sweep across the embayment, island horses wade through it, flounder skim along its bottom.
Fresh water seeps in from a spring on the eastern shore.
On very high tides, ocean water spills across the dunes to flood the bay with salt. Every inch of the estuary offers new research possibilities. Though the bottom of the estuary is crowded with thousands of tiny snails, some patches are completely bare. For Rittschof and his students, the estuary is an open-air laboratory that provokes an endless stream of questions. He leads nighttime canoe trips there, catches its flounder by hand, tracks its snails and sediments, measures its salinity.