. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. And they are right. Few firsthand stories can be told of the old market hunting days, and few are as resonant as those of Saunders, entombed in dead fowl and thrilling to a chorus of goose music, wind whining through marsh grass and gun-thunder rolling across the sound. It would be difficult to imagine a place more providential for waterfowl than Currituck Sound. About 30 miles long, the shallow sound lies north to south, from just across the Virginia state line to the tip of the peninsula that hems in Alb
. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. And they are right. Few firsthand stories can be told of the old market hunting days, and few are as resonant as those of Saunders, entombed in dead fowl and thrilling to a chorus of goose music, wind whining through marsh grass and gun-thunder rolling across the sound. It would be difficult to imagine a place more providential for waterfowl than Currituck Sound. About 30 miles long, the shallow sound lies north to south, from just across the Virginia state line to the tip of the peninsula that hems in Albemarle Sound. Bounded by the North Carolina mainland to the west and the Outer Banks to the east, it is rarely greater than four miles across. Long ago an inlet cut through the Currituck Outer Banks, and the sound's waters were brine. But drifting sands closed the inlet in 1828. Cut off from direct ocean access, the sound's waters fresh- ened. Oyster beds disappeared, and saltwater fish were wiped out. In their place, however, came enormous numbers of perch, bass, eels and underwater plains of freshwater plants relished by waterfowl. The Currituck Sound bottom, reported Alexander Hunter in 1892, was "one mass of wild ; Untold numbers of wintering ducks, geese and swans piled into the shallow waters — black ducks, pintails, widgeon and teal packing into open marsh ponds, while diving ducks such as canvasbacks, redheads and scaup rafted up by the thousands on the windswept open waters. Stories of duck flocks that darkened the sky are not uncommon, nor far off the mark. Even today, ducks can be so numerous in Currituck Sound that they appear as islands, thin dark smudges against the slate-gray water, until they take wing in cyclonic swarms. It didn't take long for Currituck farmers to turn to this supply of game for cash money. Edmund Ruffin, a Virginia editor who traveled extensively in the Currituck region in the 19th century, wrote of an Edgar Burroughs who o
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookcollectionunclibra, booksubjectoceanography
