Heritage Shores

Yesterday I drove to Heritage Shores which is near Cherry Beach in North Myrtle Beach. I had to pay $4.50 per hour to park which is extremely frustrating. I found a fairly large nature preserve among all the housing developments. I walked across five board walks and on sandy paths. Where the sandy paths were low and wet I saw the many round holes signifying a fiddler crab lives here. Fiddler crabs dig their homes straight down. When the tide comes in they plug the entrance to their home with a ball of sand. To see fiddler crabs you generally have to look at the path ten to twelve feet ahead of you. When the fiddler crabs hear me coming, my foot steps shaking the sand, they disappear into their homes. Once in awhile I will see a fiddler crab under me and I wonder if that one is deaf. 

People are not allowed to fish or take crabs at this nature preserve. The tide was low on this visit and I saw something incredible. Oysters, shown in the picture above, were spitting a stream of water 8 inches into the air at regular intervals. This is only visible when oyster is still in water but the water isn't very deep above them. I watched the oysters spit for a good 15 minutes while laughing gulls chuckled at me. Oysters are cleaning the water when they spit like this. Ocean creatures are incredible.