Ep15: A Beautiful Day on the Marsh

Title:  Languaging in Hampton Roads

Episode 15: A Day on the Marsh

Hosts: Jill Winkowski and Prue Salasky

Date: March 31, 2025

Length: 30 min.

Publication Frequency: Monthly

In this episode of languagingHR, we look out on to one of the most iconic views in the Hampton Roads area, where the marsh meets the open water, while we explore the history of common words such as marsh and mud and heron and horizon that are used every day to describe our coastal surroundings. 

To help us on our word journey, we asked three local experts to join us: Dr. Steve Kuehl, Marlee Fuller, and Laura Lohse. 

Mud: As a marine geologist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), Steve Kuehl has spent his whole career studying sediment, or mud, primarily in deltaic systems, that is where rivers meet the sea. In this episode, he describes the why and how of studying mud. First and foremost, geochronology, studying the layers of sediment, allows us to learn about the history of our planet. By taking cores of mud and earth, we unearth, as it were, a record that spans millions of years. Marine scientists also study mud to learn more about our aquatic ecosystems. They measure benthic activity in, say, the York River to gauge the vitality of certain fish populations; they take cores in coastal areas to measure the patterns of buried carbon; and they study the resilience of the sedimentary activity in local marshes. 

Birds: With a background in evolutionary biology, Marlee Fuller has worked in bird research on clapper rails in Mississippi and prairie chickens in Oklahoma. She travels with her Coast Guard family and during her time in Hampton Roads, she was emersed, as a nature guide, in the local coastal and especially avian experience at False Cape State Park in Virginia Beach. If you haven’t had a chance to visit False Cape and Back Bay Wildlife Refuge, it’s a gem. In this episode, Fuller describes the varieties and habits of our native heron population as well as the name origins of the whimbrel and our ubiquitous killdeer. Be sure to check out this episode’s bonus content for Fuller’s vivid descriptions of local and migrating bird behaviors.

The Horizon: Laura Lohse has decades of experience teaching and sailing using celestial navigation, that is using the stars, the sun, and the horizon to stay on course. For our word journey, Lohse connects the nautical terms that we use in our day-to-day language—to get a fix, to find your bearings, to give leeway, with their historical use in sailing. To shoot stars is to get lines of position from stars at dusk or dawn using the horizon as a reference. Dead reckoning is using speed estimated with a taffrail log, and in the old days a knot log, to figure out position when there is no horizon in view.

And be sure to check out our bonus content (publishing weekly in April) where: Steve Kuehl describes the rock cycle, from sediment to sedimentary rock and back again(!); Marlee Fuller describes the lively behaviors of the sanderling and how a tricolored heron stealthily creates shade to attract its prey; and Laura Lohse recounts her experiences in the open ocean, from watching mola molas, that is gigantic sun fish that swim on the surface of the ocean, to experiencing the doldrums, long periods with no winds.  

To learn more about the organizations in this podcast, visit:

Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Gloucester

https://www.vims.edu/

False Cape State Park, Virginia Beach

https://www.dcr.virginia.gov/state-parks/false-cape

Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge, Virginia Beach

https://www.fws.gov/refuge/back-bay

Schooner Alliance II, Yorktown

https://sailyorktown.com/

Sloop Luna and the Colonial Seaport Foundation, Deltaville

https://colonialseaport.org/luna-operating-plans/

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