A week of natural awe

– May 15, 2024 –

Good morning! Last week was a great one for awe-inspiring natural sights on the Georgia Coast. We chronicle two of them below, one in the sky and one in the sea. Also awe-inspiring was a demo at a place not usually noted for inducing wonderment — a truck stop.

Questions, tips or concerns? Send me a note at mary.landers@thecurrentga.org

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Living fossil fling

Horseshoe crabs are kind of the armadillos of the sea — beachgoers mainly see them when they’re dead. But The Current’s visual journalist Justin Taylor witnessed hundreds of horseshoe crabs very much alive and spawning on a sandbar in Ossabaw Sound last week. “Wild to think that exact scene has looked the same along our coast for over 100 million years,” Taylor wrote.

Watch Taylor’s video of the horseshoe crabs here.

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Northern lights go south

Tybee resident Lesley Mailler thought she’d have to head to Iceland to fulfill her bucket list item of seeing the aurora borealis, or northern lights. Instead, a text from her daughter sent her out to Tybee’s North Beach Friday night where she photographed the pink-and green-streaked sky.

“That was amazing,” said Mailler, a veterinarian who cares for the animals at the Oatland Island Wildlife Center.

Mailler posted her photos on Facebook, as did aurora viewers up and down the Georgia coast. Find Midway photos here and Cumberland photos here.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration offers a prediction of the intensity and location of the aurora borealis over North America for each night and following night here. We also recommend explanations from Savannah-based hazards researcher Chuck Watson at his Enki Research Facebook page here.

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Quiet at the truck stop

Sean Register is proud of creating what an EPA official has called “the truck stop of the future” featuring alternative fuels including electric vehicle chargers and compressed natural gas. His Port Wentworth Port Fuel Center even offers alternative fuels for truckers themselves in the form of a salad bar.

In a sign that PFC’s chargers may be catering to more electric tractor trailer trucks soon, a Freightliner eCascadia charged up there last week and made a demonstration run to the Port of Savannah and back. Such heavy duty electric vehicles are nearly silent and fume-free, a benefit not only to truckers but also to the fence-line communities near ports and warehouses. The Current’s Mary Landers wrote about how one trucking chore especially suits these electric semis.

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Also noted

• With assistance from Georgia Interfaith Power and Light, Trinity Episcopal Church in Statesboro recently became the first faith community in the state to sign a solar energy procurement agreement with Georgia BRIGHT, a program funded by the national nonprofit Capital Good Fund. Capital Good Fund uses tax credits, grants, and bulk purchase discounts to lower the cost of solar to homeowners and nonprofits like Trinity Episcopal. 
• Gov. Brian Kemp vetoed a bill that would have suspended a tax exemption for data centers, a booming industry in Georgia that’s raising concerns over energy and water use, as Emily Jones of WABE/Grist reports.
• A shrimp boat that sank last month 6 miles off Jekyll Island, the F/V Shirley and Tammy, remains submerged in the reported location, Lt. Tyler Pfenninger, USCG Sector Charleston told The Current in an email. A nearby fellow fisherman rescued the three mariners on board who were then transported to shore by the Coast Guard. “CG Incident Management Division from Marine Safety Detachment – Savannah is monitoring the vessel as a potential pollution hazard to the environment,” Pfenninger wrote. “The Captain of the vessel has been issued a Notice of Federal Interest for the potential pollution hazard. No fines have been issued at this time.”

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