By Jordan Tomberlin and Irene Nolan

Reprinted from The Island Free Press

HATTERAS — After years of planning and preparation, construction has begun on the ambitious Hatteras Island Ocean Center project in Hatteras village.

And according to Eric Kaplan, the driving force behind the Ocean Center, the first phase of development, which will include an information center and a series of wetland trails that lead to a soundfront launching area, will be completed and open to the public sometime this spring.

The main feature of this initial phase will be the multi-purpose information and education center.  It will be housed in the former Beacon Shops building, just off N.C. 12 in the village, which the Ocean Center bought last year. It will serve as the headquarters for the non-profit Ocean Center and an interactive, educational resource for visitors.

Kaplan and a network of volunteers have been hard at work, remodeling one of the building’s vacated retail spaces and preparing to outfit it with an array of exhibits and interactive technologies that will allow visitors to explore the complexity and diversity of the island’s ecosystem.

Shipwrecks will be a featured exhibit at the Hatteras Island Ocean Center. This unidentified wreck on Hatteras Island appeared on a postcard, circa 1929. Photo: Durwood Barbour Collection of N.C. Postcards, N.C. Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

“Everything we do in this building is going to be tied to ecology, in one way or another,” Kaplan said. “And because we’re small, we have to be very, very creative.”

To that end, Kaplan and volunteers Lee Haller, Jody Haller, and Lee Setkowsky have organized the space into a series of exhibits—each focusing on a particular aspect of the island ecosystem—that rely heavily on visual media and interactive technologies to engage visitors.

When visitors first enter the space, they will be greeted by a large — as in, life-sized — video screen that will feature the underwater photography of local artist Russell Blackwood.

From there, visitors will move to an exhibit on marine life and the ecology of shipwrecks, which will be created in collaboration with the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum, and will, of course, feature everyone’s favorite ocean predator, the shark.

Next up is a feature on weather and its role in the island’s ecosystem, followed by an exhibit on shellfish and salt marsh ecology.

From there, visitors will enter what Haller affectionately called “Turtle Land.”

As Kaplan put it, “everyone loves turtles.” And, he added, “Turtles play a really important part in what’s going on here.”

The first stop in “Turtle Land” in an interactive machine, on loan from the N.C. Aquariums, which simulates x-rays and probes and allows users to “diagnose” turtle maladies and learn how to care for them. Basically, it teaches visitors about sea turtle biology and the environmental conditions that affect turtles by allowing the visitors to play veterinarian.

Another exhibit focuses exclusively on N.C. sea turtles, with a particular emphasis on the issues and opportunities facing Hatteras Island. The exhibit will include information about the nesting, stranding, rehabilitation, release of turtles and information about the relationship between turtles and fishermen on Hatteras Island.

The latter provides a natural segue into the final exhibit, which will provide information about fishing on Hatteras Island—and Hatteras village especially.

Like the exhibit on shipwreck ecology, the fishing exhibit will be the product of collaboration between Ocean Center volunteers and The Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum, with special input from Ernie Foster, captain of the Albatross Fleet, the island’s oldest charter fishing enterprise, which was started by his father in 1937.

The exhibit will focus specifically on the charter and commercial fishing industries, but Haller and Kaplan said they hope in the future to include information about beach and pier fishing as well.

As they come full circle, just before they reach the main entrance of the space, visitors will see an interactive whiteboard that will provide information about what’s happening on the island that day—including weather and tide updates—as well as an area where visitors can pick up brochures, cards, and other information from local businesses.

And, of course, there will be a small gift shop, where visitors will be able to purchase a few Ocean Center goods should they feel so inclined.

After they leave the information and education center, visitors can feel free to enjoy the other Ocean Center feature that will be available this spring — the nature trials that will snake through wetlands behind the Ocean Center building, leading visitors to the Pamlico Sound.

Essentially, the trails will be little more than well-beaten footpaths through the marsh.

“We’re restricting ourselves to no hardened structures,” Haller said of the trails. “We want to make as little impact as possible.”

The Hatteras Island Ocean Center’s education center and ecology park should be open this spring and will provide exhibits and access to creeks and wetlands for hiking and watersports. Photo: Lix Browning Fox, Island Free Press

The idea is that the trails will function as a kind of hands-on, outdoor educational experience—that visitors will be able to immerse themselves in the wetland ecosystem in a minimally invasive way.

In addition to the trails themselves, the Ocean Center is planning to provide a space for visitors to launch watersports equipment at the trails’ end.

They plan to create some sort of unloading dock for the equipment, but for now, those details—as well as details about the parking situation—are still up in the air. Kaplan insisted, though, that sometime this spring there would be free, public kayak and stand-up paddleboard access and accessible parking, for anyone who wanted to explore the Hatteras wetlands.

That’s exciting news for anyone trying to launch a kayak or a paddleboard in Hatteras village, since there is currently a dearth of public launching areas, and parking is even harder to come by.

However, despite his commitment to facilitating responsible wetland excursions, Kaplan was adamant that providing public access would be as far as the Ocean Center would go.  In other words, the Ocean Center would not be offering training courses, equipment rentals, guided tours or other watersports-related services.

“We’re not trying to compete with [local businesses],” Kaplan said.  “Our job is to enhance. We’re all about economic development, not about hurting the economy.”
The idea that the Ocean Center will be a boon to the local economy and bolster local businesses is one that’s very important to Kaplan—and one to which he’s very committed.

There will be no charge to visit the Ocean Center and use its facilities. “We hope that [visitors] have such a good experience that they’ll give us a donation,” Kaplan said.

And local businesses will be able—and are encouraged to—place flyers, brochures, and business cards in the education center.

The long-term plan for the Hatteras Island Ocean Center goes beyond the education center and the soundside trails and water access. The Ocean Center’s first move was to purchase property on the oceanside of N.C. 12 in Hatteras village, the site of the former General Mitchell Motel that was destroyed in Hurricane Isabel in 2003.

Jody Haller, a volunteer at the center, rescued this Kemp’s ridley sea turtle in January. Photo: Hatteras Island Ocean Cener

The facilities on the oceanside, Kaplan hopes, will eventually include a world-class fishing pier, a pier house with an event venue, a restaurant for oceanview dining, other food vendors, covered playground, an arcade, plentiful parking, a public bathhouse, tackle shop, equipment rental, indoor and outdoor exhibits, classrooms, research areas and a wildlife rehabilitation area.

Kaplan sees locals and visitors using the area for fishing, swimming, surfing, kiteboarding, windsurfing, standup paddleboarding, scuba diving, bird watching, stargazing, wintertime seal and whale watching, dining, enjoying live music and just sitting and watching the sunrises and sunsets.

It will be, he says, “a place for everybody to enjoy the ocean, play, learn, and have fun.”

However, while Kaplan and the Ocean Center board pursue funding possibilities for the oceanside phase of the project, they are opening up the information and ecology center to give the project a presence on the island.

And the soundside trails and launching area are much less expensive to develop than the oceanside phase.

That phase, Kaplan says, is several years down the road at least and will involve building the pier house first and then the pier.  The thought behind that is that local businesses leasing areas in the pier house would provide a source of income.

Over the winter, the Ocean Center received what is essentially the National Park Service’s endorsement for the project. The Memorandum of Intent between the Cape Hatteras National Seashore and the Ocean Center gives the center permission for a portion of the pier to cross park property on the beach.  The Pier House would be on the private land, purchased by the ocean center.

To accomplish this, the Park Service will enter into a cooperative management agreement with Dare County for operation and maintenance of the portion of the center crossing seashore property. However, the Park Service will have no financial liability for the Ocean Center, and thus far Dare County has made no financial commitments to the project.

Kaplan is pursuing financing through grants from the public and private sector, including foundations, to build the project.

Kaplan hopes that the Ocean Center will be a draw for visitors—a facility that will attract more people to Hatteras village. “We want people to realize that the lower part of Hatteras is a destination in its own right, not a way to get to Ocracoke.”

Kaplan also believes that the Ocean Center will complement the island’s existing cultural and historical attractions—including the lighthouse, the marinas and the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum—and that the attractions will support and bolster one another.

“I think it all works together, and that’s—I think—an important aspect of what we’re doing. You have to make this work, not only from a cultural point of view, but also economically,” Kaplan said.  “If there isn’t enough stuff to do, people won’t go. So, the more things [to do], the better. They actually reinforce each other.”

By Jordan Tomberlin and Irene Nolan

Reprinted from the Island Free Press

HATTERAS — In 2003, when Lynne and Ernie Foster organized the first-ever Day at the Docks, it was just a small, community-based event celebrating the “spirit of Hatteras” in the wake of Hurricane Isabel and honoring the fishing heritage that is central to the village.

Day at the Docks has grown quite a bit since then, attracting more and more people each year, becoming one of the most popular events on Hatteras Island.

Lynne Foster

Ernie Foster

Anticipation was at an all-time high for this year’s Day at the Docks, which took place Saturday, Sept. 15, and it didn’t disappoint.

The weather was perfect—bright, sunny and not too hot—and the hundreds, if not thousands, of visitors who attended this year’s celebration were met with an expanded lineup of speakers, performers, activities and contests.

It was the biggest and best Day at the Docks yet.

The festivities kicked off at 10 a.m. on the main stage, just across from The Albatross Fleet, with opening statements and an official welcome from county commissioners Allen Burrus and Warren Judge and local poet Johnnie Baum, and it was full-steam ahead from there.

The main stage boasted a variety of entertainment all day, and many of the performers were new to Day at the Docks. Local author Susan West and cultural anthropologist Barbara-Garrity Blake read selections from their book, Fish House Opera. They were followed by David Cecelski, a professor of American Studies at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Duke University, who talked about the cultural significance of traditional shanties.

He was joined onstage by Bob Zentz, a troubadour-style musician from Norfolk, Va., who sang a shanty while Cecelski elaborated on their purpose and their importance to early mariners.

According to Foster, the pair had not planned to perform together—they didn’t even know each other before Saturday. It just seemed like a good idea, and it ended up working out really well.

Zentz took the stage alone after Cecelski finished, delivering the one-man, multi-instrument, maritime-inspired show that has made him a Day at the Docks favorite.

He was followed by poet Dave Densmore, a life-long commercial fisherman from Alaska, whose ballad-style poems about his life on the ocean speak to truth about what it really means to be a fisherman.

In addition to what was available on the main stage, visitors could find entertainment up and down the waterfront.

Seth Foutz of Ketch 55 in Avon was the winner of the seafood throw-down. Photo: Don Bowers, Island Free Press

All the activities that folks who attend Day at the Dock have come to know and love returned, including the children’s crab races, the mullet toss, the concrete marlin and concrete sailfish competitions, the fish-print T-shirt station, the survival suit races and the kids’ fishing tournament.

As always, food was one of the main a focuses of the event.

On the porch beside the Albatross Fleet office, local chefs and restaurateurs showed off their skills. Sharon Peele, from the Hatteras Harbor Deli, did a shrimp cooking demonstration. Dwight Callahan from Dinky’s Waterfront Restaurant cooked grouper with a garlic basil and roasted red pepper parmesan crust, and Dan and Don Oden, from the Breakwater Restaurant, fried up some fresh, local bluefish.

As always, one of the most popular events of the day was the Hatteras Island Cancer Foundation’s annual chowder cook-off.

This year, 16 restaurants and businesses entered, and the chowders were more creative than ever. They ranged from traditional Hatteras-style clam chowder to an unusual — and delicious — Thai seafood chowder.

In the end, Breakwater Restaurant won first place with its creamy corn, crab, fish and chorizo chowder. Café Pamlico came in second with a Pamlico Sound seafood and Currituck corn chowder and Saltwater Grill’s pumpkin and fish chowder took third.

The chowder cook-off has always been one of the biggest draws of Day at the Docks, but this year, an exciting new event—the seafood throw-down—may have won the prize for biggest crowd.

The throw-down was the last big event of the day, and it pitted the executive chefs from two local restaurants against each other in an “Iron Chef”-style cooking competition.

Forrest Paddock from Café Pamlico and Seth Foutz from Ketch 55, each with one sous chef, went head to head in this year’s inaugural bout.

They had one hour to plan, prepare and serve a dish—based on a “mystery ingredient” that could not be revealed until the clock started ticking—to a panel of three judges.

Started in 1937 by the late Capt. Ernal Foster, the Albatross Fleet has fished every season since then except for the years of WW II. The fleet is now operated by Capt. Ernie Foster who, having learned from his father, is one of only three second-generation native guides operating out of Hatteras. Photo: The Albatross Fleet.

The Cape Hatteras Secondary School marching band entertained the audience while the stage was set-up, and just before their time started, Jeffrey Aiken of Jefferey’s Seafood in Hatteras, showed up to reveal the mystery ingredient: cobia.

The rest of the ingredients for the dish were sourced from the Conetoe Family Life Center’s community garden. The garden, which started as a project to inspire and educate the youth of rural Conetoe—a town with a population of 365 people in Edgecombe County—has grown into a full-fledged vegetable farm. The income from the sales of the produce went to a scholarship fund, and in the spring of 2012, the first set of the program’s alumni graduated from college.

The contestants were judged on taste, presentation, use of the whole fish and originality.

After the judges deliberated, Foutz’s Thai-style cobia trio of pan-roasted cobia served over rice noodles, cobia ceviche and cobia sashimi edged out Paddock’s honey-glazed lemon, rosemary, smoked paprika cobia served over garlic and hot chili collard greens.

After the throw-down, awards were handed out for the children’s fishing contest, always a popular event.

In this seventh children’s fishing contest, 103 youngsters competed for prizes donated by local businesses and for bragging rights. There were 9-and-under and 10-and-over categories.  Two of the winners – Zeke Willis of Buxton and Harper Hubbard of Williamsburg, Va. – were just 4 years old.

The grand-prize winner for the heaviest pinfish was Jahfar Christ, 13, of Frisco for a fish that weighted four-tenths of a pound and for the longest fish was Haley Rosell, 8, of Hatteras who caught a 14-inch puppy drum.

Click here to see all of the winners of the contest and the businesses that donated prizes.

It was almost 5 p.m. by the time all the awards were handed out on the stage under the tent, and it was time for boats to start lining up for the working boat parade and blessing of the fleet.

This event was the genesis of Day at the Docks when it was first held in 2004, a year after Hurricane Isabel cut a new inlet between Frisco and Hatteras, isolating Hatteras village.  It has been held every year since then at the end of Day at the Docks. In fact, Day at the Docks was cancelled last year after Hurricane Irene, but there was still a parade and blessing of the fleet.

John Canning, left, and Wheeler Ballance, both 11, got their commercial fishing licenses at the Blessing of the Fleet, Here, they hold the wreath that a traditional island shad boat took out to Pamlico Sound to honor Hatteras Island fishermen. Photo: Don Bowers, Island Free Press

Almost 40 boats participated in the working boat parade this year – everything from large, expensive charter boats to well-worked commercial vessels to skiffs.  As usual, the “Miss Hatteras” brought a crowd of folks and the participants in the blessing to Hatteras Harbor Marina.  And this year two – not just one – Coast Guard boats were the last in the parade.

As always, the parade was led by the “Albatross I,” which was built by the late Ernal Foster in 1937 and is the oldest working boat in the harbor. The younger” Albatross II” and “Albatross III” also participated. The fleet, now run by Ernal’s son, Ernie and his wife Lynne, will celebrate its 75th anniversary this month.

The boats lined up outside the Hatteras Harbor breakwater under blue skies with puffy white clouds in a stiff northeast wind, gusting to about 20 mph. As the sun was setting, the air on the water was chilly, and many folks were putting on their sweatshirts.

By the time, the parade headed back into the harbor, the line of boats stretched to the west all the way to the ferry channel.

One by one, the boats re-entered the harbor as the folks on land cheered and waved at them.

The site of the blessing, as usual, was Hatteras Harbor Marina, where a community choir was singing hymns and patriotic songs.

Two island poets – Johnnie Baum and Dale Farrow – recited poetry they had written about the island’s watermen.

Then three ministers offered prayers for the watermen who have died this year – including Bernice Ballance, Harry Gaskill and Gary Wade Midgett — and for the safety of those who still fish the seas.

Offering their prayers were the Rev. Ken Davenport, pastor of the United Methodist churches in Buxton, Frisco and Hatteras; the Rev. Dr. Azariah J. Jeyakumar, known as just Pastor Jey, of the Hatteras Assembly of God Church and Rev. Dwight Burrus of Hatteras, a native son.

The wreath to honor the watermen was brought to the dock by Dan Oden and his family and handed over to Michael Peele and friends and family on an old, traditional shad boat for its return to the sea.

On the landing, a representative of state Division of Marine Fisheries presented commercial fishing licenses to two members of the next generation of island watermen. They are Wheeler Ballance and John Canning, both 11 and the sons of watermen. Wheeler is the son of Todd and Mary Ellon Ballance and John is the son of John and Lee Ann Quidley Canning.

The two young watermen then climbed aboard the shad boat to join the Peele family and the pastors in taking the wreath outside the breakwater and placing it on the water as the sun was setting over Pamlico Sound.

“When the winds blow and the seas are hard, may they find Your guiding hand,” implored Pastor Ken Davenport.  “Bless this fleet. May You see them home safely.”

The story was provided as a courtesy by the Island Free Press