Travel People no longer harvest Sable Island cranberries. “Gulls eat them like popcorn,” said Bill Freedman. The Dalhousie University biology professor generously shared the knowledge that he gained during his studies of Sable Island ecology. (We were saddened to learn that he recently passed away.) During his on-board presentations, he introduced us to some of Sable Island’s 190 plant species. Onwalks, Bill showed us small white flowers on the starry false Solomon’s seal. Mixed among them were fuzzy, grey-leafed, pearly everlasting plants. Sable Island’s interior vegetated area is mostly grassland. Bill explained that it’s dominated by three species which feral horses like to eat, as well as the most common plant on Sable Island –marramor dune grass. “Although horses don’t like it as much as their three favourite grasses, marram is so abundant that it makes up the bulk of their diet.” The plant’s scientific name, ammophila, means “sand-loving.” By spreading through underground rhizomes, it encourages sand deposition and helps stabilize dunes. We have vivid memories of sitting on sand dunes, surrounded by marram grass, as we photographed grazing feral horses. “Sable Island is very dynamic,” said Jonathan Sheppard, as he pointed out areas with growing dunes which didn’t exist a few years ago. In other places, he showed us blowouts where the sea breached the dunes during storms and deposited the sand elsewhere. On North Beach, our guides handed us magnifying glasses to look at two creatures that they had collected in the ocean. We viewed a tinyMedusa jellyfish floating like an open umbrella in a plastic bag full of water and a translucent comb jellyfish – a favourite sea turtle food – dangling in a bottle of water. The Atlantic Ocean along Sable Island’s beaches looked inviting, but we didn’t dare go swimming. Eighteen species of sharks patrol these waters, including great white sharks. Although some seals die fromnatural causes, others die from shark-inflicted wounds. With its crashing surf, South Beach looks very different from the steeply sloped North Beach, just 1.5 kilometres across the island. As we crossed a long, desert-like plain to the beach, we felt as if we were hiking across the ocean floor when the tide was out. We were, in fact, walking along the sandy bottom of the former Lake Wallace. You’ll see the lake on old Sable Island maps. In the 1950s, pilots landed amphibious Canso planes in the water. Wind-blown sand infilled the lake in just over two decades. The final remnants disappeared in 2011. Ecologist, Bill Freedman, points out various plant life Starry false Solomon's seal and fuzzy grey-leafed pearly everlasting plan Crossing the former Lake Wallace to South Beach Using magnifying glass to examine translucent comb jellyfish Handful of cranberries from Sable Island bog 20 | www.snowbirds.org
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