Animals: Return of Eel Grass?

For Eastern duck hunters, Assistant Biologist Clarence Cottam of the U. S. Biological Survey this week had good news. On the coast and islands of North Carolina he had found eel grass coming back. A flowering saltwater plant, it normally mats the Atlantic coast’s shallow-mud flats from Florida to Greenland. In 1931 it began to disappear. Simultaneously many a brant, Canada goose and black duck began to shrivel and die. Eel grass is the staple winter food of brant, important to other waterfowl.

The epiphytotic (plant epidemic) spread to Europe, has now almost denuded most of North America’s Atlantic coast. After more than a year of seeking its cause, scientists are still baffled.