Note: This report features images of a whale necropsy.

CURRITUCK COUNTY — In the morning hours, Carova Beach is quiet. In a few months it will be packed with visitors. The popular spot in the Outer Banks is known for its wild horses and remote location, but it’s early March, and the scene is empty apart from seabirds diving, shorebirds scurrying, and the occasional truck passing by on the offroad path.

Eventually, an unusual sight emerges from the deserted shoreline: a 26-foot-long dead minke whale.

Soon the team arrives. Researchers from North Carolina State University, North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries, University of North Carolina Wilmington, North Carolina Aquarium and its Jennette’s Pier, and volunteers have come from across the state to perform a necropsy.

When a whale dies offshore, the carcass eventually sinks and becomes a whale fall, providing vital food and habitat for deep sea scavengers, invertebrates, and microbes for years or even decades. When a whale carcass washes ashore, its body is used in a different way.

The main purpose of a necropsy is to investigate the cause of death, but samples are also taken to support a myriad of research. Tissue was collected to study diet and dive physiology. The eyes will be used in research about marine mammal vision. Feces were collected for parasitology analysis. The dorsal fin was radiographed to map out blood vessels and inform future biological sampling on live animals, just to name a few. Additionally, a variety of samples were gathered to archive for future research or share with collaborators.

This female, who died from a bacterial disease called brucellosis was the third dead whale found in the region in just as many days.

Earlier that week a humpback whale washed ashore in Virginia Beach, followed by another at nearby False Cape State Park. The same day this necropsy was performed, a pregnant and a juvenile dwarf sperm whale washed ashore in Nags Head. The following day, a bottlenose dolphin was found at Nags Head and a common dolphin at Southern Shores. In April, a nursing North Atlantic right whale was found off Virginia Beach, a victim of a vessel strike, and a humpback whale was found off the coast of Rodanthe entangled in fishing gear.

While it’s unusual to find strandings so close together in space and time, Dr. Craig Harms, a researcher from the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine and Center for Marine Sciences and Technology, or CMAST, says that may just be an unfortunate statistical anomaly.

That blip is because of storms that create strong currents and waves that bring ashore carcasses that may have otherwise remained at sea.

Further, spring marks migration season in the area, when larger numbers of whales are making the journey back north from their wintering grounds. The swelling population also means that more whales die here.

Even so, this minke whale is part of a broader trend.

Since 2017, elevated minke whale mortalities have occurred along the Atlantic Coast from Maine through South Carolina, totaling 166 thus far, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration records.

Minke whales aren’t alone in this predicament. Unusual mortality events, or UMEs, are also active for the North Atlantic right whale and humpback whale. Causes include vessel strikes, fishing entanglements and disease.

Climate change also plays a role.

“Warming waters are bringing fish into areas they haven’t gone before and it’s bringing whales closer to shore,” said Blair Mase-Guthrie, NOAA’s Southeast Region marine mammal stranding coordinator. “So, the effect of that, because they’re closer to shore they’re being impacted by human-related events such as getting entangled in fishing gear and getting hit by ships and boats.”

According to NOAA, about 40% of humpback whales necropsied have died from either vessel strikes or fishing entanglements.

Some have tried to place blame for the mammal deaths on offshore wind development, but such claims are unsupported by research. Additionally, many proponents of this idea are far-right groups and fossil fuel interests attempting to block clean energy projects.

For example, three right-wing groups — The Heartland Institute, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and the National Legal and Policy Center — recently filed a lawsuit against Dominion Energy, citing a Virginia wind project as a threat to endangered right whales.

Arguments against offshore wind liken noise from surveys, construction and operation of turbines to seismic air guns used in oil and gas surveys or tactical military sonar.

Wind energy advocates, however, contend that noise from offshore wind activities have a smaller impact zone because they produce lower noise at a higher frequency and narrower beamwidth than those related to fossil fuel exploration.

Further, precautions are put into place to minimize impact. For example, pile-driving has been halted during months when endangered right whales are likely to be present, and observers are required to be present to search for marine animals nearby and stop pile-driving if whales are seen.

Marine biologist Dr. Andrew Read, director of the Duke University Marine Lab in Beaufort, studies marine vertebrates, particularly longer-lived species such as whales. He also is a commissioner of the Federal Marine Mammal Commission.

One area Read says needs more study is the effect turbines could have on the distribution of zooplankton near wind farms, but thus far, studies have not been conclusive.

“Let me say clearly as a scientist to you, there is absolutely no evidence, not a single dead animal has ever been examined on the U.S. East Coast that we can tie to mortality associated with offshore wind. Not one,” Read said. “And yet, there’s this whole ecosystem of people and organizations out there that, because of politics and economics and how those two are intertwined, that will tell you, ‘Of course, it’s offshore wind.’”

Even though the scientific consensus is that vessel strikes and fishing entanglements, not offshore wind, are the biggest contributors to whale deaths, interests acting under the guise of conservation continue to make gains in turning public opinion against offshore wind.

While the debate is unlikely to go away anytime soon, Read said that, in the meantime, researchers must keep cutting through the disinformation noise.

“I think we have to be true to our science and say what we know,” he said. “But we also have to not let people get away with mischaracterizing what we say.”

To report an injured, entangled or dead marine mammal, call the NOAA Fisheries 24-hour Stranding Hotline at 866-755-6622.

At the end of a gravel road, tucked deep into the woods, bald cypress trees dot the shoreline of Bennett’s Mill Pond. Great blue herons wade in the shallows, searching for their next meal. It’s July in North Carolina, and time on the water would be the perfect way to enjoy some peace and quiet. But not today.

Haley Plaas pulls on a pair of rubber gloves. She lays on the dock and gently reaches her hand in. A mucus-like substance clings to her glove as she pulls back, leaving stringy threads on the water’s surface. While brilliant in color, the network of blue scum across the pond is dangerous cyanobacteria, a type of harmful algae.

Sometimes confused with aquatic plants like duckweed, cyanobacteria can vary from looking like green or blue-green opaque, thin mats to translucent paint or dye. Blooms pose a threat to the local environment — leading to fish kills, ecosystem damage, and drinking water contamination. They can also cause illness in humans and death among pets and wildlife.

Harmful algal blooms, often called HABs, occur naturally, but human activities increase their frequency and intensity.

HABs feed on nutrient runoff — anything from leaky septic tanks to fertilizers and industrial waste. While the U.S. South has dealt with this for years, it’s a growing global environmental issue exacerbated by climate change. Increased surface temperatures lead to warmer waters, and more extreme storms are followed by periods of drought. That combination is a perfect recipe for the algae — storms increase nutrient runoff into waterways, and then drought leads to stagnant, warm water.

While cyanobacteria directly impact water quality, less is known about how they affect air quality. Enter Plaas, a doctoral candidate in environmental science and engineering at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

Harmful algal blooms emit cells and chemical compounds that travel as tiny atmospheric particles, called aerosols. Plaas has partnered with the Chowan Edenton Environmental Group, or CEEG, to deploy PurpleAir air sensors along North Carolina’s Chowan River, part of the Albemarle-Pamlico estuarine system. Their goal is to see if blooms correlate with poor air quality due to an increase in these aerosols, and generate a wealth of accessible data in areas that are underreported.

The PurpleAir project examines air and water quality in the entire Albemarle-Pamlico estuarine system, but its focus is on the Chowan River. Not only does this region experience more blooms than other areas of the state, it also has a high prevalence of asthma among the population.

Additionally, the size of the estuarine system — the second largest in the country — means that high wind and wave action can contribute to toxins moving easily through the river and its tributaries.

Sending data to the PurpleAir website every 10 minutes, the sensors measure the number of particles in the air, as well as humidity and temperature.

“We don’t have any information about aerosol composition from these sensors, we just know the amount that’s there,” Plaas explained. “But since we’re looking over a big area and over a seasonal trend, we’ll be able to see a cause and effect. If we see a bloom, then in the following days are we seeing increases in aerosol particles?”

Educating, engaging the public

Chowan Edenton Environmental Group educates the public about environmental issues and supports research efforts in the area.

“Water quality is a key issue here. It’s a big part of our livelihood,” said CEEG Chair Colleen Karl. “It affects the economy — just look at the number of people that commercially and recreationally fish. Farming is tied into it because they use the water for irrigation, among a number of other reasons. There’s also a lot of people that buy houses in the area because they want to be on the water. So it’s a concern for a lot of people.”

Karl, a former high school teacher and science outreach coordinator for North Carolina State University, is passionate about introducing others to the world of environmental research. Today, she brings that same energy to her work with the CEEG.

“One goal of the CEEG is to increase understanding of changes we experience in our local ecosystems,” she said. “We all want the best environmental planning for the communities we call home.”

The group partners with a myriad of research organizations including the UNC Institute of Marine Sciences, North Carolina Sea Grant, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration offices in North and South Carolina, North Carolina State University, the State Climate Office, and the North Carolina Department of Agriculture.

“If we can work with another agency, there’s a lot of mileage we can get out of that. It might come in the form of grant writing or a community event. It might come in the form of a partnership you never even thought about,” Karl said. “For our area especially — in rural Eastern North Carolina — partnerships like that can be vital.”

In the study, funded by North Carolina Sea Grant and the Water Resources Institute, Karl engages the community — finding volunteers to host sensors, scouting blooms, collecting water samples, and building local partnerships. Plaas serves as scientific oversight and determines areas to install sensors, conducts lab experiments and builds statistical models for the data.

Barbara Putnam is the operations manager at the Museum of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City. The museum serves 13 counties, interpreting and telling the history of the region. When Putnam was approached about hosting a sensor, she saw a connection between the air quality project and the mission of the museum.

“What better way to preserve history, even if it’s an environmental recording and not the recording of an artifact?” she asked. “You’re taking data from the environment and then creating a history of that.”

Chip Wynns grew up on the Chowan River. His family owned a fish company from the 1950s until it was destroyed by Hurricane Isabel in 2003. He and his wife, Reba Wynns, have lived on the property since 2015.

The Wynnses’ love for the river made it an easy decision to host an air sensor. While they’ve seen water quality issues since living there, it’s much better than years past.

“The 1980s was horrible,” Chip Wynns said. “I remember it looked like fried eggs floating on the water. You could take a stick and pick it up it was so thick — slime, clumps, green, just nasty. There was a lot of debate about why. I think industries took a lot of the hit for that.”

Lois Thompson said air quality is a concern for not only her health, but also her 9-year-old grandson’s. That concern fueled her decision to host an air sensor at her home in Edenton.

“You walk outside and sometimes you say, ‘Oh gosh, I’ve got a headache and I’ve just walked outside,’ and you don’t know what caused that headache. You don’t know if it’s something in your house or if you walked outside and there’s something in the air that you picked up,” she said. “You just want to know how the air is and what’s really going on around you.”

Albemarle Regional Health Services partners with researchers on a number of issues, including HABs. Besides the PurpleAir project, the public health facility is working with researchers at Duke University investigating the links between cyanobacteria and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. Participating in research is a crucial part of serving the Albemarle community, said Health Director Ashely Stoop.

“You cannot be solely academic-driven and you cannot be solely practice-driven,” she said. “You’ve got to look at the data, and that academic component really helps us figure that data side out.”

Collaborations like this are vital to Plaas’ research.

“By directly collaborating with community scientists you’re connected to a network of people who are seeing these environmental issues every day,” she said. “It’s really important to put community members in the driver’s seat.

“I know this can’t be possible for all research, but for a lot of environmental and public health research it’s crucial to get feedback from the communities that you’re hoping to have an impact in.”

Plaas said engaging community scientists is not only practical — they host sensors, collect water samples, and notify authorities when blooms arise — but it’s also ethical.

“I see the intention of science to be seeking knowledge to improve and better our societies,” she said. “I think the only way that you can really know if you are doing research that’s going to improve a community is if you’re getting constant feedback from them the whole time.”

Like her work in the Albemarle Sound, Plaas is also monitoring air and water quality in the San Francisco Bay Delta Estuary to see if harmful algal blooms contribute to air pollution, and if toxins in the water can go airborne. Her experiments in the lab at UNC explore how gasses emitted from blue-green algae might condense in the atmosphere as a liquid and then travel as aerosol.

Know the warning signs

While the signs of a large bloom are obvious, smaller concentrations of cyanobacteria are invisible to the unaided eye. Because of this, it’s important to not only know the visible warning signs, but also recognize when the conditions are ripe for a bloom. HABs prefer slow moving to stagnant, warm water with plentiful nutrient runoff.

Due to wind and wave action, HABs can move quickly through an ecosystem. An area can be healthy one instant and then contaminated in just a few hours. Cyanobacteria are the most common type of harmful algal bloom found in freshwater, although it can occur in brackish or saltwater as well. Historically an issue in hot climates, harmful algal blooms are now found across the globe and in all 50 states.

Stephen Hammer has spent thousands of hours fishing in North Carolina — usually in preparation for bass tournaments. With that much time on the water, Hammer and his peers can share updates to researchers and environmental groups.

“We’re looking at water quality all the time,” he said. “What color is the water? Is it moving? Is it coming in, is it going out? … If you’ve got algae, you better move ’cause you ’aint gonna catch no damn fish,” he said.

Fish and shellfish can absorb toxins into their bodies, but little is known about the human health risks associated with consuming affected meat. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends trimming the skin, fat, and internal organs — areas where toxins are most likely to accumulate — before cooking fish and to avoid eating the “mustard” of crab. The World Health Organization advises moderation in eating fish exposed to blue-green algae.