DATE: Tuesday, April 1, 1997                TAG: 9704010215

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: PEMBROKE                          LENGTH:   58 lines

CAROLINA BAYS HOLD SECRETS - AND, SCIENTISTS HOPE, THEIR GROUND

Some say they were formed by meteors. Others say they were formed by whales.

In 1971, an Ohio researcher went so far as to conclude that a giant black hole struck the Hudson Bay and rained icebergs onto the East Coast, leaving behind a moonscape.

However the thousands of bizarre egg-shaped ponds and swamps on the Carolina plain were formed, scientists have developed an obsession for the formations, known as Carolina bays.

``Everybody loves a mystery, and the bays are a good one,'' said Thomas Ross, a geography professor at the University of North Carolina-Pembroke. ``I've counted at least 18 different theories on their origins, and it seems I hear a new one every few months.''

In recent decades, scientists have gradually agreed that winds explain part of the mystery. Over thousands of years, prevailing winds have redistributed sediments within the bays, transforming round ponds into the shallow, elliptical depressions they are today.

Even so, the bays still hold plenty of mysteries. Why, scientists ask, are some bays wet and others dry most of the year? Why do they support such a profusion of unusual plants and animals? And how did they get there in the first place?

``These bays are very puzzling,'' said Margit Bucher, a botanist with the N.C. Nature Conservancy, which owns eight Carolina bays in the southeastern part of the state. ``You can come to a bay during the driest months of summer and they will be full of water. Then you can come right after a big winter thunderstorm and there's no water in sight.''

The Nature Conservancy and other environmental groups are trying to focus attention on the bays' future, not just their past. When left intact, Carolina bays are home to more than 30 endangered and unusual species, including rare salamanders and the Venus flytrap, a carnivorous plant that is found only in the Carolinas.

They worry that the bays are slowly being buried as new roads, subdivisions and farms are built in the coastal region. Many of the bays already have been cleared and drained for crop land, converted to tree farms, intersected by highways or lined by subdivisions.

The N.C. Nature Conservancy started looking for intact Carolina bays in the 1980s. Now the conservancy owns more than 600 acres of bays in Robeson, Scotland and Hoke counties.

Last year, a pair of scientists - Mark Brooks and Barbara Taylor - completed a study of Carolina bays in South Carolina, using a combination of deep-penetrating radar and archaeological techniques. They concluded that wind and waves were major forces in creating the bays and that most of them are about 10,000 to 18,000 years old. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Margit Bucher of the Nature Conservancy Preserve surveys plant life

in Robeson County's Antioch Bay. The bays are home to more than 30

rare species.

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