As we leave the dock at Sapelo Island, Georgia aboard our boat, my senses are filled with the sights, sounds, and smells of the salt marsh, which dominate the shoreward side of Georgia's barrier islands. Cordgrass, now green and waving in the hot summer wind, stretches as far as you can see, broken only by the tea-colored tidal creeks and rippling waters of Doboy Sound. Great blue herons squawk as our noisy passage disturbs them from their concentrated fishing rites.
Fiddler crabs scurry into their muddy holes as the wake from the boat splashes along the mudflats.
I can see an old lighthouse, long abandoned, marking the southern end of Sapelo Island as we leave the sound and enter the Atlantic Ocean. To the north are the beaches and dunes, which protect the island from the constant wash of ocean waves. Shorebirds scamper among the waves in search of food. The water changes from the color of tea to a blue-green as we leave the sound and travel east across the continental shelf. Flocks of sea gulls and terns follow our boat hoping to get an easy meal.