MOREHEAD CITY — If offshore drilling took place off the East Coast, it’s unlikely that the N.C. coast would transform into the industrialized nightmare of beaches lined with oil refineries many locals fear. That’s because neither of the state’s port cities make appealing choices for the industry to bring oil or natural gas ashore.

That’s according to David McGowan, the executive director of the N.C. Petroleum Council. The council is a subsidiary of the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group for the oil and natural gas industry in the country. “I think the reality is, here in North Carolina, we’re much more likely to see the types of shore-basing and supply operations that would support the offshore industry but not the major infrastructure complexes, like refineries or processing facilities, that a lot of folks anticipate that we might,” McGowan said.

North Carolina doesn’t have refineries to process oil or natural gas or pipelines to transport them. Given there hasn’t been a new refinery built in the United States since 1976, McGowan says there’s a slim chance industry would build one a new one here.

Early this year the state Department of Commerce presented a report to the N.C. General Assembly on the feasibility of building a liquid natural gas export plant at either the Wilmington or Morehead City ports. The report notes that major hurdles would first have to cleared, including a lengthy permitting and review process, building a network of pipelines, an exporting facility and subsurface natural gas storage and keeping channels to the ports dredged to a depth of about 50 feet to accommodate the ships loading the gas. A more technical analysis is needed to determine profitability.

Here’s another good reason why there’s a slim chance that will happen: “We have fairly robust refining infrastructure right now on the East Coast in the Delaware and Philadelphia area,” said McGowan. “And so, most likely any resource that was produced off the East Coast would make its way to that existing refining infrastructure.”

What Morehead City or Wilmington could offer the industry is a port to supply and service offshore drilling operations with, for example, storage space, supply boats, helicopter bases or equipment manufacturing facilities, McGowan said.

Of the two state ports, Morehead City’s would finally be the golden child, and not the redheaded stepdaughter some in Carteret County have labeled it. Unlike its sister Wilmington port that 26 miles from open sea on the Cape Fear River, the Morehead City port is only four miles from the sea buoy – and less than a mile from Beaufort Inlet.

Morehead City is also closer to where the resources are expected to be found, based on offshore geology and previous industry interest. The last time the oil industry considered drilling off North Carolina was in the early 1980s, when several companies bought leases off Hatteras Island on the Outer Banks.

“From an efficiency standpoint,” McGowan said, “Morehead is certainly in a good situation. And I think, based on the little bit we know of the resource from the previous studies and information that’s been gathered offshore, the Morehead port is probably better geographically situated than Wilmington in that regard.”

Although Morehead City’s port is the closest port to open sea on the East Coast, it does present some challenges to any major industry wanting to settle in. As David Whitlow, the city manager of Morehead City, explained, there are a few big reasons why the city and its port might not be the obvious or immediate choice for the industry. “We don’t have an interstate highway, so we’re a tough place to get to by truck in volume,” Whitlow said.

Also, the only railroad line runs right through downtown. “Our rail is not an extensive rail system and doesn’t offer a lot of opportunities unless somebody wants to put a lot of money into coming up with a second route,” he said.

“Even the port here,” continued Whitlow, “the main part of the port is pretty well fully developed and committed, so that only leaves Radio Island as a possibility. And Radio Island isn’t the most accessible spot they can have for a port because they have a couple different bridges they have to cross to get there and it doesn’t have a lot of services out there. Access to the existing Route 70, Arendell Street, is challenging at best, even as Radio Island is currently developed. “So without a lot of additional infrastructure going into place there I can’t even see from a highway standpoint how Radio Island would serve to play a significant role. So what does that leave us with?”

Gov. Pat McCrory’s proposed bond referendum, Connect N.C., might be the answer to that question. The bond’s budget includes spending $125 million upgrading Morehead City’s port infrastructure to accommodate larger vessels, $75 million at Wilmington’s port for improvements and repairs and $50 million on expanding the rail system. Part of the governor’s 25-year vision for the region includes upgrading U.S. 70 to interstate standards and building a new rail and highway access bypassing Morehead City and reaching the port from the eastern side.

The channel to the port has also faced years of ongoing challenges with shoaling. “Getting the dredging situation under control is critical,” said McGowan, no matter the activity taking place, he added.

Whitlow said he was present earlier this year at a meeting of the Morehead City Port Committee, a nonprofit group interested in developing port business, when members of the American Petroleum Institute discussed the potential economic benefits of offshore drilling.

N.C. Ports Authority spokesman Cliff Pyron, said port officials are prepared to react if drilling plans move forward. “We could be the receiving facility for these types of projects but have not been approached by any particular business ventures at this point in time,”Pyron said Monday in an email.

Whether Morehead City is prepared to handle the population growth from the industry is another question.

“We’re pretty well fixed for water and sewer, so we have that infrastructure in place,” said Whitlow, “but let’s say 2,000 or 3,000 people came in to support the oil industry. Obviously under our current conditions we don’t have that kind of housing available.”

Both private and public sectors would have to pour their resources into building up for the big influx of workers and their families, he said. More emergency medical personnel, firefighters, police officers, sanitation workers, teachers and doctors would be required. Also, further expansion of the county hospital may be needed, Whitlow noted.

The growing pains expected if industry and jobs were to come and the stress on city resources weren’t Whitlow’s greatest fears. It’s, by nature of the industry, that all those people could be sent packing again a few years later. It’s the typical oil industry “boom and bust” seen in some Oklahoma and Texas towns that’s a bigger concern, he said.

“When (the industry) is growing it has a positive economic impact, although it doesn’t necessarily have a positive community impact; and when it’s dying, it certainly has a negative economic and community impact,” said Whitlow. “Growing too fast is not a good approach to things.”

If the industry selects a site in Morehead City, then city officials would have some say in what the industry could or couldn’t do, said Whitlow. However, if a firm becomes a tenant at the port, “the state does not have to go through a lot of our processes, and we don’t have any particular domain over some of what the state does,” he said.

Ultimately, site selection depends on a number of variables, many of which remain unknown, McGowan said. “All of that is dependent in large part upon what the resource is – is it oil? Is it natural gas, dry gas, is it wet gas? Where is it located exactly? What are some of the potential challenges to not only exploring and producing that product but then getting it to shore to refine and to make into the end product?”

WILMINGTON — The wind blew ferociously on the second floor of the Southport-Fort Fisher ferry where two young men working onboard stood side by side in khaki uniforms wearing dark sunglasses. Coby Benson and Chris Pittman agreed, drilling for oil and natural gas off the N.C. coast would be a good thing.

“I’m for it,” said Benson, a native of nearby Wilmington.

“The only way it would affect us would be positive,” said Pittman.

The men expressed how great it would be if more jobs came to the area, particularly maritime jobs. “The local economy would pick up, too, from more restaurants and housing,” Benson suggested.

A number of people I talked with on my travels along North Carolina’s southern coastline also supported offshore drilling. Old salts in Sneads Ferry, a fishing village in Onslow County, for instance, thought the industry could benefit the younger, local captains looking for work.

I found the group of fishermen on the last day of the weeklong road trip, hanging out in Mitchell’s Seafood Market. It wasn’t until I spoke the magic words, “Sammy Corbett sent me,” — the name of a Hampstead fisherman who chairs the Southeast Marine Fisheries Commission — that I was let into the circle.

“It might create a lot of jobs for the fishermen around here because this industry is going bad to the wayside, and it could give some options for some younger captains,” said Randy Millets, who runs the fish house, which is just down the street from where he was raised.

He sat back in his office chair within a white room that had nothing more than a soda machine in the corner and a tall counter against which a handful of other fishermen leaned. A middle-aged man, he looked to be the youngest of the group. He wore a light blue shirt and cap that magnified the ocean color of his eyes.

In Oil We Trust

“They had that bad thing happen in Louisiana, but BP took care of them,” said Millets about the oil company responsible for the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010.

Ray Liberman, an older man standing near me, joined in. “Yeah, I know one guy that become a millionaire over it,” he said, referring to a shrimper who was paid to help clean the spill.

The fishermen were fairly confident that the oil industry would look out for them in the event of a spill and any resulting effects to their livelihoods, but they wanted some reassurance. “We all kind of got an idea of what went on in Louisiana, but we’re not from Louisiana so we didn’t truly experience it, see. There would be a lot of questions we’d like to ask somebody,” Millets said.

Like, if there were pipelines, where would they run on the seafloor and how many? The fishermen wouldn’t be able to drag their trawling nets over a pipeline, and they could easily lose their rigs if they ran across one by mistake, Millets said.

“Most times us guys will sit around and we’ll talk about it, and this one will bring this view up and that view up,” he said. “I might could change tomorrow if we got to talking about it. But, one thing they won’t change my mind on is I do want this country to depend on itself.

“Me, personally, I’m a patriot,” said Millet. “So whether I benefit anything at all from it, at least we’re dependent on our own country.”

Energy independence was the one dominant argument expressed by those not opposed to offshore drilling. So, how dependent is the United States on foreign oil?

In the U.S., net imports of petroleum amounted to 27 percent of what we consumed in 2014 — the lowest annual average since 1985. This has largely been driven by both a boom in natural gas production, more fuel-efficient vehicles and other factors.

You may find it surprising that 90 percent of the petroleum we consumed last year was either produced domestically or imported from Canada, according the Energy Information Administration. We import more petroleum from our Canadian neighbors than all the Persian Gulf countries combined.

Alternatives Instead

A prevailing mantra of those against offshore drilling was the need to aggressively find alternative sources of energy.

That’s what Wilmington native Dan Brawley said on the morning we met near downtown. Wilmington is the largest city on the N.C. coast with a university, a college and roughly 112,000 residents. The slender man with a handlebar mustache, shoulder-length, wiry blond hair and eyeglasses is a leader in Wilmington’s arts community. He’s the executive director of the annual independent Cucalorus film festival and the founder and manager of the Independent Art Co.

“The compelling argument for drilling and exploring for energy in delicate ecosystems is going to become more urgent and more convincing over time,” said Brawley. “So as we’re discussing offshore drilling energy exploration, we should be putting a lot more of our resources into supporting scientists and other inventors, researchers to discover that thing that might just save our ability to live on this planet.”

Brawley and I took a walk with his dog Izzy over to Folks Café on Princess Street. Inside, we chose a seat by a large window to keep an eye out for his dog, which was lying on the ground and tied to a post.

In a way, Brawley said, knowing how animalistic humans can be makes him feel a little better about practices like offshore drilling and fracking. He compared it to a colony of ants incapable of conserving a discovered mound of sugar. “In some ways it seems a little bit inevitable that we’re going to go out and tear the earth apart to find energy,” he said.

“Can we come up with a reasonable way to do that?” he wondered, stating the importance of getting back to a place where both political parties can negotiate and find common ground. For many locals, including Brawley, entertaining whether to drill off the N.C. coast feels like a one-sided conversation in which the only the titan fossil fuel industry will be heard.

“It feels to me like this conversation is about ‘How does it feel to be a loser’ a little bit, you know?” he said. “Given the people who are in power. I mean we have a 25-year-set-with-Duke-Energy as our governor, and we know how incredibly powerful the energy sector is in Washington.

“So it’s a David and Goliath battle,” said Brawley.

“People Power”

Even so, Carolina Beach’s Ethan Crouch believes in “people power.”

“It becomes inspiring, to be honest,” Crouch said, “that the people’s voice is still loud and the people want to really, in spite of the literally unlimited amount of dollars that we’re fighting against, people are still coming out; people are still voicing their opinions; people are still signing petitions; people are still calling their senators, still writing letters and still doing whatever they can as citizens to protect what we love so much.”

He was among the more than 300 people who crowded into a Kure Beach town council meeting in January 2014 to voice their opposition to drilling. It was the beginning of a grassroots movement throughout East Coast towns to begin passing resolutions against seismic surveys and offshore drilling. Kure Beach Mayor Dean Lambeth may have lit the match when he signed onto an industry-sponsored letter endorsing exploration for oil and natural gas without any public input.

Crouch has had a large role in spearheading Pleasure Island’s opposition effort as the local chair of Surfrider, an environmental nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting oceans and beaches.

“It comes down to I love the ocean. It’s not worth putting at risk,” said Crouch. “And our — not just love — but our existing economy thrives in this area off clean and healthy beaches, not off an industrialized coastline. You look to the Gulf Coast and that’s where you see the industrialized beaches, literally refineries on the beach.

“That’s not the vibe of North Carolina. That’s not what makes North Carolina great. That’s not why people move here. That’s not why people start businesses here. It’s for those pristine and clean beaches,” he said.

Sean Cook is one of those people who decided to move to Carolina Beach and start a few businesses. He owns Pleasure Island Rentals, which rents out everything from kayaks and paddle boards to beach chairs and umbrellas. He said, “Our rental shop depends 100 percent on tourism dollars and there’s so many other businesses that are the same way all the way up and down the coast.”

I met Cook for a drink at his other business, an oyster bar restaurant. This one was in downtown Wilmington. He’s not for offshore drilling for several reasons. A spill, he said, could potentially affect the local tourism economy.

“If I’m not making money in Carolina Beach and I’m struggling to survive, I’m not coming downtown (to Wilmington) to spend money. I’m not going to Mayfair to buy overpriced clothing. The trickledown effect is so enormous,” Cook said.

Visitors spent roughly $4 billion along  North Carolina’s coast in 2013, according to the state Department of Commerce. And every year, more than 11 million people visit the state’s beaches and coastal towns. Kure Beach, for example, has roughly 2,000 year-round residents, but swells to a population between 400,000 and 700,000 during the summer. This goes for most of the towns along the state’s southern coastline. It appears tourism not only drives their economies but greatly shapes their culture.

Cook asked, where will those 11 million tourists vacation if there was an oil spill of the N.C. coast? Nobody wants to come to the coast to swim in sludge, he said.

However, not all those who work in North Carolina’s coastal tourism industry worry about such accidents. The pier owners of Kure Beach and Oak Island weren’t opposed to drilling offshore. In reference to the BP Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Mike Robertson, Kure’s pier owner, said, “You have to consider all the gas and oil we’ve gotten from the Gulf and all the times it didn’t fail.”

If we’re going to keep using oil and gas products, we need to keep exploring for them, he said. Robertson pointed out that the oil-producing states on the Gulf Coast have some of the best inshore fishing today. He justified the risk of oil spills for the sake of the country’s dominant source of energy with this, “Sometimes you have to break an egg, and bad things happen to good people.”

Born and raised in Kure Beach, he remembers oil washing up on the sand during World War II. “Nature bounces back,” he said. “It ain’t pretty … Now there’s more people to see it and more press to report it.”

No NIMBYs Here

Like Robertson, other coastal residents thought it was unfair to have a “not in my backyard” attitude. Marty Evans of Wilmington doesn’t like the idea of drilling off the N.C. coast and wants the state and country to pursue alternatives, but, he said, “Until I totally swear off cars or oil, I can’t say, ‘How dare you collect oil in my backyard. Go do it somewhere else.’”

There are other tourism-based jobs that stand to potentially benefit from offshore drilling, namely recreational fishing. Oil rig structures create artificial reef habitats that can attract fish. Fishing near rigs – both active and inactive – is legal and popular along the Gulf Coast.

Jon Huff, a recreational fishing guide, lives in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood in Ogden, a suburb north of Wilmington. “In the short term,” he said, “I know if there were offshore platforms out of here it’d be great fishing spots. That’s the first thing you think about.”

“Louisiana is still much more of a destination than we are for recreational fishing,” Huff said. “If it was going to hurt my business from an ecological standpoint, you know, it hasn’t in Louisiana, so how?”

Still, Huff said he had mixed thoughts about drilling and confessed that he didn’t know what the environmental ramifications would be if North Carolina pursued offshore drilling.

If there were three questions people most often said they wanted answers to, they were these: What is the “real” need; what are the “real” environmental effects; and what are the “real” benefits of offshore drilling?

North to Pender

Driving north into Pender County, traffic and roadside development dissipates while the pine forests stretch farther and farther without interruption. The county has fewer than half as many people living in it as Brunswick, New Hanover and Onslow counties and also a smaller population than Carteret County, with roughly 56,000 residents, according to the N.C. Office of Budget and Management. Its percentage of people living below the poverty level was greater than the state and national averages and its average annual income level was lower, too.

Pender County traditionally had an agriculture-based economy. Today however, only about 3 percent of the population is in agriculture, forestry, fishing, hunting or mining. The greatest employment sector is in educational services, health care and social assistance, around 19 percent, followed by retail and construction. Along its coastline though, I met nearly a dozen commercial fisherman, all with different things to say.

Sammy Corbett, of Hampstead, said, “I can’t be against anything that helps the economy.” He feels confident that the fisheries would benefit from the habitat created by the structure of rigs, and that drilling can be done without harming the environment or ecosystem. “I think the [safety] measures have already been taken to make it a lot better,” he said.

I met him at the fish market in Surf City, at the Crab Shack restaurant and fishing dock. There, I talked to watermen from various corners of Pender County’s coast, including those working that day, scaling fish and prepping iced coolers. Ethan Thomas, a tall, slender man wearing dark green waders and a faded orange visor, kept moving around the group discussion, smoking one cigarette after the other. His skin, like the others, had a rough, darkened tint from working under the sun at sea. I didn’t think he was paying any mind to the ongoing conversation about offshore drilling until he said, “I wouldn’t recommend it,” as he passed by.

Thomas used to be a commercial fisherman. Now he works at the market where the pay is more stable. The open seas off this coast are tumultuous, he explained. Commercial fishermen are lucky if they can fish offshore five times in January or February or March, he said, whereas conditions in the Gulf make for access to deep water easier throughout the year. Despite the habitat rigs or platforms could create for fisheries, Thomas said he doesn’t think it’s worth the risk of a spill.

With a sharp glance and one long drag of his cigarette, he concludes, “Oil and water don’t mix.”

By the time the road trip wrapped up in Morehead City, I was left with an array of responses from the 80 people I talked to about offshore drilling. Nearly half of them were against it. While there were an equal number of men opposed as not opposed, no women decidedly supported offshore drilling. The remainder were either undecided or said they were too uninformed to have an opinion.

Wednesday: The Outer Banks

Tony Morris pulled up and docked his green boat by the open-air seafood market in Surf City. The commercial fisherman was getting ready to go to work offshore catching grouper, just as he has for the last 35 years.

Before he headed out, Morris walked inside the fish market to look for a reporter who he had agreed to meet. It didn’t take long to spot me. I was holding a notebook and tape recorder with a bulky camera bag slung over my shoulder.

The Topsail native responded to my question about drilling off the N.C. coast with one of his own. “How’re you going to stop it?” he asked. “It’s big money.”

Drilling could take place at the heart of grouper bottom. The fish come in from the deep sea to spawn near the continental shelf break. That’s where Morris was headed that day. It’s a narrow band he fishes, between 45 and 60 miles offshore. The draft, federal offshore leasing proposal released last winter restricts drilling to 50 miles from shore.

“I would say, ‘Yeah, I would fight it,’ but you can’t,” said Morris. “It’s oil. It dominates. There’s just no way around it. It’s the Koch Brothers … You just can’t stop it.”

Morris’ sentiment stayed with me like an echo as I traveled North Carolina’s southern coastline. From Calabash, near South Carolina’s border, to Morehead City, I talked to 80 people about the prospect of offshore drilling during a five-day road trip. While the majority did not support drilling off the N.C. coast, the responses varied tremendously.

Some people were passionate about fighting it, others like Morris thought the fight hopeless. Some  argued drilling would be in the best interest of the local economy and the country. Several were caught in the middle and undecided and a few admitted they were too uninformed to make a decision.

A Rainy Start

It all began on a rainy Monday morning in mid-April when I met Jim Barber of Sunset Beach. From his balcony on the third floor, you could see South Carolina. The spacious condo overlooked the nature reserve Bird Island — the last bit of beach before Little River Inlet separates the Carolinas. It’s a view of salt marsh, tidal creek, sand dune and open ocean.

Barber offered me a cup of coffee and we settled into two leather-cushioned seats in the corner of his living room. He retired here from Raleigh with his wife, Linda. On his list of major things to worry about, offshore drilling isn’t one of them, he said.

“My view,” said Barber, “is under the best scenarios, it’d be 10-plus years before there’s any serious [oil or gas] production off the coast, if everything went well. There are things that I see more on my one- or two-year horizon that are much more important.”

Barber wouldn’t be the last person I met that week who had more pressing coastal issues on his mind than the prospect of offshore drilling. Other folks who live on the island, for example, said they were worried about a terminal groin proposed for the south end of Ocean Isle, the neighboring island to the northeast. A groin, they feared, could trigger the erosion of Sunset Beach’s north end.

[su_quote cite=”John Corbett, Sunset Beach”]Most of us who are down here came down here because it’s really a beautiful, pristine beach. We really don’t want to lose any of that. If you had an oil spill, the tourism would stop completely.[/su_quote]Sunset Beach is at the base of Brunswick County, which was the fastest-growing county in the state last year after Mecklenburg. Historically, the economy and culture of Brunswick has centered on agriculture and fishing. Today, tourism is its leading economic engine. It’s also become a magnet for retirees looking to escape the snow. There are twice as many people aged 65 and over who live in Brunswick County than the state’s average, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Nearly everyone from Sunset Beach I spoke to that first day expressed a fear of an oil spill despoiling the town’s natural beauty, which drives its tourism. As army veteran John Corbett of Sunset Beach explained, “The economy of this little town is heavily dependent upon renting beach houses during the six to 11 weeks during the summertime. There ain’t a whole lot else here that supports it.

“Most of us who are down here came down here because it’s really a beautiful, pristine beach,” Corbett said. “We really don’t want to lose any of that. If you had an oil spill, the tourism would stop completely.”

Risk vs. Reward

The town’s mayor pro-temp, Lou DeVita, agreed. “Most of us move to the coast to enjoy the beauty and serenity,” he said. “Towns establish themselves because tourists get attracted there, and they have an economic engine that drives them.”

He worried that small coastal communities won’t be rewarded in proportion to the risks they’d be taking with offshore drilling. So, Sunset Beach’s town council passed a resolution proposing that the ocean be cherished as are national parks.

“We believe that the oceans should likewise be regarded as a natural treasure to be preserved and protected,” the resolution states. “If drilling for oil is offensive and dangerous to the environment and wildlife in Alaska and the Western states, why is this and other invasive projects safe off our coastlines where containment in the event of a disaster is near impossible?”

As the day began to reveal, this hot-button topic was not a partisan issue. “I’m a conservative guy. I am big time,” said Dave Nelson, a longtime local of Sunset Beach who sells real estate and owns a hotel. He calls himself a “car guy” who likes gasoline and is all for oil independence.

“I’m a firm believer — and man, I’m really stepping out on the line here,” Nelson said, sitting on the couch in his hotel’s lobby, “but it’s about time that we stop this business. There’s no doubt in my mind that we don’t have the ability to come up with some type of other energy source besides just continuing down the same road — a new energy source that’s cleaner.

“When they can convince me that we’re going to get something that’s actually worthwhile besides just money, that it’s worth the effort, that it’s worth the risk, then I believe I’ll side on I’m not for it,” he said.

I ate lunch that first day in Calabash on the state border with South Carolina. In Calabash, you eat fried seafood. It’s so ubiquitous that “Calabash style” means battered, deep-fried fish anywhere on the N.C. coast. That day, however, was the first time I’d actually sampled the real thing in its namesake town.

Captain Nance’s Calabash Seafood Restaurant is on the waterfront. A shrimp trawler is docked outside. The family restaurant, built originally in 1975, is one of the oldest in Calabash and many of its employees are related. My waitress, Donna Nance Morgan was born and raised here. Her short, brown hair was spiked and she wore a bright pink T-shirt with the logo of her aunt’s restaurant. Like a handful of others I talked to later that afternoon in Calabash, Donna hadn’t heard about this proposal to drill offshore.

“I don’t think I could form an opinion because I’ve never lived anywhere that produces oil,” she said. “I don’t know the pros or cons, but I’d be concerned about an oil spill and how that’d affect the ecosystem and also what would happen if a hurricane came through the oil rigs.”

The N.C. coast juts out into the warm water of the Atlantic Ocean, an area nicknamed “Hurricane Alley” because of its track record of damaging hurricanes. Other people I later interviewed also worried how rigs off the coast would survive repeated hurricane seasons.

Donna brought me the lunch special: fried shrimp, fried flounder, fries and hushpuppies with honey butter and, of course, iced tea as sweet as syrup. Mainly, she’d like to know how offshore drilling would affect the seafood restaurant industry, the lifeline of her hometown.

Don’t Sully the View

U.S.  17 through Brunswick County is a monotonous stretch of asphalt past billboards, fast-food restaurants and sporadic shopping centers. Beyond the road are unseen housing subdivisions. I ended the first day inside one of them in Ocean Isle, in a gated community called Ocean Ridge Plantation, complete with four award-winning golf courses. The subdivision bills itself as “southeastern North Carolina’s most exclusive and luxurious beach and golf community.”

Tom and Jeanne Oxenfeld welcomed me for the night. They retired here early from Pennsylvania where they raised their two, now-grown, children, one of whom was visiting from out of town. After dinner, we got to talking about the heavier stuff.

I think for the community here the mindset would be if they go down to Sunset Beach and sit on the upstairs of their private beach house, and if they can see a [wind turbine] or an oil rig, forget it.[/su_quote]Tom was born and raised in nearby Wilmington. He said he’s in favor of  the country becoming more independent from foreign oil but isn’t convinced of the need to drill off North Carolina’s coast, especially in light of its lack of infrastructure.

Tom Oxenfield, Ocean Isle

And, while he thinks that offshore drilling is not good for the environment, he said, he doesn’t know enough about that — something I heard many coastal residents say throughout the week. Unless it fouled swimming waters, oil isn’t something that’s going to personally affect him, he said.

“I think for the community here,” Tom said, “the mindset would be if they go down to Sunset Beach and sit on the upstairs of their private beach house, and if they can see a [wind turbine] or an oil rig, forget it.”

One of the main amenities of the area is the beach, he added, where the young retirees like to take their grandchildren when they come to visit in the summer.

Tom’s daughter, Laura, interjected. “If it doesn’t disturb the day-to-day life of the conservatives that live in this extremely wealthy enclave,” she said facetiously, “then why would it be a problem?”

The following morning I drove to Holden Beach and waited for the rain to stop inside a coffee shop on the mainland. Curt Bolden sat across from me in the café.

“There’s no industry in Holden Beach,” he said. “Most people here are retired or veterans on disability.”

Bolden was a manager of automotive plants for General Motors and Ford Motor Co. before he retired. Now he is a regular at Cappuccino by the Sea, as the shop was named, and said he moved down here largely because it was still affordable. This shop is one of the few that stays open throughout winter, and even then only on certain days because it has no heat.

“It’s a delicate balance,” Bolden said of offshore drilling. “Energy independence is important, but it’s a big ‘oops’ you have to worry about.”

He said he’s not convinced the benefits of drilling offshore outweigh the risks. As a volunteer on the sea turtle patrol, he also worries about how the sea turtles might be affected by spills. “Sea turtles are already endangered,” Bolden said. “Offshore drilling would put them at risk when their populations are already stressed.”

Sea Turtles and Oil

Patrolling the beaches for sea turtle nests and watching hatchlings enter the ocean for the first time is a significant ecotourism business along the N.C. coast. It brings in $30 million annually, for example, just to Bald Head Island, which sticks out in the Atlantic at the state’s most southern cape.

“I invest $200,000 a year and I get a return of $30 million — give me a Wall Street investor that can beat that,” Suzanne Dorsey would tell me later. She’s the executive director of the Bald Head Island Conservancy, which is well known for its sea turtle conservation work.

She based the figure on a 2012 study by Gladys Delgadillo of Stanford University. The report shows that residents and visitors place a high value on the sea turtles that nest on Bald Head Island beaches as an economic factor that should be considered in decisions about development of the island. “These are my constituents who value and preserve their environment, and it pays them back”, Dorsey said.

“I’m less concerned about a giant spill,” she said, “and much more concerned about what I know will happen, and that’s the small to medium spills.”

Dorsey explained, just as ocean currents form island-like patches of sargassum seaweed on the ocean’s surface — the food source for and habitat in which hatchling sea turtles hide — the currents would direct oil there, too.

“So if sargassum is coated by oil, it dies. It then sinks. Then their habitat is gone,” she said, adding that the seaweed is also a food source and important habitat for seabirds.

I left the foggy strand of Holden Beach and drove about 24 miles to Oak Island on the other, east side of the Lockwoods Folly Inlet. The spot to find locals on a Tuesday afternoon, I was told, is a restaurant called Russell’s Place. It looked like your all-American diner. Only two middle-aged women were working the front end, pacing to and from a dining counter and passing handwritten orders through the kitchen window to the cooks. The women seemed to know most of their customers by first name, and though they remarked that business was slow, their gait suggested anything but. The menu, by no surprise, was Southern fare.

Marsha put a menu and napkin-rolled silverware in front of me at the counter and recommended the fried okra and creamed potatoes with gravy. She hadn’t heard of the plan to drill off the coast. Others throughout the week would tell me the same thing. It seems that some people are too busy worrying about the realities of today to worry about possibilities of tomorrow.

Unlike these people, there were others I encountered who were simply indifferent to offshore drilling. As one Carolina Beach resident later said to me, “Most people are ignorant to it and just don’t care. Until it actually happens in their backyard and all of a sudden sludge is coming up on the beach, then they’re going to give a shit.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said, “there’s a lot of intelligent people on the island who care a lot about this. But the vast majority, they got other shit to worry about, like what the Kardashians are doing or what’s on Facebook.”

Tuesday: Wilmington to Morehead City

“Everyone goes immediately to the environmentalists,” she says, “because we can clearly articulate the impacts to our species that we’re concerned [about] and the environmental impacts at the physiological and habitat level. What astounds me is that our coastal tourism, coastal real estate industries have not stepped up here because there’s also very clear evidence that the broad economy that supports conservation is at risk.

“Where is their voice as our governor, I think, rightly so explores opportunities for this state to have more jobs and more diverse economy?” she asks.

To find out what those in the real estate business south of Morehead City had to say on the issue, I first met with Steve Candler, the executive vice president and director of governmental affairs of the Brunswick County Association of Realtors.

The association, based in Supply, represents around 900 Realtors whom have expressed different views on offshore drilling, Candler said. Realtors stand to benefit from any kind of economic development in their area, he said; but at the same time, they’re selling Brunswick County, so if there are any drastic changes that make it hard to sell, that affects Realtors, too.

Later in Wilmington I spoke with a real-estate salesman who said he “feared” offshore drilling would be a good thing for his business. “I’m for progress,” said Juan Santos, “but it has to be positive.”

“If it creates business and wealth, yeah that’s good for real estate. But, I’m not willing to pay just any price to do business,” Santos said. “Maybe I’m unusual that way.”

The Wilmington Regional Association of Realtors declined to interview.

In the weeks following my interview with Candler, the N.C. Petroleum Council’s executive director, David McGowan, came to speak to the Brunswick realty group about how the oil and gas money might be able to help fund beach re-nourishment projects if offshore royalties are shared with the state.

This possibility at least piqued the interest of Candler. “The municipalities and the counties are looking at different sources of funding even now for beach nourishment—property taxes, parking, all that kind of stuff,” he said. “We think that’s nickel and diming a million-dollar solution. So we need to think of something long term and big — big.”

As recently as May, the Obama administration opposed bills in the U.S. Senate that would allow North Carolina and other states to receive a share of federal revenue from the energy produced off their coasts. Director of the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Abigail Hopper, said the administration opposes the bills because they would “divert offshore energy development revenue from the Treasury, reducing the net return to taxpayers and adding to the federal deficit.”

Hundreds of North Carolinians will take 15 minutes Saturday to join hands with strangers in a peaceful demonstration against fossil fuels.

The event, known as Hands Across the Sand, will take place in different states and countries around the world. After Florida, where it all started six years ago, North Carolina is holding the most events: six along its coastline and three inland.

“What it does is it creates an amazing, powerful image,” said Dede Shelton, executive director of Hands Across the Sand. “We send this image to the elected officials so they see people don’t want this to happen.”

That’s certainly the case for the residents of Kure Beach, which will be the site of an event. In December 2013, their mayor, Dean Lambeth, signed onto an industry-sponsored letter endorsing offshore seismic testing for oil and natural gas without any public input. The following month over 300 people piled into the town hall to voice their opposition at a council meeting. The outcry triggered a reaction; municipalities up and down the East Coast began passing resolutions in opposition to seismic testing.

“I really couldn’t understand why someone representing a coastal town would want to be destroying the environment,” said Joanne Durham, a Kure Beach resident who is organizing the beach’s Hands Across the Sand event.

The beach town has about 2,000 year-round residents, but during summer months its population swells between 400,000 and 700,000 from tourists who visit the beach.

“We wanted to do something,” she said. “And we’d heard about this as something that was happening internationally, but we felt like we wanted something to happen right here in Kure Beach because we just feel very strongly that we should not have offshore drilling — whether it’s right here along our beach or anywhere along the North Carolina coast. So we wanted to continue to highlight that.”

Folks in Seaside, Fla., form a human chain to “draw the line” on fossil fuels, says Dede Shelton, executive director of Hands Across the Sand.

This demonstration, however, is not just about opposing offshore drilling for oil and natural gas.

“Our gathering is really focused on the problems associated with coal-fired power plants, particularly coal ash pollution,” said Britten Cleveland, Charlotte’s Hands Across the Sand organizer. “I think our reliance on coal is a big issue, and that really came to a head with the coal ash spill in the Dan River.”

While threats of fossil fuels are different across the state, Cleveland says, the solution is the same: “I think that what ties the coastal events into the inland events is that we’re all calling on the same solution, and that’s the need for a strong clean power plan from the governor.”

Cleveland is also an organizer for the N.C. chapter of the Sierra Club, one of Hands Across the Sand’s national sponsors along with Oceana and Surfrider. The state chapter is helping organize the event in Atlantic Beach, Apex and a paddle out to Duke Power’s Belews Creek coal-fired power plant just north of Winston-Salem, where folks will hold hands in silence to have their message heard.

“What we’re asking for is an end to our reliance on coal to clean up our air and our water,” said Cleveland.

A businessman named Dave Rauschkolb, Shelton’s brother, sparked the  Hands Across the Sand grassroots movement in Seaside, Fla., in 2010.“He was hosting a fundraiser for a local politician,” Shelton said, “and when the politician got up to give his speech he told the whole crowd that the Florida legislature was going to approve offshore drilling again in the Gulf of Mexico, all the way around the coast.”

As the owner of three beachfront restaurants, Rauschkold was mortified, she said. They held their first event on Jan. 13 that year. Five weeks later on April 20, a wellhead blew out on the BP Deep Water Horizon oil rig, spilling an estimated 210 million gallons of crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico—the biggest accidental marine oil spill in the industry’s history.

Hands Across the Sand responded with another day of demonstrations on June 26 — this time with events in all 50 U.S. states and 43 other countries, with support from some of the world’s largest environmental nonprofit organizations.

The Florida Senate later rejected the bill proposed by the state House to approve offshore drilling. After several failed attempts, the BP well was permanently sealed on Sept. 19, 2010.

“(Hands Across the Sand) hasn’t been as big since because there hasn’t been an oil spill,” said Shelton, at least not one as well publicized. But, Shelton says, she hopes this year’s turnout will be different given the possibility of drilling off the East Coast.

Event Details

All events are scheduled for Saturday, May 16, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Demonstration begins at noon. Click here for more detailed information.

State events are set for:

• Apex, Jordan Lake State Park
• Atlantic Beach, Fort Macon State Park
• Charlotte, Freedom Park
• Kitty Hawk, Kitty Hawk Pier
• Kure Beach, K Ave. beach access by the fishing pier
• Nags Head, Bonnett St. access
• Oak Island, Middleton Park beach access
• Walnut Cove, 4252 Pine Hall Road
• Wrightsville Beach, Johnnie Mercer Pier beach access 16

Last of three parts. 

As saltwater moves increasingly farther into North Carolina’s coastal plain, there will be changes to the landscape that we can see, like dead-standing trees, and many that we cannot. The quality of the water, the nutrients in the soil and the exchange of greenhouse gasses will all be affected.

Five researchers have begun a five-year, $1.5 million dollar study to project when and how these changes may unfold in order to help people prepare for what’s ahead.

The research will take place on the peninsula between Albemarle and Pamlico sounds, a region sculpted by a long history of farming. There, the forests and the crops closest to the sounds and creeks have stopped growing and started dying. They can’t seem to handle to the encroaching saltwater. Scientists call this landward movement of saltwater into the surface water and soil “saltwater intrusion.”

Marcelo Ardón-Sayao is an ecologist and biochemist in the biology department at East Carolina University. He’s one of the research project’s principal investigators. “[Saltwater intrusion] is going to be bad for the farms because it decreases their yield,” says Ardón-Sayao. “It could also be bad for the downstream estuaries because it could release a lot of the fertilizer that has been building up in the soil.”

He explains why. The soil of the Albemarle-Pamlico peninsula is rich with nitrogen and phosphorus because of fertilizers used by farmers over many generations. These nutrients fuel plant growth, which is why the farmers use them. They also trigger algal blooms if too much nitrogen and phosphorus leak into the surrounding water. When the short-lived algae die, they deplete oxygen in the water, suffocating fish. Scientists call this “hypoxia.” Fishermen have a more fitting name: dead water.

Wetlands, then, are important because of their ability to improve water quality by retaining these nutrients in their soil, Ardón-Sayao explains. That is, until there’s too much saltwater. Then just the opposite happens, he says.

“So one of the things that we’ve found is that when these coastal wetlands, primarily the freshwater wetlands, when they start experiencing saltwater their ability to retain and transform nutrients goes down,” he says. “Wetlands, which can be a nitrogen sink, can actually turn into a nitrogen source, so they can release nitrogen. The same thing with phosphorus.”

This release makes it harder for plants to retain those nutrients essential for growing. It’s one reason too much saltwater slows the growth of most plants. The other is stress, says Ardón-Sayao, because salt draws water out of plant cells.

“The salinity itself is also harmful for the crops because it stresses them out. Even though you might have a lot of water, if that water is salty for plants it’s almost the same as if there was no water because it causes osmotic stress, so they actually end up losing water.

“So just having the salinity is harmful to the crops, but it is also harmful in the sense that you lose some of the nutrients that were in the soil as well,” he says.

One thing Ardón-Sayao will be investigating is the timing of nutrient release from the soil once it’s exposed to saltwater. “Is it something that happens for only a couple of years when you have saltwater intrusion to these systems — do you basically just release all the nutrients that are there and then it goes down — or is it going to be a prolonged problem for a long time?” He asks.

Farming isn’t the only traditional occupation at risk in the Albemarle-Pamlico region. Historically, timber harvesting was one of the region’s greatest economic drivers and is still an important one today.

Another of the project’s principal investigators, Justin Wright, is studying the response time of Eastern North Carolina’s trees to saltwater intrusion. Wright is an assistant professor in the biology department at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

“Timber is a tough industry because you have to plan 15, 20 years down the road when you’re planting the trees that you’re going to harvest,” Wright says. “And, if you’re planting loblolly pine today and have an expectation that it’s going to be a much saltier environment 15 years down the road, that’s going to change the economics of the decisions of what kind of trees you should be planting.”

Will it make a difference if bald cypress trees, for example, are exposed to saltwater for a short amount a time versus a longer one? And, once they are exposed, how long does it take before we begin to see responses? These are some of the unknowns Wright will be researching.

“We’ll measure whatever (trees) we’ll see,” he says, but he’ll be focusing on trees important to the timber industry and people’s interests, like loblolly pine and bald cypress.

“We’re really interested in making sure that this work is relevant, not just for the scientists but for the people that are trying to live and work in this landscape,” Wright says.

Then, the researchers will focus on an aspect of the project that affects us all: the greenhouse gases. They are the heat-trapping gases, like carbon dioxide and methane, that are warming the planet and, consequently, triggering a cascade of other effects. Emily Bernhardt, a biochemistry professor at Duke University, will join Ardón-Sayao in researching how saltwater intrusion affects these emissions.

In general, scientists think that saltwater intrusion decreases the ability of wetlands to store carbon, says Ardón-Sayao. It can kill  plants, which absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Saltwater also will stimulate microbes in the soil, he explains. The microbes decompose organic matter in the soil. The carbon dioxide in the organic material is then released into the atmosphere, Ardon-Sayao says.

“With the greenhouse gasses,” he says, “there’s this idea that [saltwater intrusion] could potentially increase carbon dioxide, [and] there’s also some evidence that it could decrease methane.”

Methane is over 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide in trapping heat in the atmosphere.

The researchers are not yet certain how the exchange of greenhouse gases, between both plants and soil to the atmosphere, will balance out as saltwater moves inland and stays longer on the ground. They hope to learn over the next five years when the research project wraps up.

Second of three parts. 

Saltwater is creeping farther inland into the soil and surface waters of North Carolina’s coastal plain. This “saltwater intrusion,” as scientists call it, has an ability to transform freshwater landscapes long before they’re permanently drowned by the rising sea.

Pine trees are dying along the edges of the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds. Forest lines are retreating; marshes are replacing forested wetlands; agricultural crops are having trouble growing; and the foundation of the land — its peat soil — is disintegrating, lowering an elevation that is only two feet or less above sea level on average.

Five researchers from four state universities are investigating the future risks of saltwater intrusion in the Albemarle-Pamlico peninsula, a region reliant on its farming. Nature, they say, won’t be the only agent of change. They’re also investigating how the area’s residents will play a role in conserving their natural resources, or not.

There are a few reasons why saltwater is moving into areas that have never dealt with it before, say the researchers. First, there is the general rise of the sea level. On land as flat as this peninsula’s, any increase in sea level will bring the salty tides farther inland. Then, there are the surges from coastal storms that flood the land with seawater. Then, drought factors in, too. When rainfall is sparse, the concentration of salt in brackish waters increases. And according to Mac Gibbs, the former director for the Hyde County Center of the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service for 25 years, the Albemarle-Pamlico peninsula has experienced less than average rainfall over the last five years.

Climate change models, referenced in numerous published research papers, suggest that the severity and length of droughts and the frequency and intensity of hurricane storms in the region will increase. Both of which will likely increase the frequency and severity of saltwater intrusion.

But, saltwater intrusion isn’t only related to flooding and drought, says Ryan Emanuel, an N.C. State University professor in the Forestry and Environmental Resources Department who specializes in watershed hydrology. It’s also affected by the natural and artificial drainage across an area. What makes the Albemarle-Pamlico region particularly prone to the effects of saltwater intrusion is its extensive, manmade network of ditches and canals. What the farmers use to drain freshwater from their crop fields is also the pathway for saltwater from the sounds and creeks to work its way back into the interior of the peninsula, Emanuel notes.

“It’s important to start a discussion on the Albemarle-Pamlico peninsula today,” he says, “if residents, landowners and others want to get out in front of these issues and determine what long-term strategies might be best for dealing with and adapting to climate change.

“The big question,” Emanuel says, “is how do we respond to [the] change? Is it business as usual as long as possible? Or, are there proactive decisions that can be made in the coming years and decades that can maintain quality of life in the region’s communities and conserve its natural resources for future generations?”

A native of eastern North Carolina, Emanuel is joined by four other researchers and several students in leading a $1.5 million dollar research project in the Albemarle-Pamlico region funded by the National Science Foundation. The team combines various fields of study: biochemistry, regional planning, hydrology and ecology.

Over the next five years the researchers will be collecting data and collaborating with locals and others that have a stake in the outcome of the area, such as land managers and commercial farmers. In the end, they’ll create maps that can project how saltwater intrusion will affect the region – over 4,300 square miles, more than three-and-a-half times the size of Yosemite National Park — at different points and time. Unlike other vulnerability maps though, these will take into consideration both different scenarios of climate change and people’s land use.

Will someone build a seawall or a levee to keep saltwater off his land? How then will that diverted water affect his neighbor’s property? These maps will be able to project those answers for land managers and others. The researchers call the maps “SIVI,” for “saltwater vulnerability index.”

“Can we build an index that is powerful enough to assess salinization accurately for the study region, yet flexible enough to be adapted to other regions? That is going to be a challenge,” said Emanuel.

Todd Bendor, one of the principal investigators, is an assistant professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. He says, “[The project] is about trying to help people understand where the risks are going to be in the future and then, once we understand those risks, we can do something about it.”

“The assumption,” Bendor says, “is that we’re all at the behest of rising sea level, but there’s a lot of things from an engineering perspective and a land management perspective that we can do that curtails it.”

His role in the research project is to talk with people about how they might react to saltier landscapes, or at least what they say they’d do in different scenarios. “It matters how people are willing to adapt or willing to fight against what may be kind of a permanent change in the landscape,” he says.

The Albemarle-Pamlico peninsula can expect more saltwater intrusion, he says. “This is going to happen. So it’s not an ‘if,’ necessarily; it’s just a ‘when.’”

Budgeting for future action is something, he says, that is uncharted territory for land managers, homeowners and farmers. “People are changing the landscape, and I think that it’s not just sea level is going to rise and we’re all going to move inland; it’s in the meantime, there’s going to be a lot of people fighting it, and there’s going to be a lot of people that are going to change their management activities,” Bendor says.

How Bendor will find folks to talk to, how he actually talks to them and how he frames the problem will all be important for the research, he says.

As far as predicting the timing and the consequences of these changes to the land, well, that’s another big chuck of the research project. Three scientists, from East Carolina University and Duke University, are spearheading this part of the project.

Thursday: How increasing saltwater intrusion in North Carolina will affect trees, soil nutrients, water quality and climate-altering greenhouse gasses.

First part of three parts

EAST LAKE — While the ocean is knocking at the front door of some beachfront homes and hotels in North Carolina, the forests across the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds are retreating from the shoreline.

They’re being driven back by saltwater. It’s seeping into the soil and surface waters of the coastal plain. What scientists call “saltwater intrusion” has been going on since the oceans began rising when great ice sheets started melting 20,000 years ago. But salt’s slow movement inland has accelerated in recent years, those scientists say.

They also say it has the ability to transform freshwater landscapes long before they are permanently drowned by the rising sea. The locals know this intuitively.

Just ask Scott Lanier, manager of Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge – the refuge sits on the eastern tip of the Albemarle-Pamlico peninsula, which juts into the two sounds like a bottom jawbone. “I can just tell you,” he says, “places where I used to walk in the marsh off of Point Peter Road and hunt here early in my career, now I could take a boat and fish in them.”

Lanier started working at the refuge when it was established in 1985 and has spent about 15 years there. He’s noticed some significant changes to the landscape.

“On Alligator River refuge we’re losing actual land base,” Lanier says. “We’re losing forest, especially on the areas that are adjacent to the sound. We’re seeing these areas be converted from forest to shrub.”

The signs of saltwater intrusion are subtle ones. Plant growth slows to a halt. There are fewer seeds, or the seeds that are dropped on the ground have a harder time germinating. High salt concentrations can draw water out of plants cells, stressing them out. The vegetation’s struggle to survive the salt, however, is not the only thing changing.

Saltwater intrusion eats away at the peninsula’s peat soil, lowering an elevation that is, on average, only two feet or less above sea level. Peat is a soil rich with organic plant litter that’s common in wet, acidic areas, and saltwater breaks it down faster. “When the soil decomposes, the elevation of the ground literally drops,” says Christine Pickens, coastal restoration and adaptation specialist of The Nature Conservancy’s N.C. chapter. “It’s called subsidence.”

“On top of that,” Pickens says, “the whole peninsula, well most of it, has been ditched and drained. These ditches allow the saltwater to work its way into the interior parts of the peninsula and chew away at that soil.”

Most of the eastern seaboard’s coastal plain has a similarly low elevation. What makes this region particularly prone to saltwater intrusion, Pickens says, is its extensive network of ditches and canals used for farming. What farmers use to drain excess water from their crop fields to the nearby sounds and creeks is precisely the conduit for saltwater to reach them.

This is farm country in the coastal plain of North Carolina between the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds. It’s some of the most productive agricultural land in the state and it’s surrounded by the second-largest estuary in the nation.

Driving down U.S. 264, through Hyde County, the first thing you’ll notice are ditches filled with water that run like a narrow moat parallel to the road. Then, you notice how most all the houses in the countryside sit three or four feet above the ground on gray concrete blocks. The crop rows, waiting to be planted after the winter, are saturated with water.

But, it’s the dead standing pine trees you see that give you the most pause. They’ve shed their needles, branches and dark brown bark. The trunks, pale as ghosts, loom in the marsh and green shrubbery like phantoms. These “ghost forests,” as they’re sometimes called, are all that remain of tress that can’t handle the encroaching saltwater.

It’s something the farmers are already dealing with every year, says Mac Gibbs, the former director for the Hyde County Center of the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service for 25 years. He’s worked locally as a farmer and commercial fisherman, too.

Gibbs was born and raised in Engelhard, a small fishing community in Hyde County, and lives on a property that his grandfather owned and farmed that backs up to the Pamlico Sound.

“We’re losing land all the time,” he says. “There are areas that used to be farmed in the late 1800s that are pure marsh now, and I’m talking about bulrush.”

As for the crops, Gibbs says today the saltwater only affects crops that are within a half mile of the creeks or, worst case, within a mile.

“They call it ‘saltwater intrusion,’ and I guess that’s the first sign of sea-level rise,” Gibbs says. “At first it starts affecting the yield, but then there’s sections of land, once it gets salt enough you can’t grow anything.”

Cotton puts up the best fight, he notes. And some farmers have tried introducing a more salt-tolerant soybean, though the yields aren’t up to par.

“Is it in their (the farmers) daily lives? Yes. Do they talk about it every day at the store? No,” Gibbs says.

“You can get the land back,” he adds, by pumping and diking or building tide gates to keep the saltwater off, but it can be expensive. Farmers are constantly comparing the tradeoff.

In the county next door though, the evidence is clear that the land is changing rapidly, says Dennis Stewart, the refuge’s wildlife biologist. Refuge scientists several years ago compared photos from the 1990s to 2012, he explained, and did some crude calculations. “Eight to 10 thousand acres had transitioned from forested wetlands to marsh,” he said.

These forested wetlands made up of bald cypress and pine trees, which are home to deer, bear, pileated woodpeckers and other critters, are gradually retreating and transforming into salt marsh. And while there’s always been a fringe of marsh between the sound and the forests on the refuge, Stewart says, in the past they were relatively narrow compared to today.

“When you look at it over successional time, it’s happening pretty fast,” Stewart says. “Within a three- to five-year period you can go from a forested wetland to a shrub-dominated wetland with a lot of tree snags (standing dead or dying tree). And then from a five- to 10-year period, you go from a shrub-dominate wetland to predominately marsh, still with some snags.”

The changes, he adds, will affect wildlife. “Those forest-dwelling species are not going to use the marsh so they’re going to have to move to other forested areas. And then the marsh species are going to love it because they’re going to get more marsh.”

The land managers are taking a more proactive approach, Lanier and Stewart both say, by starting to think about how they can adaptively manage the land to buy just a little more time for wildlife to move “up-gradient.”

“Yeah, it’s humbling to know things may not be here forever,” says Lanier. But, at least, he says, they’re trying to do something about it: “I get a lot of satisfaction out of the fact that we’re not just sitting back and watching things happen.”

“I think the hardest part about it,” he says, “is knowing we can only do as much as we can afford.”

Wednesday: Five researchers across several disciplines are joining forces to investigate the future risks of saltwater intrusion in this region and how its locals will ultimately play a role in conserving the land, or not.

PINE KNOLL SHORES — A chapter of the world’s oldest and largest organization dedicated to fisheries will present one of its annual awards to the N.C. Coastal Federation, an environmental nonprofit group, for its work to restore marine habitats.

The Tidewater Chapter of the American Fisheries Society will present the federation its Conservation Award at its 29^th annual meeting today at the Pine Knoll Shores Aquarium.

The Conservation Award is given to people or organizations that have distinguished themselves through notable acts of fisheries or habitat conservation.

Made up of more than 9,000 fishery scientists from around the world, the society works to advance sound science, promote professional development and disseminate science‐based information for the global protection, conservation and sustainability of fisheries resources and aquatic ecosystems.

“I’m pleased that we’re able to recognize their good work,” said Ronald Klauda, chairman of the society’s awards and scholarship committee. Klauda has been a member of the American Fisheries Society for almost 40 years.

“We’re fisheries, but we know everything that comes off the landscape, through wetlands and so forth, down rivers and streams, is all connected,” he said. “[The federation] works with the fishing industry and does a lot with cleaning up derelict fishing gear, repurposing crab pots for oyster reefs habitat.”

The federation also restores wetlands and educates people about habitat conservation, Klauda said. And, it works extensively to address stormwater runoff, which is poisoning coastal waters.

“I think there are probably a small segment of people involved with fisheries who see anything that doesn’t involve ‘harvest as many as you can’ as maybe a threat. Though most people are more enlightened these days, and they understand the importance of habitat,” Klauda said.

Protecting coastal waters and marine habitats have been the primary focus of the federation since its founding in 1982, noted Todd Miller, the federation’s founder and executive director. “Many years ago a wise fisherman stressed the vital importance of keeping our estuaries healthy and productive,” said Miller. “He said if you can’t hatch them, you can’t catch them.”

A future with healthy fish stocks, Klauda says, relies on conservation work. “There’s no evidence I can see really that our stocks are necessarily going to improve on their own.”

He listed several reasons why that is, including a growing global population, the overexploitation of commercial fish stocks, changes to landscapes that are polluting spawning and nursery areas and a shifting distribution of fish stocks due to climate change.

“I see conservation as having a bigger and bigger role as we realize there are more threats, and we need to do things or we’re going to be, you know, in dire straits,” Klauda said.

Lexia Weaver, a coastal scientist who manages habitat restoration projects for the federation, will accept the award on behalf of the federation staff that gets its feet wet restoring oysters, wetlands and water quality. “We appreciate the expertise and the management expertise provided by association,” she said. “Their work makes our work easier and much more effective.”

Rachel Bisesi, one of the federation’s educators, and Sam Bland, the federation’s coastal specialist, will join Weaver in receiving the award.

The Tidewater Chapter is made up of members of the fisheries scientists from North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Delaware. Each year the chapter rotates between states to hold their annual meeting and highlight the work of local people and organizations.

Today the chapter will also presented their Excellence in Fisheries Education Award to Philip “Skip” Kemp, Jr. Skip recently retired but for many years was the head of the aquaculture technology program at Carteret Community College.

EMERALD ISLE – By the time she made it my apartment, Deborah Walters, a 63-year-old grandmother, was halfway through a 2,500-mile journey from Maine to Guatemala. She’s traveling in a kayak. Alone.

“A lot of people go out paddling for a day and then pull a short night and sleep,” says Walters. “Well that’s all I’m doing. The only difference is that I’m doing it day after day after day until I get to Guatemala.”

Walters isn’t kayaking simply for the sake of going further than she’s ever gone before – and perhaps further than any woman her age has gone before solo. She wants to raise $150,000 for children living in Guatemala City’s garbage dump by stopping along the way to tell their story.

“In large parts of the world people come up with a hand out, but I don’t get inspired then,” Walter says. “In Guatemala, it’s the people (who are) working really hard to help themselves and, with just a little bit of help from outside, I see how it can make a big difference.”
She was once the board president of a nonprofit in Guatemala City called Safe Passage, which educates and feeds over 500 children – the poorest of the poor, she tells me. The group doesn’t have the capacity yet to help all 2,000 children living in the garbage dump.

For the last two years, Walters has been actively planning this trip. And on July 13, a day after she left Yarmouth, Maine, she kissed her husband, Chris, goodbye on their wedding anniversary for her grand sendoff from Portland.

Five months later, she’s breaking bread at my small kitchen table, politely refraining from scarfing her food to satiate her constant hunger.

Walters is wearing the same outfit she’s worn the last two days: grey cargo pants and a black sweater. She’s only brought a few articles of clothing with her on the trip, the others reserved for either paddling or public speaking. She also wears a Velcro strap around her right forearm for support; it helps with the pain and numbness she’s been experiencing in that arm as she paddles.

Despite having a little arthritis, this is a woman who has kayaked hundreds of miles among the minke whales and narwhals in the Canadian Arctic on six separate occasions. She’s finished first place in kayak races – and last too, the only “solo old broad” in her division, as her friends like to joke. Including, a 300-mile race across the Florida panhandle and through the Everglades.

She loves the feeling of being completely self-sufficient in her kayak and to travel by “human-power,” she says. By hiking or kayaking, “you see more of the world and you’re more connected.”

As opposed to being transported by a plane, when you’re kayaking along the East Coast, Walters says, “you can see the changes in the environment and the changes in the people and in the culture and in the food as you go along — you feel like you’re really there.”

Paddling from Maine to Guatemala, however, will be a physical feat greater than any she’s ever attempted before.

That’s why she’s doing this trip in true granny fashion: safety first. Averaging about 15 miles a day, Walters likes to paddle two days in a row and take the third day off to rest. “I don’t do anything that I think is dangerous,” she says. “If I think there’s a 75 percent chance that I can make it, I would never go out. Conditions can always get worse.”

She’s bypassing the Gulf of Mexico, she says, to avoid getting shot by the Mexican drug cartels. Instead, Walters and her 18-foot kayak are getting a lift, from Key West, Fla., to Belize, on a sailboat where she’ll continue the last 200-mile stretch of her voyage. Or, so she hopes.

At least Walters owns up to her slower pace and cautionary style: “Some people when they go on these expeditions it’s like this big macho thing, like ‘me against nature.’ For me, it’s more like ‘me with nature,’ and sort of becoming more a part of the natural flow of things.”

Already this woman has become familiar to me, returning questions as though she were the reporter. She’s become a friend and a source of great inspiration. But it was only two days ago I was cursing her name.

“This is ridiculous,” I’d said to myself.

I was standing between two private properties on Bogue Sound waiting for sight of her bright yellow kayak, trying not to look suspicious as I stood there awkwardly in the middle of the work day.

Just that morning I’d driven to Morehead City to pick her up on account of the windy weather. I was nearly there when I got the call from Walters that she wanted to carry on another 10 miles to the Goose Creek RV campground, rather than my backyard in Emerald Isle across the sound. She figured she’d be there around 12:30 p.m., so I could pick her up then.

“Maybe you could call and see if I can store my kayak there? That’d be great. Otherwise I’ll just talk to them when I get there,” she said over the phone.

The RV campground was uninterested in helping Walters, so I pulled down into an unpaved boat ramp before Goose Creek. I planned to yell and flail my arms to catch her attention. But, 12:30 p.m. came and went without word.

Fortunately, Walters had a GPS on her kayak that signaled her whereabouts every 10 minutes. I’d never had to track down a house guest quite so literally. I used my cellphone to log on to her website and clicked the “Where is Deb?” button. There she was — a blue dot on a map moving into Broad Creek, about 3 miles up the road. By the time she called me, I was nearly there already.

Walters was standing on the floating dock of a marina dressed from head to toe in warm, wicking layers, a waterproof jumpsuit and a broad brimmed hat. Her face was the only skin showing. She looked stoic and strong armored in her gear. A serious water warrior, holding her paddle beside her like a mighty staff.

When I saw her speak the night before at the N.C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort, she looked more the part of a university provost, which is what she was before she retired. She was slender and tall, her grey hair coiffed back neatly. She wore loose, nice-looking clothes of neutral tans and blacks, and her blue eyes sat behind a pair of glasses. She looked sophisticated yet modest, much like I would imagine a younger Jane Goodall. And like Goodall, Walters had been a scientist, too. Before becoming vice president and provost of Unity College in Maine, she was a neuro-physicist who developed mathematical computer models of the human visual system.

“Hello!” Walters hollered from the dock. I was taken aback by her energy and enthusiasm, expecting she’d be exhausted after paddling nearly 19 miles against the wind.

“That was quick!” she said.

Walters pulled several large, blue, waterproof bags from her kayak. It was at once impressive the amount of belongings she could stow in her kayak and how little she needed to travel so far by herself.

She bounced slightly as we made small talk, clearly in dire need to relieve her bladder. When she returned from the marina building, she smiled brightly with an air of relief that made her seem more human. After all, what she was attempting to do in her kayak seemed almost impossible to me.

With her was a short, middle-aged man. He’d decided to paddle out and join her that morning after learning about her expedition from a friend. By the time the three of us loaded my car with her belongings and moved her kayak somewhere safe, a photographer for Canoe & Kayak Magazine had arrived from Wilmington for a two-hour photo shoot .

When I volunteered to host Walters for three nights, I had no idea how famous she was becoming. I’d only signed up to help a stray traveler as I had with many others before her. Also, I wanted to meet the living proof that at any age one can embark on the expedition of one’s lifetime.

Once I got past the inconvenience of her noble mission to my daily routine, I was grateful to meet and learn from such an amazing woman. It wasn’t Walters that was demanding, but the currents she paddled against. The wind. The waves. The weather. Even the temperature, now that it was December.

The air temperature was freezing the following morning at dawn when I’d dropped her off at her kayak. I stood there watching as she peeled back the frosted cover of her kayak cockpit, layered in frozen dew, before I retreated to the warmth of my car. She would paddle 13 miles that day, from Broad Creek to Swansboro.

“Getting into the kayak in the morning when it’s cold and I don’t know the waters and I hear there’s terrible currents right ahead of me, it feels like I’m jumping off a cliff,” Walters says after we finished our breakfast. “Quite often, I’m not convinced that I can make it, you know? Why am I doing this? I sort of go through this most days.”

Then she recalls the first time she visited the garbage dump.

“The first time that I went there,” Walters says, “there was a family that came running up to the Safe Passage office to ask if we had a metal detector. The husband, who’d actually done some plumbing for us, had driven his pickup truck into the dump to drop off some things but a sink hole opened up under his truck.

“He didn’t know where you could and couldn’t drive there. He and his truck just disappeared down in this garbage. We found a metal detector really quickly and gave it to them, but they never found him,” Walters says. “So many people have fallen in sink holes there or gotten covered up in a land slide and died.”

The garbage dump serves nine million people. It’s in the middle of Guatemala City, the country’s capital and the largest city in Central America. Medical waste and hazardous chemicals are also disposed there; and the river that runs through it is basically an open sewer, Walters says. Roughly 10,000 people live there scavenging for food, collecting recyclables to sell and sleeping in housing built upon mountains of disintegrated trash.

“Visitors aren’t allowed in the actual part of the garbage dump anymore,” she says, “so we were up on a cliff in an old cemetery looking down. All the people looked like little ants as they were lining up beside the garbage trucks, sorting through the garbage and collecting whatever they could find in there.”

Breathing problems and skin disease are common for the people trying to survive in the dump, Walters says. Even from the cliff where Walters was watching, the air she breathed in reeked of the rotting garbage; and while many visitors applied fragrant oils above their upper lip to help hide the smell, Walters refused. There were great swirls of dust, she says, and many vultures circling above.

Over the last nine years, Walters has listened to the stories of many women and children at Safe Passage. Like Myra, a 70-year-old woman who has been on her own in the dump since she was the age of five. Walters says Myra once told her that she didn’t have any big dreams growing up: “I wasn’t living,” she’d told Walters. “I was only surviving.”

For the mothers, their greatest desire is for their children to go to school for a chance at a better life. The public and private schools used to require uniforms and books, which the mothers couldn’t afford; but even if they could, the schools refused to accept the children, dismissing them as “garbage.”

That attitude has come a long way, Walters says, since Safe Passage opened its doors. The organization has made tremendous progress in the relationship between the schools and the children from dump. And while on average 10 percent of all Guatemalans graduate high school, 40 percent of children in Safe Passage programs will graduate. Though Walters is confident that 100 percent of them would if Safe Passage was a full-time school. If she can raise $150,000, Walters hopes to convert an after-school program into the third and fourth grades.

So she pushes on day by day. Mile by mile. “It’s daunting to think of the whole thing,” Walters says, “but if you think a piece at a time — and when you think that the waterways were the communication highways of the world for such a long time, and maybe become more so in the future — it can be done,” Walters says.

“But, what does it take to do it?” I ask. “To take on what seems like an impossible challenge?”

“It’s what the people in the garbage dump have,” she answers. “Grit, determination, persistence. Because I really believe that ordinary people, like me, can do extraordinary things if you just keep at it, if you just persist.”

A fiery full moon rises above Bogue Sound. According to Native American lore, November’s full moon is named the Beaver Moon. Photo: Dennis Szeba

Photographers await the right moment to take just the right picture…. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

…And the moon rewarded them for their patience. Photo: Sam Bland

The setting sun casts its dying light on the clouds over Bogue Sound. Photo: Sam Bland

SWANSBORO — On the afternoon of the N.C. Coastal Federation’s first full moon photography cruise not a hint of clear sky was in sight. Just hours before the boat trip rendezvous at Hammocks Beach State Park near this waterfront town in Onslow County, grey cloud cover and 17-mile-an-hour winds dimmed the photographers’ hopes of capturing a fiery, oversized moon rising above the horizon on camera.

That didn’t keep over 30 people from showing up, though. The trip was on. The group of nature photographers, it seems, showed up understanding that when wilderness is the star of the show, there are always surprises.

At the very least, “It’s an excuse to get out on the water,” some said. Especially, one Emerald Isle married couple added, when the boat is filled with like-minded people and guided by the federation’s naturalist, Sam Bland.

Bland was a park ranger and the superintendent at Hammocks Beach State Park before retiring after 30 years at state parks. He is not only an accomplished photographer, but he knows the depth and breadth of just about every living thing on and surrounding the three islands and mainland that make up the park.

Bland says that Native Americans gave each month’s full moon a name. November’s is the “Beaver Moon.”

He invited another local naturalist and photography expert, Jody Merritt, to join the cruise and share photography tips and advice. Merritt was the superintendent at Fort Macon State Park in Atlantic Beach when Bland was starting out there as a ranger. The two often travel together to take pictures now. While Merritt excels with landscape photography, Bland’s forte is wildlife.

Around 3 p.m. when the cruise began, the sky cracked open and released its sunny yolk as the group moved onto the 40-foot-long boat, the Lady Swan. Clouds still clung to the horizon but no one seemed to complain as the golden light poured over the scenery of birds, barrier islands and maritime forests.

While the pros dished out advice on manipulating film speed settings and the back-buttons on their fancy cameras, others wowed and awed at the birds – the great blue herons, the cormorants, the pelicans and the egrets. Some folks had both binocular and camera dangling from the necks. Still others closed their eyes, simply soaking up the sunlight and feeling the breeze brush the face.

But before long the sun was sinking behind the clouds like a flashlight under water. Just a muffled pink sphere in an ocean of grey. Soon the moon would be rising, in view or not. Bland ushered the group off the boat onto Shark Tooth Island and up a dune twice the size of a house for a high vantage point of the moon.

Folks were so fixated on the traffic driving over the Emerald Isle Bridge to the east where the moon should be that they were blown away when they turned around and caught the sky on fire. A bed of embers burned through the cloud cover in deep crimson, sangria and ruby light. And then they were blown away again.

A giant, overripe nectarine was levitating above the bridge traffic and over the dune grasses.

“I’ve never seen a moon rise like that in my whole life,” said Jackie Foster. “I’m not a photographer, but I thought that (the cruise) would be fun.”

Perspective is key, Bland says. It’s what makes every full moon near the horizon seem abnormally close to us and unusually large. It’s also what makes the mundane a nice picture.

Stay tuned for the federation’s next photography adventure with Sam Bland, and visit our Facebook page to see more photos.

Kevin Geraghty took this dramatic photo of the sun’s fading light filtered through the clouds. Photo: Kevin Geraghty

The evidence is overwhelming that there are better, more natural ways to control erosion and prevent flooding than wooden or vinyl bulkheads or ugly piles of stones, according to a new report. Unfortunately, few waterfront property owners use them.

To find out why the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration asked Restore America’s Estuaries, or RAE, a national alliance of 11 coastal conservation groups, to look at some of the long-standing obstacles preventing the widespread use of so-called living shorelines and to develop strategies to overcome them.

It’s the first time that living shorelines have been evaluated nationally, and today the RAE committee that did the study will discuss its draft report with coastal management and restoration experts attending the 7^th National Summit on Coastal and Estuarine Restoration in Washington, D.C.

“The report is a wakeup call that we can’t leave the health of our estuaries to chance,” says Todd Miller, the executive director of the N.C. Coastal Federation, one of Restore America’s Estuaries’ partner organizations. Miller chaired the committee.

Todd Miller

“People are quickly developing the fringes of our coastal sounds, bay and rivers, and if we don’t do it right, then we’re going to be living with the negative consequences for centuries to come,” he says.

Jeff Benoit, the director of Restore America’s Estuaries, warns that if business continues as usual and vertical, hard structures remain the popular method for stabilizing shorelines, then we will form a rim around our bays and estuaries similar to a bath tub.

“Water comes in and just starts sloshing around,” Benoit says. “It’s increasing the erosion of the mudflats and the beach areas [because] there’s no way to absorb a lot of the wave energy when you just have those vertical structures.”

Instead, that wave energy scours the seafloor and destroys any vegetation in its way. Living shorelines, on the other hand, absorb some of the shock, slowing waves down as they flush past the structure and vegetation. They also help settle sediments in the water, allowing the shoreline to slowly rebuild itself.

Though no two methods are the same, a living shoreline typically looks like a narrow ridge submerged in shallow water that runs parallel to the shore. They’re often made of natural materials, like oyster shells, and reinforced with marsh grass that’s planted on the shore. Baby oysters, or spat, like to attach to the old oyster shells. As they grow, the oysters solidify and strengthen the structure. Eventually, the resulting oyster reef provides shelter and foraging grounds for other marine critters and birds. Also, oysters and plants help improve the water’s quality by filtering pollutants.

Nearly a decade of research shows they are the preferred method for controlling erosion along many coastal shorelines, especially those that would normally be fringed with marsh. Not only do they maintain the productivity of the estuary and allow the marsh to migrate in response to sea-level rise, but many experts agree the methods are frequently cheaper in the long run and typically perform better in severe storms than bulkheads and other types of traditional methods.

“The general public, contractors, scientists, we’re all in agreement, and even policy people, that living shorelines are better alternatives,” says Tracy Skrabal, a coastal scientist for the federation, who has been advocating the approach for more than a decade. “They protect the shoreline as well if not better; they’re cost effective; and they preserve that important edge.”

Living shorelines are often combined with marsh restoration. Recycled oyster shells in mesh bags were used in this living shoreline project on Jones Island in the White Oak River. Volunteers, top, then planted marsh grasses behind the sill. A growing season later, bottom, the restored marsh is thriving.

Benoit hopes the report, Living Shorelines: From Barriers to Opportunities, will help people understand that there are better choices for protecting their waterfront property. The report could also encourage coastal agencies and nonprofits to start revising and updating the way they think about managing our coastal shoreline, particularly in the estuaries, Benoit said.

“It’s time for us to really start thinking about new ways and new strategies to protect those properties, particularly in light of climate change impacts like sea-level rise, increased flooding and storm surge,” Benoit says.

Living shoreline still aren’t used very widely because few landowners and marine contractor know about them, the report says, and regulators are more comfortable writing permits for bulkheads. They are locked, the report notes, “into a business-as-usual routine” that has “impeded needed change in the regulatory system.”

Other obstacles include a lack of widespread advocacy for living shorelines and the case-by-case evaluation required to put one in. Also, there is a lack of consideration for how traditional methods like bulkheads negatively affect the environment beyond the site.

“Change is a hard thing to get people to do,” notes Bill Cary, the report’s author and an lawyer who was once the general counsel of the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources. “I mean I’m sure that any time a state tries to make it hard to get bulkheads, there’s going to be some pushback from developers and people who are used to doing it that way.”

The traditional and easiest way to stabilize a property owner’s shoreline in North Carolina has been to build a bulkhead or a seawall. Thousands are permitted each year in an expedited process that doesn’t require much of the state agency’s staff time, Miller says. In fact, in North Carolina it’s possible to get a general permit for a bulkhead without a detailed written application or meaningful environmental review.

“We’re the only state, that I know, that has no review for bulkheads or ripraps with regard to environmental issues,” says Skrabal.

Until all shoreline stabilization methods are reviewed individually, in a permitting process that favors the least destructive practice, Skrabal says, “everything else is just sort of putting lipstick on the pig.”

“The science says we should be doing that, and whatever the reasons are [for not],” she says, “are not justified.”

Cary says, that’s in part a “capacity problem.”

“If now you suddenly say somebody’s going to have to go out in the field and look at that project and make a reasoned judgment about it,” says Cary, “they’re going to say, ‘Fine, where are those people coming from?’”

Tracy Skrabal

Getting a permit for a living shoreline in North Carolina requires a rigorous application and a multi-agency review process that can take anywhere from 45 to 90 days, depending on the type of permit.

“The last application I did for a sill project was 18-pages long, and there is a two- to three-month wait period to see if you get your permit; and this is supposed to be a fast-track permit,” Skrabal says.

Living shorelines have many more design considerations than a bulkhead and take longer to evaluate, explained Braxton Davis, the director of the N.C. Division of Coastal Management, which issues permits for shoreline structures.

“There’s a lot of things you have to look at; and so the challenge is creating a one-size-fits-all general permit that will allow something to go in numerous small properties across the state and not result in any unanticipated result,” Davis says.

In the last three years, he says the division has worked to streamline their general permit for marsh sills. The Army Corps of Engineers, though, still has to review each permit application.

“I think that’s being oversold that the permitting delay of several weeks is what’s causing this to not happen,” Davis says. “It comes down to a whole lot of factors that I think are equally or even more important in some cases than how long it takes to get the permit.

“We need more proactive outreach and education for marine contractors and property owners,” he says.

The division agrees living shorelines are the preferred environmental alternative, Davis says, which is why the agency has been working on several fronts to advance them. It helps train marine contractors, provides educational workshops and outreach materials and funds living shorelines research. The division, Davis said, is also working on strategies to promote them.

Also, he says the division’s field staff routinely discusses shoreline stabilization alternatives with property owners and frequently provides educational pamphlets during the permitting process. “However, in many cases,” he wrote in an email, “our staff are called to a site where a shoreline stabilization approach has already been decided upon.”

The new report elaborates on four strategies that need to be pursued at the federal, state and local levels of government to overcome these long standing issues, including reforming regulation, developing more education and outreach, increasing institutional capacity and calling on public agencies to lead as role models.

“The outcome isn’t punitive to people,” says Miller. “It’s a good result that accommodates everybody’s needs. It’s just going to be more work, there’s no way around it, but our estuaries are worth it.”

The comment period on the report closes Dec. 5, and the final version will be out shortly after the New Year.

Scorpion fish, top, and Atlantic spadefish are just of few of the species found on a reef off Wilmington. Photos: UNC Institute of Marine Sciences

PIVERS ISLAND – It is the Age of Information. Reams of data, from personal bank account balances to the chemical composition of Antarctic ice cores, are keyboard clicks away. Satellites now see all, and remotely controlled crafts plunge to the darkest depths of the seas and return with pictures of strange, creepy creatures.

Yet, there is this startling irony: We know very little about the ocean floor just off our coast.

“We come to find out that less than seven percent of the coastline of North Carolina, from the coast out to the continental shelf break, has been mapped or described in any way,” said Chris Taylor, a research ecologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Center for Coastal Fisheries and Habitat Research on Pivers Island near Beaufort.

No one, it seems, really needed to know what’s out there. Now, they do.

The federal government has designated three areas off the N.C. coast as potential sites for large-scale wind energy development. It would be prudent to know something about the ocean floor before the huge turbines go up.

Scientists like Taylor are looking. He is one of the principal investigators in a study funded by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to find out where critical fish habitats are within an area that the federal agency will potentially lease to offshore wind developers.

To get the job done, Taylor’s team employed expensive seafloor mapping sonar technologies, sent divers to the bottom and spent several weeks at sea. They surveyed 277,000 acres, which covered an area for possible wind-energy leasing, southeast of the port of Wilmington, known as Wilmington-East. Taylor said he was mostly impressed by how the offshore reefs cluster like oases in what appears to be a vast oceanic desert — one that covers over 95 percent of Wilmington-East and that scientists know very little about it.

“I think that’s what I’ve learned — and I think it’s been one of the greatest findings that we have from this project — is that there’s really localized areas of hard-bottom reefs and then there’s this vast desert that we don’t know much about at all,” Taylor said.

Just as deserts on land are important ecosystems that provide migratory corridors, so do the ones down below. Taylor said that sand shoals and sand waves are important habitats for spawning fish, like cobia and red drum, and provide avenues for moving offshore. “We need to understand [that] maybe some of those sand features are also important habitats like we see the obvious importance of these hard-bottom reefs,” he said.

However, scientists need to better understand where and why particular areas within those sand habitats are important to fish, he said.

The vase sponge is one of the worlds most colorful sponges. They are invertebrates, which means they don’t have a backbone. Predators do not eat them because they lack nutrition. Photo: UNC Institute of Marine Sciences

“They just look like sand waves to us, but there’s probably something very specific about them that the fish are cuing-in on that we have yet to learn,” said Taylor.This research was prompted by a gap in understanding what effects wind turbine farms might have on the ecosystems of high-value fish, he noted.

“There’s a very valuable recreational-commercial fishery offshore that focuses on snapper and grouper. They’re at risk of overexploitation and at a high risk for fisheries management; and the habitats that they reside on are sparsely distributed along the coastline, and we don’t really know where those are,” said Taylor.

Also, as it turns out, it’s easier to install a 500-foot wind turbine on a flat, sandy surface than a on a reef.

“Our understanding is that a good place to put a wind turbine is somewhere that’s flat and sandy; that they can either put an anchor base or they can pile drive into the sediment. They would not want to put it on something that’s hard and rocky, primarily for the impact that it has on the habitat but also because it just becomes more challenging to execute that engineering,” Taylor said.

It took 30 days, 24 hours a day, painting the seafloor in half-mile-wide swaths of sound waves, going back and forth as if mowing a lawn. The side-scan sonar creates a black-and-white, photo-like image of the seafloor, which is often used to detect the texture of the seafloor and objects like reefs or shipwrecks.

This gave the researchers an indication of where the hard-bottom reefs were, but they couldn’t be sure. “So we had a larger mission that dropped divers in the water and used a more expensive multi-beam sonar,” Taylor said.Multi-beam sonar creates a rainbow-colored map of the seafloor’s depth. Red is used to show shallower depths and blue-violet for deeper water. The divers compared the images created by the sonar technology to confirm whether a structure is a reef or something else.

“There’s a lot of area within this proposed wind energy field that do not contain these sensitive hard-bottom habitats. That’s what we think, based on our observations so far,” Taylor concluded.

Gathering this expert input is part of BOEM’s “Start from the Start” initiative, which is designed to identify suitable areas for wind-energy leasing and to inform developers’ decisions in choosing sites with sound research.

A diver does transect surveys of a reef. Photo: UNC Institute of Marine Sciences

“The N.C. Wind Energy Areas were delineated with the intent of providing protection of ecological sensitive areas and minimizing user conflicts while making available commercially viable areas for offshore wind development,” wrote BOEM spokeswoman Tracey Moriarty in an email. “By doing so early in the process, the time and cost associated with the permitting, construction and operation of a wind facility within these areas will be significantly reduced.”UNC Chapel Hill’s Institute of Marine Science in Morehead City is a partner in this research effort. The academic team is synthesizing all available information about how stakeholders use the wind energy areas – be it navigation, fishing, diving, recreation, commerce – as well as surveying offshore reefs seasonally to create a baseline of information.

“The hard-bottom habitat data will be needed later in the process if a developer submits a construction and operations plan. The process can move forward without this information, but no actual development would be able to occur until full surveys and identification are done for all areas being considered for development,” Moriarty wrote.

Scientist can envision negative and positive effects from wind turbine farms, said ecologist Chris Taylor. One such negative example, he says, is the immediate effect of the construction.

“You can imagine a disturbance of pile driving into the sediment, and if you’re in close proximity to a reef there might be debris that would float from the pile driving or the dredging or from anything when you’re placing the infrastructure,” he said.

Depending on the currents and how the water is moving, that could affect the hard-bottom habitats within a certain proximity. Also, there’s the potential for the way water moves and delivers nutrients to change, though, he said, it is still unknown how close the turbines will be to the natural reefs.

A positive effect wind turbines could have on the ecology, Taylor said, is that rocks anchoring the turbines to prevent erosion could create artificial reef habitat for fish.

“[Artificial wrecks] holds some of the largest fish that you can see out on the reef habitats off North Carolina,” he said. “So it could be that these wind turbines provide new habitats that provide new places for fish to reside, grow, reproduce and protect from predation.”

Whether this would prompt more population growth or displace fish from their natural habitats to the artificial ones, “that we don’t know,” said Taylor. “I’m not sure we can make those predictions yet.”

The Venus flytraps lures, kills and digests bugs. The only place in the world the carnivorous plant grows in the wild is within a 90-mile radius of Wilmington. The conservation of the rare plant depends on the state, which is why it will be a felony to steal them, punishable by up to 25 months in prison. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

On Dec. 1 it will become a felony in North Carolina to poach Venus flytraps from the wild, punishable by up to 25 months in prison.

Unlike most plants, the Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) moves. It secretes a sweet-smelling nectar that drips on its guard hairs the way saliva drips from fangs. When trigger hairs on its yellow, sometimes ruby-colored, tongue are hit twice in a row, the flytrap snaps its teethed leaves like a bear trap within a tenth of a second, imprisoning its prey and absorbing the nutrients slowly.

Unless you’ve ever seen one, you might have larger-than-life expectations for the plant villainized by the 1960 film “Little Shop of Horrors” as a discreet yet ferocious flesh-eater. In the wild, however, their bright green, football-shaped heads that can eat bugs are hardly an inch wide. After opening and closing just a few times, the flytrap dies.

The only place in the world that Venus flytraps grow in the wild is within a 90-mile radius of Wilmington.

For that reason, its conservation in the wild depends on North Carolina. Rep. Ted Davis, Jr., reached out to the N.C. Coastal Land Trust and The Nature Conservancy to help in their conservation efforts for the flytrap. He introduced a bill in New Hanover County to make the theft of Venus flytraps a class H felony, which quickly gained popularity with four neighboring counties. The bill provision then went on to pass through both legislative chambers as a statewide law.

“I was happy to do it,” says Rep. Ted Davis, Jr. “First and foremost, I was born and raised in New Hanover County. I was familiar with the Venus flytrap being there, the uniqueness of the plant, in fact it eats bugs and flies to survive, and also how rare it is. If that thing is gone from its natural habitat…that’s it.”

In the last two years more than 11,000 Venus flytraps have been stolen in North Carolina, which is nearly a third of the amount estimated to be left in the wild. Under current law, taking flytraps from the wild is practically a slap on the wrist — a misdemeanor charge with a fine of $10, $50 at most. This has done little to deter repeat offenders.

Though the plant’s greatest threats are habitat destruction from development and fire suppression, they’re being assaulted by poachers in the very areas where they’re protected, like the Green Swamp in Brunswick County, which is preserved by The Nature Conservancy.

“We’re getting hit really hard, all the time, especially in the Green Swamp,” says Angie Carl, a fire specialist and land manager for the conservancy. “Poachers have altered the landscape they’ve taken so many.”

Divot marks in the soil where the thieves have used spoons or shovels to remove the bulbs are a dead giveaway combined with the plants’ disappearance. Some also leave markers like plastic bottles.

In the past two years, over 11,000 Venus flytraps have been stolen, which is nearly a third of the amount estimated to be left in the wild. The plant is so small, poachers can easily fit several hundred in a pillow case. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

There are only three viable populations of Venus flytraps left in the wild, Carl says: the Green Swamp, Camp Lejeune and Croatan National Forest. The public can see them at Carolina Beach State Park, the N.C. Aquarium at Fort Fisher and botanical parks like the Stanley Rehder Carnivorous Plant Garden in Wilmington, too.

“This place is a little hidden gem,” Carl says, en route to one of the properties she manages that isn’t open to the public. “The population of Venus flytraps here isn’t nearly what it is in the Green Swamp, but it hasn’t really been poached like the Green Swamp has,” she says.

The black, all-wheel-drive truck rocks up and down through the wet terrain. The beauty of coastal bogs and pine savannahs in North Carolina is a subtle one, but after a prescribed burn, Carl says, “at that point it’s not subtle. It’s spectacular.”

The soil here is acidic and offers few essential plant nutrients, which is why the flytrap evolved its carnivorous diet. Like other plants, the Venus flytrap also makes food through photosynthesis but depends on insects for its source of nitrogen and phosphorus.

In an open field ablaze with thousands of golden-lime pitcher plants, Carl crouches down and starts combing the grassy brush for the flytraps. She notes all the varieties of carnivorous plants around her: the bladderworts, the butterworts, the sundews, the tall pitcher plants, the mauve squatty ones and their hybrids. Finally, after several minutes, she begins to see the strange, small plant everywhere.

Managing 40,000 acres of land makes it difficult for Carl to catch poachers in the act, which is why she often depends on witnesses like hunters who notify game officers of suspicious activity.

“When we catch people, they have thousands in their bag,” Carl says. A pillow case can fit as many.

Venus flytraps are sold on the black market to private nurseries for 10 to 25 cents a seed. The retail value of a thousand plants may be $20,000, but the thieves are hardly getting any return on their hard work.

“When we catch them, a lot of times they’re drenched in sweat,” says Matt Criscoe, a game officer for the N.C. Wildlife Resource Commission. “It’s not like they’re making a fortune doing it. That’s what we don’t really understand.

“I think they consider it a safe gamble: The payoff is worth the risk.”

“A lot of people that we’ve got are on the lower end of the poverty spectrum and probably have some addictions would be my guess,” Carl says. “They’re just supporting their habits.”

Angie Carl, a land manager for The Nature Conservancy, sits among a field of thousands of pitcher plants in Pender County. This is where she finds the rare Venus flytrap, which has adapted to its acidic, low-nutrient habitat by luring, killing and digesting bugs. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

Also, extract of the Venus flytrap is thought to have 17 immune-supporting compounds, which some advertise as a cure for cancer.

“It’s kind of like one of these scams of rhino horns and ivory. Whatever is rare people sort of imbue with amazing properties,” says Camilla Herlevich, founder and executive director of N.C. Coastal Land Trust.

When over a thousand flytraps went missing from the Stanley Rehder Carnivorous Plant Garden in Wilmington in May, 2013, the N.C. Coastal Land Trust, which owns the conservation easement of the park, decided to step up and address the problem.

“We started talking to people at the state of North Carolina and to The Nature Conservancy and to Rep. Ted Davis, Jr., who actually called us and asked what he could do to help,” said Herlevich.

“What wildlife officers and prosecutors and judges have told us is that the penalties aren’t strong enough to deter criminals, and they don’t really justify a large investigation because typically there’s not much of a penalty,” she said.

It’s not illegal to own Venus flytraps, nor is it illegal to sell them. Only the act of stealing them from the wild is illegal, which can be difficult to prosecute, according to Linda Rawley, spokeswoman for the Wilmington Police Department.

“It’s very difficult,” Rawley says. “There’s no witnesses; and if we found the [stolen] plants, how can we tell where they came from?”

The hope is that a more severe penalty will deter the crime all together. “If they get caught now, they’ll get arrested,” says Criscoe. “With a felony charge comes a lot of restrictions in life.”

Needless to say, conservationists are praising the new law. “We spend millions and millions of dollars to protect these lands,” says Carl, “mostly because the flytrap is our North Carolina heritage.”

MOREHEAD CITY — Only the repetitive release of air from her regulator breaks the sea’s silence as a school passes her in a silver current. Avery Paxton counts the fish by the hundreds. She is drifting buoyantly above a jagged, narrow ridge, which her team of divers has named Lightning Bolt Ledge, admiring how the black sea bass and tautog forage near the reef just as the angelfish do.

The “little islands of marine life out in the middle of the sandy desert,” as she calls the offshore reefs that she studies, are as close as 1.7 nautical miles from shore and as far as 43.

Scientific diver, Alyssa Adler, measures the topography of a hard-bottom reef off North Carolina. Studying the structural features and ecology of the reefs will help with their conservation. Photo credit: Avery Paxton/UNC Institute of Marine Sciences

Lightning Bolt Ledge is 26 nautical miles away from Wilmington, in one of the windiest areas off the East Coast. One that the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEM, will potentially lease for the development of wind farms.

Avery Paxton

Paxton, 25, is a graduate student at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’sInstitute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City. Her research is funded in part by BOEM to identify the most important fish habitats within one of the three areas off the N.C. coast that the agency has designated for possible wind turbines. This one, known as Wilmington-East, is roughly 134,000 square miles of ocean just southeast of Wilmington’s port.

She is studying how fish selectively use the different types of hard-bottom reefs. Fish use the reefs for feeding, some for spawning or as nurseries. Others swim from reef to reef seeking refuge, said Paxton, to move safely to deeper water. They’re important resources for the fishing industry and ecotourism, too. By understanding which reef habitats are essential to conserve, developers can make informed decisions about where to build their wind turbines, Paxton explained.

Amid the blue-tinted world, Paxton’s GoPro camera films yellow, tropical butterflyfish fluttering past a tall sea sponge while she jots down notes on her slate. “I think one of the most interesting things to me as a scientist and a diver is that we have a mix of these colder-water species and these warmer-water species,” Paxton said.

The warm Gulf Stream mixes with colder, nutrient-rich water as it flows north past Cape Hatteras. The mixing creates a diverse array of marine life, including plants like seaweed, called macro-algae by scientists.

“They’re not a simple system,” said Paxton. “There are so many species. Just macro-algae, for example, there’s over 90 species, and one of the really cool things is that these macro-algae, they’re seasonal. So it’s kind of like the trees that we have, right, they bloom during one season, the leaves fall off, they bloom again — the same thing happens underwater.”

The reefs are as diverse as the marine life. Half of them are made of rock or different kinds of sediment cemented together. The other half are artificial:  shipwrecks or manmade boxcars and concrete pipes. Some, like the ribs of a sunken ship, stick 30 feet out into the water column. Other “features,” as the scientists like to call them, are flat as a stage. And sometimes the reefs are ephemeral, temporarily buried by sand until a storm exposes them again.

MOREHEAD CITY – This is a tale about a fish house liar whose famous words could be “I’ll tell you this story.”

The Morehead City local may not be as well-known outside this town in Carteret County, but around here Rodney Kemp is somewhat of a celebrity for telling entertaining stories about local history.

“In the days before mass communication, down at the community store or the fish house, the entertainment in the evening was the guy who could tell stories,” says Kemp.

Kemp, 68, keeps that tradition alive. He says he’s the last of Morehead City’s fish house liars, as they’re called, who still tells audiences the local lore he grew up hearing. And just like the fish house liars before him, he’s known to embellish the truth to please a crowd.

Rodney Kemp delivers a talk about a piece of Morehead City’s history to a crowd last Friday at The History Place. The series “Fridays with Rodney Kemp” have been a hit since they began in 2000. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

“It’s stories that are on the edge of the truth, but if you tell them right they’re almost believable,” he says. “In your mind you tell them so much, you get so you don’t know the difference between a lie and a truth.”

People don’t mind that, he says. “You can wrap a lot of local history around humor because people are humorous here, particularly when they’re out on the water and they haven’t caught a fish all day.”

Kemp cracks jokes as he transitions in his history talks, moving the next photo onto the old overhead projector. In his pile are also article clips and notes handwritten in Magic Mark on sleeve protectors, like the ones found in a student’s binder. He keeps an informal, conversational tone – short, sweet and to the point.

“You’ll see I’m pretty much getting to the punch line the best I can,” Kemp says.

He invites the crowd — sometimes calling on an audience member by the first name — to tell the history as they remember it, too. The talk becomes a dialogue; and the history, sometimes someone’s childhood, is born again.

“The stories reminds me of the things I’ve forgotten,” says Jean Lewis, one of Kemp’s time-honored fans who was sitting in the front row at his talk last week at The History Place. The monthly history talks, “Fridays with Rodney Kemp,” just started its fall season series.

“And he’s really funny,” she adds.

As far as Kemp’s story, he’ll tell you: “The basis of my history is I’ve been here forever, and that’s a blessing.” The man has a tremendous amount of affection and gratitude for his upbringing in Morehead City and for its people.

Kemp was born in Knoxville, Tenn., but moved to Morehead City when he was two and a half years old. He says it was a blessing to grow up during the 1950s in “small-town USA” in a “Leave it to Beaver” neighborhood. The kind where the lady at the corner shop calls your mother to let her know where you are; the kind where everyone goes to church together.

“Boy, I can’t believe I was fortunate enough to have grown up in that neighborhood,” says Kemp, regretting that the same sense of community changed by the time he had children and grandchildren.

He was the middle child of five. His father was a garment maker from Pennsylvania who liked to tell stories at night around the supper table. His mother, from Alabama, was always at home to greet him from school, and she instilled in him her love of poetry. He was always more interested in playing sports than schooling. Athletics, he says, was his form of expression.

Kemp lived nearly half a lifetime before he ever gave his first professional speech. He went to college in Texas where he studied journalism, English and history. He came back to Morehead City and became a school teacher. He coached basketball, ran 12 marathons and married Pat Giblin, “the most beautiful woman I’d ever met.” They had two daughters and a son. Kemp took a job as an insurance salesman in Wilmington.

He wasn’t in Wilmington long before he returned to Morehead City in 1987 to take a job with Chalk & Gibbs, where he still works today selling insurance. After all, he’s known his bosses since they were four and five-years-old. But, if it wasn’t for his three-year stint in Wilmington, Kemp might have never realized his talent for public speaking.

Rodney Kemp uses the overhead projector to enhance his presentation with old photos, articles and notes. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

He was selling car insurance to a woman one day, and when she handed him her business card, he glanced down and read the words “motivational speaker.”

“I’d love to do that,” he said.

“You can,” she said.

“How do you know that?” Kemp asked.

“‘Cause you want to do it.”

The woman encouraged him to sign up for his first talk at the Lion’s Club, a service organization in Wilmington. After his first motivational speech, he called her back and said, “It worked!” As though in disbelief.

“My nature is not to be a performer,” he says. “Now people say, ‘Now you don’t look nervous.’ I say, ‘I’m torn up until I get going, and I hear that first response from the audience.’”

Kemp delivers upwards of 150 talks a year. He writes out his stories, puts the punch lines in just the right order and practices either in front of a mirror, his family or school children – his toughest audience. Back in his marathon-training days, he would listen to speeches on headphones, too.

He taught history in a continuing-education class at the local community college for 20 years. He’s been speaking at the Elderhostel program, known as Road Scholar, at the Trinity Center in Salter Path since 1991. And he’s been telling stories at the History Place since the museum bought the old colonial store next to his office in 2000. He continues to draw large crowds. Kemp also gives sermons in churches, and he’s even taken to telling the history of others.

Through it all, Kemp’s wife, Pat, battled cancer six times over a period of 19 years. He described her as courageous, never letting on to what she was going through for the sake of not burdening her family. Kemp said he was shocked when the doctor pulled him aside, six years ago, to tell him she wasn’t going to be coming home.

“She went home alright. Don’t worry about that,” says Kemp. “She just isn’t coming back to Morehead with us.”

Kemp still wears his wedding ring, he says, because he was very blessed in his 35 years of marriage.

He wasn’t sure what it meant to mourn, but he found he couldn’t sleep in the bedroom anymore. He moved in with his younger brother in an area of Morehead City known as the Promise Land. As many times as he had read, written and talked about the Promise Land, he’d never come to know it so intimately. He soon found solace in the “precious” neighborhood where the descendants of Diamond City migrated after a hurricane destroyed their homes on Shackleford Banks.

“I would sit across there on the porch, particularly in the rain storms, and I’d look around and I’d think: ‘You know what? This place is absolutely mind-boggling beautiful.’ And it’s not because they’re elaborate houses. Promise Land houses were modest; some of them floated across from the Banks. I would talk to [the Promise Land people], and I realized how much they loved their heritage of a sharing community, even greater than the one that I described where I grew up — greater than that.Across the street from his brother’s home is the preserved house of Capt. Gibb Willis. Kemp crosses the street to sit on the porch, with permission, and rock in the evening. He says:

“I don’t know who I thought I was. I decided that we need to record the history of the Promise Land before we lose it.”

Kemp put an announcement in the paper that the first meeting of the Promise Land Society would be held June 10, 2012, at the Franklin Memorial Church. A few friends showed up, fearing no one else would.

“There were a hundred there, and I didn’t know what I was getting in to,” Kemp says.

Since, the Promise Land Society has published two books about their history with a third in the works.

“I am very honored and blessed to have him as a friend,” said Janice Ray Lewis Ditto, one of Banks’ descendants. “I’m so grateful that he pulled the Promise Land people together to get our history and great stories and memories written before they all pass away.

“Promise Landers are peculiar people. I’m but one of them,” Ditto said. “With his personality and ability, we took him in as a great friend.”

“I don’t know why other than the Lord gave me a gift that he wanted me to use, I don’t know why I get these opportunities, but I don’t mind it,” Kemp says. “All that stuff is part of my makeup, the evolution of Rodney Kemp.”

Sanders Point is a place of worship for Trinity Center and the marsh behind it, a classroom for its environmental education program. Trinity Center and its Sound to Sea educators won a Pelican Award for their leadership in planting a living shoreline to save Sanders Point from further erosion. Photo: Sound to Sea

PINE KNOLL SHORES – It wasn’t just a few trees and a little sand that was saved. The eroding shoreline at Sanders Point is a sacred space for this worship center and an irreplaceable classroom for its environmental education program. One storm at a time, it was slipping away into Bogue Sound.

“While it is one of the most beautiful spots on the property, it is also one of the most exposed,” said Penn Perry, the executive director of Trinity Center, which is the retreat, worship and education center of the Episcopal Church’s Diocese of East Carolina.

Trinity Center could have built a breakwater to help save the holy point from eroding. In fact, they had plans to do so. When two educators from its Sound to Sea education program learned of the plans, however, they took it upon themselves to find an alternative solution that wouldn’t destroy the marsh that they teach about.

“They went above and beyond for the coast and for their kids,” said Lexia Weaver, a coastal scientist for the N.C. Coastal Federation.

Their actions did not go unnoticed. The federation presented Trinity Center and the Sound to Sea educators a Pelican Award for their leadership in building a living shoreline in Bogue Sound. This alternative buffers wave energy and slowly builds up the shore while also enhancing the marsh ecosystem and improving water quality.

The environmental nonprofit organization presents their awards annually to people and groups along the N.C. coast who have demonstrated exemplary commitment and have undertaken meaningful actions to protect and restore the coast.

Sanders Point sits high on the edge of Bogue Banks overlooking the sound. The outdoor chapel has wooden benches, a sky for a roof and an altar framed by twisted oak trees. It’s used for worship, weddings and baptisms. It’s also the entre to the outdoor classroom — the marsh.

Thousands of students of all ages come to Trinity Center each year to participate in the Sound to Sea program, which emphasizes hands-on learning to foster appreciation and stewardship of the environment.

Meghan Dinneen, left, and Mindy Furrer work for the Sound to Sea program. They wanted to find a shoreline stabilization technique that didn’t destroy the environment they teach about. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

“Science and nature doesn’t mean very much to a lot [of students], so getting out there and getting to hold crabs and talk about why the water quality is important while they’re in the water makes it real for them,” said Meghan Dinneen, the program coordinator.

“And our hope, because they’re not usually from this area, is that they take these lessons back to wherever they’re from and are able to use them as they go and explore their surroundings,” continued Mindy Furrer, the program director.

Dinneen and Furrer have been working together for quite a while. Long enough, they say, that they can complete each other’s sentences. They recognized that it would be difficult for their students to make that hands-on connection if they lost the marsh to a bulkhead.

“We figured since we’re here teaching in the sound to the kids that come here about having a positive impact on the environment, we thought what if there were other ways to [stabilize the shoreline] besides a typical bulkhead or seawall or something like that,” said Dinneen. “So we just wanted to explore our options.”

“We didn’t know what we were going to look into. The terminology we were using with our executive director was soft stabilization versus hard stabilization, and that’s really all we knew,” said Furrer.

With a little research, Trinity Center staff came across a photograph of a living shoreline that the federation helped build. Dinneen contacted the federation to learn more about this technique and present the idea to the center.

“They really took the initiative to do the project,” said Weaver. “To me, they got it and they knew that if they put this [breakwater] in, it’s not going to be as healthy for the stuff that they teach people about – the plants and the animals and the critters that live in the estuary in Bogue Sound.”

Hardened structures, like a breakwater, protect a shoreline for a while until they have to be replaced; meanwhile, the wave energy scours the existing marsh, leaving behind a barren environment. A living shoreline is typically a combination of planted marsh grass and a sill made of oyster shells. The sill slows down the wave energy and knocks down the sediment in the water, which over time starts accumulating and re-building the shore. The grass and oysters filter the water and provide habitat and food for animals.

According to Dinneen, making a case for the living shoreline had two selling points. It had a great tie-in to environmental stewardship, for which both Sound to Sea and Trinity Center advocate. And, it had an appealing price tag.

“It actually was significantly less expensive than a seawall,” Dinneen said.

“That’s what hit it out of the park,” added Furrer.

Volunteers plant spartina marsh grass to complete the living shoreline at Sanders Point. Two sills made of bagged oyster shells in the background will buffer the wave energy, accrete sand, improve water quality and provide habitat for critters. Photo: Sound to Sea

“They were very thorough about their plan, and they persuaded me that the opportunities the living shoreline presented were too good to pass up,” said Perry. “They were willing to oversee the project, their willingness to donate labor made it cost-effective, and the education opportunities it presented for Sound to Sea were obvious. In addition, the N.C. Coastal Federation made clear its willingness to partner with us to complete the project.”

Working side-by-side with the federation, Dinneen and Furrer began and ended the permitting process in 2013 and, with the help of many volunteers, completed the construction in 2014.

“It’s rare that you find someone that actually wants to do something good even though it’d give them more work to do,” said Weaver. “They run the education programs, they’re not in charge of property maintenance.”

“For us it was just getting this one thing done and using it as a teaching tool,” said Furrer, “but the fact that we were nominated for an award and got that award put a bigger scope on the bigger picture.”

“We were pretty proud of what we’d done because we had put the — whew — sweat and tears into it, so we felt really good,” said Dinneen. “But I think this [award] gave us a reason to feel like it was a good example for others. Just people knowing about it could have an impact on decisions they make in the future.”

The crew fishes for sharks 12 miles offshore off Shackleford Banks in Carteret County as part of the Frank Schwartz’ survey for UNC’s Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City. The 42-year-old survey helps assess the health of shark populations. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

MOREHEAD CITY – It was rough seas for a day of shark fishing, one that makes waves in your stomach — and not because you’re “sharkin’,” as the captain put it. The bow of the 48-foot research vessel seemed to reach for the sky before dropping nose-first down into a wave. At times it looked like we were going to dive straight into those dark open waters before the next wave lifted the boat again.

That is, at least, for the new kid on the boat. The seasoned crew dressed in green waders and orange gloves stepped steady and deliberately across the stern, which has an opening flush with the ocean, as they hauled and released a trawl net of fish onto the deck, bait for our larger prize. The scent of diesel fuel and fish, the deep drone of the boat engine, not even the cool, salty breeze could take my mind off what prehistoric predator might be lurking down below. What would we catch today?

“We don’t worry too much about it stormin’,” said Capt. Joe Purifoy.

Purifoy and his crew make the biweekly pilgrimage to the waters off Shackleford Banks in Carteret County to catch sharks for Frank Schwartz, a researcher at the University of North Carolina’s Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City. The routine is almost always the same: They trawl for small fish to use as bait and then they reel out about a mile of monofilament fishing line with dangling baited hooks. They fish at two places, a mile-and-a-half and 12 miles offshore.

Frank Schwartz leafs through his book Shark, Skates, and Rays of the Carolinas in his office at UNC’s Institute of Marine Sciences. His shark survey is the longest continuous shark dataset in the country. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

“I wanted to find out what we have out here,” said Schwartz, who began surveying sharks off the N.C. coast in 1972 and who’s going on his 47th year working at the institute as an ichthyologist, or fish scientist.

Schwartz, 85, has more than 1,300 trips under its belt, making his shark survey the longest continuous dataset in the United States that uses the same gear at the same locations.

Schwartz intercepts sharks on their seasonal migrations. Over the years, then, he’s been able to detect the types of sharks that visit North Carolina’s coast and gauge population trends. Most importantly, the survey provides a historical perspective in assessing the health of shark populations today.

Schwartz says there are certain species that he isn’t seeing anymore, particularly the large sharks. He thinks the decline is cyclical and isn’t worried that any one species will go extinct. However, other scientists think sharks are indeed in serious trouble; and despite recent studies indicating that some sharks are very slowly beginning to recover, their threat of extinction is still real.

George Burgess is one of those scientists. He directs the shark research program at the Florida Museum of Natural History and is the curator of the International Shark Attack File. “Shark populations have been under stress through a variety of sources, most notably commercial fishing but also in certain areas of the world such as the East Coast of the United States through recreational fishing and of course also as a result of habitat loss and modification,” he said.

The Early Days of Sharkin’

As soon as the bait from the trawl net hit the deck, the students on board swarmed over the pile, piercing the small fish with fat, rusted hooks. Students often come on the shark survey trips to record the measurements, the sex and the species. All captured live sharks will be tagged and returned to sea.

The Cape Lookout Lighthouse was a thimble on the horizon when the men began deploying the fishing line in an assembly fashion. One controlled the spool of line with a wooden stick, one took a seat on the edge of the boat to pass the baited hooks in order while another clipped orange buoys onto the line after every 15 hooks. Then it was a matter of waiting.

According to Schwartz, the decline in the populations of certain shark species off the N.C. coast is a natural fluctuation. “One species goes down, another will come up,” he said.

Frank Schwartz uses a wooden measuring stick to size the 14-foot dusky shark caught on his survey in 1991. Photo courtesy of Frank Schwartz.

“As I say in the last sentence of my book, they’ve been around for 400 million years and I think they’ll be around for 400 million more years,” Schwartz said.

His book Sharks, Skates, and Rays of the Carolinas, published in 2009, is an illustrated guide that covers the 91 species of sharks, skates and rays found off the Carolinas.

For some of the larger species, however, the decline is undeniable to Schwartz.

“[The dusky] shark, that big one, its population is crashing now. I don’t think they’ll go extinct but it’s crashing,” he said. “Whereas before we could catch in a day 20 to 30 of them, now I haven’t seen one for five years.”

“Silky sharks is another one that’s disappearing on us,” he said. “We’re not seeing them anymore.”

Schwartz recalls the shark fishing clubs in Carteret County in the mid-1980s, a time when as many as nine commercial boats fished for sharks. The flesh could be eaten, the skin used for leather, the liver oil extracted for vitamins or the fins sold in Asia, where shark fin soup is a symbol of wealth and class in China.

“In 1981 we had what was called a shark jubilee here and in Texas. We had hundreds and hundreds of sharks here along the beach feeding, all kinds of sharks,” said Schwartz.

The beaches were closed for three days during that event. In that decade alone, Schwartz surveyed about 3,400 sharks on the research vessel and as many as 14 species a year.

“I could take you out there and in five minutes give you five to 10 tons of dogfish sharks. You could go out there now and you’d be lucky to get six,” Schwartz said.

Who’s Attacking Whom?

“Virtually every species of sharks on the [western] Atlantic have declined with a couple rare exceptions,” said Burgess.

A 2007 statistical analysis of Schwartz’s survey revealed a drastic decline in the number of the larger sharks at the top of the food chain: 87 percent decline for sandbar sharks; 93 percent for blacktips; up to 97 percent for tiger sharks; 98 percent for scalloped hammerheads; and 99 percent or more for bull, dusky and smooth hammerhead sharks. Such number, the analysis noted, “implies their likely functional elimination.”

The scalloped hammerhead became the first shark species protected by the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

A group of shark specialists for the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the world’s most comprehensive inventory of global conservation statuses, recently found that a quarter of sharks, rays and other cartilaginous fish are threatened with extinction. The group is at a “substantially higher risk than most other groups of animals” and has the “lowest percentage of species considered safe,” about 23 percent are classified as “Least Concern.”

This artistic rendition of the “Jaws” movie poster depicts how the tables have turned. The decline in sharks is largely due to overfishing, bycatch, habitat loss and their biology. Image: Jelsin Alvaro

In an article released this year by the group, a co-chair for the shark specialist group, Nick Dulvy, said, “Our analysis shows that sharks and their relatives are facing an alarmingly elevated risk of extinction. In greatest peril are the largest species of rays and sharks, especially those living in shallow water that is accessible to fisheries.”

Part of the reason sharks have been hit so hard is because their biology is working against them.

“The problems that sharks and rays have is that once they get down they stay down for decades rather than years whereas most bony fishes under proper management can recover in five to 10 years at most,” said Burgess.

Sharks reach sexual maturity late, and many can be pregnant for 12 to 24 months. Those with longer pregnancies reproduce once every two to three years and females have few pups at a time.

Sharks will live for a long time, most species for 10 to 30 years and some even longer. Great whites can live as long as 70 years or more. Schwartz said he is still catching sharks with tags from 1972: “2011 was the last one,” he noted.

Being the best hunters in the ocean can have a downside. “They’re actually pretty easy to catch because they’re so damn efficient at finding bait and will take a hook so readily,” said Burgess.

Gill nets are also extremely effective at killing sharks as well as other marine life, he said.

“Certain species are found dead on lines anywhere from 80 to 100 percent of the time,” said Burgess. “That’s the other part of the story — not all sharks are created equal in that respect.”

Compared to those that come up on a line very much alive, like the nurse shark, the species that are more prone to dying during capture are the ones that tend to have a much slower recovery rate, like hammerheads. As an example, dusky sharks, which used to be quite common on the N.C. coast in the early 1970s, is a large coastal shark with a three-year reproductive cycle that is probably down to 10 or 20 percent of its original biomass, said Burgess.

Sharks Help Balance Our Oceans

When it started raining, we were 12 miles offshore and nearly finished reeling in the second line. Hook after hook came up to the boat empty. After a half day at sea, only three sharks less than three-feet-long were caught: two Atlantic sharpnose sharks and a small blacktip. The sharpnose, which has white spots and averages about three feet, is one of the most common sharks off the N.C. coast in the summertime and their pups are often caught off the piers. It can recover two to three times faster than its kin because it reproduces every year.

“They’re doing just fine,” said Burgess.

Charles “Pete” Peterson, another researcher at the UNC institute who co-authored the analysis of Schwartz’ survey data, suspects there is another reason that factors in. The only natural enemy of small sharks and rays are the sharks more than six-feet-long, the apex predators. He and other researchers have found that the decline in these larger sharks coincides with an increase in rays and smaller sharks and also a cascading effect down the food chain.

“Sharks, as we discovered in our work, play a very important role in the balance of nature in the context of their role as apex predators,” Peterson said.

The Road to Recovery

The Atlantic sharpnose isn’t the only species on the rebound. “Frankly, virtually every shark out there is having some sort of recovery,” Burgess said.

In part, he said, that’s because of different management strategies. For example, closures prohibit fishing in an area during a certain time of the year when a particular species, like the dusky, is likely passing through on its migration.

Students work quickly taking measurements of the sharks so they can return them to the ocean as quickly as possible. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

Or, the rise of great white sharks on the East Coast is because it’s listed as a “prohibited” species to catch by the National Marine Fisheries Service and also because the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 protects the sharks’ favorite foods – seals and sea lions.

Shark sittings are becoming less rare thanks to more people in the water with cameras on their cell phones and a means to instantaneously share a shark siting with the world on social media. However, contrary to dozens of media headlines, that doesn’t mean that there’s been an “explosion” or “surge” in the populations of great white sharks, Burgess said.

“The most difficult thing, I think, is getting people to realize that recovery is such a prolonged process,” he said. “What we’re seeing perhaps is a slight increase in sharks.”

Another thing we’re seeing is that the public opinion about sharks is shifting.

“After the 1975 release of the movie “Jaws,” the general public felt that ‘the only good shark was a dead shark,’ however in the 30 years that have followed, this mentality has changed,” said Neil Hammerschlag, co-author of a study on the economic value of shark ecotourism and the importance of including conservation efforts in long-term management plans. “A growing number of people are turning their fear into fascination and want to continue to see sharks in the wild.”

According to the study, a single reef shark could be valued at $73 a day alive or more than $200,000 over a conservative 15-year life cycle. That beats the one-time value of a pair of fins for shark fin soup, which can range from $50 to $1,000 a bowl.

“[Sharks] are part of the wondrous biodiversity of life on the planet,” said Peterson. “By persisting and exceeding they provide wonder to us all. Sharks are a fascination for people that exceeds most other groups of organism, so absent the sharks from nature we’ll lose all that particular form of enjoyment that we get from the diversity of sharks and the stories associated with them.”

Are Shark Attacks Increasing off the N.C. Coast?By Tess Malijenovsky  There will likely be more shark attacks per year in the future here along the N.C. coast. Though, experts say, an individual’s chance of being bitten will decrease. Over the last 20 years, there’s been an upward trend in the number of shark attacks, says George Burgess, the curator of the International Shark Attack File, and he suspects there will be more “incidences” this decade than the last.   This bar graph shows an increase in unprovoked shark attacks worldwide over the decades (from the 1900s to the 2000s). Graph: International Shark Attack File People aren’t the only ones braving the water later into the winter season or further up the coast. As ocean temperatures continue to rise, many species are expanding their distributional range. “With the increase in water temperatures, one will expect there to be increases in the number of sharks along the East Coast of the United States, including North Carolina,” says Burgess. “You’re going to have more sharks in more areas encountering humans,” he says. “As a result the answer is, of course, there will be more of these incidences because a) you’re going to have a lot more people in the water and b) you’re going to have more sharks in areas where they were not normally found. We’ve already seen that in certain areas.” Burgess references a series of great white shark attacks near Russia in the northwest Pacific, where neither great whites nor people used to swim because it was too cold. Don’t freak out yet. Burgess says, “Our chances of being bit as individuals actually decreases each year because of the sheer volume of people in the water. “Despite the fact that there’s less sharks in the water, we still continue to get an increase in the number of attacks, and that’s simply because we’re putting so many people in the water,” Burgess said. 12 tips to reduce the risk of a shark encounter: Tip compiled by the International Shark Attack File Avoid being in the water from sunset to sunrise. This is when sharks are most active and have a competitive sensory advantage. This is a map of confirmed unprovoked shark attacks in North Carolina from 1935-2013. There have been 48 in total, including three fatalities: 1935, 1957, 2001. The counties in red represent six or more attacks, the counties in green one to five. New Hanover and Onslow counties have had the most at 10 attacks. Map: International Shark Attack File Stay in a group, and do not wander too far from shore. Isolated individuals are more likely to be attacked than large groups; in addition, the farther you are from shore, the farther you are from help. Consider your clothing: avoid wearing shiny jewelry, because the reflected light resembles the sheen of fish scales. Avoid brightly colored or patterned clothing, because sharks see contrast particularly well. Do not enter waters being used by sport or commercial fisherman – sharks can sense the smells emitted from bait at incredible distances. Avoid entering waters with sewage output and/or entering the water if you are bleeding. Such additions to the water can act as strong olfactory attractants to sharks. Know your facts. Porpoise sightings do not indicate the absence of sharks. In fact, the opposite is often true. Also be on the lookout for signs of bait fishes or feeding activity – diving seabirds are good indicators of such action. Animals that eat the same food items are often found in close proximity. Remember, a predator is never too far from its prey. Refrain from excess splashing while in the water, and do not allow pets in the water because of their erratic movements. Exercise caution when occupying the area between sandbars or near steep drop-offs, as these are favorite hangouts for sharks. Do not enter the water if sharks are known to be present, and evacuate the water if sharks are seen while there. And, of course, do not harass a shark if you see one. Stay calm if you do see a shark, and maintain your position in as quiet a manner as possible. Most sharks merely are curious and will leave on their own. Relax. You are more likely to be injured by lightening than attacked by a shark. To learn more about your relative risks, see: The Relative Risk of Shark Attacks to Humans

Volunteers work the organic community farm called EarthWise in Carteret County. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

OCEAN – EarthWise, as it’s called, started with a seed — first planted in the imagination of an old man and then in the soil by his children.

The N.C. Coastal Federation’s small community farm that then sprouted is at the end of a dirt road, near Bogue Sound in Carteret County. People come down the road on Tuesday evenings to work the soil, hoe the weeds and collect the harvest, a wide variety of veggies and melons that everyone shares equally. Though the volunteers enjoy their buckets full of produce, the people will tell you there’s something more going on that brings them back to help.

“I enjoy working at the EarthWise farm because it gives me a chance to learn about different crops and ways to care for them, “ said Rachel Bisesi, an educator for the federation who lives on the farm property in the steel, evergreen and red barn. “It also gives me a genuine connection to the earth and reminds me of how much we depend on the environment every day.”

Watching kids come to appreciate the bounty that the earth provides may be her favorite part of all this. “I love watching how excited they get once they realize this one little seed they planted months ago is now something healthy and delicious to eat,” Bisesi said.

The connection people made with the earth to grow food wasn’t something the volunteers felt the need to express to each other while plucking peppers and pulling carrots. Though that was a common theme for their reasons to volunteer.

“I enjoy having some control over where my food comes from,” said Todd Miller, the executive director of the federation. “It’s always been something I get a lot of pleasure out of, being able to live off the land so to speak. Just the fact that you can acquire a lot of the food by either growing it or catching it is pretty neat these days.”

Miller and his family grew up next to the plot of the land by Bogue Sound, where they still live today. He can be found out on the farm just about every day.

“It gives you an appreciation that it’s not that easy to grow and it connects you to what it really takes to sustain people here,” Miller said.

EarthWise’s story began about 70 years ago with farmer named Ken Parker. He tilled all his acreage with a mule. He couldn’t afford a tractor or a fancy irrigation system. EarthWise also depends on the rain.

Isabella Taylor, left, and Olivia Honaker get their hands dirty while learning a lesson about the origins of food. Photo: Rachel Bisesi

Bix Griffith is pleased with her giant cabbage. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

“It really was a much more sustainable way of doing agriculture at the time, in terms of the environment,” Miller said, who as a boy remembers Parker.

Parker sold some of his land to Miller’s father, Ted. At one point, portions of the land were leased to a large farmer who grew tobacco, corn, soy beans and cotton.

“It went from a very small almost garden operation to a big commercial farm,” Miller said.

For the most part though, the land remained untouched for many years until Ted Miller, in his 80s, returned to the family compound on Bogue Sound, after years traveling, to build EarthWise. Ted was a creative soul, a sailor at heart and a chemist by nature. He envisioned EarthWise as a place to practice what he had preached over the years about nutrition and health. He was critical of food additives and overly processed products and so sought to grow food from enriched soil without the use of pesticides or fertilizers. He also donated fresh produce to local charities.

There is a plaque on a stone at the head of the property honoring Ted and a sign on the farm shed that reads: “Fifty years ago, Ken Parker and his mule, Katie, effectively farmed this land to produce safe abundant foods. Now the goal is to restore this farm to its natural capabilities.”

For Cindy Miller, Ted’s daughter, working on EarthWise every week is about the nutrition for her family.

“To me it’s just thinking about what I’m going to do with [the produce] and how I’m going to feed my family,” Cindy said. “It’s making something out of it, just like making bread and kneading it and dreaming of how beautiful this product is going to be.”

Not only would Cindy bring her pickled farm-produce to share, but she would bake treats like zucchini pies for the children. She’s volunteered to put together an EarthWise recipe book.

And then for others, like Randy Mason of Emerald Isle, the reason to volunteer was quite simple: “I just like to see things grown.”
Mason is also a fan of the okra. “Yeah, okra. I love okra. Fried okra,” he said, carrying the “eye” sound in “fried” for just a few seconds longer.

Earthwise is an on-going experiment. “We had the opportunity to have the land as part of the federation, so we’ve been trying to explore good uses that help to advance the mission of the federation as well,” said Miller.

The nonprofit’s mission is to help people have an active role in the stewardship of North Carolina’s coastal water quality and natural resources. For this reason, EarthWise uses organic pesticide so that nothing harmful to the environment flows down the hill into Bogue Sound when it rains. Knowing that polluted stormwater runoff is the number one cause of degraded coastal water quality, the federation advocates for low-impact development and makes a point to lead by example.

Here’s just a sampling of EarthWise’s bounty.

Randy Mason says he gardens because he enjoys watching things grow. Photos: Tess Malijenovsky

As far as the experimentation goes, using the land as a community farm was never quite planned. Really it all happened organically.

The Miller family inherited the land from their father and decided to donate part of the property to the federation. “He wanted it to be used in a way that it would do some public good and sort of left it to the family how best that could be done,” Miller said.

A group of neighbors from the new development up the road reached out to Miller about helping with the farming in exchange for fresh veggies.

“We all met one day and talked about roles and responsibilities,” said Josh Honaker, one of the neighbors. “We set a date, and then we all met over here the first day [in March] when we were putting all the plants in.”

“The group worked together remarkably well,” Miller said. “There wasn’t any jealousy about anybody taking too much. I think everybody was very conscientious, trying to do their part and take what they deserve.”

The group said they enjoyed the comradery, and Mason hopes others will join. If there is genuine interest, Miller said, there’s more space to expand.

Of course, perhaps most of all, everybody enjoyed the fruits of the labor. It seemed of all the greens and vegetables and legumes and melons, most everyone had one favorite in common.

“Probably the tomatoes,” said Cindy. “I just like working with them.”

“Probably the tomatoes, fresh tomato on a sandwich. And the cucumbers,” Honaker said.

“I love garden tomatoes, peas and cucumbers, but there is something really special about garden tomatoes. They just don’t taste the same from a store. Long live the tomato sandwich.” Bisesi said.

And then there was Mason, “The okra baby, oh yeah without a doubt.”

For Honaker, who brings his toddler son, Josh Jr., and two girls, Madeline and Olivia, volunteering at EarthWise is also about the education of where food comes from.

“I like it just to get the kids out, just to teach them. Kids nowadays don’t really understand. Everybody is used to going to the store and just picking up your vegetables. Not too much goes on like it used to back in the day.” he said.

Michael Burchell, in red, smells a plug of soil from North River Farms and passes it around to people attending the Blue Carbon Workshop. The roots in the soil are an important location for carbon dioxide or, in the case of a salt marsh, “blue carbon.” Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

SMYRNA — Out in the middle of a salt marsh in rural, coastal North Carolina a small group of scientists, land managers, engineers and conservationists gather around, passing a plug of wet, black soil. They rub it between their fingertips then bring it up to their faces for a closer look and a long whiff — that rotten-egg smell of sulfur, rich with hope and opportunity.

The mats of roots in the soil are a clue to something invisible, something driving global research and discussion. They call it “blue carbon,” after the carbon dioxide that’s taken up and stored by ecosystems near the ocean — salt marshes, tidal wetlands, mangroves and sea grasses. However, it means much more than that for us all.

Aside from improving water quality, providing habitat to fish and wildlife and protecting us from floods and storm surges, the salt marshes and tidal wetlands of eastern North Carolina provide a newly recognized and highly valuable “service” — they help fight climate change, big time. And that’s marketable.

What is actually being measured when anyone speaks of blue carbon is the net amount of greenhouse gasses being released and absorbed by a coastal marine ecosystem, such as a salt marsh. Greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are the ones warming the planet. If a salt marsh acts as a sink, draining the heat-trapping gases out of the atmosphere, then it could be sold on the global carbon market in the form of a carbon offset credit.

“It’s an additional ecosystem service, and we’re becoming increasingly attuned to the need to mitigate climate change. So by recognizing this, it adds a little bit more of the imperative to restore (coastal) landscapes. Hopefully it will bring more funding to agencies who do ecosystem restoration,” said Steve Crooks, a global expert and consultant on blue carbon.

Crooks was one of the people examining the marsh soil. He came to Beaufort two weeks ago for the two-day workshop on blue carbon put on by Restore America’s Estuaries, a national nonprofit, and one of its regional partners, the N.C. Coastal Federation. Joining him was Restore America’s Estuaries’ senior director of strategic planning and programs, Steve Emmett-Mattox.

This graph shows the amount of carbon dioxide in tons per hectare sequestered and stored by different ecosystems; the brown represents the carbon in soil and the green, in plants. The order of ecosystems are as follows: sea grass, salt marsh, estuarine mangroves, oceanic mangroves and tropical forests. The top four coastal marine ecosystems are, in most cases, more effective carbon sinks than tropical forests. Source: Murray, Brian, Linwood Pendleton, W. Aaron Jenkins, and Samantha Sifleet. 2011. Green Payments for Blue Carbon: Economic Incentives for Protecting Threatened Coastal Habitats. Nicholas Institute Report.

“If you work in the restoration sector, you know that there’s a lot of unmet need to restore these habitats and we need more resources,” Emmett-Mattox said.

He came to the workshop to help land managers in the Southeast begin to understand this emerging topic and its potential for bringing financial resources to their conservation work. After all, the term blue carbon has only been around about five years and its science is still rapidly evolving.

For a plant, carbon dioxide is like pie. They “sequester” the pie – take it in – and store it throughout their bodies, the “biomass,” and into the soil via their roots. What makes these “blue” ecosystems near the ocean the pie-eating-contest champions of the planet is their wet, salty environment that keeps methane emissions extremely low and slows the breakdown of carbon. Also, they have a deep layer of organic-rich soil that stores hundreds of tons of carbon dioxide, much deeper than what is below a terrestrial forest.

By comparison, coastal marine ecosystems store more greenhouse gasses per acre than a tropical rainforest. And though they only make up six percent of land area covered by tropical forests, when they’re destroyed they contribute one-fifth of all emissions attributed to deforestation worldwide. It may take hundreds of years for carbon to build up in the soil, but it only takes a matter of days to be released back into the atmosphere when tidal wetlands are ditched and drained.

On the second day of the workshop, the group traveled to one of the federation’s wetland restoration projects called North River Farms. Looking around, it was hard to believe that the marsh everyone was standing in had been a farm for 30 years. It’s taken roughly seven years to restore the farmland into tidal wetlands, and now the federation wants to know whether it’s storing more greenhouse gasses than it’s emitting. Over the last three years, N.C. State University has been doing that groundbreaking research with funding from the U.S. Geological Survey.

“There hadn’t been a lot of studies in wetlands that are as salty as this brackish marsh, so there was kind of a hole left in the science on this,” said Michael Burchell, the lead project researcher and an associate professor at N.C. State who has been monitoring, designing and restoring the farm since 2003.

Freshwater wetlands naturally generate a significant amount of methane, which is over 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Would a brackish tidal marsh with saltier conditions also generate so much methane that it offsets the carbon being taken in through the plants?

This restored marsh was once a farm growing corn and soy. Now it is a carbon sink. North River Farms is one of the N.C. Coastal Federation’s wetland restoration projects. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

The short answer is no.

“What we learned was that there is very little methane that is being produced in these brackish marsh systems,” said Burchell, a result of the microorganisms in the soil using sulfur instead of methane, which gives off that rotten-egg smell. He and his doctorate student, Yo-Jin Shiau, also found that while the marsh is giving off some carbon dioxide, “[it] is acting as a true sink for carbon meaning there’s more carbon coming into the system and being trapped than leaving.”

Therefore, restored coastal marshes have a role to play in the global effort to address climate change.

“Why I’m excited about the North River Farms work,” Emmett-Mattox said, “is I think all of that really adds important knowledge that coastal managers can use.

“I think where we are is that we need a better understanding in specific places and specific estuaries as to what the carbon benefits of conserving and restoring those habitats really are because there’s still relatively few places where this is being measured and considered,” he said.

Over 40 people showed up for the workshop from across the Southeast, which was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. At the workshop, attendees learned about the tools and standards that exist to verify credits and how to assess the blue carbon potential of a project. The lesson chief among them though was that blue carbon creates an economic incentive to conserve and restore our coastal ecosystems, or as some workshop attendees said “to do the right thing.”

So, go on, next time you look out over the salt marsh, see if it doesn’t smell a little sweeter.

PINE KNOLL SHORES – Former Senator Marc Basnight, a Dare County native, received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the N.C. Coastal Federation for years of leadership in the N.C. General Assembly that shaped the N.C. coast in significant ways.

“You look up and down the coast, there are a lot of things that have resulted from his legacy, from land being protected, restored areas, better regulations for coastal development to investments in infrastructure and things that he really shepherded through the process,” said Todd Miller, the executive director of the federation.

Former Senator Marc Basnight wins the Lifetime Achievement Award from the N.C. Coastal Federation. Photo: Shawn Rocco, News & Observer

Basnight is one of 15 winners of the 2014 Pelican Awards. The winners this year are varied, from a commercial fishermen to a Realtor to the library staff at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

The annual Pelican Awards recognize exemplary action to protect and preserve the coastal environment. The winners will receive the awards Saturday at a luncheon at the N.C. Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores in Carteret County, thanks to the sponsorship of Backwater Environmental.

Lifetime Achievement Award

During his 26-year reign in the Senate – the last 17 years of which he was the president pro tempore – Marc Basnight rose through the ranks, outlasting his opponents and even governors, to become the most politically powerful man in the state.

“Just the Clean Water Management Trust Fund by itself has certainly driven our agenda since 1997 in terms of a lot of things we’ve done. He opened up vast new opportunities that we didn’t have before that as a new tool for land acquisition,” Miller said.

Basnight’s brain child, the N.C. Clean Water Management Trust Fund, which was established by the General Assembly, provides millions of dollars through grants to finance projects that address water quality. Money from the fund has helped reduce stormwater runoff, bought and restored vulnerable lands threatened by development and created a planning blueprint to start restoring the state’s once-famed oyster populations. He is also praised by environmentalists for a bill in 1997 that tightened regulations on hog farm lagoons and improved sewage treatment plants.

While the federation didn’t see eye-to-eye on all issues with the political leader, they recognize that he made the coast a much better place during his many years in public service. “I would say to his credit he was responsive — when he got requests for help, he tried to help people,” said Miller.

Northeast Coast

Troy Outland is a commercial fisherman on the Outer Banks who received a Pelican Award for making working waterfronts a workable idea. Photo: Staff

Many others along the coastline’s three regions have demonstrated exemplary commitment to their vision of a healthy, thriving coast. For example, Troy Outland, a native of the Outer Banks and a lifelong commercial fisherman whom the federation considers “a pioneer of cooperation” among recreational and commercial fishing interests in the area. He will be recognized with a Pelican Award for making traditional commercial fishing access to the historic Manns Harbor Marina a sustained reality.

“Well I was pretty surprised. I really had no idea I was going to get (picked) for that. Just pleased to get it,” said Outland.

Commercial fishermen along the coast find it more and more difficult to afford access to the water to dock their boats because of the cost of water-front property and the limited space available for storing their fishing gear. Outland helped establish and now chairs the Manns Harbor Commission, which is a board tasked with managing the first state-funded, shared-use working waterfront.

“Most fishermen, including myself, just don’t really like to get involved with things like that. They just like to get up and go to work and not really deal with issues like that. So I just felt like someone had to try to come up and get everybody together to see if we could get something going,” Outland said.

Central Coast

Allen Propst a realtor who blew the whistle on the illegal ditching and draining of wetlands in Pamlico County. Photo: Staff

Another friend of the coast is Allen Propst, a realtor from Oriental — a town in Pamlico County – who blew the whistle on the illegal ditching and draining of wetlands in the area.

“When Buck told me about this wetland forest conversion of the Atlas Tract to agriculture land, I was stunned,” Propst said. “I had spent about a week on this property about three years earlier trying to sell it as hunting/forestry land for Copper Station, one of the prior land owners. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that the vast majority of this 4,700 acres was non-riverine wetland forest.”

His efforts resulted in hundreds of people writing emails and attending county commissioner meetings, letters from county leaders to federal agencies, and what appears to be enforcement action by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The country is losing wetlands at a rate of seven football fields each hour, and Propst showed that much of this loss occurs because regulatory safeguards for wetlands are not enforced.

“Continued diligence must be taken to prevent further degradation of these valuable wetlands now and in the future,” said Propst.

Southeast Coast

Sue Weddle of Sunset Beach won a Pelican Award for being a dedicated, persistent and effective advocate of the coast. Photo: Staff

Looking to the southeast region, another winner is Sue Weddle, of Sunset Beach. “Shocked, speechless, jubilation,” was how Weddle described her reaction to learning she had won a Pelican Award for being a dedicated, persistent and effective advocate of the coast.

Weddle retired in Sunset Beach with her husband, Owen, but found she could not relax. “I went out on our deck overlooking the marsh in a spring rain to thank my lucky stars that I had been given this wonderful place. When I looked up at our tidal creek, I saw a sediment plume about three-quarters of a block long with what looked like an oil slick on top of it. On that day I became an environmentalist,” she said.

Weddle soon began serving on state and local environmental rules review committees. She advocated against lifting the inlet-hazard area designation from Mad Inlet and continues to advocate for effective stormwater regulations. Most importantly, she keeps a close eye on how coastal development rules and regulations are being enforced and met near Sunset Beach. The federation said that Weddle “leaves no stone unturned, deed unread or permit unchallenged” when it comes to unnecessarily hurting the health of the coast.

“I always thought there were grown-ups in charge, and I didn’t have to worry,” Weddle said. “I learned there are no grown-ups in charge, and each and every one of us must step up to the plate.”

Many Others

Many others demonstrated the likes of these few winners and received Pelican Awards:

• Bill Hettler, a volunteer, for his loyal stewardship of the Hoop Pole Creek Nature Preserve and commitment to the federation 
• Bill Edwards of the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service for his significant contribution to land conservation and wetland restoration 
• Ernest Boyce, another volunteer, for his dedication to the coast and enthusiastic help with all federation efforts
  
• Craig Hardy of the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries for his dedicated career in oyster restoration 
• Burrows Smith, a developer, for being a local champion and pioneer of Low-Impact Development
• Shawn Ralston, a former planner for New Hanover County, for leading efforts to provide sound environmental safeguards via adoption of the New Hanover County’s Special Use Permit process
• The staff of the UNCW William Maddison Randall Library for cataloging the federation’s collection of documents and making them accessible as a permanent coastal education resource
• The Trinity Center’s Sound to Sea Program educators for their leadership in installing a living shoreline in Bogue Sound
• The board of directors of the N.C. Press Association for recognizing the changing media landscape by supporting Coastal Review Online’s membership in the association 
• Lakes of Lockwood Homeowners Association for their efforts to install over 50 rain barrels and eight rain gardens with the Smart Yards Program
• The Town of Wrightsville beach for the town’s partnership and support in establishing the federation’s new southeast office and Fred and Alice Stanback Education Center

OCEAN – Many people will remember her for helping save Sugarloaf Island, an undeveloped island visible from Morehead City’s waterfront. Books, however, may be the things Sarah Hamilton loved more than environmental activism.

Hamilton, 90, passed away in March of 2013, but the library at the N.C. Coastal Federation’s headquarters here in this small community in Carteret County continues to be a reflection of her touch.

Hamilton made a career out of her love for books, introducing others to the gift books offered. Born in 1923 in Morehead City, she was librarian at three high schools in Carteret County over her lifetime. Todd Miller, the executive director of the federation, remembers Hamilton when he was a student at West Carteret High School.

“She was of the community. She was well known and well respected,” Miller said. “She was just a very sweet woman.”

Hamilton served on the board of the federation for 20 years.

The federation’s “library ladies,” from left, Dot Reist, Sarah Hamilton and Ann White.

She also served on the town planning board of Morehead City and took an interest in environmental issues. During the time she was on the board, there were several proposals to develop Sugarloaf Island. Accessible by watercraft only, the 47-acre island can be seen from the restaurants and shops lining downtown Morehead City’s waterfront on Bogue Sound.

“She was pretty instrumental in saving the island,” Miller said. Hamilton opened the door for the federation to begin working with Morehead City, helping the town apply for funding to buy the island. Sugarloaf Island is now a part of Morehead City’s park system with a floating dock, nature trails and public restrooms. The preserved island is like a good book in a way – it’s a place where you can get away from it all.

Hamilton’s background as a librarian was put to use when the federation was settling into its office in Ocean in 1995 and another former board member, Bob Daland, died, leaving behind his collection of environmental literature. Daland, whom the library is named after, was an active member of the Sierra Club and infatuated with environmental issues, said Miller.

“He gave us the beginning of the library,” Miller said.

The library is one of the benefits of being a member of the N.C. Coastal Federation. There are books and magazines on a range of environmental topics including gardening, crafting with nature, seashells, wildlife and a juniors’ section. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

Hamilton in 1996 recruited the help of two other local women – Anne White and Dot Reist – to organize and help maintain the library. The three of them, known around the headquarters as “the library ladies,” were recognized in 2006 for their outstanding environmental service to the federation with a Pelican Award.

“She was a gracious lady with finesse under any circumstance. I just admire her so much,” said Reist, of Emerald Isle.

Reist volunteered at the library until 2013, two years longer than Hamilton was capable for health reasons. White died in 2013.

“I really got to know her through politics,” Reist said. “She was a good Democrat and so am I. We used to go to Raleigh often, my husband would drive us.”

The women would visit senators and congressman in Raleigh together, going office to office. Reist said, as one example, they fought for tougher regulations on hog farms, which had open pits for waste that would wash out into the watershed with each storm.

Reist was invited to help organize the federation’s library by typing the catalog cards. In fact, part of the ambiance of the federation’s library is its classic card catalog system that Hamilton installed, said Rose Rundell, a federation staffer.
There is no computer database to tell people where to find a particular book. The federation’s library relies on the good old-fashion system that’s worked since 1876: the Dewey Decimal System. Whether you’re searching a book by title, author or subject, it’s easy to locate the book you’re looking for by pulling the appropriate file draw and flipping through cards in alphabetical order for a classification number.

“Aunt Sarah was all about books,” wrote one of Hamilton’s nephews, Bob Harvey. “I’m not sure she would have the same love of Kindles and iBooks.”

“Having the card catalog system was definitely her touch,” Miller said.

Sarah Hamilton helped put in place the card catalog system that you’ll find at the federation’s library. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

The catalog system may be old school, but its contents are old and new, from classics like the Audubon Society’s Sibley Guide to Birds to Philip Gerard’s most recent novel Down the Wild Cape Fear. The library features books and magazines for the environmental enthusiast on a range of topics, including gardening, crafting with nature, seashells, wildlife and much more. There’s even a juniors’ section.

And thanks to a contribution made by Harvey, the library will continue to expand its book collection over the next several years. “It just seemed appropriate to donate it to one of the things that she was involved in,” said Harvey.

It was something of a family tradition, Harvey said, for Hamilton to bring her nieces and nephews over to Dee Gee’s Gifts and Books, a shop on Morehead City’s waterfront, the day after Thanksgiving to pick out a new book.

In addition to the federation, Hamilton was also a volunteer for Hospice, Emily’s List, Planned Parenthood and the Southern Poverty Law Center. “I think probably because she didn’t have any kids, she got involved with a lot of things that helped other people,” said Harvey.

If you’ve never visited the library before, it’s a cozy nook in the federation’s headquarters, just beyond the entrance and front desk. Three walls of shelved books surround a spiral staircase, plush reading chair and study table. Readers will find a checkout sheet on top of the vintage card catalog cabinet.

There are no late fees here. “We go by the honor system,” said Rundell.

The library is one of the privileges of being a member of the federation. Members simply fill out their contact and library book information and can keep the books for as long as it takes them to read it. Book can be returned in a pile next to the checkout sheet or, if the office is closed, the white mailbox just outside the entrance doorway. You might like to visit if you share Hamilton’s love for reading with a worn paperback book in your hands.

Two federation interns take measurements of the newly constructed oyster reef patches in the Lockwood Folly River. The project is part of the federation’s on-going work to help restore the water quality of the river. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

VARNAMTOWN — When it wrapped up last month, the project was a milestone for the N.C. Coastal Federation, an environmental nonprofit that has been working with Brunswick Country since 2008 to help restore the water quality of the Lockwood Folly River. While other federation projects continue on land in the county, the 21 patches of oyster reef mark the end of their work in the water, at least for now.

It’s a curious sight, the piles of oyster shell with white poles checkering three acres on a mud flat, just before you reach the docks at Varnamtown. Though it may look like an odd art installation, the patches are precise, calculated oyster restoration work. They will become reefs as baby oysters, or spat, attach to the old shell; and according to research, fish favor the mosaic design, which creates eddies that allow spat and food particles to drop down and the oysters to be more effective filters of the river.

Restoring the river has been a priority for the federation in part because of its potential to recover. “We started working on Lockwood Folly River a while ago and one of the reasons is because the river has some pollution degradation issues but a lot of the watershed is still intact,” said Ted Wilgis, an educator for the federation who led the oyster restoration work.

“It hasn’t been developed to the extent of some other watersheds so there’s the potential of being proactive and using LID (low-impact development) and planning to allow for the protection and restoration of the river,” he said.

The black river snakes quietly through the primitive marshlands of Brunswick County. Fishermen and locals from Supply to Sunset Harbor relish this secret wilderness of the Southeast. “The Lockwood Folly River traditionally was one of the best oystering watersheds in the southeastern coast,” said Mike Giles, a coastal advocate for the federation.

Fishermen and locals from Supply to Sunset Harbor relish this secret wilderness of the southeast N.C. coast, the Lockwood Folly River. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

However, it’s changed since the county became one of the fastest growing in the nation. According to the state, today 85 percent of the river’s shellfish waters are closed permanently or temporarily to harvest because of high bacteria levels.

The culprit is unassuming. As Giles will explain, “It’s about runoff from the land, how we changed the natural ability of the landscape to absorb the rainwater, which contains pollutants from wildlife, from pets, from a variety of sources.”

The federation began working with Brunswick County officials, local communities and various state and federal agencies to address this stormwater runoff problem and reverse the trends of shellfish closures.

The two oyster reef patches, foreground, will mimic the function of the existing strip of oyster reef next to them in the middle of the Lockwood Folly River. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

“We can’t really affect or change the source because it’s a natural source, it’s always been there. Pets have added to it. What we can change is the pathway of the water,” said Giles.

A watershed restoration plan was designed to do just that; it retrofitted existing properties and encouraged developers to change the way stormwater flowed on new construction sites so that the runoff could soak into the ground rather than rush into the river. The plan included working directly in the river building oyster reefs to improve its water quality.

“What we try to do when we have a project like this and we develop a watershed plan is connect projects in the water with the things we’re doing on the land. So the oysters and the replenishment and restoration of natural oyster beds directly connect to what we’re trying to do on the land,” said Giles.

Living, thriving oysters – even the ones that aren’t safe to eat – help clean the water by filtering pollutants and sediments. Also, the oyster reefs become a habitat for other marine animals. Not only will they attract more fish, but they will produce more spat in the river, which means more oysters downstream where the water quality is good enough to harvest.

The project’s benefits come on many fronts, according to the federation. Improving the fishery indirectly stimulates the local economy; people come to the area to fish and fishermen work in the river. The project contractor, Chris Connaway, of Connaway Marine Construction, hired locals of Varnamtown to help with the work too. The federation wants their restoration work to have a diversity of benefits, said Wilgis, to the environment, the fishery and the local economy.

Chris Connaway and two hired locals shovel oyster shell into piles that will eventually become oyster reef patches. The federation says that the oyster restoration project benefits the ecology, the fishery and the local economy. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

Connaway made a point to talk to the locals about the project. “Instead of trying to be standoffish about it, I go right at them, bring them out here, tell them what we’re doing,” he said. “There’s some older, hardcore fishing guys who look at it (like) it might be a detriment to do something like this, especially in a site that’s contaminated.

“When hurricane Fran and the red tide hit years ago, really devastated this area. The locals understand that it takes a lot of time for it to come back, but some of them had felt like this was probably going to slow the water down in here and not let the water flush quite as good; but after they’ve seen the reefs put in place everybody’s happy with it.”

They’ve been extra friendly in fact, said Connaway, “coming out of the wood works” to offer help. Both Connaway and Wilgis expressed gratitude for the town, which allowed them to store the oyster shell – 12,000 bushels weighing 780,000 pounds — on land near the loading docks.

Along with this project, the federation also helped install 200 feet of living shoreline – a combination of a sill made of bagged oyster shells and planted saltmarsh cordgrass – at a park in Oak Island in 2013 and another in St. James in 2007. The federation says the projects help improve the water quality of the Lockwood Folly River and provide habitat for fish.

Rachel Gittman uses a dibble to wedge a hole in the sand, a mother plants the cordgrass and her son sprinkles fertilizer. Working in teams, the volunteers planted 3,500 plants to stabilize the rapidly eroding shoreline of Carrot Island. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

BEAUFORT – The dibble slices the sand like butter. Working in pairs, one volunteer wedges a hole into the island shore and the other plugs it with a native marsh plant, spartina alterniflora. Several organizations and volunteers spend the afternoon planting the shoreline in a joint effort to stabilize the rapidly eroding southeast edge of Carrot Island near Beaufort.

Three thousand five hundred plants later, a green shoreline runs parallel to the North River channel. The marsh planting is the island’s last line of defense against boat wakes, storms and sea-level rise.

“We have documented erosion rates of about half a meter a year and in some places a little more,” said Rachel Gittman, a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City. “It’s definitely eroding.”

Carrot Island is one of five islands that make up the Rachel Carson Reserve across from Beaufort’s harbor. It’s an ideal site for a shoreline stabilization project because of its high erosion rate and its public visibility. The national and state reserve programs protect areas like the Rachel Carson Reserve for research, education and public stewardship opportunities.

Aside from thwarting erosion, the marsh planting is also a demonstration for private property owners who might be thinking about how they want to stabilize their own shoreline. It is part of a bigger effort funded by the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, to compare natural shoreline stabilization and bulkheads along the N.C. coast.

The oyster reefs seaward of the marsh plants are the island’s first line of dense against erosion. The combination of reefs and plants makes a living shoreline, a natural approach that controls erosion, creates habitat for marine animals and improves water quality by filtering particles and sediment.

This living shoreline project on Carrot Island is somewhat experimental. The research reserve contracted with UNC’s Institute of Marine Sciences in 2012 to build oyster reefs by essentially dumping loose oyster shells along the shoreline. With boat wakes and waves pulverizing the shoreline, the researchers weren’t sure if oyster larvae, or spat, would attach to those loose shells in time to solidify them into a reef.

“We feel like this is a place where we can push this technique a little bit. Let’s try it in a fairly high energy setting and see how it works,” said Carolyn Currin, a NOAA researcher who has been studying living shorelines in North Carolina for more than a decade at the Beaufort lab. “If we can do it here, then I think we’ll learn a lot more by pushing the envelope a little bit about where you can use this kind of approach.”

Oyster reefs help slow erosion by buffering waves. The beach is significantly wider behind the oyster reefs than the shoreline without a structural barrier. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

Now there is a reef with living oysters on top of what was, two years ago, a pile of oyster shells. And the width of the beach is noticeably wider behind the oyster reefs than the shoreline without a structural barrier.

“Today we’re just going to enhance the area with plants; so that’s going to stabilize the soil further, help the soil to accrete even more and provide some habitat to small critters,” said Paula Gillikin, the central sites manager for the research reserve.

The saltmarsh cordgrass will grow roots two to three times longer than the green stems that sprout above ground, according to Currin. This holds the soil together. The stems also play an important role.

“The above-ground biomass is important because that’s what knocks down the waves. As it reduces wave energy, sediment falls out and then we build up the surface of the marsh,” said Currin.

The plants, especially the oysters, help to filter the water. They also become a lush haven for crabs and juvenile fish hiding from predators in the open water.

“Probably by this time next year there’ll be lots of fiddler crabs that aren’t here today,” said Lexia Weaver, a coastal scientist for the N.C. Coastal Federation, who partnered with the others to help guide the marsh planting. “So you have the habitat, the filtering and the erosion control all in one restoration project,” Weaver said.

“This is our big effort to really try to stabilize this. We hope that as people come out they’ll see this great way to stabilize a shoreline without a bulkhead,” Currin said, as kayakers and boaters cruised by in the background.

The southeast edge of Carrot Island before the marsh planting. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

The same shoreline sprouts green after the marsh planting. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

Bulkheads or seawalls, by comparison, are usually concrete, wood or vinyl walls at a property’s edge that slow erosion and protect what’s behind them. Like a cliff it has a steep drop-off, which forms when the wave energy, that has nowhere to go, scours the sand and tears apart any marsh. It’s a barren place for marine animals. Forget filtering water. They can be more expensive to build and maintain than a living shoreline and they don’t necessarily hold up better in a big storm, according to Gittman. After Hurricane Irene hit, Gittman traveled up the N.C. coast to conduct a visual assessment of the damage to different types of stabilized shorelines.

“What we found was that bulkheads by far had the most damage,” she said.

The storm hit at high tide. Water came up over the bulkheads, scoured behind them and caused them to collapse. Whereas water ran up and down the alternatives with low slopes. “We had lots of property damage because people had bulk headed shorelines that were not mimicking the natural slope of the shoreline,” Gittman said.

“I do think it provides some evidence that at least when comparing to natural shorelines, damage when a bulkhead does fail is much more substantial than a little bit of erosion you may see along a natural marsh and much more expensive to repair,” said Gittman.

Conner and Whitney Miles pick up trash on Huggins Island during their summer break with the N.C. Coastal Federation. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

SWANSBORO – What do glass bottles, fishing lines, plastic slides, beer cans and bags of dog food have in common? They litter our beaches. At least, that’s what a group of volunteers found on Huggins Island with the N.C. Coastal Federation staff.

“I’ve heard from a number of people who say, ‘I want to do something,’ but they don’t know what to do,” said Sam Bland, a coastal specialist for the federation.

They will this summer, anyway. The federation, for the first time, is offering people a series of opportunities to help clean up several local islands. People can enjoy a free boat ride, spend an afternoon in the sunshine, explore an undeveloped island and, most importantly, make a noticeable difference.

“There’s so much need to clean up these marshes,” said Lexia Weaver, a coastal scientist for the federation.

Whether you call it trash, litter or garbage, marine debris is a serious problem along the coast and in the world’s oceans. Just ask Bland or Weaver about the flounders they’ve seen stuck in aluminum cans or entangled in fishing line. Wild animals can die by swallowing plastics, like sea turtles that mistake plastic bags for jellyfish.

Litter also chokes the economy. Tourists escaping the city heat won’t be likely to stay long or return if the environment is trashy or if they step on a rusted nail on their beach walk. Boat engines and propellers can also be damaged by floating marine debris.

Volunteers came from near and far to help clean up Huggins Island last month, which is at the mouth of the White Oak River in Onslow County. For instance, a visitor from Louisville, Ky., who was camping nearby and a man who drove an hour and a half away from Apex just to help clean the island.

All sorts of discoveries are made during the island cleanups, like this living bay scallop opening its mantles to reveal its many blue eyes. Photo: Sam Bland

“It’s good volunteer hours and it’s fun,” said Conner Miles. He and his twin sister, Whitney, said they could earn volunteer hours for their high school. “Besides, my mom said I can’t surf every day.”

It was a gorgeous summer afternoon for the first island cleanup of the series with clouds like whipped cream in the pale blue sky. Dolphins were seen along the boat boat ride from Hammocks Beach State Park to Huggins Island. And there, without a road or shop in sight, the only thing stirring was the breeze that carried the tune of cicadas through the apple-green marsh.

The group set out with gloves and trash bags to patrol the coastline for the eyesores — the plastics, the glass and the treated wood — that didn’t belong.

Marine debris wasn’t the only discovery the volunteers made exploring the coastline. The federation’s staff pointed out the birds and the shellfish, like a living bay scallop, which has a string of blue eyes like a sapphire necklace lining the edges of its two shells.

Maybe island cleanups aren’t for those afraid of getting a little muddy or wet; then again, that seemed to be part of the fun. The day’s haul filled the bed of a truck, and the staff of Hammocks Beach State Park thanked the volunteers for their service. No one could say that it didn’t feel rewarding.

“The opportunity that we present allows people to feel good about their own contributions,” said Bland. “And I think it’s important for people to have those opportunities because if they don’t have them then they’ll never be able to have that sense of participation and pride and involvement.”

All this trash was picked up in a few hours from Huggins Island, thanks to the volunteers. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

Here are the locations and dates for the island cleanups scheduled for the rest of the summer:

• Bear Island, July 9
• Sugarloaf Island, July 23
• Radio & Pivers Island, July 30
• Gallants Channel, Aug. 6
• Shackleford Banks, Aug. 13
• TBA, National Estuaries Day, Sept. 2

If you’re interested, check out the calendar of events for more details.

Last of two parts.  

A site in Hewlett’s Creek where researchers from UNCW collected sediment and oysters to study the concentrations of heavy metals and organic contaminants. Photo: Ralph Mead, UNCW

WILMINGTON — Arsenic levels in the oysters of Brunswick and New Hanover counties are among the highest in the country, and some of these oyster live in waters open to harvest, according to a recent study by researchers at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Two professors and four undergraduate students at UNCW are taking a closer look at what is accumulating in oyster tissues as they filter our estuaries. The research is the first of its kind to establish a baseline of two organic contaminants and 10 heavy metals in sediment and oyster tissues in Brunswick and New Hanover counties.

While the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Mussel Watch Program has done similar studies around the country and in the Carolinas, none had monitoring sites in these counties.

Despite the high spikes of certain heavy metals, the data suggests that none came close to the federal action level – the threshold for health risks. How the organic contaminants may be affecting the environment or human health remains unclear. The study does not address if the concentrations of metals or contaminants are harmful.

The researchers were surprised to find an antimicrobial compound, called triclosan, at all sites studied so far. Triclosan is banned in Europe for health and environmental reasons but widely used in this country in a variety of consumer products. Yesterday’s story goes more in depth into this organic contaminant.

The students and Ralph Mead, a professor of biochemistry and chemistry at UNCW, also looked for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. Like triclosan, “They are a pretty prevalent contaminant,” Mead said.

PAHs come from either the combustion of manmade products, like motor oil and cigarettes, or the combustion of natural sources, like wood.

“From a human health standpoint, some of them are carcinogenic, so it’s kind of good to know what levels are in the oysters,” said Stephen Skrabal, a professor from the same department and the associate director for education at the Center for Marine Science who helped lead the research on heavy metals.

Many PAHs are toxic and pose health concerns. However, Mead found that oysters better absorbed the more common PAHs with smaller molecular structures. Those tend to be the less toxic forms of PAHs.

“Basically the more rings you add, the more toxic they get,” explained Amy Ringwood, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina Charlotte who researches environmental toxicology in marine invertebrates.

The two push pins represent sampling sites on Bald Head Island. A site in an undeveloped area had concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, that one would normally expect to see near a marina where polluted stormwater runoff is abundant. Photo: Ralph Mead and Stephen Skrabal, UNCW

A smaller subset of 12 sampling sites were analyzed for PAHs in the oysters and the sediment. The sediment data found only a few “hot spots:” two on Bald Head Island and one by the Bradley Creek Bridge near a marina. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “hot spots” of contaminants in sediments show a need for more testing to determine if the site is causing harm to the ecosystem. It’s like the FDA’s action level only it’s for superfund sites, the most polluted environments in the country.

The hot spots had levels of certain PAHs that were two to eight times greater than the EPA level. One was as much as 24 times greater.

Mead and Skrabal did not seem alarmed by the data. “We have no idea whether they’re harmful levels. We didn’t do any sort of toxicology. So we just don’t know the answer to that,” said Skrabal. “I sure wouldn’t say that there’s a PAH contamination problem in Bald Head.”

According to Ringwood, “It looks like there’s some regions of concern because there are some high spikes here, especially in sediment levels, but again that’s probably not too surprising where you’ve got boating, jet skiing traffic, that’s releasing combustion PAHs.”

A sampling site in an undeveloped area on Bald Head Island, however, had concentrations as high as the one near a busy road and marina where polluted stormwater runoff is abundant and expected.

Mead could determine the sources of the PAHs from studying their molecular structures. He found that the types in the sediment at the Bald Head Island sites were from wood combustion. “There can be atmospheric transfer of PAHs in the form of soot and things like that so it’s not surprising that there is a baseline or a concentration there,” said Mead.

David Evans, a research chemist with NOAA, agrees. “My overall view is that there does not appear to be broad ranging or intense contamination,” said Evans. “EPA considers such criteria as only screening level guidance and not necessarily evidence of a problem.”

He said his response to the observations would be to identify the source – creosote on wood pilings, he suggested – and if found, removal or remediation might be appropriate.

The nearby water treatment plant could also be a source of the contamination. “It could be that (PAHs are) not removed from the treated water and it’s kind of getting concentrated in a relatively small area,” said Skrabal.

The other thing, Skrabal said, is that the Bald Head sites had finer, muddier sediment – the kind you can sink up to your knees in ­– which can accumulate more contaminants than sandier soil.

In fact, Ringwood suspects that some of high spikes in the oyster tissue data could be from the sediment, which typically has higher levels of contaminants and metals than the oyster tissue. “One of the problems that you have with processing oysters is making sure that you’re actually processing just the tissues and not extraneous sediment contaminants,” she said.

Ringwood, who encourages diligent rinsing of oysters and an overnight cleanse before analyzing oyster tissues, expressed the same caution for the data on the heavy metals. Skrabal and the students analyzed 10 individual oysters at all 19 sites for 10 heavy metals: arsenic, mercury, lead, copper, zinc, chromium, cobalt, nickel, cadmium and vanadium.

“Zinc, there are some that seem to be actually quite high, but that was where I wondered again about extraneous sediments,” Ringwood said. “On the other hand, maybe there’s some reason for some concern; but it might require a little more evaluation analysis to make sure that we’re not over-estimating potential risks.”

These bar graphs represent the levels of arsenic found in oyster tissues in Brunswick and New Hanover counties. They are compared to the median for the Southeast (top line), the 85 percentile (middle line) and the national median (bottom line) compiled in a 1999 study. Source: Stephen Skrabal, UNCW

Compared to an established study, some of the samples had concentrations of copper and zinc that were higher than the national median and ranked among the highest levels in the country, mostly in the closed watersheds and near marinas due to antifouling boat paints.

“It’s pretty well established that copper and zinc are often high in marinas around the world. (Boat paints) have a very, very high percentage of copper and zinc in them. I think our results support that,” said Skrabal.

Cadmium and cobalt were below the national median and mercury averaged close to the median, about the same amount per weight as lobster or cod.

The only heavy metal that raised a brow was arsenic, which trumped the averages for the Southeast region. As it is, all bivalves in the Southeast already have significantly higher concentrations of arsenic compared to the rest of the country, according to the NOAA Mussel Watch Program study.

This stark contamination in the Southeast has “geologic origin,” suggests another study. It could be that the historical use of arsenic in agricultural pesticides and wood preservatives in the region has been embedded in the bedrock.

“One of the interesting things that we found was that back in the ‘60s and ‘70s there were really large amounts of arsenic-containing agricultural chemicals that were used in the Cape Fear rivershed,” said Skrabal.

High concentrations of arsenic can be toxic to fish, birds and plants, and prolonged chronic exposure can be linked to cancer in humans. However, arsenic comes in many forms, said Ringwood, and the less harmful forms tend to predominate in seafood.

“The form that arsenic is in in the tissues is really critical in terms of whether it’s actually toxic to the oysters or to predators, even humans,” said Ringwood. “These studies are valuable in providing some aspect of overall arsenic levels. Somebody could say, ‘Now here are some real hot spots; now let’s go back in here and do some of the more detailed studies to actually determine what form the arsenic might be in.’”

Guiding future restoration efforts with this baseline knowledge was part of the goal. “Aside from providing undergraduate students with scientific training, the data will become public on an interactive web site aimed to help others in choosing sites for oyster restoration projects,” Skrabal said.

The state’s Coastal Recreational Fishing License program provided about $89,000 for this research.

Oyster are not only an important economic resource, but they play an important role in the environment. One oyster can clean up to 50 gallons of water a day by filtering particles in the water, and oyster reefs prevent shoreline erosion by buffering crashing waves.

Perhaps the study will also help people living near the coast become more conscious consumers. “I think the easiest thing to grasp is that some of these everyday products that we use end up in our waterways,” said Skrabal. “So maybe it helps them (the public) to think about whatever we use.”

First of two parts. 

WILMINGTON — Ingredients from the paint on your boat and the soap you use to wash your hands might be in those oysters you eat.

That’s the take-home message from a recent study of contaminants in the tissues of nature’s best water filter, the Eastern oyster. Two professors and four undergraduate students at the University of North Carolina Wilmington are wrapping up the first study to establish a baseline for 10 heavy metals and two organic contaminants in sediment and oyster tissues in Brunswick and New Hanover counties.

Oysters growing near marinas, harbors and other urbanized areas usually have the highest levels of contamination, the study shows. Arsenic levels in the oysters were among the highest in the country, while mercury levels were about average. A few pockets of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a group of compounds — some harmful —  that are the byproduct of combustion, on Bald Head Island and near the Bradley Creek Bridge may warrant further investigation. To their surprise, the researchers found triclosan in oysters everywhere they’ve looked so far. Banned in Europe, the antibacterial compound is commonly used in this country in a wide variety of consumer products.

The push pins represent the sampling sites where the researchers collected oyster and sediment samples in Brunswick and New Hanover counties. The water bodies, from the top: Pages, Howes and Hewlett’s creeks; Lockwood Folly River; Intracoastal Waterway near Wrightsville Beach, Bradley Creek, Whiskey Creek, Intracoastal Waterway near UNCW Center for Marine Science; Bald Head Island. Photos: Stephen Skrabal and Ralph Mead, UNCW

While the study does not address if the concentrations of metals and contaminants are harmful to humans or the environment, the data suggests that none of the heavy metals came close to the federal action level – the threshold for health risks. How the organic contaminants may be affecting the environment or human health remains unclear. Even so, what the researchers found was telling of the historical and current pollution sources influencing water quality in the two counties.

“Our goal was really to get a survey of some of these important heavy metals and organic contaminants in oysters because there’s really not anything known in this area, to our knowledge,” said Stephen Skrabal, a professor of biochemistry and chemistry at UNCW and the associate director for education at the Center for Marine Science.

Stephen Skrabal

The other professor, Ralph Mead, is from the same department and helped lead the research on organic contaminants.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Mussel Watch Program has done similar studies to establish these baselines in oysters around the country and in the Carolinas. None had monitoring sites in Brunswick and New Hanover counties.

The researchers collected oyster and sediment samples at 19 sites from the Intracoastal Waterway; Wrightsville Beach; Lockwood Folly River; Bald Head Island; and Pages, Howe, Hewlett’s, Whiskey and Bradley creeks. Nearly half of the sampling sites are areas currently open to shellfish harvest. The others were near marinas or in other closed waters.

The state closes shellfish waters either temporarily or permanently when bacteria levels in the water get so high that the oysters and clams are unsafe to eat. What might be in the oysters themselves, such as arsenic or mercury, isn’t considered.

Oysters are often the lab specimen of choice for researchers who want to learn more about the health of a salt-marsh ecosystem because they stay fixed in one place and filter particles in the water through their gills. Certain contaminants that they’ve absorbed from their environment build up in the oysters’ tissue, a process called bioaccumulation. For example, oyster tissue can have 50,000 to 100,000 times more methylmercury – the most toxic form of mercury — than the water that it’s living in.

Ralph Mead

People and animals can be exposed to these contaminants by eating them. However, heavy metals and some organic contaminants can occur naturally in the environment and exposure to them isn’t necessarily dangerous. It’s supposedly only in concentrations higher than the Food and Drug Administration’s action level that they can potentially pose harm.

Triclosan, though, is one organic contaminant examined in this study that neither occurs naturally in the environment nor has a regulated safety threshold in this country. “If you find triclosan it’s really only coming from one place, and that’s us,” said Mead.

“Keep in mind that triclosan right now is not a regulated organic compound,” Mead said. “There’s discussion as far as I know in Washington with the EPA that it is a contaminant of concern, but there’s no legislation that mandates thresholds for concentrations. So what the impacts are, what it all means is somewhat up in the air.”

Triclosan is found in countless everyday household products. It’s in hand soaps, toothpaste, toiletries, cosmetics, clothing, kitchenware, furniture, toys and various industrial equipment. It was designed four decades ago to reduce and prevent bacterial contamination before there were laws requiring scientific review of cleaning chemicals. It is banned in the European Union and in Minnesota just recently because of health and environmental concerns.

“Just by the sheer volume of use, it has found its way out into our waterways,” said Mead. “So part of why we looked at this compound was basically to answer the simple question: Is it there? If it’s there, then can we quantify it to some extent; and that’s as far as we have gone.”

In terms of the environment, there are two concerns for triclosan that’s accepted among scientists. “One, it’s an endocrine disruptor, which can cause ecological problems among populations of all sorts of organisms,” said Skrabal. “And number two, there’s concern that because it’s an antimicrobial that it may contribute in some way to antibiotic resistance.”

This is one of the first studies to look for triclosan in oyster tissues.

The problem with endocrine disruptors, Mead explained, “is you can skew the sexes of organisms one way, so it will take away the natural ratios so to speak of males and females, which will ultimately lead to the dwindling and destruction of organisms’ population.”

Here are just a few products that contain triclosan. The contaminant makes its way into our estuaries where oysters filter the water. Photo: Medical Drug Effects

Antibiotic resistance means that certain strains of bacteria could adapt so that they’re not killed by the antibiotics or the antibacterial product, leaving people more exposed to the harmful bacteria.

The EPA and the FDA say on their web sites that “triclosan is not currently known to be hazardous to humans,” but the agencies agree that there are valid concerns and more research is warranted. Several animal studies show that triclosan alters thyroid and estrogen regulation. However, effects in animals don’t always predict what will happen in humans.

Meanwhile, the effectiveness of triclosan in killing bacteria remains debatable. Other than proven to fight gingivitis, the FDA says on its web site that “at this time, the agency does not have evidence that triclosan in antibacterial soaps and body washes provides any benefit over washing with regular soap and water.”

“You’re not getting any benefit from the antibacterial so why use a compound that is not really improving the function of the product but may have some detrimental effects?” asked Skrabal. “It’s just one more thing that makes its way into the environment that doesn’t really need to be there.”

Mead and the students found triclosan in oyster tissues at all four sites that they’ve analyzed. “The triclosan was a shocker, for me anyway,” said Mead. “I didn’t expect to find it.”

At each site they collected 20 oysters and blended them together into one composite sample. The researchers have only examined four sites for triclosan because they weren’t expecting to find it. Based on the surprising data, though, they’ve received an extension to analyze the rest of the sites before completing their final report this summer.

“It really makes me think about the impacts of the chemicals we use every day, especially in large amounts, and how they leak out into the environment,” Mead said.

SWANSBORO – The glistening waters off the coast offer much more than what meets the eye from the mainland. To give people an idea, the N.C. Coastal Federation is bringing bring people closer to wildlife in its natural setting through a series of cruises.

Rachel Bisesi, educator for the federation, takes people to Jones Island on the White Oak River cruise. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this summer, the federation will offer boat tours that will give people a chance to see birds, collect seashells, learn local history, identify plants, catch aquatic life and watch dolphins.

“Our goal is to give people who live in and visit our coast an opportunity to experience it firsthand by being out on the water. We hope these educational programs allow guests to learn more about North Carolina’s beautiful coast while gaining an appreciation for all it has to offer,” says Rachel Bisesi, an educator for the federation.

Bisesi welcomes a mixed group of locals and out-of-towners at the ferry dock of Hammocks Beach State Park near Swansboro. They’ve come to take a ride on the White Oak River and to learn about its history and nature.

The White Oak River cruise — along with several others that the federation is offering this summer — is on an estuary, a special place where the freshwater from streams and rivers meets the saltwater from the ocean. Each one is a complex of islands, mudflats, marshes and sandbars.

These dynamic environments provide habitat for hundreds of species to breed, nest and feed. Estuaries are important to the economies of coastal communities and to the health of coastal waters, which is what the environmental group hopes the public will learn firsthand on its summer cruises.

The boat moves slowly down the Intracoastal Waterway. Bisesi pulls out a large laminated map to show the group the White Oak River watershed that begins and ends in the coastal plain.

“The White Oak River is a black water river. Does anybody know what it gets its color from?” Bisesi asks the group.

She tells them how the tannins of decayed plants dye the river black, before the boat picks up speed, skirting between the scenic waterfront of Swansboro and a few docked shrimp trawlers.

They are en route to Jones Island, one of the three barrier islands that make up Hammocks Beach State Park. The N.C. Natural Heritage Program considers its coastal fringe evergreen forest a rare and regionally significant coastal ecosystem. And in 2007, the federation helped the state park acquire the island.

While exploring Jones Island, you might find a piece of Native American pottery near the shoreline. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

The group huddles on the island at the foot of the lapping water where a patch of marsh grass was recently planted and a sill made of bags of oyster shells runs parallel to the shore. These are features of what’s called a living shoreline, which reduces erosion, restores water quality and provides estuarine habitat. Jones Island is often a demonstration site for the different techniques that the federation advocates to restore water quality.

There, between the river and the live oaks, everyone learns about the plants and the wildlife around them and the first settlers who lived on the island. The Native Americans used wax myrtle as an insect repellent and yaupon holly to purge themselves during ritual purification ceremonies. History is at the groups’ fingertips on Jones Island, where pieces of Native American pottery are found scattered along the shoreline.

This is only one of the cruises the federation is offering this summer.

Southeast Coast

Departing from the Wrightsville Beach boat ramp, Coastal Advocate Mike Giles will guide guests on the Rich Inlet Boat and Beach Excursion. Rich Inlet is the gateway to the unspoiled Hutaff-Lea Island barrier island complex. It is an important bird area where some of the most threatened migratory birds in the world, like the red knot and piping plover, stop over to refuel on their long flights. Come see how a natural inlet lives and fluctuates and adjusts to winds. The first trip is Thursday with more to come this summer.

Also in the Wrightsville Beach area, federation members can get discounts on scenic bird-watching boat trips, Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. The view from the boat is a great way to see the black skimmers in action, the great blue herons hiding in the cordgrass or the endangered piping plovers in a feeding frenzy.

Central Coast

On the Trawling Adventure, people can try a variety of catch-and-release techniques like using a seine net. Photo: Sam Bland

Aside from the White Oak River cruise, there are three other cruises that launch this summer from Hammocks Beach State Park near Swansboro. On the Dolphin Watch, you’ll be on the lookout for Atlantic bottlenose dolphins. Dolphins are one of the most intelligent species on the planet, and Bisesi will be there to talk about their communication techniques, social behavior, habitat, anatomy and diet.

Or start your day with a nice, long beach walk searching for seashells. You’ll take a cruise to The Point of Bear Island — where there are more shells and fewer people — and make the first footprints in the sand. Bisesi will be there to talk about the marine invertebrates that came from each shell. Then you can take home your prized finds.

On board the Trawling Adventure, folks will try different catch-and-release techniques using crab pots, clam rakes, seine nets and dip nets to see what’s living in the estuary. Helping Bisesi pull a net behind the boat will be Sam Bland, the federation’s coastal specialist. They’ll be trawling in the deeper channels for short periods of time.

“All of the animals collected will spend a minimal time out of the water before being released alive back into the estuary,” said Bland. “We will trawl using a small recreational net that has been modified without a tickler chain to prevent disturbing the surface of the bottom.”

Northeast

Any keeper-sized blue crabs can go home with you on the cruise near Manteo. Photo: Sam Bland

And if you live near Manteo, don’t miss Boat the Bay. This cruise goes around Shallowbag Bay, which cuts into Roanoke Island from the sound, for a scenic view of historic downtown Manteo and Roanoke Island Festival Park. Sara Hallas, another federation educator, will talk about the plants and wildlife in the estuary. To give you a close-up look, she’ll pull a trawl net behind the boat and pull up a crab pot. You’ll get to take home any large crabs for dinner. Also, Hallas will show you how she tests for water quality and make a stop at Jockey’s Ridge State Park to see an example of a living shoreline.

Come take a boat ride in the estuary near you and learn more about what the federation is doing to preserve it. For registration or details about the cruises, check the federation’s events calendar.

Joanna Cole will read from her latest  “The Magic School Bus” at the N.C. Coastal Federation’s ice cream social Saturday. Photo source: Shanghai Family

WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH — “We’re being frizzled again!” said Arnold, riding a heat wave head-first towards the Earth. The character from the children book series, The Magic School Bus, is on yet another wild field trip with his whacky science teacher, this time learning about climate change. For those who have grown up with Ms. Frizzle, this Saturday is your chance to meet the woman behind the famous fictional teacher and hear about her last book.

Join Joanna Cole, the author of The Magic School Bus series, and the N.C. Coastal Federation for an ice cream social on Saturday at the Fred and Alice Stanback Coastal Education Center on Wrightsville Beach. Fans are encouraged to dress up as the characters and bring their favorite book from the series or buy one at the event for Cole to sign.

The Magic School Bus is a series of children’s books about science. The award-winning series has been published around the world in several languages with over 58 million books in print.

“Although people consider these books factual books, I consider them more conceptual books,” said Cole. “They’re about how the world works.”

Kids don’t have to be interested in the water cycle to have fun reading about the adventures that Ms. Fizzle, the science teacher, takes her students on to learn about science. In a bit of role reversal, it is the teacher who wants to go out of the classroom and the students who would rather stay inside taking spelling tests where it’s safe.

“Her enthusiasm carries the class to where no class has gone before!” said Cole. That is, to the bottom of the ocean and to the far reaches of the solar system and now around the world to witness the effects of global warming.

Her latest book, The Magic School Bus and the Climate Challenge, is the most politically-sensitive subject that the series has touched on to date, and her next book is about evolution.

The Magic School Bus book series is read by children from around the world. Joanna Cole and her illustrator Bruce Degen pose with a group of school children in China.  Photo sources: Shanghai Family

“The Magic School Bus series, we consider it to be a contribution to science literacy,” said Cole. “We didn’t want to avoid a subject because some people were denying that it was factual.”

In The Magic School Bus and the Climate Challenge, Ms. Frizzle drives a flying school bus to the Arctic and then around the world to see how the planet is changing. They’ll go high into the atmosphere to see carbon dioxide molecules and slide down a sunbeam to the Earth as they learn about the greenhouse effect. By the end of book, kids will learn about fossil fuels, alternative energies and, of course, what they can do to help.

Cole, the illustrator Bruce Degen and the publishers at Scholastic weren’t afraid of a little controversy. In fact, Cole said, “We wanted to write about something that was controversial.”

“I said to my editor, ‘Global warming is not really controversial and by the time this book comes out it won’t be a controversy anymore.’ Well I was wrong about that,” said Cole.

The book was published in 2010, and Cole believes now that climate change has become “undeniable in people’s everyday experience,” there is greater awareness of its urgency.

“Kids are no exception,” she said. “Kids should know about it and talk about it and they should talk to their elders about it. They can be a real influence because it’s their world that’s being changed.”

Scattered throughout the books are boxes labeled “kids can…” that suggest how kids can make a difference by conserving and recycling and others labeled “a little can do a lot” with interesting facts, like “If your town recycled 2,000 pounds of aluminum cans, it would save enough energy to heat the typical home for 10 years.” At the end of the book, the students are writing letters to their Congress people, inspiring their school and involving their town.

Here are two pages in The Magic School Bus and the Climate Challenge where the fictional class learns about the greenhouse effect by traveling on sunbeams and heat waves. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

“Will the Earth really be okay, Ms. Frizzle?” Asks the class at the end of the book.

“I hope so,” said the Friz. “Our only chance is to work together – every person, every city, every country.”

“When you’re writing about climate change it’s pretty hard to be funny,” Cole said. Yet Cole manages to tell the multi-faceted nature of the climate challenge in a light and humorous tone and in a fun and easy read.

For each Magic School Bus book that Cole writes, she spends about six months reading scholarly articles, journals and books about the subject. When the manuscript is complete and after all the illustrations are drawn, the book is sent to an expert on the subject for feedback.

Joanna Cole believes kids are no exception to the discussion on climate change. Photo source: Five On the Fly

“We’re sticklers for accuracy,” said Cole of herself and the illustrator, Degen. “We even keep up with the information and make corrections as the years go by.”

When astronomers decided that Pluto would no longer be considered a planet, The Magic School Bus Lost in the Solar System had been out for several years, and Ms. Frizzle had visited Pluto-the-planet in the book. Cole and Degen later changed the story and illustrations to reflect the updated information.

The book series attracts a much larger age range than one would think. Cole says that she originally intended to target third graders. But since the first one was published in 1986, she’s learned that children as young as 3-years-old to college students and professors read her books.

“It’s not surprising to me that adults would learn things from not only The Magic School Bus but any good children’s science book,” Cole said.

Cole had been publishing children’s books for 16 years before she wrote the first Magic School Bus book. Her first book was about cockroaches because she loved catching and inspecting insects as a child.

“I loved science as a child and I had a wonderful science teacher named Ms. Bear,” Cole said.

Cole modeled Ms. Frizzle after her seventh grade science teacher and Degen made her look like his geometry teacher. Cole said that Ms. Bear wasn’t quite as “nutty” as Ms. Frizzle, but like the fictional character she had a great enthusiasm for her subject.

You can learn more about Cole’s writing process and listen to her read from The Magic School Bus and the Climate Challenge this Saturday from 4 to 6 p.m. at the education center on Wrightsville Beach. More details about the price of the event can be found here.

Visitors gathered by the rain gardens as the executive director of the N.C. Coastal Federation, Todd Miller, announced at the grand opening that the new education center and southeast office was named in honor of Fred and Alice Stanback. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH — It took 32 years of operating as a nonprofit organization before making a permanent home in the southeast N.C. coast, seven years just to find one and over a year to move it and renovate it. It’s been a long time coming, and it couldn’t have been a nicer day for the grand opening of the N.C. Coastal Federation’s education center and office Saturday.

At the unveiling and ribbon cutting, Todd Miller, executive director of the federation, announced that the center would be named in honor of two environmental philanthropists, Fred and Alice Stanback.

The foyer of the new education center and office. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

“Today we’d like to recognize two people who have made a world of difference to the Coastal Federation, to the coast and to the state of North Carolina,” Miller said, standing in front of the center before a crowd of about 150 people. “If you travel anywhere across North Carolina you’re going to encounter beautiful natural areas that they have helped protect and preserve.”

Fred Stanback, of Salisbury, and his family have donated millions of dollars to environmental groups, including the federation. Some of that money helped protect pristine areas of North Carolina, including Grandfather Mountain, Linville Falls, Chimney Rock, Mount Mitchell, the Blue Ridge Parkway, Shining Rock Wilderness, Uwharrie National Forest and Croatan National Forest. They also donate money to groups that fight for tougher environmental laws, and they pay for an internship program at Duke University.

The Stanbacks, Miller said, keep a low profile and do not seek the limelight. In response to the honor, Fred Stanback wrote: “The North Carolina environment is under assault from the mountains to the sea. The N.C. Coastal Federation is doing important work in protecting the coast, and I am glad to be able to help.”

Miller was happy that the Stanbacks agreed to let the federation use their name for the education center and office. Given what the Stanbacks have done for the state’s environment and the federation, naming the building after them seemed a fitting opportunity to give thanks, he said.

“They not only give generously to land acquisition and land preservation,” said Miller, “but they also support the development of good, sound policy to protect the environment of North Carolina. They’re a major backer of many environmental groups across the state, and again it’s a great honor to the Coastal Federation that they would let us put their name on this center.”

Dick Bierly cuts the ribbon next to Tracy Skrabal. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

An applause erupted from the crowd as two staff members moved to lift the blue cloth and reveal the sign: North Carolina Coastal Federation, Fred and Alice Stanback Coastal Education Center. The “closed” sign was flipped to “open” for the very first time, and the president of the federation, Dick Bierly, proceeded to cut the ribbon. Another applause followed.

“As the grand opening of this center, we’re ready to put it to work,” Miller continued. “It will become a tool for the future to help ensure that our coast stays the wonderful place that surrounds us. We invite everybody to join with us as we look at it today and years to come.”

The 1948 beach cottage was donated to the federation and transported from Harbor Island by barge to its new location in Wrightsville Beach’s Historic Square. The opportunity to preserve an old coastal home was a fitting move for the nonprofit organization that works to preserve and restore the coast of North Carolina.

A previous owner, Beth O’Quinn, said: “I’m absolutely delighted that it’s in the hands of the Coastal Federation. I’m so happy that it will go on to be a place that will nurture people, educate people and draw people to the coast.”

O’Quinn said that before the house was donated to the federation, she was aware of the organization but not as “focused” on it as she is today. “There are a lot of people who don’t yet know what the Coastal Federation is all about,” said Bierly. “People are going to be curious to find out.”

The new building and its prominent sign will act as “a big billboard,” he said, that will draw the attention of Wrightsville Beach visitors and residents alike. “It gives us a visibility and a prominence that we didn’t have as vagabonds before,” said Bierly.

Visitors watch a slide show of the moving and renovation process that took place over a year. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

After the unveiling and ribbon cutting, federation members and new faces explored the education center. There was a slide show of the moving and renovation process, a videographer standing by to record anyone’s memories of the house and an art display of Bonnie Monteleone’s Plastic Ocean Project, bringing attention to the giant gyres of discarded plastics spiraling in our oceans.

The display was a symbol of the types of collaborations that will be possible now that the federation has its center, said Tracy Skrabal, coastal scientist and manager of the southeast office. She also told visitors to stay tuned for the educational programming and the speaker series that begins this month.

“We would not be able to do this programming if we didn’t have this center,” Skrabal said.

The new center has examples of how to control polluted stormwater too, featuring rain gardens, a cistern and pervious pavement. Visitors were even encouraged to pour water onto the pavement to see for themselves how water soaks in rather than runs off into the parking lot.

There were many people to thank at the grand opening for making the Fred and Alice Stanback Coastal Education Center and southeast office a reality for the federation. “We’ve been blessed with a wonderful asset,” said Miller. “Now we have to make sure that it works for our mission.”

Lauren Hermley takes a seat by Beaufort’s waterfront after lunch at Beaufort Grocery Co. She is the assistant manager of Beaufort and the vice president of the N.C. Coastal Federation’s board of directors. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

BEAUFORT – She’s traveled the world, dived with hammerhead sharks and loves grilled green onions so much that she’ll fly to Spain to celebrate them. If you live in Beaufort, you likely know Lauren Hermley. If you don’t, you might like to get to know the vice president of the N.C. Coastal Federation’s board.

Stepping outside of town hall in Beaufort’s historic waterfront district, Hermley, the assistant town manager, said, “Let’s go to Beau Gro.”

Her familial reference to Beaufort Grocery Co., a restaurant in town, made me at ease. Whew, she’s no stiff.

Hermley, 40, enjoys the therapeutic silence of diving in an underwater cave, but on land she is a people-person. “I like to be in the mix,” she said. Doing so allows her to stay engaged in the community and see what needs are out there. It also means she gets to socialize with hundreds of people.

“I really enjoy people and working with people around a common goal. I enjoy the group dynamic,” said Hermley, who holds a bachelor’s degree in organizational psychology.

She has lived in Beaufort for 12 years with her husband, Shawn, who is a Harrier pilot and a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps. They have moved around the country for Shawn’s job but have been fortunate to stay in Beaufort for quite some time now.

“Eastern North Carolina is an interesting place,” Hermley said sitting by the large front window inside the bustling restaurant. She doesn’t miss the snowy climate up north, but of Beaufort she said, “It took a little while to warm up to it.”

Hailing from Syracuse, New York, and having traveled around the world diving shipwrecks and underwater caverns, the South was an adjustment in a few ways. “I grew up in upstate New York and my school was really diverse and my parents couldn’t have been more socially liberal,” Hermley said.

“My mother would have been fine if I had brought home anybody — black, white, red, purple, lesbian — she would have had no problem with it whatsoever,” she said. “But I brought home a marine.”

Adapting to the transitory lifestyle of the marine’s wife — looking for new work in a new town and finding ways to occupy her time while Shawn was deployed — took a while. For the longest time, she said, she didn’t have a quick answer to the so-what-do-you-do question.

Lauren and her husband, Shawn, like to travel together, like here at the cliffs of Moher in Ireland. Photo: Courtesy of Lauren Hermley

Yet, connecting groups of people to achieve a common goal has been an constant thread throughout her life; whether she was managing a community foundation in Arizona, leading scuba diving trips in Micronesia or organizing a pirate invasion festival in a southern coastal town.

“It’s really rewarding for me to work on a team that’s working towards something and have that come together,” Hermley said. This is especially true when she can help the “teams” she works with collaborate together, like Beaufort and the federation.

In fact, starting a dialogue about the work of the federation within local-level politics has been one of her more fulfilling collaborations: “I live and work and breathe in Beaufort. And so to be able to speak to our elected officials and be in a position to have conversations about these really critical issues is one of my more rewarding experiences.”

When the state lost funding for its oyster shell recycling program, the federation didn’t have the means to collect oyster shells even though there was a receptacle to house them. Hermley helped connect the nonprofit organization with the resources of the Beaufort municipality, which has a public works department with employees that do collection for a living. Beaufort began collecting oyster shells in town and taking them to the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries in Morehead City.

Then, familiar with the federation’s efforts to reduce stormwater runoff pollution, Hermley saw an opportunity for Beaufort to convert a swath of impervious surface on public works property into a public park.

“It’s going to alter and improve the stormwater situation in this very critical part of town,” she said, as her soup and salad arrived.

Lauren Hermley, pictured here in the Galapagos, traveled to exotic destinations around the world leading small-group scuba diving travel for her business When in Roam. Photo: Courtesy of Lauren Hermley

When she’s not working or serving on the federation’s board of directors, Hermley is volunteering as president of Beaufort Ole Towne Rotary Club. She began participating with the international nonprofit organization when she lived in Yuma, Arizona.

“That allows me to maintain a foot in helping out on a global scale,” Hermley said.

She may work, live and play in small town Beaufort but Hermley has empathy for people from around the world, in part because she has traveled to many foreign countries.

The next destination for Hermley, she hopes, is Catalonia, Spain, where she can experience a festival dedicated to one of her favorite delicacies: grilled green onions. Charred, tender and sizzling right off a barbeque, the green onions are served with Spanish dipping sauces.

“I want in. I want to go. I want to do that,” said Hermley.

Lauren Hermley dives by the north anchor of the Queen Anne’s Revenge shipwreck. Photo: Courtesy of Lauren Hermley

Scuba diving, however, is what brought Hermley to some of the world’s most exotic places. She once owned a business in Beaufort, called When in Roam, that led small-group scuba diving travel around the globe, from Egypt to the Galapagos to Palau.

“Palau might be the most beautiful place on Earth,” she said, reminiscing about the island’s pristine natural beauty and its famous underwater shipwrecks.

While she was running her diving business in Beaufort, Hermley was also working with the state’s Department of Cultural Resources to save a pirate’s shipwreck. She helped found Friends of Queen Anne’s Revenge, a nonprofit organization established to support the archaeology and conservation of Blackbeard’s flagship, Queen Anne’s Revenge. The notorious pirate overtook the French slave ship off the coast of Martinique before running aground the Beaufort Inlet in 1718. Hermley also developed an educational program for certified divers as part of the project’s public outreach.

With her foot in the door via the project, Hermley started working directly for the cultural resources department developing heritage tourism and outreach throughout eastern North Carolina. When an opportunity surfaced to work for the town as assistant manager, she jumped on board.

Hermley brings diverse skill sets to her teams, whether it’s the town or the federation, including working knowledge of marketing, communications, citizen engagement and finance. The president of the federation’s board of directors, Dick Bierly, said she’s a good board member because she is versatile, thoughtful, has high energy and doesn’t run from a problem.

“And because she’s a local official she introduces people whom we may not have access to,” said Bierly. Such as with the oyster shell collection that, thanks to Hermley’s communication, continues in Beaufort today.

Hermley is fond of the federation’s mission, but it’s the personality of the organization that she loves. “They listen to all different types of people,” she said. “They listen to the environment. They’re not so interested in preaching, they’re not so interested in judging. They’re interested in doing and really creating synergies.”

Hermley is interested in listening to all people and creating synergies too. “We have a lot of serious problems facing our planet, facing our society, and the only way that we’re going to pull this off is to work together. That necessitates communication and dialogue and civility,” Hermley said.

Students of Maysville Elementary catch sight of a dolphin on their field trip with the N.C. Coastal Federation to Bear Island. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

SWANSBORO – What better way to appreciate the Earth than to step onto the sand barefooted and see the expanse of an ocean for the very first time? It was something of an Earth Day for the third- and fourth-grade students at Maysville Elementary school on their field trip to Bear Island with the N.C. Coastal Federation. Although Maysville is less than an hour from the beach, many of the students have never been.

“Look!” A student shouts out, pointing to large ripples left behind from a dolphin.

The captain of the boat that ferries the kids to the island cuts the engine and the other 30 kids move to the bow. The graceful dolphin resurfaces closer to the ferry. The “whoa” and “wows” of the children fill the air.

“They’re, like, so beautiful,” says one young girl. It is the first time she’s seen a dolphin in the wild.

Since January, Rachel Bisesi, one of the federation’s educators, has been visiting the students at Maysville Elementary to teach them about coastal plants and how stormwater runoff pollution affects the health of the ocean. The students have been learning about ecosystems at school.

Today’s lesson at Hammocks Beach State Park is hands-on under a blue sky. For many of the students, it is their first trip on a boat or to the beach.

The ferry captain helps a curious student identify a bird he’s never seen in Maysville. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

“This’ll be an adventure for a lot of them,” said Tina Trott, a teacher’s assistant at the school.

The students arrived at the park visitor’s center to begin their field trip with a presentation on sea turtles in the auditorium.

“Are those turtle shells real?” asks one student. The loggerhead turtle shells beside the ranger were more than half the student’s size.

Kim Valenti, the third-grade teacher, was pleased that the park ranger Jacob Vitak opened her students’ eyes to the possibilities of science careers.

“They need to know there are opportunities beyond Maysville. Mr. Jacob gave examples of what they could do, become scientists and solve the problems that they’re having right now,” said Valenti.

Maysville Elementary is the only primary school in Maysville in Jones County.  Most of its students are from low-income families.

“These communities don’t always have an opportunity to experience the coast in ways that some other students may, and we want to make sure that they get the opportunity to have the same hands-on experiences,” said Bisesi.

Third- and fourth-grade students of Maysville Elementary run wildly on the beach of Bear Island. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

Lilly holds up what she discovered on the beach: half a sand dollar. Photo: Rachel Bisesi

While its goal is to serve everyone, the federation’s educational program strives to work with underserved schools, said Sara Hallas, who has been a federation educator since 2008 at its office in Manteo. “By targeting some of the underserved communities it helps to inspire them to know that they can do things on their own without a lot of money or with very simple resources by just having the knowledge,” said Hallas.

After the exciting dolphin siting, the students gathered under a gazebo on Bear Island and listened to Bisesi talk about some of the items she collected from the salt marsh nearby: a clam shell, mussels, oysters, a fiddler crab, an oyster drill, a periwinkle snail and sea lettuce.

“I’ve learned a lot about the animals and what different shells are besides just being shells,” said student Michael Meadows who had never seen a mussel shell before.

“They don’t associate clam with the shell,” said Tina Rappaport, one of the parents on the trip. “Seein’ the stuff that they see all the time, it doesn’t come from Food Lion.”

It’s important that the students make this connection to the environment, Rappaport says, because “that’s the future.”

“They’re the ones who have to protect it later on, so if they don’t know where it comes from they take it for granted,” she said.

No small animal track goes unnoticed as the students marched to the ocean-side of Bear Island. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

Simple things like ghost crab holes don’t impress most adults much or perhaps we often take them for granted. The children, however, let no small animal track or “evidence” go unnoticed as they marched to the ocean-side of the island. Along the trek, federation volunteer Donna Snead would stop the group to talk about the different plants and the animals that depend on them to survive in the beach ecosystem.

After a picnic lunch, the students braced themselves for “free time” on the beach: wiggling out their excitement, taking off socks and shoes and then being on their best behavior to get the teachers’ approval. A single file line down the wooden railing quickly derailed into kids running in every direction on the beach like 30 pinballs in one machine. Some stayed in groups playing the federation’s beach scavenger hunt; boys discovered an over-sized tennis ball in the swash zone to play catch with; others collected seashells by the dozens.

“This is the best field trip ever!” said student Michael Meadows.

“This is something a lot of them will remember for a lifetime,” said Jacqueline Lanier, the fourth-grade teacher.

Shoppers will be able to choose from among dozens of different species of native plants.

OCEAN – It’s spring gardening season and that Tuscan kale that looked so pretty in the gardening store last year didn’t make it and the flowering pear tree that you fussed over is looking sickly. Go native this year and save yourself time, money and hassles.

A good place to start the switch will be at the N.C. Coastal Federation’s main office in Carteret County on Saturday when the non-profit holds its 11th annual Native Plant Sale. You’ll be able to buy plants that will survive our humid summers and outlast our coastal winters.

“If you buy a species and put it in your garden that is native to your county it’s fine. It’s not going to care what the weather does and you don’t have to protect it in the winter,” said Joanie McLean, one of the owners of Mellow Marsh Farm, a nursery in Siler City that supplies some of the natives sold at the federation’s sale.

Notice how azaleas blossom like wildfire throughout an entire coastal city, or how the firewheel flowers thrive along the dunes no matter how hot it is at the beach. The secret: They belong there.

Native, or indigenous plants, evolved in the local area thousands of years ago along with the insects and the songbirds and, well, the whole food chain. By incorporating native plants in your garden and yard, you’re inviting the butterflies back home and much more.

In fact, the resiliency of native plants and their low maintenance are not the main reasons that the federation sells them or that Mellow Marsh Farm grows them. They are beneficial to the environment in many ways.

Donna Snead

Randy Mason

“The main purpose is to make people aware of the use of native plants,” said Rose Rundell, the federation’s administrative assistant and plant sale coordinator.

“This is a very serious issue to maintain the integrity of our ecosystem and our natural community,” said McLean. “When nonnative species are brought into an area they generally don’t find themselves in balance with the ecosystem and they get out of hand.”

Kudzu is a familiar example. In Japan, where Kudzu originates, the plant is not a problem. When it was brought to the Unites States, however, it became an invasive species. Without the checks and balances of its native ecosystem – diseases, herbivores, parasites — Kudzu populations exploded.

Today there are around 50,000 nonnative plant species in the United States and 4,300 are considered invasive, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Many of these plants were introduced to the U.S. when colonialists brought their favorite plants and animals to the New World.

In effect, when invasive plants outcompete native plants for natural resources, the native species can become displaced and in extreme cases extinct, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

“A lot of the Russian olive and privet are examples of shrub species that are nonnatives and have very effectively crowded out and caused the disappearance of native shrubs,” said McLean.

The absence of native plants is not an aesthetics issue; it affects the local food chain – the pollinators and the birds that depend on them as natural food sources. In fact, research shows that “native songbirds are suffering detrimental effects from eating the berries and seeds and fruits from nonnative shrubs that have been brought in and that they say have jumped out of gardens and now spreading through the woods,” said McLean.

It’s a house of cards or a domino effect — you mess with one link and you’re going to get trouble all the way up the line and all the way down the line,” said McLean.

At the federation’s plant sale, locals will be sure to find native plants from “straight” seed, not hybridized seed. Some horticulturist use the term “native plants” but clone species or cross two species in a greenhouse to get a phenotype, or look, that they like. “They come up with a plant that did not happen naturally in nature,” said McLean, which means that they often can’t reproduce.

Flowering dogwoods will be just one of the many native trees that will be available.

“We keep within 200 miles of the nursery and we collect seed from wild population,” she said.

Whether you’re using natives or nonnatives this year, planting improves air and water quality. All plants take carbon out of the air, which is one of the primary greenhouse gases. Also, plants not only filter polluted stormwater runoff by absorbing it to grow, but their roots create resistance to the flow of runoff, aerate the soil for draining water and prevent erosion.

A wet, boggy corner on your property can be transformed into a blossoming rain garden that filters water pollution. A rain garden is a depressed area with plants that acts like a bowl collecting rain water during a storm. It is a smart yard technique that can reduce stormwater runoff pollution – the number one source of pollution in our creeks, rivers and sounds – by 90 percent or more.

The federation encourages the use of native plants when building rain gardens because many native species can handle both extremes: standing water and severe drought. And, because native plants are adapted to the soil and climate, they generally require little to no fertilizer; and the less fertilizer we use, the less fertilizer leeches into water bodies causing harmful algae blooms.

At the plant sale there will be an array of grasses, perennials, shrubs and trees to choose from, including a host of plants ideal for rain gardens. Each plant comes with a fact sheet that lists its common name, description, growing conditions, care, landscape uses and wildlife benefits. Members of the federation will receive a 10 percent discount, and others will have the opportunity to become members.

The decade-old tradition grew its roots when Randy Mason, former federation staff and current board member, suggested the idea to the executive director, Todd Miller, as a fundraiser.  He dragged Frank Tursi, a federation Coastkeeper at the time and now the editor of Coastal Review Online, along.

“Frank and I actually went to 10 or 15 nurseries that we had lined up with a U-Haul trailer truck and we filled it up with native plants,” said Mason.

The plant is a great way to meet neighbors with similar interests and to get to know the federation staff, some of the reasons that Donna Snead of Emerald Isle volunteers every year.

“The people that go there are so interesting; you have a lot of master gardeners. It’s a fun activity to be there with the coastal federation staff, the camaraderie. And it’s a way for me to pass on what I’ve learned from the Coastal Federation to other people coming in,” Snead said.

Come on by Saturday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the federation’s headquarters, 3609 N.C. 24, or about halfway between Morehead City and Swansboro. Thirty-gallon rain barrels will be back by popular demand, a great way to save money on yard irrigation or to convert into a Do-It-Yourself compost tumbler.

Scott Stewart, a landscape architect, once considered his relationship with environmental groups like “oil and water.” Then, he started working with groups like the N.C. Coastal Federation on low-impact development. “Now, we’re chocolate milk,” he says. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

RALEIGH — Hundreds of people filed into the convention center in late March for the Low Impact Development Summit to learn about an emerging approach to stormwater management that appeals to businessmen and environmentalists because it is often cheaper and better at controlling polluted runoff than ponds and other conventional methods.

Rick Catlin is certainly a fan. He is a state representative from New Hanover County and one of the meeting’s featured speakers. “It provides a way to lower the cost of development while at the same time enhancing environmental protection,” he said of low-impact development, or LID. “That’s a win-win solution for all of us.”

LID is a term used to describe an emerging land planning and engineering design approach to managing stormwater runoff. It emphasizes conservation and using a site’s natural features to protect water quality. LID techniques, such as rain gardens, are usually engineered, small-scale controls that attempt to replicate the pre-development hydrology of a site and to detain stormwater close to its source

The two-day meeting, organized by the N.C. Coastal Federation, featured presentations from academic experts, national speakers, development professionals and government leaders on LID: its benefits, its impediments and its potential. There were also panel discussions on successful and practical applications of LID in residential, commercial and public projects from the coast to the mountains.

“I heard from several attendees that this was the best environmental conference they have attended in years,” said Tracy Davis, the director of the N.C. Division of Energy, Mineral and Land Resources.

There are many reasons for people to tune in and turn on to LID. Stormwater runoff is now the largest sources of water pollution in the state. It is, for instance, the main source of the bacteria that closes shellfish beds on the coast.

Conventional methods of stormwater management usually channel runoff as quickly as possible into ugly ponds, where it’s held for a time before discharging into surrounding waters. Despite many years of regulating polluted runoff, the quality of the state’s waters continues to worsen.

The Low-Impact Development Summit in Raleigh drew an almost packed house. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

“The science and the history of watching our attacks on stormwater problems have led us to the conclusion that we truly want to mimic and design with nature,” said Charles “Pete” Peterson, a distinguished professor at the University of North Carolina’s Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City and a speaker at the summit.

Untouched coastal landscapes produce very little runoff because they have a natural ability to handle stormwater: the sandy soil filters it; plants absorb it; and heat evaporates it. A development project, then, is considered to meet the principles of LID when the volume of runoff leaving the site before and after development are equal, as defined the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Pete Peterson, a UNC researcher and professor, said past failures to control stormwater have made LID a realistic alternative. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

LID employs a suite of simple techniques, such as rain gardens, using permeable pavement and rerouting downspouts to lawns, that slow the flow of runoff and allow it to soak into the ground. Developers can eliminate ponds, maximize the amount of land to develop and save some money while improving water quality.

“The new tools and permit applications being unveiled today are a big step forward in helping to make LID projects not only the preferred environmental alternative, but also the best economic alternative for land- development projects,” said Catlin.

New chapters on LID in the state manual for approved stormwater designs were among the tools revealed for the first time at the meeting and were the fruits of a yearlong collaboration between the state, the federation, N.C. State University, development professionals, local governments and private engineering firms.

Storm-EZ, an interactive spreadsheet that can be used for both LID and conventional projects, was also discussed at the meeting. It helps the developers who choose LID to demonstrate compliance with state rules and regulations, making the permitting process much easier.

Promoters of LID say the collaborative effort to develop these tools shows how LID is appealing to business, regulatory and environmental groups. “This ability to work together to find solutions to problems is rare these days, and should be applauded,” said Catlin.

As an example of this new-found cooperation, Lauren Kolodij, deputy director of the federation, stood at the podium on stage beside, panelist Scott Stewart, a landscape architect, developer and general contractor who gave a presentation of his LID residential project in Wilmington. He and the federation, he said, used to be like “oil and water.”

“Now we’re chocolate milk,” Stewart said.

Only our imagination is limiting our application of LID, said Larry Coffman. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

A hurdle to some will be an opportunity to others. And what was a mandate to improve water quality is now driving economic development, said Larry Coffman, who is known as the pioneer of LID.

Coffman is currently working for the Maryland Department of Environmental Resources in Prince George’s County, Md., to meet water quality goals for Chesapeake Bay. He spoke of the untapped potential for public-private relationships, which would drive millions of dollars into the local economy, and a whole new world of technology.

“Urban retrofits are really going to be a driver for future generations of LID technologies,” Coffman said.

Meeting participants seemed excited about the prospects that LID offers to protect the environment and to meet a rapidly growing population.

“Not using the land is not a feasible approach,” said panelist Chris Widmayer, the vice president of investments for Regency Centers.

He worked in partnership on building a Whole Foods Market in Raleigh, which produced less runoff after development than pre-development. “The results were staggering and opened my eyes to what we have accomplished,” said Widmayer.

“I’m here to save the world,” said Stuart. “Every little bit helps.”

New possibilities and ideas were shared over the two days, like the mushroom mycelia filter strips used at a public project in Mars Hill. “The only thing limiting us is our imagination and creativity,” Coffman said.

Startled by the boat full of birders, a flock of lesser scaups take off from the White Oak River. Photo: Sam Bland

Birders on the Lady Swan spring to action. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

SWANSBORO — Everyone is waiting in attention, binoculars in hand, as the Lady Swan drifts from the mainland dock at Hammocks Beach State Park. They’ve come prepared in a uniform of rain jackets, some strapped with a chest harness. One man adjusts his camera settings, knowing his subjects move swiftly. The water is as still as the air is silent on this cool, overcast morning.

“Brown pelican!” shouts a woman from the boat. Her excitement and haste is contagious. All aboard the 40-foot boat twist like owls to spot the flying target in the distance over the estuary.

As if on cue, bulky binoculars are lifted to a dozen pair of the eyes. Through the magnified lenses, birders on the boat could appreciate the way the pelican’s shoulder blades and pale yellow head draw back on its spine in flight, allowing it to cruise above water as if on autopilot. They could admire the pelican’s warrior paint, its eyes masked in black as well as its pouch, which runs along the iconic bill like the barrel of a shotgun.

It is fitting that the first bird in sight this morning on the N.C. Coastal Federation’s White Oak River birding cruise is the brown pelican, the logo of the environmental nonprofit group. “Forty years ago brown pelicans were a rare sight,” says Joanne Powell, the local birding expert who led the excursion.

Ingesting pesticides like DDT, the pelican’s calcium metabolism was so altered that its eggshells were too thin to support the weight of the incubating babies. Eggs cracked open like omelets in the nest, and pelican populations began to plummet. Brown pelicans were removed from the federal endangered species list in 1985 after DDT was banned in 1972 — a true coastal success story.

As drab as the sky is on this Sunday March morning, the bird action is anything but. A marsh hawk bullets through the air and into the cover of a cedar tree. Also known as a harrier, the light brown hawk is easily distinguished by the white spot on its rump, says Powell.

She is identifying birds in every direction, not only their names but any other insightful tip or knowledge. “Double-crested cormorant, 1 o’clock. The double-crested cormorant is often mistaken for the common loon,” she says and goes on to describe the difference.

Powell’s expertise comes from over 40 years of observing birds in the local ecosystem and guiding bird-watching excursions for the N. C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort. And while she clutches a bird guidebook tightly in one hand, she appears to have memorized it all.

The White Oak River is as still as the air is silent on this cool, March morning. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

Joanne Powell, a local birding expert, volunteered to lead the cruise. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

On the other side of the boat there is a sandbar where gulls and terns are congregating along with lesser scaups, a blue-billed duck with a white belly. A pair of mallard ducks on the opposing beach is another indication that winter lingers. The ducks will soon leave once spring decides to stay.

Properly identifying a bird is as much fun as spotting one, or at least so it seems. “I was totally wrong and I was dubious to begin with,” says Carol Reigle of Morehead City, a longtime birder who in this instance misidentifies a bird. The birders consult each other about the color of a bird’s neck or the white on its wings. What was simply a black bird before you become a birder is now a boat-tailed grackle. A walk in the woods will never be the same once there is this shift in perspective.

Over 20 people have come from across Carteret and Onslow counties for the cruise, and their motivations vary. It’s the first time for one Emerald Isle couple who hopes to learn at least one new bird name. It’s a photography challenge for C.B. Dillworth of Greenville who’s picked up his camera club’s “spring bird” challenge, a more difficult task than expected. And for Reigle, it’s one more adventure outdoors where she never knows what wildlife she’ll see this time. The wilderness, she says, is unpredictable

“Never say never,” says Reigle. “And never stop learning.”

Her birding wisdom reflects the thoughts that inspired her hobby many years ago: “Oh, isn’t that a pretty bird? What is that beautiful thing?”

The great blue heron stands motionless as it scans for prey. Photo: Sam Bland

Navigating expertly about the hundreds of sandbars and islands, the captains point out Bear Island and Huggins Island and Jones Island just past the Swansboro bridge, which are part of the state park.

The Lady Swan moves toward the mouth of the White Oak River, which is dark as coffee from the decayed vegetation that has leached tannins into the water. The river begins about 40 miles away up in Jones County, flowing slowly along the Croatan National Forest and eventually entering the Atlantic Ocean through Bogue Inlet. Within the two-mile span from Jones Island to the ocean, a significant change in the biodiversity can be seen.

American oystercatchers are not as common as they used to be because of habitat loss, although they are found in no shortage on today’s cruise. As their name suggests, the boldly patterned birds are seen feeding on an emerged oyster bed, plucking the bivalves with their slender, blood-orange bills. A large herring gull swoops into frame.

“That’s an immature herring gull. It’s larger than mature herring gulls, kind of like baby fat,” Powell says.

Powell has noticed some changes in bird species over the years: “There used to be hundreds of glossy ibis, which have recently become a rare sighting. More commonly spotted throughout the year is the white ibis.” She has also noticed more bald eagle nests, which used to be rare.

Although no white ibis were seen this time, no birding cruise on the White Oak River is the same. As the seasons change so do the wildlife activity. The federation has three birding cruises in the spring and three in the fall. You can register for the next birding cruise Sunday, April 13, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.

CASTLE HAYNE – Like other developers, Burrows Smith used pipes, ponds and other conventional techniques to direct and control stormwater runoff on his projects. But he’s made the switch to a relatively new approach that attempts to mimic the land’s natural ability to absorb rainfall. He’s happy he did and next month will tell a big roomful of people why.

Smith is likely to tell people at the N.C. Low-Impact Development Summit in Raleigh on March 26-27 that using LID, as it’s called, is not only good for coastal waters, but it is often good for the developer by saving him money. He’ll talk about the real and perceived obstacles of implementing LID and about the money he has saved using simple techniques known to control runoff.

The two-day meeting will bring over 250 people together to share success stories on residential, commercial and public LID projects, and the latest information on LID tools and standards.

“I look at [LID] as a tool,” said Smith, who’s been specializing in the construction of new developments in New Hanover County for 30 years. Most of those years were spent building project that relied on conventional techniques to control stormwater, now the largest sources of water pollution along the coast.

Developer Burrows Smith has learned that low-impact development is good for the environment and his pocketbook. Photo: River Bluffs

In the 1980s, curb, gutters an ponds became the way to develop, Smith said. “Everyone started putting in wet ponds, and we thought that was the way to do everything,” he said.

These conventional systems have become ingrained in the designs of developers, engineers and regulators. LID is a new tool in the box. “If you’ve been using one type of screwdriver and a wrench you’re whole life, and all of a sudden I say, ‘Well, you can use these other tools to do the same deal.’ You’re going to be like, ‘No, I’m just gonna stick with my screwdriver and wrench,’” said Smith, who understands the perspective of the traditional developer.

However, conventional systems for treating stormwater runoff are not only expensive, but they concentrate pollutants and eventually direct them into coastal waters. Today thousands of acres of shellfish beds are closed across the N.C. coast because of the dangerous levels of bacteria found in stormwater.

“Although I wouldn’t call myself an environmentalist, I am very in tuned to water quality,” said Smith. He grew up along Wilmington’s Intracoastal Waterway, fishing and catching clams and oysters. As a contractor and developer he observed the ineffectiveness of the wet ponds.

Smith is working on a planned development on the Northeast Cape Fear River near Castle Hayne called River Bluffs. Smith’s 257-acre development will have 193 homes in its first phase and a 143-slip marina on the river.  The gated community will sit on a bluff overlooking the river with native a hardwood forest expanding over its rolling terrain. To put in a traditional wet pond, Smith would have to cut down swaths of the forest and pay to remove acres of sandy soil that are perfect for naturally absorbing excess rain.

When the state released new guidelines for LID in 2010, Smith was happy to redesign River Bluffs, switching from the traditional wet ponds to LID techniques. These techniques allow for stormwater runoff to flow over the natural landscape, soaking into the soil where it does not cause a problem for water quality.

More than a third of the forested land at River Bluffs will be preserved as green space. Photo: River Bluffs

The roads in River Bluffs will not have curb and gutter, a cost savings of $500,000, Smith estimates. For the developer, one of the greatest benefits of LID is its cost savings, Smith said. With LID, homeowner dues will be quite less than is typical because it’s easier to mow a park than slopes of ponds all summer long. Neither will someone have to maintain the ponds.

Rather than clear an 80-foot wide path through forest to put a stormwater pipe into the ground, the lower forested areas will double as green space for the residents and stormwater management systems. “It would look like Interstate 40 going through there where I’d cleared all these trees to lay a piece of pipe,” said Smith. “With the LID I’m not being forced to pipe water through some of my terrain.”

That’s another cost savings.

Smith is building a model house to present some of the LID techniques that the homes will feature. “I want to be able to show people an example of each to alleviate some of the fears,” he said.

Those features include pervious driveways that allow stormwater to penetrate into the ground; cisterns that collect rainwater that will then be used to automatically irrigate lawns; native plants for landscaping, which require less water and fertilizer; and downspouts that direct stormwater to grassy areas rather than to the streets. The last line of defense will be roadside swales, which will collect any polluted runoff before it has the chance to reach the river.

Making the switch from conventional development to LID is not difficult, Smith will tell summit attendees. In fact, the summit will unveil new tools that will make LID easier than ever.

In the past there were fears that the permitting rules of the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources, or DENR, prohibited or severely impeded the use of LID because state regulators had to approve each individual technique.

Mike Randall, who works for the N.C. Division of Energy, Mineral and Land Resources in stormwater permitting, said, “The problem is that all of our forms and the permitting process were geared for more conventional design.”

Model homes are going up to demonstrate the various LID methods that will be used to control runoff. Photo: River Bluffs

Until recently, filling out supplemental forms for a couple of methods wasn’t a big deal. For 27 varying methods, however, “It would require [developers/engineers] under the existing process to submit 20 to 35 supplement forms each, which are 4 or 5 pages long, along with a maintenance agreement and some soil samples for each one of those,” Randall said.

Over the last few years, local governments, the N.C. Coastal Federation and DENR have been developing tools that simplify the permitting process. At the summit, Randall will talk about some of these new standards and tools, like StormEZ, an interactive spreadsheet that allows engineers to demonstrate compliance to rules and regulations in one form instead of potentially 30.

“They just enter what they know about the project and let the form do the rest of the work for them,” said Randall.

While the state will be using StormEZ for all its projects, local governments have the choice of adopting it. Randall hopes they will.

“We’re hoping that it will simplify [the permitting process] so that if you’re a developer you don’t have to worry whether you’re submitting one form to the state and a different one to the local governments,” Randall said. “But that will be a decision that the local governments have to make.”

The meeting in Raleigh will be a way to learn about the benefits of LID. It’s open to everyone, and there will be plenty of experts making presentations, sponsoring displays and answering questions.

“I hope this summit will serve as a springboard for the widespread use of LID, not only at the coast but across the state,” said Lauren Kolodij, deputy director of the federation.

WILMINGTON – A young woman’s idea to build a rain garden to help two impaired coastal creeks has now become a collaborative effort among two universities, two nonprofit groups, a local business and the city.

“This project is important to the City of Wilmington as there is a major push to address the health of Hewletts and Bradley creeks,” said Roger Shew, a professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, one of the partners.

The tidal creeks are on the federal “black list” of sorts for polluted waters, known as the 303(d) list. It’s named after the section in the federal Clean Water Act that requires states to periodically list waterways that no longer meet water-quality standards and then come up with plans to restore them. The state recently released its draft 2014 list.

Hewletts and Bradley are on the list because they’ve been polluted to the point where harvesting oysters and clams is no longer allowed because of high levels of bacteria. The culprit is polluted stormwater runoff, the number one cause of water quality impairment along the N.C. coast.

The N.C. Coastal Federation has been working in the Bradley Creek watershed for years. Here, the federation is helping students and staff at Bradley Creek Elementary School build a rain garden on the school’s campus.

In the middle of the two is Tidal Creek Food Co-op, Wilmington’s cooperative food market. Like so many other businesses, the store has two parking lots. A grassy strip of land intersects the two where a deck was built. Parking lots, rooftops, roads and the like are considered “impervious surfaces” because they prevent rain from soaking into the ground. During a storm, rain rushes from the parking lots into the grassy area, which is unable to absorb the large volume of water. The now contaminated runoff floods onto Oleander Drive, where it drains into a grate on the roadside.

“Once that water gets into the stormwater system, it goes straight to Hewletts Creek and there’s no filtration,” explained Erin Carey, Wilmington’s watershed coordinator. “There’s no treatment of that water at all.”

The rain garden project began in 2011 with a phone call to Kathryn Waple, a Tidal Creek employee. Waple has short curly hair, a bright smile and a baby on the way. Three years ago she didn’t know much about rain gardens or watershed restoration.

Sean Ahlum, chair of the Surfrider Foundation, called to ask if Waple would spearhead the foundation’s “Ocean Friendly Garden” program in Wilmington. She agreed. “I thought it would be a good fit because I had this experience organizing a community garden downtown on Castle Street,” said Waple.

The Surfrider Foundation is an international non-profit organization that works to protect the world’s oceans and beaches through a grassroots activist network. Their “Ocean Friendly Garden” program aims to educate people about the benefits of maintaining one’s yard in a way that reduces the ocean’s primary source of pollution.

“There are just better ways to handle your yard than to have golf course, manicured, super-neon green grass that we see around here so much,” said Ahlum.

Installing rain gardens and using native plants are two methods of controlling stormwater pollution. A rain garden functions as a bowl collecting polluted stormwater runoff, which then filters into the soil where it does not cause a problem for water quality. Native plants not only drink up the water but their roots create resistance to the flow, prevent erosion and aerate the soil for draining water. And native plants, already conditioned to the environment, require less fertilizer and water to grow.

Roger Shew

Surfrider Foundation was looking for a “centerpiece educational garden” in Wilmington. Waple began by identifying an area in her community suitable for the project. She didn’t have to look far. The co-op seemed like an ideal location because its runoff affected both creeks.

“It’s a place where we can show people how they can do stormwater retention, native gardening, in an easy, low-impact way that will have a significant impact on the stormwater,” said Waple.

Craig Harris, the store’s general manager, jumped right on board. “Our namesake and where we live, it just makes total sense,” he said. “If you think about what the co-op is as opposed to your traditional for-profit, part of our mission and values is supporting the community and supporting the environment. So when they talk about something that we could do literally at our store that would help, there really wasn’t any question in my mind.”

In the project’s preliminary stages, two UNCW professors, Shew and Anthony Snider, supported the effort to have the rain garden installed as a learning opportunity for their students, people in the community and city officials.

“I thought it was a great opportunity for UNCW to partner with a business, the City of Wilmington Stormwater Services and non-profits to do both something good for our watersheds and to provide an educational benefit to the community,” said Shew.

The next hurdles were convincing UNCW, which owned the grassy area outside of Tidal Creek, that it was a valuable cause and worth investing in and then to find an engineer to design the garden.

In November of 2012, Wilmington hired Erin Carey to implement the Bradley and Hewletts Creeks Watershed Restoration Plan. The plan’s approach to restoring water quality focuses on reducing the volume of stormwater runoff reaching coastal waters—rather than addressing pollution sources such as pet waste—with the use of rain gardens, and other methods.

“When Erin got on board, she helped tie everything together. That’s when it really started moving forward,” said Waple.

Once UNCW’s administration gave permission to use the land, Carey reached out to Bill Hunt at N.C. State University, an internationally recognized stormwater engineer.

“When I saw the site, I realized how good a location this was for a stormwater management facility, meaning that the design would be simple enough that a student team with limited experience could do a good job,” said Hunt.

He assigned his design class the task of designing the rain garden for their senior project.

Shew also involved his environmental science students by having them conduct tests on the site and share the results with the NCSU students. The professor intends to continue having a class design and monitor the site.

The N.C. Coastal Federation and Surfrider are helping fund the project. Shew and Snider also received a grant from the Center of Teaching Excellence at UNCW to support the project.

“This will be a major achievement for us and the City of Wilmington as we try to get more businesses and residents to adopt methods for reducing stormwater runoff,” Shew said.

The NCSU students finished the engineering design last fall. Construction of the garden could begin this spring.

“The spring is a great time because people are thinking about their yard; they’re starting to get back outside,” Carey said, “and it’s a great time to reach out to people to tell them about native plants, tell them about rain gardens, explain about rerouting downspouts.”

Not every stormwater control method requires an engineer. Anyone can reroute her downspout or plant a rain garden and play an important role in restoring coastal water quality. In fact, a communitywide effort is the only way to restore our coast.

“It’s that idea that you just contribute what you can, when you can, and something good happens because of it,” said Waple. “If everybody is doing a little bit then nobody is burning themselves out trying to do it all.”

LELAND– She may sit on the board of directors for a Southern environmental group, but she’s a New Yorker through and through, and you won’t catch Veronica Carter sleeping outdoors by choice.

“I believe that if God wanted us to live outdoors then he wouldn’t have let us create houses,” she said.

However, try to put a landfill anywhere near her backyard and then lie about the poisons you’ll put there, and Veronica Carter will be quick to call you out.

That’s what she did a few years ago when Hugo Neu announced plans for a huge recycling dump in Navassa, a predominantly black community in Brunswick County. Carter led the opposition that successfully pushed a bill through the N.C. General Assembly that stopped that landfill and three others from being built throughout Eastern North Carolina.

Veronica Carter now

Veronica as an Army major

“I was appalled when I found out that everyone of these mega landfills was being placed in minority communities,” said Carter.

The N.C. Coastal Federation soon came calling, inviting Carter to join its board of directors. She did because she wanted to prevent other companies from taking advantage of economically depressed communities.

Carter’s fearlessness in standing up to a corporate giant doesn’t surprise those who know her. This is a woman who spent 20 years in the Army, when female soldiers were still an oddity, and two years in war-torn African countries working for the United Nations.

While she says she enjoys the finer things in life, like a seafood diner at Catch restaurant in Wilmington, she has never been a “for-profit kind of gal.” “I was more driven to that gratification and satisfaction—feeling that I’d done something good for someone else,” she said. “I’ve been very blessed and I think I have to give back.”

Her grandfathers were coal miners in West Virginia who never finished grade school. Carter’s parents wanted their only daughter to go to college. A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., Carter entered Fordham University in the Bronx in 1977 to study political science.

While there, Carter looked for ways to help her parents pay for college. An enticing postcard she received in the mail one day inspired her to join the university’s Reserve Officer Training Corps, or ROTC. The Army would help with her education if Carter committed to an Army career after graduation.

“The bright person that I am thought it better to be an officer than to be a private, and I can do this while I’m going to college,” she said.

After a ROTC camping trip in pup tents during a pouring rain, her new Timberland boots covered in mud, she was hooked, much to her mother’s surprise. Finishing her bachelor’s degree as a distinguished military graduate, Carter was commissioned in 1981 as a second lieutenant in the Army. “It was kind of saying, ‘We figured you’ll be here for 20 years,’” she said.

In the Army at the time, the highest rank a woman held in her branch was major and there were only two of them. Without many female role models in the upper ranks, soldiers like Carter mostly fumbled their way through the instances of degrading profanity or sexual harassment.

She was first assigned to ordnance, which deals with logistics. “Unbeknownst to me, and probably the Army at the time, I was pretty good at logistics but I didn’t know what logistics was,” said Carter.

Logistic officers address the army’s needs in transportation, ammunition, maintenance, supplies and services. Whether or not it’s a time of war, tanks need to be repaired, refueled and rearmed. Soldiers have to fed, clothed and moved around. Soldiers like Carter made sure all the parts and clothing, food and fuel, bullets and bombs were where they were supposed to be.

	While a student at Fordham University in the mid-1970s, Veronica Carter, left, joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps to help pay for college.As a major in the Army years later, Veronica poses with the school’s ROTC unit.

Carter remained in the army and received a master’s degree in public administration from Troy State University in 1989. Seven years later, she was assigned as a professor of military science and the department chair of military science at Fordham’s College of Business Administration. She also taught courses on problem-solving, decision-making and interpersonal communications as an adjunct professor at Fordham and New York University.

After retiring as a major in 2001, Carter became a full-time peacemaker when she took job as a logistics officer for the UN headquarters focusing on peacekeeping in Africa. After two years, she decided it was time to help her aging father move out of Brooklyn. Her mother had died in 2002.

Leland became their new home, nestled between Camp Lejeune and Fort Bragg and not too far from an aunt in Wilmington. While Carter had moved 11 times in the last 20 years, it was her father’s first move in 55 years and also the first without his wife. “I probably don’t need to work right away,” Carter said.

One day her father came home with a leaflet from the Piggly Wiggly about Hugo Neu’s plans to put a giant landfill five miles from their home.

Challenged over the radio by a condescending Hugo Neu spokesperson, Carter volunteered to visit the site where the company guy made the mistake of showing a retired army officer a topographic map and lying about the water in the area.

“Well, that’s interesting,” Carter told the Hugo Neu man as she pointed to the map, “because there’s a little lake right there. There’s a creek. This is marsh land here. Looks like from the contour intervals that we’re about 10 to 14 feet above sea level. How deep are your liners going to be because I’m thinking pretty soon you’re going to hit the water table?”

“I looked at him like I know I don’t have Booboo the fool tattooed on my forehead,” she now says.

Veronica Carter talks to a reporter during a rally against the proposed Titan cement plant near Wilmington.

Carter not only returned home to join the opposition, she became the political chair and the president of the grassroots group, Cape Fear Citizens for a Safe Environment. The group sued Hugo Neu for a copy of the business agreement. With that in hand, it reached out to the N.C. Coastal Federation for help. “We were looking for people who could help us take some of the technical data that we had gotten and explain it,” Carter said.

Federation lobbyist, the late Jim Stephenson, and coastal advocate Mike Giles, were instrumental in teaching the group how to work the halls of the legislature with a new bill. They also teamed them up with the six other grassroots groups representing other economically deprived, minority communities fighting huge landfills.

In 2007, Carter helped pass the Solid Waste Management Act, which made it economically undesirable for the Hugo Neu to build the landfill. “That law was created to deter all the tentative mega landfills from being developed at the time,” Carter said.

Shortly after the federation invited Carter to join its board of directors, Carter was also appointed by Gov. Mike Easley to the Coastal Resources Commission, or CRC, which sets coastal development rules. She was at the time the only African- American on the commission. Her term expired in 2012.

Carter also serves on the board of directors for Brunswick Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit that builds houses in partnership with people in need.

When she retired, Carter was one of 63 female majors in her branch of the Army. She led the pack from the front, being the only woman in her platoon. Nine knee surgeries, two shoulder surgeries and an abdominal surgery later, she takes it easy in her Leland community where she’s lived now for 10 years. “It’s kind of nice to finally feel like, ‘Ok, this is home,’” she said.

OCEAN — Today more than 63,000 acres of shellfish and swimming waters in coastal North Carolina are legally impaired because of polluted stormwater runoff. It wasn’t always that way.

Changes to the landscape over the last 40 years to create fields for agriculture and highways, shopping centers and subdivisions for cities and towns have changed the way water moves across the surface of the ground, or what a scientist might call the natural hydrology. Unable to penetrate asphalt and concrete, rain water runs across these hard, impervious surfaces. Or it drains into ditches dug along farm fields. Either way, this stormwater collects bacteria before draining into surrounding bodies of water. The volume and rate of stormwater runoff have dramatically increased, bringing unacceptable levels of bacteria into coastal waters.

Source: National Institute of Building Sciences

This is not a problem unique to North Carolina. Many coastal communities throughout the United States are facing the same water-quality impairments. In response, the N.C. Coastal Federation has been working over the last year on an online Watershed Restoration Planning Guidebook.

Soon to be released, the guidebook is the first of its kind to provide clear, detailed guidance to local governments on how to develop a watershed restoration plan that improves water quality by reducing the volume of stormwater runoff. The concept is relatively new and may expedite restoration efforts at a lower cost.

While it presents a method and philosophy that could be adapted to coastal watersheds throughout the country, the guidebook provides resources specific to North Carolina. Also, it targets those smaller portions of watersheds that flow directly into shellfish or swimming waters. By focusing on smaller drainage areas, local and state governments can make smaller changes for lower costs. The result can have significant benefits, including the reopening of closed shellfish waters and a decrease in swimming advisories.

A group of nine graduate students interning with the federation’s Coastal Advocacy Institute put together the first draft last summer under the direction of Ana Zivanovic-Nenadovic, the federation’s program and policy analyst.

“This is one of the first efforts to put numerical value to the volume of stormwater reduction needed for the improvement of water quality,” she said.

Traditionally, methods for reducing the amount of pollutants in impaired waters have been to either eliminate the sources of bacteria—a feat that is nearly impossible given that most of it comes from wildlife and pet waste—or expensive stormwater treatments at the end of pipes that remove contaminants before water is released into water bodies.

The federal Clean Water Act requires that states set goals to reduce pollutants to impaired waters. States attempt to do that by calculating what the law calls the “total maximum daily load,” or TMDL, which is simply the maximum amount of a pollutant that a water body can receive and still safely meet water quality standards.

Ana Zivanovic-Nenadovic

Under the law, states are also required to develop a plan for each impaired water body that lays out how the TMDL will be reached. However, a TMDL study and restoration plan can cost thousands of dollars and take several years to complete.

Rather than treating or removing bacteria from stormwater runoff or focusing on the sources of contamination, the method outlined in the federation’s guidebook aims to reduce the transport of bacteria by cutting the volume of stormwater runoff. If polluted stormwater runoff stays on land, the bacteria never reach coastal waters.

Coastal communities can do this by mimicking the natural surface water hydrology; or in other words, keeping stormwater on land where it does not cause a problem for water quality. Very little storm runoff drains into surface waters on a natural coastal landscape. Much of it soaks into the sandy soil instead. Depending on the type of development and soil composition, there are different methods that can be used to mimic this natural process.

“In the case of residential developments, low-impact development is the best solution,” said Zivanovic-Nenadovic.

These types of techniques are simple and cost-efficient—from redirecting a downspout from facing the driveway to facing the lawn, to installing rain barrels and cisterns that collect rainwater. (You can learn more about these methods in the federation’s Smart Yards booklet.)

The federation initially developed and implemented this method in three watershed restoration plans: White Oak River in Onslow and Carteret counties, Lockwoods Folly River in Brunswick County, and Bradley and Hewlett’s creeks in New Hanover County. These projects confirmed that one of the best ways to restore water quality was to reduce the volume of stormwater runoff. The method was further tested and refined in three other watersheds: Howe Creek in Wilmington, Williston Creek near Beaufort, and Mattamuskeet Drainage Association in Hyde County. In fact, the guidebook is an outgrowth of the EPA grants the federation received to implement the watershed restoration plans.

Rain barrels can be inexpensive ways to control stormwater at home. Photo: Rain Solutions

The basis of the watershed restoration plan is the volume reduction goal—the number of gallons of stormwater runoff that needs to be reduced in order to restore water quality. “We look back at when the hydrologic changes started and whether they are caused by residential development, agricultural conversion or something else; and they are different for each case,” said Zivanovic-Nenadovic.

Using aerial photography and information about soils, development history and water quality, engineers can determine a quantifiable goal by creating a hydrograph, which shows the flow rate of water over time.

“This is a long-term management approach and it will take years for the water quality to be restored, just as it took years for it to be degraded. We are still working on the case studies, but some preliminary assessments of the stormwater volume reductions show that projected volume reductions will not only be achieved but also surpassed with the restoration efforts we have in one of the three case study sites,” said Zivanovic-Nenadovic.

The volume reduction goal can be used instead of a TMDL. In fact, the guidebook frequently references the nine elements of a plan required by the EPA so that the plan can serve in place of a TMDL and qualify for federal grants.

Even if a TMDL has already been completed, the guidebook can complement restoration efforts by presenting strategies to control non-point source pollution, such as runoff from driveways. Also, the guidebook can be effective for those who want to take proactive steps in maintaining water quality for water bodies that were not considered legally impaired when the Clean Water Act was established in 1975.

The guidebook is in its final revisions and will soon appear publicly on the federation’s web site. It will be presented at various conferences including the N.C. Low-Impact Development Conference in Raleigh in March.

Last of two parts

BOLIVIA – Steve Stone took a chance in 2006 and invited the “enemy” down to Brunswick County.

That’s what many on the Brunswick County Board of Commissioners thought of the N.C. Coastal Federation. That bunch of environmental radicals wanted to stop all development and turn everything back over to the ‘gators and woodpeckers.

Rapid growth in the county was polluting its rivers and streams. Stone, the county’s deputy manager, figured the federation would know something about pollution.

Steve Stone

“One of the things I remember saying to our board members privately was that I thought we had a lot more in common with the Coastal Federation then we had differences,” said Stone. “It seemed to me that both the commissioners and the Coastal Federation wanted the environment, the water quality, the things that were attracting people to Brunswick County; they both wanted those things to stay in place.”

Stone invited Todd Miller, the federation’s executive director, and Lauren Kolodij, its deputy director, to a meeting with county officials to discuss the concerns the federation had with South Brunswick Water and Sewer Authority, then a private company that the federation had sued.

“[The meeting] sort of opened the door to not only talking at each other but with each other,” said Miller. “[Stone] knows how to connect the dots between the people or interests that are involved in dealing with these issues.”

Stone listened to people. That impressed Kolodij. “He’s open to ideas. He’s very respectful of people. He cares about peoples’ views and he makes people realize that we all have more in common,” she said.

Stone walked out into the parking lot with Miller and Kolodij after the meeting and spent nearly an hour encouraging them to work more with the county and not just be adversaries.

To be in public service, Stone said, “You really need to be tolerant of people who have views that differ from your own.”

Shortly after their initial meeting, Miller contacted Stone about Brunswick County’s eligibility for a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to fund a project to restore a watershed in the county.

“There were some people in the development community that had what I still believe to be an incorrect image of what the Coastal Federation stands for and an even more negative image of what United States EPA is there for,” Stone said. “The idea of having a federally funded grant operating in Brunswick County really created some concern on their part. I think some people even suggested to some of the board members that I didn’t need to be working here.”

Stone worked hard to win the commissioners over, Kolodij remembered. EPA in 2007 awarded the grant for the Lockwoods Folly Watershed Project. Partners included the former enemy, the N.C. Coastal Federation. The goal was to develop strategies to maintain and restore water quality in the watershed. As the grant manager, Stone was directly involved in making sure the county lived up to its expectations.

With more shellfish beds closing in the 153-square-mile watershed in the heart of Brunswick County, residents feared that the river was showing signs of deterioration.

Brunswick’s county commissioners appointed an eight-member Lockwoods Folly River Watershed Roundtable, a diverse group of stakeholders that meet monthly to develop strategies to maintain and restore the water quality. Stone was there for administrative support and to encourage everyone to stay involved and work together.

The grant, which ran through 2010, involved water quality testing for fecal coliform bacteria and total suspended solids. Trained volunteers did the bulk of the field work by taking samples and recording environmental conditions at the sampling sites. An engineering firm used the results to develop a computer model that identified bacteria sources and determined how the pollution is getting in the river.

The results were alarming. The state’s bacteria standard for safely consuming shellfish is 14 fecal coliform colonies per 100 milliliters of water, the test results showed an average of 350 to more than 1,000 colonies. They found that more than 55 percent of the river was closed permanently or temporarily to shellfishing because of high bacteria levels. That’s a three-fold increase since 1980.

Polluted runoff was the culprit, according to the study. It found that bacteria entering the river with each rain must be reduced as much as 84 percent if the river is to once again meet state water standards for shellfishing.

The grant also included developing methods to control stormwater for public education and involvement by the community and local officials for an overall strategy to address the stormwater issues in the river.

Residents of Winding River Plantation along the Lockwoods Folly River build a rain garden in their neighborhood. Such LID measures were recommended by a study to reduce stormwater pollution.

After the commissioners adopted the strategies, the county, the federation and others created a low-impact development, or LID, manual and stormwater calculation tool for developers to manage stormwater runoff from new development and redevelopment.

The restoration plan largely stressed the need to promote and implement LID so that as much stormwater as possible soaks into the ground where it falls. This meant that 94 percent of developed land would need to be targeted for stormwater retrofits. LID not only leads to improved water quality but in many cases is less expensive for developers than conventional pipes and ponds.

“You talk about a true win-win,” said Stone.

His work with the federation has been on-going. Since the project, Brunswick County and the federation have received more grants to work on LID programs and projects together.

“[The grant] started the era of much cooperation between the Coastal Federation and local government in southeastern North Carolina,” said Miller.

Brunswick County was the first local government that the federation worked with on LID, a collaboration that has since been showcased at national and international LID conferences.

“Steve is the one that kind of made it all happen,” said Kolodij. “He steers the ship from under the deck.”

First of two parts

BOLIVIA — You can hear the country in his voice. His slow and deliberate southern drawl suggests an upbringing on a tobacco farm, a childhood in a country church and a crossroad’s hamlet.

Sitting behind a large office desk, however, wearing a dress shirt with a pen in his pocket and an oversized Carolina-blue gem on his class ring, Steve Stone’s suggests otherwise. This farmer boy now helps run one of the fastest-growing counties in the country.

Stone first became the deputy county manager at the beginning of the new millennium when Brunswick County was the 14th-fastest growing county in the nation. He took what was considered an unusual step at the time by partnering with an environmental group to promote a more natural way to control stormwater, called low-impact development, or LID, and restore the county’s water quality.

LID was all pretty new back then. But what made the move particularly unorthodox was the group Stone chose to align with. County commissioners considered the N.C. Coastal Federation to be their opposition.

“I’ll be honest,” Stone said, “at least some of the elected officials in Brunswick County and some development interests really felt that the Coastal Federation was sort of the county’s enemy, that the Coastal Federation was opposed to development.”

The quickly urbanizing population of Brunswick County was fueling the need for a centralized sewer system. The federation was opposed to the idea because, without proper controls, the resulting high-density development would increase the flow of stormwater runoff and pollute the county’s already impaired streams.

“While I don’t have a strong science background I had enough understanding to know that, yeah, there are right ways and wrong ways to develop areas,” said Stone.

Stone is a moderate man and he says he is not partisan in any way. His connection to the environment, he says, stems from his childhood. Growing up on a 250-acre tobacco farm, Stone had seen first-hand as a boy how agricultural and development practices can harm the land and water.

The farm he grew up on was just outside of Orrum, a little place south of Lumberton in Robeson County. He spent summers helping his dad on the farm, pulling out tobacco from the wooden slides and stacking it on tables to be strung and dried. In the 1960s and ‘70s tobacco farming was very labor-intensive work, and his father worked round the clock. His mother worked for the railroad.

Orrum had a little country store and gas station where folks congregated to chat about politics and whatever else was going on. The Stone family attended a conservative southern Baptist church about 2.5 miles from the house.

“Everybody knew everybody else and everybody tended to everybody else’s business,” said Stone.

Until junior high his family shared a party line telephone with seven other people, and Stone would often have to wait his turn while the women shared community news and gossip.

Stone decided at an early age that he did not want to be a tobacco farmer. “When I was in the 8^th grade,” he said, “I told my parents that I loved them to death but that I did not want to take over the farm, that I intended to go to college at Carolina, and that I probably would not be coming back to Robeson County.”

By the 1960s when integration reached the county, Stone had started taking notice of the segregation around him. He can close his eyes and still picture the sign in the Lumberton movie theatre lobby that read “balcony for colored.” 

In Orrum where Steve Stone grew up the country store was the community gathering spot.

“That seemed really strange to me because on farms you worked with people of other races. That’s just how it was,” said Stone. “For as long as I can remember I pretty much just thought people were people.”

Robeson County is the largest and most ethnically diverse county in North Carolina. Both Lumbee Native Americans and African Americans worked on the Stone farm.

Stone entered the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1975, and a new world opened to him. Chapel Hill broadened Stone’s views of the world and what people considered to be critical problems: “I didn’t realize how relatively wealthy Americans were until I was in college,” he said. “I started to study other cultures. The poorest Americans are still wealthier than so many hundreds of millions of people around the world. It sort of reframed my perspective.”

Stone’s mother wasn’t pleased to learn that Stone chose a black roommate his sophomore year in college. His father quickly riled when Stone came home saying things like, “Jesus was the first socialist.” He did it partly to goad his father.

The way the university facilitated education for thousands of students and faculty members was a world apart from his high school class of 96 students. “It just seemed that things around me—that collaboration was a much more effective tool than separation,” said Stone, an observation that would later shape Stone’s character and his management style.

Stone was studying recreational administration at Chapel Hill, although he discovered during his senior internship that he was more interested in what was going on in city hall then he was in the parks.

Growing up, Stone was somewhat cynical of government. As a boy he watched the Vietnam War and the Watergate hearings unfold on TV in his high school history class. The killing of four antiwar activists at Kent State University in 1970 rocked Stone.

“Even at 13 and a half [years old], I was like, ‘Why on earth would national guardsmen be shooting college students?’ That was just completely crazy to me,” he said. “And, I guess if there was a moment that changed my political perspective, it was that.”

The killing of antiwar activists at Kent State University in 1970 had a profound effect on Steve Stone.

After getting his bachelor’s degree, Stone immediately re-enrolled at Carolina for a master’s in public administration.  

He never had to leave the ninth floor of the Granville West Tower dormitory. Most of the young men who came to live on his floor stayed for many years, forming an affection like that of a brotherhood.

“With anyone’s college experience you don’t necessarily want to say the very first thing that pops in your mind,” said Kevin Brown, another small-town guy who was one of Stone’s best friends from college.

“Never met a soul that would have a bad word to say about Steve,” Brown said. “He was always responsible, always willing to lend a hand; he knew the right thing to do, and he did it.”

The group still meets for a reunion every year around a home game during the football season.

With his master’s degree nearly completed, Stone met Susan, his wife to be, in August 1984. She was a nurse at a convalescence center in Chapel Hill where Stone’s aunt was a resident. Things moved quickly. They were engaged in December and married the next spring.

The couple has nine children, including two from Susan’s previous marriage and three adopted from an orphanage in Brazil. 

Outside of his home life, Stone oversees over a dozen county departments, including all those listed under the departments of Operations Services, Land and Development Services, Technology and Community Services.

“When you’re a generalist manager overseeing so many diverse areas as I do, the management has to ebb and flow. You’re not equally committed to every department at the same time,” said Stone.

Friday: Partnering with the N.C. Coastal Federation

Volunteers start creating a rain garden in front of the Habitat for Humanity house.

LELAND – A little rain didn’t keep volunteers from helping the Alvarez family plant native plants and build rain gardens at their new Habitat for Humanity home. Not only did it ease landscaping by softening the soil, but the rain was symbolic of what the volunteers were doing: Helping to preserve and restore a river by reducing the amount of polluted runoff that flowed into it.

Native plants and rain gardens are just two of the simple and inexpensive stormwater management techniques known as low-impact development, or LID. As a part of their ongoing work in Brunswick County to help restore the Lockwoods Folly watershed, the N.C. Coastal Federation partnered with Brunswick Habitat for Humanity to retrofit and implement LID designs at two housing projects.

“We want to work with all different types of groups to show that LID can be done anywhere, on small residential houses up to commercial buildings,” said Lauren Kolodij, deputy director of the federation.

Habitat for Humanity is a non-denominational Christian organization with a vision for a world where everyone has a decent and affordable place to live. Founded locally in 1994, the Brunswick affiliate has built over 40 homes for families with small children, single parents and the disabled. Homes are built by volunteers using tax-deductible donations and sold to families with no-interest loans. Homeowners not only help build their own house but the homes of others before every receiving the key to their front door.

Veronica Carter and homeowner Jose Alvarez are all smiles after a hard day’s work.

Another depression that will become a rain garden starts to take shape.

“I like the idea that the homeowners are involved. They have to put some sweat equity in it; they have to qualify and pay the mortgage. So it’s a hand-up rather than a hand-out,” said volunteer Al Hight, New Hanover county extension director for the N.C. Cooperative Extension.

Over a dozen volunteers showed up last month to show their support and do their goodwill under the wet weather. The group included students from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, volunteers from Habitat for Humanity and the federation, members of the New Hanover and Brunswick counties Cooperative Extension offices, the Coast Guard and experts on plants and landscaping techniques in the region.

“I think it’s important to always give something back,” said Hight, who has worked for the extension for the last 10 years. He was also a landscape contractor and “an old farm boy” in another life, he says.

“A lot of time it’s stuff that I know how to do a lot better than some other people know how to do, so I feel like it’s imperative that I help out, you know?” he said.

Veronica Carter, who serves on the board of both Brunswick Habitat for Humanity and the federation, rallied the group of volunteers. “We want to help people when they get affordable houses, like the Alvarezes will hopefully get in a few days now, be able to sustain their neighborhood and the aquifers and themselves because they’re going to be able to reuse some of the rainwater that we collect here today.”

Rainwater harvesting systems, like a rain barrel or cistern, can be used to collect stormwater from a downspout and use later to water the garden. Using native plants is another LID technique. Native plants require less effort to grow and less money to maintain because they’re conditioned to living in the coastal environment, unlike ornamental, nonnatives that may require fertilizers and heavy irrigation.

Directing volunteers on Habitat’s behalf was Linda Rudick, the volunteer landscape coordinator for the last 10 years. “I consider the landscape as the jewelry to finish the Habitat house,” Rudick said.

Since undertaking the LID project, she’s widened the scope of her landscaping to include native plants and rain gardens.

A rain garden is a depressed area that acts as a bowl collecting stormwater from the areas of higher elevation in the yard. Rain gardens can reduce polluted runoff from a site by 90 percent or more. Plants in a rain garden not only use the water to grow, but their roots create resistance to the flow, prevent erosion and aerate the soil for draining water.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2007 funded a three-year study in the watershed that revealed the need to reduce the flow of stormwater from all land contributing to surface runoff. Specifically, 94 percent of developed land in the watershed needed to be targeted for stormwater retrofits.

“The only way to protect and restore coastal water quality is to maintain or mimic the natural hydrology. And the only way to really accomplish that is to deal with stormwater on a lot-by-lot basis,” said Kolodij.

Native plants will help absorb stormwater.

The N.C. Cooperative Extension has been working with the federation for the last decade on the Lockwoods Folly Watershed restoration project. The two groups have similar goals, Hight said.

“As far as trying to do things that help us clean up surface waters, keep our environment in good shape so that we can keep a healthy population and healthy wildlife and good tourism,” he said.

An EPA grant paid for the LID project and partnership with Habitat for Humanity. The federation hopes that it will serve as a model for future Habitat housing projects and demonstrate to the community that LID techniques can be affordable for any and all homeowners.

“We’re going to use this blueprint to give to Habitat and say, ‘Guys, incorporate this in the rest of what you do,’” said Carter.

Dee Antonio, executive director of Brunswick Habitat for Humanity, said she hoped to continue using LID in other projects. However, the labor required to build rain gardens will depend on volunteers, she said.

“Most of our volunteers are retired people in their 60s and some of them into their 70s so I think we’ll struggle each time we have a project to be able to find folks to do those basins,” Antonio said.

Last of two parts

The old pontoon bridge once served as a vital link between Sunset Beach and the mainland. It has been moved and preserved as an important connection to Sunset’s past. Photos: Old Bridge Preservation Society

SUNSET BEACH – The old pontoon swing bridge that opened on the hour every hour since 1958 is the symbol of Sunset Beach. Though replaced a few years ago by a high-rise, concrete monstrosity, the quaint little bridge has been preserved and still occupies a special place in the history of a young town and in the hearts of its inhabitants.

Its image can still be found on t-shirts, coffee mugs, baseball caps, flags and license plates. And though it no longer serves as a vital transportation link, the old bridge is still an important connection to the past.

“The Town of Sunset Beach is the mainland and the island, which distinguishes us and gives us an identity. That bridge is a connection in more than just the literal sense,” said Ann Bokelman, one of the founders of the Old Bridge Preservation Society.

She will talk about the bridge and its importance in the history of Sunset Beach on Dec. 10 at the Museum of Coastal Carolina in nearby Ocean Isle Beach.

For nearly three decades, Sunset Beach residents debated whether or not to replace the old bridge with a new high-rise bridge. Proponents worried about the safety of the old bridge or grew tired of the long waits to get across and the frequent break downs. Others feared that a high-rise bridge would encourage faster development and jeopardize the island’s isolation and tranquility.

When they learned that the N.C. Department of Transportation would demolish the iconic swing bridge and replace it with $31 million high-rise bridge, Bokelman and two other Sunset Beach women fought unsuccessfully to persuade the town to save it. In 2010, with the new bridge nearly completed, the women formed the Old Bridge Preservation Society and bought the bridge for $1.

Sunset Beach was only incorporated in 1963, making it a very young town that is celebrating its 50^th anniversary this year. There are no 200 year-old buildings or famous historic battlegrounds. The old pontoon bridge, then, serves an important piece of history.

Mannon Gore

In 1955 Mannon Gore, a farmer, bought the island Bald Beach and renamed it Sunset Beach because he loved watching the sunsets from there.

“Dad had a great talent and a great vision,” said his son Ed Gore.

Although he never had any formal education, Gore had a genius for looking at something and understanding how it worked. “He would find a way, the poor man’s way,” noted his son.

Gore first built a small dredge that he called the Little Dawn, which he modeled after the much larger dredge that he served on while in the Coast Guard. He used Little Dawn to build two causeways, one on the island and the other on the mainland. Then he engineered World War II surplus barges so that they swung like a door, opening and closing the Intracoastal Waterway and connecting the two causeways.

“It was an antique thing that was doing the job that a multi-million dollar bridge would’ve done,” said Ed Gore.

Once the bridge was built in 1958 the island became accessible. Gore began selling lots. “Dad made sure that there would be no large commercial district on the beach,” said Ed Gore.

To this day Sunset Beach remains an unspoiled beach and a residential family town, just as Gore had originally envisioned.

Gore lived by the waterway close to the bridge, which he left in the open position so that it didn’t obstruct the waterway. When a motorist wanted to cross the bridge he would honk his horn or at night flash his headlights. “Mr. Gore would come out and operate the bridge, sometimes in his bathrobe flapping in the breeze and probably sometimes in the middle of dinner too, I am told,” said Bokelman.

Mannon Gore built the Little Dawn so that he could build a bridge to the island he bought and called Sunset Beach. Photo courtesy of Ed Gore

In the early 1960s, the state built a replacement bridge using Gore’s basic design except that it was a pontoon that floated. The one-lane bridge that spanned 110 feet had a wooden center section and two metal ramps on either side that would connect to the causeways and accommodate for the level of the rising and falling tides.

“One of those things that people really liked about going over the bridge is that you were close to the water, you were close to the marsh, you could see everything. Going across the bridge the tires would make this ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump sound,” said Bokelman.

The sound earned the old bridge its reputation as the heartbeat of Sunset Beach.

A small, white tender’s house stood in the middle of the pontoon bridge. It contained a large diesel engine that powered three winches: one to pull the bridge open, one to pull it closed and one to operate the counterweights. The last thing the bridge tender did was sink the cables. Then, he would sound a siren.

“He sounded one when he was getting ready to open and let the boats go through; and then he sounded one when he was closing, and it meant if you weren’t in line to go through you were out of luck,” said Bokelman.

If only a few boats passed, the whole operation would take about 15 minutes; if a large barge passed, 30 minutes. However, it wasn’t unusual for the bridge to break down and take several hours to reopen. Sometimes boaters would shoot through before the bridge tender dropped the cables and catch their props on them.

Mannon Gore built the first wooden bridge to Sunset Beach on World War II barges that swung open and closed. Photos courtesy of Ed Gore

The bridge created inconveniences for boat and car traffic and, of course,for emergency vehicles. “It was a safety issue and I understood why the town and the state wanted to build a new bridge,” said Karen Joseph, a Sunset Beach councilwoman and a member of the Old Bridge Preservation Society.

For two years, residents watched as the construction of a 65-foot tall bridge slowly dwarfed the old one. Word spread that the old bridge would soon be demolished. Karen Dombowski, Chris Wilson and Bokelman started lobbying for the town to save the bridge.

“In the beginning we really were just trying to, rather naively, make sure that the town would save the bridge,” said Bokelman. “It seemed to us that something so integral to the history and the development of Sunset Beach, of course everyone would want to save it.”

They launched a campaign and collected over 6,000 signatures, a considerable feat for a town with only 3,600 fulltime residents. Initially the town voted to save the old bridge, but the decision was later overturned with only a couple months to spare before the old bridge would be removed and scraped.

The women formed the Old Bridge Preservation Society, a non-profit organization, and convinced the bridge’s owner—the construction company hired to build the new bridge—to give it to them. With only a month to go and nowhere to put the old bridge, Ronnie and Clarice Holden, who own Twin Lakes Seafood Restaurant and Island Breeze boutique, offered to move it onto their land.

“I was very pleased there was a private movement to save it,” said Joseph. “I believe that it is very important for us, not only us as a town but as a state and indeed as a nation to restore and preserve history.”

For the last year the preservation society has been busy restoring the old swing bridge and tender house with the financial support of the community. One small contribution at a time, the tender house was re-wired, and a new foundation was put in along with windows and a garage door where the opening for the machinery existed. The old bridge was anchored down permanently, and railings and ramps were built for public access. The local Sherwin Williams paint store and two local paint contractors donated their materials and labor to repaint both structures.

The old tender’s house is removed from the pontoon bridge. Photo: Old Bridge Preservation Society

The restored tender house will serve as the island’s first history museum. Visitors will see the original outfitting of the tender office along with memorabilia, photographs, tools and public records. There will be video footage of the old pontoon swing bridge in action and stories told by the bridge tenders both live and recorded. The museum is scheduled to open in May 2014 and will include an exhibit of The Vesta, the Civil War blockade-runner that ran a ground at Bald Beach in 1864.

“It’s certainly understandable why we needed a new bridge, but we’re happy that we were able to keep, not only the heartbeat, but the heart of Sunset Beach,” said Bokelman.

Her presentation next week, Tales from the Old Bridge – A Peek into History, will be free for museum and dual museum-planetarium members. Non-member admission: $8 adults, $7 seniors, $6 children and free for ages 2 and under.  She’ll start at 6 p.m.

Visitors get a bird’s eye view high above the 235,000-gallon Cape Fear Shoals exhibit.

KURE BEACH — A sand tiger shark glides past my head as I stand inches away from the glass exterior of the Cape Fear Shoals exhibit, but I am not gaping at the long, sharp teeth that protrude from its jaw like mangled fingers. After taking the “Extended Behind the Scenes” tour at the Fort Fisher Aquarium, I no longer look at these mysterious species as pieces of living art swimming around on display. The tour is something like learning the tricks of a magician. Now when I see an exhibit I can appreciate what it takes to produce the magic of this aquarium.

The Fort Fisher Aquarium’s two-hour tour gives visitors access through the “staff only” doors to learn how the tanks are kept clean and clear and how the animals are collected and cared for. Visitors witness the science experiments that are taking place and the new species that are getting ready for debut. The tour concludes atop the largest exhibit tank to watch the sharks feed.

Joseph, the tour guide, led our small group through the aquarium entrance and then immediately through an unassuming door into the freshwater life-support conservatory. The first thing we encountered was the dangerous animal holding area, two chambers with glass doors. This is where the alligators, cottonmouths, copperheads, diamondback rattlers and poisonous dart frogs come to rest after being on exhibit or if they become sick.

Joseph, right, the aquarium’s guide, leads visitors on a behind-the-scenes look at the pumps and filters that make the magic happen.

Through the glass door that read “authorized personnel only: venomous snake quarantine,” we could see the lethal creatures sitting up and watching us from the windows of their black containers. Hooks used by those qualified to handle the snakes hung on the other side of the wall.

Along the tour Joseph shared some interesting facts about the animals at the aquarium, like the not-so-poisonous dart frogs. In their natural environment, dart frogs accrue poison from their diet of ants that feed on poisonous plants. The dart frogs at this aquarium, however, have a diet of flies and therefore are not poisonous.

Through the corridor we pass multiple filtration systems that keep the tanks clean and clear. The ultraviolet sterilizer is larger than a man. It bombards water with radiation to kill microbes and microorganisms, filtering them from the water. Just next to it, the high-rate sand filters use sand as a physical barrier to trap solid waste materials in the water.

The concrete walls around these filtration systems are also lining parts of the fish tanks. The group learns that concrete will make water basic. So while the world’s oceans face acidification, the aquarium tanks require a pH monitor that triggers an automatic acid pump dispenser to release acid and balance the water’s pH.

Standing next to brown paper sacks of salt piled on the ground, Joseph notes that in natural freshwater habitats the water is usually brownish or yellowish in color but in the aquarium the water is always clear. Ozone sterilizers are used not only to sterilize water but also to reduce its coloration. And, trace amounts of salt (two to four parts per 1,000) are used in the freshwater to keep tanks clean.

Those on taking the tour get up close with porcupine puffer fish, top, and baby loggerhead sea turtles.

Exiting the building we step outside under the blue sky to inspect a giant freezer housing the “restaurant grade” seafood for the animals—mackerel, squid, shrimp, blue crabs, clams and other fish.

“I like to joke around and say they eat better than me,” said Joseph.

Without delay he directs us into the freshwater quarantine. Like bugs drawn to a lamp in the dark, we gather around terrariums lining rows of metal shelving. Heat lamps glow inside each. They keep the reptiles and amphibians warm. The animals used in the educational programs that teach kids about the local wetland environment

The room is gurgling with the sound of yet more filtration systems. Scattered on the floor are tubs of water with floating black spheres that look like the prickly balls of a sweet gum tree. Although small in size these bio-balls are cleverly designed to maximize surface area and produce beneficial bacteria to eat any waste materials dissolved in the water.

The group gets a good look at the docile baby American alligators that were confiscated from a pet owner. Here they will be given names and taught how to target food —bumping a plastic pipe with their noses and then opening their mouths for food. “Until they do that they don’t get food, and they learn pretty quickly,” Joseph said.

The tour continues outside where we see a woman dangling her legs off the ledge of some steps, soaking up the sunshine next to a few baby loggerhead turtles. I watch a loggerhead turtle for the first time as it swims perpetually inside its Tupperware of water and admire its exquisite shell, or carapace, and little, dexterous fins.

The baby turtles have just arrived from the beach. Each year, the Fort Fisher Aquarium receives three baby loggerheads and releases them back into the ocean once they turn a year old.

We’ve arrived at the back door entrance of the two-story saltwater life support conservatory and quarantine building. The Fort Fisher staff takes trips offshore to collect new species for the aquarium. The new animals will spend at least 30 days in quarantine to ensure they aren’t carrying any bacteria or illnesses and also to give them time to adjust to captivity.

Fort Fisher aquarium reproduces its own brine shrimp and moon jellyfish to feed other animals like sea turtles and sea nettle jellyfish. They also propagate baby sea horses, which they can trade along with the moon jellies to other facilities.

Lionfish spend some time in a quarantine tank before being put on public display.

Sometimes recreating a species’ natural environment requires thinking outside the box. Sea nettle jellyfish, for example, cannot live in rectangular tanks because the corners create “dead spots” where the jellyfish can ball up and tangle their tentacles. So while their exhibit appears to have a rectangular shape from the visitors’ perspective, behind the wall is a circular tank.

Upstairs Joseph shows us the invertebrate holding for crabs, sea stars, sea cucumbers, urchins, hermit crabs and horseshoe crabs. This floor rumbling with construction is also where the food from the freezer outside is prepared with vitamins and minerals. Sharks and rays, for example, require extra calcium. Vegetarian species may snack on saltwater or freshwater gels made with vegetables or phytoplankton.

Often a variety of fish foods is dumped into the same tank so that fish can enjoy a dietary smorgasbord. Even within the same species certain individuals prefer different foods. If the staff notices an animal that is having difficulty reaching food fast enough they’ll try to target feed it. If it goes on for too long they catch the animal and put it back in quarantine to nurse it back to health.

The tour ends with a shark frenzy at our feet in a tank as wide as a swimming pool. It’s feeding time for the 84 animals living in the 235,000-gallon Cape Fear Shoals exhibit tank, the largest in the aquarium. From a railing we watch an employee target feed sandbar sharks and sand tiger sharks from a bridge across the tank. On the other end of the tank, two employees scatter feed for the other 22 species by throwing handfuls of food into the water. Sheldon, the green sea turtle, is fed separately in a box that he’s learned to swim into for his food. After all our questions have been answered and curiosity sufficed, Joseph leads us back to the visitor’s side, but now we’re visitors with a  new appreciation and respect for the aquarium.

The Extended Behind the Scenes tour takes place every Wednesday and Friday at 2 p.m. The charge is $20 for adults.You can also choose a similar but shorter tour – no shark tank — for $15. That one is at 11:15 a.m. on Saturdays and on Sundays at 11:15 a.m. or 1:15 p.m. Reservations can be made online. 

WILMINGTON–“She reminds me of Mrs. Frizzle from the Magic School Bus,” says Paige Taylor, a student of Mrs. Cecelski’s Marine Science Academy at E.H. Ashley High School. Equipped with a license to drive a school bus, Mrs. Cecelski frequently takes her marine science and oceanography students on excursions outside of the classroom. Perhaps like the fictional science teacher Mrs. Frizzle, Mrs. Cecelski teaches her subject through experiential learning activities, engaging even teenagers.

“The more you expose a child to something, the more sense of love, sense of ownership, the more sense of connectedness they have with it,” Sandie Cecelski says. Having her students participate in a beach clean-up is just one of her many field trips.

Sandie Cecelski won the Pelican Award for exceptional dedication and leadership in coastal environmental education. The federation’s annual Pelican Award recognizes exemplary actions to protect or restore the coastal environment.

Taylor White, Lexi Riggs and Leah Haseltine work together on their bathymetry mapping activity in Mrs. Cecelski’s Marine Science Academy at E.H. Ashley High School.

She is a National Board Certified Marine Science Teacher and holds a Masters in Marine Science Education. She has been teaching for 27 years in New Hanover County high schools. She even has a waiting list for her classes. What makes Sandie Cecelski an exceptional educator, however, is her earnest devotion to teaching about the ocean.

“I feel that we need to develop the next generation of ocean scientists. We are at such critical tipping points right now with global climate change, ocean acidification—I teach all of that stuff. If we are not fostering that, we are a sinking ship. It doesn’t matter how much calculus they know,” says Cecelski.

Next to the wall with the painted shrimp is the door to Mrs. Cecelski’s classroom. The room is alive with pinfish, blue crab, anchovies, hermit crabs, spadefish, yellow-bellied sliders, and flounder living within 14 aquariums and tanks. There are ocean maps and marine life posters, a giant marlin and foam shark mounted to the blue walls, and papier-mâché starfish and sea turtles among the many sea-themed knick-knacks lining the tops of her bookshelves.

Mrs. Cecelski’s class is designed with hands-on science in mind.

“I’m a hands-on person,” says Cecelski. “I love to read, but if I have to learn a new program I’m much better if I can manipulate it or be shown how to do it.” Applying her preferred style of learning, she is able to break through to her teenage students with hands-on learning activities.

As student Gray Wilson will tell: “You get to learn more. It’s more interesting and easier to stay engaged.”

Class begins with student groups feeding their respective aquatic species, which the students have brought in or collected during a field trip. After recapping what they’ve learned in their previous lesson, students begin the day’s activity—whether it’s working with play dough to replicate the ocean floor in their bathymetric mapping activity; or using M&Ms and layers of blue plastic to learn the physics of electromagnetic radiation, absorption and the scattering effect in relation to light transmission in deep sea waters.

Cecelski also links classroom learning with service learning, often working with various local environmental organizations and learning institutions. She partners with the federation to engage students in oyster and salt marsh habitat restoration and water quality protection projects.

Together with Ted Wilgis, the federation’s southeast coastal education coordinator, Cecelski developed and launched Students Restoring Community Creeks, a stormwater education pilot program for students in the 9th grade. Students learn about stormwater runoff pollution and best management practices in the classroom and then hands-on at Anne McCrary park. After creating footprints of their homes and deciding as a class which gutters had priority, the students traveled to eight houses to reroute downspouts from draining onto pavement.

This year also marks the launch of Mrs. Cecelski’s Marine Science Academy pilot program. Prompted by the superintendent’s challenge to develop an academy program exemplary of their location and encouraged by her principal, Cecelski designed a college-level Marine Science Academy for E.H. Ashley’s high school seniors.

“I transferred here from a different school just for this academy my senior year,” says Griffin Bryn, one of Mrs. Cecelski’s academy students who aspires to major in mineralogy and ocean science.

Mrs. Cecelski helps students in her Marine Science Academy with a hands-on mapping activity.

The academy began a week before school started with a summer enrichment program. “We were at UNCW for five days. We were out on the Research Vessel Cape Fear in the ocean doing bathymetry, biological sampling, water chemistry analysis; learning to use technology in the water with remotely operated vehicles. We went kayaking to Masonboro,” says Cecelski.

Completion of the year-long course will grant students a memo of waiver from introduction to marine science and oceanography classes from UNCW, where many of the students want to go to university. These students are on a field trip every other week. Internships are also a part of the curriculum, embedding the students in different marine science career opportunities.

“You can tell she really cares for our benefit. She’s not just any other teacher. She doesn’t do it to get paid—this is what she loves to do,” Paige Taylor says. “She cares about our careers.”

“I’m extremely passionate about the ocean,” Cecelski says. “I grew up in the mountains, but I think I’ve always had saltwater in my blood.”

Toni and John Cornelius wanted a house that went beyond green. They wanted to build simply.

Rain gardens in the backyard are attractive landscaping features and also effective stormwater controls. Photos: Tess Malijenovsky

WILMINGTON — There will come a day when low-impact development is simply development. When that day comes it may look something like the residential property of Toni and John Cornelius tucked away beside a shaded edge of Summer Rest bike trail.

Examining a lot before building, its trees and vegetation, the way the water and air move or the site’s exposure to the sun aren’t just environmentally responsible meditations. They are the preliminary steps to designing a home that is resource and energy efficient and minimized stormwater runoff. Doing so is good for the environment and your pocketbook. In short, it pays off to think ahead.

When the Cornelius family moved to Wilmington they found a lot hidden in the woods, not far from the water. There, they could build a home for their three kids and dog to grow up in.

“We wanted to build beyond just green: build simply,” said Toni Cornelius.

John and Toni brought on the expertise of Lara Berkley, landscape architect, and Scott Ogden, an architect with B+O Design Studio, to design the house that would meet their family’s wants and needs.

“We—Toni and John included—are interested in what is called modernist design, which tends to be resource efficient in general,” said Berkley. “We’re not huge fans of ornamentation in architecture or landscape and find that simple, clean design gestures and site-specific design make for more interesting and special places.”

In the respect that less is more, the architecture firm appreciates and takes advantage of a site’s existing features, minimizes disruption of the natural environment, salvages its great trees and makes use of its water, paying particular attention to where it goes.

“First thing is to figure out where the site disturbance can happen,” said Berkley.

In this step of determining where the house will be built, an effort is made to minimize the amount of land disturbed during construction, which saves money from bringing in fill or excavating it.

“What was really neat about that site was that they had a lot of awesome native buffer around the perimeter and we really didn’t want to mess with that,” Berkley said.

The team, for instance, went to great lengths to keep a tree in the center of the driveway alive by working around it.

A 1,000-gallon cistern made from a culvert pipe captures runoff that is then used to water plants.

To save a tree, the driveway goes around it. Photos: Tess Malijenovsky

Plus, incorporating native plants into the landscape designs can save landowners time and money. Because they are adapted to the coastal environment, indigenous plants require less care and eliminate the need for pesticides, fertilizers and irrigation. The plants also prevent erosion and increase soil permeability, which reduces stormwater pollution by absorbing and slowing the flow of runoff.

Polluted stormwater runoff is the leading cause of degraded coastal water quality. Whenever rain falls on an impervious surface, like a roof or driveway, and the runoff drains into the street gutters it carries bacteria and other pollutants into our coastal waters. This is why more and more waterbodies are off limits when it comes to fishing clams and oysters. Allowing this runoff to soak into the ground as it naturally would is the key to low-impact development.

Rather than paying for someone to fill a depression or natural swale in the Cornelius lot, Berkley recommended they build a rain garden. Rain gardens are small, vegetated areas lower than the surrounding lawn that captures rain during storms. They not only help reduce flooding during heavy rains, but the plants and soil soak up the rainfall before it has a chance to become polluted runoff.

Many hours were spent observing the site before B+O Design Studio went to the drawing board. Berkley collects data from a geographic information system (GIS) to study how water moves on the surface of a property. “We want to allow the flow of water to go where it naturally wants to, while also allowing it to return to the groundwater—down into versus across the site,” she said.

To do so the yard is designed in concert with the house. The two-story deck is slightly slanted so that rain is directed into a 1,000 gallon, bright red cistern conveniently and purposefully located close to Toni’s raised garden beds. “Where possible, we look for opportunities for reuse, storing closest to where the client’s needs are,” said Berkley.

Cisterns and rain barrels are containers that collect and store rainwater. They double as a solution for reducing stormwater pollution and as a free source for watering a garden or lawn.

Bill Christopher, who built the house, also custom-built their cistern from repurposed culvert pipe. “[He] was a very creative contributor in terms of construction materials, methodologies, re-purposing and using salvaged materials,” Berkley said.

The roof of the Cornelius house is also slanted, guiding rainfall to a downspout by the back porch. The downspout then sends the water down a clever and beautiful channel of stones outside the perimeter of the concrete porch, allowing the water to eventually drain into the nearby ravine.

The finished landscape design produced a backyard big enough for the kids to play in and small enough to maintain easily, utilizing every square foot as responsibly as possible. “We didn’t want a huge lawn that we had to mow and a bunch of shrubs that we had to prune, so it was all about it being natural,” said John Cornelius.

That’s what we call a smart yard. The N.C. Coastal Federation created a Smart Yards publication that anyone can reference for simple, do-it-yourself solutions to reduce stormwater pollution.

BOLIVIA — When restoring water quality boils down to the actions each property owner takes, imagine what a community with over 1,100 properties can accomplish for their local watershed working together.

This is why Winding River Plantation Property Owners Association won a Pelican Award from the N.C. Coastal Federation for developing model community landscaping guidelines that promote environmentally friendly yards.

Residents of Winding River Plantation build one of the rain gardens in the community.

The federation’s annual Pelican Award recognizes exemplary actions to protect or restores the coastal environment.

Winding River Plantation in Brunswick County got its name from the Lockwood Folly River which winds through the planned golf course community like the letter “S.” Retirees and families charmed by the water views, wetlands, natural preserves and river accesses come here to live and play. With the territory comes residents who get caught up in the idea that they have to preserve the resources that they enjoy living on.

One morning reading the newspaper resident Pam Duncan came across an article inviting the public to help the Coastal Federation build rain gardens at the government center and decided to volunteer. Building rain gardens is a low-impact development, or LID, technique that mimics nature by slowing, pooling and filtering stormwater runoff. At the event she met another Winding River neighbor, Rich Peruggi, who joined the federation after attending a public meeting about the Lockwood Folly River.

“We knew that all development in our community, as well as others, has an effect on what winds up in the river,” said Peruggi. “You start looking for ways—without making it difficult for people to enjoy living—that can still help the environment. This whole approach with the low-impact development seemed like such a natural thing. We started looking for ways to make it real, to make it happen.”

Duncan and Peruggi took the first step by forming a rain garden committee, pitching the idea for building rain gardens in Winding River Plantation to the board of directors.

“Everybody got together down here in the middle of the street talking about rain gardens,” Duncan said.

They received $12,000 in state grants to share with their neighbors in the River Run Plantation community.

Volunteers came out to help build the two rain gardens near the boathouse and marina in the fall of 2010. “I’ve got to tell you, putting those rain gardens in took us six months of paperwork and three days to put in, and their were times when I was ready to throw in the towel,” said Peruggi. “Either of us alone, this wouldn’t have happened; the two of us together, we got it done.”

	The finished rain gardens collect and absorb stormwater and are attractive landscaping features.

Duncan and Peruggi gave presentations on rain gardens to the alliance group that represents all nearby subdivisions so that the LID efforts could catch on in the other Lockwood Folly communities. However, to make LID a staple in the future maintenance and development of Winding River Plantation, Duncan headed an effort to revise the homeowners association’s design and planning documents to include LID designs. These guidelines provide property owners and builders with a detailed set of standards for new construction and modifications to existing residences. Since only 50 percent of Winding River Plantation is developed, all future construction will adhere to the new, greener guidelines.

“My philosophy is don’t sit on the sidelines and bark at people: get involved. And, if it was important to me to have the low-impact development piece in here than I needed to get involved in doing it,” Duncan said.

Keeping up with Winding River’s 1,000 acres calls for a robust homeowners association with all its different review boards and committees, rules and guidelines. As an example, residents must submit formal landscape plans to the appropriate committee for approval before removing a tree or starting a garden.

“There’s a fine line between landscaping and going natural, and it’s a vibrant community so we have to landscape,” said Lee Burton, chair of the Landscaping Committee, who introduced curbside lawn debris recycling and helped two vacant lots transform into a butterfly park, among other things.

“We take all of this very seriously because we have a lot of water, not only the Lockwood Folly, but we have about 16 ponds and a lot of natural swales. Whether you sit next to the water or not, you feed to the water here,” said Duncan.

The landscaping section of the guidelines especially encourages taking a proactive role in preserving and protecting the coastal environment with simple and specific examples like choosing native plants, which save money on irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides because they are adapted to thriving in the local environment. The federation has been sharing Winding River Plantations landscaping guidelines in workshops and with Brunswick Forest.

“Our vision 2015 has been used for a model in a number of plantations around here because most people don’t have a plan like this,” said Duncan.

Rerouting downspouts into your yard can cut stormwater runoff from your property in half.

Strategically placed rain gardens can act as natural stormwater sinks and be an attractive landscaping amenity.

Restoring coastal water quality depends on your yard. Did you know that for less than $10 you could cut the polluted stormwater runoff from your property in half? Or that using a rain barrel for lawn irrigation can save you nearly 40 percent on your water bill in the summer?

You can find those tips and others in Smart Yards. The booklet from the N.C. Coastal Federation is a free guide to inexpensive and simple, do-it-yourself solutions to reduce stormwater pollution.

Today all five creeks and streams in New Hanover County and 55 percent of the Lockwoods Folly River in Brunswick County are closed to shellfish harvesting because of high levels of bacteria.

“They’ve been polluted to the point that you can’t use them for that one purpose. Some of them you don’t even want to swim in or let your dog swim in,” said Rich Peruggi, a member of the federation board of directors who lives along the Lockwoods Folly and volunteers to build rain gardens to help protect the river. “Most of that damage is attributed in bulk to the pollutants — the bacteria, the fertilizers — that are carried into the stream by the stormwater runoff.”

Whenever a natural area is paved over and replaced with impervious surface, such as a road or parking lot, that prevents the rain from soaking into the ground, the rainwater runs along the hard surface and then usually into a ditch or pipe that carries it to the nearest water body. Along the way that runoff picks up an enormous amount of pollutants and sediment water. Much of that rainwater would have soaked into the sandy soil if the natural environment hadn’t been disrupted.

The federation and partners in 2007 did a three-year quantitative study on how many pollutants reach Lockwoods Folly River in order to begin the process of re-opening closed shellfish waters. Volunteers collected over 300 water samples from 12 sites in the water or on the land that drains into the river. The results found 350 to more than 1,000 fecal coliform colonies on average per 100 milliliters of water. The state’s water quality standard for safe consumption of shellfish is 14 colonies per 100 milliliters of water. This would mean that to preserve the integrity of the water quality, 94 percent of developed land in Brunswick County would need to be targeted for stormwater retrofits.

Regulating point source pollution, like a big pipe at a cement plant, is relatively easy to control unlike non-point sources such as an individual’s driveway. “We need 10,000 small improvements,” said Peruggi.

Currently the federation is promoting and implementing widespread low-impact development stormwater reduction measures in the Lakes of Lockwood community, located in the Lockwood Folly watershed, as part of a pilot study funded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It will spend a day retrofitting the community with the do-it-yourself solutions highlighted in Smart Yards.

Rich Peruggi says 10,000 small improvements, like rerouting downspouts, are need to improve water quality in the Lockwoods Folly River.

“The only way to protect and restore coastal water quality is to maintain or mimic the natural hydrology. And the only way to really accomplish that is to deal with stormwater on a lot-by-lot basis,” said Lauren Kolodij, the federation’s deputy director and creator of Smart Yards.

The goal of Smart Yards is to educate residents about stormwater pollution and to promote the use of soil, plants and rain barrels to capture the rain before it has a chance to become polluted runoff, the way nature intended.

Does your downspout send stormwater onto your driveway? Smart Yards explains how installing a little piping to redirect stormwater five feet from your house onto the grass can make a big difference. A downspout disconnection program in Portland, Ore., reduced 1.2 billion gallons of runoff each year by redirecting 56,000 downspouts in the city.

Or build a rain garden with your neighbors using native plants. Rain gardens function as a bowl, reducing stormwater runoff by 90 percent or more. Plants not only use the water to grow, but their roots create resistance to the flow, prevent erosion and aerate the soil for draining water. What’s more is that native plants require less effort to grow and less money to maintain since they’re conditioned to living in the coastal environment. The Brunswick County Cooperative Extension is a great resource for a list of native plants.

How about saving on 40 percent of your water bill in the summer by using a rain barrel? “It costs money to water a lawn with an irrigation system, but if you’re using a rain barrel to collect the water off your roof, instead of letting it run off your driveway, then you have a free source of water that you can use later on,” said Kolodij.

After reading Smart Yards, you will see solutions to your local watershed problem everywhere you look, whether it’s in your neighbor’s yard or your workplace. The guide is easy to read with bulleted facts, directions, and resources, as well as pictures, diagrams, and examples to support the text. Making a countable difference never seemed so simple.

Hand-in-hand, Peter and Cathy Meyer plans to walk the length of North Carolina’s beaches and write about their experiences in a series of e-books. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

Peter and Cathy Meyer take long beach walks to another level. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

WILMINGTON – Maybe someone has walked the length of every beach along North Carolina’s coast, but Peter and Cathy Meyer are the first to write an iBook about it.

Coastwalk North Carolina is not only the story of their adventure but an adventure to read with numerous photographs and short videos. Its electronic format brings North Carolina’s coast to life in ways the printed page never could.

If only I could read it. I don’t own an iPad. While the e-publishing industry evolves and until it matures, Coastwalk North Carolina will remain exclusive to e-readers, specifically those with iPads. Like many others traveling the service road of the information highway, I haven’t quite kept up to speed with the digital revolution—I still print film in a darkroom and, I have yet to ask Siri a single question.

I can access the beach for a walk, which is precisely what I did with the “Coastwalkers” on Masonboro Island to learn more about their e-book.

“We take long walks on the beach to another level,” Cathy says.

Peter and Cathy are a close team and as down-to-earth as one would expect from a couple who coined the shorter, flatter version of the Appalachian Trail for beachcombers. They welcomed me aboard their 16-ft Carolina Skiff called “Tern,” aptly named after the small and agile least terns on Masonboro Island that they are happy to see growing in numbers since the fox extermination last winter.

In little more than five minutes we were at the backside of Masonboro, one of their favorite morsels of beach to walk. The Meyers have been exploring and feeding their insatiable curiosity about the coast with research for over 30 years. In fact, they self-published Nature Guide to the Carolina Coast: Common Birds, Crabs, Shells, Fish, and other Entities of the Coastal Environment in 1991, selling over 80,000 copies.

Walking on Ocean Isle Beach one October day in 2010, Cathy turned to Peter and suggested, “Well, why don’t we just walk the whole coast?” They’d been to bits and pieces of almost all the islands but never explored the entire coastline.

“Ok,” Peter said, and they walked the full length of Ocean Isle Beach that day.

For the next 15 months the Meyers hop-scotched North Carolina’s coastline, tackling one beach at a time and walking eight to 12 miles a day. Coastwalk North Carolina encourages readers to take the beach pilgrimage whether it’s done in one shot or in sporadic trips.

A barnacle-encrusted sun ray Venus clam is just one of the many delights that await a determined coastwalker. Photo: Peter Meyer

“If it takes 20 years, so what? Do it,” says Peter.

The e-book includes essays about their adventures and observations as well as useful tips like what to pack, where to park and what nature to spot along the way.  Or so I’m told.

“I don’t think the public is aware of the opportunity they have—425 miles of beach distance that is wide open, that anybody can walk and enjoy. We need to keep that. We don’t need to do anything to alter the public beach so that the public can’t use it,” says Peter in reference to the terminal groins, jetties and other such structures that are planned to protect privately owned property, meanwhile starving the public beaches. Peter bends down to pick up some plastic washed up on shore.

Coastwalk North Carolina brings the coast’s current state to light, the good and the bad. “(Our coast) is not just a beach vacation. It’s a whole ecosystem,” says Cathy. “If you get out there, you get a feel of the pressures that are being put on the coast. I think people would get that message if they just got out and walked a little bit more than their romantic long walks.”

Ironically Coastwalk North Carolina invites us to engage with our coast via another anonymous device with a screen. Alas, e-books are the future and the Meyers are in the forefront. E-book sales are expected to grow to $12 billion in 2017, up from $6.6 billion this year, according to Forrester, a global research and advisory firm.

Coastwalkers are sure to encounter the ever-watchful ghost crab. Photo: Peter Meyer

“I’m still one of these people that would much rather have a book in my hand that I can leaf through at my leisure instead of sitting at yet another little computer screen to read an electronic book. But, iBooks Authors offered us a lot of innovative ways to present what we experienced on the coast walk,” says Cathy.

Not only is e-publishing ideal for heavily illustrated and interactive books, but the cost to self-publish electronically with iBook Authors is virtually nil, Peter says. He believes the future is digital and that economics will dictate so.

“Eventually people are not going to want to pay $25 for a printed book when you can get it for $8 online,” says Peter. “Unfortunately I think in this world there’s going to eventually be a have and have-not access to digital information. If you don’t have some kind of access in whatever form or device in the future, you’re going to be at a disadvantage and that’s a shame.”

Coastwalk North Carolina is being released in a four-part series: SOHO—Sunset Beach, Ocean Isle Beach, Holden Beach and Oak Island; Between the Capes—Cape Fear to Cape Lookout; Wild Banks—Cape Lookout to Hatteras Inlet; and, Out There—Hatteras Inlet to the Virginia border.

If you’re already a part of the digital coup, you can preview the e-book for free on the iBookstore. For you Kindle revolutionaries, there is a version for you in the works.

And for us service road plodders, maybe it’s time we ask ourselves if we will resist change or embrace it. Maybe if we embrace it, we can help shape the direction its heading.

Kayakers wind their way through the marshes on their way to Masonboro Island. The kayak tours are appropriate for expert and novice paddlers. Photo by Tess Malijenovsky

WILMINGTON — This summer a new partnership between New Hanover County Parks and Gardens and canoe and kayak outfitter Hook, Line & Paddle brings local water lovers a series of kayak eco-tours. Paddlers will launch from various county parks and explore the ecology each has to offer.

Being next to the Atlantic Ocean and the biggest river basin in North Carolina, New Hanover County has copious kayak accesses.

“Let’s highlight them,” Chris Tryon, owner of Hook, Line & Paddle, said, “along with talking about the ecology and how to keep to our waterways clean.”

The county is interested in promoting kayaking in its parks as a recreational water activity that doesn’t pollute, that’s silent and, therefore, far less detrimental to the environment.

Matt Collogan leads the kayak tours. Photo by Tess Malijenovsky

“We’re showing people that you can use our boat launches, not just for fishing boats or recreational motorized boating, but that you can also do kayaking,” said Matt Collogan, who works for New Hanover County Parks and Gardens as the environmental education program manager for Airlie Gardens.

It was beautiful spring day a couple of weeks ago for the first eco-tour of the series out of Trails End Park, in the southern part of the county off Masonboro Loop Road. A group of visitors and locals gathered by the multi-colored touring kayaks provided by Hook, Line & Paddle as Tryon talked about kayak paddling techniques and safety.

Novice kayakers shouldn’t be discouraged from these kayak eco-tours. Tryon was a certified kayak guide at Cape Fear Kayak before he took over the business in 2007. Also, the group moves at a leisurely pace.

Everyone was excited as they launched into their buoyant state at high tide. The kayaks move silently, almost gracefully, across the inlet, permitting the egrets to rest in the marsh and the ospreys to continue plunging like missiles into the water for a meal.

“You just can’t get closer to nature than being in a kayak I feel like,” said Collogan.

The eco-tour reached its final destination at the national estuarine research reserve of Masonboro Island, one of the few remaining undeveloped barrier islands along North Carolina’s coast.

Just off the shore a staked sign tells the group they have entered colonial waterbird nesting territory. Collogan seized the moment to talk about the waterbirds that nest directly on the sand. While swallows flitted about the group, they learned about how the speckled eggshells of various waterbirds camouflage on the seashell spotted beach. Foxes and ghost crabs are among the lists of predators.

A speckled bird shell was one of the finds on Masonboro Island. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

Nestled between Wrightsville Beach and Carolina Beach, Masonboro’s 4,831 acres are considered an important bird-nesting area by the National Audubon Society, which means it’s internationally recognized as being vital to the conservation of birds and other biodiversity. The biodiversity was abundant on the tour with American oystercatchers standing by on the beach, pelicans surfing the waves and a porpoise revealing its dorsal from the ocean.

The eco-tour not only revealed the marvels of the environment, but also the pressures that threaten it and the conversation measures people can take to preserve it.

“It’s up to us to recycling our oyster shells, pick up our dog poop and recycle plastics,” said Collogan.

Tryon brings up the PVC pipes that the kayakers passed coming to the island, identifying them as oyster beds and encouraging everyone to recycle his or her oysters by putting them back in the water or bringing them to oyster recycling centers. New oysters grow on the hard surfaces of old oyster shells.

“Oysters are really the keystone species in the salt marsh creeks on the sound side because they’re the ones that filter all the water, and provide habitat and food for all kinds of things,” Collogan said. “We’ve lost 90 percent of the native oyster population in North Carolina since the year 1900, largely from over harvesting, habitat degradation, pollution and sedimentation.”

Moving around to the oceanside of Masonboro, the guides brought the group’s attention to the progression of plant complexity, from shrubs to live oaks. Branches of lives oaks can fuse together to share nutrients, according to Collogan. “Imagine along the whole length of a barrier island you have all the live oaks connected. That makes them that much stronger for a hurricane,” he said.

Learning about the local environment from an educator and paddling in the element with a pro, residents will likely heighten their appreciation for living by the coast. Best of all, each kayak eco-tour this summer explores a different county park and its endemic biodiversity.

Wide, empty beaches await after a kayak trip to Masonboro Island. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

Coming up next July 1, from 3 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., the kayak eco-tour leaves Airlie Gardens heading up Bradley Creek, which is a dynamic brackish water environment. “You can see the spartina grass change into black needle rush and then eventually there are some cypresses at the very end,” said Collogan.

Following Bradley Creek, an eco-tour will launch from Riverside Park on July 26, from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., along the Cape Fear River. Paddlers may have a chance to walk around Kegg Island, Campbell Island and Shark’s Tooth Island for a chance to find natural artifacts, such as fossils or shark teeth.

Keep a lookout for more kayak eco-tours to be scheduled later in the summer at the New Hanover County Parks kayak page. Registration is $25 with your own kayak and $50 for rental equipment. For more information and registration call 910-798-7707 or email Collogan.

A diamondback terrapin slowly slops through the mud of Masonboro Sound. Named for the diamond-shaped growth rings on its top shell, the terrapin is native to the eastern and southern United States. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

By Tess Malijenovsky

WILMINGTON — Weaving through Masonboro Island by kayak or sometimes wading knee-high in mud, Leigh Anne Harden looked for diamondback terrapins, the only North American turtle adapted to the coast’s high-salinity marshes, creeks and sounds. But the little turtle may be in trouble.

No one really knows, but Harden hopes all that poking around will lead to answers and possibly some solutions. She’s a graduate student at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, and her research on this turtle that’s native to our tidal wetlands is the first of its kind at the university. It will likely play an important role in revising the state’s management plan for blue crabs.

Leigh Anne Harden has searched in knee-high mud for diamondback terrapins. Photo: UNCW

The crabs and the terrapins are connected in a way. Terrapins crawl into crab pots lured by bait or other terrapins. Once in the wire traps, the terrapins can’t escape and drown. While a terrapin can likely go months without oxygen in their winter state of dormancy — also known as overwintering — they can drown in as little as 45 minutes in the summer under stressed conditions. This makes “ghost” pots — or abandoned crab pots cut loose during a storm — particularly deadly.

Diamondbacks (Malaclemys terrapin) were once so abundant in North Carolina that they were considered a nuisance. Fishermen were sometimes unable to haul catches because of the weight of terrapins caught in their nets. But by 1920, the terrapin was a much sought-after gourmet item, costing $90 per dozen. The market boomed and farms were established, notably in Beaufort, to breed the species in captivity. After World War I the market declined because the wild populations were over-harvested.

Though not endangered, the diamondback terrapin today is listed both state and federally as a species of “Special Concern.” Because of this status within the state, a special permit is required to possess or collect this species. Loss of habitat and mortality from incidental capture in nets and crab pots pose the greatest threats to terrapin populations.

If the terrapins’ interaction with crab pots is an issue needing regulation, the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries will need to amend its Blue Crab Management Plan to protect the species. UNCW is leading the research in determining whether or not their populations are truly in decline.

Little was known about our local diamondback terrapin populations before Harden joined Amanda Southwood Williards’ research lab in 2008 for a doctorate degree in marine biology. Her studies monitored terrapin movements and uses of their habitat, their overlap with blue crab fisheries and their seasonal behavior and physiology.

“We didn’t know that much about what habitats terrapins were using, where they were congregating for breeding aggregations, or where they were overwintering. We had no idea,” said Harden.

New to the area, Harden teamed up with the Division of Marine Fisheries and local crabbers who knew the waters best. “Turtle conservationists and enthusiasts can scare crabbers by wanting strict and immediate management and regulation,” Harden said.

Some crabbers, however, like local Jeff Wolfe, want to learn more about where terrapins are and how they can be avoided. “Crabbers don’t want to catch terrapins,” Harden said. “They’re a nuisance in the crab pot.”

The transmitter glued to the terrapin’s shell allows researchers to track its movements. Photo: Leigh Anne Harden

After catching terrapins by using seine nets to rope off areas of Masonboro and Figure Eight islands, Harden attaches a data-logger the size of a stack of dimes and a radio tag to the back of each turtle’s carapace, or shell, using epoxy. Remote sensing with the data-loggers records the temperature of the carapace every 30 minutes, which gave Harden an idea of where the terrapins were—the water, the mud—when she wasn’t in the field.

Still, three to six times a week in the summer Harden kayaked through the marsh, patiently awaiting the small, camouflaged head of a terrapin to pop out of the water for air. Like a fingerprint, each terrapin shell is unique in its color variation—black, blue, green, brown, spotted with white necks. Using radio telemetry, she carried a bulky receiver to dial into each turtle’s location like a radio station that plays a series of beeps.

The diamondback terrapins at her sites are most active from early April to October. In the winter when terrapins aren’t eating, they’re not necessarily attracted to a crab pot even if it’s nearby. In the spring however, when waters warm up about 60 degrees in April, the risk of interaction with crab pots is at its highest. Crabs are moving back into shallow water to molt, and terrapins in the same location are foraging after a long period of overwintering.

Diamondback terrapins often stay in one tidal creek their whole lives, which is why populations in a specific tidal creek can be wiped out with one precariously placed crab pot. Being that terrapins exhibit sexual dimorphism with females weighing three to four times more than males, crab pots can alter the sex ratio of terrapin populations by catching mostly males and juveniles.

In 2010, Harden and Southwood Williard received a grant from the N.C. Sea Grant Blue Crab and Shellfish Research Program to send out an anonymous post card survey to commercial fisherman in 10 coastal counties soliciting basic information about crabbing and diamondback terrapins.

“We were trying to get a better idea of not just Figure Eight and Masonboro, but an idea of where terrapins are along the coast based on where crabbers had seen them,” Harden said.

Although only about 11 percent of the surveys were returned, the Division of Marine Fisheries combined the results with their past aquatic sampling studies to create a map of interaction hot spots.

“Here in the southern part of the state is where I think the majority of these interactions are going on,” said Stephen Taylor, a division biologist.

Terrapins get trapped in crab pots and can drown. Photo: Leigh Anne Harden

Yet many other areas along the coast aren’t experiencing any interaction problems, he said, making statewide management a challenge.

“A lot of the guys don’t think it’s a problem,” said Taylor. “Most of their pots are in deeper water and they don’t have interactions. The ones that are here know that there are terrapins around, especially on the Cape Fear River, but they know how to avoid them as far as putting their pots in deeper water and certain distances away from the shoreline.”

Some of the possible management approaches suggested for the Blue Crab Management Plan amendment include the required use of terrapin Bycatch Reduction Devices, restricted pot areas based on depth or distance from shore, additional diamondback terrapin awareness and educational programs for the public, or a combination of those listed.

More research is needed before any suggestions can be turned into regulations. “We can’t say right now that the populations in this area are declining. We just don’t know enough,” said Harden.

Continuing the research this summer will be Stephanie Chavez, another UNCW graduate student under Southwood Williard. She will be testing different dimensions for the devices that keep diamondback terrapins out of the crab pots without significantly reducing blue crab catch.

Thousands of people have walked the beach to the end of Bird Island to leave their most cherished thoughts in the notebook of the “Kindred Spirit” mailbox. Photo: Tess Malinjenovsky

By Tess Malijenovsky

SUNSET BEACH – A crowd of people will gather here on Friday in a celebration of sorts for a very special place.

They’ll come to dedicate a kiosk that is yet another benchmark in the preservation of Bird Island.

It was a crowd of a different sort, though, that Bill Ducker remembers. It was more than 20 years ago. People packed the small room where the Sunset Beach commissioners where getting ready to vote to rezone Bird Island, an uninhabited island that was at the time separated from the town by a small, meandering inlet.

The family that owned the island wanted to build a mile-long bridge from Sunset and begin developing their land. The town commissioners first had to approve the plans by rezoning the island.

“I was there,” recalls Ducker. “I’d never gotten up in front of a group of people and spoken. All of a sudden I just felt compelled to say something. I raised my hand, I said, ‘Wait a minute. Do you know what you’re doing’?”

“Mr. Ducker the time for public comment has passed,” the mayor said.

“But wait a minute, you don’t know the scope of what you’re doing,” Ducker retorted.

The mayor became irate. “Mr. Ducker,” he said, “if you don’t shut up”—and those were his words, Ducker promises—“I’ll have the chief of police throw you out.”

Ducker knew that the chief could never reach him in that crowded room and so he persisted with his question again and again.

Frank Nesmith, far left, become the acknowledged “mayor of Bird Island” after leading thousands of people on beach walks to save the island.

The crowd began to murmur and the people said, “Well, let’s hear what Mr. Ducker has to say.”

The meeting that night in 1992 sparked the fight to save Bird Island, which ended 10 years later in one of the great conservation victories in state history. The island’s almost 1,500 acres are now preserved as part of the N.C. Coastal Reserve.

Another step in the long process of salvation comes Friday when the Bird Island Preservation Society – the group Ducker and other advocates formed to save the island — dedicates an educational kiosk at 11 a.m. in the gazebo parking area of Sunset Beach. The dedication comes a little more than 10 years after the state found the money to buy Bird Island.

The kiosk will consist of four signs. One tells the story of the fight to save Bird Island. Another describes the shore and marsh birds that make the island important for endangered piping plovers, rare painted buntings, common terns, great blue herons, white ibis and black skimmers. The third sign identifies the variety of plants on the island, like the sea oats, wax myrtle and saltmeadow cordgrass, and the last sign describes the various sea turtles that nest on the island between May and August.

But there would be no signs about birds and marshes if Bill Ducker hadn’t spoken up that night.

You can see Bird Island from the deck of his house, across the marsh teaming with the avian life that gives the island its name. It was the right place for the Sunset Beach residents who cherished Bird Island to come together and find a way to save it. Guided by the N.C. Coastal Federation, the small group of residents formed the Bird Island Preservation Society. There in Ducker’s house the group stuffed envelops asking every property owner in Sunset Beach to join their society, to write letters to legislators and to contribute what they could.

“I can’t even imagine an America that we have so altered that there is no piece of it left that is like it once was,” says Sue Weddle, one of the original members of the Bird Island Preservation Society. “You realize it’s your backyard. And if you don’t protect it, nobody’s going to.”

The mailing response was great at first, but when enthusiasm dwindled Frank Nesmith came up with an idea to lead folks on walks along this last bit of North Carolina sand. “I figured if you can get them to go walkin’ out there to Bird Island they’ll fall in love with it,” says Nesmith.

Being a permanent resident since 1975, Nesmith has a story or two to tell like the one behind the mailbox on Bird Island named the “Kindred Spirit.”

“My idea always was that anyone that’d go through the trouble to get to the thing loved nature and loved the spirit of the coastline,” he explains. “The people that visited the “Kindred Spirit” mailbox were the kindred spirits.”

Walking south from the last beach access, it takes about 30 minutes to reach the mailbox that Mr. Nesmith planted over 30 years ago. The trek away from civilization invites the pilgrims into silence as the rush of waves washes over their thoughts. Sandpipers scurry by the sea foam and larger birds soar along the sanded cliffs as the sun wraps the body in warmth. Sitting on its crooked wooden beam in the dunes is the black mailbox with pencils and a few notebooks inside carrying messages from the “kindred spirits” that have visited. One entry writes:

After a 10 year fight, Bird Island is now preserved as part of the N.C. Coastal Reserve.

“Dear kindred spirit, returning to this peaceful place for the first time since last winter. It’s been a difficult year for us at home in Ontario. Only the thought of returning to the beach gave us hope and comfort. And now the eternal rhythm of wave and tide, sunrise and sunset puts all our struggles in perspective. It truly restores the soul. Jean B.”

Others also give thanks: “Walked to the beach again. Found one sand dollar. It doesn’t get any better than this! Dan Berry.”

The number of people accompanying Nesmith on his walks to save the island kept doubling until over 150 joined. Membership to the society grew by the thousands. They came from all over the country.

The N.C. Coastal Resources Commission finally rejected permit for the bridge in 1996 and suggested that the state find a way to buy the land. The Bird Island Preservation Society along with the federation, the N.C. Coastal Land Trust, the National Audubon Society and the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources worked together to keep Bird Island safe once and for all; and in 2002 the state acquired the island for $4.2 million with funding awarded by the state’s Clean Water Management Trust Fund, the Natural Heritage Trust Fund and the N.C. Department of Transportation.

Aside from its natural significance in terms of rare bird and plant species, the reserve protects the genetic diversity and evolutionary processes that allow scientist to learn more about our world. As increasing populations and demands of coastal real estate pressure natural coastal ecosystems, undisturbed barrier islands like Bird Island will become “controls” for scientist studying issues of water quality, hydrology, storm damage and exotic specie invasion in adjacent developments. They are irreplaceable outdoor laboratories for coastal management research and decision making for future generations. Also when visitors can visually contrast an undisturbed island to a developed one, they gain a better understanding of how the world is changing.

And Bird Island will continue to be a place where people can take lonely walks down a deserted beach to an old mailbox in the dunes. There in a dog-eared notebook, they can share their more cherished thoughts and longing prayers.

Bradley Creek Elementary School has worked with the federation and several partners to create rain gardens and wetlands to control polluted runoff.

WILMINGTON — An elementary school in New Hanover County that has worked with the N.C. Coastal Federation to reduce polluted stormwater will be recognized today for its significant achievement and outstanding stewardship in sustainable building.

Bradley Creek Elementary School is one of five projects along the southeast N.C. coast that will be honored at the eighth annual Lower Cape Fear Stewardship Development Coalition Awards Luncheon in Wilmington.

“Sometimes it takes a lot more effort to do the right thing, the innovative thing, the new thing. There should be some sort of payoff to those folks,” said Mark Imperial, chair of the awards program and director of the Master of Public Administration Program at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

The coalition formed in 2004 to recognize developers who were going above and beyond the minimum standards for building. “We wanted to create an avenue for encouraging the public and nonprofit sectors to make those investments and to serve as leaders in putting together projects that demonstrate a better way of building and developing sites for the public,” Imperial said.

The Stewardship Development Program honors residential, commercial and public development projects in Brunswick, Pender and New Hanover counties that demonstrate outstanding environmental stewardship through the protection, conservation, improvement and awareness of our natural resources.

Students at Bradley Creek planted the rain gardens and help maintain them.

Bradley Creek Elementary, which has worked with the federation for several years, will be recognized today for projects to control runoff and community outreach. The school’s 19-acre campus is in the Hewlett’s Creek watershed, an important tidal creek that has been the focus of restoration efforts by the federation, Wilmington, the New Hanover Soil and Water Conservation District and various other partners.

Stormwater runoff is leading cause of pollution in the creek. It has degraded estuarine habitats and closed of shellfish beds to harvesting. When rain contacts rooftops, concrete, asphalt or other impervious surfaces, pollutants are absorbed and drained directly into streams rather than filtering naturally through the ground.

With the support of the school and New Hanover County school system, the project partners began visiting Bradley Creek Elementary in 2009 to create a site design and build a network of rain gardens, wetlands and vegetated areas to absorb runoff. These features collect and treat 120,000 gallons of runoff every time it rains 1.5” or more. Bradley Creek’s third graders who’ve learned about the significance of their school’s green development also get to lend a helping hand year after year.

“We take them out into the school yard so that they can get their hands wet and dirty in those rain gardens and have a sense of what the rain gardens do and some stewardship over them,” said Ted Wilgis, coastal education coordinator for the federation’s Southeast Regional Office.

Another project received an award of Outstanding Stewardship, the highest level of distinction available in the Stewardship Development Program, for its innovative approach to building a utility building for a 1,000-gallon tank of 100 percent recycled, vegetable oil-derived biodiesel with a $10,000 grant from the Department of Energy’s Clean Cities Initiative.

The new College Union at Cape Fear Community College turned a eyesore into an example of sustainable development. Photo: Cape Fear Community College

SECU Hospice House used green building practices and intimate gardens to create a serene environment. Photo: SECU Hospice House

“That amount of money is chicken scratch,” said Christopher Yermal of Older School Rebuilders who was contracted for the project by Piedmont Biofuels Industrial, an N.C.-based alternative fuel cooperative.

Having lived in northern California where landfills sell reusable materials to the public at a reduced rate—a practice yet to reach the East Coast—Yermal had the idea to reach out to the local New Hanover Landfill. He brought back 4,000 pounds of repurposed materials from the landfill, which provided 98 percent of the framing lumber needed for the project.

“I certainly think there’s a huge future in deconstruction and re-use of good building materials in new projects,” Yermal said.

Knowing firsthand that construction waste accounts for the majority of the waste in landfills, Yermal views this sustainable approach as the solution to the “landfills bursting at their seams” as well as saving the energy and resources used in processing lumber from forests.

Architect Eric Jabaley had to modify his designs based on the materials found and used a creatively staggering approach to the wall construction, a low-tech feature with a robust insulation result. Tidal Creek Cooperative Food Market stepped in to provide the building space and electricity free of charge and joined the partners in hosting a public workshop on green roof construction—planting indigenous plants on the roof to mitigate stormwater runoff.

“I think what really impresses our judges are what sometimes people are able to do. Sometimes there’s projects where you just look at it and say, ‘Well what’s so great about that?’ And then you realize the challenge of doing everything they did without increasing any stormwater runoff when the site is almost entirely paved,” said Imperial.

The Bald Head Island Conservancy also won Outstanding Stewardship for its education and research campus, which Executive Director Suzanne Dorsey called “an external expression” of their mission—fostering community-based barrier island conservation, preservation and education to live in harmony with nature.

Given that a barrier island is constantly moving and difficult to reach, finding local materials was a challenge. Dorsey said they had to change the lumber industry in order to secure local lumber as one of the stipulations of being certified as a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design by the U.S. Green Building Council. However the conservancy didn’t choose to build sustainably for the sake of getting a green certification. Protecting and restoring natural resources in turn protects the community’s resources. One such example is the roof designed in line with the forest canopy, which tolerates salt spray and sheers off hurricane force winds.

“[Receiving the award] is just so validating for the staff but especially for the community that took such a big risk on building it,” Dorsey said. “I think the uniqueness of this community is a leadership in sustainability that defines why the conservancy was founded and was volunteer-run for the majority of its history.”

Live oak trees were preserved in the courtyard of the Bald Head Island Conservancy campus. Photo: Bald Head Island Conservancy

Also awarded for its significant achievement in green development was the SECU Hospice House in Brunswick County, which used green building practices and intimate gardens and natural landscapes surrounding the building to create a serene environment for its inpatient care.

And, finally, the Cape Fear Community College Union Station building and parking deck for not only transforming a site that was an eyesore and student safety concern into functional structures connected by a safe pedestrian park route but also set an example of sustainability to its growing student body and the community.

Today’s ceremony also will give special recognition to the people who had the vision and commitment to create the Stewardship Award Program in 2004.

To learn more about Lower Cape Fear Stewardship Development Coalition and its efforts to promote environmental stewardship, or to register for the awards luncheon, visit the coalition’s Web site.

WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH — Of its three regions, the N.C. Coastal Federation’s Southeast office has been the last to root its identity in a permanent building. This year the non-profit group’s patience may pay off in a fitting way. The federation proposes to transplant a donated historic beach cottage for reuse as the new regional office and Coastal Education Center for the Southeast, preserving a valuable piece of Wrightsville Beach history in the process.

“For the Coastal Federation to make that choice to move with historic preservation, to me, shows a commitment to the community,” said Madeline Flagler, director of the Wrightsville Beach Museum of History.

“If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are,” she added, quoting poet and author Wendell Berry.

Wrightsville Beach was established in 1899 and has since survived many storms and other disasters, including a devastating fire in 1934. “The historic architecture here is really becoming endangered,” said Flager.

It’s what makes Wrightsville different from Morehead City or Isle of Palms, she said. “It’s what contributes to the uniqueness of your community,” she noted.

The Palmgren-O’Quinn house will have to be moved by barge to its new location in the historic square in Wrightsville Beach. Photo: Ned Leary

For the last couple years, the federation’s Southeast regional staff had thought of moving to a permanent location in the historic square of Wrightsville Beach, a property that was deeded to the town exclusively for non-profit organizations. This historic square at the center of the island, off West Salisbury Street, is the site of the Visitor Center and the history museum. To move into the historic square, the federation first had to find an historic home­—not an easy task on an island little more than three-miles long. Everything seemed to fall into place last year when Debbie and Mark Mitchell, a local couple, donated their historic beach cottage to the federation.

The Mitchells were looking to build a new house in South Harbor Island where they’ve lived for many years, one that would accommodate old age with an elevator and space for their two children. “We wanted a house we could grow old in and we didn’t want to move,” said Debbie Mitchell, “so we bought the house next door.”

That house, known as The Palmgren-O’Quinn house, was built in 1946 and belonged to a former mayor of Wrightsville Beach, Robert O’Quinn. “It’s a very beautiful building with lots of wide open spaces, very typical of what you would expect to have at the beach,” commented Flagler.

The Mitchells planned to build a new house on the site. Rather than demolish the existing building, the couple decided to donate it, partially for sentimental reasons: “We loved the O’Quinns, and our kids have grown up playing in their yard. We certainly didn’t want to tear their house down,” Debbie said.

By word-of-mouth and a series of coincidences the federation was put in touch with the Mitchells, and in December the Wrightsville Beach Historic Landmark Commission approved the group’s request to move the Palmgren-O’Quinn house to the historic square. The request is scheduled to go before the Board of Alderman on Thursday to discuss the lease agreement.

“All the pieces of the puzzle are fitting together nicely even though we have a ways to go. We’re anticipating the move in May,” said Tracy Skrabal, project manager of the relocation and director of the federation’s Southeast office.

The historic house will not only be adaptively reused, but it will be creatively moved. “The only way to get it out intact is to take it by barge,” Skrabal said.

Currently the house sits in a neighborhood full of live oaks, leaving the water as the only viable exit strategy.

Tracy Skrabal

Not that the office minds the challenge. “The reason why we’re actually pleased with that is because part of our mission is preservation of cultural heritage, not just natural heritage,” said Skrabal.

The coast’s abundant natural resources have always shaped its history, she noted, and finding a regional office building that also preserved local history seemed like the perfect fit for the federation.

The proposed property on the historic square used to stockpile storm debris for the town of Wrightsville Beach. Now it will serve a greater purpose. “It’s not just a house and it’s not just a piece of dirt,” said Skrabal. “This land is going to be very close to the marshes and the sound so that we can use this area as a real public resource.”

Kids will be invited on marsh and estuary walks where they can pull up seine nets to learn about the marine life of their coastal ecosystem. Staff will also be able to teach the community hands-on about the relationship between land uses and ecosystems, as well as what can be done to lessen negative effects.

There will be demonstrations incorporating low-impact development techniques on the landscape with cisterns, rain gardens and permeable pavement. All help to alleviate the effects of stormwater pollution. The staff also wants to use native landscaping around the center and intends on building a plant nursery for growing marsh plants and other native vegetation. Ideas of importing oyster shells for bagging events are also being considered so that the office can build oyster reefs in local waters.

The regional office staff will no longer have to find rented or donated space to hold large meetings. In fact, they intend on hosting a wide range of educational meetings, speaker series and seminars on issues involving the coastal ecosystems, including topics of science, natural history and policy. The building will be personalized with permanent education displays and rotating art exhibits. And oyster roasts will no doubt be arranged, which can be fun occasions to learn about the work of the federation or membership and volunteer opportunities.

“It provides us with an identity in this region that we’ve been missing,” said Skrabal.

With a place to call home, the Coastal Education Center for the Southeast will be able to create memories with its community members while maximizing its role for coastal North Carolina, truly satisfying a sense of belonging.

These abstract photos, taken by Courtney Johnson, emerged from the depths of the Atlantic off fishing piers in Avon, top, Atlantic Beach, center, and  Oak Island.  Photos: Courtney Johnson

WILMINGTON — One photographer fishes among the anglers on North Carolina’s 19 remaining fishing piers for what has never been captured before.

“This was about a picture that we’ve never seen,” said Courtney Johnson about her exhibition Light Lure, Underwater Pinhole Photographs of North Carolina Piers, currently on display at the Art Gallery in the Cultural Arts Building at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Equipped with a homemade pinhole camera and funding from the Charles L. Cahill Research Award, Johnson imagines what time looks like at the bottom of the Atlantic and invites us to do the same.

“I didn’t know what was going to happen so it was a lot about that mystery and the magic of photography,” Johnson said.

First the viewer must imagine a camera made from a pineapple juice can fitted over a wafer cookie tin, fishing line, black rustproof spray paint, waterproof putty, a Cheerwine can and 3.5 pounds of fishing weights.

“It took me many trips to the piers just thinking about what would work,” said Johnson.

The result is essentially a lightproof tin with a pin-sized puncture as its “lens.” When the contraption hits the water, the juice tin floats, exposing the pinhole to the ocean’s light on 4-by-5 color film inside the cookie tin. The weighted cookie tin cannot withstand the movement of the waves for long and after 30-minutes on the Atlantic floor, Johnson reels in her mysterious image.

The abstract photos that emerged from the depths of the Atlantic come in a surprising variety of hues, mimicking the true colors of North Carolina’s sand, sky and sunsets. “I actually really like how soft the exposures ended up being and how much they’re about time and the unknown,” Johnson said.

Johnson is a leading expert in the cliché-verre photographic process and often focuses her work on creating images that have never been seen.

“I knew there was going to be some blur. I knew I was going to get light on top and dark on the bottom, but I didn’t really have much more of an idea besides that,” said Johnson.

Inspired by her UNCW photography students, Johnson deviates from cliché-verre to explore North Carolina’s coast. It was just a few months after moving to Wilmington in 2011 for a position as assistant professor of photography at the university that she began teaching pinhole photography and applied for the Cahill Research Award. Several prototypes were tested in Greenfield Lake and the Cape Fear River before her first final underwater exposure at Nags Head Fishing Pier in May 2012. After all, transcending nature’s most unpredictable element from the piers would mean facing greater travel distance, choppier waters and stronger winds. Not all of the images were captured in fair weather either.

“The very last one I did was in pouring rain storm,” Johnson explained. “Hurricane Sandy was going to hit the next day. In fact, I did Avalon pier on Friday and that Sunday it was split to pieces.”

Light Lure highlights the importance of the fishing piers to North Carolina’s coastal tradition. Johnson made it a component of her grant to use the funds locally, buying film from her local photography store and learning about the history from a book she found in Old Books on Front Street titled North Carolina’s Ocean Fishing Piers: From Kitty Hawk to Sunset Beach.

“Fishing piers were some of the first structures built on the barrier islands,” said Al Baird, author of North Carolina’s Ocean Fishing Piers: From Kitty Hawk to Sunset Beach and founder of the N.C. Fishing Pier Society. During the 1980s there were as many as 36 fishing piers along North Carolina’s coast. Today only 19 remain.

Building materials for the fishing piers were inexpensive in the 1950s and ‘60s when pine was being forested in the state and so piers were used to promote the coast to Northeastern tourists. Pictures of pretty girls holding big fish circulated in the news as if to say, “We have everything Florida has yet we’re half the distance.”

A Cheerwine can, a pineapple juice can and fishing weights are the essential components of Courtney Johnson’s pinhole camera. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

More recently, however, those building costs have risen along with oceanfront land values. “When the hurricanes of the mid ‘90s started to pound every year, pier owners were finding that their land was worth more in oceanfront housing than fishing piers,” said Baird.

Or, as put by Baird’s group, “The land is becoming too valuable to operate a marginal business like a fishing pier and once the property changes hands the pier’s fate is almost certainly sealed.”

Yet for a “marginal business,” trips to the state’s ocean fishing piers reel in about $152 million to the state’s economy, according to a January 2012 study produced by the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries.

Johnson particularly appreciated the camaraderie of the fishermen who were equally excited to learn what she was doing. “Really they’re doing the same exact thing I am—putting something into the water and hoping that they get something out of it.”

Just like the fishermen, the mystery of the catch kept Johnson hooked.

Courtney Johnson’s work has been featured in nine solo exhibitions in New York, San Francisco, Miami, Richmond and Bogotá and in more than 30 group exhibitions in the last three years. She earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts with honors in photography and imaging from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and a master’s in fine arts in studio art from the University of Miami. Light Lure,

Underwater Pinhole Photographs of North Carolina Piers is showing through Feb. 22 at the UNCW Art Gallery, Randall Parkway and Reynolds Drive. The gallery is open Monday through Friday from noon to 4 p.m.