It’s not uncommon for Dr. Jim Herstine to hear his name enthusiastically called out when he’s out and about in Wilmington.

Admittedly, he doesn’t always immediately recognize the smiling face greeting him in a parking lot or grocery store. By his estimates he taught some 300 students in a class that he and a couple of colleagues came up with to offer at the University of North Carolina Wilmington in the mid-1990s.

But his former students who took the North Carolina coastal issues and experience class, now more than 20 years strong and counting, remember the course that took them from the classroom on a trip through the Outer Banks.

“It was my favorite class to teach,” said Herstine, who earned the title professor emeritus when he retired in the summer of 2018. “The whole purpose of the class was to get the students out of the classroom and into real-life situations.”

He’s “tickled to death” the course continues to leave an impression on students willing to brave the seven-night, eight-day field portion of the class that entails camping, kayaking and covering miles and miles of coastal areas to learn about and experience the Outer Banks and the issues communities within the region are facing, be it climate change, tourism-related impacts or development.

Today, UNCW students may take this unique course during the university’s first summer session, which ran from May 20 through June 18 and was, this year, opened to undergraduate students by Dr. Jennifer Biddle, an associate professor of public and internal affairs who inherited the course from Herstine.

Biddle explained in a telephone interview earlier this month that the ultimate goal of the field course is to bridge the gap between science and policy by exploring an area filled with beautiful beaches, “but they have a lot of serious threats that they are being faced with.”

“The idea is we really are trying to help (students) understand the variety of perspectives on these coastal issues,” Biddle said.

Think of it as a guide to get students to appreciate and empower them in how they can help affecting change where they live.

Students learn about how different organizations are coping with threats facing these coastal communities, why it’s important to protect those areas and how they, in their future professions, can work with various organizations and groups in helping coastal communities deal with these issues.

It’s an ultimate field trip that takes the students through an immersive experience from the Virginia border to Carteret County, stopping along the way to kayak along freshwater rivers and coastal sounds and meet with an array of professionals, from federal and local government officials to coastal environmentalists to ferry captains.

They camp primarily in state parks and on national seashores, more often than not washing off the day’s grime in cold showers at primitive campgrounds.

But what they lack in modern-day comforts, they gain from the sound of a chorus of frogs at night, marveling at a stingray swimming gracefully near their kayaks and good conversation about the day’s highlights over a communal dinner, Biddle said.

“You have the whole tourism economy meets sea level rise,” she said. “Or, even in Hyde County, the loss of economic opportunities meets sea level rise. And, one of the prevailing things in the Down East area is sense of loss.”

That includes a loss of community, loss of lifestyle and livelihoods and loss the community has experienced as members of families who have been here for generations move away, she said.

This year’s class of 15 students, including five undergraduate students and 10 graduate students, represented an array of studies: oceanography, political science, public administration, environmental sciences, biology, public policy and the university’s Master of Coastal and Ocean Policy degree program.

“I definitely came back tired. I definitely came back dirty, but it was a fantastic opportunity because I came back with so many different perspectives,” said UNCW Assistant Director of Transfer Admissions and graduate student Trey Ricks. “I think one of the things that I walked away with that has been most impactful is that you have to work with the environment and people to make any kind of change.”

Fulbright Scholar and UNCW graduate student Elisapeti Veikoso saw some parallels between the issues Outer Banks communities are facing and those of her native Tonga.

“I have to say that this course was an eye-opener for me in how developed countries try to deal with coastal issues and the big issues that we’re facing nowadays – climate change, sea level risk and frequent tropical cyclones, I think you call them hurricanes,” she said. “I got the same feeling that we have at home. We’re not alone in dealing with climate issues. As an islander, that is our story as well. This class is really an eye-opener.”

That’s what the professors – current and past – aim to provide through the course.

“It took a lot of people to put the whole class together,” Herstine said. “Do I think that the class itself is a legacy for the university? Yes, I definitely do.”

A team of educators and scientists is combining efforts to build a program that makes small-scale living shorelines a practical option for waterfront property owners.

The N.C. Living Shoreline Academy held its first introductory course last fall at Carteret Community College in Morehead City and is getting ready to offer it again, along with the new structure and design course.

The introductory course is scheduled for 2-5 p.m. March 27, where attendees can learn about living shoreline concepts, construction and permitting processes, existing natural shoreline stabilization techniques, and different types of living shoreline projects.

A four-week structure and design course will follow and be held from 2 to 5 p.m. each Wednesday in April. This course offers a step-by-step approach on design, construction materials, and addressing vulnerabilities, as well as guide students on designing effective, research-based living shoreline solutions for private property projects.

Tuition for each course is $35 and there are some seats open for both. Register online or contact Lauren Daniel at Lauren8421@carteret.edu to get more information on the program.

The college’s Maritime Programs Coordinator Scott Leahy and Dr. Rachel Gittman, an assistant professor at East Carolina University, are co-principal investigators for the program that was awarded a $460,186 grant in 2023 through National Sea Grant College Program’s work with the U.S. Coastal Research Program.

In addition to the college and ECU, partners in developing the program are North Carolina Sea Grant, the North Carolina Coastal Reserve, and the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review.

Gittman, who has been working with different organizations on living shorelines for about a decade, said that while there are a lot of definitions out there of what a living shoreline is, she tends to view a living shoreline as one that has native living components incorporated into the design and that maintains the land-to-sea continuum, or not interrupting the transition between the land and the sea with a wall or other type of hard barrier.

“That’s the real key for me, that the land-to-sea transition is maintained,” she said.

Research shows that this green infrastructure technique, which is a natural alternative to riprap or bulkheads, sustains less damage during storms, is more environmentally friendly with a lower carbon footprint, and there’s life within the structure, Leahy said.

By comparison, a bulkhead wouldn’t have much growth or increase biodiversity, he added, “Whereas it’s been shown through research that if you put an offshore sill, it will increase the biodiversity within the scope of your project.”

He said that the idea for the Living Shoreline Academy was planted during a conversation with Lauren Daniel, who is developing the program, while she was attending one of his other courses. They discussed “how great” it would be to have a class on how to build living shorelines on private property.

Gittman explained she was at the college working on a different proposal with the aquaculture program when she learned there was interest in developing the living shoreline program.

They submitted a grant proposal for the new program through National Sea Grant and the U.S. Coastal Research Program.

One of the grant requirements is to translate the ample research by other institutions on living shorelines into practical application for property owners and contractors who would be interested in building small-scale living shorelines.

“We proposed that we would take a lot of the research that’s been done over the last decade or so, really more than that, and try to integrate it into — not just your intro to living shorelines — but a more in-depth, module-based course,” Gittman said.

“Our goal is to read through the research and be able to present it to folks,” who want living shorelines, Leahy said, adding the courses are being geared toward property owners and marine contractors.

The academy is focusing on projects around 100 feet or less, which would fall under the general Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, permitting in North Carolina, Leahy said.

“We are not training people to do the really large projects,” Gittman explained. “We’re really focused on helping typical homeowners with backyard-type living shorelines that would fall under the state’s general permitting program because that’s where most of the projects are, and where I think there’s the most opportunity for growth in the living shoreline market is to do these smaller, private property living shorelines.”

The first session being held Wednesday is designed to expand on what a living shoreline is, its purpose, benefits and drawbacks, Leahy said.

The structures and design course takes a deeper dive into the different types of living shorelines, available materials and products, and what would work best for different types of shorelines.

For example, if you’re in an area with high wave energy, you don’t want to use oyster bags because they’ll get destroyed. “That would not be the best method there for your goals,” he said. “We’re trying to match the materials with your location.”

Participants will learn the basics on how to understand and apply for a CAMA permit, too.

“So, you think about it, then you design it. You get a permit and then you build it,” he said. “This class is all about that design, how you make it.”

Leahy said the academy’s first class was held in the fall and that was just the intro class.

Gittman said they had a full range attend the intro course last fall, including property owners who have shoreline issues and wanted to know about their options, and marine contractors who had been doing mostly bulkheads and wanted to diversify what they offer.

This spring, they’ve added the structures and design course and, in the fall, these two classes will be held and a vegetative component will be added, Leahy continued.

“We’re going to work with our horticulture department here on campus, we’re growing marsh grasses,” he said. “We’re going to discuss the different types of Spartina grass, we’re going to propagate the grass products, potentially planting some in a sample site, and then we’re going to be focusing on the upland plants that go into supporting healthy shoreline.”

Then, there are plans to add a logistics course and a live project. Once those are in place, when a student completes the academy, they’ll earn certification.

Leahy said the ultimate goal is for a contractor to be able to present their certification to potential clients to show they’re knowledgeable and have been trained, or so a homeowner will be better equipped to build their own following CAMA guidelines.

He’s hoping that as more people install living shorelines, these projects can become more affordable.

“I think there’s definitely interest there and learning what other options are out there,” Gittman said, adding that these smaller projects are important because they do add up.

“There is evidence from the research that we’ve done and others have done in other states that it is kind of like a domino effect. Whatever your neighbor chooses to do, tends to influence what you do. And so, if we can get whole communities to kind of buy into this idea that there’s opportunities beyond just building a bulkhead to prevent erosion of your shoreline,” she said. “The more seeds we can plant in the community, I think the more advocacy we’ll have from residents.”

The Coastal Federation’s Coastal Resiliency Manager Sarah S. Bodin said that the academy “is a wonderful hands-on training tool” for homeowners, contractors, and laborers who wan to increase their education and skills in the design, permitting and implementation of living shorelines.

“Living Shorelines are a vital nature-based technique in the preservation and restoration of coastal wetlands, especially in light of sea level rise, increase in storm events, and where migration corridors are limited,” Bodin continued. “Living Shorelines have been around for more than 25 years, yet their use is not the norm. This course will help to address the knowledge gap between the public and these tried and true nature-based techniques.”

The North Carolina Coastal Federation is moving forward with its plans to expand an existing Pamlico Sound oyster sanctuary network and create a partnership to encourage underrepresented university students to study marine sciences.

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration notified the nonprofit Thursday that the $14.9 million grant had been finalized.

NOAA first announced the award recommendation in late April for the nearly $15 million project titled, “Completing the Pamlico Sound Oyster Sanctuary and Training the Next Generation of Restoration Professionals,” through the Biden administration’s Climate Ready Coasts initiative, funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act. 

This project is expected to complete the 500-acre goal of oyster sanctuaries in the Sen. Jean Preston Oyster Sanctuary Network, which is named in memory of the late state senator who represented Carteret County, and to facilitate an innovative program with N.C. State University and N.C. Central University to offer hands-on opportunities for underrepresented undergraduate and graduate students studying marine sciences.

Coastal Federation Oyster Program Director Erin Fleckenstein said that there are a handful of immediate next steps ahead for the oyster sanctuary work, including finalizing locations of  future sanctuary construction.

“The grant will allow us to build out several existing sanctuaries that are already permitted, but we also need to finalize locations and permit the additional sanctuary locations,” she said. Organization staff will be able to work with material suppliers to secure enough in the quantities and types needed to build out the sanctuary acres, and ensure that the stockpile locations are prepped and ready.

Lastly, Fleckenstien said that for this portion of the project, the Coastal Federation will open up bids for a construction contractor who will be responsible for constructing the sanctuaries that are planned.

For the partnership with the two universities, Fleckenstein said the researchers have advertised and made motions to hire a cohort of graduate students who will work toward their master’s or doctorate’s during the course of the grant.

“We’ve developed a list of potential research questions that the students will address during their research,” she added.

N.C. State Center for Marine Sciences and Technology, or CMAST, Director David Eggleston explained to Coastal Review that research on restoring oyster reefs and creating tools to help guide future restoration sites has been conducted for the past 15 years. The research group first teamed up with the Coastal Federation in 2010 in response to funding through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.

“This initial effort focused on assessing the ecological performance of restored, subtidal oyster reefs in Pamlico Sound that are a part of the Jean Preston Oyster Sanctuary Network,” he said. This current project with the Coastal Federation, and other partners including N.C. Central, the state Division of Marine Fisheries and the North Carolina Aquariums system, will assess the ecological performance of restored subtidal oyster reefs.

“A novel and key component of the current project is to diversify and train the next generation of coastal habitat restoration practitioners. There is increasing recognition of the valuable ecosystem services provided by coastal habitats such as oyster reefs, seagrasses, salt marshes and mangroves. Given limited resources for habitat restoration, it is critical to locate restoration projects in areas that have the greatest chance of success,” Eggleston explained.

During this project, they will focus on training underrepresented graduate and undergraduate students in Geographic Information Systems, or GIS, computer-based machine learning, population dynamics, statistics and a broad suite of field and laboratory techniques including scientific diving, boat handling, and communication skills.

The N.C. State component is to assess the ecological performance of the restored oyster reefs relative to either unstructured estuarine bottom, or adjacent oyster reefs. Examples of ecological performance include tracking oyster settlement, growth and survival on restored oyster reefs, characterizing fish use of the reefs, the footprint of the reefs and any changes in their structural complexity over time, and refining GIS-based tools used to guide where to locate new restoration sites, he explained.

“Most of the budget for this project component is devoted to supporting graduate and undergraduate students from underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM,” he said.

N.C. State University is partnering with Dr. Carresse Gerald, assistant professor in Environmental, Earth and Geospatial Sciences at N.C. Central University, to recruit undergraduate and graduate students to participate in this project, serve as a formal co-mentor and graduate committee member for students, and facilitate approaches for student success, Eggleston said.

For undergraduates, this includes successful scholarship or fellowship applications, employment post-graduation in STEM, or acceptance to graduate programs. For graduate students, this is earning a degree in a timely manner, which is two to three years for a master’s or four to five years for a doctorate, as well as enhancing skills in critical thinking, communication, interdisciplinarity and quantitative tools.

“These achievements should lead to increased workforce development of underrepresented groups as restoration practitioners, as well as building research capacity at an Historically Black College or University,” he said.

Gerald and Dr. Del Bohnenstiehl, professor in the Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences department at N.C. State, introduced the project during the Coastal Federation’s Oyster Summit, a two-day workshop held earlier this year in Raleigh.

Bohnenstiehl said there are three pillars to the program, with the first being a cohort of eight graduate students from underrepresented groups. The students will have an opportunity to begin or finish their master’s program or begin their doctorate program in marine science, data science or geospatial analytics.

“Our focus is going to be on recruiting from HBCUs such as North Carolina Central and other universities,” he said. HBCUs are historically Black colleges and universities.

The students will be working collaboratively and be involved in all aspects of the project. They will be able to carve out some piece of the project that they can focus on for their thesis, gain more expertise and work with advisers, Bohnenstiehl continued.

Gerald, during the summit, said that over the past few years, she has taken undergraduate students to the coast to work with the Coastal Federation.

“They really enjoy being out there, looking at the living shorelines, looking at the oysters and learning about the ecological impacts of those types of things on the environment,” Gerald said, adding that the program advisers intend to travel to the coast with more undergraduate students to encourage their exploration of this type of science and to develop an interest in restoration ecology.

Gerald said there will be opportunities for undergraduates in her science classes to visit the coast for field work, as well.

“I had an environmental education and outreach course that has come down to the coast before and so we’ll have some of those students as well participate in this effort to learn more about living shorelines, the ecology in the marine data science that is happening down in the Pamlico Sound,” she said.

Bohnenstiehl said that one of the opportunities that Central’s undergraduate students are encouraged to take advantage of in the short term is the summer fellowship at CMAST, “an existing program that has been very successful. It’s up to about 40% minority participation already.”

There is funding through this project to support four students from underrepresented groups every summer for the next three years, Bohnenstiehl said.

“We think there’s going to be a huge opportunity to bring these students in, and all the research shows if you start off hands-on, kind of long summer experiences are really critical for getting students engaged in and engaging them in the STEM fields,” he said. STEM means science, technology, engineering and math.

The students will train and take courses but at the heart of the project is an ecological study, trying to understand the benefits of building the sanctuary reefs, their function and their ecosystem services, Bohnenstiehl explained.

“And that’s what the students will be working on, trying to quantify and understand together with partners from DMF and elsewhere,” he continued. Components of the project include field sampling, oyster demographics, mercury within the oyster samples, and “We’ll be looking at maps of the seafloor, trying to quantify and find ways to describe the habitat that’s created by these reefs.”

Bohnenstiehl said they anticipate bringing the graduate students into this project in all aspects as well as the undergraduate students at these different levels.

“Over the next three years, we should have 70 or 80 different students participate in these programs and contribute to the science that goes into all of this and hopefully they’ll be prepared then to be this next generation of practitioners when it comes to understanding oyster reefs and restoration in general,” he said.

Gerald explained to Coastal Review that she was brought in by the Federation’s Coastal Education Coordinator, Rachel Bisesi, “who asked if I would be interested in working on the grant. After a meeting with other partners from NC State we were forging ahead.”

Gerald said they plan to select well-rounded students – four from N.C. State and four from N.C. Central – by evaluating their academic progress, personal statement along with other metrics.

Some of the work students will delve into includes analyzing habitat restoration response variables in the oyster populations and evaluating contaminants such as mercury in the oyster species, she explained.

Gerald said the goal for N.C. Central’s portion of the project is to increase students, more specifically underrepresented and underserved individuals, to engage in ecological studies and more specifically restoration ecology by engaging them in the large-scale oyster restoration project in the Pamlico Sound.

The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

NORTH TOPSAIL BEACH — A new type of barrier tape used to mark off turtle nests was unveiled in North Topsail Beach Wednesday, one that does more than simply cordon off an area.

The tape is made of a biodegradable material to keep plastics off our beaches, and it is a way to learn more about the creatures it protects.

Keith Dorman, founder and managing director of Love thy turtle, was on hand for the midday unveiling at Access No. 29 off Island Drive. To say Dorman is passionate about sea turtles may be an understatement. He flew into coastal North Carolina from South Florida for the event. The crew at Love thy turtle say they are dedicated to the protection and conservation of sea turtles and their habitats.

“I must confess, I love sea turtles,” Dorman said with a beaming grin during the press event held in conjunction with the unveiling.

Dorman and his team developed the eco-friendly turtle nest marker tape that features a QR code that allows anyone on the beach to scan it with their smartphone for access to more information about the nest in front of them and the organization working to protect it.

Scanning the code will take them to the sea turtle rescue organization in that area, in this case, the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center in Topsail Beach. Beachgoers can “adopt” sea turtles and make donations with all proceeds going to the Beasley Center from their website.

Terry Meyer, deputy and conservation director at the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center, said that Love thy turtle initially provided six rolls of the marker tape free of charge. So far, the first tape marking active sea turtle nests has been up for six months and shows no signs of degradation.

The Beasley Center received additional tape Wednesday to get them through the rest of the 2023 nesting season, also free of charge.

Meyer noted the tape is reusable. “We can just roll it up after use,” she said. “It is not a hazard in the ocean if washes away.”

And the QR code allows the crew at the center to concentrate on saving turtles, rather than answering the phone.

“People can now get information with a smartphone instead of having to call us,” Meyer said. “They are able to get information on local sea turtles directly on the beach and specific local information on our center.”

Meyer said she was impressed on Dorman’s zeal to get information about sea turtles to the public.

The tape is intended to draw awareness and educate, Dorman said.

Dorman spoke about a turtle in the Loggerhead Marine Life Center, a nonprofit West Palm Beach, Florida, sea turtle rescue organization. The turtle had passed about 20 pieces of plastic during its first 24 hours there.

“I have to do something,” he said, visibly moved by the experience. “I wanted to create the tape with the QR code so that people can adopt the turtle and find out all the facts, and it becomes an information hub.”

It’s also a way for people to support the organizations that work to save sea turtles.

“The QR code scanning takes people to the Love thy turtle map site, and on that page there is an icon that will take them to the nearest adoption center website,” Dorman. “We don’t touch any of the money, it goes directly to the local center.”

As the group explained, female sea turtles have for millions of years returned to the beaches where they were hatched to make their nests and lay their eggs. Officials estimate only one in 1,000 hatchlings will survive to adulthood. That’s why Dorman and Meyer say it is vital that nests are protected to help improve the odds.

Over the last decade or so, the sea turtle population has declined by over 80%, Dorman said. He explained that in South Florida, they also mark sea turtle nests with yellow tape, but it was not enough protection.

“I was on the beach, and I heard a kid ask his mother, ‘Mommy, why are there so many dead bodies on this beach?’” Dorman said. “So I said, we really need to figure out a better way of letting people know what’s going on.”

North Carolina Erosion and Sediment Control Program officials say that because of construction and development, thousands of acres of land are left vulnerable to erosion each year, which can lead to waters polluted with sediment.

The state is working to reach the public and professionals about controlling erosion and preventing sedimentation through its erosion and sediment education program.

A part of the Erosion and Sediment Control program with the mission “to allow development within our state while preventing pollution by sedimentation,” the program is under the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Energy, Mineral and Land Resources.

Sediment Education Engineer Rebecca Coppa explained to Coastal Review that erosion of exposed terrain — often land made vulnerable through human activity — strips away nutrient-rich topsoil, degrading the soil and making it less productive, leading to sedimentation, or when the eroded soil is moved and deposited by water or wind.

“It takes about 500 years to naturally replace one inch of topsoil,” Coppa said.

“Sedimentation can increase the risk of flooding by reducing the storage volume of water bodies and by clogging storm water drains,” Coppa continued, adding that sedimentation can clog fish gills, smother bottom-dwelling fish and their eggs, and cause turbidity, which is when the sediment makes water look cloudy, opaque or muddy.

“Turbid water negatively impacts recreational use of water, restricts the amount of sunlight reaching aquatic plants, and increases the cost of drinking water treatment since you need to filter all of that out,” Coppa said. “Harmful substances such as pesticides and fertilizers can also hitch a ride on the sediment particles that are washed off the landscape and into waterways, and can contribute to things like algal blooms, which can also harm aquatic life.”

One way to control erosion and prevent off-site sedimentation is to use best management practices, or BMPs. BMPs include replanting vegetation in disturbed areas, controlling rates of runoff and putting in place basins, rock dams and sediment traps.

Coppa said educating the public about erosion and BMPs is the mission of the erosion and sediment control’s education program.

“There are many avenues that we have to inform, educate and help the general public, residents, local and county governments or professionals,” Coppa said. These include keeping the Erosion and Sediment Education website current, having a Frequently Asked Questions page, providing forms, guidance documents and information packets to teachers and professionals, offering workshops for professionals, and attending events.

There are two workshops. The local program workshop is held annually by the department’s Land Quality Section to educate and train staff for their erosion and sediment control programs. For information on this workshop visit the Local Government Programs page. The North Carolina Erosion and Sediment Control Workshop is to educate design professionals, contractors and developers with new erosion and sediment control requirements and practices, and fulfills professional development hours. Registration and the agenda will be posted on the workshop’s event page as it becomes available.

Outreach to younger learners include special activities like the curriculum supplements “Erosion Patrol” for third and fourth graders, and “Where Is All Our Soil Going” for middle schoolers.  

One tool Coppa and other educators use is called Enviroscape. These 3-D educational models demonstrate how watersheds can become polluted and are sold through a private company.

Coppa said that she has been using Enviroscape since she began working with the state five years ago, and other educators have relied on it as well, including DEMLR Chief of Program Operations Toby Vinson.

Vinson said Enviroscape is a valuable tool he’s been using since 1994 to present the impacts of erosion and sedimentation and other pollutants to the environment, community and property to K-12 and college students, at workshops instructing contractors, developers and engineers and at community festivals.

Evangelyn Lowery-Jacobs, assistant regional engineer in DEMLR’s Fayetteville Regional Office, added that Enviroscape helps to translate technical concepts into real life, relatable terms. She mostly used the teaching aid with elementary and middle school students. 

“I did have one opportunity to visit a class to conduct a demonstration for developmentally challenged adults. Enviroscape allowed the students to observe and interact because of their ability to identify with things they had been exposed to in their personal lives,” she said. “The eagerness to answer questions was obvious and the model encouraged dialogue among everyone in the group. This encounter gave me a new perspective on the value of this model and its effectiveness for people of all ages and backgrounds.”

Coppa said interactive, hands-on educational activities help communicate the message because being able to see, touch and play with something “helps us learn about it so much better than just reading about it or listening to it in a lecture.”

During her presentation at the North Carolina Water Resources Research Institute’s annual conference earlier this year in Raleigh, Coppa shared how educators can enhance their Enviroscape activities with basic materials, like cocoa powder can simulate sediment.

She expanded in a recent email interview that the Enviroscape brand provides ideas for materials that can be found at low costs at many stores, which allows for flexibility.

“Personally, I like to use various sprinkles (jimmies if you’re from the north) to demonstrate different pollutants. Rainbow sprinkles for trash/plastic pollutants; chocolate sprinkles for feces (such as cow poop or dog poop); and sugar crystal sprinkles of various colors to represent fertilizers, pesticides and point source chemicals from factories,” she said. “Obviously, the chocolate sprinkles representing poop is the one that gets the best reaction from the students. But we also can’t forget what we use to represent the number one pollutant by volume to NC’s waterways: coco powder to represent sediment.”  

Other ways she enhances her lessons is by pairing Enviroscape with an erosion or stormwater walk, and incorporating activities through Project WET, or Water Education Today, a water education foundation. 

“I’ve paired the Enviroscape with a sediment jar activity and/or soil texture by feel analysis and discussed why soil texture is important in terms of erosion. Plus, then students get to play with both soil as well as the water on the Enviroscape model; all of the learning through play,” she said. 

Each of DEMLR’s seven regional offices throughout the state have an Enviroscape Watershed Model and while she’s the only staff primarily dedicated to education and outreach, regional office staff can visit as their schedules allow. 

“The expansion of virtual meeting software during the past few years has also increased our capacity to how far we can ‘travel’ if you’re willing for us to come to your classroom virtually. Virtual visits without travel time are often easier to fit into our schedule and we can send you activity instructions ahead of time so your students can follow along with what we are demonstrating on screen,” Coppa said.

She added to contact her with any education outreach requests and she will help coordinate visits with regional office staff if she’s unavailable to make it herself.

“Part of our role as nonformal educators is to be there to support the formal educators of North Carolina. So, if they have questions beyond what is already available on our website, we are a short email away and are happy to brainstorm with you about how we can work to fill in the gaps within our respective education programs,” Coppa said.

A graduate of Worcester Polytechnic Institute with a bachelor’s in environmental engineering, Coppa has been educating about sediment control for almost five years. 

“That four-year degree combined with my volunteer work with kids throughout my high school and college career and extracurricular work planning events made me a good fit for this job,” she explained. 

“The environment has always been something I’ve been passionate about, and my passion for environmental education, getting learners of all ages outdoors, and letting them learn through play, has only grown these past few years as I’ve been learning so much myself as I am pursuing my North Carolina Environmental Education Certificate,” Coppa said. “And as that passion has grown, I’ve made a conscious effort to bring the Enviroscape, soil or water or other things that the students can touch and play with if I can’t get the student’s outside. Because the more the students interact with the lesson and materials, the more I see them lighting up, becoming interested, and hopefully remembering what they learned for years to come.”

Construction began this spring on an interactive exhibit to educate the public on the importance of oysters at the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island.

Aquarium Director Larry Warner told Coastal Review that if a grant through the Institute of Museum and Library Services, or IMLS, comes through, the plan is to open the exhibit they’re calling “Fish Filter Food: The Human Oyster Connection,” in early summer 2025. 

Warner said they’ll know if they received the grant in September.

The grant is a two-year proposal that includes funds to support formal evaluation, Warner explained. “This said, our hope would be to open the exhibit by early summer of 2025, with evaluation occurring over that summer and closure of the grant process in September of 2025.”

Seed money to get the project started came through the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which has partnered with the aquarium on the exhibit, through two National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grants. 

“We are requesting an IMLS grant that would be a combination of federal funding with a 100% match provided by the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island,” he said. “We will continue to seek additional funding from other resources as well to round out what we need.” 

During the 2023 Oyster Summit in Raleigh, Warner told the crowd of about 200 that Coastal Federation staff, after receiving the federal grant funds, approached the aquarium in 2020 to look at the possibility of creating an oyster exhibit. 

The Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, hosted the two-day symposium in May.

Coastal Federation Oyster Program Director Erin Fleckenstein said that the partnership offers a way for people to learn about oyster habitats and the importance of oyster sanctuary work through interactive, hands-on engagement.

The aquarium has roughly 330,000 annual visitors, and “is a great venue to get messaging out,” Warner explained. 

The aquarium is already committed to promoting oysters as part of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, and as part of the N.C. Oyster Trail, which lists the Roanoke aquarium as an educational stop.

Because of this, the North Carolina Aquarium Society is acting as a liaison through an agreement with Coastal Federation “to help us make this (exhibit) happen.”

Though the pandemic shutdown caused some delays, Warner said the project was not derailed. In 2020, aquarium staff, coastal federation staff and a stakeholder group began working together.

After several brainstorming sessions – and lots of ideas – Warner said the ideas were distilled down to a “very simple message to get this out to people who come through the aquarium on a single-day basis.”

The exhibit, which will start in the aquarium’s Wild Wetlands area and wind through to the Ocean’s Edge area.

The exhibit focuses on four main topics, with each of the following represented in a specific area: “Fish,” or how oysters interconnect in the aquatic and terrestrial food chain; “Filter,” featuring oysters and the benefits they provide to the marine environment; “Food,” or oysters and the benefits they provide to humans; and “Guest Actions”, or how you can help.

In the aquarium’s Croatan exhibit, Warner said the plan is to add a replica inside that habitat of the process of oyster reef restoration, where there will be information defining oysters and oyster reefs.

The exhibit will contain tanks filled with the animals found underwater around oyster reefs accompanied by an activity to identify the different types of creatures.

One area Warner said they’re especially excited about is the filter section.

“Because we can’t actually put an oyster display to show the oysters actually filtering the water, we’re going to use digital technology,” Warner said. There will be a reef projected on the wall that simulates how oysters filter water. 

Plans also include a hands-on display of a mural with an oyster reef and audio samples of underwater sounds, a section on how microplastics and other marine debris can affect oyster reefs, and videos with messages from area scientists and professionals about oysters.

Warner said in a recent interview that since the Oyster Summit took place there have been more detailed discussions “regarding many of the wonderfully planned, hands-on interactives with outside vendors who can make them the best they can be. As with everything, it seems, post-pandemic pricing for this type of design work has increased significantly.”

As a result, the new challenge will be seeking additional funding to round out the exhibit, “but with the tremendous excitement shared by many who have seen the designs, I’m quite hopeful we’ll be able to secure the additional funding,” he said.

Warner explained that the process to create the exhibit has “been amazing. There are so many dedicated individuals involved who are passionate about oysters and their role with the coastal ecosystem, environment, and economy.”

The process started with stakeholder meetings to determine key educational points. 

“Designing an exhibit from concept to completion is never a fast process, particularly if you want to make sure you’re hitting the right educational points without overwhelming the audience, all the while making it fun, interactive and engaging. COVID was a definite impact in this process, as it did slow the process down considerably,” he said. “The silver lining with COVID, however, was that it gave us more time to examine how we approach the messaging – not to mention it has allowed time for additional programs and support to develop in the overall oyster arena.”

If the Institute of Museum and Library Services funding comes through, Warner said he plans to propose presenting the exhibit during the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, or AZA, annual conferences in 2024 and 2025, and he hopes to write an article about the exhibit for varying state and regional publications, as well as AZA’s publication. 

“I have also already been approached by the National Aquarium in Baltimore about our exhibit with interest in potential educational collaboration. One of the nice qualities about exhibits is that if they prove successful, there is always the opportunity to create a scaled-back traveling edition or duplicate the exhibit at other facilities,” Warner said. “And finally, we want to make sure that our commitment to the N.C. Oyster Trail’s education component supports the importance of informing the public on the importance of oysters.”

WANCHESE—Location.

That was a driving force behind the establishment of the Coastal Studies Institute, or CSI, a decade ago as a research partnership between five public North Carolina universities. Being on the Outer Banks provides direct access to the nation’s second-largest estuary, the Albemarle-Pamlico, as well as to a unique part of the Atlantic Ocean.

And CSI’s location continues to make it valuable in the eyes of those involved today, from the executive director to professors and researchers to undergraduate students.

“CSI is a place-based steward of the best available data and science,” Executive Director Dr. Reide Corbett told Coastal Review in an email. Such place-based facilities “transform the lives of students of all ages” and allow collaboration with the local community “to integrate science into decision-making.”

To celebrate 10 years on the Outer Banks, CSI held a free open house Saturday on its campus in Wanchese. The public was invited to tour the building, participate in a variety of hands-on learning experiences and talk to professors, researchers and students from East Carolina University, Elizabeth City State University and the College of The Albemarle.

Various organizations in the Coastal Environmental Educators Network also had informational and activity booths on-site for the 2023 Earth Fair OBX that took place in conjunction with the open house.

The parking lot was full by midday and groups of people meandered through and around the LEED Gold-certified building. LEED is a green building rating system.

A family viewed local shipwreck video footage through 3D glasses in the scientific diving lab room. Groups of attendees perused rooms full of the latest research on marsh cores and sediments, Gulf Stream ecology, renewable ocean energy and more. Attendees also had the chance to see drones, autonomous vehicles, a wave energy converter, CSI’s research boat and other science technology firsthand.

Dr. Jim Morley, an assistant professor in ECU’s biology department, welcomed members of the public into the Fisheries Ecology Lab he oversees on CSI’s third floor. He had a computer screen set up to display the view through a microscope of tiny crabs and transparent shore shrimp swimming in a water sample.

Morley said he’s been stationed here for almost 3½ years. “The best part? Definitely the location,” he stated. “Just being close to the places where you’re conducting field research is very handy.”

The Albemarle-Pamlico estuary, located directly behind CSI, is one of the country’s most important estuaries “in terms of fish productivity,” Morley said.

The six people he oversees in the lab are interested in how marine ecosystems change over time.

“We’re doing research on climate change impacts and other forms of human interference with habitats,” he said. They’re also currently studying a shrimp parasite. And they’ll start a project this summer on invasive species of catfish to see “what their predatory impact is on the native species.”

Next to him, Lela Schlenker, a postdoctoral ECU student, invited people to catch and hold shore shrimp swimming with small fish and crabs in tanks on a lab counter.

“I’m a fisheries biologist, and this project is a broad fisheries assessment,” Schlenker said of a nearby set of charts displaying her research. “We’re basically trying to understand the state of fisheries and ecosystem in North Carolina.”

Verena Wang, another ECU postdoctoral scholar, invited people to hold an otolith. Otoliths are ear bones unique to fish, which help them both hear and orient themselves as they swim, she explained.

Juvenile fish develop daily otolith rings, while older fish have yearly rings, like a tree. Scientists can tell how old a fish was and what species it was just by studying its otolith, since each species’ otolith has a unique shape and size, Wang explained.

In a second-floor classroom, undergraduate ECU students asked attendees if they wanted to look through microscopes at various forms of plankton. Laminated sets of photographs of plankton and their corresponding names were next to each telescope.

Julia Callender, a junior ECU biology major and coastal studies minor, helped a child get situated at a microscope. Callender is studying in the semester-long program ECU offers at CSI, which she said is “like a study abroad program, but it’s local.”

The undergraduate housing in Manteo costs the same as a semester in a campus dormitory, but doesn’t include the meal plan, she said.

Prior to coming to CSI, “I didn’t think I was interested in working with the public,” Callender said, but she found she has enjoyed working with the K-12 science outreach program. She has also enjoyed the hands-on learning — even learning how to tie boat knots — and the small undergraduate class sizes, generally between four to 10 students, which “are beneficial” for developing relationships with professors. She plans to host an outreach table when she returns to Greenville to recruit more students to the program: “Why wouldn’t you want to come here?”

Outside on the dock by CSI, Andrew McMains, an ECU doctoral biology student, manned the Adaptive Resolution Imaging Sonar, or ARIS, which provides a way to count fish. A screen was set up so if a fish swam by, people could see it in real time. ARIS sends out sound, and fish bodies reflect it back, so it can still effectively be used when waters are not clear, he explained.

Starting this fall, he and his colleagues plan to study fish movement through Oregon Inlet. McMains said questions they hope to answer include whether predatory species or prey leave the sounds for the ocean first, and what exactly prompts fish to leave and to return — is it temperature or wind or multiple days at the same temperature?

Meanwhile, Patterson “Trip” Taylor, a research assistant at CSI for almost 10 years, stood on the deck of the Miss Caroline, which was docked nearby in the canal.

“This is our research vessel,” Taylor said, gesturing around the 42-foot Duffy & Duffy boat. “The majority of boats with the same instrumentation are significantly larger.” But its compact size helps when navigating the shallow waters of the local sounds, he noted.

Instruments onboard measure water temperature, salinity and speed, and special cameras can map up to 600 meters below the boat. From the salinity and other characteristics, he said he can map the “boundaries” of waters, determining where Chesapeake Bay outflow, Gulf Stream and other distinct water bodies are in the ocean.

Hanging off the back of the boat in the air for people to see was a “rosette with gray canisters,” through which water can freely flow until researchers decide to close the tops. After taking water samples at specific depths, they bring the filled canisters back to CSI, “so chemists and biologists can do their own research,” Taylor said.

The Outer Banks is situated at the confluence of the Mid-Atlantic Bight and the South Atlantic Bight, in an area that is also heavily influenced by wind and by the Gulf Stream.

“It’s an extremely dynamic environment out here, which is why it’s interesting for oceanography,” Taylor said.

CSI is a multi-institutional research partnership between ECU, Elizabeth City State, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University and University of North Carolina Wilmington.

ECU took administrative lead over CSI in 2015, establishing the Outer Banks Campus, according to Corbett. That led to the development of a new college called Integrated Coastal Programs at ECU in 2018, as well as the new Department of Coastal Studies and the redesign of a doctoral program. Prior to 2015, CSI reported directly to the University of North Carolina Systems Office, he said.

CSI has grown from three to 10 full-time faculty since its establishment and currently has more than 50 undergraduate students spending at least a full semester on campus, Corbett said in an email. Faculty have backgrounds in fields of study that include anthropology, remote sensing, human geography, coastal engineering, physical oceanography, fisheries, hydrology and marine geochemistry — bringing together “an interdisciplinary team unlike any other marine center.”

“This breadth of experience allows CSI to focus on the cutting edge of coastal science, providing solutions to coastal communities through cutting edge research and engagement,” Corbett said.

“We are proud of our ability to expand the amount of long-term ocean observations, including waves and currents, off our coast from Ocracoke to the Virginia line,” Corbett said. “We maintain this suite of instrumentation off our coast to better understand the energy resource, address questions related to the complex physical and biochemical interactions in our coastal waters, and provide the data publicly as an important scientific and public resource.”

CSI scientists have also been working with Dare County, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service collecting long-term data “that has been instrumental in creating a monitoring program to assess possible biological impacts along the beach following a (beach) nourishment project.”

Over its first decade, CSI’s external grant revenue has multiplied by more than tenfold, to $4 million currently, “with research being conducted in our backyard and around the globe,” Corbett said.

He pointed to North Carolina Renewable Ocean Energy Program as “an important part of our strategic growth.” The leadership team has expanded its partnerships with the U.S. Department of Energy, or DOE, and CSI hosted the DOE Waves to Water prize program in conjunction with Jennette’s Pier in April 2022, where four devices competed for $1 million in total prize awards to use wave energy to convert ocean water into drinking water.

Also in 2022, Corbett said the DOE awarded ECU/CSI and three partner institutions competitive grants to create the Atlantic Marine Energy Center,or AMEC, a new national center “to address the ongoing needs for research, development and testing” of wave, tidal and ocean current energy. The University of New Hampshire is the lead organization for AMEC, which is the fourth national renewable energy center.

The U.S. is “certainly about a decade behind Europe” and is “playing catch-up” in harnessing offshore wind and other forms of renewable energy, like waves and currents, he said in a phone call. Only in the last several years has development really been pushed, such as by DOE putting significant resources toward driving innovation in that area.

CSI also works with the DOE Energy Transitions Initiative Partnership Program, which annually encourages remote and island communities in the Southeast to apply. The town of Nags Head and Ocracoke Island applied and were competitively selected for the program in 2021, according to the DOE website.

CSI is working with both local governments to help them include renewables in their future energy portfolios, such as by potentially electrifying some Ocracoke ferries, Corbett said.

Outside of that, scientists also collaborate locally to address challenges or specific project concerns. They have provided data for the town of Nags Head’s estuarine shoreline management plan, and students are currently working with the town to evaluate shallow groundwater changes.

“We have worked with Nags Head on helping the community understand the science behind sea level change and possible implications of future rise,” Corbett noted. “We are here to serve our community to the best of our ability.” 

As scientists, they recognize they don’t have all the answers, but “we are constantly searching, studying and looking for solutions,” he added.

CSI also plays a part in instructing the next generation of scientists. K-12 programs in ocean energy, marine biology and more are available both at CSI and off campus at schools. CSI educators collaborate with local teachers with Dare County Schools, but also serve groups across the state and in Virginia, according to Corbett. He expects CSI to serve 2,000 students on campus and another 2,000 off campus by the end of the year.

Additionally, CSI offers 10 summer day camps. All camp slots sold out within two days of opening registration this year, Corbett said. In the past, CSI offered as many as 17 summer camps, but scaled back because of staffing and the need to “create a balance” between the camps and ongoing research.

Echoing the top concern of many Outer Banks employers, Corbett acknowledged: “The biggest challenge for our growth is housing.” While actively trying to address that, he said he expects it to “continue to limit growth of our programming and capacity.”

He explained, “When you really want to drive research, build on research, a lot of that is done with your grad students, Ph.D. students (and) post-docs.”

But several graduate students have chosen to return to ECU’s main campus in Greenville “due to a lack of housing” on the Outer Banks. The campus set up a weekly shuttle to bring students to CSI, “but that doesn’t provide the contact time or research experience often needed for their research,” Corbett said. Whereas three to four years ago, CSI had about six full-time doctoral and graduate students living and working on the Outer Banks, it currently only has two.

While CSI leases dormitory-style housing in Manteo that works well for undergraduates, the higher-level students and technical staff “typically need something more than dorm-type housing,” Corbett said.

In the future, CSI plans to continue to grow its capacity to harness the many forms of renewable energy available off the coast, including using the Gulf Stream as a source of energy, he said.

CSI staff members look forward to the Pioneer Array being stationed off the Outer Banks coast in 2024 and learning how that ocean observation system “can be integrated into our current research,” he said.

The Pioneer Array just finished a seven-year stint of continuous data-gathering off the Massachusetts coast.

CSI also plans to continue to study coastal change in order to supply solutions to coastal communities’ challenges.

“CSI is truly blossoming as a marine center,” Corbett said, noting the importance of its many local partnerships. “We want to work across these partners to create a more resilient coastal community.”

For more information, the public can attend CSI’s free, monthly “Science on the Sound” events, visit the campus or visit www.coastalstudiesinstitute.org.

From a birds-eye view, Dr. Llew Phillips was another person in the crowd of gawkers mesmerized by the bright flames lighting up the sky that late September night.

He was 13 years old when he stood among some 200 people gathered that evening on the old bridge that once linked Morehead City to Beaufort. All eyes were trained on a small island at the mouth of the Newport River where a menhaden factory was engulfed in fire.

“It completely burned down probably in the course of, I would say, 12 hours, 24 hours. I don’t remember how long,” said Phillips, a retired dermatologist.

What he does recall about that evening in 1953 was the trauma of it all.

That was his family’s factory. His family’s island. A childhood haven where he and his younger brother and sister would play on the swingset built by one of his uncles. It’s where they spent carefree summers amongst the oak trees and yaupons that once peppered the northside of the island.

“We had emotional ties to the island. I think I more than the others because I was at the right age to enjoy it,” Phillips said.

His affection for the island hasn’t changed. Before the COVID-19 pandemic seemingly shuttered the world in early 2020, Phillips traveled across the country from his home in the Seattle area to Morehead City a few times each year.

He’s planning a visit in October, his favorite time to visit the coastal town that’s left him brimming with memories of playing in the Haystacks, a marsh in the Newport River near Crab Point, catching scallops and clams with his toes on Bogue Sound and pulling eels from seagrass.

“All those sorts of wonderful things. It’s beautiful times and feelings that, even though I love where I am now and have been for 50 years on the West Coast, I still miss the inextricable pull of the North Carolina maritime childhood I had. It’s just things you don’t forget,” he said.

This much anticipated trip for him will, of course, include a visit to the island.

That was one of the few stipulations included in the transfer donation deed with the new owner.

A practical decision

Yes, Phillips made the decision to donate his little slice of heaven on earth.

Locally referred to as Phillips Island or Chimney Island, aptly named because an old brick chimney is the sole relic left standing on the island, the land as of June became the property of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Institute of Marine Sciences, or IMS.

Phillips came into full title of the island sometime around the mid- to late 1990s.

This was after the deaths of his grandmother and father, who, along with his father’s two brothers, purchased the island on Aug. 1, 1932.

By then, the United States was in its third year of the Great Depression and like so many businesses at the time, the company that owned the menhaden processing plant on the island fell into bankruptcy.

Phillips said he has no idea why his family bought the island. His father was an attorney in Morehead City. One of his uncles was an avid fisherman. The other, a carpenter, also enjoyed fishing.

“I have a feeling it was (my father’s) desire to do something other than law and my two uncles who loved fishing,” Phillips said.

The uncle who was a carpenter became the factory manager and was in charge of maintenance.

No one knows what started the fire in 1953. The factory was closed for the season. There were no guards on the island.

By the time the Coast Guard and marine patrol arrived, nothing could be done to spare the wooden structures from the flames.

A few years after the fire, Phillips left his hometown and headed for the hill – Chapel Hill. He earned his undergraduate degree there and graduated from its medical school in 1965.

He ventured to places far from Morehead City, but he has not gotten away from the memories, the pull back to his hometown. Not that he’s wanted to.

The decision to gift the island, though, was his, a man who doesn’t veil that he’s a realist.

“Certain parts of your memory are so precious to you when you grow up and things you’ve done and remembrances of friends and family that you just don’t want to get rid of them unless you have to or unless you get to a point where I am now that you realize you’re not going to be around forever,” he said. “I’m not being morose, but practical. I just turned 82 in May so for me to think that another 40 years of enjoying the island when I go back to Morehead and walking, taking family and friends there, it’s rapidly becoming something that is not going to be happening.”

Advancing the study of marine science

Phillips’ mind was set. He felt strongly that the island needed to be preserved and remain in a natural state.

“At the very end, it came down to what was more important to me and that is making sure that the island stays unmolested, if you would, and free,” he said.

Phillips will tell you that giving something like land away is “a monstrous thing.”

“It’s awfully difficult,” he said with a chuckle.

The process to turn it over to the institute stretched out for more than a year of committee meetings, paper filings and environmental reviews.

He attributes the grunt work to his brother-in-law Jim Thompson, a Morehead City attorney. Phillips said his longtime realtor David Waller of Gull Isle Realty was instrumental in making the connection with IMS.

“The thing about the island is it’s just a beautiful place and it’s a place I think a lot can be gained from study from the ecological standpoint. I think it’s ever changing,” Phillips said.

The oak trees and yaupons on the island’s north side are gone. That side of the island is eroding.

The island spans a little more than 17 acres now. Phillips remembers when it was 22 to 23 acres.

“One hundred years from now it could be completely under water,” said IMS Director Rick Luettich. “Given the fact that all of eastern North Carolina or much of eastern North Carolina is really subject to those same sorts of natural stressors associated with climate change over the coming decades (the island) offers itself as a bit of a microcosm of that. From my perspective, having it available and having it as something that we can initiate some long-term studies on will help us greatly understand how coastal barrier island, and this isn’t exactly a barrier island but it is probably a good proxy for one, how low-lying coastal areas are evolving and changing as we see sea level rise, as we see other signature consequences of climate change.”

The island is a few short miles by boat from the institute. Its location makes it a prime spot for long-term field work and perfect spot for educating students in the field.

Luettich said there are no plans to make the island, a popular stop for boaters, off limits to the public any time soon, if ever.

“What I see us doing more of is actually putting out educational material so that it’s a little more visible and maybe a bit of explanation as to what people might be seeing as they pull up and moor their boats here on the weekends,” he said. “(The island) won’t be there forever, but maybe other parts of the North Carolina coast won’t be there forever either and so part of what we do is try to understand what those processes look like so we can help citizens and good policy and other decision making that needs to accompany these processes that are going on around us. For me, Phillips Island gives us that opportunity to participate in a meaningful way.”

BEAUFORT – From tagging sea turtles at Cape Lookout National Seashore to writing stories on personal and ecological resilience for Carteret County middle and high schoolers, nine Duke University undergraduates were immersed in the community this spring and early summer during the DukeEngage program at the Duke Marine Lab on Pivers Island.

The program May 8 to July 3 titled “Conservation and Community: Working with education and conservation organizations in rural, coastal communities,” is one of the numerous Duke University DukeEngage programs taking place across the country and beyond. The program’s goal is to have students and faculty “collaborate with communities – locally and globally – to address critical social issues through an immersive summer of community engagement.” 

DukeEngage’s Conservation and Community program supports coastal organizations with educational and conservation missions. Students in this program will work with the Community Science Initiative at the Duke Marine Lab, an initiative that increases community engagement through research, according to DukeEngage.

In its second year, the Beaufort program students worked with six area organizations, many of which have small staffs, to accomplish much-needed projects. The students were also able to go camping and take field trips to see Carteret County. 

Two groups focused on youth in the community. One group worked with the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Coastal Plain’s Morehead City and Beaufort locations to create hands-on science programs for club members. Another group designed a resiliency curriculum for Carteret County Public Schools.

Another two groups worked to protect sea turtles. One group created a way to track how light pollution affects sea turtles for Cape Lookout rangers while another worked with the state Wildlife Resources Commission, based in Raleigh, to create content about protecting sea turtles. 

The students spent time working behind the scenes as well. At the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island, one group archived material for a yet-to-be-launched website about Carteret County communities. Students working with Coastal Carolina Riverwatch helped plan one of that organization’s major annual events and collect resources for educators.

The last meeting for DukeEngage was July 3, when community partners were brought together to discuss and celebrate the work. 

DukeEngage Site Coordinator Laura Givens, a marine science and conservation doctoral candidate at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, said that the final meeting went well.

“Most of our community partners were able to attend and expressed how much they enjoyed working with the students and how impressed they were with the work they completed,” Givens told Coastal Review.

She said the wrap-up session was one of her favorite parts of the entire experience. 

“Our partners were really engaged with their own students, which was unsurprising since they’d been working together closely the past eight weeks, but they also seemed to be inspired by the other projects and their enthusiasm for the whole program was encouraging. All of them have said they want to work with the program again next year as well, which is great,” she continued. “The students did an incredible job with every single project that we had them working on and the output will be truly helpful in our community. They were great to work with and it was sad to see them go.”

Early in the morning of the last Friday in June, which was the seventh week of the eight-week program, the students were seated at tables for two in a semicircle discussing their progress with DukeEngage organizer Liz DeMattia, who led the meeting remotely. DeMattia directs the marine lab’s Community Science Initiative put in place to increase community engagement through research.

During the meeting, the group helping with Coastal Carolina Riverwatch excitedly shared the details of their recent field trip to look for new water sampling sites. Coastal Carolina Riverwatch is an advocacy organization working to protect and enhance the waters of the White Oak River Basin.

Undergraduate Amy Buckalew explained that in addition to helping with sampling, the group compiled a list of activities and resources on subjects such as stormwater, wastewater, plastic pollution and marine debris for educators to use in their classrooms. This group also helped with the annual North Carolina Marine Debris Symposium to be held in October.  

Lisa Rider, executive director for Coastal Carolina Riverwatch, told Coastal Review that the organization was grateful to be a part of the student engagement and community support program offered by Duke University.  

“This program is a huge value to our community environment,” Rider said. “We have a small staff and as a growing organization, we are incredibly grateful for additional support and work for the mission.”

Rider said the DukeEngage students pulled and consolidated educational resources on water quality issues, prioritized concerns and prepared public outreach materials including creative content. Students were also efficient in leading the due diligence efforts of comparing venues for the North Carolina Marine Debris Symposium. 

Spencer Moyle, an environmental science and policy major, said during the meeting in June that the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum group was making progress digitizing material for the Carteret County community history website.  

DeMattia explained that the website effort with Core Sound began with the DukeEngage program last summer. “Then this year, this group has just exploded and put even more staff and more resources onto it.” 

One objective for DukeEngage is to work with community organizations that do not have the staff or resources to take on large projects, such as the website, DeMattia said. Not only is it a great product these students have created but, she said, it’s something that the community wants. The museum didn’t have the human and monetary capital to do this without DukeEngage. “It’s been a nice win-win.”

Museum Executive Director Karen Willis Amspacher told Coastal Review that this second summer with DukeEngage “was another great team of hard workers.”

“Our focus was on a website that serves as a community archive for the Core Sound communities that involved website design, formatting and editing, but most of all, provided the students with a glimpse of how Down East’s past has helped shape the communities we are today,” Amspacher said. “Students this year got to visit many of the Down East communities in person, giving them a real-life experience to balance all the historical documents and photos the website work included.”

Participant Blake Todzo, a psychology major, said the group working with Cape Lookout had been surveying activity on the protected seashore, helping with turtle tagging and researching how light affects sea turtles.

DeMattia added that the National Park Service wanted to figure out how to measure light. The group worked with scientists and created an instrument that the students used to collect data to share with the park service. “And again, this was something that rangers really wanted to do but didn’t have the time or energy to do because it always comes up in the middle of the nesting and tagging surveys.”

Cape Lookout National Seashore Superintendent Jeff West called it an outstanding project. 

“One of the foundations of our protection efforts is that we have science to back up any regulations that might be imposed upon the public. One of the concerns we have is specific nighttime driving habits at this park,” West said in an interview

The work this group did is laying the framework for understanding local habits, behaviors and impacts, West said. “What we found, although preliminary — it will need more research – is that typically nighttime drivers at Cape Lookout are few, tend to locate a camp or fishing spot and stay there, and are cautious when driving at night.”

They also identified potential problems with the way campers use light at night, West said. 

“Some camps leave lights burning all night, and some have brighter lights than are necessary for safety around the camp. Based on what we learned, we are putting together educational information to use next year on camp lights — what to use, why it is important to avoid bright fixed lights and when it is appropriate to use light in a camp based on sea turtle protection and safety,” he said, adding that it was a great effort, timely and beneficial to the park.

Undergrad Andreas Hernandez said his group worked on sea turtle conservation projects with the Wildlife Resource Commission, “essentially just getting the word out about protecting sea turtles on the Atlantic Ocean. We’ve been doing that through a website that has the dos and don’ts of sea turtle conservation,” she said. They also worked on a documentary.

The students were able to spend time with and create programming for county youth, as well. 

Participant Emma Lofgren said that the Boys and Girls Club group had worked on creating programs for members. She said the group went weekly to Morehead City and Beaufort club locations to engage in activities with the children, such as hands-on science and creative problem-solving exercises. For the older students, Lofgren said there were drone days at the Duke Marine Lab.

Spencer Moyle, an environmental science and policy major, said the group that worked with the Carteret County school system began the program by writing stories with personal resilience and ecological resilience woven together. The group read their stories to teachers during a recent workshop and developed a curriculum on resilience. He said they worked to publish their stories and create a podcast.

Moyle said during the meeting that he had joined DukeEngage for the experience. As an environmental science and policy major, Moyle said he knew that after college he would be focused more on policy. DukeEngage provided a chance to  experience the community in a different way.

Other students piped up that they enjoyed camping, collecting data while spending time in nature and seeing the community’s youth participate in science. 

DeMattia said that DukeEngage is one of her favorite programs “because it pairs amazing Duke students with community organizations that need and love having the influx of their brains and energy during the summer. So it’s such a win-win in a positive situation that is really fun to be part of.”

DeMattia said the program was set to go in 2020 but was canceled because of COVID-19. Last year, the program was held virtually, and this year, they were able to do it in person. 

“Last year was great and this year, it has been phenomenal,” she said

DukeEngage works with the same community organizations that the university’s Community Science Initiative does during the regular school year. The initiative was started as a resource for conservation and education groups here on the coast and to connect the Duke Marine Lab with the community. 

When DeMattia asked the community groups whether there would be interest in DukeEngage, the answer was a resounding yes.

These partnerships deepen “the connection the Marine Lab has with the community in ways that isn’t just research but is a kind of human capital into our community,” she said.

The Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership recently awarded $40,000 to two organizations that help teachers educate students about the Albemarle-Pamlico estuarine region in eastern North Carolina and southeastern Virginia. 

The Friends of North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences was awarded $20,000 plus matching funds for its “Shad in the Classroom” program. This program, which began in 2009, helps educators teach about water quality, American shad ecology, riverine and coastal ecosystems, and careers in science. The Friends group is a nonprofit that supports the Raleigh museum.

Lynnhaven River Now, or LRNow, an environmental organization based in Virginia Beach, will use its $20,000 plus matching funds to create a resource guide and lesson plans for educators in southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina. The guide is expected to include history, natural resources and connections of the region. There are two immersive teacher training experiences planned as part of the project in the southern watersheds of Virginia Beach, which flow into North Carolina’s Pasquotank River Basin and the Albemarle Sound.

“The estuaries of the Albemarle-Pamlico region are a national treasure,” said APNEP Director Dr. Bill Crowell in a statement. “We are very pleased to support these partners working to promote stewardship of the watersheds that flow into Albemarle-Pamlico sounds, including our shared waterways with Virginia.”

The Pasquotank, Chowan and Roanoke basins flow into Albemarle Sound, the Tar-Pamlico and Neuse empty into Pamlico Sound and rivers of the White Oak basin flow to the Albemarle-Pamlico estuary’s southern sounds, including Core, Back and Bogue sounds, according to APNEP.

“The sounds, rivers, creeks, wetlands, and terrestrial areas provide habitat for an abundance of animal and plant species,” Crowell said in a follow-up interview. “People depend on the system for residential and resort development, food, recreation, mining, forestry, agriculture, business, and industry.”

The Environmental Protection Agency, which supports APNEP, provided the funds. APNEP is hosted by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

The projects are to be funded for one year and may be funded for up to three years, depending on availability of funds and current program priorities. Crowell said that this is the first year since 2015 with an open call for education and engagement project proposals.

The projects were selected to reach goals in APNEP’s strategic plan, Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan, and support APNEP’s Memorandum of Understanding, or MOU, with Virginia to address environmental issues in the shared river basins.

“APNEP is a watershed-based program and crosses state lines. Several of our rivers that flow into Albemarle Sound originate in Virginia, so it is important that Virginians know and understand their connections to the communities and environments downstream,” Crowell said. “Building relationships with Virginia-based organizations helps further implementation of our MOU to foster collaboration within the shared waterways of the Albemarle-Pamlico region. Projects like these help elevate recognition of the importance of the significant resources of Albemarle-Pamlico to the regional economy, and its status as the second largest estuary in the United States.”

Shad in the Classroom

Melissa Dowland, manager of teacher education with the Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, and Danielle Pender, the Shad in The Classroom program specialist, explained to Coastal Review in an email that the program offers students an authentic, hands-on experience while assisting with American shad restoration.

Students in elementary, middle and high school learn about American shad’s survival, its cultural and biological importance, ecological connections to other species and habitats, genetics, and careers in fisheries science and management. Teachers incorporate math, social studies, technology, art, literacy and writing.

The program heightens knowledge and awareness in future generations of an important migratory fish, Dowland and Pender said.

“The authenticity this lends to the program has a dramatic impact on student engagement and learning, sometimes providing the first real connections between students and their local river basin,” they said.

During the program, students build a tank, monitor water quality and raise and release juvenile fish in partnership with fisheries biologists from the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Activities include fish dissections, fish printing and water sampling.

“The hands-on approach of these activities allows students to see, touch and explore the subject, helping to engage the students more fully,” they said.

In addition to learning about American shad, the students are helping with ongoing restoration efforts for the species through the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission.

The program will be able to continue its work with the grant award from APNEP. The funds will go to supplies for the classroom, staff to coordinate the program and field trips. “In order for the schools to release their larvae into the Neuse River Basin they need to get there. Many of the schools do not have the funding for field trips; therefore, the program reimburses the cost of the buses, gas, and drivers where needed,” they said.

American shad, which can be found in the Atlantic Ocean as far north as the Bay of Fundy in Canada, are important to North Carolina and many other states along the East Coast. An anadromous species, these fish live in the ocean but move into rivers to spawn. When the fish are 3 to 5 years old, they return to the rivers they were born in every spring to spawn. The embryos hatch in the stream and the larvae make their way down to the estuaries as they grow into juvenile fish. In the fall, shad head into the ocean to become adults, they said.

“Due to this anadromous lifecycle, American shad are particularly important in bringing nutrients to and from the ocean and the rivers and they play a significant role in the food web,” Pender and Dowland said. “Shad serve as a food source for many animals living in both inland freshwater and marine environments. Predators of shad include other fishes such as striped bass and king mackerel, bald eagles, bottlenose dolphin, and humans.”

However, American shad face limitations for recovery including poor water quality, insufficient flows, lost or degraded spawning and nursery habitats, recreational or commercial overharvest, industrial impingement and entrainment, and combination of these.

Applications for the Shad in the Classroom are to be available to educators at public and public charter schools this fall.

Lynnhaven River NOW

Jody Ullmann, Pearl School coordinator with Lynnhaven River NOW, told Coastal Review that the organization will use the award to help educators explore the Pasquotank River Basin and Virginia’s Southern Rivers Watershed.

Lynnhaven River NOW, or LRNOW, is a Virginia Beach-based environmental organization working to remove pollutants from the waterways, educate and engage the population of the city, and restore and conserve riparian buffers, forested land, and oyster reefs, according to LRNOW.

After exploring these waters, the teachers will develop resource materials to link Virginia and North Carolina watershed maps. The organization plans to share all Virginia resources with North Carolina educators.

“This award has given us the means to take on the dream of getting teachers on the water and participating in an immersive adventure that will change how they feel about the Albemarle/Pamlico Sound and the lands that drain to this amazing estuarine system,” she said.

False Cape State Park, Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge and university researchers and environmental educators from both states are to work together on the project.

With the MOU signed between Virginia and North Carolina, one of the goals of the project “is to build relationships with resources in North Carolina, both people and places, that might be able to be called upon to help students with research, zoom into a classroom or form partnerships with schools,” Ullmann said.

Ullmann explained that though the city’s schools focus on the Chesapeake Bay watershed and problems the area faces, two-thirds of Virginia Beach land drains to the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds in North Carolina.

“It is important for the teachers to see and learn about this watershed firsthand, so that they can go back into the classrooms and develop activities and programs that help the students understand that not only are they living in a special watershed, just as fragile and important as the Chesapeake Bay, but that their actions have a direct effect on the quality of the water downstream,” she said.

Crowell told Coastal Review that these projects support one or more objectives in APNEP’s strategic plan by communicating the importance of stewardship and offering volunteer opportunities, providing and promoting outdoor experiences, providing environmental education training opportunities for educators in the region and increasing public understanding of the relationship between ecosystem health and human health advisories relating to water, fish and game.

“The projects are intended to increase citizen stewardship, volunteerism, and environmental literacy within the Albemarle-Pamlico region,” he said. “The goal of the projects is that through targeted education, engagement, and communications efforts, APNEP and its partners will encourage citizens to reduce their environmental impacts and provide meaningful opportunities to protect and restore the ecosystem.”

In the long run, supporting programs like these leads to a more knowledgeable public, Crowell said, adding that these connections with natural world give collective efforts to preserve and protect value and real meaning. 

“Educational efforts help foster the desire for citizens to directly assist through volunteering and supporting our partner organizations that promote stewardship of our waterways, and also help advocate for policy and decision makers to direct resources towards monitoring ecosystem health and protecting and restoring our watersheds and estuarine systems,” he said.

MOREHEAD CITY — Libby O’Malley drove into the parking lot of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Institute of Marine Sciences that day, cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee in hand, and looked up to find the answer to a question she’d been mulling for weeks.

There it was. The towering corner of one of the institute’s building that can be seen from traffic traveling in both directions on Arendell Street, Morehead City’s main drag and part of U.S. 70.

“I looked up and was like, that’s the biggest canvas,” said O’Malley, the institute’s development manager.

For more than a month she’d been thinking about how the campus, which next year will be celebrating its 75^th anniversary in Morehead City, needs to beef up visibility on the thoroughfare where some 26,000 cars travel every day.

At least some road signs, she thought. Something to make the public, residents and tourists alike, aware that Carolina’s Institute of Marine Sciences, or IMS, is there.

It all came together, her old office view of a mural of two whales on the side of a multistory building in downtown San Diego, California, her time as a volunteer on Morehead City’s downtown revitalization committee and the city’s design committee when she overheard that at least 26,000 cars travel Arendell Street each day.

O’Malley’s aha moment came one summer day 2019 when she pulled into the parking for work and glanced up at the 40-foot-high brick wall where “UNC Institute of Marine Sciences” is spelled out in large lettering next to a depiction of the university’s iconic Old Well.

“A mural instantly puts you on the map,” she said. “It’s instant visibility.”

She took the idea to IMS Director Rick Luettich, an alumni distinguished professor who more than a decade ago spent the better part of two years advocating for the signage on the building that houses labs and classrooms.

“I do remember thinking this was a terrific idea,” Luettich said. “She didn’t have to convince me. For many years our building really had minimal signage on it and I don’t think many people knew we had a facility down here. The institute has always had in its mission to try to engage the public. The research we do here is all very applied and the goal has always been to solve problems that are related to coastal North Carolina. Communication with the public is certainly a part of things that we aspire to accomplish. We’re not an ivory tower kind of place here.”

He warned O’Malley to be prepared for what could be a challenging process to convince campus facilities officials to modify the appearance of the side of the building.

That turned out not to be the case.

O’Malley began making calls in late 2019 and early 2020 to pitch her idea to university officials — the building’s architect, a couple of folks on the university’s main campus some 175 miles away in Chapel Hill. So far, those she talked to had loved the concept.

“And then, COVID hit,” she said.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which shut down life as we knew it in March 2020, stalled, but didn’t stifle the process.

Kathryn Wagner, associate director of the university’s Arts Everywhere program, became a key ally.

Arts Everywhere started in 2016 with the mission to bring the arts to the center of the Carolina experience for students, staff and faculty.

“This is exactly the kind of project we love taking on,” Wagner said. “It is easy for your average student, let’s say, to forget UNC has all of these wonderful programs that don’t happen on main campus.”

Murals are on display at the university’s main campus.

With brick walls that span 11 feet wide and 40 feet high, IMS would lay claim to the university’s largest mural. It’s to be paid for through private funds.

IMS launched its call for artists’ proposals earlier this month. Proposals must be submitted by close of business Jan. 10.

“I can’t begin to conceive of what direction it would look like,” O’Malley said. “I expect that we’ll see a variety of interpretations of coastal North Carolina and marine science. This is the kind of thing that’s going to have wide appeal and not be controversial. The theme, marine science and the coastal environment, is a very aesthetically friendly theme and really in and of itself in our region looked at on a daily basis. It’s gorgeous here.”

Her goal, she said, is that the mural will become a you-have-arrived symbol for Morehead City.

“I think it certainly has the potential to become sort of a landmark,” Luettich said. “What I hope it serves as people go by and see that mural is, ‘Hmm, I wonder what that is?’ It’s a conversation starter for the community.”

Ideally, the mural will be finished no later than the first weekend of October, the weekend of the North Carolina Seafood Festival, O’Malley said.

Briggs Cloutier, 16, and his sister Addie, 13, are on a mission to help the ocean’s wildlife through a new, online initiative.

The duo, who currently reside in Morehead City, credit their interest in marine conservation to their world travels.

“I was born in the United States, but due to my father’s work in international development I moved to Thailand when I was only 1,” Briggs said. “From there, we moved to a few other places. The island of Timor-Leste, Angola, and most recently Mozambique in southeast Africa.”

This time in Mozambique exposed Briggs to a variety of aquatic creatures he had never seen before.

“I was able to dive with a lot of marine megafauna such as whale sharks, manta rays, (and) humpback whales. I really was blown away by how amazing and beautiful these creatures were,” he said.

Addie cited the African island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe as an impactful travel destination.

“I went there when I was 7 and it was such a memorable experience. The most amazing thing about the trip was watching little baby sea turtles hatch, and helping them to the ocean really put the privilege of life into perspective,” she said.

Addie hopes that she will have many more travels in the future.

“I really want to travel to the Galapagos, it has the most exotic animals and nature. The main sea animal I would want to see the most would be sea lions because they are quite different from regular sea animals,” she said.

The brother-sister duo created a website, Sea NC, and a YouTube channel that are “dedicated to marine conservation and outreach.”

“My sister’s and my original goal in mind was to use our experience and talents to generate funds for marine conservation,” Briggs said. “My sister painted out some of the marine megafauna in the Mozambique oceans and I made short, documentary-style videos about them.”

“I (design) marine animals and ocean scenery with acrylic paint. I use photos from past experiences to help me create the shape and the color scheme,” she said of her work.

As far as the influence she wants her art to have, Addie hopes to impact people’s decisions. “Hopefully they can see the beauty in nature and animals through my paintings so they can make the right decisions that can help preserve our environment and habitats,” she said.

They put Addie’s artwork on T-shirts to sell at various events and raised more than $1,000 for the Marine Megafauna Foundation, an organization that works a lot in Mozambique, Briggs said. All the online proceeds from the shirts currently go towards the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

They were able to donate $250 to the North Carolina Coastal Federation in October and continue to give $22 a month to Ocean Conservancy, both of which work with residents to protect the ocean.

“We have recently moved back to North Carolina this past year and have changed our image to fit more with the North Carolinian theme,” Briggs said. But that hasn’t changed their core message.

“My sister has been hard at work painting different fish iconic to North Carolina,” he said. “I am now making short videos of different waterman-related activities that you can do across North Carolina. I visited Lake Mattamuskeet, fished for Spanish mackerel off of an island, and many other adventures that you can check out on our YouTube channel.”

While these experiences around the world did give them exciting opportunities, it also showed them how much conservation work is left to do.

“In Mozambique for example, there is a bad overfishing problem for exports,” Briggs said.

“Large boats will drag nets up and down the Mozambique coast not aware or even caring about what they are killing. Sometimes turtles, dolphins, and even rays get stuck in the nets,” he said. “Seeing this really stuck with me and made me care about marine conservation not only in Mozambique but across the globe where similar problems are occurring.”

According to Conservation Travel Africa, the country of Mozambique, which has one of the largest concentrations of Africa’s whale sharks, has marine conservation laws in place, but they’re not always enforced.

A recent report from Oceana, an international organization focused solely on oceans, showed that “nearly 1,800 animals from 40 different species swallowing or becoming entangled in plastic since 2009.” Additionally, 88% of those 1,800 were considered endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

Briggs hopes that their work will inform people and move them to act on their own.

“I hope that they learn something new,” he said. “I hope (my videos showing different North Carolina marine-related activities) inspire people to go out there and try it out for themselves. I also hope they learn something new about marine conservation, a problem that is sometimes overlooked, through my short documentary videos on marine animals.”

In all of the creatures Briggs has seen, he does have a favorite.

“Eagle rays are my personal favorite because they are quite unique to any other type of ray,” he said. While most rays have a flat back and two lobes in front that allow them to feed, the eagle ray is different. “(It) has a beautiful set of almost leopard-like spots on its back and their head structure almost looks human-like … they are so cool to me.”

“My favorite marine animals are sea turtles, manta rays and humpback whales,” Addie said. “They are my favorite because they are majestic and very friendly in the water. I have also had amazing experiences with them.”

Both Addie and Briggs look forward to the future of conservation, and hope that people understand their own impact.

“My hopes for conservation in the future is to have a steady plan on how much we … consume,” she said. “For example: pollution. We should hope to have more things that can replace the things that are destroying our oceans and environment.”

“I want (humans) to be more aware of conservation issues and not just talk about them or post on social media about them,” Briggs said. “I want us to get out there and make a difference ourselves.”

Copublished with Outer Banks Voice

This story has been updated.

MANTEO — When the Clyde A. Erwin High School in Buncombe County was under national media klieg lights more than 20 years ago over a U.S. Justice Department civil rights investigation of its Native American mascots, the Manteo Redskins and Braves sports teams in Dare County remained distant from growing national controversy over names Native Americans viewed as insulting and disrespectful.

Eventually, the Asheville school changed its offensive Squaw mascot to Lady Warriors. In response to the 2002 State Board of Education directive that required North Carolina school districts to review any use of American Indian mascot names, Manteo scaled back Indian imagery in its mascots, while keeping the Redskins and Braves team names.

But now former and current students and community members say it’s past time for the names to go.

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, some alumni of Manteo schools in August submitted a petition with more than 12,000 signatures to the Dare County Board of Education urging the Native American mascots be retired.

A subcommittee of the Dare County Board of Education agreed Wednesday to add the alumni’s presentation on the mascot issue to the agenda for its regular meeting, scheduled for 5 p.m on Tuesday, Sept. 8, according to board spokesman Keith Parker. The meeting will be held virtually and will be streamed live online.

“The use of these mascots is deeply harmful to the cause of creating sustainable and positive race relations in our community,” according to the petition. “Changing these mascots is a small but symbolic step towards dismantling racist structures and building dialogue and accountability.”

The petition also asks the district to “increase education about regional and national Native American communities and efforts to create an anti-racist school community.”

Named for Algonquians Wanchese and Manteo, who interacted on Roanoke Island with the 1587 “Lost Colony,” the English colony that mysteriously disappeared, Manteo High School adopted its Redskins mascot, a Native American brave’s head, sometime before World War II. The Braves name and logo were adopted by Manteo elementary and middle schools.

Holly Overton, a 2005 Manteo High graduate, said she remembered feeling “weird” about the Redskins’ name, but nobody ever said anything about it when she was in school. Native Americans consider the name, which refers to a murdered American Indian’s scalp, to be a racial slur.

Years later, Overton recounted, her memory of that discomfort was stirred by the recent Black activist movement. In examining her “privilege,” she said, she realized that Native American mascots are examples of the perception of “other” that is outside the white person’s frame.

“That was the trigger,” she said in an interview. “I started texting some of my friends.”

Overton, who is a painter and musician in Brooklyn, New York, soon connected with Manteo alumni — 2005 graduate Rachel Endsley, 2002 graduate Evan Harrison and 2007 graduate Kristen McCown — and they worked together with people in other school districts who have addressed the issue.

A petition drive in Gaston County is underway to retire the South Point Red Raiders in Belmont, which uses a Native American mascot with similar imagery to Manteo’s Redskins mascot.

“They’re sort of ahead of us,” Overton said. Further, she added, the Manteo petition and policy paper used a  modified version of South Point’s template.

Overton also contacted Monroe Gilmour, coordinator of the North Carolina Mascot Education & Action Group in Asheville. Gilmour, who has been involved in the mascot issue since the 1990s, said that the group was advised back then that attempts to force an outright ban of the mascots used in 73 school districts throughout the state would create intense backlash and a change would have to come from the community itself. That advice proved to be wise — and effective.

“We got 40 schools to stop using Indian mascots,” he said in a recent telephone interview.

Over the years, interest in the mascot issue waned, except for occasional flareups inspired by the controversy over the Washington NFL team. But the Black Lives Matter movement sparked new awareness.

Out of the blue, Gilmour recounted, he received a call in June from a South Point alumna. The next day, he received a call from Overton. Then he received another call from an alumna from Social Circle, Georgia, schools, which also use the Redskin moniker. None of the young women knew each other, or their separate efforts to reach out to Gilmour.

“All three of them contacted me within a matter of three days,” he said.

With strong emotions attached to mascot names, ranging from community members who identify with the teams they grew up rooting for, to Native Americans who grew up feeling belittled and mocked by the characterization of their culture, changing the mascots has been a slow and conflicted process.

Gilmour recalled that when activist Charlene Teters — who has been referred to as the Rosa Parks of American Indians — had visited Asheville in 1998, some students had lowered a banner where she was speaking that said “Scalp ‘em.”

Another example he cited was of a woman representing the schools’ booster club who spoke after a presentation about the Cherokee perspective on Native American mascots.

“She said, ‘They’re taking my heritage and my culture and my home away,’” Gilmour said, referring to her objection about changing the school mascots. “She did not see the irony in that.”

In March 2020, the National Indian Education Association issued a new resolution calling for “the immediate elimination of race-based logos, mascots, and names from educational institutions throughout the Nation.”

What concerns Gilmour is how often school administrators have dismissed the underlying racism in mascots.

“Educators are so cowed by fear of the alumni,” he said, “that they don’t do what they know they should do.”

Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg, who died Aug. 11 at 75, had testified as an expert witness for a Native American group seeking to revoke the trademark for the Washington Redskins football team, according to his obituary in The Washington Post.

In his testimony, the Post reported, Nunberg — renowned for 30 years of language commentaries on NPR’s “Fresh Air” — called the use of the word “redskin” a “racial slur” defined in the American Heritage Dictionary as “offensive slang.”

“You could put the Redskins’ claim that the success of the team brought honor to Indians,” the Post quoted Nunberg writing in 2003 language blog, “in the same way, I assume, that the achievements of the New Jersey Devils bring honor to the Prince of Darkness.”

But despite years of withering criticism, Washington team owner Dan Snyder refused to consider retiring the name the team adopted in 1933.

“We’ll never change the name,” he declared in 2013 to USA Today. “It’s that simple. NEVER — you can use caps.”

At the time, about 79% of Americans polled about the name agreed with Snyder, according to ESPN.com.

As part of the rationale for keeping the name, the NFL cited various high schools throughout the country who used the Redskins mascot.

But earlier this year, under pressure from advertisers, Snyder reversed course and agreed to change the name.

Marilyn Berry Morrison, chief of the Roanoke-Hatteras Tribe, said there are about 200 or so members from the Outer Banks on the official roll. But Native American heritage has been difficult to trace, she said, because of the fear of “being carted off to the reservation,” combined with the tradition of oral rather than written history.

“You lose a loved one, you lose a library,” she explained.

Through the 1800s, Morrison said, Native Americans were given two choices in identifying themselves: either they were white, or they were Black, creating a so-called “paper genocide.”

As it is for Washington, she said, it’s long overdue for Manteo to toss its Redskins mascot.

“Well, we tried to get this changed years ago, but it fell through the cracks and I’m glad that it’s surfaced again,” Morrison said. “Ditching the cringeworthy name would send a very, very important message. We are evolving. I know we can find something more suitable and appropriate to honor Manteo High School.”

Some names suggested in comments by people who signed the petition include Mariners, Seafarers, Falcons, Algonkians and Pirates.

There was a wide range of ages represented, some of whom signed despite saying that the mascots shouldn’t change, others who adamantly supported their replacement.

“There was literally a mural in the cafeteria of MHS that was an incredibly racist caricature of indigenous people cannibalizing human limbs,” commented Brian Jones, who graduated in 2003. “Students for decades ate their school lunches next to it. I don’t remember what year it was finally removed, but let’s not stop there.”

Robin Sawyer, a former journalism teacher at Manteo High School from 1991 to 2004 and then at First Flight High School from 2004 until she retired in 2015, understands the reason why Redskins is offensive.

But the name also has a strong association to alumni heritage, especially for older generations. It’s about dedication, camaraderie, connection, rootedness, identity and loyalty.

Yet, Sawyer said, spending time fighting over the Redskins’ name strikes her as “frivolous.”

“In the big picture, I don’t give a flip about it,” she said. “In the personal picture, it is heartbreaking.”

Jerry Cahoon, a retired teacher who at 85 looks back fondly on his 30 years coaching the Manteo Redskins football team, also sounded resigned about the name changing.

To the community, he said, he believes the mascot name was meant to show Manteo’s pride in its American Indian history, “but we’re not Indians, and I don’t know how they feel.”

Still, he said, a new name might take getting used to, but it would not take away the team spirit.

“There’s going to be a lot of people that are going to miss Redskins,” Cahoon said. “I think our fans are still going to be our fans.”

Update: Alumni made a presentation during the school board’s Sept. 8 meeting. The board took no action on the matter.

On Saturday, March 14, Gov. Roy Cooper ordered all North Carolina schools to close. Classes would continue, but instruction would be entirely online.

Two days later, the nonprofit Outer Banks Community Foundation rolled out the first of its COVID-19 Rapid Response Grants, which it awards in times of crisis. The $4,500 grant awarded to the Dare Education Foundation helped Dare County Schools provide high-speed internet service to families with students who either did not have service or whose service was inadequate.

Lorelei Costa, Outer Banks Community Foundation executive director, worked with Amy Sasscer, executive director of the Dare Education Foundation, and Keith Parker, digital communications director for Dare County Schools, to put together a plan for the county.

“(We) were on the phone, text messaging all weekend trying to figure this out,” Costa said. “It was a three-way partnership. Dare County Schools, Dare Education Foundation and the Community Foundation.”

Since that time, the Community Foundation has awarded more than $140,000 in Rapid Response Grants from Currituck County to Ocracoke.

The first grants went to area schools, with the money targeting the families of students who would not otherwise be able to participate in online classes.

The school districts had different needs. Dare County Schools had already purchased hot spot devices needed to connect homes without broadband internet service.

“In late January, the thought was gaining traction that it (COVID-19) could be something to lead to a school closure,” Parker said. “We were trying to plan for worst-case scenarios.”

Because the school system already owned hot spots, Dare County’s grant was used to connect homes to the internet and to pay for service for the remainder of the school year.

On Ocracoke, Hyde County Schools had just returned hot spot devices that were no longer needed after being used in the wake of Hurricane Dorian. With schools closed statewide, suddenly the demand for those devices far outstripped supply.

The school district contacted its supplier, which responded they had the devices, but because of demand, they needed to know right away if Hyde County Schools would be able to take them.

“I’ll tell you how great it was,” said Hyde County Schools Superintendent Steve Basnight. “If the grant had taken several weeks, the supply of these jet packs would have been exhausted.

“It was actually done the day we submitted it,” he said. “I had been on the phone that day at the morning, (saying) ‘Please hold these. We absolutely need them. We’ll get this done as quickly as possible.’ I called him back that afternoon and said, ‘We have the money. Send them.’”

The turnaround was quick.

“It’s called a rapid response grant, but I didn’t expect it to go that fast,” said Mary McNight, counselor at Ocracoke School. McNight wrote the grant proposal leading to the award to the Ocracoke Youth Center. That’s because the grants must be awarded to a nonprofit organization.

Students of Currituck County Schools who were determined to lack broadband service also benefited from a grant from the Community Foundation.

“Through one of our donor-advised funds we were able to partner with the North Carolina Community Foundation and one of their donor-advised funds and give (internet) access to 200 of their students,” Costa said.

The Community Foundation’s Rapid Response Grants were first used in the wake of Hurricane Dorian, Costa noted.

“As far as I know the first round of Rapid Response Grants was after Dorian. It was a new concept for us. That money came entirely from existing endowments,” she said.

Typically grants can only be submitted at specific times during the year. They require significant amounts of paperwork and can take four to six weeks to be approved. The rapid response grants are intended to get funds to nonprofits to address immediate needs.

Rapid Response Grants are designed to reduce paperwork requirements to help the foundation’s partners known to be financially well managed, Costa said.

Focus on the basics

The initial grants were designed to help schools and students stay connected. When the grants moved beyond that, the priorities were apparent.

“We’ve got to focus our resources on the most basics. So, food, shelter, absolutely number 1,” Costa said.

That’s where another grant recipient, Food For Thought Outer Banks, comes in.

Food For Thought, or FFT, is an all-volunteer organization sends breakfasts and lunches home over the weekend to Dare County students who qualify for a free or reduced meals. Through some innovative social distancing practices, FFT has been able to continue sending meals to students.

However, concerned that some of the most economically vulnerable families would not be able to provide even the most basic necessities, the group wanted to also send home a monthly $20 gift certificate to Food Lion.

“When the world fell apart, we applied to the Community Foundation and they gave us a grant for $8,800,” said FFT Vice President Margaret Lawler. “I can order (Food Lion) gift cards that exclude alcohol and tobacco. I give them to the schools, and they distribute them to the families. It might be toothpaste. It might be soap. It gives them an opportunity to fill in the gaps.”

The Beach Food Pantry in Kitty Hawk is the recipient of a $25,000 grant, the largest to date. The funds will be used to purchase and distribute food on the Outer Banks.

As Beach Food Pantry Executive Director Elizabeth Silverthorn explained, the COVID-19 pandemic forced organizations that provide food for those in need to radically change what they were doing.

“There was a bit of a perfect storm that happened with this COVID-19. We get food in three main ways: One way is from retail donations from local stores, one way is through purchases … from local stores, (and) then we also get food from food drives and regular donation locations,” she said.

What followed were runs on grocery stores, disrupting distribution, so the organizations could no longer purchase food from local retailers, nor could those stores continue to donate as much as they had. And churches and donation sites were no longer options.

“Our food drives were canceled and churches, where people were bringing food, the churches were closed,” she said.

The needs were greater than ever — demand has nearly doubled at the Beach Food Pantry location at 4007 N. Croatan Highway — and the only way to supply those needs was to go to the distributors directly. The distributors, though, facing their own pressures, could only send full trucks of food, and the funds had to be immediately available.

The $25,000 grant will bring a truck to the Kitty Hawk location and from there it will be sent to other area food pantries.

“It (the grant) will be to purchase a truckload of product that can be … distributed across the county. They (the distributor) have to have one group that it goes to but we’re working on behalf of all the pantries,” she said.

Rapid Response Grant cycles are currently running in two-week intervals. With a board of directors composed entirely of Outer Banks residents, there appears to be recognition of their important role during times of crisis.

“We have thrown all the resources we have at this. We’ll continue to be there for the community if there continues to be needs. We’ll figure it out,” Costa said.

Food pantries on the Outer Banks

From Ocracoke to lower Currituck County, there are a number of food pantries offering help to those in need, including the following:

• Bread of Life Food Pantry – 459 Lighthouse Road, Ocracoke. 252-928-9001.
• Lifeline Outreach Food Pantry – 26651 N.C. Highway 12, Salvo. 252-489-0306.
• Hatteras Island Food Pantry – Buxton United Methodist Church, 48221 Buxton Back Road, Buxton. 252-995-4306.
• Roanoke Island Food Pantry – Mt. Olivet United Methodist Church, 300 Ananias Dare St. Manteo. 252-473-2089.
• Source of Hope Food Pantry – 318 Budleigh St., Manteo. 252-473-1911.
• Beach Food Pantry – 4007 N Croatan Highway, Kitty Hawk. 252-261-2756.
• The Lower Currituck Food Pantry – 109 Forbes Loop #4, The Shops in Grandy, Grandy. 252-202-6005.

With the 50^th anniversary of Earth Day Wednesday, environmental and educational groups are offering creative ways to celebrate while maintaining social distancing to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

The first Earth Day was held in 1970, marking the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement, according to the Earth Day global organizer, the Earth Day Network, which has taken its event online with the first Digital Earth Day.

“At Earth Day Network, the health and safety of volunteers and participants in Earth Day events is our top concern. Amid the recent outbreak, we encourage people to rise up but to do so safely and responsibly — in many cases, that means using our voices to drive action online rather than in person,” Kathleen Rogers, President of Earth Day Network, said in a statement.

Use hashtags #EarthDay2020 and #EARTHRISE to be part of the global conversation. To see the other digital events such as virtual protests, social media campaigns, online teach-ins and more during The 24-hour “Global digital mobilization,” visit earthday.org or check in with the organization’s social media, @earthdaynetwork.

On Wednesday, we’re going LIVE —

Tune into Earth Day Live on April 22 as we flood the world with messages of hope, optimism, and above all, ACTION.

Join us for 50 years of #EarthDay:https://t.co/f7yqlqPoNP | #EarthDay2020 pic.twitter.com/x6wn9Wj0PA

— Earth Day Network (@EarthDayNetwork) April 20, 2020

Rachel Bisesi, coastal education coordinator with the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s central office in Carteret County, worked with other agencies and organizations to create the Distance Learning Lab that launched online over the weekend, just in time to be incorporated into Earth Day activities at home.

The Distance Learning Lab is a compilation of resources organized by grade level to help educate about coastal science.

In addition to the Federation, partners and contributors include Hammocks Beach State Park, Jennette’s Pier, Lady Swan Tours, North Carolina Coastal Reserve, Albemarle Pamlico National Estuaries Partnership, North Carolina Sea Grant, Duke University Marine Lab, University of North Carolina Wilmington MarineQuest, NOAA Marine Debris Program, Clean Water Education Partnership, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and North Central Texas Council of Governments.

Bisesi said that the motivation behind the Distance Learning Lab was to have one site where people could go to learn more about the coast. The goal was to make the site easy for both teachers to share with their students and for families to follow along.

“It seemed like a lot of us were doing different things to educate others during this time of uncertainty, and it made sense to collect our efforts in one place. I’m very grateful for all of the contributing partners and everything they were willing to share on the page. It sends the message that we’re all in this together and we support each other in an overarching goal of educating others about our coast,” she said.

“There are lots of fun videos to watch and activities to do on the page. You can learn about water quality, oysters, marine debris, coastal wildlife and living shorelines. Some videos have crafts or experiments that can be recreated at home such as the UNCW MarineQuest QuaranSTEAM experiments, and the egg carton oyster craft,” Bisesi added.

QuaranSTEAM experiments with the MarineQuest Team, “Water Explorers,” is interactive video with hands-on science experiments to explore the properties of water using supplies easily found at home.

Harris Muhlstein, the University of North Carolina Wilmington MarineQuest school program coordinator, said in an email interview that Earth Day is an opportunity to celebrate the natural world around us, a world that is mostly blue at about 71% water.

“During the challenges of COVID-19 we wanted to reach out and offer families a way to stay engaged with science in the safety of their own homes. Water Explorers is a fun way for families to get hands-on as they uncover some of the amazing properties of water that make life possible on our blue planet,” he said.

Water Explorers is one of the many resources available on the Distance Learning Lab

The participating organizations were all very accommodating and positive about the project. “They willingly shared their resources, which I’m so grateful for. The page wouldn’t have nearly the impact that it does without their support. The coastal environmental education community is such a great network to be a part of,” Bisesi continued.

Lori Davis, education coordinator for the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management’s National Estuarine Reserve and Coastal Reserve Program, told Coastal Review Online she was thrilled when Bisesi asked if she could highlight the North Carolina Coastal Reserve’s education resources including curricular activities and videos.

“During this pandemic, it’s really hard for environmental educators to not be in our outdoor classrooms serving our audiences,” Davis said. “I miss seeing the excitement in the faces of students who have never been on a boat before and then being able to see and hold hermit crabs maybe for the first time ever. While videos and pictures are nice, there is no replacing the magical smell of marsh mud or having the Spartina grass graze your ankles on a hike,” she continued.

Davis said that with this being the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, she hopes everyone takes the time to enjoy the environment around them, even if it’s in their own backyard.

“I hope they strive to use resources like this to learn some new things about the ecosystems around them. Earth Day, in my opinion, should be celebrated every day,” she said. “The Earth and all of its wonders should be enjoyed using all the senses. To quote Rachel Carson, ‘One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?’”

If you want to spend Earth Day outside, you can safely go outside while social distancing, she said.

“I would encourage people to go for a walk in their yard or neighborhood and look for ways to celebrate nature there. Nature doesn’t always have to be viewed at a park or along a trail like one may think,” Bisesi said. “You can find nature by simply looking out the window and observing the clouds, or by exploring the plants in your yard or even along the cracks of a sidewalk. While outside, look for ways to be a good steward of the Earth. Bring along a bucket to collect any litter and download the Marine Debris Tracker App on your phone to record what you find.”

She said that birding is another great Earth Day activity that can be done from home.

“In coastal North Carolina, we have some amazing birds we can observe, and there are numerous resources online to help you identify different species,” Bisesi said, adding to check out the Cornell Lab’s allaboutbirds.org.

In the Northeast, Earth Fair OBX VIII has gone virtual. The Coastal Environmental Educators Network, which has organized and hosted an Outer Banks Earth Day event each year since 2012, is comprised of the Coastal Federation, Coastal Studies Institute, Jennette’s Pier, North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island, Jockey’s Ridge State Park, Outer Banks Forever, and Nags Head Woods Preserve.

These organizations are working together to post Earth Day content across each of their social media platforms for 50 days to celebrate the 50 years since its establishment. A variety of topics will be featured for this virtual “event” including ethical angling, marine debris, reusables, recycling, green cleaning, water quality, living shorelines, coastal landscapes, prescribed burning, native species, and the benefits of enjoying nature.

The Earth Day posts began Monday and will conclude with World Oceans Day June 8. Each of the seven partners encourage others to follow along, share posts, and even participate by using the hashtags #EarthFairOBX and #NCEarthDay50.

Earth Fair OBX VII is going virtual!

April 20- June 8, BOLO for #EarthFairOBX + #NCEarthDay50 posts from @CoastalECU , @NCCoastalFed, @Jennettes_Pier, @OBXparksforever,Friends of Jockey’s Ridge, Nags Head Woods Preserve (@NC_TNC), and @NCAquarium_RI.
https://t.co/xBBhR29DX8

— ECU Integrated Coastal Programs (@CoastalECU) April 18, 2020

“In a nutshell, we’ve joined together seven of the groups that would have participated in our Earth Fair OBX event and each are using their social media platforms over the next 50 days to share information in honor of celebrating the 50th anniversary of Earth Day,” said Sara Hallas, coastal education coordinator.

“I’ve helped plan for and participate in an Earth Day event for so many years, and it’s usually one of my favorite times of the year. I’ve always wanted to apply ways to make an impact beyond a one-day celebration, and I’m glad this year has challenged us to educate and inspire in new ways – that also happen to be environmentally friendly,” she said.

The Wilmington Earth Day Alliance has taken its celebration online, too. Earth Day 2020: 50th Anniversary Virtual Celebration is set to begin at noon Saturday and will be on the organization’s Facebook page.

Organizers have created a virtual scavenger hunt. Those 21 and older who submit a photo of their correct and completed entries will be entered to win a $50 gift certificate to Bill’s Brewing Co. or Waterline Brewing Co. Additionally, the Rapping Red Oak from Mr. Mark’s Music will perform for the kids and Jesse from The Pinkerton Raid will play a short set that will be streamed as well. Shirts, water bottles, tote bags, and other swag for this year’s event are available online.

For #NCEarthDay50, our @NCDEQ Secretary @Michael_S_Regan spoke with 3 recently certified @NorthCarolinaEE Educators to raise awareness of the work of #NCEnviroEducators across the state. Here’s Libbie Dobbs-Alexander, educator at @TheNCArboretum ?5⃣0⃣ https://t.co/kPVlFznXjW

— NorthCarolinaEE (@NorthCarolinaEE) April 20, 2020

The Department of Environmental Office of Environmental Education and Public Affairs is encouraging people to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day by enjoying the nature all around their homes.

“We may all be social distancing but we can go outside and share our backyard nature finds on social media. All month, we’ve seen educators, parents, caregivers, students and even local meteorologists posting photos of their backyard nature finds using the #NCBackYardNature hashtag,” Lisa Tolley, program manager for the Office of Environmental Education.

“We are also spotlighting North Carolina’s environmental educators throughout the month of April and on Earth Day, April 22, 2020, by highlighting to educators and encouraging others to give a ‘shout out’ on social media to their favorite educators the hashtags #NCEarthDay50 and #NCEnviroEducators,” Tolley continued. “Following these hashtags on social media is also a great way for the public to learn more about the state and to get ideas on how to celebrate Earth Day in their own backyard.”

Tolley said that the Office of Environmental Education has an online searchable database of professional development opportunities and other resources for educators to access from home that are provided by programs, agencies and nature and science centers throughout the state.

“We are also encouraging citizens to participate from their homes in citizen science programs such as the City Nature Challenge, an international effort to find and document plants and wildlife in cities across the globe from April 24 to April 27,” she said.

BEAUFORT –  Nicola Quick had the full attention of 14 kindergartners in Kimberly Wade’s class at Tiller School, a tuition-free charter school in Carteret County, on a Friday afternoon in late November.

“I’m super excited that we’ve got all these great moms to come and help us do science,” Quick told the students as she introduced the moms who were volunteering to lead experiments as part of Moms Do Science.

Moms Do Science is a program Quick and two other mothers have been coordinating for a few years as a way to bring hands-on science into the classroom that complements the teacher’s plans.

Mothers of students at Tiller volunteer to lead the grade-appropriate experiments. No science background required.

“Do you know what? We can all do science. Science is everywhere,” Quick, a research scientist at Duke University Marine Lab and mother of two elementary-aged daughters, told the students.

“Today we’re going to do four different experiments to show just cool science is and all the different things that you can do,” she added.

As the groups of three and four students became engaged in the experiments stationed at tables in the classroom and outside, their excitement grew as they learned about static electricity, how warm water versus cold water dissolves candy, floating objects and balance.

Wade told Coastal Review Online that her kindergarten students loved the experiments, “This was evident by the smiles on their faces.”

Before the program, Quick, Christine Buckel, who is a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and has a daughter in second grade, and Jill Pitko, a sculptor who has a daughter in first grade, explained how they launched Moms Do Science at Tiller School

Quick said that three years ago when her and Buckel’s daughters were in kindergarten, the teacher then, like most Tiller teachers, was great at encouraging parents to become involved in the classroom.

“Because we both have a science background, I work at the Duke Marine Lab and Christine works at the NOAA Lab, we thought we could come in and do some science,” Quick said. She said the kindergarten teacher at the time, Janet Sweeney, said they didn’t do much hands-on science because it’s difficult to be hands-on with all the children with just two adults.

“We came up with moms could come in and do science,” which was for a number of reasons, including “The fact that we were women to break down those stereotypes of women doing science and also that we’re moms and that we could help the teachers. … And one thing that a school has got is lots of moms.”

She said the first year, they held one, hourlong event in Sweeney’s class. “Christine and I spent a lot of time talking about how we could do more” and brought in Pitko, who also has a background in engineering.

Buckel said that the general structure is to have multiple, simultaneous experiments. The students are broken up into small groups and they rotate through the experiments and, depending on the number of groups, they’re with an experiment for about 15-20 minutes.

“It’s amazing the amount of science we can conduct in an hour,” Buckel said, adding, Once the experiments start, “you will quickly hear the level of enthusiasm and excitement. It’s very inspiring, I think is the other piece for this too, I think it’s inspiring for the children as well as the moms who are doing the teaching.”

Quick explained that one of the key points of Moms Do Science is that its hands-on, so all the kids get involved.

Pitko added that the students learn by doing, instead of rote learning and trying to absorb, “The kids are much more responsive and take their imagination to their hands and discover by experimenting.”

To come up with the experiments, Quick said they looked at all the teaching standards per grade, which are broken down by main themes like ecosystems, and lots of research.

“One of our main aims was to make science accessible, so we decided we wanted to find experiments that used everyday materials that the kids could relate to, had some context for them,” Quick said.

Using everyday materials not only keeps the cost down and accessible, but also shows that science is everywhere.

Pitko added that the experiments are tailored to the grade level and individual needs of the teacher. They try to meet with the teachers beforehand to try to align the experiments with what the class is working on.

Quick said that last year they visited four grades, some multiple times, and have had Moms Do Science programs four times already this year.

“The students are excited by a number of things: The fact that it’s hands on, the fact that it’s new people in the classroom and the really important thing is that its moms that they know, because that sort of breaks down these stereotypes of who can do science,” Quick said. “I think every parent who has done it has said they’ll come back and do it, sometimes it’s hard to break that stigma that they don’t have to be a science teacher.”

Buckel said that there’s definitely some reluctance from some moms, but, Quick added, there are step-by-step instructions sent out a week before to the moms. “We provide everything, there’s step-by-step, we offer to meet with them before if they want to,” Quick said. Plus, Buckel, Pitko and Quick will be there to help if the moms ask.

“All the descriptions are everyday concepts of science you see all around you,” Pitko added. “They’re in laymen’s terms so that anybody can understand them, read them and relate them to the kids. The kids are just so excited to be doing anything with their hands; they are hearing the science … but they’re doing the discovery on their own.”

The three moms have noticed that through the grades, they see a shift in some students’ confidence in their ability to understand science.

Buckel said that during Moms Do Science programs with fourth and fifth grades, they’re hearing students make comments like, “I’m not good at science.”

The hope, Buckel continued, is that when the students get to fourth and fifth grade who were in kindergarten when they began Moms Do Science, “We don’t hear that anymore.”

Having the moms of their friends helps to show that you don’t have to be a scientist to do science.

Quick added that she’s learned a lot about outreach. As a high-level research scientist, she said she’s realized that Moms do Science is basic science literacy and showing children that everything is possible is way more powerful than going into a room and lecturing.

Wade, who welcomed Moms Do Science to her kindergarten class, explained that it’s important to have children engaged in science at this age.

“It is a way for them to begin using critical thinking skills at a young age and reach conclusions based on their own hypothesis,” she said. “As their teacher, it helps me to connect these experiments to future lessons in math and science. I will also connect it to books I read during the school year. Integration is something I use often as my approach to teaching and this supports my teaching style.”

Wade added that Moms do Science is a wonderful way for mother’s to be involved in the classroom. “It gives parents a perspective on how we teach in the classroom, and it is fun for our students to learn from each other and other adults.”

Kelley Riley, executive director of Tiller School, said that teachers at Tiller have been excited to have moms in the classroom.

“Family engagement is so important to our school and this is truly a unique way to build our students creative confidence and ultimately use these experiences to build their own identities in science whether in our or outside of the classroom,” she said, adding that hands-on, experiential learning is at the heart of our teachers’ instructional planning and delivery.

“Our Moms Do Science group has taken this to heart and work hard to first collaborate with our teachers to plan and then deliver science exploration and experiments to our students,” she said.  “They bring new and fresh ideas that enrich our students’ learning experiences. This is a partnership that fosters an opportunity for our parents to be involved, for our students to learn from one another and learn from women that are passionate about science, creativity and problem-solving.

“Our ultimate goal is to share learning experiences with our students that are an authentic means of them seeing that being a ‘lifelong learner’ means something to our educators, our families and our school. It is our hope that their lessons and activities spark interest in science topics and fuels our students’ curiosity about the world around them,” Riley said.

The three Moms Do Science organizers hope to create a science packet for teachers that any volunteer could lead because they didn’t want the program to be an extra burden for teachers.

To learn more visit https://www.tillerschool.org/moms-do-science

WANCHESE – More than two decades after a cheeky bumper sticker slogan “UNC-Dare … Why Not?” led to a push for a Dare County-based marine education and research center, the 7-year-old Coastal Studies Institute has taken a big step toward its original goal of becoming a world-class marine science facility.

East Carolina University’s Outer Banks campus at CSI has hired six new faculty who will conduct research and teach as part of new or expanded programs in integrated coastal science, ocean energy and coastal ecology. The first of the team of interdisciplinary coastal scientists started in August, and the last two will arrive on the Outer Banks in January 2020.

“It’s an overarching program that’s focused on building coastal research and education across all of ECU campuses,” said Reide Corbett, ECU’s dean of Integrated Coastal Programs and executive director of CSI.

“What I’m trying to do now is build the program,” he added. “Whether it’s research or curriculum, it’s done on the shoulders of faculty.”

As part of ECU’s new Integrated Coastal Programs unit, which includes CSI and the Department of Coastal Studies, four of the faculty were hired after a major investment by the university in teaching programs focused on ocean margins and research on coastal North Carolina.

Each tenure-tracked scientist possesses distinct expertise: David Lagomasino, landscape geomorphology, ecohydrology, remote sensing; Kimberly Rogers, coupled human-natural systems and coastal processes; Nadine Heck, human-environment geographer; and Siddharth Narayan, coastal engineer.

Corbett, a coastal oceanographer/geochemist who has worked at CSI since it opened in 2012 and at ECU since 2000, sees the big picture on northeastern North Carolina’s environment. Not only is coastal science here changing rapidly, it is made extraordinarily complex by virtue of its enormous estuarine system, a long ocean shoreline subject to powerful currents and storm-driven waves, and its proximity to the mighty Gulf Stream.

“My own interest is that land-water interaction,” Corbett said. That alone covers beach erosion, sand transport, nutrient pollution, saltwater intrusion, beach nourishment and wastewater treatment.

Extrapolating the interests of the other scientists at CSI, it’s easy to understand why Corbett says he is excited to have the new team of researchers at there. The focus on integration and collaboration, he said, will foster growth and link the Greenville campus to the Outer Banks campus, with an emphasis on the challenges faced on the coastal plain out to the deep ocean.

Of all the challenges related to climate change, he said, two that loom largest, sea level rise and increased flooding, are particularly significant on the coast.

“The coast – period,” Corbett said. “Not just North Carolina. We have faculty in West Africa.”

For that reason, resilience on a regional and global level is also a focus at CSI, which is the state’s first marine study institution on the northeast coast. CSI historically has focused on coastal processes: estuarine ecology, coastal policy and sustainability, maritime heritage and coastal engineering. With the new faculty, the opportunities will broaden. They will also participate in the redesigned PhD program on Integrated Coastal Sciences and development of “place-based” courses.

“We’re bringing together different disciplines to these fairly complicated challenges we are facing on the coast,” Corbett said.

Three marine institutions, albeit much larger, are located on the Crystal Coast: UNC Chapel Hill Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, Duke University Marine Lab in Beaufort and N.C. State University’s Center for Marine Sciences and Technology in Morehead City.

“You might think you’re duplicating efforts,” Corbett said. “But everybody has their own expertise. One of the things we’re doing differently than many is linking social science to natural science.”

“One of the things we’re doing differently than many is linking social science to natural science.”

Reide Corbett, ECU’s dean of Integrated Coastal Programs, CSI executive director

Policy, people’s perception of risk and physical factors are all part of the equation, he explained. “All of those things are going on at the same time,” he said. “Sea level rise, I think, is an example where a lot of those things are playing out right now.”

Beach nourishment, once a volatile public issue, has been credited recently for effectively forestalling the effects of erosion from rising seas.

“Yes, it’s working, but we need to be thinking a bit further down the road,” Corbett said. “We need to be a little more proactive in going forward.”

But in the wake of increased rains, deluges and different storm patterns, he said, it seems as if people are starting to change their attitude about the reality of climate change.

“I do think we’re moving in the right direction,” he said.

When CSI was founded in 2003, it was run by director Nancy White out of a small office in Manteo. White retired in 2017.

In 2005, the institution added a research laboratory in Nags Head. Meanwhile, plans were made to construct a LEED-, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-certified building on a landlocked site donated by Dare County near its regional airport on Roanoke Island.

When an opportunity came up to buy more than 200 acres along the Croatan Sound on the other side of the island, the state agreed. But in the process, a planned auditorium and student housing had to be cut from the site plan.

Until 2015, CSI answered to the chancellor of the University of North Carolina system. Now, that link is to the ECU system. But from the beginning, CSI has been partnered with UNC-Chapel Hill, N.C. State, UNC-Wilmington, ECU and Elizabeth City State University.

The $36 million campus, a 65,000-square-foot research and education building and a 15,000-square-foot marine services building, officially opened in Dec. 2012.

Surrounded by undeveloped marsh and wetlands and natural landscaping, the award-winning main building is an example of sustainable modern architecture designed to fit the environment.

Even before the recent expansion of the programming and staffing at the Outer Banks campus, there was impressive science being done at CSI, including studies at the continental shelf, research on stormwater management, shipwreck explorations and ways to harness energy in Gulf Stream.

George Bonner, a recently retired Coast Guard civil engineer, took the helm in August of the North Carolina Renewable Ocean Energy Program at CSI, a collaboration with UNC Charlotte, N.C. State and N.C. A&T, among other stakeholders. His new post is a good fit with his prior work on sustainability and resiliency in building and rebuilding, he said.

Along with Bonner, Jim Morley, coastal ecologist with the ECU Department of Biology, has joined the staff at the CSI campus.

Bonner, also with N.C. State’s Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, was a participant in Old Dominion University’s three-year Intergovernmental Pilot Convener project, a Hampton Roads-based planning organization that addressed sea level rise preparedness and resilience planning for government, public and private sector concerns.

The experience showed him the value of collaboration, he said, especially with controversial issues such as sea level rise.

“I think it helped move it a long way by helping bring people together to talk about things,” Bonner said about the joint effort. “I think the same principles apply here. You’ve got to engage everybody on things that affect the whole community. “

Renewable ocean energy is no longer a lofty goal, it is being actively pursued in multiple ways by multiple players.

As emphasized in the April 2019 U.S. Department of Energy report, Powering the Blue Economy: Exploring Opportunities for Marine Renewable Energy in Maritime Markets, there are more markets with potential for ocean power than anticipated, including underwater vehicle charging, marine algae and aquaculture, ocean observation and navigation and seawater mining.

Opportunities were also found to support community resilience, the report said, such as desalination and community-scale isolated power systems.

Currently, researchers are working on building ocean observing devices with long lasting power and technology that uses wave energy to provide potable water.

But CSI has been conducting cutting edge science in the deep ocean for years, measuring current power and force at the Gulf Stream and testing energy production. And UNC Charlotte has developed a magnetic gear to use in wind turbines instead of more rust-prone moving parts.

Bonner said that he has heard during energy meetings that research done in North Carolina “is really respected.”

As the new director of the renewable energy program, Bonner, who grew up in Manteo, intends to continue to advance interdisciplinary research and collaboration, including testing wave energy devices and other ocean technology at nearby Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head. The program will incorporate ways to kindle scientific innovation in students from kindergarten to university, he said, and emphasize holistic environmental stewardship, meaning that noise and other factors are considered in ocean projects.

“It’s really inspiring to come to work here every day,” Bonner said.

The N.C. Renewable Energy Challenge for middle school through university students will be hosted by CSI on March 21, 2020, and the ninth annual N.C. Renewable Ocean Energy Symposium, when university students report on their research, will be held at CSI on March 30-31.

As the new faculty settles in and the programming is geared up, Corbett said he will work with the community to find a long-term solution for student housing. But ultimately, his goal is building the campus – ideally with about 14 faculty and 50 full-time undergraduates – that was envisioned more than 20 years ago. That way, more students with ECU’s Integrated Coastal Programs can spend time at the beach.

“We want to move that center of gravity out to the coast,” Corbett said. “We certainly want all our students in that program to understand a coastal community.”

CARTERET COUNTY — School may be out but 42 young teens from Carteret and Craven counties spent last week dissecting, probing, examining and measuring at many of the marine science institutions in eastern North Carolina.

Area researchers and educators hosted immersive programs for rising seventh through ninth graders during the weeklong Brad Sneeden Marine Science Academy, now in its 12^th year.

Although students live close to the ocean and to marine science institutes, many don’t have opportunities to visit or learn about career paths available in marine science.

“It’s a fun way to expose them to options in this county,” said Beaufort Middle School teacher Todd Williamson, who participates in the program every year.

Middle and high school science teachers from Carteret County supervised the camp, taking students to destinations such as North Carolina State University’s Center for Marine Science and Technology in Morehead City, the North Carolina Coastal Federation in Newport and Cape Lookout National Seashore.

Students witnessed a dolphin necropsy, participated in geocaching and water sampling, and received a behind-the-scenes tour of the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores. They visited the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences, or UNC-IMS, in Morehead City June 27 where scientists led hands-on activities related to current research topics, such as how oysters can clean water.

At an activity led by UNC-IMS postdoctoral research associate Jim Morley, students inquisitively prodded the slimy exteriors of fish on display: “Why is its mouth so big?” “What kind of fish is this?” “How big is this one’s brain?” “How does a puffer fish inflate?”

After explaining the adaptations and sensory systems that allow fish to live in the ocean, Morley cut a fish open to show the internal organs.

“Kids like guts,” Morley chuckled, reflecting on his previous experience leading dissections for the Sneeden camp.

The activity also demonstrated how researchers insert miniature tracking devices called acoustic tags into live fish. Morley emphasized that counting fish isn’t easy and had students brainstorm how to estimate fish population sizes based on data collected from the tags.

Aiming to cover a coastal science concept not in the school curriculum, UNC-IMS graduate students Carson Miller and Molly Bost designed an activity to demonstrate Walther’s Law. Miller’s research on marsh migration in eastern North Carolina makes use of this geologic law, which describes how layers of sediment currently on top of one another were once next to each other.

Miller and Bost created landscapes made of colored cakes, with each layer representing a different environment such as sand or marsh. Students evaluated historical land movement in the edible landscapes by boring through the layers with straws, just like researchers collect sediment cores.

Bost encouraged students to think about how landscapes will look in the future, especially with ongoing sea level rise. Rising seventh grader Elaina Sherline favored this exercise in geological methods.

“We got to learn how they take samples but at a small scale, and we got to graph it. I love graphing,” she expressed. “And we got to eat cake, which was delicious.”

Moving to a topic receiving much public attention, students learned about common sharks of North Carolina from UNC-IMS doctoral students Jeff Plumlee and Martín Benavides, and research technician Grace Roskar. While large sharks often get the most publicity, the most common sharks in North Carolina waters are only about 3 feet long, such as the Atlantic sharpnose. Roskar anticipated the activity would help students “get up close and personal with a shark to realize they’re not scary.

“I hope the students get to see what fascinating creatures they are,” she said.

By touching and dissecting a deceased Atlantic sharpnose, students learned about the external and internal adaptations sharks have to survive in the ocean. Seventh grader Rosemary Johnston learned something new about a shark’s exterior.

“Sharks have modified teeth on the outside of their skin,” she recalled, “so it felt really smooth if you rubbed it from head to tail, but like sandpaper if you rubbed it from tail to head.”

Benavides explained that the skin allows sharks to swim faster through the water.

As the researchers described functions of different internal organs, they also collected samples like muscle and vertebrae to learn more about the shark’s life history.

The late Brad Sneeden, a former Carteret County School superintendent, envisioned “a marine science academy that utilized all the marine science institutes and natural resources in our county, to get middle schoolers thinking about career options,” said Carolyn Sneeden, his wife.

She previously set up a memorial fund and applied for a community grant to continue providing opportunities for middle schoolers via the Marine Science Academy.

Any student who participates in the academy is also eligible to apply for a college scholarship from the Brad Sneeden Memorial Fund. In addition to this fund, the academy is sponsored by the Carteret Craven Electric Foundation, The North Carolina Seafood Festival, Beaufort Ole Towne Rotary Club, the North Carolina Biotechnology Center and the Carteret County Public School Foundation.

RALEIGH – When Hurricane Florence made landfall in September 2018 as a Category 1, the amount of rainfall, not wind, ended up being the storm’s major force, began Natalie Nelson during her presentation of “Water Quality of Hurricane Florence floodwaters: Knowledge Gaps and Challenges” at the 21^st annual conference of the North Carolina Water Resources Research Institute.

Nelson said that the rainfall was observed over a four-day period just after Hurricane Florence made landfall and throughout the Piedmont and coastal plain, the total rainfall amount ranged from 2 to 36 inches.

“With this huge amount of rainfall, we also saw really devastating flooding,” she said.

The principal investigator of the Biosystems Analytics Lab in the biological and agricultural engineering department at North Carolina State University, Nelson was one of the dozens of speakers presenting to the hundreds of scientists, students, consultants, officials and representatives from nonprofit organizations and government agencies attending the conference March 21-22 at the McKimmon Center at North Carolina State University.

North Carolina Water Resources Research Institute, or NCWRRI, is a multi-campus program of the University of North Carolina System and is a partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey. NCWRRI is one of the 54 National Institutes of Water Resources authorized by the Water Resources Research Act in 1964 to administer and promote federal and state partnerships in research and information transfer on water-related issues, according to the website.

The two-day conference featured several presentations on ongoing and completed research. Topics included wastewater treatment, economics of water resource management, stormwater management, restoration efforts, public health, water utility management and contaminants. Four free, concurrent workshops closed out the conference March 22, each with a different focus: water literacy, sharing water data, managing a shared waterway and drought information for water managers.

Nelson, who led other sessions during the conference, said during her presentation that as the hurricane began to make landfall, her team of University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and N.C. State University researchers led by N.C. State University assistant professor Angela Harris, discussed what they could anticipate in terms of different effects on water quality as a result of the widespread floods.

The researchers asked if there would be an increase in concentrations associated with different contaminants because of the increased connectivity of the waterways to different contaminant sources. Or instead, because there was so much water associated with the floods, would the contaminants dissolve?

The two essential aims of the project were to assess how Hurricane Florence flooding affected microbial and chemical contamination and identify the relative effects of different land uses on contaminant loading, Nelson explained.

She said there are many variables that might affect water quality on different timelines for this research. The researchers also found no clear guidance for this kind of work, including what types of sites should be prioritized and what kinds of baseline information needs to exist.

This means that there is often no water quality data that exists prior to a certain extreme event, making it difficult sometimes to gauge whether a contaminant signature is related to the flood or was present before flooding.

Samples were collected over different times and locations across eastern North Carolina. Those samples are being analyzed for a full profile of contaminants, then the team will identify spatial relationships between contamination, flooding extent and land use. The first phase of sampling took place Sept. 21-28 at 46 sites and the second in October at 43 sites. There were plans to sample again this month and in August.

“The idea with future sampling is that we really want to have a better baseline,” she said. The plan is to collect samples after a one-week period of no rain to be able to separate the effects of surface water runoff from base flow.

The large team of researchers that includes Nelson plans to analyze a wide range of contaminants from within the waters including microbiological contaminants, nutrients, emerging chemical contaminants and pathogens.

That information will then be used to make connections among different land use types, flooding dynamics and what has been observed in terms of the different contaminant signatures, she explained.

Venue for Developing Partnerships

Nelson told Coastal Review Online that North Carolina WRRI offers a range of opportunities to discover the breadth and depth of water-related research taking place in the state and offers the chance to find new people to collaborate with.

“I still feel like a newcomer to North Carolina, so I try to take advantage of any opportunity to learn more about North Carolina’s waters, as well as to share my own experience in water resources research,” said Nelson, who earned her doctorate at the University of Florida. “North Carolina WRRI is the perfect venue for gaining greater exposure to the work of professionals committed to improving water management in our state. Events such as NC WRRI are critical to ensuring that water researchers and practitioners connect and develop new partnerships.”

Susan White, executive director of NC WRRI and leader of North Carolina’s Sea Grant and Space Grant programs at North Carolina State University, said in an interview that at the conference this year there were about 375 participants, a significant increase compared to recent years.

“For more than 20 years, our NC WRRI conference has been a key gathering for researchers, from citizen scientists to undergraduate students to international experts,” she said. “It also is designed to share data and policies from local, state and federal agencies. Representatives of community organizations and the public at large also seek information on water quality and quantity topics.”

The conference hosted 10 universities, nearly 20 local governments, almost 50 private businesses and more than 15 nonprofit organizations, plus there were more than a dozen state and federal government agencies present. The conference provides required annual education hours required for professionals, including engineers, soil scientists, geologists and landscape architects.

“We are receiving and evaluating surveys to understand key points that attracted new and returning attendees,” she said, adding that the free workshops were a highlight.

“We are truly excited that the NC WRRI conference is so welcoming to students. For many, it is their first professional experience in sharing their research,” she said. “Some even moderate sessions, thereby taking first steps in building a network. The conference also hosts a mentorship program and career-oriented roundtable discussions.”

In recent years, the team organizing the WRRI conference “has been working to increase the diversity of the presenters and attendees, and to provide elements of inspiration, be it keynote speakers who have experience in communities across the country, or from nearby elementary-age artists,” White continued. “The diversity of attendees is mirrored in the spectrum of presentations and the organizations that come together for the benefit of the state.”

This year’s keynote speaker was Vernice Miller-Travis of Skeo Solutions, Inc., a consulting firm based in Virginia that specializes in environmental stewardship, social equity and economic opportunity. During the March 21 luncheon, she spoke on the importance of successfully reaching communities impacted by a project or plan during her address, “Community engagement: Thinking outside the box or just plain common sense?”

The senior adviser for environmental justice and equitable development on Skeo’s Community Planning and Revitalization team discussed her work in New York, Maryland and North Carolina.

“We’ve come to think about building productive community relationships, that this is really, really critical work for any kind of project that you’re working on, no matter how complex it is, building community relationships is really important,” Miller-Travis told attendees.

Priorities That Can Be Addressed

White explained that NC WRRI works with partners across the state to provide an unbiased, research-based approach to address a range of water issues.

“Through strategic planning and engagement with our advisory committee, we ensure that our research and outreach efforts are directed toward pressing priorities that we have capacity to address,” she said.

Additionally, NC WRRI research and outreach results are used in varied ways that the public may not initially realize.

“We share our results and recommendations with managers for large public water supplies, as well as with owners of private water wells,” White explained. “Water quality research topics may range from E. coli to emerging contaminants and algal blooms, all issues that have been in the news and are of interest to residents across the state.”

She added that the work of WRRI reveals a variety of factors that affect water quality. “For example, sediment-control measures and careful planning for appropriate landscaping at construction sites and stream restorations can reduce runoff into nearby streams,” White said.

“Our multi-campus format allows us to fund research by a variety of teams, who may be engaged with diverse partners across the state,” White added. “In addition to the USGS funding, we also administer research programs funded by consortia of municipalities and other water utilities that need data and recommendations on critical topics regarding drinking water and storm water.”

BEAUFORT – Sixth- through eighth-grade girls can build a virus, explore stormwater issues, navigate robots through mazes, visit a living shoreline and even learn how to create a carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere in a cup and watch it change the water beneath it during Girls Exploring Science & Technology, or GEST, on the campus of Duke University Marine Lab.

Set for 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. April 13, GEST, a collaborative one-day event, provides the chance for middle school-aged girls to engage in hands-on science and technology activities and meet women with careers in science. Registration is now open for the inclusive event. GEST welcomes all female-identifying and gender nonconforming students.

During GEST, the girls are split into groups and taken to three different hands-on activities of their choice related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM. The day will kick off with a talk from a woman in a science-related field and close with a panel discussion with female scientists and instructional workshop about preparing for futures in STEM. Lunch will be provided.

Ashley Blawas and Anastasia Quintana are coordinating the event along with volunteers, staff and master’s and doctoral students.

Blawas is a first-year doctoral student in marine science and conservation with a focus on marine mammal physiology and Quintana, a social scientist, is a fifth-year doctoral student studying cooperation and conflict between fisheries and conservation.

“I think girls in science is a really important,” said Quintana, who co-founded GEST with another DUML student about five years ago. The first GEST was held in 2016.

“I’ve been here since day one,” Quintana said, explaining that GEST is a way for sixth- through eighth-grade girls to interact with women in STEM fields.

This age group was chosen, Quintana explained, because there is a lot of evidence showing that girls in middle school begin to underperform in science. When younger boys and girls are asked about their performance on a science test, they answer fairly accurately as to how well they performed. When girls reach middle school, they begin to underestimate how well they do on testing, and then they begin to underperform.

With GEST, they wanted the middle school girls to see women in science and know that “science is fun and I can be a scientist,” said Quintana.

An undergraduate student at Duke last year, Blawas served as a group leader, and as PhD student this year, was eligible to join the planning committee.

“It’s an awesome event,” she said, “And we’re growing in capacity every year.”

She said that several organizations are involved in GEST, including folks from NOAA, Rachel Carson Reserve, North Carolina Coastal Federation, students from UNC-IMS and CMAST and more.

There are several activity leaders from the area as well as females in STEM-related careers based in the triangle.

Blawas said that bringing in women in STEM-related careers from the Raleigh-Durham area who may study different animals or organisms is a way to expose the girls to a wider range of STEM beyond a marine focus.

As of Monday, more than 200 students had registered and they’re looking to cap at around 240 participants.

“Every year, we’ve reached capacity, so it’s really exciting that we’re reaching that many girls around the communities,” Blawas said, adding that organizers are working to increase capacity each year and come up with creative ways to use the space on the island to allow for as many activities as possible.

One highlight from last year for Blawas was the reaction of her group during the squid dissection.

Blawas said during the activity the girls could touch the squid, not just look at a paper and see a diagram but be able to participate in the dissection.

Her group had a blast, she said, adding that some of the girls were not squeamish and really into the activity, but others were cautious.

“I think the hands-on aspect of the activities is really engaging,” Blawas said, adding that she thinks those types of hands-on activities are the best for kids to see that science is a career option.

Lori Davis, education coordinator for North Carolina Coastal Reserve, leads the squid dissections for the GEST event.

Leading the squid dissections “is probably one of the biggest highlights of my whole entire year,” Davis said. “It is so exciting to see the girls’ reactions to these slimy invertebrates when I ask the girls to pick the squid up and get acquainted with them. Some are a little more adventurous than others but within just a few minutes, all of the squid have names and the girls are eager to find out if they have a male or female.”

Davis said she chose squid to dissect during GEST because it is an animal that can be easily dissected in a short amount of time and the animal is fun to examine with its suckers and tentacles.

“After exploring the external anatomy, the participants are able to use simple dissection tools (scissors and tweezers) to view the gills, gonads, stomach, and beak,” she said. “Let’s not forget how they are able to take out the ‘pen’ or gladii which is the internal shell of the squid.  They then use this pen to bust the ink sac and write their names.”

Davis said that after the squid are dissected, the pieces are put back into the water to enter the food chain again.

“GEST is a wonderful event because it allows middle school girls to interact with female scientists in their community,” Davis said. “Most kids in our area are so curious about what happens in our labs and this event highlights that work and inspires this future generation who is super eager to learn.”

New this year are junior group leaders, former participants that are now in high school.

“We hope within that, they see people who have been to the event before and have been impacted and want to come back, and teach them what they learned,” Blawas said.

Quintana added that they’re still adapting the event and one of the more important things they’re realizing is that the event helps students get to know girls in the community and create a relationship between Duke and local middle schools.

Duke in Durham has many outreach events for students living in and hear Durham, but for those students that live in Carteret County the events in Durham aren’t very accessible. “So one of the goals in having an event at Duke Marine Lab is offering local students the opportunity to come to an academic university setting,” said Blawas.

BEAUFORT – Two Duke University Marine Lab undergraduates stood last month behind an aquarium, facing about a dozen kindergarten through fifth-graders, all members of the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Coastal Plain, seated at tables in the elementary school cafeteria, where the Beaufort Elementary Unit is based.

Serving as a wave tank, the average-sized aquarium had a few inches of sand sloping across the bottom, mostly covered in water. A brick was on the thicker side, meant to mimic a hardened shoreline, parallel to a wooden block slightly submerged in the water, which was used to make the waves.

Barbara Lynn Weaver, a junior majoring in plant biology, told the club members that the brick represents a hardened shoreline, which could also be made of concrete or wood, and that people put these in their yards where the water meets the land because they want to keep their soil dry and keep it from eroding.

Taylor Walker, a senior majoring in marine science, said, “We’re going to make some waves and we’re going to see what happens when you have water going against something hard,” as she lifted the rectangular piece of wood to make waves that lapped against the brick.

Walker and Weaver were at the elementary school, to demonstrate a hands-on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, project, along with fellow classmates Isabel Harrington, a junior majoring in environmental studies, and Haven Parker, a senior studying environmental science and policy, who were leading the arts component of the project.

As part of their Conservation Biology and Service Learning class, the Duke students designed the project to help kindergarten to seventh-grade students learn about the science behind storm surge and express their hurricane experiences. The undergraduate students also engaged with students at Beaufort Middle School Nov. 30 and visitors to the Dec. 1 Waterfowl Weekend at Core Sound Heritage Center and Waterfowl Museum on Harkers Island.

Weaver told the Boys and Girls Club members at the elementary school that when there are big waves, the energy has to go somewhere.

“So if it’s going to hit a wall, where is that water going to go?” she asked the kids, explaining that the wave will either go straight up, which causes splashing, or the energy will cause the waves to go over the wall and wet the dry ground.

“Taylor and I have another kind of shoreline that we really like, called a living shoreline, which you guys are going to get to help us build,” said Weaver, adding that a living shoreline is made out of two things, oysters and marsh grass.

The brick was removed and the students helped “plant” marsh grass, which was actually just plastic aquarium grass, and oysters, or more specifically, oyster shells. Weaver told the group that oysters are bivalves, like clams and mussels.

“The funnest fact I could possibly give you,” Weaver began, is that bivalves eat by sucking water in, instead of biting things like sharks do. “And instead of chewing it like we do, they spit it back out, but instead of spitting it back out of their mouths, bivalves suck all that water in, and poop out anything they don’t want to eat … but that means they’re pooping out soil. That’s kind of funny, but if you have a live oyster that’s cleaning the water, it’s sucking that water in and pooping soil out.”

Julia, a fourth-grader, stepped up to the aquarium and demonstrated how the living shoreline worked.

“Pay close attention to what’s happening in this upper beach, you may see it might get a little wet but overall the grass is staying in place, the oysters are staying in place, and the water isn’t splashing up like it was before,” Walker said.

Oysters and plants slow the waves down. “The thing is, you can’t stop a wave from coming. If there’s really big hurricane wave, it’s going to be powerful enough to go over the wall, like we saw before, but you can slow it down, and you can slow it down using the plants,” Weaver said.

Walker added that some of the fish and crabs we eat lay their babies on living shorelines and then they grow up so that we can eat them “It’s very important to have this around instead of a brick wall where no organisms like to live.”

Harrington and Parker were nearby working with a different group of club members who were exploring through art their experiences during Hurricane Florence.

The students used a range of paper colors meant to represent the different temperatures for a Hurricane Florence heat map mural. The outer colors of blues, greens and purples represent cooler temperatures while the inner temperatures are hot colors – red and yellow, Parker said.

As the groups were wrapping up their activities, club member Julia said she learned during the activity about living shorelines and that oysters clean the water and the marsh grass helps the grass stay.

Third-grader, Kendra, who drew “Go Away Florence” as her art project, added that she learned about oysters and that the living shoreline will help the environment because it will help clean the ocean and help get the trash out.

Harrington told Coastal Review Online before the club members filed into the cafeteria before the service project began that they ask the students two different prompts: What would you say to the hurricane? What would you say to the community to give them hope? and encourage them to draw or write their answer.

Harrington, a Bucknell University student who attended Duke for the semester, said most tell the hurricane to “go away” and are concerned about WiFi, or losing their internet connection. “But a lot of the kids are hopeful, have a happy joyful spin on it.”

Parker said that with the two groups they worked with previously on the Hurricane Florence heat map mural, she noticed the kids often bring up pets when asked about their experience. “I think they find it easier to talk about their pretty traumatic experience with the hurricane by anthropomorphizing their pets. … We ask them about their pets and ease into asking about their experience.”

Harrington explained that the point of the activity is to help kids be able to talk about the hurricane, for psychological and long-term effects, “Because there’s a lot after the fact, we wanted to give them a lighthearted outlet to have that experience to reflect on the hurricane, normalize it, reflect and move on.”

While at Beaufort Middle School they worked with sixth- and seventh-grade students, Weaver said, explaining that the project presentations at the middle school went well. The students were really interested in living shorelines and how they can use them in their own backyards, “and they were telling us they were going to show their parents, which is really fun.”

Walker said that the following day at the waterfowl museum about a dozen middle school students found them and brought their parents.

“We let the kids show the parents how the wave machine worked, not only did they get to teach their parents something, but they all got that experience together,” Weaver added.

The parents had personal stories, Walker added, telling her that they knew of someone that their hardened shoreline was damaged or they were working on repairing one.

The project began this year as part of the marine lab’s undergraduate course in conservation biology and service learning under Liz DeMattia, a research scientist leading the Community Science Initiative.

The course introduced university students to conservation biology and explored service learning as a way to make positive change, DeMattia explained. While the project was part of the undergraduate course that took place in the fall, Duke Marine Lab offers many STEM learning opportunities year-round, including marine debris programs, water quality programs and summer programs.

“Given the devastating effects of Hurricane Florence to our Carteret community, the conservation biology class focused their service learning projects on using art, creative writing and scientific discovery as a means to express individual hurricane experiences,” she said.

She said that the reaction of participants and students has been “incredibly positive.”

“This program connected Duke undergrads to kids in our community. Our young K-12 kids benefit by interacting with college students and exploring STEM together,” DeMattia said, adding that the Duke undergrads benefited by being active in the community. “Both the Duke undergrads and the K-12 students benefited by sharing their Hurricane Florence experiences with each other, and working together to create art that shows how resilient our community is.”

DeMattia added, “We currently are dealing with many environmental issues in our communities — from flooding and storms, to water quality and health. Solutions to these issues, and others, will come from individuals who understand STEM and can apply their knowledge to help our communities deal with our environmental issues.”

Ava Bryant, Boys and Girls Clubs of the Coastal Plain unit director at Beaufort Elementary School, and leader Talley Long in a follow-up email explained that STEM activities are hands-on, minds-on, which aim to increase student interest in math and science, and are usually relatable as well.

“The hurricane activity that the Duke undergrad students did with our Boys and Girls club members was significant and relevant. Through the use of a wave tank, students learned about hurricane-force waves and its impact on the environment,” they wrote. “The tank modeled the significance of our marshes and how they protect against storm surge. The tank also modeled oysters and how they are able to stay in place.”

When the students drew their Hurricane Florence experiences, one student drew a house near a dock with waves approaching, another drew a scene of marsh grasses flowing under storm surge, and yet another student drew a sign that simply stated, “Go Away Hurricane Florence.”

“We hope that students will appreciate this area in which they live, and as they grow older, and become more involved in this community, will have a desire to protect their environment, specifically the marshes,” the email said. “We also appreciate the value of having young adults, such as the undergrad students, be involved in modeling positive behavior for our club members.”