by Bud Ward

With Valentine’s Day imminent, 40 Northern Neck residents on February 9 got a special reminder: Love our Northern Neck salt marshes.
That, in essence, was the essential take-home message a marine ecologist brought to a lunch-time group at Indian Creek Yacht & Country Club. The title of marine scientist David Samuel Johnson’s presentation: “Salt Marsh Romance: Finding Love in the Marsh.”
Johnson, with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) in Gloucester, explained how his childhood life growing up enjoying the outdoors as a “barefooted hillbilly vagabond” in central Arkansas eventually led him to earn a doctorate in marine science from Louisiana State University. In an often-humorous presentation, he said he had grown to marvel at the enormous…