A Good Day Exploring with Ben Raines

By now, most people know or have heard of Ben Raines. He’s made the news a lot, written books, and discovered things like the last slave ship, the Clotilda, and an underwater forest offshore of Gulf Shores.

At his core, Ben Raines is an environmental journalist and filmmaker. His latest work includes The Last Slave Ship about his discovery in the Mobile Delta of the burned and scuttled ship that brought the last slaves to America. Africatown, the town the enslaved founded, was established after emancipation. This was fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed.

Ben’s latest film documentary, Carnivorous Kingdom, premiered last fall and explains how one of Alabama’s rarest ecosystems works. Insect-eating plants thrive near Fish River at the bog, where it empties into Weeks Bay, and at the Splinter Hill Pitcher Plant Bog near Bay Minette. These bogs are rare remnants of an ancient ecosystem that covered the Southeast Longleaf Pine forests providing ideal conditions for carnivorous plants to thrive under their wetland longleaf canopy.

In 2004, Hurricane Ivan made landfall at Gulf Shores as a Category 5 storm leaving a wake of destruction in its path. With waves as high as 98 feet, it uncovered an underwater forest of cypress trees, estimated to be over a thousand years old, submerged under sediment.

Encased and sealed with layers of mud, the trees had not decomposed and provided scientists a look at what was once a vast and swampy floodplain forest. Ben and his team filmed a documentary, The Underwater Forest, narrated by Ian Thompson-Yates, released in 2017.

In December 2020, Ben wrote and released Saving America’s Amazon: The Threat to Our Nation’s Most Biodiverse River System. This book,  with a foreword by the famous Sociobiologist, E. O. Wilson explores the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta’s abundance of more species of fish, crayfish, salamanders, mussels, snails, and turtles than any other aquatic system in North America.

This book followed Ben’s documentary in 2014, America’s Amazon, The Mobile-Tensaw River Delta, a stunning visual presentation of the rich biodiversity shaped by evolution and the current pressures threatening its survival. It is one of the most interesting films I’ve seen and heightened my appreciation of the Delta’s importance to the waters surrounding the Scenic 98 Coastal area.

Ben is and has been a lot of things, writer, explorer, conservation leader, cinematographer, and tour guide extraordinaire. So, when we had an opportunity to go with two other couples on a guided tour through the Upper Delta, we jumped at the chance. This was in early December, and we met at Live Oak Landing near Stockton, just north of Interstate 65 at 10 AM for a six-hour tour.

The day before our tour, we had a gully washer rain, and the temps called for a high of 50 degrees. Our friends from Tuscaloosa arrived the day before and we looked a bit like Eskimos as we bundled up for the boat trip through the Upper Delta region. The weather turned out to be beautiful albeit chilly, and we were ready for an adventure.

Ben met us right on time at the boat landing and began pointing out landmarks and interesting fauna, much of which is unique to the Delta, as we progressed into slews and bayous along the way. Ben is an excellent guide. You know immediately that he never tires of being in the Delta and enjoys explaining and educating with child-like excitement. We soon settled in and asked lots of questions which he answered with insight and patience.

The upper Delta winds through rivers and bayous, past fishing camps, hunting camps, and even a couple of Vietnam War ships that are moored along the banks. We saw several houseboats, one of which Ben just purchased and is renovating. The two ships are rumored to become Bed and Breakfast establishments. We’ll see…

It’s the dead of winter and the water is high after the flooding rain the day before, so our two main stops are the ancient Indian Mounds and the big cypress swamp with the famous huge tree at its core. The Bottle Creek Indian Mounds is one of the most important prehistoric Native American sites in Alabama. We eased up to a creek that led us on a short hike to see the mounds which date back to about 1250 AD.

Second in pre-historic importance only to Moundville, Bottle Creek includes 18 mounds, canals, and residential areas that covered much of what is referred to as Mound Island. It is believed that the site was mainly a Mississippian Stage ceremonial complex that dominated from the years 1250 – 1500. The mounds themselves were constructed of shells brought from the coast and the tallest mound rises 52 feet above the ground.

The artifacts left behind indicate a clear connection to other Mississippian Indian communities throughout Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. Travel was primarily by foot or canoe, and water travels through the low, swampy coastal region to the Bottle Creek Mounds led to it becoming a trading center, helping to build a thriving community of great importance.

After a quick lunch along a creek bank, we headed to the big cypress swamp to see the mighty cypress tree. We soon discovered that the trail leading to the famous tree was covered with one to two feet of water due to the previous day’s rain. The trek through the swamp was an adventure unto itself, as the water covered thousands of cypress knees waiting to trip you, and the swamp mud was difficult to navigate.

We had a couple of minor casualties along the way but the tree itself is amazing. Twenty-seven feet in circumference, it towers among the other cypress trees and is a reminder of the huge cypress forests that existed here before loggers harvested the trees to almost depletion years ago. Cypress trees are coveted for their dense composition that is resistant to rot. The canopy of this magnificent tree begins about 100 feet high, and its location is a closely guarded secret.

As we made our way back to Live Oak Landing, we were exhausted by the more difficult trail hiking through high water, but we were happy to have had this unique experience. Ben offers guided tours to both the Upper Delta and Lower Delta. Spring tours fill quickly and are an amazing adventure discovering all that the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta has to offer during the Spring bloom. Be sure to watch  America’s Amazon to learn more. You won’t be disappointed!

P.S. We all recovered after a hot shower and had a terrific dinner at Char 32. It was a great day!