Being able to watch a mother sperm whale give birth to her calf in the eastern Caribbean Sea a couple of summers ago “felt like an encounter with something both impossibly rare and profoundly ancient,” marine biologist David Gruber told Coastal Review.

Gruber, a National Geographic Explorer and City University of New York distinguished professor of biology, is president of Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative). He founded the nonprofit based in the U.S. and Dominica in 2020. It’s made up of artificial intelligence and natural language processing specialists, cryptographers, linguists, marine biologists, roboticists and underwater acousticians from a network of universities and other partners, per the website.

He was aboard the organization’s sailing research vessel on July 8, 2023, off the coast of Dominica, where scientists have been observing whales for decades, when the team noticed that all 11 members of a known sperm whale unit had gathered at the water’s surface.

The team soon realized that they were witnessing the exceedingly rare 34-minutelong birth of a sperm whale in the wild and the coordinated care efforts for the newborn by the other adult females.

Project CETI published two reports detailing what the team observed, calling the work in a March 26 press release “the most comprehensive documentation of a sperm whale birth ever recorded and the first quantitative evidence of cooperative birth assistance among non-primates.”

The two studies analyze more than six hours of underwater audio and aerial drone footage recorded during the birth event.

Gruber, in the March 26 release, stated that these findings fundamentally reshape how we understand whale society. “What we’re seeing is deeply coordinated social care during one of the most vulnerable moments of life.”

Researchers said that understanding of labor, birth, postnatal and neonatal behavior is lacking for most cetaceans, with observations of these births in the wild recorded for less than 10% of species. Cetaceans are marine mammals such as whales, dolphins and porpoises.

“Of the described 93 species of cetaceans only nine species have reported birth observations collected in the wild,” the study states. “And reports of birth events of pelagic, deep-diving cetacean species, such as sperm whales, are exceptionally rare.”

Published in Nature’s Scientific Reports, “Description of a collaborative sperm whale birth and shifts in coda vocal styles during key events,” gives a chronological timeline of the birth framed within the context of known whale behavior, communication and evolution.

“Audio data revealed distinct shifts in vocal styles during key moments of the birth, including the presence of vowel-like structures, adding a new dimension to Project CETI’s ongoing work decoding sperm whale communication,” according to the nonprofit.

The journal Science published “Cooperation by non-kin during birth underpins sperm whale social complexity.” The organization explained that the study quantified the behavior of the 11-member unit by using high-resolution drone footage, computer vision, and multiscale network analysis using software developed for the work, combined with previously made scientific observations, including reports of whale births.

“The findings show that female sperm whales from two unrelated matrilines come together during a birth to assist the labouring mother, and both kin and non-kin taking turns assisting the newborn. This provides the first quantitative evidence of birth attendance outside of humans and a few other primates,” researchers state in the press release, adding that the birth attracted the attention of short-finned pilot whales and Fraser’s dolphins.

Gruber told Coastal Review what it was like to witness the live birth.

“To be on CETI’s sailing research vessel, in that moment, felt like an encounter with something both impossibly rare and profoundly ancient,” he noted.

“In marine biology, so much of a career is impacted by luck — being present when ocean life decides to reveal itself,” Gruber continued. “I’ve been fortunate enough to witness things like the first biofluorescent turtle seen to humans, but nothing compares to witnessing a sperm whale come into the world.”

Gruber went on to say that very few such births have been seen by humans, and the last scientifically recorded observation after the birth was decades ago.

“It makes you wonder what Herman Melville would have written had he glimpsed this: not the violence of whaling, but the circle of care and a society revealing itself through cooperation,” he explained about the author of the 1851 American novel, “Moby Dick,” that tells the tale of a whaling vessel’s captain and his quest for vengeance against the whale that took his leg.

“We witnessed culture in action,” when the 11 whales, across family lines, “coordinated to keep a newborn alive, communicating in ways we’re only beginning to understand.”

Gruber said it took more than 50 scientists 2.5 years “to begin to interpret even a fraction of that moment, because Project CETI sits at the intersection of marine biology, artificial intelligence, and network science — fields that must come together if we are to decode these lives,” he said. ”And, in some sense, this is why Project CETI exists: We are one of the few teams in the world continuously embedded with these whales, with the tools, the longitudinal data, and the interdisciplinary lens to not only witness something this rare, but to begin to understand it.” 

Shane Gero, National Geographic Explorer, Project CETI biology lead, and founder of The Dominica Sperm Whale Project, leads the research.

Researchers, who have been tracking since 2005, the mother that gave birth, observed her that day with both her mother and her daughter.

“This is the most detailed window we’ve ever had into one of the most important moments in a whale’s life,” Gero said in the release. “Because this family unit has been studied for decades, we could see what the grandmother was doing, how the new big sister acted, and how each helped mom and newborn, placing this rare birth within a deep social and behavioral context.”

The two studies point to cooperative caregiving during birth being ancient evolutionary behavior.

The behaviors documented in the research “suggest that cooperation during births functions to reinforce social bonds between sperm whales, which underpin their large-scale society. Helping unrelated companions drives them to help in return later. In this way, a foundation of trust and collective success builds their social world,” researchers said.

Ocean Conservancy has launched an online calculator that lets users see how many seabirds, sea turtles and marine mammals they’ve helped by picking up plastics from the environment.

Whether you’re a party of one scooping up plastic trash as you stroll on an ocean beach, or part of an organized group cleanup effort along a roadside, the conservancy’s new wildlife impact calculator lets you plug in different types and amounts of plastics you’ve kept from reaching our oceans and seas.

“Then the calculator uses our science to output the amount of animals that you helped protect had they eaten this plastic,” said Ocean Conservancy Ocean Plastics Research Manager Dr. Erin Murphy.

The science to which Murphy refers is a study conducted by researchers with the nonprofit environmental advocacy group who reviewed the results of more than 10,000 necropsies of animals recorded to have died by ingesting plastics.

The peer-reviewed study published last November focused on dozens of species of seabirds, all seven species of sea turtles, and 31 species of marine mammals from across the globe.

“From these 10,000 animals from around the world, we found that nearly half of sea turtles had plastic in their gut, a third of seabirds, and 12% of marine mammals,” Murphy said. “And then we found that these actual lethal thresholds for these animals were much smaller than we expected.”

For example, seabirds like Atlantic puffins that consumed less than three sugar cubes’ worth of plastics were found to have a 90% mortality rate.

Loggerhead sea turtles experience, on average, that same rate of death if they ingest just over two baseballs’ worth of plastics. For every one in two harbor porpoises, the threshold is about a soccer ball’s worth, or 60 inches, of plastics.

Scientists found that soft plastics like grocery bags and fishing debris are especially hazardous for marine mammals. In fact, 28 pieces of plastic smaller than the size of a tennis ball is enough to kill a sperm whale.

Rubber and hard plastics were found to be the largest threat for seabirds. Both soft and hard plastics are of particular harm to sea turtles.

Some of the animals autopsied and included in the study were found to have entire garbage bags in their digestive systems. These bags block food from being able to move through an animal’s intestinal tract, leading to starvation and death.

An albatross was found to have died from eating an entire disposable water bottle.

Larger animals, like sperm whales and manatees, had died from eating numerous fishing lures, ice cream wrappers and, in one case, a fully intact three-gallon bucket, Murphy said, adding, “all sorts of things that we frequently find in our beach cleanup.”

Since 1986, more than 400 million pounds of trash has been picked up from beaches and waterways across the world through Ocean Conservancy’s annual International Coastal Cleanup.

The wildlife impact calculator aligns with the organization’s Clean Swell mobile app, which allows users to record each item of trash collected off a beach, in a park or neighborhood.

Information recorded through Clean Swell is plugged into an international database shared with scientists and policymakers around the world. The app allows the user to track the amount of trash that person has collected and share cleanup results with friends on social media.

Murphy said the organization hopes to eventually streamline its wildlife impact calculator with the Clean Swell app.

“We do encourage people to use (the calculator) as a learning tool so even if they’re not able to go out and participate in a cleanup that day, they can absolutely put in numbers and try to understand the relationship between what’s on the beach and how that could affect marine wildlife,” she said.

More than 11 million metric tons (8 million tons) of plastics enter the ocean each year, according to the conservancy.

“Ocean Conservancy does a lot of advocacy work to reduce the amount of plastic we produce and to improve waste management,” Murphy said. “But the third prong in this global effort to address plastic pollution is really cleanups, and every single person going out on the beach and picking up what they see does make a difference in help protecting our ocean animals.”

Annie Harshbarger had been interested in animal behavior ever since she was young. Now, as a doctoral candidate at Duke University’s Marine Lab, she is currently building her thesis on decision-making in pilot whale social groups.

“I sort of knew when I started college that I wanted to study the behavior of whales and dolphins,” Harshbarger said. “The way that they navigate this really challenging environment that they’ve evolved to live in is very interesting.”

Harshbarger spoke about the way we can see this in the behaviors of whales off the coast of Cape Hatteras. She said in a talk at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences that the behavior of pilot whales in that area demonstrates this flexibility. “They’re generalist foragers, so they can eat a lot of different things, so that means they can live in a lot of different habitats, and their behavior varies with what they live and what they’re eating.”

Pilot whales’ flexibility is tempered by the needs of their social groups, however. Unlike other whale species, they stay with the same group of whales for their entire lives (with occasional exceptions of males who join other groups to mate). When pilot whales dive for food, they do so together. Harshbarger is studying how those groups make decisions at different points throughout this process — a question without a lot of known answers, as of now.

New technology brings new information

One of the tools Harshbarger is using for her thesis is data gathered from digital acoustic recording tags, or DTAGs. These tracking tags can capture whale movement in three dimensions, painting a much more holistic picture of their behavior, and as the name implies, they record sound as well as movement. The technology was initially developed in 2003 by Mark Johnson and Peter Tyack in order to better understand the ways in which human-made noise pollution potentially affects the behavior of whales and dolphins.

“They were designed to study the effects of anthropogenic noise. We didn’t have the tools to understand the ways that noise pollution affects marine life. Peter and Mark came up with the tags to tackle that,” said Dr. Andy Read, director of the Duke Marine Lab and Harshbarger’s academic adviser.

Now this technology is being used to paint a fuller picture of what pilot whales are doing beneath the ocean’s surface. Harshbarger explained that the acoustic tags not only captured sound, but depth and movement in three dimensions. This allows researchers to study specific details about the whales’ diving behavior. Harshbarger is particularly interested in this data because of her focus on how pilot whales decide as a group when and where to look for food.

The information shows that pilot whales usually stick together throughout the entirety of their dives. It was originally hypothesized that while hunting, pilot whales would stay far enough apart from one another so as to avoid competition while also staying close enough that they could still hear each other.

To test this, researchers used information gathered from the acoustic tags. Because the tags have special hydrophones attached, they are able to record the sounds in such a way that they can gain an approximation of each whale’s position relative to the others.

“We can really understand how the group is foraging separately and together like we never have before,” Harshbarger said.

Tackling the big questions

One of the great unknowns with pilot whale behavior has to do with their decision-making processes. They are flexible animals who eat a wide variety of food found in many different environments. So how do they decide when and where to eat? Because pilot whale populations around the world are so large and varied, it can be difficult to track any one group consistently enough to determine the specifics of their behavior.

This is the question that Harshbarger is trying to help answer. “I found that decision-making process really interesting. So I’m studying how groups of pilot whales make decisions at different points in the dive cycle,” she said. Harshbarger compared it to a large family or group of friends trying to decide where to go for dinner. There are a number of options, and it can be difficult to make a decision for a big group of people. The same rule applies to pilot whales.

Harshbarger hopes that her research will begin to tackle these questions. Data gathered from the tagging of the Gibraltar whales has already answered some of them. By examining the audio and movement information gathered from the acoustic tags, researchers have learned that pilot whales not only dive together, but they usually forage for food at the same depths as well, even though there isn’t currently any evidence of them sharing prey.

The question of how pilot whales make decisions as a group remains mostly unanswered. Large populations and limited technology makes tracking them difficult in the long term. Acoustic tags stay on the whales’ bodies for around 24 hours maximum, so information is still limited.

“I think Annie’s work is probably going to leave us with a lot more questions. The potential conflicts between animals in groups is a really interesting idea. But Annie’s going to address the first, fundamental questions,” Read said.

Harshbarger said she believes in the value of studying and understanding these whales’ habits and behaviors, even if they are not currently endangered. There have been instances where local populations have suffered declines due to disease, and those populations’ behaviors changed as a result. Researchers were only able to notice that change because they had been observing the population beforehand.

“I think that’s kind of why I’m really interested in this, even for pilot whales, which are not necessarily something that people think of as the species with the most pressing conservation needs,” Harshbarger said. “That’s why I think it’s valuable to understand social behavior in any species, because you know that could change for them at any time.”

Nature-based coastal shoreline erosion control structures that successfully attract and grow oysters can better defend shores from waves, according to a study led by East Carolina University researchers.

The study, published late last year in the journal Scientific Reports, found that the more oyster-dense a breakwater designed to recruit and grow those shellfish is, the better that structure is at dissipating waves.

“We actually found that wave attenuation increased or improved as the structures recruited oysters,” said Georgette Tso, a doctoral candidate in ECU’s Integrated Coastal Sciences Program and co-author of the study.

As more and more oysters grow on a surface, their shells building layer by layer, those shells alter that structure’s surface, making that surface rougher and less permeable.

After documenting two seasons of oyster recruitment, researchers found that living shorelines constructed with living oyster breakwaters absorbed wave activity by an increase of 10-15%.

Their findings are based on observations of living shorelines at two private properties along Bogue Sound in Newport in Carteret County.

The structures were installed between May and June 2022 by Native Shorelines, the coastal resiliency division of Davey Resources Group, using concrete-based breakwater systems called QuickReef.

QuickReef is built from materials primarily of natural calcium carbonate formed into concrete slabs. Those slabs are installed to allow water flow and attract oyster larval, which attach to and grow on the structures.

Living shorelines are becoming increasingly attractive for coastal waterfront property owners seeking ways to curb erosion of their land.

“I think there’s been a lot more awareness within coastal North Carolina about living shoreline options as an alternative to a hardened shoreline, like bulkheads or some other vertical structure, which oftentimes actually costs more over time to repair. And, they’re not as resistant to hurricane damage because of that vertical profile,” Tso said.

The benefits of living shorelines, including their resiliency against the effects of rising sea levels, have been documented through research spanning back more than a decade.

But Tso said that there is little data how smaller-scale living shoreline projects like the ones she and her fellow scientists observed for this study actually change the way waves interact with shorelines.

Their observations proved to be “an exciting finding,” Tso said, because they prove what researchers have suspected for some time.

“Oysters grow vertically and they increase the roughness on the surfaces that they grow on. They also can grow within interstitial spaces and reduce porosity in that way. So, we hypothesized that the amount of wave attenuation a structure could provide would increase with the recruitment of live and healthy oyster populations,” she said. “This additional factor that’s not been explored, of it actually improving the wave attenuation potential and reducing the wave energy that hits the back of your shoreline over time, is something that we should communicate more to homeowners because they’ve actually bought into a solution that has increased benefits over time that they may not have anticipated when they first put in the structure.”

And while it’s fair to say the longer these structures recruit oysters the more protection they may offer to a shoreline, Tso said there is one important caveat.

“This is just a two-year study so we’re not capturing the point in time where the oyster population will eventually plateau. The size of the structure and the amount of food available to the oysters in the water is limited, obviously, so the oyster population will eventually plateau. So, though we’ve observed increases in wave attenuation potential, probably it’s going to cap off at some point,” she said.

It is also important to note that oyster recruitment and growth will not be the same at every shoreline.

Shorelines bend and curve, leaving pockets where water does not circulate to deliver oyster larvae.

“What we found is only relevant if your structure can actually recruit oysters, and that’s not true on all North Carolina shorelines,” Tso said. “If you don’t have baby oysters being delivered to your shoreline, you’re not going to be able to recruit oysters. If you’re in a site where that’s not possible then the wave attenuation potential that you have at construction is what you’re going to have. It’s not going to improve because you’re not recruiting oysters.”

Successful oyster larval recruitment and growth also depends on things like water temperature, salinity, and tidal variation.

Tso is in the process of analyzing data researchers collected last summer at more than a dozen QuickReef living shoreline sites. Scientists during that time also revisited their two original study sites, which continued to recruit oysters, Tso said.

The other researchers on this study include Dr. Siddharth Narayan, assistant professor in ECU’s Integrated Coastal Programs, Megan Geesin, a doctoral candidate at ECU, Dr. Matthew Reidenbach, professor and chair of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, Dr. Jens Figlus with Texas A&M’s Ocean Engineering Department, and Dr. Rachel Gittman, assistant professor with ECU’s Department of Biology.

A group of North Carolina State University researchers has created a model that simulates wind, waves, tides and currents to help pinpoint areas that are likely best to install offshore energy facilities.

The model, called a portfolio optimization framework, also identifies what combination of wind and marine hydrokinetic technologies, which capture energy through water flow, may work together in an area to produce the greatest amount of power.

“It’s not about only one type, but multiple sources of generation that can somehow work together to generate a more stable output of your portfolio,” explained Dr. Anderson de Queiroz, co-author of the study and associate professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering. “For example, if you think about the single source, let’s say offshore wind or wave energy, they have lots of variability with respect to their supply because it depends on natural conditions. It depends on wind speed or the ocean heights and in periods, so it’s variable.”

By locating areas where different offshore energy technologies can work together, a phenomenon researchers refer to as “complementary behavior,” power companies can get the most bang for their buck.

For context, picture an offshore field of 50 wind turbines. Within that field are marine hydrokinetic devices such as wave energy converters or underwater kite turbines that generate electricity from ocean currents and tidal streams.

“When you’re collecting the electricity, instead of collecting only from wind with transmission lines, you can also collect electricity from this other source. So, the electricity that you’re bringing to shore in that situation will be more stable because of the complementary behavior between the sources,” de Querioz said.

For the developer trying to explore and analyze where they can get the most power output possible, this model could help reduce their financial risk.

“For government analysts and planners, they can also see strategically where there are regions that would be beneficial in terms of most electricity that they are able to get to at a reasonable cost and that’s away from, for example, protected habitat areas or away from strategic areas” used by military forces, de Querioz said.

The team of researchers, with support from the North Carolina Renewable Ocean Energy Program, conducted an analysis for the North Carolina coast, focused on wind turbines and marine hydrokinetic kites.

But de Querioz points out that the model they have developed can be used globally and with any combination of technologies. And, he said, it may be applied onshore.

The research team is in the process of expanding its analysis to other regions, including the coasts of New Jersey and Virginia.

The project, which is through the Atlantic Marine Energy Center and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, will use the portfolio optimization model to support bringing electricity to the East Coast through the Eastern Interconnection.

The Eastern Interconnection spans from central Canada east to the Atlantic Coast, south to Florida and west to the foot of the Rockies. It is one of two major power grids.

Researchers will pair the portfolio optimization framework with another model known as Tools for Energy Model Optimization and Analysis, commonly referred to as Temoa, which produces long-term analyses of energy systems.

“We are going to combine analysis from this offshore portfolio with the long-term energy planning for the Eastern Interconnection,” de Querioz said. “Basically, we’re looking at the entirety of the Eastern Interconnection, and then deploying not only offshore energy, but also looking at natural gas potential, new nuclear or the potential to have energy storage, onshore solar, and things like that.”

The team is also working with the North Carolina Renewable Energy Program this year to develop an adapted design for a wave power buoy called Reference Model 3, or RM3, that converts wave energy into electrical power.

“On these, we’re going to do more specific and detailed analysis for the North Carolina coast with this new design of wave energy converters,” de Queiroz said.

He is extending an invitation to collaborate with industry, government and other scientists with an interest in the model. The model is expected to be released sometime this year. Anyone interested may contact de Queiroz by email at ardequei@ncsu.edu.

“Fused Portfolio Optimization for Harnessing Marine Renewable Energy Resources” was published in the journal Energy earlier this month.

N.C. State doctoral student Mary Maceda is a corresponding author of the study. Co-authors of the paper include Rob Miller, a doctoral student, Victor de Faria, a recent doctoral graduate, Dr. Matthew Bryant, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the university, and Dr. Chris Vermillion with the University of Michigan.

“We have had nine 100-year storms in the last 20 years,” said Dr. Reide Corbett during a conference in Wilmington back in November. “Somebody said that math doesn’t math.”

Corbett is dean of the East Carolina University Coastal Studies Institute Campus in Wanchese and he was addressing the fourth annual Water Adaptations to Ensure Regional Success, or WATERS, Summit held Nov. 13. He said the statistical model used to predict precipitation frequency is no longer reliable.

The model, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Atlas 14 data server,  is widely used in infrastructure planning and flood risk assessments. Atlas 14 provides statistical modeling that is based on rainfall amounts and storm intensity for the 30 years leading up to the 21st century.

The server “contains precipitation frequency estimates for the United States and U.S. affiliated territories,” according to NOAA.

Corbett told those attending the summit that Atlas 14 “doesn’t hold any longer.”

In a follow-up interview with Coastal Review, Corbett said the problem with Atlas 14 is that it does not factor in how the climate has changed during this century.

“It does not take into account changes in the moisture that the atmosphere has, and it certainly doesn’t project forward,” Corbett said.

That’s why NOAA is developing an Atlas 15 model, which is to be rolled out in stages this year and 2027. When completed, “Atlas 15 will supersede NOAA Atlas 14 as the national standard and will become the authoritative source for precipitation frequency information across the United States.,” according to the NOAA website.

Dr. Jared Bowden, interim director of the North Carolina State Climate Office, agreed that, as a predictive model, Atlas 14 is flawed.

“It doesn’t use the most recent observations. (Atlas 14) hasn’t used any of the data in the past 20 or 25, years, really,” Bowden said.

Atlas 15 is expected to correct that shortcoming nationally, but in the meantime, the State Climate Office has developed a dataset that illustrates how precipitation patterns represented in Atlas 14 may evolve over time. 

RaInDROP, an acronym for the statistical information for the state model, Rainfall, Intensity, Duration and Return for Observations and Projections, is “a product that is tailored to North Carolina,” Bowden said. “Some things in the methodology that we do behind RaInDROP are very North Carolina specific.”

The datasets the State Climate Office developed use the Atlas 14 model as a baseline, but also predict what the future climate will look like. The modeling also takes into account North Carolina’s geography, Bowden said.

“There’s eight climate divisions across our state, and we use these climate divisions to help think about how we scale Atlas 14 values,” Bowden said. “We took climate change projections and tried to figure out how you would scale up based on the different climate divisions.”

The online RaInDROP tool maps show marked variations from Atlas 14 data. For instance, the southeast corner of the state, New Bern, Jacksonville and Wilmington, in particular, will experience significantly more rainfall and more intense events than previously modeled. Bordering the Atlantic Ocean, that output is consistent with climate change data that shows a warming atmosphere.

Climate change is not a linear increase with temperature and moisture, Bowden explained. Rather it’s an exponential increase and an exponential increase in moisture capacity.

“If you’re able to saturate the atmosphere and have a forcing mechanism to wring it out of the atmosphere, such as a hurricane, then you get these really big downpours. You get these really big flooding scenarios that will create just larger and larger problems for our infrastructure.”

The climate office tool is designed to have practical applications in designing infrastructure.

“If you’re looking out at midcentury, let’s say 2050- or 2060-time frame, and you were to design a culvert that’s supposed to last that period of time, how would your design criteria change based on using plausible future scenarios?” Bowden continued.

Public and private infrastructure rely upon reasonably accurate climate models to determine design criteria. Retention ponds, as an example, typically use a 4% annual chance of a 25-year storm as design criteria. Based on that assumption, a retention pond should perform as expected provided the storm events occur as predicted by Atlas 14.

However, climate events predicted by RaInDROP suggest that what is now thought of as a 25-year storm will be more frequent and more intense, and if that happens “it’s not going to perform as you expect, and it’s going to be overwhelmed more frequently, and it’s going to be become a problem,” Bowden said.

Environmental engineer George Wood, owner of Environmental Professionals of Kill Devil Hills for nearly 40 years, told Coastal Review that private infrastructure systems in particular would be overwhelmed by more frequent and increased storm intensity and rainfall. And, compounding the problem is less recovery time for the system between storms.

Wood was particularly critical of how private stormwater systems are maintained – or not — noting that private retention ponds are often overgrown with subaquatic vegetation and culverts are often clogged and incapable of even handling the rainfall amounts for which they were designed.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality has suffered the highest percentage of staff cuts of any state, with nearly one-third of its workforce eliminated between 2010 and 2024, according to an environmental watchdog group.

A whopping 32%, or 386 DEQ staff positions, were wiped out during that 14-year period, according to an Environmental Integrity Project report released earlier this month.

Those staff cuts, the report concludes, leave the state agency responsible for administering regulations to protect water, air quality and the public’s health “ill-positioned to confront” pollution from the state’s growing factory farming industry, climate-driven storms and flooding in coastal communities.

The report notes how the agency was downsized when former Gov. Pat McCrory signed the 2015-16 state budget into law, triggering a shift of several divisions from what was then the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

The Republican governor, who also renamed the agency the Department of Environmental Quality, said the move aligned with his vision for government efficiency.

Josh Kastrinsky, DEQ’s deputy communications director, said in an email last week that it is “difficult” to directly compare present staffing levels to those in 2010 because of the changes that were made to the department in 2015.

“However, for several regulatory divisions that existed in 2010 and 2025, staffing levels declined by at least 25%,” he wrote, adding that, “The EIP report focuses on regulatory work and does not include DEQ’s non-regulatory work, which affects the total numbers of staff shown.”

As of the week that began Dec. 8, the departments vacancy rate was 8%, Kastrinsky said.

“This includes an engineer vacancy rate of 14% and an environmental specialist vacancy rate of 9%,” he said. “Several DEQ programs have larger workloads and several programs have less staff than they did in 2010.”

North Carolina’s population has increased by more than 11.5% since 2010, according to USAFacts, a nonprofit organization that gathers data from federal, state and local governments.

The state’s population growth corresponds to an increase in environmental permit applications filed with the department.

Since 2010, the department’s Division of Mitigation Services has seen a 200% increase in projects.

During that same time period, the number of erosion and sediment control project applicants filed with the Division of Energy, Mineral, and Land Resources has jumped by nearly 60%, and the Division of Waste Management has received a 62% increase in underground storage tank applications.

“The 2010-2025 period also includes several destructive hurricanes, and DEQ staff have been heavily involved in recovery and long-term resilience in impacted communities,” Kastrinsky said. “DEQ’s ability to hire and retain sufficient staff levels has a direct effect on its ability to provide permit oversight, technical assistance to businesses and customer service to North Carolinians.”

The department’s “roughly 1,700 staff members remain dedicated to providing science-based efforts to ensure clean air, water and lands by managing applications, conducting inspections and permit oversight, investigating complaints and taking enforcement measures as appropriate under law,” he continued. “DEQ also continues to focus on a variety of funding and assistance programs to maintain critical infrastructure and make communities’ aging systems more resilient to increasingly severe natural disasters.”

The Environmental Integrity Program analyzed the budgets, annual expenditures and staffing levels from 2010 through to 2024 of the environmental agencies of all 50 states.

North Carolina topped the list of 31 states found to have cut jobs at their environmental agencies from 2010 to 2024. Connecticut experienced a 26% cut during that same time, followed closely by Arizona, which saw a 25% reduction in its environmental agency’s staff.

Seven states, including Texas, Mississippi, South Dakota, and Connecticut, reduced their pollution control funding by at least a third, the report concludes.

The impacts of such cuts will likely only be exacerbated by the Trump Administration’s plans to downsize the Environmental Protection Agency, the program warns.

“The Trump Administration is attempting to dismantle EPA and rollback commonsense federal pollution rules, claiming that the states can pick up the slack and protect our communities – but that’s not the case,” Jen Duggan, Environmental Integrity Project executive director, stated in a release. “The implementation of our environmental laws depend on both a strong EPA and state agencies that have the resources they need to do their jobs. But our research found that many states have already cut their pollution control agencies and so more cuts at the federal level will only put more Americans at risk.”

The report highlights North Carolina’s factory farming industry, which includes the production of nearly 1 billion chickens annually for sale as meat. And, as of March, there were 8.1 million hogs in concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, in the state.

Poultry waste at these CAFOs is sometimes dumped in open-air heaps and, when it rains, washes into nearby streams, discharging harmful nutrients into waters downstream, including those in the Cape Fear River Basin, which has the highest density of CAFOs in the world, according to Cape Fear River Watch.

“The unchecked expansion of hog and poultry farms has left the state environmental agency unable to even evaluate the cumulative impacts,” Drew Ball, director of Natural Resources Defense Council’s Southeast Campaigns team, states in the report. “At this point, policy experts and advocates can’t even get the information they need to protect the public. You can’t respond if you don’t know what’s coming online. We need to think a lot harder about keeping track of potential pollution and what it could mean for downstream communities.”

Coastal Review will not publish Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in observance of the Christmas holiday.

To get a sense of just how severe Battery Island’s shoreline is changing, look no farther than its trees.

As waves lick away at the fringes of this little island in the middle of the Cape Fear River near Southport, trees rising off its shores are toppling.

“The mature trees that the birds nest in are being lost along the shore,” said Lindsay Addison, coastal biologist with Audubon North Carolina.

Each tree that plops into the river is one fewer on an island that is globally significant for nesting white ibis and home to one of the largest wading bird colonies in North Carolina.

To Battery Island’s east rests Shellbed Island, a large marsh system edged by elevated banks of old oyster shells called shell rakes.

In good condition, these rakes do not flood at high tide or during storms, making them a crucial and rather niche nesting habitat for American oystercatchers.

“The Cape Fear River supports almost 30% of the state’s nesting American oystercatchers. And about half of the American oystercatchers that nest on the Cape Fear River nest in these types of habitats. So, it’s a very important habitat type for American oystercatchers and they are a state listed species,” Addison said.

Like Battery Island, waves have altered Shellbed Island’s edges, where the elevated shell rakes have been flattened out and pushed back into the marsh by coastal storms.

In an effort to protect the threatened bird habitat on these islands, Audubon and its partners, Sandbar Oyster Co. and the North Carolina Coastal Federation, have teamed up to design and install two pilot living shoreline projects and test their effectiveness at protecting the low-lying islands on the river.

The Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, is contributing $13,800 in cost share for the $51,500 projects. Of the Coastal Federation’s contribution, $5,250 has been set aside for Battery Island and $8,550 for the project at Shellbed Island.

Georgia Busch, a coastal specialist in the Coastal Federation’s Wrightsville Beach office, said these projects, “align with our mission for preservation of critical habitats in our coastal and estuary systems.”

“But, particularly in the lower Cape Fear River, there’s a need for some extra reinforcement of those habitats there. Historically, the birds have used this area for a long, long time and we just want to make sure that stays intact. These sites were chosen for both their exposure and their critical points in the river,” she said.

Battery Island’s shores have for years been battered by waves from large vessels that navigate the river to and from the Port of Wilmington, recreational boats that skim the waters around Southport, and the Bald Head Island ferry.

“What makes Battery Island special for the nesting birds is it’s relatively small, it’s far enough away from the mainland that it doesn’t have any mammalian predators on it, and so that allows this colony to have a lot of success,” Addison said.

There’s also little human disturbance on the island. The island, which is managed by Audubon, is closed to people March 1 to Sept. 15 each year.

A test section of about 70 linear feet of living shoreline will be installed along the roughly 100-acre island’s southwest corner, which has experienced some of the most severe erosion.

A reef constructed of Sandbar Oyster Co.’s Oyster Catcher reef building substrates, which are made with plant-fiber cloth, infused with different cement mixtures, and molded into different shapes to promote sediment accumulation and marsh growth.

The test project at Shellbed Island has been designed to prevent shell rakes from washing away.

Power hurricanes, including Florence in 2018 and Dorian in 2019, pushed the shell rakes back into the marsh and flattened them out. And the oyster reefs that at one time provided an abundance of oyster shell in the river are not as plentiful because of overfishing, pollution and habitat degradation.

“There’s still plenty of spat, larval oysters, in the water, but there isn’t a lot of substrate for them to settle on because oysters typically grow on other oysters,” Addison explained. “When you put in a living shoreline-type of material, or almost any hard substrate, you’ll get oysters recruiting onto it. What we would like to do is to help jumpstart some oyster populations in areas of these shell rakes.”

The project at Shellbed Island includes installing roughly 67 feet of living shoreline in front of the shell rakes and material behind the shell rakes, “so that when nature moves those loose shells around, it can build back up into a more sustainable nesting habitat where the oystercatchers are not losing so many of their nests to overwash,” Addison said.

Audubon has a received a grant for a separate project to place loose oyster shell directly on the existing rakes.

Busch explained the test projects are a first-of-their kind because they will be at isolated islands “where we’re really only looking at habitat and this will be really helpful for testing out the strength and feasibility of the Sandbar Oyster Company’s products and of living shorelines.”

“These sites were chosen for both their exposure and their critical points in the river,” she said. “We want to see how this product will work somewhere where we get a lot of wave energy. We’re going to find out.”

Addison said she has “high hopes” for the living shorelines in curbing erosion at the islands.

“If it turns out to look like it’s working well then we could seek larger pots of money and expand our permit to be able to do this at a larger scale,” she said.

Audubon is continuing to fundraise for the projects. Donations may be made by contacting Addison by email at lindsay.addison@audubon.org.

Plastic may be cheap to make and convenient to use, but it comes with a staggering economic cost to the United States — possibly more than $1 trillion a year — according to a new report.

The study, released Thursday, estimates that the economic cost of the life cycle of plastic – from how it’s made, to its conversion into products, to its use and disposal – ranges anywhere from $436 billion to $1.1 trillion annually.

That figure is likely a significant underestimate, according to Duke University researchers who authored the report.

“We, from the beginning, wanted to focus on the harms and costs of the entire plastic life cycle, not just focus on plastic pollution,” said Dr. Nancy Lauer, a co-author of the report and staff scientist and lecturing fellow with the Duke Environmental Law and Policy Clinic. “That was because there really is this entire life of plastic product that has now-well-documented harms at every single stage that we are paying for. It was important for us to make those harms and those costs more transparent to consumers so that they understand this is not just a problem when plastic escapes into the environment and becomes litter or marine debris.”

The team of researchers was able to explore this concept after the university in 2023 awarded it a small grant. That grant led the researchers to host a workshop in early 2024 that brought together experts from across different fields with experience in analyzing the social costs of plastic from its production to its disposal.

Those experts were given a list of studies examining economic costs associated with plastic’s life cycle compiled and initially reviewed by a team of graduate students. The experts then advised researchers on what categories of studies were missing from that list and whether there was additional research that could be examined.

In the end, researchers reviewed 13 existing studies focusing on plastic’s harms and costs on the environment, human health, and the economy.

The report breaks down the economic impacts of plastics by several categories, from greenhouse gas emissions associated with plastic production to human health effects.

The largest cost, by far, is human exposure to toxic chemicals in plastics.

Researchers estimate that increased disease and mortality from plastics use is between $410 billion and $930 billion each year.

“These high costs are driven largely by the value of IQ loss and reduced productivity associated with exposure to plastic activities,” the report states.

Exposure to chemicals such as phthalates, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, bisphenol A, or BPA, and those found in flame retardants are linked to a host of adverse health outcomes, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, reproductive disorders and neurological damage.

Lauer explained that only within the last couple of years studies on the economic impacts of human health-associated harms from plastics use have “really taken off.”

“So that was certainly a category that we, in those initial searches and before the workshop, did not have as great of a handle on, but that research has just really continued to take off in these last two years or so,” she said.

And while studies of the economic effect on human health have come a long way, Lauer said there’s still a long way to go.

“The studies that we found document the harms and costs from exposure to just a tiny fraction of the chemicals that are in plastic. There’s thousands of chemicals in plastic, several of which have known health effects, and several of which we don’t know enough about to know if they have health effects,” she said.

There is also lack of research on the cumulative effects on human health from chemical mixtures in plastics.

“If we take in a plastic particle, we’re not just taking in one or two chemicals, we’re taking in that mixture of chemicals,” Lauer said. “How those chemicals interact together to spur health impacts, we don’t have a good sense of that at this time.”

The report highlights other research gaps, including economic costs associated with plastic recycling and incineration, the effect of plastic on property values, and the cost associated with loss of terrestrial environment.

“When plastics get into the environment, often our first thought is when it ends up as marine debris and the harms that it causes in the ocean, entangling animals and creating these great garbage patches that need to be cleaned up,” Laure said. “Plastics also impact the terrestrial environment. They get into streams and lakes, along our roadsides, and studies have documented that plastics also cause harm to terrestrial animals like invertebrates and freshwater fish. But, there’s not estimates in the literature for that loss of terrestrial ecosystem services in the same way that the literature has begun to document the cost of the loss of marine ecosystem services.”

According to the report, the estimated cost of the loss of marine ecosystem services ranges from $1.4 billion to $112 billion a year.

Other categories and estimated annual costs detailed in the report include the following:

• Greenhouse gas emissions produced from fossil fuel extraction and manufacturing: $6.4 billion to $15.9 billion.
• Increased disease and mortality from oil and gas extraction: $2.9 billion to $31.9 billion.
• Landfill disposal: $2.9 billion.
• Plastic litter cleanup: $9.8 billion to $13.3 billion.
• Loss of tourism: $2 billion.
• Damage to fisheries and aquaculture industry: $88 million.
• Damage to marine shipping: $909 million.

Lauer said that a motivation to make these costs more transparent to the consumer is to highlight that, though products we buy that are made of plastic tend to be relatively cheap, “that’s just the price we’re paying right there on the spot.”

“There’s so many other costs that we may not necessarily realize we’re paying when we use that plastic,” she said.

And while plastics are important for certain industries, including the medical industry, “we’re still using a lot of plastic in places that we don’t necessarily need to be,” Lauer said. “The patchwork of state and local laws on the books are important to reduce plastics on that local and state level, and they’re important to have proof of concept and build momentum towards something that is more comprehensive. But I think what that more comprehensive strategy needs to look like is really focusing on reducing plastics at the source, and that can be through phasing out needless plastics.”

The North Atlantic right whale population increased slightly in 2024 from the previous year, but marine scientists warn that federal protections are crucial to the recovery of the critically endangered species.

The 2024 population is estimated at 384 individual whales, a 2.1% increase over the 2023 estimate, and a continued slow, upward trend in growth over the last four years, according to the latest numbers released by the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium earlier this week.

The modest increase follows a year in which researchers documented five right whale deaths, 16 entanglements, and eight vessel strikes, according to the consortium.

So far this year, no deaths have been logged. Scientists have documented one whale that has been injured in 2025 from being entangled in fishing gear, and one whale injured in a vessel strike.

“The slight increase in the population estimate, coupled with no detected mortalities and fewer detected injuries than in the last several years, leaves us cautiously optimistic about the future of North Atlantic right whales,” North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium Chair Heather Pettis said in a release Tuesday announcing the latest population estimate. “With small population increases year to year, we still need strong protective measures for continued growth. We don’t want to take our foot off the gas when it comes to management and conservation efforts.”

Though this year has thus far proved to be a better year for right whales, researchers were hoping for more than the 11 calves born in 2025.

Scientists note that of those, four were born to first-time mothers.

“In recent years, right whales have been delaying giving birth to their first calf until they are older,” Philip Hamilton, a senior scientist with the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, said in the release. “It is encouraging to see four of these older females join the reproductive pool this year. The future of the species rests on their broad backs.”

Scientists from the aquarium’s center and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, work together to calculate annual population estimates.

Vessel strikes and entanglements in fishing gear remain the leading causes of death and serious injury to North Atlantic right whales.

Last December, a 3-year-old male spotted about 40 miles off the North Carolina coast was among at least three right whales observed to be entangled in fishing gear that month.

The juvenile male (Catalog No. 5132) was “observed with rope wrapped around its head and mouth, with lines attached to two marked buoys and a single line was trailing the animal by a distance of about three body lengths,” according to information provided by the Canadian government.

That whale, still entangled, migrated to waters hundreds of miles north of Canada’s East Coast, according to an update shared at the consortium meeting.

The yearly updated population estimate is revealed in coordination with the consortium’s annual meeting, which was held through Thursday in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The consortium was started in 1986 and includes research and conservation organizations, shipping and fishing industries, technical experts, U.S. and Canadian government agencies, and state and provincial authorities.

Nora Ives, a marine scientist with Oceana, took a quick break from the meeting Thursday to speak with Coastal Review by telephone.

“These protected species have huge ecosystem benefits to all of us on the planet,” she said. “Large coastal whales like the North Atlantic right whale fertilize our oceans. They kick off the oxygen cycle of the planet. We can all benefit from their recovery.”

Right whales migrate seasonally, spending their spring, summers in waters off New England and further north into Canadian waters to feed and mate.

In the fall, the whales travel south, sometimes more than 1,000 miles, to their calving grounds off shore from the Carolinas to northeastern Florida.

The modest increase in the 2024 population estimate, “proves how resilient these whales are and that they can recover if we let them,” Ives said.

“But we cannot do that without a fully staffed and funded NOAA and a strong Marine Mammal Protection Act, which is the underpinning of all this important work to recover our large coastal whale, the North Atlantic right whale.”

The Marine Mammal Protection Act, enacted in 1972, requires the federal government to safeguard the life and well-being of all marine mammals within U.S. jurisdiction.

President Donald Trump’s proposed 2026 budget includes massive layoffs at NOAA, slashing the administration’s Fisheries division by up to a third of the workforce that oversee the protections of marine mammals, and reduces funding for conservation of marine mammals and endangered species.

“That would be devastating for these programs,” Ives said.

Notably missing from this year’s meeting, Ives said, are NOAA employees, absent because of what is now the second-longest government shutdown in United States history.

“We have colleagues from the federal government who are not able to join us at this annual meeting to discuss the latest research and work toward solutions for the recovery of the North Atlantic right whale,” she said. “Our federal colleagues are doing their best to share their research remotely with prerecorded talks.”

Scientists are calling for the implementation of additional measures that would aid in the recovery of the right whale population, including the use of ropeless or on-demand fishing gear in crab fishing to reduce whale entanglements.

“That would be implemented only in places where whales are detected or expected, so really allowing for this dynamic and adaptive management that can both protect American livelihoods and our American fisheries while also protecting our coastal large whale as they migrate up and down the East Coast,” Ives said.

Scientists support existing federal rules that mandate vessels 65 feet or longer travel at 10 knots or less through designated North Atlantic right whale seasonal management areas in the northeast, mid-Atlantic, and southeast.

Earlier this year, NOAA announced its withdrawal of proposed similar speed limits for vessels under 65 feet in length those management areas, though it “encourages” those vessels to slow to 10 knots or less.

“Another year of modest population growth is certainly better than a year of sharp decline, and we should celebrate that while also keeping our eyes on the work ahead,” Jane Davenport, a senior attorney for Defenders of Wildlife, said in a statement. “We need new initiatives to reduce vessel strike and entanglement risk in the U.S. and Canada, and the current legislative attacks on the Marine Mammal Protect Act must end, or this iconic species’ extinction is all but guaranteed.”

As you near Wilmington for your beach vacation, you take in the classic coastal Carolina scenery — tall longleaf pines, grassy marshes, and the wide Cape Fear River. But then something strange catches your eye: a forest of bare white tree trunks rising from the swamp like a field of bones. The eeriness of this ghost forest — a place where living woods have turned to watery graveyards — leaves you wondering, “What killed all the trees?”

The answer researchers with the University of North Carolina Wilmington found in the boneyard may surprise you.

For centuries, bald cypress trees thrived on the banks of the Cape Fear River and its tributaries. Bald cypress trees — ancient survivors — are not fragile. These giants can live for thousands of years, stretching to 120 feet tall and standing strong through hurricanes thanks to buttressed roots that prevent the tree from toppling in high winds. An hour away, cypress trees on the Black River are some of the oldest trees in the world with some in Three Sisters Swamp found to be aged at over 2,600 years using tree-ring dating in a 2019 study. But here along the Cape Fear River — like much of the East Coast — many of them are dying and leaving behind ghost forests.

The cost of ghosts

Ghost forests aren’t just spooky. They’re a warning sign. Remote sensing photos from a 2020 paper by Jessica Lynn Magolan and Joanne Nancie Halls show Smith Creek’s freshwater wetlands giving way to salt marsh. Old-growth freshwater swamps are engines of life. They shelter birds, fish and reptiles. They store vast amounts of carbon. Their roots absorb floodwaters, buffering nearby communities when hurricanes roar ashore.

Ghost forests, by contrast, provide little protection. They are markers of loss — loss of biodiversity, of resilience, of time.

And they’re spreading.

Digging into the past

On a warm morning standing in the mud near Smith Creek, graduate student researcher Kendra Devereux of the University of North Carolina Wilmington holds a cylinder of tree core to the light. Each ring tells a story of a year in the tree’s life: how much it grew, whether it was stressed, whether conditions were good or bad.

Devereux and her team are piecing together a mystery. Along with her research advisers, Dr. Monica Rother and Dr. Andrea Hawkes, and a team of other collaborators and students, she’s collected tree cores and sediment samples from two sites on Smith Creek, looking for clues hidden in growth rings and in the microscopic remains of creatures. Tiny, fossilized organisms buried in the layers of river mud act like timekeepers, revealing how salty the water was at different points in history. By studying them, the team can reconstruct how salty the water was when they lived.

And the evidence revealed in their report points to what may be a surprising culprit.

A river made deeper

The cypress deaths weren’t just caused by globally rising seas or regular tides. It appears that the trees were undone, in large part, by ongoing dredging.

Over the last century, the Cape Fear River was repeatedly deepened to allow bigger ships to reach Wilmington’s port. Each time the channel grew, for example, in 1912, 1930, 1946, 1950, 1970, and from 2000 until 2005, more ocean water pushed upstream, according to a 2011 UNCW study for the Army Corps of Engineers that monitored how deepening the Wilmington Harbor would affect tidal range. Combined with rising sea levels, that extra saltwater slowly crept farther upriver and into tributaries like Smith Creek. Even tiny increases in salt can stress or kill bald cypress trees. For people, it was invisible. For trees, it was deadly.

And the problem may only be exacerbated if the Wilmington Harbor channel is deepened from a depth of 42 feet to 47 feet.

Earlier this month, the Corps released a draft environmental study on the proposed multimillion project, which would permit larger ships to cruise from the mouth of the Cape Fear more than 20 miles up river to the North Carolina Port of Wilmington.

Salt: silent killer

Freshwater has almost no salt. Ocean water is about 3% salt, or about 35 parts per thousand. Bald cypress trees start struggling when there’s just a trace more salt than they’re used to. To put it in kitchen terms, just over a pinch per gallon is enough to start killing them. Older trees, despite their size, seem more vulnerable. Along the saltier stretch of Smith Creek, untold numbers of older trees have died, leaving only snags — the standing skeletons of once-living giants.

Upstream, where the water is fresher, cypresses are still thriving, with at least one more than 800 years old. But closer to the Cape Fear, trees that have managed to survive amidst the ghost forests show signs of years of stress, with observable ring patterns that coincide with the dates of major dredging projects. In the 1970s, cypress growth was suppressed in the area with high salt. By 2000, whole stretches of trees had died, leaving behind today’s ghost forest.

A warning rising with the tide

As Wilmington faces sea level rise and continued dredging, Rother, Devereux and the other authors found, the salty tide will keep pushing inland. That means more ghost forests, fewer living cypress trees, and greater risk of flooding for the people who call this coast home.

The white skeletons along Smith Creek are more than strange landmarks. They are warnings etched into the landscape, reminders of how human choices and a changing climate can reshape even the hardiest of forests. As Rother explains, “Climate change and sea-level rise will form more ghost forests across the Atlantic and Gulf coasts,” leaving communities with less natural protection from flooding. And with continuing dredging of the Cape Fear River bottom, hurricane-prone Wilmington could face even greater risks.

Next time you cross that bridge, look again. The ghost forest isn’t just haunting the swamp, it’s a warning carved into bone-white silence.

The blue crab population in the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine System is taking a hit sometime between when juveniles leave their nursery habitats and before reaching sexual maturity, a recent study finds.

Published last month in Fisheries Oceanography, “Long-Term Trends in Juvenile Blue Crab Recruitment Patterns in a Wind-Driven Estuary” examined the density of blue crabs in three different types of nursery habitats during the instar stage of the species’ complex life cycle. That’s when the tiny juvenile crab is about the size of a pea.

The North Carolina blue crab population began declining in the early 2000s, and despite state-mandated measures implemented in the years since to protect the lucrative fishery, the population hasn’t recovered. “With fishing accounting for approximately 80% of total annual blue crab mortality, these measures were expected to allow the stock numbers to recover, which has not occurred,” the study explains, referencing a 2018 N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries report. “This absence of recovery has often been attributed to recruitment overfishing.”

But, that’s not what the authors found.

The research shows that the juvenile blue crab population numbers from the late 1990s and the late 2010s are similar, and point to a “potential population bottleneck occurring in later life stages.” But the bottleneck is not the result of recruitment overfishing, which “occurs when the spawning stock of a population has been depleted to the extent that there are insufficient adults to produce the required number of recruits to replenish the population.”

Lead author of the study, Erin Voigt, is a doctoral candidate in David Eggleston’s lab in the North Carolina State University’s Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Also listed as authors are Eggleston, a professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences, and previous N.C. State doctoral student Lisa Etherington.

Voigt told Coastal Review that one of the biggest takeaways from her research, at least in looking at the instar stage, is that “there is no evidence of recruitment overfishing.”

And if it’s not recruitment overfishing, “then that means that there’s something going on after the instar stage but before the adult stage that’s resulting in the blue crab population not rebounding,” Voigt said.

Another component of the study, which also relates to Etherington’s work, was to determine which habitats the blue crabs use.

Voigt sampled at Ruppia seagrass beds and shallow detrital habitats found along the mainland shores and the mixed species seagrass beds on the sound side of the Outer Banks.

Early in the life cycle, when the megalopae return to the inlets, the seagrass bed structure is the first nursery habitat they encounter on the sound side of the Outer Banks if there are no storms to interfere with the pattern.

“However, the surprising thing that we found was that if you look at the density of blue crabs,” which she said is the amount of blue crabs per meter squared, “you find almost four times as many blue crabs in these super patchy, very hard to see, kind of scruffy seagrass beds on the western shore.”

The researcher, the research 

Originally from Maryland, Voigt earned her bachelor’s in biology from St Mary’s College, spent a few years researching at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, and then earned her master’s in ecology at San Diego State University.

She began her doctorate in 2016 but took an extended leave of absence when she began working in 2023 as program coordinator of the Duke University Marine Lab Scholars and Climate Scholars Program. Voigt resumed her research earlier this year and plans to defend her thesis later this semester.

Voigt began explaining her research by reviewing the “complex life cycle” of a blue crab.

In early summer, the male and female typically mate upriver in low-salinity environments. The female, or sponge crab, carries the eggs on her stomach. When it’s time to hatch, the planktonic larvae, or zoeae, which Voigt said look like space aliens, drift into the inlets or ocean and undergo several molts, with the last transition in the ocean being to the megalopa or megalopae phase.

“The megalopae have a little bit more swimming ability. They look less like aliens and slightly more like something that you might consider a crab or a shrimp,” Voigt said.

Starting in late summer and early fall, the winds shift from primarily southerly to northeasterly, and with that shift, the megalopae are pushed back into inlets, usually the Oregon and Hatteras inlets. They will use their sensory capabilities to find a nursery habitat and then transform to instar, or a small crab.

The instar stage in the life cycle is the focus of her study, she said, and builds on the research of previous graduate students in the Eggleston lab, including Etherington, who had sampled areas within the Pamlico Sound between 1996 and 1999 to learn where juvenile blue crabs were settling.

“In about 1999 — unrelated to her experiment — there was a massive overfishing event, and this occurred due to three hurricanes,” which were Floyd, Dennis and Irene. Overfishing means that a species is being removed at a rate too high for the population to maintain.

The inundation from these storms decreased the salinity upriver, forcing blue crabs to migrate to smaller, higher-salinity areas. This concentration led to a 300% increase in catch-per-unit effort, which is a way to measure how abundant a species is by dividing the total weight of the catch by total amount of work it took, such as hours fished and with what equipment.

“There was just a ton of blue crabs caught that year. We had a really high take. The blue crabs have never rebounded from that,” Voigt said. “There has been a decrease in fishing pressure during that time — a 50% decrease in fishing pressure — and we still have not seen it rebound.”

Then in 2016, when Voigt began as a doctoral student, Eggleston told her he found it interesting that the blue crab population wasn’t rebounding and it wasn’t clear why, though the going theory was recruitment overfishing.

For her research, she sampled from 2017 until 2019 the same exact locations Etherington had sampled 1996-99 for her study.

Voigt said she expected to find a strong reduction in the number of crabs in these key nursery habitats, “because if we’re running into recruitment overfishing, then you’re assuming that not enough juveniles are recruiting back into Albemarle-Pamlico Sound, and therefore you will not see as many instars in these habitats,” Voigt explained.

“However, what’s really interesting about this study was that we did not find that. In fact, the numbers of blue crabs we found when I studied were statistically no different from the number of blue crabs” that Etherington had found when she sampled the same areas before the fisheries collapse, Voigt continued.

An overwhelming majority of litter captured over the course of three years by in-stream traps set up in watersheds throughout the state was plastic waste, according to a recently published study.

About 96% of litter North Carolina waterkeeper organizations and their volunteers removed from trash traps between June 2021 and November 2024 consisted of plastics, said Dr. Nancy Lauer, lead author of the paper published in the journal Community Science.

“Plastic is lightweight, it’s buoyant, it floats easily,” Lauer, a staff scientist and lecturing fellow with the Duke Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, said in a recent telephone interview. “The plastic items, they can very well make their way through the stormwater system, through the stream and end up in the trash trap before they are ever going to biodegrade.”

During the course of the three-year study, 150,750 pieces of litter were removed from 21 traps.

The litter traps were funded through a 2020 North Carolina Environmental Enhancement Grant as part of a statewide microplastics research and pollution-prevention infrastructure project sponsored by Waterkeepers Carolina, a group of 15 licensed waterkeepers in the state.

By removing and documenting the litter that gets caught in the traps, waterkeeper organizations are able to get an understanding of the most prevalent types of litter entering North Carolina rivers. They are also able to look at correlations between litter accumulation and characteristics such as development, impervious surface, road density and human populations within different watersheds.

Using the data collected by those waterkeeper organizations, researchers can provide a big picture of riverine litter in the state and use that to shape policy.

For this study, seven waterkeeper organizations and their volunteers were tasked with separating and organizing the trash they removed from traps into categories.

Those categories included plastic film, hard plastic, polystyrene foam, metal, glass; and paper covering items, such as drink containers made of plastic, glass and metal, plastic straws and stirrers, cup lids, bottle caps and food wrappers.

Fragments of polystyrene foam from consumer products like Styrofoam cups, food takeout containers and packing materials were removed from all 21 traps in “very high” loads, Lauer said.

Those fragments and single-use plastic bottles made up about 83% of the litter that was collected and documented.

“If you do a cleanup of a roadside, you’re going to find a lot more plastic bags, a lot more food wrappers and we would find those occasionally,” Lauer said. “But I think that those just tend to snag on branches or get weighted down in the stream banks before they would ever be able to reach the trap. It was sort of eye opening to realize which of these plastic items, when they get into the environment, are extremely mobile. It seems like the trash traps are telling us that Styrofoam fragments and plastic bottles can really effectively be transported by surface waters downstream just because they made up such a large fraction of what we were finding in the traps.”

The paper is the latest to highlight single-use plastic pollution in the state.

A 14-page report published last March and created through a collaboration of nonprofits and the policy clinic concluded that state agencies, local governments and nonprofits spent more than $56 million in 2023 cleaning up more than 7,000 tons of litter.

Related: State’s fix for costly litter problem ‘not efficient or sufficient’

That same year, legislators injected language into the state budget prohibiting counties and cities from adopting rules, regulations, ordinances, or resolutions that restrict, tax, or charge fees on auxiliary containers.

The provision stopped locally elected officials in Asheville from voting on a proposed ban of single-use plastic bags and Styrofoam food containers. The law also barred local elected officials in Durham from deciding whether to require retailers tack on a 10-cent fee for each plastic bag given to customers in restaurants, grocery stores and shops.

That law “dealt a huge blow” to North Carolina, Lauer said.

The volume of single-use plastics removed from riverine traps clearly indicates that type of pollution is a huge issue in the state, she said

“I think what this data really highlights is that there’s still work that needs to be done and that work now, because of that preemption law, can’t necessarily be done on the local level in the same way that it could before,” Lauer said. “But there are state-level actions like banning Styrofoam, or a bottle bill that would incentivize people to return their bottles to receive a small deposit. Those could be really effective at reducing stream litter.”

She said it is important to keep in mind that there are types of litter that aren’t being captured in trash traps.

“These traps have a lot of positive aspects, but ideally we want to live in a world where we don’t need them because that trash is never ending up in our streams,” Lauer said. “I feel really strongly that there needs to be action by the corporations and the businesses and the government to stop these items from being provided in the first place. We go through life and you can make choices as an individual, but single-use plastics are still so prevalent that it can feel impossible to avoid them, no matter how hard you try.”

Those slabs of meat labeled “shark” on display in grocery stores and seafood markets might be from a critically endangered species and contain significant levels of mercury, according to a new study.

The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill paper, “Sale of critically endangered sharks in the United States” was published Tuesday in Frontiers in Marine Science journal. The study was funded by the university and the National Science Foundation.

Students in the university’s undergraduate-level seafood forensic course analyzed the DNA of 29 shark meat samples collected from 19 filets purchased in grocery stores, seafood markets and Asian specialty markets, mostly in North Carolina, and from 10 products called “jerky” that was ordered online.

Out of the samples, 27 “were ambiguously labeled as shark or mako shark but not as a specific species.” Of the two samples that were labeled, one was shortfin shark mislabeled as blacktip shark, and the other was correctly labeled.

The students identified 11 different species, three of which the Union for Conservation of Nature has designated as critically endangered: great hammerhead, scalloped hammerhead and tope.

“Previous studies have found that the first two species contain very high levels of mercury, illustrating the implications of seafood mislabeling for human health. The availability of shark meat in U.S. grocery stores is surprising given the dramatic decline of shark populations globally,” the authors wrote. “Moreover, the fact that nearly all shark meat is labeled ambiguously or incorrectly amplifies the problem. Accurate, verified product labels for shark meat would benefit consumers and shark conservation efforts, and should be a priority for the seafood industry.”

Savannah Ryburn, the lead author of the study, is a marine ecologist who recently earned her doctorate from UNC Chapel Hill. She and distinguished professor John Bruno are co-instructors for the class.

Ryburn told Coastal Review Tuesday that the main goal of the study was to figure out what species are being sold and if there’s any cause for concern, to which, “we would say ‘yes.’”

Just in the 29 samples analyzed, three were the meat of critically endangered species that are extremely high in mercury, which can be very dangerous for human consumption, Ryburn highlighted.

Finding the highly endangered shark species among the samples is a big conservation concern, “but even more perversely,” Bruno explained, these are long-lived, high-trophic level species with high mercury concentrations.

“Nobody should be eating hammerhead sharks,” Bruno said, because they’re loaded with mercury and the consumer has no idea, since the meat is sold as shark.

“We don’t know if it’s a spiny dogfish that’s low in the food chain, not very long lived, not very big, probably not super concerning in terms of tissue content, but there’s just no way to know,” Bruno added.

With this ambiguous labeling, Ryburn continued, sellers are taking away the consumer’s choice. “It’s very concerning when it comes to the general labeling,” particularly considering their findings are from such a small sample size. “It just raises more concerns for the actual shark meat market in the United States.”

Bruno explained that the shark populations are being decimated by fishing, and mostly for its fin. There are regulations in place that require the fisher to land the entire shark, not just cut off the fin, which is one reason the meat is being sold in stores.

Bruno explained that the fin is shipped to Asia, where it is in demand, and then the rest of the meat goes into either the pet food supply or the human food supply, but it’s not lucrative. The average price in the Raleigh area was around $5 a pound.

The United States Food and Drug Administration only requires sellers to have the meat labeled as shark, Ryburn continued.

The results of the study led the authors to emphasize “that sellers need to be required to label their product to the species name, rather than just shark, so that it can be more regulated and consumers have more of a choice,” she said. “In Europe, their regulations are a bit more specific when it comes to labeling sharks to the species level, so we definitely recommend following suit with that European regulation.”

Seafood Forensics

Bruno is a marine ecologist who, about a decade ago, designed the Seafood Forensics class for students to do the actual research testing and certifying seafood.

“We purchase seafood in grocery stores and restaurants, and we sequence it to identify what it really is, and we quantify mislabeling,” Bruno said. “We teach the undergraduate students about seafood mislabeling,” and use DNA barcoding to figure out what stores are actually selling.

Students are taught basic lab skills such as how to extract and sequence DNA, how to read the sequences and compare them to online databases, or DNA barcoding. Previous classes have studied red snapper and shrimp, for example.

Ryburn explained that the students design the research project they work on throughout the semester.

The idea to study shark meat evolved from a student telling the class that she noticed a grocery store was selling meat under the generic label of “shark,” though there’s hundreds of species of sharks, and they vary, she said.

The students collected the samples, most of which were labeled “shark,” and then began going through the process to identify the species.

About sharks

Ryburn, who studied sharks for her doctorate, said the animal is vital to the overall function and health of the marine ecosystem but “they’re currently being fished at extremely high rates throughout the whole world.”

Many of the species are long lived and, as a result, the populations don’t replenish quickly. If a large number is removed by fishing, it is hard for the population to recover at a sustainable rate.

She called sharks the “cleanup crew” for marine ecosystems, because they prey on injured or sick animals, making the populations of other species stronger.

If there are no sharks to help manage the population of other species, this will cause a cascading effect on the overall health within the ecosystem.

As for the threats to human health, shark meat is similar to tuna, in that there’s a very high level of mercury in its tissue, and that is due to something called bioaccumulation, which is the buildup of chemicals in an organism over time.

“Predators that are higher up in the food chain tend to accumulate more mercury in their tissue from the prey that they’re eating, because everything has mercury in its tissue,” Ryburn said. But with larger predators that live longer and eat bigger prey, the animal tends to accumulate more mercury, and that mercury never leaves the tissue.

Some shark species even eat tuna, like the mako shark, and they’re accumulating all of that mercury when they eat.

“If we go and eat something that’s super high in mercury, we’re also absorbing that mercury into our bodies, and mercury can cause major health issues and even cause people to die,” she said.

Researchers found in a recent study that, over the long term, bulkhead structures have a “significant negative effect” on marsh habitat size.

Using high-resolution imagery from 1981 of Carteret County’s Bogue and Back sounds and Newport and North rivers, the team measured the marsh extent, or total marsh area, at 45 sites with bulkheads and 45 natural sites, or those without the type of hardened structure. The 1981 measurements were then compared to the data from images collected in 1992, 2006 and 2013 of the same 90 sites.

The study found that all 45 bulkhead sites experienced marsh shoreline erosion during the 32-year study period, with complete marsh loss at 11% of the sites with bulkheads. More than 80% of the 45 natural marsh control sites experienced shoreline erosion, but at seven sites, around 15%, the marsh shoreline accreted waterward. None of the control sites experienced complete marsh loss.

“Our study found bulkheads nearly tripled the rate of marsh loss over a 32-year period. All of the 45 marshes we studied in front of a bulkhead got smaller or disappeared entirely,” Principal investigator Brandon Puckett explained to Coastal Review.

Puckett is a research marine biologist for the Coastal Resilience, Restoration and Assessment Branch in National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, which partnered with Duke University and North Carolina Division of Coastal Management on the study.

“At the 45 natural marsh sites without bulkheads, the story was different. While many of them also eroded, more than a third actually held their ground or even grew by migrating inland into upland habitat. Bulkheads prevent marsh migration leading to a process known as ‘coastal squeeze’ whereby the marshes are not only eroding at the front edge, but are also blocked from migrating upland,” the Beaufort-based scientist said.

The study, “Bulkheads Reduce Salt Marsh Extent: A Multidecadal Assessment Using Remote Sensing,” was published this summer in the nonprofit Coastal Education and Research Foundation’s Journal of Coastal Research.

“Think of it this way,” Puckett continued. “Over the 32 years of our study — close to the length of a mortgage — the average marsh in front of a bulkhead lost about 15 feet of width. A natural marsh, on the other hand, lost only about 5 feet of width on average, because it could often make up for erosion by migrating upland.”

Of Carteret County’s 1,530 miles of estuarine shoreline, salt marsh accounts for about 1,270 miles, roughly 87 miles is hardened with bulkheads, and the remaining 11% is a different shoreline type or hardened structure other than bulkheads, like riprap.

The Division of Coastal Management, which is under the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, calls bulkheads the “most commonly used estuarine shoreline stabilization method” in the state “but could have deleterious impacts on the marsh habitats where they are being constructed.”

Factors contributing to the deterioration of salt marsh habitats include sea level rise and coastal development, which often result in hardened shoreline stabilization structures like bulkheads or seawalls constructed to protect against coastal hazards such as erosion, flooding and subsequent property damage, according to the study. “Concurrently, the many ecosystem services salt marshes provide, such as storm surge protection, carbon sequestration, improved water quality, and nursery habitat, are also diminishing.”

Authors state that the study is intended to offer a better understanding of how hardened shorelines like bulkheads “can have a significant negative effect on marsh extent through increased erosion of the waterward edge and prevention of landward migration with” sea level rise.

Why look at bulkheads and marsh loss?

Puckett told Coastal Review that the team decided to pursue the study after they realized they were “watching two powerful trends collide: the decline of essential marsh habitats and the increase in shoreline armoring,” provoking the question “’Is the solution to one shoreline erosion (bulkheads) actually making the other problem — marsh loss — worse?’”

He noted that scientists have long suspected that the hardened structures harm marshes but there wasn’t a lot of long-term data demonstrating these impacts. “We wanted to look back in time to objectively compare the long-term rates of change in marsh loss in locations with and without shoreline armoring.”

To get what Puckett called a “fair, apples-to-apples comparison,” the team “essentially became historical detectives” using the old aerial photographs, which were taken around low tide, when marsh shorelines were most visible. The study area was chosen because the historic aerial imagery was available.

They pored over the 1981 photos to find 45 locations where a fringe of salt marsh already existed with a bulkhead behind it. Then, for each of those 45 bulkhead sites, they located a nearby natural marsh without a bulkhead.

“We were careful to select control sites that were exposed to similar wave and wind conditions so that we were comparing like with like,” Puckett continued. “We meticulously traced the waterward and landward edges of the marsh at each site for each of the four imagery sets. By comparing these digital outlines over time, we could precisely measure both the erosion at the front of the marsh and its migration (or lack thereof) at the back.”

One of the more striking surprises from the study, Puckett said, is that the negative effects of bulkheads are almost invisible over shorter time spans.

“When we analyzed the data in smaller chunks — say, over a seven- to 14-year period — the difference in erosion rates between the bulkhead and natural sites wasn’t statistically significant. It was only by looking across the entire 32-year period that the dramatic, long-term impact became undeniable,” he said. It’s a true ‘death by a thousand cuts,’ and it tells us that short-term assessments can easily miss the entire story.”

The discovery also raises a new question about what’s driving erosion.

“We found that the fastest erosion rates occurred between 2006 and 2013, the period during our study with the highest rate of relative sea-level rise,” he said, “but not the stormiest from a tropical storm and hurricane perspective. This suggests that the constant, daily pressure of higher water levels might be a more powerful force in eating away at marsh edges than the occasional big storm, which challenges some common assumptions.”

‘Study is unique’

Authors state that this study is “the first to investigate the long-term impacts of structures on loss of marsh extent and provide useful information for better understanding the effects of shoreline hardening on salt marsh ecosystems,” which Puckett expounded on for Coastal Review.

“This study is unique for a few key reasons,” Puckett said. “Conceptually, we’ve known that bulkheads can expedite loss of marsh through reflecting wave energy and preventing migration, but this is one of the first studies to provide empirical evidence to support our conceptual understanding.”

The study analyzes more than 30 years of data, enabling the team to illustrate the slow, cumulative impacts that shorter studies could miss. “Environmental changes often don’t happen overnight, and this long-term view is critical,” he continued.

The research specifically focuses on what happens to the existing marsh that is left in front of a bulkhead, as well.

“Many people might think that as long as you leave some marsh, you’re preserving its function. Our work shows that while this may be true in the short-term, this leftover fringe marsh is often living on borrowed time because it can’t easily adapt to rising seas,” Puckett said.

And lastly, the team didn’t just measure erosion at the water’s edge, but also measured the movement of the landward boundary.

“This allowed us to calculate the net change in marsh area and definitively show that preventing landward migration is a critical factor that turns a shoreline erosion problem into a catastrophic loss of habitat. It’s this comprehensive look at both sides of the marsh over such a long period that is a unique component of this research,” he said.

Though disheartening, Puckett said it’s crucial to know that “this isn’t just a story about loss. It’s also a story about resilience and hope. The ‘good news’ from our study is that where marshes had space to move, they did.”

In the 45 natural sites studied, more than a third of the marshes were stable or even grew by migrating into upland habitats, both proving that marshes are naturally resilient and can adapt if given the room and pointing to a path forward to help address marsh erosion and migration.

“First, to combat erosion at the water’s edge, we can use living shorelines. Instead of hard walls, these solutions use natural materials like oyster reefs and native plants to slow wave energy while maintaining the vital intertidal connection between land and water. This helps preserve the marsh’s front edge. However, a marsh still may need room to move inland to adapt to sea-level rise,” Puckett said.

And a “second, equally critical part of the solution is to protect marsh migration corridors through land-use planning and conservation,” he added.

The corridors are undeveloped land set aside to allow marshes to move upland to survive rather than drowning in place.

“It is the combination of using living shorelines to reduce erosion and allowing for landward migration that can reduce the effects of coastal squeeze. We have a chance now to help protect our salt marshes that are the nurseries for our fisheries, our buffer from storm surge, and our natural water cleansers,” Puckett said.

Plants on land are increasingly absorbing more carbon, while Earth’s oceans are taking in and storing less, according to a study released earlier this month.

The study published Aug. 1 in Nature Climate Change found a strong upward trend of global photosynthesis on land between 2003 and 2021.

That trend, however, is partially offset by a decline in photosynthesis occurring in oceans.

“At the global scale, if we put land and ocean together, it shows an enhanced photosynthesis, so that means, currently, our nature ecosystem is still showing an ability to absorb more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” said Yulong Zhang, a research scientist at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and primary author of the study. “Overall, this is encouraging news.”

That’s because, as the climate is warming, the system of plants, animals and microorganisms that referred to as the land ecosystem, still functions as a potential carbon sink to offset the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, he said.

Plants on land and algae in oceans absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, a crucial process that uses sunlight to create the base of the food chain.

But, it should be noted, Zhang said, that photosynthesis is a driver of carbon cycles because the ecosystem, like humans, can breathe out CO2.

Scientists have largely studied the net primary production, or the rate at which plants and phytoplankton store energy and make it available to animals, by focusing their research on either the land or sea.

Zhang primarily focused his research on the land until this study, one that treats both the land and ocean as two components of one global system and how those parts, together, are responding to climate warming through photosynthesis.

To conduct their study, the team of researchers used sets of data collected from satellites and large-scale climate information to create models to try and simulate various environmental factors, such as air and water-surface temperature, light and precipitation.

Scientists then compared year-to-year fluctuations in photosynthesis with the long-term trends on land and, separately, in oceans. The research team included scientists with the University of Iowa, Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, University of New Hampshire, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and U.S. Forest Service.

“We found that, globally, the photosynthesis on land showing a strong increasing trend in the past 18 years from 2003 to 2021,” Zhang said. “But, by contrast, the ocean just shows a weak, declining trend.”

The rate at which plants on land store energy and make it available to animals during that 18-year span increased 0.2 billion metric tons of carbon per year, except in the tropics of South America.

During that same time, marine net primary production declined by about 0.1 billion metric tons of carbon per year, with strong declines occurring largely in tropical and subtropical seas, especially in the Pacific Ocean.

The trends show that during those 18 years global net primary production increased at an overall rate of 0.1 billion metric tons of carbon per year.

The changing trend of the land and the ocean are not uniform at the regional scale.

In tropical seas, scientists have found a large-scale decline in photosynthesis.

That’s a worrying pattern, Zhang said, because that decline equates to a decrease in energy that is provided to fish.

“So, the fishery in the tropical ocean may show a decline and it may particularly have influence on the local fisheries and also the economics for the tropical countries,” he said.

What remains unanswered is the question of what happens if this trend continues. Will the decline our oceans’ ability to absorb carbon continue and, if so, how long can the land ecosystem potentially make up for the declines?

To get answers, that will require “us to do long-term, coordinated monitoring of both land and ocean ecosystems as integrated components of our Earth,” Zhang said.

With massive canines that could gore and then gnash its prey, prehistoric hell pigs were fierce predators before they went extinct 20 million years ago.

The four-hooved entelodonts, the scientific name for the land mammal that looked like a giant hippo-pig hybrid, had a skull half the size of its body with a jaw that could open more than 90 degrees to chomp its game.

“We’re talking, maybe 6 feet at the shoulder, closing in on 2,000 pounds, a massive head with these weird projections that made the skull look even more crazy,” Raleigh-based paleontologist Sean Moran told Coastal Review.

The hell pig, which isn’t a pig at all but is related to the hippo, is one of a dozen “exceedingly rare” early Miocene land mammal fossils recovered over the last several decades from a commercially owned rock quarry just outside Maysville, where Jones and Onslow counties meet.

These fossils help fill in the gaps of early Miocene biogeography, or how the animals were distributed across the Earth roughly 23 to 16 million years ago, according to a recent Cambridge University Press study.

“The Early Miocene is of great importance to understand the macroevolution and distribution of land mammals in North America. It marks the origins and major adaptive radiations of many modern families of mammals, and considerable faunal dispersal coinciding with global sea-level changes,” explains the paper titled, “Early Miocene land mammals and chronology of the Belgrade Formation, eastern North Carolina.”

Moran is an author of the paper and has been the paleontology and geology collections manager for the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh since 2021.

The study looks at around 25 years’ worth of fossils collected from the Belgrade Formation, “where we only have a few dozen fossils of land mammals,” Moran said. He described the Belgrade Formation as a single, fairly thin stratigraphic, or rock, layer in Jones County and the vicinity.

The land mammal fossils found in Maysville “of this age are rare in eastern North America, north of Florida,” but similar fossils are found in abundance in Texas, Florida and Nebraska, the study says. “As such, the recovery of a small but biochronologically diagnostic assemblage of land mammals from (the Maysville quarry) makes it an important contribution to understand Early Miocene biogeography.” 

 A biochronologically diagnostic assemblage means that the group of fossils found together in the same rock layer indicate a specific geological time period. In this case, the late Oligocene or early Miocene, about 17 to 21 million years ago.

The fossils recovered from the Belgrade Formation are of “added importance” because land and marine animals are embedded in the same rock layer “which are likewise rare during this time in North America.”

Though there’s only been around three decades of collecting on and off in the Belgrade Formation, that “gets our hopes up that when we start looking more closely and collecting more diligently, that we might be able to build out a much greater fauna list of what might be there,” Moran said.

The discovery of the hell pig molar is surprising because hell pigs are “pretty rare in most places,” Moran explained in an interview.

The museum collection that Moran oversees includes a cast of that hell pig molar found around 15 years ago, which was donated to the Smithsonian, “but that’s representative of the whole group being here at that period of time when the sediments were deposited,” Moran said.

The first hell pig​s appeared in southern Asia about 40 million years ago, and ​are in a family called Entelodontidae. Their population spread across the rest of Asia and into Europe before eventually migrating into North America about 36 million years ago, Moran explained.

When he’s out doing field work in Nebraska, where he’s been since early last week, Moran said he expects to see fossils of much earlier versions of the hell pigs that are considerably smaller, a little more diverse, and consisted of a few more species. Whereas, the hell pigs that were in coastal North Carolina were “sort of the end of the lineage. It’s only a couple million years before we know it goes extinct.”

Moran said researchers are “pretty sure” hell pigs are omnivorous, given the shape of their teeth, and may have been predators within their ecosystem. The bulbous teeth indicate that they may be eating nuts and fruit and occasionally meat.

“Their teeth are large enough and are robust enough that they certainly could have,” Moran said. “They’re pretty wild animals. We’re still trying to figure out where they fit in the evolutionary tree.”

Other mammals noted in the paper are rhinos, which Moran said are fairly common in the North American fossil record, until they went extinct somewhere between 3.5 to 5 million years ago, and two different species of horse.

He explained that while the Spanish did bring horses to North America, the very first species of horse was on the continent millions of years ago.

“So, around 55 million years ago, we see the first species of horse in what is now Wyoming, and we have a great fossil record of horses all the way from 55 million years ago to 10,000 years ago, give or take, at the end of the ice ages,” Moran said. “Of course, only 500 years ago or so, they were brought back by the Spanish. But we have a really diverse fossil record of horses here in North Carolina.”

There’s a small weasel-like animal, and an animal called the protoceratid, which is deer-like, but not a true deer.

“I think one of the most interesting things that we have is a red panda, which is pretty unusual for North America. There are only a few places where they’ve been documented, especially this far back in time,” he said. “So they are diagnostic of the period of time we’re looking at when they were first found in Nebraska; that’s about the same age as what we’re seeing in Belgrade.”

Moran said it’s the nature of the climate on the East Coast that makes it rare to find these land mammal fossils.

“The eastern part of the U.S. is just much more humid and wet, so we can’t rely on the elements,” like in the western part of the country where there’s not enough rain to sustain heavy plant growth, and rock is exposed, Moran said.

In North Carolina, “you have to rely on rivers to cut through rocks of the right age that you’re interested in,” Moran said, or rely on development projects to cut into the rock and hope that you get access during development.

“One of the ways that we are reliably able to see these units is through quarries,” where the paleontologists do much of their work because the work to mine rock requires “cutting through stratigraphic records of sedimentary rock in the eastern part of the state.”

And, “Beaches are a great place for people to find fossils all throughout North Carolina, but the reality is, if we lived in a place where rock was exposed like in Nebraska, this likely would have been a fauna that was already well-known,” he explained. But, the fairly recent mining activities “allows us to see this as a new frontier for understanding the land mammals and land mammal evolution in the state,” he said.

Moran has been in Nebraska the past few weeks conducting field work with the museum’s paleontology crew, which travels each summer to search for new fossils.

Each week, one of the paleontologists hosts a “Dino Dig Live” talk, where the scientists call in to answer questions. Moran is scheduled to call in from the field site at noon Thursday. The talk will be streamed on YouTube.

The last talk for the summer is Saturday, Aug. 16, with SECU DinoLab Manager Eric Lund calling in from a field site in Montana, also available on YouTube.

The state has the protocols in place for successful fisheries management, but North Carolina is missing the mark, recently released state-mandated research concludes.

A top recommendation: Hire more fisheries scientists.

And the head of the state body formed to coordinate scientific research for the legislature, in a letter accompanying the report, states that lawmakers’ recent failed shrimp trawling ban measure had no basis in the report’s findings and clarifies that the recommendations did not address trawling.

Legislators in 2021 directed the North Carolina Collaboratory to evaluate the overall health of fisheries and habitats and make recommendations for better management ahead of the 25th anniversary of the state’s Fisheries Reform Act of 1997 and the Coastal Area Management Act’s 50th anniversary in 2024.

University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Institute of Marine Sciences Director Dr. Joel Fodrie and a team of nine researchers presented a summary of their findings to the North Carolina General Assembly late last month, as the legislature had mandated.

Fodrie told Coastal Review that the state requested a broad analysis as part of its 2021 budget bill, so the research team, over the course of three years, collected and used data to assess the state’s fisheries and make the state-mandated recommendations based on those findings that could improve “both marine fisheries and our coastal habitats, with a specific link between those habitats and the way they support fish.”

The 46-page summary highlights the seven findings and the five recommendations to “achieve the vision of the Fisheries Reform Act.” The state Fisheries Reform Act requires fishery management plans to ensure long-term viability of the fisheries, according to the state.

The final, comprehensive report with full analyses and data is still being fine-tuned and is to be sent to the legislature later this year, Fodrie added.

In addition to Chapel Hill, researchers who study fish biology and ecology, estuarine ecology, fisheries management and environmental governance from N.C. State University, East Carolina University and UNC-Wilmington participated in the research.

Fodrie explained that if you were to gather data across states to quantitatively evaluate each state’s attempt to manage fisheries, North Carolina scores pretty high based on the management components put in place as a result of the Fisheries Reform Act, or FRA.

The state seems to have adopted many of the practices that should produce better outcomes and have strengthened these practices for most species over time. Despite those gears being in place, the results are only so-so, he said.

The findings point to at least three significant hurdles for optimizing management outcomes, including a significant time lag in the implementation of new data or information for up-to-date decision-making, a breakdown of trust and communication among managers and key stakeholder groups, and long-term shifts in estuarine habitat quality and coverage.

“What the FRA did for North Carolina is it put us in a position to have many of the building blocks that are helpful and can remain part of the solutions, while the analyses also show that we’re still falling short of the FRA’s core objectives and thus some changes in management structures ought to be seriously considered,” Fodrie said.

About the findings

Researchers found that management intensity in North Carolina had increased over time and is equal to or exceeds the levels of other states throughout the Mid-Atlantic, Southeast and Gulf of Mexico, but despite the presence of a rigorous management structure, the state continues to “exhibit challenges in achieving the core goals of the FRA, which is ‘to protect and enhance … coastal fisheries in NC.’”

A benchmark for informed fishery management, according to the summary, are quantitative stock assessments. These produce estimates of stock biomass and the harvest rate, which define overfished, related to how much fish biomass is in the system, and overfishing, related to how high the catch rate is, for the population.

The most recent stock assessments estimate that blue crab, southern flounder, spotted seatrout, striped bass and striped mullet are experiencing overfishing, meaning that the harvest rate is too high.

Blue crab, southern flounder, striped bass and striped mullet are overfished, or the stock is too low, and sheepshead and red drum are neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing.

The summary notes that developing and updating the fishery management plans process “is relatively slow, which potentially limits the efficacy of science- and process-based public trust resource management,” what researchers call in the summary “hallmark goals” of the Fisheries Reform Act.

Across the 12 stocks the state manages that have an initial fisheries management plan, the average time between the first plan and amendments is seven years. The average time between management plan actions is a little more than five years.

“In the context of these timelines, there is little evidence that adaptive management is being achieved by increased activity within” the North Carolina General Assembly, “by the breadth of motions adopted” by the Marine Fisheries Commission or by proclamation authority from the Division of Marine Fisheries, according to the summary.

The remaining findings relate to the pressures coastal habitats are facing from fishing, development, climate variability and other human activities. Data suggests that the entire ecosystem has changed since the Fisheries Reform Act was passed, particularly for water quality and coastal and estuarine habitats.

Researchers offered five recommendations.

Fodrie said that a primary recommendation is to increase the Division of Marine Fisheries staff, especially the number of stock-assessment scientists, so the stock assessments and fisheries management plans are regularly updated.

An independent science and statistical committee to improve fishery management outcomes in the state, as well as new approaches for enhancing the division’s outreach with stakeholder participation, trust, and management transparency, are also recommendations.

Fodrie said that the role of this type of committee and a redesigned Marine Fisheries Commission would be to target current weaknesses related to implementation of the Fisheries Reform Act, such as the mode and tempo by which catch limits are set, when and how stakeholders can be engaged, and resolving disputes between key resource users.

The final three recommendations relate to fisheries and habitat health, including adopting an ecosystem-based management approach to assess the health of the state fisheries as a whole and the drivers that affect them; stopping or reversing patterns of habitat loss and degradation, along with requiring improved monitoring of habitat extent and water quality; and re-evaluating the nursery designation system and creating an adaptive framework for protecting critical nursery areas.

“The state also has some real challenges related to what’s happening with its coastal habitats,” Fodrie said, adding that it’s a big ask to take the major steps needed to halt or reverse those trends. “This involves balancing fishing practices, coastal population growth, climate variability, and development; which would require buy-in at the whole-state level to manage at the coastal ecosystem scale.”

Note from the Collaboratory

The North Carolina Collaboratory’s “Study of Coastal and Marine Fisheries of the State” hadn’t gotten much attention since it was first mandated — that is, until the Senate added in mid-June to a House bill about recreational flounder and red snapper seasons a proposed law to ban shrimp trawling in inshore waters and within a half-mile of the shoreline.

The report was mentioned more than once during discussions between supporters and opponents. The House declined to advance the bill with the Senate’s amendment on June 25.

Looking back: House Republicans decline to take up shrimp trawling bill

Collaboratory Executive Director Jeff Warren, in a letter dated June 30, the deadline and date when the summary was released, wrote that “recent legislative actions – specifically, those related to shrimp trawling language in the current version of House Bill (H) 442 – have brought into question the contents of this report. Because this specific issue was out of the scope of this study, this report neither advocates for nor opposes a ban on shrimp trawling.”

Warren stated in the report’s cover letter that there had been multiple comments made by legislators in both chambers as well as statements circulating in the media, that “suggested the Senate was aware of the contents of this report and this advance knowledge drove actions to amend the legislation to include a shrimp trawling ban prior to the report’s release.”

Those statements were untrue, Warren stated, “and undermine the credibility of this multi-year research study carried out by nine researchers across four UNC System campuses.”

Warren added that the recommendations in the summary, and ultimately the full report, do not address, nor respond to, the shrimp trawling language contained in the shrimp trawl ban “nor were they ever designed to. Further, no legislative influence or pressure impacted the legislative recommendations or the scope of work, which has remained consistent over the three-year arc of the broader study.”

He closed the letter by adding the full report will be available later this year after it’s refined, “to ensure a broad variety of users can access the data and information. To be clear, this clarifying work will not substantively change the recommendations provided herein.”

The U.S. Forest Service estimates that the cone crop for longleaf pines in the Southeast will be “poor for 2025,” according to the “Longleaf Pine Cone Prospects for 2025” report released in June.

Because of the anticipated seed shortage that comes with a low estimate of seed-producing cones for the third year in a row, The Longleaf Alliance is scouting for potential locations to harvest in the fall.

Based on observations collected earlier this year from low-density stands of mature longleaf pines in 10 study sites, researchers estimate the average for seed-producing cones is 12.4 per tree this fall.

The study, which looked at state-managed parks in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Louisiana, defines a good crop as 50 to 99 green cones per tree, a fair crop as 25 to 49, poor as 10 to 24, and a failed crop as less than 10 seed-bearing cones per tree.

Once plentiful, the longleaf pine could be found on an estimated 90 million acres in the coastal plains between southeast Virginia to eastern Texas. During the Colonial era, the trees were felled for timber and naval stores. Demand grew exponentially when the turpentine industry took off at the turn of the 20^th century, nearly stripping the ecosystem of the native pine. Today, its estimated that there’s around 5 million acres remaining.  

The alliance is a nonprofit organization that was established in 1995 and is devoted entirely to longleaf pine ecosystems.

“With a fraction of longleaf pine acres remaining in the Southeast, much of this work is focused on reestablishing longleaf pine. We are planting trees that can outlast us, and it is essential that landowners are up for success from the beginning,” The Longleaf Alliance Vice President for Operations Ad Platt explained to Coastal Review.

The Longleaf Alliance is a founding member and leader within America’s Longleaf, a landscape collaborative effort of public and private partners that supports range-wide efforts to restore and conserve longleaf pine ecosystems.

The study site for North Carolina, Bladen Lakes State Forest, is expected to have an average of 27 cones per tree this fall. The more than 33,000-acre state-owned land is in Bladen County, roughly between Wilmington and Fayetteville near Elizabethtown.

Platt said that with Bladen Lakes State Forest being one of only three locations in the report predicted to have a fair cone crop this fall, it is optimistic news for the longleaf cone in North Carolina. The other fair cone crop areas are in Georgia and Florida.

The South Carolina site is estimated to have a poor crop this year, and the remaining six sites are expected to have less than 10 cones per tree, and are in the failed category.

By estimating the number of green, or productive, cones per tree, the seed volume can be approximated. The minimum cone crop needed for successful natural regeneration is 750 green cones per acre, or around 30 cones per tree with 25 seed-bearing trees per acre, the study states.

The 60-year regional cone production average for longleaf pine is about 27 green cones per tree, but the year-to-year average varies widely. For example, 1996 had the single best cone crop at an average of 115 cones per tree, but 1995 had a 41-cone average, and 1997 had a 17-cone average.

This year’s numbers are better than 2024, which “failed” with an estimate of almost seven cones per tree, and for 2023, the estimate was 10.3, according to the report.

Platt explained that the longleaf pine is a masting species, which means that instead of producing seeds consistently each year, there are some years with an exceptionally large number of pine cones and seeds, followed by years with relatively few. So, this pattern of low cone production is somewhat expected.

“For that reason, longleaf pine growers collect as much seed as they can when cone crops are good. The problem is that the seed supplies needed for longleaf pine seedling production are now limited after subsequent years of poor cone production,” he explained, adding that the last good crops documented in the annual Longleaf Pine Cone Prospects Report occurred in 2022.

“Complicating this issue are recent patterns of large, strong storms when pine cones are maturing in the summer and fall. While future cone production is strongly correlated with hurricanes, with positive trends two years after a storm event, strong winds damage that year’s cone crops and mature longleaf forests, as was observed in 2024 with Hurricane Helene in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina,” he said.

Platt continued that the natural variation of longleaf pine cone production means that even when crops are forecast to be low, there is likely a good longleaf cone crop somewhere.

“The challenge is finding it,” he continued. “If you are lucky enough to have mature longleaf, please assess what kind of cone production you may have this summer.”

Platt said that’s best done on a clear morning with the sun at your back and using binoculars to count the large, developing green cones. Fair or better cone crops include 25 or more cones per tree, with 25 trees per acre.

Landowners with fair or better cone crops may have a potential income opportunity if their longleaf stands are large enough and easily operable, meaning they’re low density with machine access for collection. Pine cone harvesting crews need a decent cone crop on a large enough acreage in the area to maximize their efforts during the short four-week collection window.

“Longleaf pine seedlings grown in tree nurseries support 100 to 150,000 acres planted in longleaf pine each year. To reach the range-wide acreage restoration goal of America’s Longleaf Restoration Initiative, longleaf pine seedling production must meet the growing demand from landowners interested in supporting this imperiled landscape,” Platt said.

Observations of mature longleaf pine trees can be submitted to The Longleaf Alliance through an online survey.

More buildings in 78 North Carolina counties between 1996 and 2020 were exposed to flooding than previously recognized, and almost half of them were not within the federally designated areas that require flood insurance, a new study finds.

University of North Carolina Chapel Hill researchers used anonymous, address-level National Flood Insurance Program records and observational damage to create maps of 78 flood events that three-quarters of the state experienced during those 25 years to determine which buildings experienced flooding and how often.

They found that more than 90,000 buildings flooded at least once, which they predict is “more than twice the number of flooded buildings compared to those at addresses associated with NFIP claims filed between 1996 and 2020,” according to the study published Monday in Earth’s Future, an Advancing Earth and Space Sciences journal.

The study’s results “illustrate that flood exposure, especially repetitive exposure, is much more widespread than previously recognized” and “demonstrate the value of simulating flood events beyond those that generate the most damage and get the most attention from governments, media, and researchers. This first-of-its-kind database of flood maps can be used to better understand how flood exposure, vulnerability, and risk change over time.”

Lead author Helena Garcia, a doctoral candidate in UNC’s Environment, Ecology, and Energy Program, told Coastal Review that the team mapped the nearly 80 events to look at how much flooding at the building level has occurred across those events in those 25 years.

“We know a lot about some of the larger events, like hurricanes Florence and Matthew, but we had questions about some of the other events, too,” she said.

The team used the flood maps they created to build an index to determine what buildings had flooded and how often.

“When we did that, we found that over 90,000 buildings flooded in at least one of those 78 events, with about a quarter of those buildings, or 20,000 of them, flooding in two or more events,” Garcia said. Adding, that of those events, there were 44 that had tropical cyclone activity, and many of the buildings were damaged during those storms.

These findings provide an estimate of how much repeat exposure is happening, especially outside of the large events, like the fall 2018 Hurricane Florence, Garcia said.

The study shows that 43% of the structures that flooded out of that 90,000 were located outside of the Federal Emergency Management Agency-mapped flood zones, Garcia said. “The people that had flooded during some of those events might not have known or realized that they had flood risk at their property.”

FEMA’s Special Flood Hazard Area, or SFHA, is where the National Flood Insurance Program’s “floodplain management regulations must be enforced and the area where the mandatory purchase of flood insurance applies,” according to FEMA.

Antonia Sebastian, assistant professor in UNC’s Environment, Ecology, and Energy Program and Department of Earth, Marine, and Environmental Sciences, told Coastal Review last week that a key takeaway from the study was how much flooding happened outside of mapped floodplains.

FEMA “floodplains are used as the primary indicator of high-risk areas, but flooding can occur outside of them,” Sebastian said. “We weren’t surprised that we had a lot of flooding outside of floodplains, but I think it’s a really important for people to recognize that even if you live outside of a floodplain, you could flood, and we’re finding some of these repetitive flooding hotspots in areas that aren’t mapped.”

About the study

The study area spans eight watersheds, including the entirety of the Neuse-Pamlico and Cape Fear River watersheds as well as portions of the Chowan-Roanoke and Pee Dee River watersheds.

For the study, the researchers used anonymous records of address-level NFIP policies in force and claims from the mid-1970s to 2020 from FEMA for the 78 counties overlapping these watersheds, which is about 77% of the state’s land area.

They used the available NFIP insurance data to map the flood events because it’s not a time-intensive method like physics-based models, and they could produce the flood maps quicker, Garcia explained.

She added that they would have looked at the entire state but the insurance data the team had access to was only available on the three-quarters of the state.

To determine what flood events to analyze, Garcia said the team established a threshold based on data from the 18 flood-related presidential disaster declarations for the study area from the 25-year period.

“We made sure that our algorithm found all of those (18 events) and also found 60 other events,” she said.

The findings highlight flooding hot spots and that information can be helpful for preparedness, mitigation and resilience efforts for these locations.

“We want to make sure that those are the places we’re putting the funding toward, because they need it the most, Garcia said. “And then in the future, I think it’s something to keep track of, to figure out are these hot spots of repetitive flooding shifting as we see different types of flood events that could be more intense or more widespread.”

One of the challenges the team encountered while working on the study was determining what counts as a flood event, Garcia said.

“There’s definitely flooding that happened over this 25-year time period that doesn’t show up in these 78 events, just because it didn’t fit the algorithm,” she said.

To define the flood events, researchers looked for flooding with at least 15 claims recorded within a seven-day period in the same watershed boundary. They chose that threshold because it included all 18 flood-related FEMA federal disaster declarations that occurred within the study area between 1996 and 2020.

Garcia said the biggest surprise for her was how many buildings experienced flooding and repetitive flooding, and not just on the coast. There are properties in inland areas like Lumberton, Winston-Salem and Chapel Hill.

Sebastian said that while the study answered questions, “the coolest thing about this study is all of the potential types of things we can do now with this information.”

Garcia said that with this data set, “we can look at impacts of floods and outcomes over time a wider range of events than we’ve currently or really been able to do so before,” such as financial and health impacts.

“Here we can focus on multiple events and also what happens when people see repeat exposure over time. So, what I’m doing with that is looking at basically people and their movements through time,” Garcia said, adding that there was also interest in finding out whether people are continuing to stay in these repetitive flooding hotspots or moving to lower their flood risk. “Does your experience with previous flooding kind of inform your next residential move, if you do choose to move?”

Shades of color are deepening in ocean waters, where water is getting greener in the polar regions, and turning bluer at the equator. A change that could have an effect on fisheries, according to a newly released study.

The changing colors indicate that concentrations of chlorophyll in the blue waters of the tropics and subtropics are declining while simultaneously increasing in the green-colored ocean waters at the Earth’s poles, the authors explain in the paper published Thursday in Science journal.

Chlorophyll is the green pigment that give things like plants and algae their color. In the ocean, chlorophyll concentrations are a measure of phytoplankton, or microscopic plants that are the base of the ocean food chain and convert sunlight into energy through photosynthesis.

“This is the first time that we say, okay, if we look at our ocean globally, we would say see, we have high chlorophyll concentration in the north high latitude, but we have low chlorophyll concentration in the subtropical and tropical region,” Dr. Haipeng Zhao said. Zhao is first author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher who worked with Dr. Nicolas Cassar, a professor of biogeochemistry at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, and Dr. Susan Lozier, a professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Georgia Tech.

Why this is happening will take further investigation, as does how it may impact coastal fisheries.

For this study, researchers analyzed two decades’ worth of satellite data collected by a NASA instrument that scans the globe every two days.

The team focused on the open ocean.

“There’s still a lot of limitation by using satellite data to observe the coastal change of phytoplankton because, in the coastal border, the sediments, a lot of minerals, they just come to the surface of the ocean and that makes it difficult for the satellite to detect whether it’s the phytoplankton blooms or something else,” Zhao said. “But we think (these areas) are very important.”

More than half of the world’s fish catch comes from tropical and subtropical regions, according to the study. A significant amount of that catch comes from coastal fisheries within those regions.

“Although our study focuses on open ocean waters, any persistent changes in these areas could profoundly affect low- and middle-income nations, such as Pacific Island nations, that rely on fisheries for sustenance and economic development,” the study states. “Future investigations should focus on these regions to provide a more comprehensive understanding.”

The authors note that it will be particularly important to study how climate change may be affecting these changes.  

This study does not correlate the changes in chlorophyll concentrations with climate change.

The satellite records researchers analyzed go back no more than 20 to 25 years, Zhao said. That’s a relatively short amount of time in terms of changes in the ocean process.

Researchers looked at different variables, such as wind speed, water surface temperature, and sunlight, to see how those may be affecting the changes they noted in chlorophyll concentrations.

“But we did find that the water is getting warmer, which is widespread increase in the temperature in the global ocean,” he noted.

The global ocean is complicated to study, he said. It involves currents and the moving of a lot of materials, like sediments, through the water.

“I think we need to get a lot of support to continue the research,” Zhao said.

That will entail getting away from solely relying on satellite observation and physically traveling to the open ocean to collect more data, he said.

“That will increase our confidence and I think that will generate more evidence to support our conclusion,” Zhao said. “At least we have already observed and what has been striking to tell people is our oceans are changing and it has potential impacts to everywhere.”

As the weather and water warm, beachgoers will flock to the North Carolina coast just as many of the native shorebirds and seagoing avian residents begin to nest.

Piping plovers skittering up and down the sand with the surf, gulls loitering for picnic castoffs and tossed fish bait and pelicans soaring overhead or skimming the swells are all well-known and welcome sights for tourists to the North Carolina coast.

The annual nesting sanctuary closure window from March 1 to Sept. 15 helps both early and late-season nesters like brown pelicans and black skimmers. Least terns have already begun their courting and nesting rituals and American oystercatchers have started hatching chicks.

While almost any sandcastle builder, surfer or fisherman can expect to share the shore with these birds, almost all of them are in steep decline from habitat loss, rising sea levels, pollution and other threats, a new study led by the Audubon Society shows.

The 2025 State of the Birds Report shows sharp declines in shorebirds and other species along the Atlantic Coast, including least terns, American oystercatchers and piping plovers. In North Carolina, black skimmers have also seen a drop in documented nests, leading to their designation as a state-threatened species.

“The issues facing shorebirds are complex,” Audubon North Carolina spokesperson Brittany Salmons told Coastal Review. “The combined effects of sea level rise due to climate change and how we respond to that by choosing natural solutions versus shoreline hardening play a central role in the long-term hope for these species. Development brings more people and more alterations — like dredging, beach nourishment, terminal groins — to the habitats birds need. For shorebirds in particular this can be catastrophic. Having inlets with natural oscillation and broad flats are critical, along with water quality and prey abundance.”

If shorebirds can rise above all of that, many species also have to endure lengthy, challenging migrations from their nests on the Arctic tundra to wintering grounds in South America and places in between. The quality of each of the habitats they will encounter on their multi-thousand-mile annual odysseys is critical to their survival and ability to return to their nesting grounds to breed once more, Salmons said.

Nationally, about a third of all bird species – Audubon kept count of 229 individual species from coast to coast – are considered of high or moderate concern because of declining populations.

Of those, 42 species are listed as red-alert tipping point species, or “birds with perilously low populations and steep declining trends.” Another 37 species are considered orange-alert, populations that show long-term population losses and accelerated declines within the past decade. Thirty-three species qualify for yellow-alert status, showing long-term population losses that have stabilized in recent years yet still require conservation to sustain that tenuous recovery, Audubon said.

All of those species, regardless of their color coding, have one thing in common: They have each lost more than half of their measurable populations in the past 50 years.

“Some of these species lack sufficient monitoring to thoroughly investigate losses,” states the report. “Tipping point species require focused scientific research to pinpoint drivers of declines, paired with fast action on conservation measures to bring these birds back.”

As a group, shorebirds fared worst among the bird populations outlined in the report. Since 1980, shorebirds have suffered a 33% decline in overall population, which the report characterizes as “widespread declines with accelerating losses.”

Of 28 species of shorebirds measured, 19 showed “definitive negative population trends,” with 18 of those showing accelerated losses in recent years. Shorebirds are most heavily represented among the species listed as at a tipping point.

“Surveys show steep shorebird declines at migratory staging sites along the Atlantic Coast from North Carolina to Nova Scotia, as well as the Gulf Coast,” the report says. “Conservation actions to restore these critical coastal habitats will protect shorebirds, people and property from storms, flooding and sea level rise.”

Targeted efforts needed

Targeted conservation efforts are needed to protect shorebirds along the North Carolina coast and elsewhere along the Eastern Flyway, Audubon said. The report highlights efforts to protect the American oystercatcher, the black, white and brown shorebird notable for its thick, sturdy orange bill.

Fifteen years ago, the oystercatcher was in serious decline throughout its Atlantic Coast range. In 2009, Manomet Conservation Sciences, in partnership with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, launched the American Oystercatcher Recovery Initiative composed of state, federal and private groups across 16 states all along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. The coordinated conservation effort has resulted in a 43% increase in oystercatcher populations, from about 10,000 individuals in 2009 to nearly 15,000 in 2023, according to the report.

Targeted management and monitoring along the coast, including protecting areas for oystercatcher use paid off, the report says. Remote islands and portions of public beaches were also roped off to keep the public from interfering with the birds’ natural behavior and reproduction.

“This coordinated, multi-state effort saved this iconic, orange-billed bird from irreversible loss,” Audubon Coastal Biologist Lindsay Addison said. “People visiting the coast this summer can do their part by respecting posted sanctuaries and keeping a safe distance from beach-nesting birds. We’ve already limited available habitat with development, the least we can do is share the shore.”

Seabirds – gulls and similar species that spend much of their time soaring over ocean waves – were also found to be in freefall. Audubon characterized seabird populations as suffering “cascading declines, but recovery efforts show great promise.”

Seabirds face numerous threats

Rising sea levels coupled with booming coastal development have wreaked havoc on natural seabird habitat and roosting sites, the report says. Seabird colonies on low-lying islands, like North Carolina’s barrier islands, are flooding more often. Marine heat waves are shocking their food sources.

Ravenous invasive species consume seabirds and their eggs in many coastal areas. They also become bycatch in many coastal fisheries and fall prey to plastic pollution and infectious disease, Audubon says.

“Protected nesting colonies and marine foraging areas can provide refuges for seabirds during extreme storm events,” the report says. “Policies that reduce fishing bycatch and plastics pollution can help mitigate direct human-caused stressors.

Most of the shorebird species highlighted in the report are long-distance migrants, which face a somewhat different set of challenges than temperate-nesting, shorter distance migrants like the American oystercatcher, Salmons said.

“To get between breeding and wintering grounds, these long-distance migrants must navigate a series of steppingstone sites where they stopover before continuing on,” Salmons wrote in an email. “Many of these are impacted by human presence on the coast, be it from beach renourishment or other coastal engineering projects that degrade habitat quality and prey availability.”

Waterfowl and waterbirds — ducks, rails, egrets, heron and the like — showed some of their long-term population gains level off but have fared better than their seaside cousins, according to the report.

In general, duck populations have grown 24% in the past half century and waterfowl were the only group of birds in the report that showed population gains. Of 20 species of duck measured, 14 were found to be increasing in population while one was stable and just five are declining.

Large-scale conservation policies and efforts from legislation like the North American Wetlands Conservation Act and the Duck Stamp program are partially responsible for the health of duck species in particular.

“But today, this legacy is in jeopardy,” the report said. “Loss of wetlands and grasslands is accelerating in key regions for waterfowl and wetland protections are being weakened. Environmental land-use changes are driving recent duck and marsh bird declines in many areas.”

Declining bird populations were laid bare in a 2019 study published in the journal Science that showed a net loss of 3 billion birds in North America over the past half-century. The 2025 State of the Birds report shows those losses are continuing.

But, Audubon stresses, conservation works. Coastal restoration, conservation ranching, forest renewal and seabird translocations “show how proactive, concerted efforts and strategic investments can recover bird populations,” the report says.

“The science is solid on how to bring birds back,” according to the report. “Private lands conservation programs, and voluntary conservation partnerships for working lands, hold some of the best opportunities for sparking immediate turnarounds for birds.”

Share their habitats

Policies aimed at reversing bird population decline can also benefit humans who share their habitats by creating healthier agricultural land, cleaner water and natural landscapes that better resist flooding, wildfire and drought, Audubon says.

Birds are also the natural foundation for a soaring outdoors industry. Around 100 million Americans are avid birdwatchers, not to mention hunters and anglers, all activities to which healthy bird populations are a keystone feature, Salmons said. Audubon puts the total economic impact of birding activity at $279 billion annually.

Regular folks can help support healthy bird populations by giving them room this summer, as they roost and lay their eggs along the North Carolina coast. Getting too close to a nest can scare parents away from eggs or hatchlings, Salmons said.

Human disturbance, in which recreational or other activities disrupt shorebirds’ survival behaviors, she said.

Such activities include people walking through resting or foraging flocks and allowing dogs or children to chase birds which wastes their energy and makes otherwise suitable habitat unavailable for their use. Repeated disturbance has a cumulative impact on birds at the coast.

“Just as running once to catch the mailman won’t cause a person to be too exhausted to cook dinner and clean the house but doing it all day can, being repeatedly disturbed over and over impacts the health of shorebirds,” Salmons said. “Compounding these challenges which relate to the heavy development and recreational use of coastal sites are issues related to climate change, such as impacts to Arctic nesting grounds, timing of resource availability, and other factors.”

Coastal communities are inundated more often than previously believed, and floodwaters take longer to recede in rural areas than in urban areas, according to a new study.

The study, published Monday in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, also found that the way government agencies gather data used to predict floods fails to truly estimate how frequently water may get pushed over land.

“To capture the burden on coastal communities and to capture what people are really seeing on the ground, it’s so important to measure flooding on land,” said Dr. Miyuki Hino, a co-author of the study and assistant professor of city and regional planning at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

What people living in Beaufort, Carolina Beach and Sea Level, an unincorporated area of Carteret County, told researchers they are seeing is that it floods “all the time,” said corresponding author Dr. Katherine Anarde, an assistant professor of coastal engineering at North Carolina State University.

“People know where it floods and a lot of people can put numbers to how frequently it floods, but as scientists, we just had no idea what ‘all the time’ meant,” she said.

To find that answer, researchers installed a network of in-house, custom-designed water level sensors in storm drains in Beaufort and Carolina Beach. Sensors were installed next to ditches cut along roads in Sea Level, a rural community about 28 miles northeast of Beaufort.

Each sensor measures when water rises and spills onto a nearby road.

The frequency at which that occurred during the course of the one-year study stunned researchers.

From May 2023 through April 2024, Beaufort experienced 26 days of flooding. Carolina Beach flooded 65 days.

And, “all the time” in Sea Level equated to 128 days of flooding. That’s one-third of the year, or once every three days.

“That was really shocking for me and I think for Miyuki too, just the sheer magnitude of flood days,” Anarde said.

It’s a reality in low-lying coastal areas where flooding is being driven more often by a combination of ingredients rather than large storm events.

The major ingredient, Hino said, is sea level rise. Rising seas strain storm drain systems and infrastructure designed decades ago when the ocean was much lower than it is today.

“And so while that highest tide 50 years ago, 100 years ago, might not have been high enough to get onto the road, now it is,” Hino said.

Sea level rise is exacerbating normal variations in water levels from tides and wind, which play a huge role in flood frequency.

If, for example, it rains on a day when a community’s storm drains are inundated with water from the tide, the rain that would normally drain into that system is pushed out across nearby roads.

But Mother Nature is not solely to blame.

Coastal areas have seen a population boom that has all but erased any semblance of what were once small fishing villages.

“Development definitely plays a role,” Anarde said. “Water has to have somewhere to go, and if the landscape is covered in impervious surfaces — roadways, buildings – then water is just going to sit on top of the road and on top of those impervious surfaces and create deeper, longer floods.”

Even in rural, low-lying areas that have fewer buildings and roads, water is not being absorbed into the ground at the rate it once was because sea level rise is elevating the groundwater table in the coastal plain.

One of the big motivations for installing the water level land sensors was to study how the different ingredients combine to cause flooding and, if you measure flooding from all of those sources, how the information gathered from those sensors compares to that taken from tide gauges.

Forecasters have widely relied on tide gauges to predict flood occurrences. The problem is, that is not what tide gauges are meant to do. And, there are many areas of the coast that are not close to a tide gauge, which are maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“They do a great job at what they’re supposed to be doing, which is measuring water levels in oceans and bays,” Hino said. “But we knew that they’re not designed to measure flooding and that some of the other forces that influence flooding, like rain and local infrastructure, weren’t being captured there and so we wanted to know how accurate those tide gauge-based indicators are and how well they match up against what people living there are experiencing day to day and year to year.”

Over the course of the past five years, 11 land sensors have been installed in coastal areas of the state.

The information these sensors provide can help guide a community’s plan for a future expected to be only further impacted by sea level rise.

“We get asked a lot about how to fix this problem of more recurrent, chronic flooding in coastal areas,” Hino said. “There are solutions to the problem. They’re going to be different from place to place and many of them are going to involve difficult choices and so having more input from the affect people into what those choices are is really important.”

Jeremy Hardison, Carolina Beach’s director of Community Development, said in an interview last month that the study has “definitely” been a benefit to the town.

“We’ve kind of monitored how much water was in the street before, but not in the storm drains where the water is actually coming up during high tide events,” he said. “I don’t know that we would have come up with flooding sensors within our storm drains to monitor how much water is in our drains. We want to continue planning and we want to do some implementation and try to see what we can do to mitigate the problem so we’re working in that direction.”

With eyes roughly the size of softballs, it may stand to reason that one of the largest mammals on Earth should have exceptionally sharp vision.

Humpback whales have some of the biggest eyes of any animal on the planet, or the oceans in which they migrate thousands upon thousands of miles during their lives.

But their journeys through open seas are done with limited vision, according to a newly published study conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and Duke University.

These mammoth creatures have to be very close to an object in order to see it in fine detail, which explains why they are particularly vulnerable to getting tangled up in fishing gear.

“Humans have exceptionally high spatial resolution of vision by comparison to most animals,” said Dr. Lori Schweikert, an assistant professor of biology and marine biology at UNCW. “But what is surprising is the fact that whales have the structure of the eye to support even better vision, but they don’t have that.”

Using a specimen of a humpback whale eye archived more than a decade ago at UNCW’s Marine Mammal Stranding Program, researchers were able to measure a humpback whale’s vision at 3.95 cycles per degree, or CPD.

CPD measures the number of black-and-white line pairs that appear within 1 degree of space.

To grasp this measurement of sight, Schweikert gave this example: hold one arm straight out and put your thumb straight up. The width to your thumb is about 1 degree of your visual space. Human eyes can resolve about up to about 60 cycles per degree.

Most animals have low spatial resolution of vision. In animals, the larger the eye, the greater their spatial vision. But for humpback whales, “they are just way off the line,” Schweikert said. “Way off.”

What researchers found when they cut into the eye is that humpbacks have unusually thickened eye walls. Nearly half of the depth of the whale’s eye was filled with its own wall, shortening the distance from the center of the lens of the eye to the retina.

That distance is called focal length.

“The longer the focal length, the sharper the vision that’s possible,” Schweikert said.

Researchers also found that the cell density in humpback whale eye retina was exceptionally low. These cells send visual information to the brain.

Based on their calculation of 3.95 CPD, researchers then modeled how humpback whales might visually perceive things in their natural environment.

The reality is, their vision, or lack thereof, is suited to their environment.

Humpbacks prey on huge bait balls of fish or krill that silhouette against an open light field, or light that is projected directly into a space without being redirected. They have few predators – mainly orcas, or killer whales, false killer whales, and large sharks, particularly great whites. And, when a humpback whale searches for a mate, it can see a potential love match well enough from a distance.

So, humpbacks did not need to evolve with the ability to see fine-scale things, Schweikert said.

Where a humpback whales’ sight gets it into trouble, she said, is when it comes across a structure in the ocean that has more visual fine-scale information, such as a net or gillnet. One of the leading causes of humpback whale deaths is entanglement in fishing gear.

“In our modeling of how they might be able to resolve this detail in the environment is that, at roughly three to four body lengths away would be where they might be able to start resolving the structure of the net. Based on swimming speed, that only leaves them a few seconds to get out of the way,” Schweikert said.

This helps explain why humpback whales get entangled as frequently as they do.

Humpback whales live in every ocean on the planet. They have one of the longest migrations, with some populations swimming up to 5,000 miles, of any mammal on the planet.

In additional to entanglements, vessel strikes are also a leading cause of humpback whale deaths.

To figure out ways to try and mitigate such human impacts to humpback whale, more studies will need to occur.

“I think that understanding how animals will interact with things in their environment is certainly more complicated that any one study or even a mix of studies that would take in all their sensory abilities to detect what’s in their environment,” Schweikert said. “It’s one thing to know if an animal can see it, but it’s totally another thing to know how they will respond. It’s quite possible that they can see some of the threats in their environment, but behaviorally, they are just not making the decision early enough to move out of the way.”

This study could be considered in the larger puzzle of those types of considerations, she said.

A pilot study tracking a popular saltwater fish was not expected to yield as much information as it did in its first year.

When the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries and its nonprofit project partner, the North Carolina Marine and Estuary Foundation, launched its red drum study last year, researchers thought the pop-off point where a satellite tag detached from a fish would be the most important piece of information they would glean.

Even over a short period of tracking time, they got much more.

“We wanted to use year one to learn and be prepared to expand it in year two,” said Cara Kowalchyk, red drum project lead biologist with the division. “We got more data than we originally anticipated. That’s allowed us to expand the project in many ways and the amount of data moving forward can corroborate what we saw in year one. We’ve got a strong, expanded plan moving into year two.”

Last October, the division tagged 10 mature red drum, or those that stretch more than 32 inches long, during its annual longline red drum survey in the Pamlico Sound.

The tagging is part of a study aimed at unlocking some of the unknowns of one of the more popular recreational catches in North Carolina. While red drum studies are not new, there are gaps of information research has yet to fill.

One of the focuses of this project is to track areas in which adult red drum gather to spawn and where they head after they reproduce.

“We know when they come into our areas, but we are not as familiar with when they leave, do they all leave at once? Where do they go? Do they stay offshore during that whole time period? We’re looking at the post-spawning movements to fill that data gap,” Kowalchyk said.

Preliminary information collected from the satellite tags last year show regular movement between inshore and offshore waters.

“What we’ve seen from some of the fish is that they are moving out of the sound into the nearshore ocean,” said Marine and Estuary Foundation Executive Director Chad Thomas.

Other fish tracked last year traveled as far as 25 miles offshore, he said.

The foundation has posted on its website a promotional video that highlights the pilot project.

The solar-powered SeaTag-GEO pop-up satellite tag affixed to each fish last year provided multiple daily positioning coordinates of those fish by sending transmissions to the Argos satellite. The information is then shot from the satellite to computer software. The tags, created by marine technology manufacturer Desert Star Systems, can be programmed to stay attached to the fish for various durations of time.

Once a tag pops off, it floats on the water’s surface, where it collects additional information, such as water temperature and depth.

“The next major step is mining that data, filtering that data and trying to really tell the story on each fish and what it’s doing,” Thomas said.

That story, he said, is crucial in helping future management of red drum, which is the official state saltwater fish, and a species important to the state’s coastal economy.

“It’s a huge economic driver for our coast,” Thomas said.

The foundation approached the division in 2023 with the idea to use satellite technology to learn more about red drum.

The nonprofit has covered the cost of each tag, which run more than $1,000 each, and a $65 per tag, monthly subscription required to transmit recorded data from the tag to the software.

This year, 40 tags will be deployed under the pilot program.

Kowalchyk said Thomas will begin training this month how to attach a tag to a red drum using the top tagging method where the tag is affixed to the dorsal area of a fish.

The division agreed to help connect Thomas with local recreational fishing guides along the coast from Manteo to Wilmington to take him to areas where red drum can be caught, tagged, and released.

Thomas will be responsible for attaching 20 tags. The division will attach the other 20 during its survey later this year, Kowalchyk said, adding that she anticipates all 40 tags to be attached to red drum by October.

While a handful of tags will be programmed to remain on red drum for three months, the remainder will be set to pop off after a year, she said.

“We are going to double our effort and our data thanks to (the foundation) in year two,” Kowalchyk said. “I look forward to continuing that partnership. This is completely new. This is a novel project for both of us and it was a great, great learning year and we feel really strong and prepared for year two.”

​As the hours passed, day turning into night, prospects looked bleak for a research vessel carrying scientists and students hoping to get past the mouth of the Cape Fear River to deeper waters offshore.

The R/V Cape Hatteras had essentially been stuck at the mouth of the river for about 24 hours after leaving the morning of Feb. 10 from its mooring at Cape Fear Community College in downtown Wilmington, thanks to an abrupt change in the weather.

“I won’t lie, I did not think we would make it offshore, which feels like a waste with this large vessel to just be stuck at a spot we could sample fairly easily on smaller boats,” said Dr. Bradley Tolar, an assistant professor with the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

February tends to be a month when the weather serves up less-than-ideal working conditions offshore.

Cold temperatures, whipping winds and rain proved that to be the case during the first several hours of the maiden trip of the TEAL-SHIPS project, a groundbreaking expedition to study shore-to-sea habitats.

TEAL-SHIPS, an acronym for this mouthful: Transect Expedition to Assess Land-to-Sea Habitats via Interdisciplinary Process Studies, will allow researchers the opportunity to get an understanding of the biological, chemical and physical changes in habitats from the mouth of the Cape Fear River to the Gulf Stream’s warm waters.

This particular area of North Carolina’s coast has largely remained understudied since the 1990s. And those previous studies of the area between the 1970s and 1990s focused primarily on nearshore ecosystems.

Now, through a series of cruises (no, not the kind where mai tais are served on the pool deck), researchers of different coastal marine science disciplines hope to build a baseline in understanding how changes in the Gulf Stream flow affect the ocean’s food chain and critical habitats between the coastline and Atlantic continental shelf.

Tolar is spearheading the venture, one that was able to come to fruition through a $1.5 million General Assembly-funded grant through the University of North Carolina System Research Opportunities Initiative, a program that focuses on several research areas including marine and coastal science.

TEALS-SHIPS includes principal investigators from UNCW, the UNC Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University and East Carolina University.

Over the course of the next two years, researchers and some of their students will embark on an expedition about every three months, setting course to a series of stations mapped from the river’s mouth to the Gulf Stream. By going out every three months, researchers aim to capture any potential changes in each season of the year.

“Even though this is only giving us two years, the goal is to write grants to continue sampling further, maybe not to this level or this frequency, but just to have a better understanding of how the coast and offshore are connected,” Tolar said.

The Gulf Stream is a powerful current that originates in the Gulf of Mexico, curves around the Florida peninsula, up the Eastern Seaboard and extends toward Europe where it warms western European countries.

“But for our coastline, we know that it transports nutrients, it transports species up to our coast,” Tolar said.

The Gulf Stream oscillates and there is some thought that rising sea temperatures might actually weaken the current over time.

“We don’t really know what those consequences might be to what it transports up to our coast,” Tolar said. “If it’s transporting nutrients that feed our coastal habitats, which we care about a lot with our state’s blue economy, if it weakens or oscillates farther offshore rather than coming inshore, we would want to know.”

During each cruise, physical oceanographers will collect fine-scale water samples to get a sense of how the Gulf Stream current is moving and any changes in that movement over the course of a year.

Two, 20-minute-long fish trawls will capture as much fish as possible at each of the project’s six major stations, each of which include vastly different types of habitat. Researchers will count all of the species captured during the trawl sweeps, collect 10 of each species, and measure 30 of every species.

“This allows them to get a sense of the diversity of fish, the abundance of fish, and then their variability and size to see basically how fish communities change as we go offshore,” Tolar said.

Dr. Christian Briseño-Avena, a UNCW assistant professor of biological oceanography, plankton ecologist, and another principal investigator on the project, will collect zooplankton and larger phytoplankton to study how those organisms change over time.

“Eventually we’d like to know more about how the zooplankton, or the plankton in general, are changing or not changing for this region over longer periods of time,” he said.

Copepods “change a lot in this region,” he said. But samples of the tiny crustaceans collected from this region are sparse.

Briseño-Avena said he is learning as he goes on each expedition, targeting smaller plankton, fish larvae and zooplankton scooped up from the seafloor to the surface in “bongo nets,” aptly named because they are shaped similar to the open bottomed hand drum.

During TEAL-SHIPS maiden cruise earlier this month, he was met with some surprises when the bongo nets surfaced back aboard the R/V Cape Hatteras, a 135-foot oceangoing research vessel used as a hands-on training tool for marine technology students at Cape Fear Community College.

He wasn’t expecting to see in the winter what turned out to be a large amount of ichthyoplankton, which are the eggs and tiny larvae of fish.

His students have already begun the tedious task of extracting and identifying the different groups and species of plankton he collected. The plankton will be preserved in ethanol and used to build a library-like catalogue of samples that will be available to future coastal marine scientists.

He and Tolar agree the expedition was a success, despite the weather challenges that cut the initial trip by a half day and covered four of the six stations. The ship traveled just under 75 miles offshore, making it to the Gulf Stream where the water temperatures were 30 degrees warmer than those near shore.

“At least we confirmed if we were able to do as much as we did in our 18-hour weather window we’ll be fine for our future expeditions,” Tolar said. “We’ll have no problem getting all the way out there. We learned that we could do it and we learned how to be more efficient about it.”

UNCW’s Center for Marine Science is in the process of acquiring its own, larger research vessel. The 73-foot vessel is expected to be complete in the spring of 2026. TEAL-SHIPS project principal investigators hope to use the new vessel during their final two expeditions covered by the current grant.

Tolar hopes to tap additional funding sources for the program to collect samples beyond two years.

“If we’re able to get more funding in the future we can compare the changes year-to-year,” he said. “Even if not, we have a really nice study that shows this is what’s happening here off the coast of Wilmington and that can connect how other folks along the East Coast are measuring their samples.”

You have probably seen someone do a little happy dance when they spot their waiter heading to the table, entrée in hand. Turns out, sea turtles have the same reaction to the promise of a full belly.

University of North Carolina Chapel Hill researchers found that captive loggerheads could be conditioned to “dance” by associating certain magnetic fields with being fed food. This test allowed the researchers to test if they use the magnetic fields like GPS, a compass or both.

The study, “Learned magnetic map cues and two mechanisms of magnetoreception in turtles,” was published Feb. 12 in the science journal, Nature. Magnetoreception means that an animal can perceive the Earth’s magnetic fields.

Lead author Kayla Goforth is a recent doctoral graduate from UNC and is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the biology department at Texas A&M University.

For the study, the team conditioned different groups of 2-month-old turtles over the course of two months to differentiate between magnetic fields. The team replicated in the lab magnetic fields that exist along the Atlantic coast, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.  

“Every other day they would experience one specific magnetic field in which they were fed. On the days they were not fed, they would experience a second magnetic field, but they did not receive any reward in this field. Eventually turtles begin to exhibit the ‘turtle dance’ in the field in which they were fed,” she said.

“The turtle dance is a food-seeking behavior that is characterized by the turtle lifting its head out of the water, opening its mouth, alternating its flippers and spinning,” Goforth said. “It’s super adorable.”

To produce the different magnetic fields, the team used magnetic coil systems. A magnetic coil is a large frame with wire wrapped around it, horizontally and vertically. When an electric current runs through the wires, a magnetic field is created inside the coil system, and “by increasing or decreasing the amps running through the wire, we can change the magnetic field.”

At the end of the conditioning period, the team tested the turtles in both magnetic fields and found that turtles danced more in the field in which they were fed.

“You can think of it like training a dog,” Goforth explained. “If you always ring a bell when a dog is given food, eventually they will begin to expect food when the bell is rung, and salivate or beg.”

The team then investigated the mechanisms underlying the turtle’s magnetic senses.

“Turtles have both a magnetic map and a magnetic compass. A magnetic map is a positional sense, like a GPS, while a compass provides directional information,” she said, and both are required for navigation. A map tells you where you are or where you want to be and a compass helps guide you.

For this part of the study, the team tested both the turtle’s magnetic map sense and magnetic compass. Meaning, the turtles had to recognize a magnetic field and had to orient in a specific direction.

“We tested whether these two senses were disrupted by radiofrequency fields,” she said, because these fields are expected to disrupt chemical magnetoreception, which is a theory that suggests complex chemical reactions enable animals to detect magnetic fields.

The team found that the compass sense likely relies on chemical magnetoreception.

“The map sense, however, does not seem to rely on chemical magnetoreception. This means these two magnetic senses, while similar, are distinct. Just like seeing and hearing are two distinct senses,” she said.

Goforth explained that the idea for the study sparked from the well-known fact that sea turtles return to where they were born to reproduce, “but what is less well known is that turtles also display really strong fidelity to their feeding sites, meaning they consistently return again and again.”

How turtles learn the locations of those feeding sites is unknown but the team thought that they likely use magnetic fields.

“A missing piece of this idea though was that we did not know whether turtles could learn magnetic fields, so I decided to try conditioning, or training them to do so,” Goforth said. “We were really excited when it worked, and that assay then opened the door for studies into the mechanisms underlying the magnetic sense.” An assay is a procedure in a lab.

The findings answered two questions: if sea turtles can learn magnetic fields, and if the magnetic map and magnetic compass senses of turtles rely on the same underlying mechanism.

And while the findings answered those two questions – yes and no, respectively — it brought up another: “How sensitive are turtles to magnetic map information, i.e., what is the smallest difference in magnetic fields they could distinguish between? And,” Goforth said, “the next big question is, if the map sense does not rely on chemical magnetoreception, then what is the underlying mechanism?”

Goforth conducted her doctoral research in Chapel Hill’s the Lohmann Lab, run by married couple and biology professors, Kenneth and Catherine Lohmann.

“Kayla began to wonder if we could get the turtles to associate the magnetic signature of a geographic area with food — and therefore act out this turtle dance behavior,” Kenneth Lohmann said in a press release from the university. “She really took the lead in this. I wasn’t at all sure in the beginning whether it would work, but we were happy to have her try, and it turned out remarkably well.”

Goforth said she began researching sea turtles while working on her undergraduate degree at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

“I’ve loved the ocean since I was young, and from the time I was about 5 years old, I was determined to become a biologist,” Goforth explained. “In high school I attended a sea turtle camp in North Carolina and that is what led me to pursue sea turtle research in college. I found them fascinating, and wanted to know how they were returning to the same nesting beaches every year, which is what drew me to Ken’s lab at UNC-Chapel Hill.”

Dana Lim is another doctoral student in the Lohmann Lab studying the function and mechanisms of magnetic sensing in sea turtles.

She assisted Goforth with the study by helping test the effect of radiofrequency fields on the orientation of hatchling sea turtles and with conditioning the turtles to “dance” in the lab.

“Something worth noting about all of these experiments is just the immense amount of work and time that went into them,” Lim said, adding that conditioning the turtles was not easy. For each set of turtles, the team had to commit several hours per day, every day, including weekends, for two months.

Lim continued that the behavioral test used for this research “has been a mainstay in studying sea turtle magnetoreception for decades. However, it requires turtles to use both their magnetic map and compass simultaneously and is carried out at a field site with wild sea turtles. Being able to create a behavioral assay that isolates use of the turtle’s magnetic map in a laboratory setting is a huge step forward in studying the different parts of this key sensory system.”

The payoff is evident “in this very paper,” she said, since it allowed Goforth to test and find evidence for two different mechanisms underlying the map versus the compass in sea turtles.

“This has been a major question in the field of magnetoreception and evidence for multiple magnetoreception mechanisms in a single animal has only been shown a couple of times before this,” Lim explained.

Tara Hinton, an environmental Studies student in her last semester at Chapel Hill, collaborated with Goforth on the research during summer 2022 in Melbourne, Florida.

“Our days began early with beach patrols for loggerhead sea turtle nests, followed by outdoor work in the Florida elements to construct a magnetic coil for our study. When the sun set, we transitioned to night experiments, fueled by Oreos and plenty of coffee,” Hinton said. “It was a rewarding experience to work with some of Earth’s most remarkable magnetic navigators, alongside a team of passionate and dedicated researchers.”

Dr. Ryan Emanuel does not remember when he first heard the English translation of the word pocosin.

He suspects it came from an authority figure, likely a teacher or professor. No matter. He believed the literal meaning of the Eastern Algonquian word was “swamp on a hill.”

It’s a translation that has been passed from generation to generation, one that Emanuel himself regurgitated in the courses he taught at North Carolina State University before accepting a job at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

That changed after the Lumbee and environmental scientist, in preparation for a television interview, took a deep dive into the word’s meaning.

He surfaced with not only the fact there is no evidence to support the longstanding translation, but a broader lesson about humility in accepting the unknown, vigilance in search of the truth, and ethically and responsibly distinguishing between Western academic knowledge and Indigenous knowledge.

Emanuel details the intricacies of why it’s important for scientists to thoroughly vet Indigenous-to-English translations in a paper he authored that was published last fall.

“We all know that, as scientists, we can’t make things up, and we have to cite properly as scholars,” Emanuel said. “And we’re used to doing that with our Western scientific knowledge. Why is it OK to not be careful with something like the translation of an Indigenous term when we’re so careful with other aspects of our science?”

He’s not pointing fingers.

His aim is not to convey a message that scientists, himself included, take the translations of Indigenous words at face value with bad intentions.

“It’s just that we didn’t do due diligence and we were not careful with the use of this word in our science,” he said.

It wasn’t until roughly a decade ago when Emanuel was invited to speak in an episode of “Exploring North Carolina,” a popular PBS program hosted by Tom Earnhardt, that he decided to give in to his own curiosity about the word’s translation.

Indigenous peoples pass along their histories through stories and oral tradition.

“But there’s a conspicuous absence in any of our communities of anything resembling this translation,” Emanuel said.

He started going through a chain of citations back through time. They all converged on a linguistics paper written in the late 1800s, the text of which is in a volume carefully filed at N.C. State’s Hunt Library.

Emanuel opened the old, dusty cover to the volume, read and reread its contents, realizing the paper says nothing about pocosin meaning “swamp on a hill.”

“That’s when the lessons of this paper started to hit home,” he said.

The first lesson? His own irresponsibility at taking the translation at face value and perpetuating “this myth of a translation.”

“I felt bad about doing that, especially as an Indigenous person who had learned the translation through nonIndigenous sources and didn’t even think to put it through our own kind of knowledge verification processes,” he said.

What also struck him as “uncomfortable,” he said, was that “nobody else had either.”

“I do think that this speaks to the humility aspect of the lesson,” Emanuel said. “As scientists who want to know everything, we have to be OK with the fact that there are some things we can’t know and this is one of those things.”

That’s a fact Indigenous communities live with every day. Their ancient languages were taken away, erased in different ways throughout colonial records and government documents.

The frustration or incompleteness someone may feel because they wish they knew the meaning of the word is certainly not lost on Emanuel.

“I’ve got an entire world view that I can’t truly know because all of that language has been taken away. We have to accept the fact that there is nobody around who can tell us any deeper meaning of that word that is used to describe the place that it is,” he said.

By and large, Indigenous communities do not dwell on this fact, he said. It’s not productive, nor healthy.

Instead, they think about what they have been able to preserve. Their strong sense of kinship, their responsibilities to their community, their relationship to the places from which they come, which include pocosin-filled landscapes.

But even those are a fraction of what they once were.

Once extensive in North Carolina, the freshwater wetlands of the Southeastern coastal plain have been destroyed or degraded by logging and ditching and draining for conversion to agricultural land.

Pocosins are sometimes referred to as “carbon sinks” because of their ability to sequester and store carbon dioxide, or CO2.

But even as efforts have in recent years been made to restore some of these areas to their original form, a North Carolina law passed in 2023 strips protections for pocosins, undermining not only their ecological and hydrological value, but their cultural significance to Indigenous communities.

“When you look across Indigenous communities in this part of North America, these landscapes are incredibly important culturally to us, yet that’s not part of the conversation when it comes to whether and how to protect and preserve these places,” Emanuel said.

He doesn’t want the mistranslation to be a distraction to the work that’s occurring in restoring pocosins.

“It’s just a reminder that the words that we use matter and that words that come from Indigenous languages remind us that these names were used for these geographies and other things for centuries, if not millennia, before we took them up and starting using them for our purposes,” he said. “They’re special and unique places and one of my favorite things to do is to take students out into the pocosins and have them tromp around on those organic soils and dig down into the muck and get that sticky soil all over their hands.”

A recent U.S. Geological Survey study projects that rising sea levels and stronger, more intense storms will exacerbate four specific coastal hazards and associated management challenges for Cape Lookout National Seashore.

Rising waters and eroding or sinking lands may be unsurprising on the coast, but the findings are troubling for anyone on or near a barrier island, those slivers of sand so popular with visitors and vital to protecting mainland folks.

“Accelerating sea level rise (SLR) and changing storm patterns will increasingly expose barrier islands to coastal hazards, including flooding, erosion, and rising groundwater tables,” according to the study titled, “The projected exposure and response of a natural barrier island system to climate-driven coastal hazards,” published in Nature scientific reports.

The authors explain in the study that their findings illustrate “viability of this barrier island system will be compromised by increasingly severe flooding, rising groundwater, erosion, and land subsidence over the next century.”

Three of the paper’s authors, oceanographer Jennifer Thomas, coastal geologist Patrick Barnard and research oceanographer Sean Vitousek, told Coastal Review in a joint response that the study looks at the coastal hazards related to sea level rise and storms on Cape Lookout National Seashore, which is just a short boat ride from mainland Carteret County.

The scientists are based at the Geological Survey’s Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center in Santa Cruz, California.

“This study shows model projections of overland flooding, groundwater depths, and shoreline change for a series of plausible sea level rise and storm scenarios over the next century. Vertical land motion is derived from satellite observations,” the scientists said.

The team explained how sea level rise can increase the impacts of coastal hazards.

A higher sea level means that high tides can more easily cause sunny day, or nuisance, flooding, and that waves and storm surge can reach higher elevations, which can then lead to overwash, erosion and flooding farther inland. This can also cause groundwater tables to rise, they said.

Since the land is also sinking, that makes relative sea level rise even higher, intensifying these hazards.

Barrier islands, like those in the Cape Lookout study area, “buffer storm impacts for the mainland coast. However, the barrier islands themselves are at an increased risk compared to mainland coasts, as they can experience the hazards of SLR and storms on all sides. Vulnerable barrier islands can lead to more vulnerable mainland coastlines in the future,” the study states.

The researchers told Coastal Review that without intervention, flooding and erosion will be pervasive across barrier islands over the next century.

“As these islands are the first line of defense for mainland communities, reduction in this natural protection will create more hazard exposure in the future,” the team continued. “Managing coastal resources under a changing climate will be extremely challenging.”

Cape Lookout Superintendent Jeff West told Coastal Review that the report findings confirmed what the park staff has seen happening over the years: “an increased number of flooding events, and more devastation” from storms.

“Not only does it confirm what we have been seeing, but it helps detail what to expect in high visitor use areas — places we have infrastructure assets,” West said.

Managed by the National Park Service, Cape Lookout is made up of barrier islands off mainland Carteret County, and is home to several threatened and endangered species, a herd of wild horses, the still-operational 1850s Cape Lookout Lighthouse, historic villages, campsites and ferry landings.

Based on these projections, West said that he thinks the park service and visitors should expect to see places they love begin to disappear over the next two decades.

“They will have environmental impacts that change where and when they can visit, and I expect they will see a change in services they have come to expect and that the NPS provided.”

Cape Lookout Wildlife Biologist Sue Stuska monitors the horse herd along with management partners the Foundation for Shackleford Horses Inc. She told Coastal Review they are trying to determine how to plan for the herd with the upcoming changes.

Models project that emerging groundwater will likely not cause flooding on Cape Lookout National Seashore because, by the time sea level rises high enough to cause that, overland marine flooding will already be occurring, according to the study.

Stuska said that while she has not seen groundwater emerging at the surface, “I have documented three new places in the middle (between ocean and sound) of Shackleford Banks where the horses are digging for fresh water in swales where they never dug before. I have theorized that the water table is rising, giving them access there where it would have been too deep before.”

Rising sea level, higher risk

The Geological Survey team explained that the National Park Service requested summaries of recent research of the region relevant to coastal management concerns at Cape Lookout National Seashore.

The team pulled data specific to the national seashore and determined that with 0.5 meters, or 1.6 feet, of sea level rise, 47% of barrier island surface area would flood daily, and the type of storm nearly certain to strike each year would flood 74% of island surface area. During a storm of the intensity likely to come only once every 20 or so years, more than 85% of the island can be expected to flood.

Flood risk for extreme storm events doubles with just 2 to 4 inches of sea level rise, “and therefore, in the coming decades, hurricanes will likely cause more severe impacts than in the recent past for coastal North Carolina,” according to the study.

And a third of Cape Lookout National Seashore is currently sinking at a rate of more than 2 millimeters — about the thickness of a nickel – each year, further accelerating erosion and habitat loss.

With 3.3 feet of sea level rise, models project that shorelines will retreat an average of 178 meters, or 584 feet, if there’s no intervention. That would cover more than 60% of the current island width at its narrower locations. Shoreline retreat is what happens when an area experiences long-term erosion. 

Researchers note in the study that the results are relative to sea level rise values, not the amount of time those levels are anticipated to be reached, to “decouple the uncertainty of timing” from future sea level rise. “However, in the Discussion section, we relate results to time, using the SLR values closest to local estimates for the intermediate-high scenario for the years 2050 (0.46 m) and 2100 (1.60 m),” or 1.5 feet in 2050 and 5.24 feet in 2100. Authors cite projections that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released in 2022.

The researchers said it’s up to the National Park Service to make the difficult decisions on how to manage sea level rise and storm impacts. “Hopefully this study can provide valuable information as a guide to the short- and long-term coastal hazards to consider.”

Cape Lookout plans on sea level rise

Superintendent West said that while management is facing “mounting pressure to balance the needs of human safety and environmental preservation in a landscape increasingly shaped by climate change,” as the Dec. 4, 2024, press release states, he recognizes how much these changes will affect those fond of the national seashore.

Federal and state managers are facing pressure, “but people who live and work in coastal areas, people that visit and love these areas, well, they will suffer from emotional loss,” West said.

He added that while the park service has planning in place and is adaptively managing its resources, people tend to reject change.

“Gradual devastating change is harder to accept. You don’t see it unless you are living it, and even then, people can get use to things and then fail to see the bigger picture,” he said.

Cape Lookout changes every day. Five years from now it will be different than it is today, 10 years from now it will be dramatically different, West said.

The park service is taking action, West said, but, “I am not sure how humans truly plan for that which they do not know or fully understand. Still, we are trying.”

Park officials had already assessed Cape Lookout’s built assets, like the lighthouse and historic structures, and they know how vulnerable they are to storms, sea level rise, storm surge, wind and historic events.

“We know which buildings we are not going to rebuild in their current locations should they be damaged, we know the options we have for each asset,” which are to raise and rebuild with sustainable materials, move, or demolish and abandon the location, West said. “A number of structures that were continually battered by storm have been demolished and removed. We are not investing repair or rehabilitation dollars in structures that have that kind of exposure. There are currently five additional structures on that list that will not be reconstructed if they are storm damaged or flooded.”

New construction takes all factors into consideration, West said.

He said the camp on North Core Banks is an example. Long Point Camp was at one of the narrowest and most frequently affected parts of the island, with 7,000 feet of underground utilities, generators, and wooden buildings. It was subject to both ocean and sound-side flooding.

West said the park service replaced underground infrastructure routinely, and has done over 20 reconstruction or repair projects after storms between 1995 and 2019, when Hurricane Dorian devastated the camp yet again.

They found a site 5 miles to move the camp that’s north on one of the highest parts of the island. The new site sees little coastal erosion.

“The camp itself is designed to take environmental impacts yet be low-cost to build and maintain. Almost no underground utilities, all structures on raised platforms, buildings are principally oceangoing containers modified for residential or utility use, all power is provided by solar and wind generator systems,” West said.

Construction started in December.

To repair or rebuild docks, the park service elevates the structure and uses decking made of concrete that allows water to flow through without undermining the supporting structure, and pilings are driven to a minimum depth of 28 feet.

“We did a large beach nourishment project at the Cape Lookout Lighthouse to protect the lighthouse complex and are currently monitoring it for erosion. Once the data is in, we will look at options to try and hold that beach in place,” West said of the work completed early last year.

“Marsh restoration and protection are currently being planned,” West said. The state will lose about 85% of its current marsh area over the next 25 years.

“We are starting the process of protecting what we have and restoring some of what we lost now to try and stay ahead of sea level rise,” he explained.

West said that the park service approaches each project by posing a series of questions with sea level rise and storms in mind: “Do we need it? If we need it, is it in the right place and/or where is the right place? Can we build it better? Can we fund it? If we can do it, should we?”

Undergraduate students who spent their fall semester studying Currituck Sound may have broken new ground in understanding the effects of controlled burns on a marsh island.

For the project, students compared vegetative changes to the marsh islands with the Audubon Pine Island Sanctuary and Center in Currituck County that have no history of recent fire, islands that are occasionally burned, and islands that have had frequent controlled burns.

The students presented their findings “The Sound of Change: Responses to Controlled Burning and Other Changes in the Currituck Sound,” Dec. 12 as part of the monthly Science on the Sound lecture series at the Coastal Studies Institute, or CSI, on East Carolina University’s Outer Banks Campus.

The students conducted the research project as part of the Outer Banks Field Site, or OBXFS, a semester-long, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill undergraduate program hosted each fall by CSI.

Controlled burns are part of a fall tradition that existed well before the first European set foot upon the North American continent and “has deep historical roots in the South, where the practice was quickly adopted from the Indians by early European settlers,” according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service research.

While there have been a number of studies examining how a controlled burn effects a marsh, delving into a fire’s impact on invasive species, soil accretion, plant diversity and potential of endangering some animal species, this research takes a different approach.

The study “was one of the few that worked in brackish marshes, and the students talking to stakeholders and users of the marsh about the changes they perceived is also something that’s, I think, unique to the study,” Outer Banks Field Site Director Lindsay Dubbs said during the presentation.

The students included a human dimension and interviewed people who use the Currituck Sound frequently about the environmental changes they feel have taken place.

For their field work, the students traveled to marsh islands within the boundaries of the Pine Island site and compared the effects of controlled burning on marsh vegetation.

The islands were divided into three groups. The control islands had “no historical data of any burns happening,” explained sophomore Lily Bertlshofer. “Our occasional sites were last burned in 2021 and our frequent sites have data being burned every year.”

The study was designed “to look at how controlled burns impact the allocation resources within marsh plants and soils, the impacts of controlled burning on the vegetation community of marsh and what the implications for marsh resilience are,” Berlshofer said.

The study confirmed that the long-established practice of prescribed burns benefit vegetative diversity in marsh inlands.

At first glance there does not appear to be a significant difference in plant diversity among the three areas.

“We found that there was no statistically significant relationship between species richness and burn frequency,” said Veronica Cheaz, a sophomore.

That finding was expected. Because the number of plants that can live in a salt-to-brackish environment is limited, diversity is relatively low.

“Generally, we found low species richness at all of our plots, which is not very surprising,” Cheaz said. “We have a brackish marsh in the Currituck Sound, and there’s not going to be very many species.”

What the study did identify, though, was how effective controlled burning of a brackish marsh could be in maintaining the habitat.

“We also looked at salinity tolerance,” Chaez said, which “is going to be influential in determining how effective these sites are at adapting to environmental stressors like sea level rise and a rise in salinity. We found that occasionally burned sites had the highest scores compared to our control sites, and we hypothesized that this is because occasionally burned sites have a balance of the disturbance periods and restoration periods that allows salt water species to move in.”

There was at least one surprising finding. When the living root systems, or the biomass, of the three sites were compared, the frequently burned areas have statistically greater biomass than either the control or occasional burn areas.

Pointing to a graph showing more than double the biomass of an occasional site, senior Katelin Harmon, majoring in environmental studies and political science, described the finding that “frequently burn sites were much higher,” as “one of our most interesting findings…There’s much stronger root systems in our frequently sites.”

Verdant and complex, the Currituck Sound marsh is somewhat unique. The nearest saltwater source is Oregon Inlet some 55 miles to the south of the study area at the Pine Island Audubon site. The salinity there is typically under 3 parts per thousand, or ppt, and at times lower.

“The low salinity makes these places special, and we refer to that as an oligohaline environment,” junior Thomas Ferguson said during the presentation.

Currituck Sound has not always been an oligohaline, or a low-salinity, environment. Throughout the colonial period and into the early 19th century, there were two inlets on the north end of the sound. Currituck Inlet across from Knotts Island was open until the 1730s. New Currituck Inlet just to the south, opened soon after that, closing in 1828. Until New Currituck Inlet closed, the north end of the sound was a high-saline brackish marsh.

With the closing of the inlets, Currituck Sound transitioned to an oligohaline marsh and migratory waterfowl began arriving by the hundreds of thousands, creating a hunter’s paradise.

“In 1828 the Currituck Inlet, at that time composed of salt water, was closed by a storm and the vicinity gradually became fresh water. This change allowed vegetation such as wild celery and eel grass to grow on the marsh bottom and this new vegetation attracted wintering fowl in greater quantities than before,” The National Register of Historic Places noted in its assessment of the Currituck Shooting Club.

The Currituck Shooting Club, founded in 1857 “by a group of business men in New York City,” the assessment wrote, was the first of numerous hunting clubs that lined the shores of Currituck Sound. The building was completely destroyed by fire in 2003.

The Pine Island Club was formed in 1910. In 1979 the last private owner of the club, Earl Slick, a Winston-Salem developer, donated 2600 acres of marsh and uplands to the National Audubon Society. In 2009 Audubon North Carolina assumed full-time responsibility for the managing the club.

Hunting is still allowed on the property, but according to at least one of the hunters the student researchers interviewed, it falls well short of what it had once been like.

“It really doesn’t have any ducks compared to when I was young, when I was your age, this place had ducks. This place doesn’t have anything anymore,” the researchers were told.

In a question-and-answer session following the presentation, Pine Island Site Manager Robbie Fearn noted that the statistical biomass findings at the frequently burned areas was inconsistent with what was visually happening.

“I’m at the Pine Island Sanctuary,” he said. “The areas that are frequently burned from my lived experiences are falling apart, and yet the data says that for longer term management, frequent burning may be better… Is it a question of the plants are responding to the frequent burn by trying to survive and creating more below-ground biomass.”

For Fearn, who was very complimentary of the work the students did, the inconsistency between what he has observed and what the statistics say is a jumping off point for much needed further research.

“The work that these students have done have really set us up to dig in and figure out how best to manage these marshes in the sound and I’m very thankful for their work,” he said.

Coastal Review will not publish Jan. 1 in observance of New Year’s Day.

Dr. Jordan Poler did not want to create an environmental problem by trying to solve one.

More than a decade ago, the University of North Carolina Charlotte professor decided to focus on chemistry that could be both sustainable and have minimum impact on the environment.

He believes he and his team of researchers have found that sweet spot, a secret sauce of nontoxic ingredients for a recipe that cleans per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, and other toxins from drinking water at the point of use, think refrigerator filter for tap water.

Earlier this year, Poler was one of two UNCC professors awarded funding from NCInnovation’s grant program, which aims to help researchers at the state’s public universities get their products from lab to market.

And in an age when the idea of safe drinking water weighs heavy on North Carolinians whose water sources are contaminated by PFAS, what Poler said he has to offer could perhaps not come soon enough for consumers.

His research involves a process called ion exchange, which, in the most basic of explanations, works by trading an atom or group of atoms (ions) with ones that do not degrade the quality of drinking water.

Ion exchange is by no means a novel concept. It was initially observed by two English chemists in 1850 and did not become widely used until the 1940s.

The chemistry developed in Poler’s lab is all water-based.

“There’s really no hazardous waste for our processing and the materials that we start with are all sustainable,” Poler said.

Those materials are a cocktail of sorts that include zeolite, an inexpensive and nontoxic, natural mineral that can be dug out of the ground, and cellulose, which comes from plants, trees and bushes.

“All of the agricultural waste and food waste can be turned into that other starting materials,” Poler said. “We’re really happy about that because we started off using materials that were kind of expensive and now we’ve developed this to basically reduce the cost of those types of starting materials to nearly zero relative to where we started with.”

The result are materials that can be packed into canisters made for water filtration in everything from refrigerators to well water systems.

These materials remove chemicals including pharmaceuticals, pesticides, arsenates, chromates, heavy metals such as iron, and, of course, PFAS.

The mix of materials remove very, very low concentrations of PFAS, down to the 4 parts per trillion maximum contaminant limits the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency established for six of the chemical compounds, including PFOA, PFOS, likely carcinogens, and GenX, a compound specific to the Chemours Fayetteville Works facility in Bladen County.

“It does a lot. It’s really quite a lovely hybrid, multi-use solution from a very green and sustainable approach,” Poler said.

PFAS are pervasive throughout North Carolina and the nation where they have been released into the environment by various manufacturing companies. PFAS are used in the production of a host of consumer goods, including food containers, stain- and water-resistant fabrics and firefighting foams.

Tests have detected these compounds in drinking water sources that are tapped by hundreds of public utilities throughout the state. PFAS have also been found in thousands of privately owned wells.

Exposure to PFAS has been linked to health effects including an increase in certain types of cancers, suppression of the immune system, low birth weight in infants and changes in liver function.

“It’s very hard to remove things at extremely low concentrations,” Poler said. “That’s why PFAS is such a challenge because it bioaccumulates. You can be drinking this water for years and then these problems creep in. So, ion exchange is, I think, the way to go.”

Poler founded a startup called naneXPure LLC, a company that is, by all accounts at the moment, a placeholder, but one intended to translate the technology developed in his lab into the marketplace.

He and his business partner are working with Monroe-based Goulston Technologies to broaden the drinking water purification materials crafted in his lab to industry scale.

The materials being developed in his lab are regenerable and reusable. That means that, unlike refrigerator filters that must be replaced every six months or so, what he has developed can be made good as new.

Regenerating materials not only cut down on plastic waste, but they keep used, discarded filters out of landfills and, therefore, out of leaching back into the environment.

Say you have a system that’s good for purifying 100,000 liters of water.

“It’s 100,000 liters of very low-contaminated water, but you don’t want to drink that contaminant so you’d purify it,” Poler said. “And then, when we regenerate it, we have maybe one liter of highly contaminated regenerate that can then be very easily destroyed by other types of technologies.”

The materials developed in Poler’s lab will have to be certified by the National Sanitation Foundation. Funding for that testing will be covered under the $400,000 NCInnovations grant Poler received.

Poler’s idea is that consumers would initially buy two cartridges. When materials in the first cartridge that is used needs to be replaced, that cartridge could be shipped back for regeneration in a mailer that would be provided by the company.

“It might be pie in the sky,” Poler said. “But that’s been my long-term goal.”

The technology has the potential to be used on a larger, water utility-type scale.

NAGS HEAD — Imagine that a hurricane skirted the coast, causing the power to go out. You wait for the green light to blink on your backup power. Getting the all-clear, you flip on the switch connected to the community’s wave-powered alternate generator, and your refrigerator is humming again.

That creative concept is still a distant fantasy in 2024, but it’s the kind of need-inspired brainstorming that a new $3.6 million National Science Foundation community-oriented wave energy project encourages. Launched on Sept. 27, scientists at the Coastal Studies Institute on the East Carolina University Outer Banks Campus in Wanchese will be seeking input from folks around Nags Head to use toward developing and deploying practical wave-energy technology on the Outer Banks before the end of the five-year project.

“The goal is to present two or three potential technologies and get (community) inputs to really see whether or not this meets their need,” Eric Wade, assistant professor in the Department of Coastal Studies at East Carolina University, which includes the CSI campus, told Coastal Review recently.

Researchers from ECU will partner with the University of Michigan, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Virginia Tech on the project, with focal communities chosen in Michigan at Beaver Island and in North Carolina at Nags Head.

While Wade said it’s not yet likely that alternate sources of energy could be produced in Nags Head, other marine energy could be more conceivable for the Outer Banks at this stage. Some examples he cited were use in desalination, powering autonomous underwater vehicles and marine aquaculture.

“The introduction of this technology will not lower the electricity bill,” he said. “It will not have this massive transformation. It may be at a very small scale.”

In a substantive way, the new National Science Foundation project builds on two ongoing research projects that CSI is part of: the NC Renewable Ocean Energy Program and the Atlantic Marine Energy Center. The important difference, Wade explained, is that the main objective of the new project is to converge different components of the community — engineering, sociological and environmental — so they can “speak” with each other.

“The local context will drive the extent, and in my opinion, will drive the feasibility of convergence, because we need to be able to design technologies that meet the needs of communities,” he said.

“And so, what this project is trying to do is see how can we get them to be on the same page, to be able to move marine energy, and specifically wave energy, forward,” Wade said.

Each of the components communicate in different “languages” and have different requirements for their disciplines, he added. “The difficulty and what is unique for this project is that bringing those together requires a lot of work and a lot of intentional talk.”

Wade said the goal in the next two years is to have community sessions that will bring together representatives from different sectors of the communities to share their perspectives and priorities.

“We’ll then take all of that information, go back to the community, consolidate, do some analysis,” he said.

The building and deployment work on the selected technology will be done for remaining three years. The big picture, ultimately, is all part of the what marine energy scientists call “powering the blue economy.”

The blue economy is broadly defined as economic activity driven by or based on the world’s oceans. And as Wade noted, the U.S. is hustling to catch up with the more advanced blue technology of Europe.

Lindsay Dubbs, a UNC research associate professor based at the institute, is collaborating with Wade on the project. She is focused on environmental and ecological assessments. That work, she said, involves devising frameworks for analyzing environmental impacts of potential marine energy developments, as well as best practices for reducing negative impacts.

Dubbs, who also serves as associate director of the NC Renewable Ocean Energy Program and the Atlantic Marine Energy Center, said their project team includes student researchers, as well as colleagues from Virginia and Michigan.

“We’re also communicating a good deal with communities in Alaska who are already implementing wave energy technologies in their communities,” she said. “We have this community advisory group that is comprised of people from all of those different communities, and the two study sites that we’re focusing this convergent research on are Beaver Island and Nags Head.”

Waves on the Outer Banks are powerful, but they’re not as big as waves on the West Coast, Dubbs said. That’s mainly because of differences in the water depths approaching the coasts. “The power density of the wave resource — how much energy can be harnessed — within an area on the West Coast is much greater.”

But, she countered, a large area of the North Carolina coast has untapped wave energy resources that could at least provide energy for niche markets. And that could include backup power. But on the East Coast and the Outer Banks, generation would be more likely occur at a community scale, not at utility scale like on the West Coast.

The project team is just starting conversations with the community groups to understand their perspectives, wants and needs for a wave-energy source, Dubbs said. But rather than advocate for a particular technology, the team’s intent is to help the community decide on the type of technology that meets their needs. Part of that process has to consider trade-offs, she said, and whether it’s worth harnessing the available energy, and if it can be done “in a manner that our community supports” that poses the least environmental risk.

“It’s so abstract and theoretical that it’s sometimes hard to really imagine what’s possible,” she said. “The exciting thing about wave energy right now, is just about everything is being imagined. But as far as coming to convergence on something that will make it more economically viable and less abstract — that’s difficult.”

Black Heart’s sighting wasn’t necessarily unusual, but exciting nonetheless.

The North Atlantic right whale, around 19, made her celebrated debut a little more than 2 miles east of Cape Lookout National Seashore’s High Hills on Nov. 20, five days into the start of calving season.

The mom of one, on the record at least, was spotted roughly 1,000 feet above by a small survey team panning ocean waters off North Carolina’s shores.

And, until April 15, when another calving season comes to an end for the critically endangered species, this same survey team will take to the skies every day. Weather permitting, of course.

It’s been five years since the Clearwater Marine Aquarium Research Institute’s North Carolina Early Warning System, or NCWS, survey team was financially resurrected by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Since the early 2000s, three-person teams collected information and aerial imagery off the North Carolina and South Carolina coasts regularly before the mid-2010s, when funding ceased for the program.

Now survey teams, including one based in Beaufort, one in Georgetown, South Carolina, another in St. Simons Island, Georgia, and a survey team with Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, take to the skies to scour hundreds of miles of the southern eastern seaboard each week through this crucial five-month period for right whales.

“More eyes in the sky has been fantastic,” said Melanie White, a research biologist and North Atlantic Right Whale Conservation project manager. “We’ve seen that there are sightings of whales that are being seen in the past years off the North Carolina coast that have not made their way further south into South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Every single whale is so vitally important to the population, especially those adult females. Anything that can be done to help give these animals a chance is really, really important because their numbers are so small.”

There are an estimated 370 North Atlantic right whales. About 70 of those are reproductively active females, which carry their pregnancies one year and birth no more than one calf in a season.

Researchers can only hope Black Heart has made her return to warmer waters to give birth this season. It’s simply not possible to tell whether a female is pregnant, White said.

Several hours after White spoke with Coastal Review, Oceana publicly confirmed the first whale calf of the 2024-25 season had been spotted with its mom by a boater off Cape Romain, South Carolina.

The yet-to-be identified mom and calf were first documented four days after Black Heart was spotted by researchers.

“The first calf of every calving season brings hope and excitement for the future of this critically endangered species, with only around 370 remaining,” Oceana Campaign Director Gib Brogan said in a statement. “Unfortunately, this first calf also evokes the fresh and painful memory of the first calf from last season that was killed by a boat strike after only a few months of entering this world.”

North Atlantic right whales migrate hundreds of miles between their northern feeding grounds south during calving season.

Their long-distance treks along the East Coast of the United States make them particularly vulnerable to human activity.

Boat strikes and fishing gear entanglement are the leading causes of right whale deaths.

“So, part of the reason for us to be conducting these surveys is to know their location so that information can be relayed to the maritime community,” White said.

When a whale is sighted, its location is added to a whale map, which is a public site.

Information gathered during each sighting is share between various research organizations, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Georgia and South Carolina’s departments of natural resources, Corps of Engineers, U.S. Coast Guard Atlantic Area Command, U.S. Navy, Duke University and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

“We’re really just trying to keep these animals safe,” White said.

By federal law, vessels must remain beyond 500 yards of right whales.

Seasonal management areas have been designated offshore from North Carolina down to northeast Florida to reduce the risk of vessel strikes. During calving season, vessels 65 feet and longer must maintain a speed of 10 knots or less.

Mariners also play an important role in helping report right whale sightings because they have an advantage aerial survey teams do not. Right whales are capable of holding their breaths for almost an hour at a time, which means they can be submerged and out of sight as a Cessna flying a survey team overhead makes a sweep of the area.

“The more eyes on the water the better,” White said. “Even though there are four aerial survey teams that are conducting work in the southeast each winter, we can’t be everywhere at the same moment so we do rely heavily on any public sighting information that comes in. Every sighting is an important sighting.”

Every good weather day – clear skies with winds 15 knots or less — aerial early warning system survey teams typically remain in the air around six hours at a time before landing, refueling and, as daylight allows, returning to the sky to what are called track lines. There are 107 track lines, well over 400 miles nautical miles of coast line, between North and South Carolina.

These track lines are flown in an east-to-west direction up to 40 miles offshore.

While two members of a survey team look out for whales, the third is a dedicated ground contact, relaying information about the airplane’s location to a field team on the ground.

Each whale that is spotted is photographed and can be individually identified by the callosity pattern on its head. These patterns are similar to human fingerprints.

Right whales are born with these patterns, which are rough patches of skin, on their heads. Within the nooks and crannies of these rough patches live colonies of tiny crustaceans known as cyamids. Cyamids are bright white, which allows researchers to see a whale’s callosity pattern.

And this is how many, but not all, of the whales get named, “based on that kind of pattern on the top of their heads,” White said.

All of the whales are, however, identified by a four-digit code that is referenced for cataloging purposes.

As of last week, Koala and Curlew have been tallied in the sightings this calving season.

Anyone who sees a right whale is asked to call 1-800-WHALE-HELP or go to SCG on VHF Ch. 16. #givethemspace

Warming sea temperatures fueled significantly more intense hurricanes between 2019 and 2023 and force-fed nearly a half-dozen storms into Category 5 strength, including two this current season, according to a newly released climate study.

Human-caused climate change has, on average, boosted peak, pre-landfall Atlantic hurricane wind speeds by 18 mph over the last six years, said Dr. Daniel Gilford, lead author of the study published in the journal Environmental Research: Climate.

“Every single storm we studied in 2024 had an intensity increase of these warmer sea surface temperatures by something between 9 and 28 miles per hour,” Gilford said during a webinar Tuesday afternoon.

A total of 11 storms have churned over warming waters this Atlantic hurricane season, which ends Nov. 30.

Gilford, a climate scientist at Climate Central, a nonpartisan, nonprofit independent group of scientists who research and report the effects of climate change, said that between 2019 and 2023 and over the course of this hurricane season, storms have strengthened over waters as much as 2.5 degrees warmer because of global warming.

Scientists found the faster rate at which hurricanes are spinning equates to an average of about one category higher on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. This scale does not measure hurricanes’ other potential destructive factors, including storm surge, which is also being exacerbated by rising seas, and rainfall.

A companion study also released Wednesday by Climate Central found that Hurricane Helene’s peak wind speeds were made about 13 mph more intense because of climate change.

The difference is a “tiny bit lower” than Gilford’s findings, “but very much in the same ballpark,” said Dr. Friederike “Fredi” Otto, a senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London and lead of World Weather Attribution, a team of researchers from several European-based institutions.

Otto said the companion study, “really shows that these two completely different lines of evidence show us the same thing.”

The study led by Gilford traced data from the International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship, or IBTrACS, which provides global cyclone track information, and the National Hurricane Center’s GIS archive to analyze hurricanes back to 2019.

Researchers used observations and reanalysis from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s optimum interpolation sea surface temperature, or OISST, which is a long-term climate data record, and combined climate models to look at how sea surface temperatures are changing.

The companion study looked at stochastic models, which use mathematics that incorporate randomness and uncertainty to simulate hurricane behavior, including intensity, track, and landfall location.

From a scientific point of view, Otto said, the changes brought on by global warming show that a storm that might have been a Category 4 over cooler sea surface temperatures is now building up to a Category 5, the highest on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.

“That makes a huge difference and I think that can also make a huge in how we communicate about the impact of climate change because, as we’ve seen, quite tragically this year, people died and there are huge death tolls when extreme events happen that people have not experienced before,” Otto said.

Thus was the case when Hurricane Helene swept up the Gulf Coast, making landfall Sept. 26 in Florida’s Big Bend region before barreling north through western North Carolina. More than 230 people across six states died as a result of the storm, one that gutted mountain towns, ripped away roads and caused more than $50 billion in damage.

Even though there “were really good warnings,” people in the Appalachian region had not experienced such an extreme event so they did not know what to do with the warnings, Otto said.

“I think this, that we see now, again and again, that records are broken, that wind speeds are higher than ever before, rainfall is higher than ever before. We really need to use that to make sure that people don’t die,” she said.

Otto added that it may be time to discuss whether to add a sixth category to the Saffir-Simpson scale, “just so that people are aware that something is going to hit them that is different from everything else they’ve experienced before and therefore more dangerous.”

Hurricanes Beryl and Milton were identified as the last of five storms that strengthened into Category 5 storms because of climate change, according to the study led by Gilford.

NOAA predicted earlier this year that there was an 85% chance this Atlantic Hurricane Season would be above normal.

Hurricane Beryl first formed on June 28 and broke a series of records this season.

It was the farthest east that a hurricane had formed in June, the first Category 4 storm to form in the month of June and, on July 2, it became the earliest Category 5 hurricane on record.

A little more than three months after Beryl made its third and final landfall – the last in Matagorda County, Texas – a monster Hurricane Milton seemingly filled the Gulf of Mexico as it roared toward Florida’s Gulf Shore. The speed of intensity at which Milton grew brought tears to longtime meteorologist and NBC 6 South Florida weatherman John Morales, whose live forecast went viral after he choked up reporting that the storm’s air pressure had dropped 50 millibars in 10 hours.

Morales, one of the speakers taking part in Tuesday’s webinar, noted that over his 40-year career he was seeing more hurricanes go through extreme, rapid intensification cycles in recent years, compared to years past.

“For all I know we might have four hurricanes in a year, but if 50% of those are becoming Category 3, 4 and 5, then we’ve got a problem because a greater proportion of them are becoming the very dangerous ones,” he said.

Deep-diving whales that rely on sound rather than vision to hunt in the ocean’s darkest depths are confusing plastic marine debris for prey, new findings suggest.

For the study, “Acoustic signature of plastic marine debris mimics the prey items of deep-diving cetaceans,” researchers from Duke University as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, compared the way sound bounces off plastic that is floating underwater to that of typical whale prey, in this case, squid and squid beaks.

It is widely assumed that seals and toothed whales mistake plastic for food because of appearance, particularly plastic bags and films that look like squid and jellyfish, according to the study, but that doesn’t explain why deep-diving species like sperm whales and beaked whales that use echolocation are ingesting plastic. To echolocate, the whale emits sounds that reflect off an object. The whale then interprets the object’s target strength, or measurement of the intensity of the sound’s echo.

“Assuming these animals are ingesting plastic at depth and not at/near the surface, they are consuming plastic without visually identifying it. Deep-diving toothed whales may therefore be misinterpreting acoustic cues when echolocating; presumably plastic’s acoustic signature resembles that of primary prey items, driving plastic consumption,” the study states.

Researchers for the new study found that 100% of the plastics they tested that are typically found in stomachs of stranded whales — plastic bags, rope and bottles — have either similar or stronger acoustic target strengths, which is how strong a sound wave is reflected off an object, compared to that of squid.

The findings support the study’s hypothesis that deep-diving whales are consuming plastic because of “a misperception of acoustic signals.”

Duke University doctoral candidate Greg Merrill Jr. led the peer-reviewed study published a few weeks ago in Science Direct.

From California, Merrill has been at the Duke University Marine Lab in Beaufort for the past few years to examine the impacts of microplastics and large plastic marine debris on whales.

Merrill graduated from the University of California, Davis, with a bachelor’s in biological science in 2014. He then pursued his master’s at the University of Alaska Anchorage, where he worked with northern fur seals, trying to understand how climate change was impacting their breeding success. That experience planted the seed for this study.

While he was working on his master’s, Merrill said he spent many months on the remote Pribilof Islands of Alaska in the middle of the Bering Sea where the threatened northern fur seal breeds.

“All too common a sight was a seal entangled in plastic debris, such as packing bands and discarded fishing net. The animals often died as a result. This motivated me to study the impacts of plastic pollution on other marine mammals like the deep-diving sperm whales and beaked whales off the North Carolina coast,” he said.

Merrill explained that these animals, in particular, hunt especially deep in the ocean where there is no light to see. Instead, they rely on echolocation, or biosonar.

“In other words, they use sound waves to locate and identify food. Because we know from autopsies of stranded whales that they are eating plastic, it occurred to me that plastic may be causing whales to misinterpret their echolocation signals. So, we wanted to see if that was true,” Merrill explained.

He said in simple terms, the study was to see if plastic in the water confused echolocating whales into believing it was instead food.

“We collected plastic trash from the beach and then blasted those objects and whale prey with various sound waves at sea using an instrumented called an echosounder mounted to the bottom of our research vessel. The plastic objects were strung up on monofilament fishing line and held underneath the instrument while the measurements were recorded,” he said.

An echosounder is a device that uses sound waves to measure the water depth or where objects are in the water. The hull-mounted echosounder tested three different sounds at the same frequencies of whale clicks.

“Based on the measurements we recorded, plastic has similar or stronger echoes than the whale prey items we tested. The way an object reflects sound depends on what it’s made of,” Merrill explained, for example what the plastic is made of or (its) thickness. “Plastic unfortunately ‘sounds’ the same as whale food.”

The study notes that plastic pollution in the oceans is pervasive and increasing with more than 1,200 marine species known to ingest plastic debris. For marine mammals, there are hundreds of examples of whales, seals, sea lions and manatees “consuming plastic, ingestion of which constitutes a major threat to individual health,” the study states. “Consequences of macroplastic ingestion include abrasion and perforation of tissues, infection, reduced reproduction and growth, suffocation, clogging the baleen filter false satiation, occlusion of the gastrointestinal tract, starvation, and ultimately death.”

The finding underscores just how complex the plastic pollution issue is, Merrill said, adding the most common plastics found in whale stomachs are plastic bags, single-use packaging, and fishing gear such as nets, ropes, and lines.

“I’m not sure many people would have ever imagined that the way something sounds could have such big consequences as affecting large whales who hunt so very far away from human activities. The scale of the plastic pollution problem is enormous, a global issue that requires policy action at the level of local all the way to international governments. And it is having so many impacts on our planet and on human health, Merrill said.

He encourages “anyone who cares about this issue” to contact their elected officials and let them know you want to see action on this front.

Michael Cove, a conservation ecologist and mammologist, told Coastal Review that “this research was fascinating and provides some much-needed insights into how and why marine mammals might intentionally ingest plastic waste that could severely impact them and ultimately lead to their deaths.”

The research curator for the mammalogy at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, Cove explained that so much of our perception of food and foraging is based on visual cues, because humans use their eyes to find food, “and that has been shown in research with seabirds and sea turtles, but many deep-sea-diving marine mammals are going off of sound through echolocation and not sight.”

Studies like Merrill’s show that there’s still a lot to learn about how some of the sperm and beaked whales forage. In many cases, there’s still much to understand about what they forage because they are feeding at such great depths, Cove explained. He has often assumed that most plastic consumption is incidental or intentional based on visual cues, citing Mylar balloons looking like squid as an example.

But this study, “points to intentional consumption of plastics based on their sound, which spells trouble for deep sea diving whales since the accumulation of plastic in our oceans continues to increase and it persists for thousands of years.”

Cove said that this work highlights and renews that calls to end balloon releases, especially in coastal areas, should be revisited and policies to reduce plastics entering marine food webs will be critical to maintaining maintain diverse marine mammal communities into the future.

“After all, marine mammals along with sharks and large fishes make up the top of the food chain, which largely regulate the lower trophic levels (links in the chain) and the loss of any species and that top-down regulation can have cascading effects throughout the community that could even influence fisheries and ecosystem health processes well beyond the deep ocean,” he said.

Coastal Review will not publish Monday in observance of Veterans Day.

Fisheries researcher Samantha Farquhar has traveled far to learn more about industrial fishing and food security, and the related effects of a changing climate on peoples’ lives. Work that first requires building a level of trust.

Her travels have taken her from the University of Washington in Seattle to East Carolina University in Greenville, with stops in Nepal, Madagascar, Greenland and a small village in northern Quebec. Also included was a stop on the Outer Banks, where she worked as a seasonal fisheries technician with the Department of Marine Fisheries.

“I got to know a lot about what fishermen think of the regulations really fast,” Farquhar told Coastal Review recently.

It was, she explained, time well spent, especially for her chosen field of research.

“You go down to Wanchese, it’s their life. You have to really respect that when you’re doing research. You can’t just go in there asking a bunch of questions,” she said. “You have to take the time to build the right partnerships and develop trust.”

She was in Greenland this summer, spending most of July in Uummannaq, a town on the west side of the country. Although most of her work has been with fisheries, in this case she was working with Hurtigruten Expeditions, a Norwegian company that offers cruises to Greenland.

She was looking into the effects of climate change on the indigenous culture there.

“Greenland is one of the only countries that is (approximately) 80% indigenous people. It’s an indigenous-run country, which is pretty cool, but with strong ties to Denmark,” she said.

Farquhar was studying how climate change was affecting the use of the qajaq (pronounced kayak), which is the traditional kayak of the Inuit people of Greenland. Made of stretched animal skins over whalebone or driftwood, it is a long, narrow watercraft, that, because of its construction, is used only in relatively calm seas.

What Farquhar found was that days with conditions safe for qajaq use were becoming more infrequent.

“I can almost definitely say it’s harder for kayakers, than, say, 30 years ago,” she said. “A kayaker will tell me, ‘I will only go kayaking when it’s between zero and 0.5 meters of wave height. If it’s greater than 0.5 meters, it’s too wavy. I don’t feel safe going out.’”

Farquhar is in an ECU doctoral program administered by the Coastal Studies Institute on the ECU Outer Banks Campus that she described as unique in the world of academia.

“I’m in a PhD program called Integrated Coastal Sciences. It’s the only PhD program in the world that has this title,” she said, adding that trying to describe the program is difficult.

“It’s like coastal resource management, but more integrated,” Farquhar said.

“I have to understand the fishery science side of things,” she said, adding that her works demands an understanding of food security, food systems and how people obtain food within the food system. “So it’s really interesting.”

After five years of study, Farquhar  expects to defend her doctoral dissertation next spring.

Aquaculture sans ocean

Farquhar, fresh out of college with an undergraduate degree in biology, began her career in Nepal, where there was opportunity, despite what she describes as a “really funny” experience, “because they don’t have an ocean.”

And it was, she said, a place where the economics of food security, society and fish intersect.

“It was an aquaculture project that was for women specifically, because in a lot of traditional Nepali societies, women are stuck in the household, and they don’t have a lot of options for economic development,” Farquhar said. “That led me to get into fisheries development … to see how fisheries could be tied to people.”

The societal aspects of fisheries became a frequently recurring concept in her work. She later spent nine months living in Madagascar on a U.S. government Fulbright Student Grant Program.

“I was working in a marine protected area,” she said, describing how it was managed by a local community, “small-scale fishers, traditional sailing vessels, that kind of thing.”

Beyond the managed area, industrial-scale fishing was permitted, but vessels from the European Union or Asian countries were entering the marine protected area. “They would get very upset,” Farquhar said. “They’d be like, ‘This boat is stealing all of our fish.’”

Often, industrial-scale fishing operations are described as “really bad for local communities, especially when the industrial fishing is by a different party and not the local community,” Farquhar said. But, empirical proof of harm is difficult to produce.

“If you think about it in terms of data, it’s really hard to prove that industrial fishing happening here is causing this household over here to lose out on meals and suffer,” she said.

Some of the difficulty in showing a link is in the recordkeeping, or lack thereof.

“There is no good long-term data for Madagascar,” Farquhar said. Even in developed nations, it can be difficult to show how food security and industrial fishing are interwoven in the local economy.

Because of COVID-19 travel restrictions, Farquhar was unable to return to Madagascar, but she did find a project in Canada, where she found, there was “much better data.”

The focus of her work in northern Quebec was in Kuujjuaq, an Inuit town on the southern side of the Hudson Straight. The town, with a population greater than 2,600 is the largest town in the Nunavik region of Quebec.

Unlike her work in Madagascar, Kujjuaq residents are developing an industrial fishing economy with the goal of benifitting the Nunavik region.

“The commercial fishery that they’re ramping up in the area is shrimp,” Farquhar said. “Shrimp is not a traditional food in the indigenous community that I’m working in. They like it, but it’s not like something that they’re (saying), ‘Yes, this is important to our culture.’”

What is important to the culture is Arctic char, a fish that looks a bit like salmon, although it has yet to catch on as an export commodity.

“It’s very important to them. It’s a really good-tasting fish. You can never find it in the United States,” she said.

The Kuujjuaq community has been fairly successful, too, exporting most of the shrimp to Asia, Farquhar said, adding although that, “they hit a bit of a bump during COVID.”

There may be a limit to how much shrimp can be harvested, however, if a healthy population of arctic char is to be maintained.

“Arctic char eats shrimp,” Farquhar noted. “So, if you’re fishing your shrimp population, is that going to affect your arctic char population?”

That remains unknown because the local ecosystem has not been well studied, something that, for Farquhar, makes working with the locals even more interesting.

“It’s very innovative work. The community is really interested in the work. They’re asking me questions to look at in my dissertation,” she said.

DUCK — For a few days this summer, three split-hull barges chugged south from Norfolk, Virginia, to deposit 6,500 cubic yards of olivine sand mined in Norway at a nearshore area of this small oceanfront town on the northern Outer Banks.

But with completion of the barge’s work in July, there’s no visible evidence that the trademarked Coastal Carbon Capture pilot research project is underway. The Vesta company project is to test whether olivine sand could permanently remove tons of carbon from the atmosphere and the ocean.

“So, I think ultimately, at the end of the day, it was a successful deployment in the sense that we’re set up for monitoring this project and getting the scientific results out of it,” Zach Cockrum, vice president of policy and partnerships with Vesta, told Coastal Review this week.

As the company’s website tells it, it’s taken decades of collaborative research to get to the point where data can be collected to support Vesta’s belief that plentiful and natural olivine could, if not outright save the planet, at least mitigate the problem.

“We could reverse climate change,” the company says on its website.

Vesta, which is permitted under the federal Clean Water Act and the state Coastal Area Management Act, has contracted with Hourglass Climate, a U.S-based nonprofit research organization, to monitor the site for two to three years. The site is a 300-foot-by-2,200-foot corridor situated 1,500 feet offshore of Duck’s beach in 25 feet of water.

Olivine, which has a light green tint, is a common magnesium silicate mineral similar to the quartz in Outer Banks sand. When it dissolves in seawater, it has the unique ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere and reduce acidity in the ocean.

Although olivine is not uncommon — there’s plenty in western North Carolina, for instance — Vesta’s coastal research is novel, including its two earlier projects testing olivine as part of shoreline replenishment and in a small area of marsh.

“But these pilot projects, using olivine in these coastal settings like this, is something that Vesta alone is doing, as far as we know, in the world,” Cockrum said.

According to company estimates, the Coastal Carbon Capture pilot project could remove at least 5,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the ocean and atmosphere. 

Eventually, the goal is that olivine, milled down to compatible grain size, could be integrated into beach nourishment projects, making the projects more affordable while helping to reduce carbon pollution. The olivine does lose its carbon removal ability over time, but further research is needed to determine how often it may need to be replenished.

As an alkaline material, olivine reacts with the carbonic acid, which contains carbon dioxide, as it weathers in the seawater. In the process, the acid is converted to bicarbonate, which provides long-term carbon storage.

Hourglass has a service agreement with the nearby Army Corps of Engineers Research and Development Center Field Research Facility, known locally as the Duck Pier, to use their equipment, vessels and amphibious vehicles at the site, Cockrum said.

“And then the researchers at the Army Corps are also looking at the sediment transport, how the olivine is moving in that ecosystem,” he added. “And that’s something that they’re interested in, outside of the carbon removal aspect of it, because olivine is a traceable mineral, so it’s helping them understand the dynamics of that coastal system.”

Hourglass is using “benthic flux chambers” that are placed on top of the sand for about a week to take consistent measurements of water over the sediment, Cockrum explained. There will also be sampling to look at benthic organisms in and around the olivine, as well as the surrounding ecosystem, and the carbon removal will be measured.

Since olivine is a natural mineral found on numerous locations, the issue is not its inherent safety; it’s what its impact would be to an ecosystem, as well as its carbon-removal ability, where it is not naturally occurring — hence, the testing at Duck. But not all olivine deposits react the same.

For instance, Papakolea Beach in Hawaii is notably green from its high olivine content. But it’s a different scenario, scientifically.

“I think the data on the naturally occurring beaches is complicated because of differences in grain size,” Cockrum said. “Like this gets way into the weeds of finer grain olivine dissolves more quickly, and therefore releases or captures carbon more efficiently. So, there are differences between the sort of existing beaches that are out there and what we’re hoping to do in these different settings. This is another thing that we’re looking at paying close attention to when I talk about how efficient is carbon removal.”

Part of the funding for research has been provided from the Coastal Carbon Capture Development Fund, a 501(c)(3) public charity. The project monitoring is also being supported by University of North Carolina Greensboro, UNC Wilmington, and the Coastal Studies Institute at East Carolina University Outer Banks Campus. 

Vesta is promising to share monitoring results publicly, including with regulatory agencies, and will be published in peer-reviewed journals.

Vesta’s monitoring partners are already starting to get some data back, Cockrum said.

“We’re in the process of basically analyzing that data and figuring out the best way to share it,” he said.

One of the most important goals of the pilot project is for data to establish how much carbon is being removed, and how quickly. And if it’s as the researchers are hoping to see, olivine could be elevated from its modest mineral status to a savior of the planet. Or at least a natural helper. 

“So, we go from here to really honing in on what is the coastal protection benefit,” he said. “Just in general, the coastal protection industry, whether it’s the Corps or any number of communities, they’re all looking for different sediment sources. And so, our hope is that we can be an affordable source of sand for any number of coastal protection projects.”

North Carolina Sea Grant has revised and expanded its “Seashells of North Carolina,” a long-trusted guide to help everyone from beachcombers to graduate students identify the treasures they find along the Tar Heel State’s beaches.

The late Hugh Porter, who was referred to as “Mr. Seashell” during his nearly 55-year career at the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, and Lynn Houser wrote the guide that was originally released in 1997, was edited by Jeannie Faris Norris, and features images captured by Beaufort-based photographer Scott Taylor.

The revised and expanded edition published in June builds on the original and includes detailed descriptions and photos of 275 species, instructions for shell identification, introductions to the biology and geographical range of these animals, and an index of scientific and common names with updated scientific terminology, per the publisher, University of North Carolina Press.

Porter, who died at 86 in 2014 in Carteret County, began his career at UNC-IMS in the 1950s as a research assistant, then served as an instructor in 1957 and just a few years later, in 1963, became an assistant professor. He retired in 1996 but was a regular fixture through 2010, according to Sea Grant.

Porter started the shell collection in 1956 that was on display at UNC-IMS during his tenure. In the late 1990s, the specimens totaling more than 233,000 were donated to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh to become part of the mollusks collection there. The collection is under the care of Research Curator Art Bogan, who is also on the team that updated the book.

Bogan, who said he primarily works with freshwater bivalves, joined the museum in 1997, when there was but a small shell collection at the museum. He learned shortly after moving into the role that UNC-IMS had donated its fish collection and Porter’s shell collection to the museum, and Bogan spent several years cataloging the thousands of specimens.

For the last 300 years, what everybody’s been using for identification is the shape, the sculpture, the color, the size to arrive at identifications, but within the last probably 25-plus years, with the advent of genetics and genomics, identifying shells has “gotten messy,” Bogan said. Researchers are going deeper by looking at comparative anatomy and dissecting the animals to see “how the plumbing all fits together” or how the organs are arranged.

Bogan, who has an obvious passion for mollusks, said that the great thing about malacology, or the study of mollusks, “is you can learn something new every day. It is changing. There are new discoveries, new species described, new resources becoming available.”

Katie Mosher, who retired earlier this year from her position as North Carolina Sea Grant’s communications director, said she started the research organization in 1998, about a year after Porter’s “Seashells of North Carolina” was published.

When she joined Sea Grant, she would witness firsthand how people could be drawn to the book.

“People would come up and just talk to us about what that book has meant to them or what it meant to their family,” Mosher said, adding that they would recount stories about taking their copies to the beach, or losing it in a flood during a hurricane, or that was at a parent’s house and unable to save it after the parent’s death.

“You hear these stories of true personal attachment that people had to a book, and it really was appealing to me,” Mosher said.

“We knew how popular (the guide) was,” Mosher continued, explaining that Sea Grant reprinted the guide several times over the past three decades, working with UNC Press for the last number of years to distribute the book.

When it was time for another reprint in the fall of 2021, UNC Press pitched to Sea Grant the idea of updating the book instead of just reprinting it.

That’s a move Sea Grant was considering at the time as well, Mosher said.

UNC Press offered to manage the printing and include the edition in its Southern Gateways Guides. 

Mosher told UNC Press it was a go, assembled a team of seashell enthusiasts, or conchologists, and got to work.

In addition to Bogan and Mosher, contributors include Jamie M. Smith, who works with Bogan at the museum, Shell Club members Edgar Shuller Jr. and Douglas Wolfe, and, with Sea Grant, Erika Young, Anna P. Zarkar and Carrie Clower. Georgia Minnich, who retired from the North Carolina Aquariums system, provided the illustrations, and the book includes new photos as well as Taylor’s from the 1997 edition.

Bogan explained that before Mosher called and asked him to help, he and a few members of the North Carolina Shell Club had been discussing the need to revise the guide, especially since the taxonomy of mollusks had changed significantly since the 1997 edition. The North Carolina Shell Club formed in 1957 and holds its annual show during May at the Crystal Coast Civic Center in Morehead City.

Club members had been keeping notes like scientific name changes in their personal versions of Porter’s edition, Bogan said.

“They had already been gathering some of the information that we would need to have for the update,” Mosher added.

Shuller, former Shell Club president, said that after he retired in the 1990s he joined the shell club in 2000. That’s when he really began to get interested in shells. In the time since, he’s had a 20-plus-year education in malacology, “and not at any university, actually, just getting your feet in the sand and digging around trying to learn what you can.”

Through that, Shuller said he began to understand the amount of work Porter had invested in the guide. One thing the users complained about with the 1997 edition, however, was that it was organized by shell shape rather than the accepted taxonomic order at the time.

But that was done for “a very good reason, I’ve come to appreciate.” It was organized by the shape of a shell to make it easier for users. “That was one thing we were worried about, and of course there was the issue of the outdated nomenclature,” Shuller said.

Shuller said he had been commenting to Bogan off and on over the years about the guide needing to be revamped.

“I didn’t know he was paying attention. I was quite surprised when he called me about this and the Shell Club was quite anxious to help out on this thing,” Shuller said. “I mean, we really were. We knew that the book needed some work to bring it up to date, and we were hoping to be able to get some of our ideas into the book,” Including having the new edition arranged taxonomically correct.

Mosher explained that the emphasis being on the shell shape in the previous edition had its value, but they wanted to make the guide organized for multiple uses. “As we were putting the book together, I was trying to think about it from my kind of every person perspective,” Mosher said.

Shuller said that to help with identification, “We came up with a very unique pictorial indexing system, which I think is going to be very useful in helping people locate the shells within the book. We have high hopes for that. I think people are going to really appreciate this particular edition.”

Young, Sea Grant’s coastal and marine education specialist, began with organization in 2022, after teaching at UNC Pembroke for 13 years. She said she has been collecting shells since she was a graduate student at UNC-IMS in the 1990s and was excited when Mosher brought her onboard.

Throughout her career, Young has used field guides and, she said that this updated version is “rigorous enough for a graduate student that needs specifics but it’s easy enough to flip through while you’re walking on the beach. It should very easily get you to where you need to be to find out what you’ve collected. And I just love that.”

Following the shell path

The team all came to appreciate seashells along different paths.

Shuller found his way to collecting mostly because of curiosity, he said, and was particularly drawn in after seeing the “fantastic, amazing exhibits” the Shell Club members put together for its annual show.

He and his partner decided to participate in the show the following year, “still not knowing anything about shells. We had picked up small shells along the beach and didn’t know what they were,” Shuller said in explaining why they got in touch with the shell club in the first place. It was to learn the names.

They soon began collecting shells in earnest, then invested in a microscope to which they could mount their camera and began taking closeups of the shells. “These were film cameras, of course, so we spent an entire summer taking pictures, taking them down to have them developed, coming back, doing it again, over and over again,” Shuller said, but they ended up with “some beautiful photos,” and they did well at the show that year.

Mosher grew up in Ohio and did not see the actual ocean until she was 18. She moved to North Carolina after college and “I really found myself drawn to the ocean for many reasons, as we all are.” When she began collecting shells, “I was just mostly enamored with the colors and the shapes and knowing, knowing that there a lot of them that we were collecting didn’t have the bright color.”

Young said that while at UNC-IMS, she would often consult Porter’s shell collection or Porter himself about what she found on the beach. Now she recognizes “what a treat that was” to have that connection with Porter, and fast-forward, she’s helping to work on the revision for his book.

Bogan grew up outside Seattle and became fascinated with shells when he was at the Academy of Sciences in Philadelphia. He was responsible for putting material into the collection.

“It becomes a lifestyle. How much do you want to learn? How much do you want to invest? How much time do you have?” Bogan said. “We learn from each other, we share facts, we ask questions, and the biggest question is, how do you flip that curiosity switch in students? Get them excited about seashells, about shell shape, animals?”

Red drum are widely known among coastal recreational anglers as one of the more fun fish to hook, particularly to those who love a good fight.

David Deuel grappled almost a mile down Hatteras Island’s Avon beach before landing the world record drum, a whopping 94 pounds, 2 ounces, in early November 1984.

But for a fish that’s one of the more popular recreational catches in North Carolina — it’s the official state saltwater fish — much remains unknown about red drum, where they spawn, their migration patterns, the distances they travel and where they go.

A two-year pilot satellite tagging study launched this month aims to unlock some of those mysteries.

The North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries in partnership with the North Carolina Marine & Estuary Foundation, will tag 20 mature red drum, or those stretching more than 32 inches long, collected next month during the division’s annual longline red drum survey in the Pamlico Sound.

This will kick off the first of two phases during the first year of the study, one that includes testing two different tagging methods. The first method will be by attaching the tag with a monofilament leader line through the musculature of the fish, allowing the tag to stream above the back dorsal fin. The second attachment method is the more conventional of the two and would allow the tag to stream closely to the side of the fish without interfering with its fins.

Marine technology manufacturer Desert Star Systems created the solar-powered SeaTag-GEO pop-up satellite tags to send daily transmissions from a fish to the ARGOS satellite to computer software that tracks the fish’s locations.

Each tag is about 7 inches long and weighs a little less than 1.5 ounces. The tags are one-time use.

During phase one of the study, division officials will be able to review the performance of the tags themselves, whether they pop off of a fish on the date they were programmed to detach (up to three months).

Data is collected daily until the tag detaches from the fish. Once the tag surfaces, it will pinpoint its final location and an accurate range of temporal and spatial data from the fish.

“This is an exciting new science for North Carolina that we will hopefully use to answer key questions and more,” said Cara Kowalchyk, red drum project lead biologist with the division. “This first year is a pilot study to learn what we can, but we just want to keep expanding. We want to keep being innovative. We want to provide positive engagement and focus on a species that is economically and socially important.”

The second phase of the project, which is expected to be complete in October, will also take place in Pamlico Sound.

During this phase, 14 fish will be tagged by division officials with the help of local fishing guides, people who know where the fish are and can take those officials to specific parts of the coastline “that we may not get through our predefined survey,” Kowalchyk said.

Tags attached to those 14 fish will be programmed to pop off at various durations, anywhere from four to six to 12 months. The additional tracking time will document more wide-ranging movement of red drum and allow researchers to pinpoint spawning sites and offshore migration locations.

Only trained division personnel will do the actual tagging. At $1,300 a pop, the tags aren’t cheap.

That cost, along with the $65 per tag, monthly subscription required to transmit recorded data from the tag to the software, has been covered by the Marine & Estuary Foundation, which approached the division about a year ago with the idea to use satellite technology to learn more about red drum.

“One of the things that we do frequently is look at the (fisheries) management plans that are developed either by the state or by the federal entities and look at their research recommendations that they put out and say, ‘OK, what are their needs here and if there are needs, can our foundation help meet those needs?’” said Chad Thomas, the nonprofit’s executive director. “So, in this specific example, one of the needs for red drum was to better understand how those fish are moving in and out of the inlet, specifically, where do they spawn, how often do they come inshore.”

Red drum are among five species the foundation “really has a focus on,” he said. The others are striped bass, flounder, weakfish and speckled trout.

“Those are the top five of what we consider our inshore coastal fisheries and whatever we can do to further the science with those five, in particular, and our understanding and our strong assumption is that when you improve the knowledge base for those five, then you’re going to improve the populations of many, many other fishes using those same habitats,” Thomas said. “It’s a great, great opportunity, I think, to look through the species that are so important to North Carolinians and say, ‘OK, how can we get better science?’”

The foundation will eventually have on its website a short educational video about the tagging efforts later this year.

Thomas said the foundation will be developing a budget and “hope to be able to strongly support the project for next year.”

The second year of the study will focus on tagging red drum in the open ocean. Tagging will be divided into two groups of red drum – one north of Cape Hatteras and the other south of the cape. Exactly how many fish will be tagged next year will depend on how much funding the program receives.

“We are going to be one of the first states implementing this, but we would love to lead the way for other states,” Kowalchyk said. “Since the northern and southern stock boundary is the North Carolina, South Carolina border, we would maybe love to participate with South Carolina, see if there’s stock mixing across that border or, with climate change, whether we’re seeing northward movement more regularly to Virginia, and partner with them. Just what we will have this year is exciting on its own and it will provide very valuable information.”

Recreational fishing guides interested in volunteering in the program may contact Thomas at cthomas@ncmefoundation.org or Kowalchyk at cara.kowalchyk@deq.nc.gov

After a year of record coastal flooding, eastern North Carolina may feel a slight reprieve from high-tide flooding days between now and April 2025.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Ocean Service last week released its 2024-25 Annual High-Tide Flooding Outlook, which projects slightly fewer of these flooding days through spring 2025 than last year. That’s because El Niño conditions are transitioning to La Niña conditions, and these two opposing climate patterns in the Pacific can affect weather worldwide.  

“Bottom line: Over the past year, we’ve seen record coastal flooding, or high-tide flooding, along our coastlines,” Nicole LeBoeuf, National Ocean Service director, during the Aug. 6 online news briefing, said. “When the ocean runs hot, sea levels run high, and we see that playing out in our coastal flooding data.”

The outlook recaps high-tide flooding events from May 2023 to April of this year at 97 NOAA tide gauges along the U.S. coast, and it projects what to expect at these locations through April 2025.

High-tide flooding, which is sometimes called nuisance or sunny-day flooding, happens when tides reach anywhere from 1 to 2 feet above the daily average high tide, and cover what is typically dry land along the coast. “As sea levels continue to rise, high-tide flooding occurs more frequently, even without severe weather,” she said.

For the 2023-24 season, coastal communities in the United States experienced seven to eight flood days, LeBoeuf said. In 2023, 34 locations broke or tied their records for flood days, which she called “a dramatic increase” from the previous year.

Hot ocean temperatures led to the highest levels of sea level measurement on record. There were 44 NOAA tide gauge locations, mostly on the East Coast, that broke or tied their previously recorded sea levels to date. This means “we got an additional 6 inches of sea level rise and five median coastal flood days annually compared to the year 2000, roughly a 200% increase,” LeBoeuf said.

The recurring climate pattern called El Niño contributed to the record-breaking 2023-24 observations.

“El Niño typically raises ocean temperatures and can result in more frequent and intense storms hitting the coastlines, especially along the East Coast, where we saw many records break this past year,” she said. “With sea level rise and high-tide flooding increasing, El Niño simply makes things worse for coastal communities, home to almost 40% of the U.S. population.”

Because high-tide flooding can degrade infrastructure, damage property and disrupt coastal ecosystems and people’s daily lives, NOAA works to help communities predict this kind of flooding and its potential impacts, she said.

NOAA maintains the tide gauges across the U.S. and its territories that make up the National Water Level Observation Network. Some of the gauges have been recording water-level data for more than 150 years. Through this network, “NOAA monitors the unrelenting creep of sea level rise and the rapid increase of high-tide flooding,” LeBoeuf said.

The outlook brings together data about high-tide flooding events between May 2023 and April 2024. That time frame is used to “account for increased sea levels in the fall and increased stormy weather during winter months, so that we can most effectively predict the year ahead,” she continued.

There are four National Water Level Observation Network stations on the North Carolina coast. According to the annual outlook, Duck experienced 22 high-tide flood days between May 2022 and April 2023 compared to 13 the year prior. Oregon Inlet Marina encountered seven days, up two from the previous year’s five. High-tide flood days at the Duke University Marine Lab at Pivers Island in Beaufort increased from six to 11. At the Wilmington tide gauge, high-tide flood days increased from two to three.

“Almost every location we measure between New York and Georgia broke their sea level and flood-day records in 2023. It’s like El Niño had the US East Coast in its Bullseye,” she said.

In the coming year, NOAA projects that the country’s coastal communities will see a median range of four to eight high-tide flooding days between May of this year and next April, which she said is slightly down from last year “as we move away from El Niño and into La Niña conditions.”

The outlook projects that for Duck, there will be nine to 15 high-tide flood days, four to seven at Oregon Inlet Marina, four to six at Duke University Marine Lab in Beaufort, and two to six in Wilmington.

NOAA’s National Ocean Service researchers predicted that this year’s Atlantic hurricane season will increase the chance of significant flooding in some places, particularly along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

Hurricane predictions are not directly factored into NOAA’s high-tide flooding outlooks, but the product “can provide situational awareness regarding baseline flooding that can compound the impacts from real-time weather events like hurricanes and tropical storms” she said. “Events like hurricanes get a lot of attention, but high-tide flooding is one of the most tangible impacts of long-term sea level rise, reminding us that while we brace for impact today, the United States must also plan for a wetter future.”

NOAA scientists project that communities across the nation will experience an average of 45 to 85 high-tide flood days per year by 2050, which means that “every four to eight days, Americans along our coast will face disruptive and damaging seawater inundation regardless of the weather at the time.”

The federal agency also produces a Monthly High Tide Flooding Outlook to provide flooding likelihoods each day of the year, up to a year in advance, offering windows of time where there’s increased flood risks.

“Together, these outlooks complement one another with information across time scales to protect lives, ecosystems and economies as towns, states, tribes and businesses are faced with increased coastal flooding,” LeBoeuf said.

Coastal Ecologist Dr. Christine Voss, who recently retired from University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences based in Morehead City, in response for comments about this high-tide outlook, explained that the trends in rising sea levels and the acceleration of global, regional and local water levels are sustained, and the data are clear. 

“If one examines the entirety of the data, there is some annual variation, yet the ‘big picture’ is unchanged. In its reports, including this one, NOAA makes clear that the Southeast US region, including coastal NC, is experiencing more high-tide flooding due to global sea-level rise, land subsidence, and regional oceanographic effects — compared to 2000 and the previous century,” she said in an email.

NOAA’s Aug. 6 article suggests that the expected development of La Niña is likely the reason that their models predict a lower number of high-tide flooding events from May 2024 through April 2025, compared to the previous year.

“So, this is the ‘regional oceanographic effects’ part of the equation. There are also numerous astronomical harmonic constituents that cause variation in our water levels,” Voss said. “Some of these harmonics have a period of up to almost 19 years,” pointing to the harmonic constituents at the NOAA Beaufort, Duke Marine Lab gauge and the Wilmington gauge.  

“Regardless of the flux in water levels, the major trend is the continued rising of sea levels and an acceleration of this trend. We, along the NC coastal region, need to proactively prepare for higher sea levels and do what we can to slow climate change,” Voss continued.

If you love the sweet taste of a fresh North Carolina bay scallop you may want to stop reading this now … but please continue — it’s not all bad news.

Although the likely invasive species of parasite that a team of University of North Carolina Wilmington researchers have identified in bay scallops here in the state is gross, these scallops are not harmful when consumed.

That’s good news for the bay scallop lover, but it’s bad news for a shellfish that has never fully recovered from a red tide event in the late 1980s, struggles to thrive in polluted waters and dwindling habitat and gets picked off by predators.

“I view this parasite as just one more hit to the scallops,” said Dr. Julia Buck, an assistant professor in UNCW’s Department of Biology and Marine Biology.

After Buck was hired on at the university in 2019, a colleague asked her a question that would set the course for an investigation to determine what type of parasite was infecting some of the bay scallops in North Carolina, where it came from, how prevalent it is in the state’s waters where bay scallops grow, and how it affects scallops.

Dr. Ami Wilbur, director of UNCW’s Shellfish Research Hatchery, first noted the parasite, a squirmy ring of white, tiny, finger-like projections around the flesh of a scallop she was examining in 2012.

It would be several years before she would get the opportunity to meet Buck and ask the most basic of biological questions: What is it?

Buck promptly determined the parasite was a trematode. Trematodes are a diverse group of organisms in which thousands of species have been known to science for a long time.

But this particular species of trematode was a mystery.

The literature Buck and Wilbur dove into provided no clues. The pair fanned out pictures of infected scallops to fellow scientists up the East Coast (bay scallops are not commonly found from South Carolina south to Florida’s Atlantic Coast) and across the Gulf of Mexico.

Scientists responded with two very different answers. Those in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Virginia had not seen the parasite.

A scientist on Florida’s Gulf coast had and, after researchers did some genetic sampling, they determine the parasites found off Florida’s west coast were the same as those found in North Carolina.

“The bay scallop is an iconic species that people care a lot about,” Buck said. “And yet, even though this parasite is very visible to the naked eye – when you open the scallop you see that it is infected – no one had described the parasite. There was no record of it in the literature whatsoever. That’s really weird. We would have seen it 100 years ago and there would have been a record of it in the literature. The fact that it’s not there tells us that it’s likely an invasive species.”

The team at UNCW conducted DNA sequencing, a laboratory process that allows scientists to learn the exact order of the four building blocks that make up DNA, and compared it to DNA in a database of genetic sequences known as GenBank.

They found the parasite’s closest known relative, a genus that was only recently described, in Australia.

Researchers can’t say with absolute certainly that this species of trematode came from Australia to the U.S.

Buck can only theorize that the parasite infected plankton that hitched a ride on a container ship.

What the team does know is that trematodes have a complex life cycle. They need to infect multiple hosts in order to make it to adulthood.

“We don’t actually know the specific identify of any of those hosts except for the bay scallop at the moment,” Buck said.

What they suspect is that this species of trematode initially latches onto a scallop before it goes on to a small crustacean, like a copepod, a tiny crustacean that is a key component in the marine food chain.

The theory is that infected copepods get eaten by smaller fish and smaller fish get eaten by larger fish. The adult worm develops in the larger fish, where the worm releases eggs, which then infect more bay scallops.

The team research, supported by North Carolina Sea Grant, found that the parasite is now found in most waterways where bay scallops live.

Fellow researcher and former UNCW graduate student Hailea Boggess, who earned her master’s last December, looked at wild scallops in places including Chadwick Bay and Core Sound.

“We basically covered the area in North Carolina where scallops exist because we wanted to know what the prevalence was throughout North Carolina,” Buck said.

Roughly speaking, Boggess found around 20% of the wild scallops she collected to be infected by the parasite.

Researchers found that infections are seasonal and that parasites are likely dropped off by larger host fish, perhaps tarpons, that migrate to North Carolina in the summer then head south back to Florida when the water turns cool.

“We see new infections happening over the wintertime,” Buck said. “This is just every single year we look this is exactly the same pattern we find.”

Ongoing research suggests that the parasite does not try to kill its initial host, but that it does try to steal as much energy as it can to put into its own reproduction.

Trematodes castrate their initial host, which means the parasite strips the scallops they infect of the ability to reproduce.

Buck said the team has also found that the parasites affect the growth of the scallops they infect, perhaps because the parasite lives in a scallop’s gills, making it hard for the scallop, a filter feeder, to eat.

Additional research, including physiological effects the parasite has on scallops, is expected to be published later.

Coastal Review reached out to Adam Tyler, owner and operator of Core Sound Oyster Co. in Smyrna, who recalled the days of his youth when the sound teemed with scallops, a shellfish he calls “sweet as candy.”

“At wintertime at low tide you would go down to the grass flats with a five-gallon bucket and fill it,” with scallops, he said.

The N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries lists the status of the bay scallop fishery as “depleted,” with harvests in recent years decreasing to practically no landings.

“Used to (scalloping) was something you could bank on,” Tyler said. “If oystering was poor, you’d go scalloping. You could always go scalloping, go oystering in the wintertime if there were no fish and now, unfortunately with the decline of the scallops and the regulations, everybody is being forced commercially into the same fisheries, which is further straining resources, which leads to more regulation and more consolidation.”

He’s watched large schools of rays come through and decimate juvenile scallop beds. He “always swore” predation and water quality have been largely to blame for the population decline.

The discovery of the parasite, “was completely new to me,” he said.

If he’s come across infected scallops, he doesn’t know it. Tyler said he can shuck one scallop in about 25-30 seconds.

“When you’re cutting them that fast you really don’t look at it closely like that,” he said. “You just spent all day catching them and now you’ve got to spend half the night opening them.”

Shucking involves removing the gills, which means parasites are likely pulled and tossed aside.

Any remaining parasite is killed off if when the scallop is cooked or frozen, Buck said.

“There are some shellfish-borne diseases, but by-and-large most marine parasites aren’t compatible in humans,” said Jeff Dobbs, a marine biologist with the Division of Marine Fisheries. “I definitely don’t want to be an alarmist about this parasite in particular. In fact, we have seen some promising upticks in Core Sound and Back Sound and Pamlico Sound.”

He encourages anyone with questions or concerns to contact the division’s Shellfish Sanitation and Recreational Water Quality section.

He also asked that anyone who sees shellfish die-offs contact the division.

Of the more than 250 freshwater fish species in North Carolina, there’s a surprising amount that venture into marine and estuarine waters.

Which ones? That answer can be found in the 464-page “A Guide to North Carolina’s Freshwater Fishes,” published in March.

“From Wolf Creek, the westernmost community in Cherokee County, to the small Outer Banks town of Buxton in Dare County, North Carolina’s fresh waters are home to forty families of fishes: Thirty-one families whose species are primarily freshwater, five families whose species are primarily marine and estuarine, and four families whose species are almost evenly split between freshwater and marine,” the introduction begins.

The University Of North Carolina Press in Chapel Hill published the guide that is an update to the 1991 “The Freshwater Fishes of North Carolina” by Edward F. Menhinick.

Authors are North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences Ichthyology Collections Manager Gabriela Hogue, museum adjunct researcher Bryn Tracy, Scott Smith and Jesse Bissette, both with North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries, and Fred “Fritz” Rohde, a fisheries biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Beaufort Lab.

Illustrated with 546 full-color images, the new guidebook has data on all freshwater fish families and 260 maps showing where to find them, the state’s ichthyological history, or study of fishes, a key to help identify fish, and an appendix that explains the meaning behind the scientific names. The paperback, $35, and the eBook, $9.99, can be purchased online from the publisher and in the museum’s gift shop.

The authors all expressed their commitment to educating the public about the often-misunderstood freshwater fish in all of North Carolina’s waters.

“This book is a culmination of my 50 years spent studying the freshwater fishes of our beautiful state,” Rohde told Coastal Review in an email response. “Unfortunately, too many people have no idea of the fish diversity that we have in the coastal area — it’s more than Largemouth Bass and ‘bream’ — and we hope that our book will enlighten them.”

The guidebook is to help people understand what’s in the state’s streams, see how beautiful the state’s fishes are, and then maybe “become an advocate to help conserve our waters,” Tracy said during a recent conversation with Hogue and Coastal Review.

Hogue agreed.

“We want people to be able to identify every fish where they’re at in the freshwaters of North Carolina, but also just fall in love with them,” Hogue said. “Most people think it’s just the marine fishes that are beautifully colored, that are intricate, that have weird features, and yes, they’re incredible, but we have incredible diversity and beauty, and strange, weird features and structures in our freshwaters too.”

Bissette and Smith explained in an email that this is a resource anglers and nature enthusiasts who frequent coastal areas can use to explore inland freshwater regions.

“Having a comprehensive guide to freshwater fishes can enhance their appreciation and knowledge of the diverse species they might encounter throughout North Carolina, including those freshwater fish that occasionally stray into brackish or coastal waters, such as Longnose Gar, and those saltwater fish that sometimes venture into freshwater, like Striped Mullet.”

Freshwater isn’t a misnomer for the fish families that spend time in waters with higher salinity.

“Fish don’t adhere to the boundaries we draw, often moving between ‘freshwater’ and ‘saltwater’ habitats. Many species also have life cycles in both freshwater and saltwater ecosystems,” Bissette and Smith continued.

For example, they said, an anadromous fish like striped bass and American shad spend the majority of their lives in saltwater but return to freshwater to spawn. Also, many rivers and streams flow into coastal areas, creating the estuarine environments those on the coast know and love.

“Understanding the freshwater species that contribute to these ecosystems helps to shed light on the broader ecological dynamics at play in coastal regions,” they said.

Tracy and Hogue both said they’ve spent decades studying fish.

Tracy took a few courses on ichthyology in the late 1970s while at University of Missouri-Columbia for undergrad and grad school. After graduating, he spent 13 years as an environmental biologist for a power company, then spent the rest of his career as an environmental specialist with North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Quality. He assessed the relationship between fish health and water quality until he retired in 2017.

Hogue, who has been at the museum since the late 1990s, said she’s always had a love for the water.

After a snorkeling trip with her father, which she called “just an incredible experience,” her interest in studying fish was piqued, but she never thought it was a career option. Unlike most of her classmates studying biology as undergrad at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, she did not want to go pre-med. She told her reasons to her academic adviser who encouraged her to find her passion, and she did while doing research at the Illinois Natural History Survey, which houses millions of specimens.

Once she finished graduate school there, she joined the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission staff to take aquatic inventories in state parks. Three years later in 1998, she moved to the natural sciences museum and has been there since.

Tracy said they first met to discuss the idea of a book in 2012, and began in earnest in 2020.

Tracy didn’t want to spend 10 years writing several-inch-thick tomes on fishes “that you could use as a doorstop,” so he, Hogue and Rohde wrote a short paper before publishing “An Annotated Atlas of the Freshwater Fishes of North Carolina” in October 2020, he said.

The roughly 200-page PDF had been downloaded more than 4,400 times as of last week and is available to anyone at no charge.

When the atlas was made available, Hogue said that almost immediately they were asked when the book would be coming out. As the number of downloads increased, so did the decision to “dive in and do this.”

They used data from the 2020 atlas and the Fishes of North Carolina project, which began in 2013 to identify all of the state’s known freshwater and marine fishes, to update the 1991 freshwater fish guide. Both the atlas and Fishes of North Carolina website are companions to the new guide.

A lot has changed since that early 1990s edition. There are new species, new distributions and even new names. “Even though this book was great in its heyday,” it was time for an update, Tracy explained.

Hogue explained that they had a few goals with the book, chiefly, making it accessible both financially and for all audiences.

“We didn’t want to just write a book for ichthyologists, or students who are hoping to be ichthyologists. We wanted to make it for anybody that wants to know more about fish,” Hogue said.

Hogue said that science doesn’t always seem accessible and she feels scientists need to just “take off that white lab coat” and dispel the belief that “we’re all geniuses because we’re scientists. No, I’m just a regular person that loves fish.”

Also, in terms of accessibility, Hogue was adamant the guide includes a photo glossary explaining how to use a dichotomous key and a glossary. A dichotomous key is a sequence of paired statements that help the user identify a species.

“In North Carolina, we are so lucky that we have these ecoregions,” Hogue continued. “We’ve got the mountains, we’ve got the Piedmont, we’ve got the coast, we’ve got the sandhills, and so that also creates incredible diversity in the habitats of these species, and that’s why I think we have such a rich diversity.”

The Wildlife Resources Commission published the 1991 guide, and Hogue approached the state agency for help with the update. The commission came through, providing a $15,000 grant that helped keep the book cost relatively low. The project also received a $950 photography grant to travel the state for better images from the North Carolina Chapter of the American Fisheries Society.  

The hope is to make downloads of a chapter or the entire book available at no charge. “But we haven’t gotten to that level yet,” Tracy added. “We’re not in it for the money.”

Hogue said the “incredible research collection” that she manages at North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences helped with data for the book.

The collection of about 1.4 million specimens focuses on southeastern United States because it is “such a hotspot for biodiversity.”

The museum’s sizable collection, most of which is available on a globally accessible database, is made up of smaller collections museums, researchers, universities and others donated for a variety of reasons. Either the institution didn’t have the funds any more to maintain a collection, or the department moved in a different direction, Hogue said.

When the museum was founded, the intent was to showcase what is in North Carolina, “but it’s not like a fish knows a geopolitical boundary,” so that focus has widened, she said. In addition to the Southeast, 67 are countries represented in the collection.

A study on last year’s extreme heat and the National Weather Service’s most recent seasonal outlook both point to 2024 being just as warm or even warmer than 2023’s record-breaking temperatures.

Researchers behind the study, “2023 summer warmth unparalleled over the past 2,000 years,” found that not only was 2023 reported as the hottest year on record, for most of the Northern Hemisphere, the year also included the warmest summer in 2,000 years.

Dr. Jan Esper and Dr. Max Torbenson, geography professors at Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany, and Dr. Ulf Büntgen, a professor from Cambridge’s Department of Geography, wrote the study published this month in the journal Nature.

Esper explained during a recent online press briefing that the study places the 2023 temperature extremes into a long-term context, in this case the last two millennia.

They combined existing meteorological records with data from the nine longest temperature sensitive tree-ring chronologies to examine June, July and August surface air temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere extra-tropics, Esper said. This region is between the latitude line that runs through New Orleans and Cairo, or 30 degrees north, and the North Pole, 90 degrees north.

The researchers also found that the temperature baseline from the 19th century used to contextualize global warming for the Paris Agreement is cooler by a few tenths of a degree than previously thought.

This period is really not well covered with instruments, Esper said of the years 1850-1900, but at least for the region in the Northern Hemisphere that was studied, the tree rings “can do really, really well.” He said the tree ring data can be used as a substitute and show the early instrumental temperature errors.

The study also found that in the last 60 years, greenhouse gas emissions have caused El Niño events to become stronger, leading to hotter summers, and 2023 is consistent with a greenhouse gases-induced warming trend that is amplified by an unfolding El Niño event.

The current El Niño is forecast to end early this summer, and past data shows that there is a lag between extreme El Niño conditions and large-scale temperature deviations, making it likely that 2024 will see temperature records broken again.

“When you look at the long sweep of history, you can see just how dramatic recent global warming is,” Büntgen said in a statement. “2023 was an exceptionally hot year, and this trend will continue unless we reduce greenhouse gas emissions dramatically.”

Officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information explained in its global monthly report that April 2024 is the 11th-consecutive month of record-high global temperatures. The month ranked as the warmest April on record, suggesting that Büntgen is right that the heat trend is continuing.

According to the global annual temperature rankings outlook, “there is a 61% chance that 2024 will rank as the warmest year on record and a 100% chance that it will rank in the top five of warmest years recorded.”

And, “based on current anomalies and historical global annual temperature readings, it appears that it is virtually certain that 2024 will be a top 10 year, consistent with a strong propensity since 1988 for recent years to be initially ranked as a top 10 year,” NOAA officials said.

State relief programs

To help communities take action to reduce the health effects caused by extreme heat exposure, Gov. Roy Cooper’s office announced Tuesday that May 26-June 1 is North Carolina Heat Awareness Week, and reminded residents of the state’s heat-preparedness tools.

“As our summers continue to get hotter, today’s proclamation raises awareness of the many tools and resources available to keep our communities safe from extreme heat,” Cooper said.

On the state level, several programs have been launched to help communities weather the heat, especially for outdoor workers, infants and children, older adults, pregnant people, athletes, low-income individuals and people with underlying health conditions who are at higher risk for heat-related illnesses.

The N.C. Office of Recovery and Resiliency, N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, N.C. State Climate Office and the Duke University Heat Policy Innovation Hub teamed up to create the Heat Action Plan Toolkit for health departments, local governments and other community partners to develop their own plans specific to their needs.

Chief Resilience Officer Dr. Amanda Martin told Coastal Review Wednesday that the state wants everyone to know the signs of heat illness when they are enjoying the summer sun at the coast.

“Extended extreme heat is dangerous to the human body. Perhaps just as dangerous as the actual heat is ignoring the protective factors that reduce and eliminate heat illness and death,” Martin said. “Last year was the hottest year in 2,000 years, so it’s more important than ever for outdoor workers and indoor workers without air conditioning to take breaks, access cooler air, and drink water. Senior citizens, young children and people with health conditions are especially vulnerable to heat waves.”

Also, the state Health and Human Services’ Climate and Health Program launched its Heat Health Alert System this month to notify subscribers when the heat index is expected to reach unhealthy levels in their county. The program operates a Heat-Related Illness Surveillance System from May through September and documents weekly emergency department visits for heat-related illness in the state.

“We want all North Carolinians to enjoy a safe and healthy summer,” said Dr. Susan Kansagra, Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Public Health, in a news release. “With more than 3,900 emergency department visits for heat-related illness in North Carolina last summer, preparing for extreme heat at the local level is critical to protecting the health of North Carolina residents and workers.” 

The Office of Recovery and Resiliency announced last week its newest product, the NC Resilience Exchange website, an interactive resource to help local and state leaders find relevant information in the wealth of climate data available online.

“The Exchange offers funding opportunities, a directory of experts, interactive mapping tools, model ordinances and more in a one-stop-shop that is relevant to North Carolina communities,” according to the website.

Federal efforts

At the federal level, the Biden-Harris administration on May 20 announced it had committed $4.55 million for the interagency National Integrated Heat Health Information System  “to enhance community science observations and data collection on extreme heat, and provide assistance to communities planning for and evaluating equitable heat resilience projects.”

NOAA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention founded the system in 2015 to lead developing community resilience to the effects of extreme heat.

The Center for Collaborative Heat Monitoring based at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham will assist organizations conduct local climate and health studies. The Center for Heat Resilient Communities that will be based out of California and Arizona is to offer diverse expertise and knowledge-sharing hubs to identify and evaluate policies, protocols, and lessons for heat resilience.

“The impacts of extreme heat caused by climate change are an increasing threat to our health, ecosystems and economy,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said in a statement, adding that this investment will support new Centers of Excellence “to help protect historically excluded communities from the dangers of extreme heat, boost climate resilience and increase awareness on best practices to tackle the climate crisis.”

The Durham center will work with the Arizona Science Center, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, and the Museum of Science in Boston to serve the entire country at a regional level.

Officials with the museum said the center will observe, monitor and evaluate factors influencing heat risk at a local scale in 30 historically disadvantaged communities over the next three years. The center is a broad collaborative effort leveraging these place-based institutions and supported by the technical capacity and expertise at CAPA Strategies, Utah State University, the North Carolina State Climate Office, and AQUEHS Corp.

“The past few years have shown us that we can work towards fixing what we can measure,” said Max Cawley, principal investigator for new center and the Museum of Life and Science’s Director for Climate Research and Engagement. “And when it comes to heat imperilment, how you measure also matters. We’re eager to convene a strong collaborative partnership towards expanding where we can measure heat and who’s involved in measuring it.”

Last month, the National Weather Service and the CDC released an experimental online tool called HeatRisk.

HeatRisk provides a color-coded forecast of risk of heat-related impacts that could occur over a 24-hour period. HeatRisk takes into consideration how unusual the heat is for the time of the year, the duration of the heat including both daytime and nighttime temperatures, and if those temperatures pose an elevated risk of heat-related impacts based on data from the CDC, according to the website.

“Climate change is causing more frequent and intense heat waves that are longer in duration, resulting in nearly 1,220 deaths each year in the U.S. alone,” NOAA Administrator Dr. Rick Spinrad said in April when the tool was released. “Last year was the warmest year on record for the globe, and we just experienced the warmest winter on record. HeatRisk is arriving just in time to help everyone, including heat-sensitive populations, prepare and plan for the dangers of extreme heat.”

CDC Director Mandy Cohen explained during a news conference that the tool will help “protect health and improve lives and to prepare for what we anticipate will be a very hot summer. Heat is a threat to our health. Heat can make underlying health conditions worse and heat related illness like heat exhaustion and heat stroke can cause serious illness and even lead to death. Heat can be especially dangerous for certain people, including very young kids.”

Note: This report features images of a whale necropsy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Climate change also plays a role.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tidal flooding is creating a potential public health hazard on the streets and roads of coastal towns, according to a recently published study.

The study found elevated levels of fecal bacteria in water samples collected over the course of two months from a tidal creek in Beaufort and its streets following rainfall.

Dr. Natalie Nelson, an associate professor at North Carolina State University, explained that the study reaffirmed what researchers already knew — stormwater runoff is the largest culprit of elevated levels, or levels that exceed regulatory recreational water quality standards, of enterococcus bacteria in Taylors Creek.

Tidal flooding forces water into the town’s stormwater system that empties into Taylors Creek. When the system exceeds capacity, water overspills onto road surfaces.

This type of flooding occurs when rainfall causes saltwater to overflow from the ocean, sounds and estuaries and, because of sea level rise, it’s becoming more prominent in coastal areas like Beaufort.

Samples collected from floodwater patches on roadways almost consistently had elevated concentrations of enterococcus bacteria.

And, in some cases, bacteria in those samples maxed out the detection limit, Nelson said.

“What it indicates to us is that the concentrations were likely high because of a source from within the stormwater network,” she said. “We say that because the floodwaters, it’s not like they were so extensive that we could really argue that they might be flushing the land surface. But, because those floodwater patches were pretty small, we think the elevated concentrations were coming from within the stormwater network.”

When floodwaters glazing the roadways drained back into the stormwater system during ebb tide, researchers recorded higher levels of bacteria in the creek, indicating that the contamination in the creek is coming from the stormwater network, Nelson said.

The contamination wasn’t present in all of the locations sampled and the presence of the contamination was brief, she said.

Enterococci are bacteria that live in the gastrointestinal tract of humans and warm-blooded animals. People who swim or play in waters with bacteria levels higher than state and federal standards have an increased risk of developing gastrointestinal illness or skin infections.

“I think the problem that we uncovered is not at all unique to Beaufort,” Nelson said. “The stormwater network was never designed to have water come back up through it and then go into places where pedestrians encounter and so we’re now in an era where we have to think about how our infrastructure systems are being stressed in new ways and how that might lead to new types of issues like maybe floodwaters having issues with contamination, but it’s a topic of ongoing research.”

In recent years, Beaufort has repaved hundreds of feet of one downtown street with pervious pavement, which allows water to soak through to the ground rather than route the water to the town’s stormwater system.

That project fell under the 2017 Beaufort Watershed Restoration Plan, one that aims to restore hydrology and reduce polluted runoff using retrofits that direct stormwater to filtrate into the ground or collect it for later use.

The town is among a number of coastal communities that have been examining how to best respond to what researchers often call “sunny day flooding” and other weather-related issues that are being exacerbated by the changing climate.

Dozens of coastal municipalities and counties have received grants through the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management’s N.C. Resilient Coastal Communities Program, or NC-RCCP.

The program is a creation of the state’s 2020 Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan, which was the result of Executive Order 80 signed by Gov. Roy Cooper in October 2018.

NC-RCCP aims to boost resilience efforts in the state’s 20 coastal counties and encourages those who live and work along the coast to participate in finding solutions to prioritize projects designed to help their communities bounce back from storms and floods.

For more information about tidal flooding and precautions, visit North Carolina Sea Grant’s website.

The bright green scum coating areas of the Cape Fear River’s surface caught everyone by surprise.

Until that summer in 2009, no one had seen Microcystis blooms in the river, which for decades leading up to that point had been monitored for algae.

“The community members, researchers, the water utilities, this was a really strange system to have these types of cyanobacterial blooms,” in the Cape Fear, said Madi Polera, a doctoral candidate at North Carolina State University. “Many historic blooms are typically associated with some kind of nearby, still-moving water, like another lake or reservoir, and the blooms appear immediately downstream.”

Even more baffling was the fact that the blooms abruptly stopped appearing in the river in 2012 — and they haven’t appeared since.

The presence of blooms set off a flurry of investigations. Water utilities studied what types of toxins the blooms may have been emitting into the drinking water supply and how to best remove those toxins from the raw water source. Wildlife officials wanted to know how the blooms might affect fisheries, particularly the anadromous fish swimming upstream to spawn.

Two years after the blooms disappeared, researchers in 2014 initiated a forensic-like investigation to rule out any possible explanation of how the algae got into the river, how to prepare for a reoccurrence of the blooms, and seek out ways to prevent the blooms from sprouting up on the river’s surface again.

Polera, one of the authors of the study that was published in March, explained that the investigation was not one where researchers tried to prove anything.

The study “was just what is the most likely, the most plausible aspects that we could not rule out,” Polera told Coastal Review via telephone earlier this week.

Microcystis algae blooms are made from a recipe largely of nitrogen and phosphorous. The cyanobacteria thrives in waters like lakes and ponds, blooming during warm summer months before hunkering down into the sediment, where it lies dormant in the winter.

Microcystis blooms produce a few different types of toxins, primarily microcystin. Microcystin can affect the liver and is considered a possible human carcinogen by the Environmental Protection Agency. If ingested, microcystin and the other toxins can cause digestive issues and may cause flu-like symptoms in both humans and animals.

Dogs are especially sensitive to microcystin.

The blooms in the Cape Fear River were localized primarily upstream of Lock and Dam No. 1, an area where conditions are ripe for algae growth because of the lake-like effect the dam has on the water. The dam is near Riegelwood, a community roughly 30 miles upstream of Wilmington and near the drinking water source intake for thousands in the region.

“What we really tried to do was look at everything that we know about the biology of Microcystis and what can contribute to it and kind of go down the list to rule out any possible explanation,” Polera said. “We started with the conditions in the river and we asked what is special about these four summers and at this location that may have changed to now support these blooms that we’ve never seen before.”

Were the summers between 2009 and 2012 particularly hot? Was there an unusual amount of nutrients in the river? Did the turbidity change in a way that would favor Microcystis blooms?

Polera first turned to monitoring data collected between the early 1990s through the 2000s. It was determined that there was nothing particularly unique about those summers or that location.

Researchers then turned way upstream to Jordan Lake where waters, they knew, had harbored other cyanobacteria in the past. Could a chance in the lake have created conditions that allowed Microcystis to incubate there and send it down river?

No. Researchers determined that the blooms that appeared that far downstream could not have possibly gotten there from the lake.

“We’ve never seen blooms at any other areas of the river that have the same type of lake-like characteristics that Lock and Dam 1 does. There were no blooms behind Buckhorn Dam, no blooms behind Lock and Dam 3 and there were occasional surges out of Jordan Lake when they got really big rains that we didn’t see blooms immediately following that,” Polera said.

Next, researchers focused a little closer to Lock and Dam No. 1, turning their attention to major industrial dischargers.

They were able to rule out wastewater treatment plants in Fayetteville and Elizabethtown.

But they could not eliminate Smithfield Foods’ plant in Tar Heel, a tiny town in Bladen County that’s home to the largest pork-processing facility in the country.

After confirming the presence of Microcystis in samples of discharge from the plant, researchers combed through monitoring reports to look at whether there was a correlation between when the facility discharged into the river and when the blooms appeared.

Next, researchers compared the Microcystis found in the plant’s discharge to that found downstream near the dam.

“Yes, there’s chlorophyll in there. Yes, there’s Microcystis. Yes, there’s enough nutrients. Yes, they were discharging during the times. Yes, they were discharging enough based on our calculations and modeling that what was coming out of the discharge was enough to seed the population that we saw downstream. I just can’t find anything in their data and in our sampling to say, no, this wasn’t possible,” Polera said.

One simple way to prevent the possibility of future blooms, she said, is for regulatory agencies to require industries that may have chlorophyll a, which allows algae to use sunlight to convert molecules into organic compounds, to monitor for that particular type of chlorophyll.

The EPA is currently proposing revisions to wastewater discharge standards for meat and poultry products facilities. The revisions would require facilities to reduce the amounts of nutrients and other pollutants they discharge by using “affordable and available wastewater treatment technologies.”

“I think the good news is we have been watching now for over 10 years,” Polera said. “We’ve been prepped and ready to go if it ever does happen again. The water utilities are very prepared, if it does happen, to make sure that nothing gets into the drinking water and they can do that very effectively. As far as the risk goes, the water utilities and researchers that are really keeping an eye on the conditions of the river have it covered. My hope is that with all that preparation and additional monitoring, I would be surprised if we see it again.”

WILMINGTON – North Carolina’s leading PFAS researchers aim to trace the chemical compounds found in waterways, air and soil in the state to the polluters emitting them.

Using newly acquired machines called mass spectrometers, scientists will also have the ability to identify per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances not in the Environmental Protection Agency’s registry, one that has steadily grown over the past several years from a few thousand to 15,000 known PFAS today.

The brand-new fleet of mass spectrometers are being disbursed to research labs on a handful of university campuses that are part of the North Carolina Policy Collaboratory’s PFAS Testing Network.

Referred to as the PFAST Network, this group of academic researchers was created after scientists at N.C. State University and the EPA discovered that the Cape Fear River, the drinking water sources for tens of thousands, contained elevated levels of PFAS.

The discovery sparked what has become a nationally-recognized, state-led effort to better understand the potential human health effects of PFAS and ways to cut down the amount of these chemicals from getting into the environment.

Academic researchers, state legislators, environmental regulators and representatives with Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., the multibillion-dollar company that makes the mass spectrometers, recently hosted a press conference on the campus of the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Center for Marine Science to announce how the technology will be used to expand PFAS research here in the state.

Related: Secretaries’ Science Board to review PFAS’ effects

Dr. Lee Ferguson, an environmental analytical chemist and assistant professor at Duke University, said the investments by the North Carolina General Assembly, which has pumped millions into PFAS research, and the collaboration with Thermo Fisher, puts the network at the cusp of increasing the sophistication of its PFAS investigations.

The mass spectrometers will allow researchers to move from canvassing the state for PFAS contamination to “understanding sources, tracking those sources, fingerprinting those sources and then move into collaborations with treatment technologies and treatment engineers to try to remove those contamination sources,” he said.

“Specifically, the new instrumentation that we are getting, and already have in some cases, will allow us to do things like ultra-fast and ultra-sensitive, targeted and nontargeted analysis so that we can try to get a picture of those 15,000 PFAS compounds that may be present,” Ferguson said.

In all, five mass spectrometers are being delivered to labs at Duke University, N.C. State, UNCW and East Carolina University.

Thermo Fisher showcased a mock mass spectrometer at the March 27 afternoon press conference. The instrument is not exactly a visual marvel. It looks like a large, boxy-shaped piece of equipment you might see in any given lab.

Each machine will be used like a key that will unlock some of the mysteries about PFAS –which PFAS are in the environment, what levels of them are in the environment, where they’re coming from and what treatments are available to reduce the amount that get into the environment.

UNCW Professor Dr. Ralph Mead explained that the mass spectrometer in a lab he heads at the university’s Center for Marine Science will be used to investigate samples of everything from rain and snow to soil.

“Specifically, the questions that we’re trying to address is understanding can we use that instrument to develop a forensics approach to trace the source of PFAS, as well as understand the fate and ultimate transport of it,” he said.

As researchers gather this and other information, they will be able to create an online library, one that would be a resource for environmental regulators and law makers navigating how much to crack down on industries that use PFAS to make a sweeping array of consumer goods.

The General Assembly will, by this July, have appropriated more than $50 million for the collaboratory specifically to perform PFAS-related research in the state.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-New Hanover, one of a small number of state delegates who spoke at last week’s press conference, said North Carolina is fortunate, not because it is, in some respects, ground zero for PFAS, but because the state has some of the leading experts to take on PFAS research.

“Here we are today utilizing state-of-the-art equipment from a great company to really accomplish some of the goals that we not only want as a state, but we want as a solution to a worldwide problem,” he said.

Rep. Deb Butler, D-New Hanover, said the discovery of PFAS in the Cape Fear region is a reminder of the far-reaching consequences of unchecked pollution.

“For too long, PFAS contamination has lurked beneath the surface undetected and unchecked,” she said. “In my opinion, we have not been diligent enough on the front-end of manufacturing and that must change. We must demand stringent standards for PFAS emissions, as well as any discharge that affects our public trust resources. We must strengthen enforcement mechanisms and promote pollution prevention initiatives. By addressing the root causes of contamination rather than focusing on the cleanup, we will better serve the citizens of North Carolina.”

Put out the flags. A hurricane is coming.

Long before the days of around-the-clock hurricane news coverage, there were flags.

A little more than 150 years ago, the U.S. Army Signal Corps, the 1870s equivalent of the National Weather Service, issued the first U.S. hurricane warning by setting out signal flags from Cape May, New Jersey, to New London, Connecticut.

We’ve come a long way in our hurricane forecasting abilities since those warning flags were hoisted Aug. 21, 1873, but there’s work to be done.

University of North Carolina Chapel Hill researchers have been developing a forecast model that will help predict in real time whether worst-case scenario conditions might occur in communities that are within multiple flood risk zones.

It’s known as compound flooding, when at least two flood hazards, including storm surge, high tides, rainfall and high river flow, occur in a single weather event such as a hurricane.

Dr. Shintaro Bunya, a research scientist with the university’s Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, and Dr. Rick Luettich, director of the institute and principal investigator of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security-funded Coastal Resilience Center, are creating an efficient prediction model that will include rivers, tributaries, canals, creeks, streams and other water features, into something called the ADCIRC.

The ADCIRC Prediction System is a network of computer programs that model concurrent information on storm surge impacts in coastal communities.

Bunya in a telephone interview earlier this month explained that the flooding models are currently limited in predicting compound flooding events because they do not include smaller rivers and tributaries.

Those areas are “very important because people are living on the smaller tributaries and they are interested in the local flooding,” he said.

As a hurricane approaches, state and local emergency management officials rely on forecasts to determine if and when they should issue evacuations and deploy resources to communities.

“We have to be able to compute a model that really details very efficiently because what we are going to do is predictions, or forecasts, so we have to provide valuable information for decision makers. Efficiencies really matter for timely decision making,” Bunya said. “Even if the information is valuable, if it’s too late, it’s too late so the time really matters in the forecast.”

Dr. Brian Blanton, oceanographer and director of the university’s Renaissance Computing Institute’s earth data sciences, explained that there are a variety of approaches that look at how to deal with compound flooding.

So, it’s not a novel concept, he said.

But Bunya and Luettich’s idea to bring two prediction models together — models for river flow and models for storm surge — and get them to communicate as fast as possible and implement them into the ADCIRC is, Blanton said.

“That was the path that we took in terms of extending the capabilities of our very useful, very well documented coastal model for storm surge and enabling it to treat rivers in a more natural way,” he said.

“That’s the advantage there because now what we can do is we can, in many situations, with one model, simulate a lot of the mechanisms that are going on in this so-called compound flooding problem,” Blanton continued. “This is actually really important for things like evacuation decisions because if you had a really conservative estimate of storm surge that covered the entire southern part of the North Carolina coast would you really want to evacuate everything from Hatteras down to the South Carolina border? That’s notoriously expensive.”

There are places along the North Carolina coast where rivers come together with very complex tidal inlets.

While these intricate, small rivers that flow into these areas do not, overall, contribute much to the total amount of water along the coast, locally they can have a huge impact, Blanton said.

Take, for example, the New River. Some “very complicated” upstream rivers flow into the New River, one that has a rather narrow outlet to the ocean, Blanton said.

Looking at a more traditional model, one that is missing information, is not a sufficient way to predict compound flooding in that area.

“So, a way to address that was to improve the model itself and to handle the situation where rivers have a pretty strong influence on what’s going on,” Blanton said.

Bunya said they will begin testing the model this year during the upcoming hurricane season.

Sinking land areas in major coastal cities could intensify climate change-related flooding and inundation in the next 25 years, concludes a new study.

For the analysis, “Disappearing cities on US coasts” published earlier this month in Nature, the team of scientists combined data on the rising or lowering of land with sea level rise projections to calculate the potential inundated areas in 32 coastal cities, including Wilmington.

“As sea level rises and land subsides, the hazards associated with climate extremes (for example, hurricanes and storm surges), shoreline erosion and inundation of low-lying coastal areas grow,” which is a “factor that is often underrepresented in coastal-management policies and long-term urban planning,” the study states.

Sea levels are expected to rise about a foot by 2050. Researchers used 2020 data as a baseline to predict how much land this will cover within the next 25 years. Then, to see how much more land is projected to be exposed to flooding and inundation because of subsidence, or sinking land, high-resolution vertical land motion and elevation data was added to the sea level rise predictions.

Leonard Ohenhen, lead author of the study, told Coastal Review in an email that they found that most communities on U.S. coasts are sinking and at different rates.

“This sinking in combination with climate change-induced sea level rise poses a significant flood hazard to major communities on the US coasts, including NC. In total, a maximum additional population of 273,000 people will be exposed to flooding by 2050,” Ohenhen said. He is a graduate student in the Department of Geosciences at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.

For North Carolina, the coastwide average rate of sinking is 1.4 millimeters, or about 0.06 inches per year, with a maximum sinking rate of 4 millimeters, or 0.16 inches, per year, Ohenhen continued. For the inundation risk, the only city researchers focused on in North Carolina was Wilmington, “and the analysis shows that an additional 2,000 to 3,000 persons, will be exposed to flooding by 2050” because of subsidence.

Other cities on the Atlantic Coast studied were Boston, New York City, Jersey City, Atlantic City, Virginia Beach, Wilmington, Myrtle Beach, Charleston, Savannah, Miami and Jacksonville, Florida. The study also looked at projected numbers for 11 cities on the Gulf Coast and 10 on the Pacific Coast.

Ohenhen said that on the East Coast, a total of about 300 to 370 square miles will be exposed to flooding by 2050, along with 59,000 to 262,000 people and 32,000 to 163,000 properties.

He said that natural and human processes help drive land subsidence.

“Why the land is sinking differs from location to location, and in some cases, it may be a result of multiple interlinked processes,” he continued. “For the US East Coast, sinking is driven by glacial isostatic adjustment, natural sediment compaction, and groundwater extraction.” Glacial isostatic adjustment is the ongoing movement of land reacting to being covered by glaciers during the ice age, according to the National Ocean Service.

The primary motivation for the research, Ohenhen said, stems from a growing concern over the increasing vulnerability of the country’s coastal cities to flooding risks.
“While sea-level rise (SLR) due to climate change has been a focal point of scientific studies, the exacerbating role of coastal subsidence — both natural and anthropogenic — has been underrepresented in coastal management policies and discussions,” he explained in an email.

“Recognizing this gap, our study aimed to create the first high-resolution (50 m), policy-relevant land subsidence dataset for the US coastlines and integrate this dataset with SLR projections to provide a more accurate assessment of future inundation risks.”

The reason previous flood estimates omitted land subsidence can largely be attributed to its gradual nature, “which often escapes immediate notice, leading to a lack of prioritization in flood risk models,” Ohenhen said. “While some existing projections do account for land subsidence, they typically rely on singular measurements obtained from tide gauges, which fail to capture the spatial variability inherent in subsidence rates across different regions. Our study provides the first semi-continuous spatially variable land subsidence dataset for the US coast.”

Ohenhen said there are ways to either mitigate or adapt to coastal subsidence.

“Here, identifying the drivers is important for preparedness,” he said. If subsidence is a result of glacial isostatic adjustment, “there is no way to mitigate against it, so we must adapt to the consequences,” by finding ways to elevate the land or replenish groundwater through managed aquifer recharge, which will help to reverse elevation loss.

“However, in cases where the land elevation loss is driven by the extraction of groundwater, then reducing groundwater pumping can be effective in slowing down or completely halting coastal land subsidence,” he said.

Ohenhen added that a number of defense structures were identified in the research that could be put in place, including nature-based protection using marshes and mangroves, subsidence control in cities subject to anthropogenic-caused land sinking, land use planning, and a combination of these will be effective in adapting to the identified consequences.

Marine Geologist Dr. Stan Riggs, distinguished research professor and Harriot College Distinguished Professor of geology at East Carolina University, when asked for his thoughts on the study, told Coastal Review that he and the other scientists he’s worked with over the last 60 years have known that there’s been a subsidence component, “but we were never able to sort it out. And I think I’ve just finally solved that problem,” which he added will be detailed in his book being published later this year.

“The Atlantic Coast here is intermediate. In the case of North Carolina, Wilmington is the most stable part of our whole coastal plain,” Riggs said, and “you would expect to get a minimum amount of compaction down there. For example, if you drill a hole in Wilmington, you go down 1,000 feet, you get granite, up here in this part of the state you go down 10,000 feet to hit granite. There’s a lot more sediment up here and so the compaction is going to be higher,” he said about the area of his residence in northeastern North Carolina.

In the Coastal Resources Commission’s 2015 sea level report written by its advisory science panel, the coastal plain was broken down into four quadrants, with Wilmington having the lowest rate of sea level rise and “the highest by quite a bit being the Albemarle embayment, everything from Croatan National Forest north into the northern part of North Carolina,” Riggs said.

At the time, the science panel couldn’t separate out how much of that was subsidence versus regular sea level rise, “so we focused on regular sea level rise, because we didn’t know how to measure the vertical subsidence,” Riggs said. “I’ve now got data and some capabilities of measuring elevation changes down to a half an inch over time.”

In the northeastern part of the state, where there are thick areas of peat, there’s been as much as two to three feet of subsidence in the last 200 years which is pretty significant,” and regarding increasing ghost forests, “that’s partly because everything’s sinking in addition to the sea level rise, and it’s happening really fast now because we’ve ditched the living hell out of this area. For 250 years now we’ve been ditching and there’s probably more than hundred or several hundred thousand miles of ditches and it’s all starts out as peat land and peat is organic matter and organic matter oxidizes if it dries out.”

What he said is important about the study is that it demonstrates that subsidence is real and highly variable depending on “where you are and what the conditions are, what the history is now and what the geology ecology is. All of that has to go together to try to understand and manage the coastal system.”

Being variable is one of the most important points, Riggs said adding, that in some places, subsidence is equal to the rate of rising sea levels, “which doubles the whammy of sea level rise.”

During any given summer on North Carolina beaches, volunteers comb the shores for evidence of freshly laid sea turtle nests.

As the height of tourism season goes on, beachgoers are likely to see brightly colored ribbon tied between stakes used to cordon off carefully buried nests.

Few are likely to witness darling hatchlings emerge to the sandy surface, flipper paddle their way to the waves and disappear in the ocean, taking with them secrets researchers have yet to unlock.

Take, for example, endangered loggerhead sea turtles. We don’t know their average life span, the typical number of nests a female will lay over her lifetime, or how many years she will nest once she reaches maturity.

Nesting females usually lay their eggs under the cover of night, leaving nest scouters, at best, a trail of flipper prints between the stretch of beach that expands and retracts with the tide.

This elusive nighttime nesting ritual usually means volunteers are not out to see females on the beach, much less tag them. Even if a turtle is tagged, that tag may come off.

All of this makes it particularly difficult for researchers to get a good idea of how the loggerhead population is faring in the wild.

For decades now, researchers have counted nests as a way to measure female sea turtle populations.

This is pretty much the worldwide, standard practice, one that leaves more questions than answers, including what’s been happening on beaches from North Carolina to Georgia where loggerhead nest counts are up.

“One of the challenges is when there’s an increase in nests, does that mean that there’s an increase of females or maybe they’ve just had a super foraging year and they’ve got tons of energy and they’re able to lay more nests,” said Matthew Godfrey, sea turtle biologist with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission.

Now researchers believe they have an answer.

“We confirmed that there’s a pretty strong correlation between the nest counts and the actual female population size,” said Brian Shamblin, an associate research scientist with the University of Georgia’s Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources.

Shamblin heads a multistate study that uses genetic tagging to track female loggerheads in the northern recovery unit, an area that spans from the southernmost beach in Georgia up the East Coast to the North Carolina-Virginia state line.

Loggerheads in the northern recovery unit are genetically distinct from those that nest in Florida and other areas of the world.

To better understand how loggerheads in this unit are doing in the wild, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission in 2010 partnered with the South Carolina and Georgia departments of natural resources and the University of Georgia for the Northern Recovery Unit Loggerhead DNA Project.

That partnership was formed after Shamblin in 2006 discovered he could extract DNA from the shells of nonviable sea turtle eggs and use that DNA fingerprint to identify a mother with her nest.

“Because we know each female for each nest we’re able to look at some of the patterns and it does look like the majority of females prefer to stay say within 25 miles or so (between nests) so usually the same island or maybe two islands adjacent to each other,” Godfrey said. “But there are other females that are less faithful and they tend to wander more and they tend to move 200 to 300 miles between nests.”

For example, one loggerhead laid a nest north of Nags Head, swam down to northern Florida to nest there, then headed back up north to Cape Lookout to lay another nest in one season.

“We don’t know why some animals take these extended periods further away,” Godfrey said. “Females don’t tend to nest every year. They nest every second or third or fourth year so you need a long-term dataset to uncover these behavioral trends.”

Through this study, researchers have found that some turtles take as many as seven to nine years off between nesting seasons.

“Which again, is really interesting and we’re not quite sure why,” Godfrey said. “We don’t know if they’re truly taking off that time or maybe those are the ones that went really far south outside of our study area and maybe they’re nesting in southern Florida and that’s why we don’t have a record of them.”

Why the numbers matter

The hope is that the female loggerhead population increase is a result of conservation measures put in place over the last 40 years.

After loggerheads were listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1978, the push to save them began.

Volunteer conservation programs began popping up on beach nesting grounds.

Government protections were put into place water and onshore. Environmental windows were created to prohibit things like beach nourishment projects during nesting season.

Shrimpers who initially faced severe restrictions and closures to protect sea turtles now use turtle excluder devices designed to let sea turtles escape from trawl nets.

By the mid-1990s, Godfrey said, nest monitoring and protection was standardized statewide and volunteer groups regularly patrolled nesting beaches between May 1 and Aug. 31.

“Because of this infrastructure of people checking every day for nests we have a built-in sampling opportunity so we rely entirely on our collaborators and volunteers in the state to be collecting these samples for us because they’re the ones out there every day,” Godfrey said.

Each year, thousands of samples are shipped to Shamblin’s lab for DNA testing.

It’s an operation that costs between $100,000 and $150,000 each year in North Carolina, which has received for the past 12 years federal grants through the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Godfrey said state fisheries has also received funds from various sea turtle volunteer organization fundraising efforts.

The Wildlife Resources Commission also receives funding for the sea turtle program and other wildlife research and conservation management projects through the North Carolina Nongame and Endangered Wildlife Fund. North Carolinians who file state tax returns can donate all or a portion of their refund to this fund.

Godfrey said it is crucial the state remain part of the regional loggerhead study.

“To have a better understanding of numbers of females in the population had bene one of the key knowledge gaps in loggerhead natural history,” he said. “The whole goal of management and conservation of loggerheads is to try to get them off the Endangered Specials Act, to try to get them to a place where their population is robust enough that they aren’t considered under threat of extinction anymore.”

Shamblin and other researchers are forging new ways to study loggerheads in order to be able to answer questions about how long they typically live, whether warming seas are affecting the number of males in the population, and various nesting habits.

“I think we’re on the cusp of having some great additional tools to add in so that makes keeping up with this sort of demographic stuff that we’re doing with the genetic tagging really important to try to maintain until those come online,” he said.

Have you ever stopped and stood on the part of the beach where ocean waves rhythmically skim up toward the dunes then back to sea?

That area, the one where you feel your feet sink little by little into the wet sand, is called a swash zone.

University of North Carolina Wilmington Assistant Professor Ryan Mieras is leading a team of researchers who are setting out to understand how sand moves within these dynamically changing oceanfront areas with the idea that, in years to come, they can create a tool to help forecast which areas of a beach may experience little to no sand loss or substantial sand loss during coastal storms.

A swash zone is a highly complex area of the oceanfront. Sand in these shallow, murky areas are camouflaged by bubbles and foam, making it difficult to be examined by instrumentation like satellites, laser scanners and acoustic sensors typically used to measure ocean forces.

“We’re getting better at modeling how the beach will change under day-to-day conditions, under storm conditions and so on and so forth,” Mieras said in a telephone interview. “But all of those gains in knowledge and improvement of these forecast models has only been accomplished because of observations and measurements further offshore than right at the swash zone.”

A fundamental problem with current models is that, while they are good at computing waves and factoring in tides and how winds generated in coastal storms may create certain types of waves, these models treat the beaches as if they were concrete.

“If we have a better way of computing how the beach changes under storm events, keep in mind all of those changes are occurring in the swash zone where the waves are impacting the dunes, we can pass that back to the model that’s calculating the waves in the storm surge elevation and that may change the risk for a particular location or community that would have otherwise maybe been under-predicted or over-predicted,” Mieras said.

The U.S. Coastal Research Program and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have awarded Mieras a nearly $1 million grant to head the four-year, collaborative study with researchers from the University of Delaware and University of Texas at Austin.

For the next year and a half, the team, including one doctoral student attending each of those universities, will work on how to mimic conditions that will generate what are called “intensive sediment transport events” in a wave flume, a massive, rectangular aquarium-like tank that can produce waves and currents to simulate a hosts of real-life sea conditions.

This large-scale laboratory experiment will be conducted throughout an eight-week stretch of summer 2025 in Vicksburg, Mississippi, home to the Corps’ Engineering Research and Development Center.

This center’s Coastal Hydraulics Laboratory includes a 10-foot-wide, 200-foot-long wave flume, one that is ideal for the team to what Mieras described as getting the physics of sand movement correct.

Those measurements will be taken using a host of sand transport sensors and instruments, some of which have been developed, manufactured and tested by Mieras’ undergraduate students at UNCW’s Coastal Engineering Wave Flume. That flume – 5 feet wide and 80 feet long – was commissioned just last year.

His team will document the concentration of sands within the water, the velocity, elevation and speed of the water and how much the lab-created beach is changing at as much as 50 times per second.

“So we’re getting a really, really detailed understanding,” of how sediment moves, he said.

Researchers will use something called particle image velocimetry, or PIV, to investigate and document how sand shifts under a variety of conditions.

“We’re measuring everything, everywhere,” Mieras said.

The team, uniquely crafted of researchers who are experts in measuring and modeling sand movement, will then spend the next two years taking data quantified in the lab and using it to understand the fundamental physics of why sand does or does not move under different conditions.

The last year of the study, the team will incorporate what researchers learn into a regional scale model called XBeach, which the Corps uses to simulate shoreline responses to storms.

“The goal is eventually to then test it with regional scale coastal morphology, with the new version and with the old version, and see if it does any better,” Mieras said.

The hope, he said, is that, say a decade from now, the results of their research will provide a better way of not only forecasting storm surge, but also update coastal region erosion in real time so forecasters can better understand hour-by-hour storm surge and coastal flooding risks.

“So, it’s not just for the Corps to say where do we deploy resources, but I think anyone who lives near or at or on the beach always wants to know more and more and more information,” Mieras said. “The hope is that not only do we have more information, but it’s more accurate.”

Their work is part of a larger collaborative study examining the transport of sediment on beaches.

From the spruce-fir forests at the state’s highest elevations to the sea level sand flats of the coast, a newly released guidebook offers detailed descriptions of these and the other nearly 350 recognized natural communities across the state.

The 1,235-page “Classification of the Natural Communities of North Carolina” by Michael Schafale, community ecologist with the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program, is available online at no charge.

The Natural Heritage Program works to provide research and data, and helps guide decisions on the potential ecological impacts of conservation and development projects. This program is part of the Division of Land and Water Stewardship within the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

Schafale explained recently to Coastal Review that the Natural Heritage Program keeps records of the best examples of each kind of community and uses them to prioritize conservation and make sure all kinds get protected. The land conservation agencies and nonprofits work on that goal to varying degrees.

Schafale, who’s been with the program since 1983, earned his master’s in botany with a focus on plant community ecology from Duke University. He also has been part of the collaborative, multi-institutional Carolina Vegetation Survey since 1987. He references the survey’s data, and that of the National Vegetation Classification, in the guidebook.

This is the fourth edition of the guide, called an approximation like the three prior editions to “remind the user that, while it is the best synthesis of knowledge the author can offer at this time, and can be useful, our understanding will continue to evolve,” according to the introduction. The first approximation was completed in 1984, the second in 1985, and the third in 1990.

A “natural community” is the collection of living things naturally occurring together in a particular kind of environment, Schafale said. Or, “in terms of the things people see — natural communities are the different kinds of forests, grasslands, marshes, etc. that make up the natural landscape.”

These natural communities have a certain combination of moisture, soil chemistry, topography, elevation, fire or flood frequency, and tend to have the same kind of plants and animals.

“It varies a bit over time and a bit from one such place to another, but you can recognize it as the same kind of thing. If you see some of the species that tend to be in them, you can predict that you have a good chance of finding others,” he said.

The 343 natural communities in the state highlighted in the resource are grouped into 30 themes, with types and subtypes nested under the themes. “There is substantial description material for both the broad themes and the individual subtypes,” Schafale continued.

While the resource is technical and intended for ecologists, botanists and others familiar with scientific names and jargon, the concepts of the communities should be understandable to a broader range of people familiar with the wildlands and natural areas of North Carolina.

“The classification is also likely to be useful to anybody who needs to name natural vegetation or natural ecosystems or types of animal habitat– academic biologists, agency biologists, environmental consultants, possibly regulatory agency people as well, though the communities themselves are not targets of regulation,” he said.

Work began on the fourth edition at a slow pace just a couple years after the third was published in 1990, then a briefer publication to the fourth approximation, called the “guide,” was published in 2012, Schafale said.

“Most of the communities in the classification were worked out by then. It was the plan from that time to produce a more thorough descriptive book, with more thorough description of the communities, more literature review, more use of the Carolina Vegetation Survey data. Work on it began shortly after the guide was published. So that is what is now finished,” he said, adding all of this builds on the earlier editions.

One of the most important changes since the 1990 edition is that there is enough understanding to recognize subtypes where he said they once just saw unintelligible variation.

For example, the 1990 classification recognized one type of pine savanna while the fourth recognizes four, and they can determine what species are only going to be in one or two of the types of pine savanna.

“That kind of refinement has happened in virtually all the communities that were known in 1990. There are a few communities that we just didn’t know about at all in 1990, such as the very rare Calcareous Coastal Fringe Forest, where soils filled with shells support plants that need high calcium levels,” he said.

Also, for the new approximation, “We extended recognition to some things we knew existed but hadn’t covered, such as the pond lily beds along tidal rivers,” he said. “Over a much broader spectrum, we can recognize and name kinds of variation that once were just disorderly heterogeneity, and by doing so, we can make sure they get conserved and we can accumulate understanding specific to them.”

This includes a majority of the communities. “There are new data and information on the species that make them up, on their dynamics, and on their other characteristics.”

Schafale explained that the Carolina Vegetation Survey and National Vegetation Classification brought a tremendous increase in the amount of available data.

The Carolina Vegetation Survey works to document natural vegetation for inventory, monitoring of environmental impacts, and assessment of conservation status.

Survey data are still not fully analyzed, but they were used extensively in writing the descriptions for this guidebook, Schafale said.

“Where pieces of the dataset had been analyzed, the insights gained went into its classification. An example is the Sandhills Mesic Transition Subtype and Coastal Plain Mesic Transition Subtype of Pine/Scrub Oak Sandhill. The distinction is visible in the data but was not recognized until the analysis showed it to us,” he said.

The National Vegetation Classification is a comprehensive classification system for all vegetation types in the United States. Work began on this classification in the early 1990s with the first version released in 1998 and a second in 2016.

The classification brought the insights of many more people and people over a wider range of states to the fourth approximation, he said.

Coastal communities, climate change

Schafale said he finds the coastal region to be extremely interesting, ecologically.

“One of the notable things is its tremendous diversity of natural communities as well as species,” which he said is “remarkable” despite having very little topography.

“Most places with high diversity are mountainous, and differences in elevation and topography and rockiness are a major thing that makes it possible. The coastal plain has very little variation in elevation or climate and is nearly flat, but a lot of variety is tied to its subtle topography, to differences in soil texture, and to all the different ways a wetland can be wet,” he explained. “River swamps, tidal areas, wet upland flats, peatlands, Carolina bays, and limesink ponds are all wetlands, but they are different in how deep the water gets, how long it stays, how regularly it comes back, how long the soil is saturated, whether it flows.”

The coast is filled with exceptional natural communities, like “pocosins — those tangled masses of evergreen shrubs, both on the big peatlands and in the larger Carolina bays. North Carolina has the lion’s share of them,” Schafale said.

And the longleaf pine savannas, “with the tremendous numbers of plant species packed into small areas. There is something like them throughout the South, but North Carolina’s particular kinds are rare and narrowly ranging – you don’t get to the middle of South Carolina before you’re in different ones.”

The natural lakes are another exceptional natural community. “Almost all the natural lakes between Florida and New England are in North Carolina, and there are just a handful. And among them, there is not another one like Lake Waccamaw.”

North Carolina has some of the best examples left of “the more widespread coastal communities like the dune grasslands and tidal marshes, and the river swamps and bottomland hardwoods.”

While not the primary purpose, the tool still has usefulness in understanding climate change.

“The different communities will respond to climate change differently, so understanding what they are can give a framework for considering and predicting responses to climate change,” he said.

When the Natural Heritage Program analyzed the effects of climate change on the state’s biodiversity some years ago, the work was organized by the themes and communities in the fourth approximation.

Currently, he continued, the Natural and Working Lands committee for addressing greenhouse gases has put an emphasis on peatlands for carbon storage – the peatland pocosins and coastal plain nonalluvial wetland forest themes of the fourth approximation.

“As a concrete example of how communities differ, the spruce-fir forests theme is the coldest set of communities in the state, so perhaps one of the most vulnerable to warming per se,” Schafale said. “The longleaf pine communities are composed of species that mostly range well to the south, so they are not so likely to be vulnerable to warmer temperature. But they depend on fire, so changes in weather that make it harder to do controlled burning will be bad for them, though no more so than institutional changes that make burning harder.”

Disclosure: Coastal Review correspondent Kip Tabb also serves on an informal citizens advisory board for the Outer Banks Field Site.

WANCHESE — Artificial light at night did not adversely affect sea turtle nesting north of Oregon Inlet from 2014 to 2022, undergraduate students found this fall during a four-month study.

A University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Institute for the Environment program, the semester-long Outer Banks Field Site combines environmental research and community engagement into the collaborative capstone research project. Coastal Studies Institute, a multi-institutional research partnership, and the East Carolina University Outer Banks Campus, host the program.

In addition to measuring the affect of artificial light, which they call ALAN, on sea turtle nesting, the students examined what the public thinks about artificial light at night.

The students presented their findings Dec. 12 during the monthly “Science on the Sound” program on campus.

Senior Drew Huffman, in introducing the study, noted that artificial light at night studies are often focused on inland areas, rather than shorelines.

“There’s a scarcity of existing literature on artificial light at night and coastal systems, as opposed to what we know about more terrestrial systems,” he said. Adding that’s another aim of their research, “to try to expand that knowledge so that we have of a grasp of what things are like for coastal systems and artificial light at night.”

Numerous studies show a repeated pattern of sea turtle hatchlings crawling toward artificial light, such as a street light, rather than toward the ocean.

The students wanted to gauge the effects of artificial light on nesting.

“Is there a relationship between sea turtle nesting and artificial light at night across the Outer Banks over the last nine years? And if so, what is it?” Those were the questions senior Laura Montague posed in describing the study.

The study area extended north from the north side of Oregon Inlet to the north end of Corolla, but did not include Carova, because, as one student explained, no one had a four-wheel-drive vehicle able to navigate the oceanfront area with no paved roads.

Reported sea turtle nesting data from 2014 to 2022 shows a trend of increasing nesting activity, although overall activity, including false crawls and nests laid, fluctuated during that period, the students found.

During that period, activity hit a low point in 2017 where only about 35 active sites were reported, comparted to 100 active sites in 2022.

“False crawls refer to instances when a female sea turtle comes ashore on a beach but instead of nesting, turns back around to re-enter the ocean,” according to the paper.

Although there was no clear reason for the trend toward more activity, junior Kenza Hessini-Arandel told the audience that she and the other students felt conservation efforts could account for the increase in activity.

“(The) Endangered Species Act that protected a lot of these species and also management efforts that organizations like (the Network for Endangered Sea Turtles) and the National Park Service perhaps helped increase the number of turtles that we’re seeing along the coast,” she said.

There was at least one anomaly in sea turtle activity that the students could not explain.

The Outer Banks is at the north end of the range where sea turtles nest, and Corolla, at the north end of the study area, saw significantly less nesting activity than sites at the south end near Oregon Inlet, which is considered to be a more compatible nesting area for turtles.

Though the number of Corolla nesting sites was significantly less than those on the south end of the study area, the number of false crawls was the same there as areas where activity was greater, representing a much higher percentage of false crawls compared to nests.

“However, we do not see the same pattern when looking at false crawls; there seem to be more false crawls in the northernmost and southernmost areas compared with areas in between,” the paper noted.

“There are a lot of variables that come into play with false crawls and we don’t know exactly why we are seeing this trend,” Hessini-Arandel said.

The students included environmental research in the study, as well. They explored the social science of artificial light, whether people attach significance to artificial light, and their perception of how it affects the environment.

The public perception survey included about 500 responses, with respondents divided into residents, seasonal residents and visitors.

The students found a strong indication that the public perception is that artificial light has a significant impact on the environment, and regardless of age or sex, or even where people lived, they were concerned about the effect.

Although there were small variations in the degree of concern among the groups, the overall response showed a clear level of unease with the amount of artificial light on the Outer Banks.

Junior Julie Yakaboski noted that a significant majority of people said they were either concerned or very concerned.

“Taking these two together, that’s about 70% of our responses,” she said.

Significantly, almost no one – fewer than 5% — said they were “not concerned about it at all.”

That attitude appears to correlate closely with whether respondents felt artificial light should be reduced. Asked whether they felt artificial light on the Outer Banks should be reduced, 90% of respondents said they either agreed or agreed strongly. More than 60% said they “agreed strongly.”

Because of the timing of the recent survey, answers were somewhat skewed by the number of full-time and seasonal residents, students said. However, the results would seem to indicate there is support for local governments to implement regulations or ordinances controlling artificial light.

“Public perceptions of ALAN have the power to affect the development of policies that regulate it,” according to the paper.

WILMINGTON – The race is on to revive the ocean’s growingly imperiled coral reefs.

Damage and decay caused by everything from warming sea temperatures to pollution to overfishing to disease are erasing these underwater architectural structures crucial to other marine life and coastal shorelines.

University of North Carolina Wilmington researchers recently received grants totaling about $2 million that will allow them to further investigate potential ways of protecting coral against disease and climate change.

The funding, which comes from $18 million in global grants doled out to fast-track coral conservation and restoration research, also paves the way for a historian at the university to examine ethical questions about potential implications of releasing coral genetically modified to resist climate change into the wild.

Super coral?

In 2020, UNCW Associate Professor Nicole Fogarty and her team of researchers at the university’s Center for Marine Science became the first to spawn two species of endangered Caribbean coral in a laboratory.

In the three years since, the lab’s success at spawning baby coral prompted the move to a larger space — actually a separate building dedicated entirely to coral reproduction.

About a half-million larvae have been spawned with this year yielding the highest numbers yet. The lab has shipped roughly a quarter-million of those larvae to research partners in Florida and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill for further experimentation.

“We can actually test the various stressors that corals are experiencing, especially the environmental stressors so namely things like increased temperature, decreased pH or ocean acidifications, changes in light intensity and light spectrum, and dissolved oxygen to mimic what’s occurring,” in their natural environment, Fogarty said.

She is part of a research collaborative that received a nearly $1.5 million, three-year grant and includes Jake Warner, a developmental geneticist and assistant professor, and Nathan Crowe, a science historian and associate professor, who will work in conjunction with researchers with the University of the Philippines.

Fogarty will provide coral larvae spawned in her lab to Warner, whose research team will then use genetic editing tools to try and create corals that can resist warming sea temperatures and other climate change-related phenomena.

Warner said researchers will also be able to study corals in ways that scientists haven’t been able to do before, including examining the functions and interactions of genes and proteins, a field referred to as functional genomics.

Warner stressed that coral genetically modified in his lab will remain there.

“Now we’re not engineering corals and then putting them back out into the wild,” he said. “The goal is to develop this technology so that if we ever decide we don’t need it, we don’t have to reverse engineer it, it’ll just be there ready to go because using this kind of technology in the wild brings some very important ethical considerations.”

That’s where Crowe comes in.

He explained that only recently have researchers begun to think about genetically modifying organisms to combat climate change.

“And those conversations have been only almost completely around climate change issues on land so the marine environment opens up new questions about aims and goals for the marine environment and creating new ways in which these corals could spread,” he said.

Crowe said it is important that these conversations are held now to help regulators make future policy decisions relating to releasing genetically modified corals into the wild.

The team plans to share its findings during the International Coral Reef Symposium to be hosted in New Zealand in July 2026. Crowe plans to host a conference at UNCW in summer 2025, inviting scholars to discuss the study.

“The idea, rather than kind of providing them just the technology and then letting them figure out what issues to consider, the hope is to provide those types of laid out various issues, concerns, potentials for the technology, so that each individual policy group can do what’s right for them,” he said. “So often we have developed these technologies and then, in retrospect, think about the issues that they might bring up. Then, what happens is, and we’ve seen this over and over again, the realities of those technologies can then make people feel as though they have very limited options.”

“CMS and UNCW are really doing some of the foremost work in this area in the world and so it’s really an important place for us to have these conversations,” he said.

Building biological defenses

Researchers looking at ways to restore and protect coral reefs know the clock is ticking.

Natural processes and human activities have severely damaged many of the world’s coral reefs.

Scientists predict that, if this trend continues, living corals on many of the world’s reefs will be dead in 20 years.

Coral reefs cover more than 4 million acres of sea floor in waters of the United States and its territories in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea.

More than 25% of all marine species live in coral reefs.

In addition to their importance to marine life, coral reefs also serve as coastal shoreline guardians.

“They provide this solid, basically limestone structure that’s surrounding coastlines and that’s really important for preventing runoff and also coastal protection from storm surges,” said UNCW Assistant Professor Blake Ushijima. “You can imagine the amount of force from (coastal) storm surges and runoff that can occur.”

Ushijima has received a more than $400,000 grant to fund ongoing research on developing probiotic treatments to protect coral against stony coral tissue loss disease, or SCTLD.

This disease is decimating coral in the Caribbean, which is experiencing one of the worst disease outbreaks in recorded history for corals.

SCTLD is particularly dangerous because it attacks coral tissue, melting the tissue away like a flesh-eating disease.

“Some of the most susceptible corals, you have 100% mortality,” Ushijima said. “It’s just gone.”

The grant awarded to Ushijima will be used to open a site in San Andres, a Columbian Island, adding to the small number of hubs being established in the Caribbean where researchers are testing for different probiotics and developing potential treatments against SCTLD.

These hubs, including those being built in Montserrat in the Leeward Islands and the Dominican Republic, include so-called bio secure facilities. Water used in these facilities is treated to remove potentially bad microbes and re-treated before it is released back into the natural environment.

Testing probiotic treatments at different facilities throughout the Caribbean will help scientists discover which treatments work best for corals in those regions.

Brain corals and maze corals, which build the bases of reefs, are particularly susceptible to SCTLD, Ushijima said.

“This disease seems to specifically target what we call the mounding coral, like the brain corals,” he said. “They’re solid limestone. The bad part is those tend to be slower growing, but they’re building the very structures of the reefs.”

SCTLD affects at least 24 of the 50 or so coral species in the Caribbean. The disease was discovered off the coast of Miami in 2014 and has since spread to two dozen different territories and countries, Ushijima said.

He is partnering on the project with researchers from the Perry Institute of Marine Science and University of Massachusetts Lowell as well as various Columbia-based organizations.

“We know (SCTLD) is a waterborne disease, but we don’t know how specifically it’s transmitted, but it’s reached across the Caribbean so it’s very unprecedented,” Ushijima said. “The scary part is it’s not going to be the last disease outbreak. It’s just one of many that will occur just from how this world is going. The more we encroach on it, the more battered the environment and more pollution, climate change, it’s going to cause all these chain reactions.”

A team of North Carolina scientists and researchers have less than two years to develop a proposal that will convince the National Science Foundation that eastern North Carolina is ripe to become an engine of innovative ecosystem technology that could advance a new workforce and a resilient and sustainable economy.

If the North Carolina Ecosystem Technology, or NCET, project is chosen, an infusion of $160 million will pour into the region over the next 10 years, potentially igniting a transformative science-based zeitgeist, similar to the launch in 1958 of the acclaimed research institute in the Raleigh area that merged science, academics, government, business and technology.  

“What we want to do is to create something analogous to Research Triangle Park,” said Reide Corbett, executive director of the Coastal Studies Institute and the dean of Integrated Coastal Programs at East Carolina University.

After the National Science Foundation announced an opportunity to compete for funds in a new program, the team submitted a letter of intent. In May, they learned they would be awarded $1 million to write a full proposal.

What’s different about the proposed ecosystem technology, or eco-tech, project is that the work concepts would be generated where people live and work in eastern North Carolina, driving economies from the ground up, Corbett said. 

By providing multiple connections with the community, as well as infrastructure and resources, he continued, the goal would be to build “an innovation hub that allows for use-inspired development … to support individuals who are trying to solve problems for the East, in the East.”

The National Science Foundation program as a whole, he added, is focused on reaching folks in less populated, remote communities, many of which are vulnerable to climate change impacts or economic decline.

“This is really about building opportunity for rural North Carolina, building opportunity for these areas that are outside of these regions that typically have plenty of workforce, plenty of innovation,” Corbett said. “It’s trying to move the capability and the opportunity beyond Raleigh Durham and that area.”

Eco-tech, defined as solutions-based applied science that uses living eco-systems to produce and enhance products, is billed as the next bio-tech, which studies biological attributes of organisms to use in products. If true, that would bode well for the potential growth of eco-tech.

Biological technology evolved over the centuries from modest techniques such as beer-brewing to today’s groundbreaking work on human genomes, proving the value of collective, collaborative and cooperative science research.

Research Triangle Park, as a business incubator and a hub of creative energy and scientific brainpower, is credited with propelling the explosive growth of bio-tech. It also helped revitalize the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area into one of the nation’s most dynamic regions. 

Corbett is one of 11 principal investigators working on the NCET project, in addition to Brian Silliman, a marine conservation biology professor at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, and Kenneth Halanych, executive director of the Center of Marine Science at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and who also serves as the director of the NCET consortium and grant administration.

As Halanych puts it, NCET is “a multi-institutional” project, that is equal parts Duke, Cape Fear Community College, Carteret Community College, ECU, North Carolina State University, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, and the Research Triangle Institute.

According to a brochure about the prospective National Science Foundation engine award, the NCET concept would initially focus on renewable energy, aquaculture and infrastructure as vehicles to translate what people (“users”) see as a need into marketable, planet-friendly products.

The work would network across universities and partner with businesses, nonprofits and other community entities to conduct research and bottom-up innovation. As a result, communities would be more resilient, workforces diversified and engaged and regional economies strengthened.

Halanych explained that the eco-tech grant is a byproduct of the National Science Foundation’s new directive expanding basic science and discovery to applied science, economic and workforce development. Called the NSF Engines Program, he said, its goal is to drive workforce development by “use-inspired” innovations.

“What that means is, instead of scientists sitting in the lab trying to think about what they want to do, it’s really about looking to the community and looking to the context of the community —‘What do you need?’ ‘Are there innovations that we can help develop that will push community needs forward, municipal needs forward, individual needs forward?’” he said.

“And so, it’s sort of bringing science out of the ivory tower a little bit with the hope that it will drive economic development.”

If the prospective NCET team’s plan makes the cut for the $160 million award, he said, it would have 10 years “to jump-start innovation” within the whole region east of the Interstate 95 corridor.

With a mix of coastal and rural areas that depend on land — whether for eco-tourism, farming or forestry — the region is ripe with opportunities for eco-tech, Halanych said. The approach is to use technology to work with, not against, the environment to build in a more sustainable way.

For instance, NCET could help with building jobs to mitigate climate change impacts with innovative technology, such as installation of living shorelines made with 3D printed oyster reefs, he said. 

Markets could be created for new kinds of adaptive wastewater disposal systems, which would require trained engineers, contractors and installers. Or in the case of flooding, whether from water bodies or rain deluges, building more affordable — therefore, more accessible — water sensors could radically improve a community’s ability to respond and react in real time to flooding events. “That’s workforce development,” Halanych said. “That’s new job opportunities.”

In a competitive process that started off with more than 950 proposals before being pared down to 30, the NCET team has about 18 months remaining before the proposal is due for submission to the science foundation, Silliman said. “Maybe five or six teams among 30 proposals will be selected for the $160 million. We’ve made it to the final round.”

Silliman, who expressed optimism about eastern North Carolina’s prospects for the final award, said that NCET would be divided into three place-based hubs where businesses, academics and community leaders congregate, with the potential to expand further into smaller hubs. The National Science Foundation, he said, is encouraging scientists to be nimble and responsive.

“This is an innovation hub that’s doing science, innovative science on topics that the people of eastern North Carolina want to see covered,” he said. “Then, we foster small business development around these hubs that hires people who were born in these areas, so they can stay there.”

The team is already working with existing networks and tapping into existing community surveys, Silliman said. The project would include community meetings, and public input would be coupled with data to provide a picture of risk and vulnerability, as well as what the community’s is worried about in the next decade.  

“And then we would have discussions about how innovative science that fuels business development can help address those issues,” he said, “and whether they are interested in something like that.”

The value of eco-tech is not just inventions of new products to use in the environment, but also in utilizing, enhancing and adapting existing products. Ecosystem technology, like biotechnology, can interact with any sector, he said.

“One of the things we want to help with in eastern North Carolina is the technology is to monitor the performance of really important infrastructure that we have in the coast,” Silliman said. “That would be our hybrid and hardened shorelines as well as as well as our septic systems. So right now, we don’t have a good handle on either one.” 

Eco-tech can be taken from the imagination to the research lab to the market with a collaborative like NCET, Corbett said. It can provide the linkage.

“A lot of what’s missing is that connection between somebody that has an idea, or maybe even has developed a product,” he said.

“It’s how they take it to the next level and a lot of times it’s the understanding of how to do that,” Corbett said. “It’s the capacity of being able to create.”

Friendship Cake was as close as cooks came to sourdough bread where I grew up in eastern North Carolina. And you were no pal if you shared a jar of the strange starter, a soupy blend of fruit cocktail, more sugar and packaged dry yeast, even though the starter always came with an undeniably tasty cake.

Black-coffee-begging sweet, dotted with jewel-toned fruit and incredibly moist, Friendship Cake hit the marks of a proper Southern dessert. But the recipe had nothing in common with wild yeast starters that cause sourdough bread to rise — except that you felt obligated to use the starter even if you didn’t want to bake a cake. How else could you morally get rid of the stuff? And who did you want to unfriend?

The idea of a live starter growing in a jar on the kitchen counter was just one reason why cooks in my neighborhood shunned sourdough bread. San Franciso, bless its heart, could have those tangy, hard-crusted, sourdough loaves whose chewiness was thanks to high-gluten, hard-wheat flour.

North Carolina’s warm, humid climate nurtures soft wheat milled into lower-gluten flours that produce tender biscuits. Southern Biscuit is an actual flour brand here, and the cooks I knew honored tradition. They served baking-powder- or baking-soda-leavened biscuits at nearly every meal. The only time they pulled out yeast was to make even softer lightening rolls at holiday time.

Over time, sourdough bread found a place in North Carolina. In fact, North Carolina State University, the same school that helps the state’s farmers successfully grow soft wheat, plays an important role in international sourdough research.

The university’s Wild Sourdough Project, launched in 2020, builds on the ongoing collaboration between scientists in the Global Sourdough Project. The research aims to understand preexisting sourdough starters from across the world and identify the microbes living in those starters.

While starters date back 6,000 years, exactly how a small number of wild organisms end up in sourdough starter and leaven bread remains unclear.

Relying on laboratory work and bakers worldwide, who produced and helped assess 500 sourdough starters, researchers have made surprising discoveries and busted some long-held sourdough opinions.

The projects’ results fascinate millions of U.S. home cooks. Their favorite COVID-19 pandemic pastime was baking sourdough. The bread remains one of 2023’s biggest trends, international bakery magazine BBM reports, so the studies also benefit North Carolina’s growing number of artisan bakeries, places like Little Loaf in Wilmington, Union Special in Raleigh, Old World Levain in Asheville and Verdant in Charlotte, all of which produce gorgeous sourdough loaves.

But unlocking the mysteries of wild microbes that help leaven sourdough bread may also help scientists to better understand microbes’ roles in complex ecosystems like oceans and estuaries.

Here’s what sourdough researchers have discovered so far.

Sorry, San Francisco

Wild yeast and beneficial bacteria that produce acids, which flavor sourdough, love San Francisco’s famously foggy climate. Many bakers believed location was the key to good sourdough. “But what we found is that, while there could be tremendous variation between the microbial ecosystems of different sourdoughs, we could not find any single variable that was responsible for much of that variation,” N.C. State assistant professor of applied ecology Erin McKenney said. That means anyone can bake great sourdough anywhere.

McKenney is the lead author of a paper published Oct. 4 in the open-access journal PeerJ.

What else matters

Researchers found different variables like a sourdough starter’s age is, how often it’s fed and where it is stored had small effects that added up to a significant difference in starters and breads. Bakers themselves must control variables to produce the best loaves for their circumstances. “Because sourdough is a living culture, it adapts to whatever conditions we impose on it,” McKenney said. For instance, she stores starter in the fridge to buy extra time between feedings. Countertop starters want to be fed two to three times a day, whereas McKenney has delayed feeding her chilled starter for up to six weeks.

Flour power

The projects’ latest report discusses the significant role flour plays in determining which bacteria thrive in starters. Bakers can influence sourdough bread’s aroma by choosing different flours, each of which foster different communities of bacteria, McKenney said.

Researchers used 10 different flours to create 40 starters, all in the same growing environment. Over 14 days, each flour formed increasingly distinct microbial communities. “Essentially, it appears that different types of bacteria are able to make the most of the nutritional compounds found in different types of flour,” McKenney said. When different bacterial communities thrive on different nutritional inputs, those bacterial communities produce different smells.

“For example, the bacterial community in amaranth sourdough produces an aroma that smells almost exactly like ham,” McKenney said. “I’ve never smelled a sourdough that had such a meaty aroma. Rye produces a fruity aroma; buckwheat has an earthy smell …”

“One surprise was that rye flour fostered a much wider diversity of bacteria than any other type of flour,” McKenney said. “We found more than 30 types of bacteria in the rye starters at maturity. The next highest was buckwheat, which had 22 types of bacteria. All of the other flours had between three and 14.”

More bacteria doesn’t necessarily translate to better aromas. The rye starter smelled sour/vinegary for the entire two weeks. “Days 4-11, we picked up on a lot of pickled okra smells. Days 8-12 we also detected smells of acetone, a compound often associated with fingernail polish remover…; but days 13-14, it smelled more distinctly like sour bread/dough,” McKenney said.

Researchers did not conduct a standardized bread tasting, so they can’t say which flour produces the yummiest sourdough, but McKenney loves sourdough bread made with emmer and einkorn flours. 

Exactly how long it takes starter to kick off

Ten days, McKenney said. “It’s possible that a starter grown in a very cold location might take longer than 10 days to mature. However, we fed the starters once every 24 hours – plenty of time for even cold bacteria to divide enough times to achieve a successional progress.”

A world full of yeast

While 70% of starters contained only one type of yeast, the researchers found 70 distinct types of yeast across all 500 sourdough samples. More work needs to be done to determine if specific microbes are responsible for shaping specific sourdough characteristics.

Sourdough research is bigger than bread

Bread is so ingrained in human existence that we take it for granted. Bake a loaf, buy a loaf, make a sandwich. No big deal. But the Wild Sourdough and Global Sourdough projects could have broad impacts because of the focus on microbes. They’re essential to life on Earth. Microbes make dead things decay, thereby providing nutrients to soil. They can break down industrial sewage. Microbes help clean the ocean of waste. They can also cause harm. Much about microbes remains unknown.

“Sourdough is an excellent model system for studying the interactions between microbes that shape the overall structure of the microbiome,” said Elizabeth Landis, a sourdough project participant and postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia University. “By studying interactions between microbes in the sourdough microbiome that lead to cooperation and competition, we can better understand the interactions that occur between microbes more generally – and in more complex ecosystems.”

The total number of Atlantic tropical cyclones that strengthened from weak Category 1 storms into major hurricanes within a 36-hour window has more than doubled in the last 50 years, a new analysis finds.

The observed maximum changes in wind speed for the lifespan of Atlantic tropical cyclones between 1971 and 2020 suggest that the intensification rates of these storms have increased as human-related greenhouse gas emissions warm the planet and oceans, according to the paper, “Observed increases in North Atlantic tropical cyclone peak intensification rates” published Thursday in Scientific Reports.

Historically, the most damaging tropical cyclones have been the most intense, with the majority undergoing rapid strengthening during their lifecycles.

Hurricanes Sandy in 2012, Irma, Maria and Harvey in 2017, Ida in 2021 and Ian in 2022 were the costliest U.S. weather and climate disasters in the last decade. All similarly strengthened rapidly, with most evolving from tropical storms to Category 3 or greater in under three days.

Because this strengthening can be difficult to predict and forecast, quickly intensifying tropical cyclones can create communication and preparedness challenges for coastal communities in a storm’s path, according to the study.

For the analysis, Dr. Andra Garner, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Science at Rowan University in New Jersey, broke the 50 years’ worth of data up into three periods: the historical era, 1971-1990; the intermediate era, 1986-2005; and the modern era, 2001-2020. Maximum intensification rates were calculated for 12-hour, 24-hour and 36-hour windows.

The maximum intensification value of each tropical cyclone was defined for the study as the greatest increase in wind speed across any window of time during the lifespan of the storm.

Garner found that between 2001 and 2020, average maximum tropical cyclones intensification rates increased 28.7% compared to storms that happened from 1971 to 1990. Additionally, from 2001 to 2020, it became more common for tropical cyclones to intensify most quickly in the central Atlantic off the U.S. Southeast Coast, the southern Caribbean Sea east of Central America, and the southeast Atlantic off the west coast of Africa, compared to storms that took place from 1971 to 1990.

The tropical cyclones that intensify at their fastest rate over the central part of the Atlantic basin could be particularly dangerous for communities along the East Coast, “an area already threatened by other evolving tropical cyclone hazards in a warming world, such as slower-moving tropical cyclones and changing tropical cyclones tracks,” the study says.

Garner told Coastal Review this week that part of her motivation for this work is knowing the fact that ocean surface waters, which are a key fuel source for hurricanes, have warmed substantially in recent years. 

She cited the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s documented increases in sea surface temperatures of more than 1 degree Fahrenheit since the 1980s. The IPCC is a United Nations group that assesses science related to climate change.

“Since I knew that ocean waters are a critical component for hurricanes to intensify, and, in particular, for allowing hurricanes to intensify quickly, I wanted to see what kinds of changes might already have occurred in the observational record of Atlantic hurricanes over the past 50 years,” she said.

Garner said that the warm ocean waters are a vital source of fuel for hurricanes to strengthen.

“Think of it like your morning cup of coffee — for a hurricane, warm ocean waters act like the caffeine in our morning coffee that helps get us going. When we have abnormally warm ocean waters, it’s kind of like an extra shot of caffeine in the coffee, providing lots of energy for the storm,” she explained.

Keeping this in mind, and knowing that oceans have absorbed about 90% of the excess warmth human-caused climate change has generated in recent years, she said she set out to understand, broadly, how the intensification rates for Atlantic hurricanes has changed in recent years. 

Overall, the fastest average pace at which hurricanes strengthen has indeed significantly increased by more than 25% from 1971-1990 to 2001-2020. Also, during 2001-2020, it was about as likely for hurricanes to intensify by more than 57 mph in just 24 hours as it would have been for hurricanes to intensify by this amount in 36 hours in the historical era, she explained.

These kinds of changes have impacted how common it is for a hurricane to intensify from a fairly weak storm such as a Category 1 hurricane or tropical storm, into a major hurricane of Category 3 or greater.

In particular, between 2001 and 2020, the number of times that hurricanes intensified from weak storms into major hurricanes within 24 hours more than doubled compared to 1971 to 1990, “which is something that my results show would have been statistically impossible to have happen under historical climate conditions,” Garner said.

Her findings didn’t come as a surprise, rather, the analysis serves to quantify the phenomenon of strengthening tropical cyclones that is very much expected in a warmer climate, Garner said. The increased likelihood for hurricanes to transition from weak storms into major hurricanes in 24 hours or fewer was particularly striking, she said.

Garner stressed that her results indicate that there have been changes in areas where hurricanes intensify most quickly, increasing the likelihood of rapid strengthening in several locations, including along the East Coast.

“One of the main reasons these findings matter is that, when storms intensify quickly, they can become more difficult to forecast and to plan for, in terms of emergency action plans for coastal residents. We also know that many of the strongest, most damaging hurricanes do intensify particularly quickly at some point in their lifetime,” Garner explained.

“My work shows that we are already seeing overall increases to the fastest rates at which Atlantic hurricanes intensify, which means that we are likely already seeing an increased risk of hazards for our coastal communities,” she said, “Including, and perhaps especially, those in North Carolina, given that results showed an increased likelihood for hurricanes to intensify most quickly near the U.S. Atlantic Coast. This means that it will be especially important for our coastal communities to work towards enhanced coastal resiliency measures and emergency action plans that may be able to adapt to hurricanes that strengthen more quickly.”

Garner said that her findings should serve as an urgent warning. 

“The rates at which hurricanes strengthen — and the frequency with which they transition from relatively weak storms into major hurricanes — has significantly increased in just the last 50 years, over the same time when we see substantial increases to ocean surface temperatures due to human-caused warming,” she said.

“Without major changes in our behavior and a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, this is a trend that will continue to get more extreme,” Garner said. “There is hope — hope that comes from knowing that we are the cause of this problem, so we can also be the solution; hope that we could secure a more sustainable future. But that hope will only be realized if we take the necessary actions to decarbonize our economies.”

A new discovery in one type of color-changing fish could be used to help artificial intelligence developers fine-tune how smart systems respond in a changing environment.

Research headed by University of North Carolina Wilmington assistant professor Lorian Schweikert has found that hogfish, popular among recreational fishermen for its mild, sweet meat, have a cell hidden underneath their skin that allows the fish to observe itself change color.

This is the first time a photoreceptor, or a cell that responds to light, has been found to exist in skin rather than in the central nervous system of a vertebrate animal, one that has a backbone and skeleton.

The study, published last month, found light sensors concealed behind a cell that researchers did not know existed until now.

This finding answers a long-standing question about why, at least for hogfish, light sensors are in the skin, said Schweikert, a sensory biologist.

“It’s also cool because it’s whimsical to think these animals are watching their own color change,” she said.

They’re able to do that thanks to the color-changing cells, which work like a Polaroid camera that lets the fish take a picture of itself to monitor itself changing color.

Schweikert said to think of yourself getting dressed in the morning without a mirror and without the ability to bend your neck. You would not be able to see whether you put on your clothes correctly.

Hogfish, named for their long, pig-like snouts, which they use to graze for crustaceans underneath the sand, are tasty to humans, sharks and barracuda alike, making their ability to camouflage paramount to their survival. These fish are typically found throughout the Caribbean and from North Carolina to Bermuda as well as the northern coast of South America.

“In the case of color-changing animals that frequently do this for camouflage to hide from predators it’s a life or death decision and they need a way of monitoring the quality of their performance,” Schweikert explained. “In physiology we call this a feedback system, sensory feedback. It’s a way of monitoring our own performance.”

This incredible feedback system could aid the ever-evolving world of artificial intelligence.

From robotic vacuum cleaners and self-driving cars to voice-activated systems like Amazon Echo or Apple’s Siri, smart systems use sensory feedback to understand their own performance.

“Basically, by looking at how systems like in the skin of these fish, how they’re organized, how they work, we can take those kinds of principles and develop our new solutions to that kind of technological problem,” Schweikert said.

This is all a result of a fishing trip she went on in the Florida Keys roughly seven years ago while a graduate student at the Florida Institute of Technology.

She caught a hogfish, and, after it died, she picked it up to find the side of the fish that had been facing the boat’s deck had taken on a white color and a bit of a pattern that matched the deck itself.

“There’s many color-changing animals in nature that do unbelievable displays of color change, but what surprised me was the fact that this color change happened post mortem in this animal and it made me think that the skin could do this maybe independently of the eyes and of the whole system,” Schweikert said.

By that time scientists knew that  virtually all animals that change their skin color to camouflage have light-detecting systems, or “visual systems.”

But no one understood why.

To be crystal clear, Schweikert said, she now knows that the color-change she witnessed on the boat several years ago was a response simply to the pressure or temperature of the boat deck.

“That experience gave me the idea to investigate skin further,” she said.

Through her postdoctoral years at Duke University and Florida International University she collected data, which she then shared once she was hired at UNCW with students she recruited to launch a research program to collect the data would answer her question of “why.”

Doctoral candidate Lydia Naughton, who, along with undergraduate Jacob Bolin co-authored the hogfish study with Schweikert, is further investigating the characteristics of the novel cells in those fish. Maureen Howard, an honors student, is studying light sensing systems in the skin of flounder.

With the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Florence this month, many on the coast are reliving the stress caused by catastrophic flooding, extensive damage to property and infrastructure, and the continued long-term recovery.

The Nation Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration calculated that the 2018 hurricane was one of the costliest tropical cyclones to impact the U.S. coming in at $29 billion, based on the 2023 Consumer Price Index-adjusted cost. But that’s just the financial toll. 

“Weather-related disasters are increasing in frequency and severity, leaving survivors to cope with ensuing mental, financial, and physical hardships,” which can exacerbate existing illnesses or cause new, and increase the risk of mortality – also characteristics of advanced age – leading to the hypothesis that extreme weather events may accelerate aging, according to “Natural disaster and immunological aging in a nonhuman primate,” a research paper published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

To test this hypothesis, researchers looked at blood samples of individual, free-ranging rhesus macaque monkeys on an isolated island in Puerto Rico. The authors compared samples from monkeys that were exposed to the 2017 Hurricane Maria to samples of those that were not. They found that the monkeys exposed to the hurricane had a gene expression profile that was, on average, two years older.

This is “roughly equivalent” to seven to eight years of human life, primate comparative geneticist Julie Horvath, told Coastal Review. “If a human gets exposed to severe hurricanes like this, maybe they’re going to age seven, eight years faster.”

Horvath, along with colleagues from Arizona State University, Caribbean Primate Research Center, University of Pennsylvania, University of Exeter, New York University, collaborated in the study.

Horvath is the head of the Genomics and Microbiology Research Lab at North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and has a co-appointment as a research associate professor in the biological and biomedical sciences department at North Carolina Central University.

She is also part of a public science project that seeks to involved middle school and high school teachers and students in researching monkey health, including a workshop for middle school and high school educators later this month.

In 1938, about 400 monkeys were relocated from India to the Caribbean Primate Research Center field station on the isolated island, Cayo Santiago, a nearly 40-acre island off the southern coast of Puerto Rico.

Researchers first studied the behavior of these highly social primates that are a close relative to humans, then their pedigree.

In the last 15 to 20 years, Horvath said they’ve been studying genetics and health of the about 1,500 monkeys on the island, all descendants of that first generation. The scientists collect blood samples and compare the blood count information with the behavioral measures to see how animal health contributes to differences in their behavior.

After Hurricane Maria hit the region in 2017, Horvath said they realized that they could compare samples, initially collected to study overall health, from before and after the storm to determine if a natural disaster can molecularly accelerate aging in the monkeys’ immune system. 

Rhesus macaque monkeys share many behavioral and biological features with humans, including aging characteristics, though their lifespan is a quarter of a human’s. “They’re really great models overall, but they also are useful because they age faster than humans so you can study aging in them,” she explained. 

“To test this idea, we examined the impact of Hurricane Maria and its aftermath on immune cell gene expression in large, age-matched, cross-sectional samples from free-ranging rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) living on an isolated island,” the study states. 

“We know that when humans experience traumatic life events it can have lasting impacts on their health and mental state. Our research underscores the importance of ongoing studies in these rhesus macaque monkeys to help us better understand the factors impacting health and aging across all primates, including humans,” Horvath said in a statement when the study was published.

Aging studies look at gene expression, or how your genes differently turn on or off, as you get older, and researchers were able to observe gene expression differences between monkeys that were exposed to a hurricane versus not exposed.

“So essentially, you’re aging a little bit faster if you get exposed to one of these extreme natural disasters like a hurricane,” Horvath told Coastal Review. Adding that macaques are a good model to study the aging process, and that can translate to what happens in humans who are exposed to natural disasters.

For example, people with higher socioeconomic status, good health care and access to food who are exposed to hurricanes probably can continue to maintain that through hurricanes, but people with a lower socioeconomic status that can’t obtain food or maybe don’t have access to fresh water would add those other confounding factors. 

The macaque monkeys on the island are provided food, so they all have a very similar diet, and don’t have intervening veterinary care, which removes the variables of food insecurity and differing medical care. 

In that sense, she said, the macaques are a model that just says the hurricanes trigger emotional and physical stress on them.

“That’s probably a better predictor of how the aging process goes. And then in humans, you’d probably see a lot more variation across humans because there’d be these confounding factors of socioeconomic status, food, access to medical care, etcetera. I think then, in that sense, the macaques are a really great model for some of these studies.”

Horvath is on the team for an online public science project, the Monkey Health Explorer, launched five years ago through Citizen Science Alliance’s web portal, Zooniverse. Part of the international collaboration to better understand how genes influence social behavior using macaque monkeys as a model, scientists can use the data to better understand the same kind of processes in humans. 

There is a tutorial and field guide for new volunteers on the site to learn how to count and identify cell types in the images of blood smears collected from hundreds of these monkeys uploaded to the online platform.

Horvath said that her lab is focusing on the public science project because everybody can contribute. 

They’re trying to get more sixth through 12^th graders to participate so the students can learn what monkey research can teach us about humans. 

The museum is offering a new workshop on the project for middle school and high school biology, Earth, environmental science and math teachers on Sept. 30 at the facility in downtown Raleigh. 

Register online for Educator Trek: Monkey Health Explorer. Fee is $25 due at time of registration and teachers can earn hours for North Carolina’s Environmental Education Certification Program.

The goal is to engage teachers and students in authentic research and to provide a platform for clinically interested students to gain valuable career experience, according to the release.

Horvath said the workshop to be held at the museum in Raleigh will include hands-on activities, print outs of the lesson plans, and supplies for teachers to take home so they can have the activity in their classroom without needing to purchase items or print documents. 

For those unable to make it to Raleigh but have an interest in the lesson plans and materials, the documents are available online. Horvath said if there’s enough interest, the museum will consider hosting an off-site workshop. 

A study of the country’s two largest estuaries reveals that inshore coastal waters are not necessarily experiencing what scientists say is a worrisome global trend of increasingly acidic oceans.

The recently published paper is the latest in a small collection of studies highlighting the complexities of coastal zones onshore.

In this case, researchers looked at trends from data collected more than 20 years within the Neuse River Estuary-Pamlico Sound waters and Chesapeake Bay and found that things like nutrient pollution and algal blooms play a role in how carbon dioxide is dissolved in inland coastal waters.

Research Assistant Professor Nathan Hall with the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City and co-author of the study explained that eutrophication is effectively causing, in some cases, estuarine waters to have lower acidification than that of the ocean.

Eutrophication happens in waters that become overloaded by nutrient runoff, leading to harmful algal blooms, fish kills and areas of low oxygen where aquatic life cannot survive.

“We think of ocean acidification as bad, eutrophication as bad,” Hall said. “But eutrophication also in these estuaries can prevent, at least in the surface layers, the effects of ocean acidification from showing up. So, it adds a lot of complexity in the coastal zone. It’s not just as simple as gauges going down everywhere because we’re pumping CO2 into the air. In a lot of cases estuaries, because we load them with so much organic matter and the rivers feeding into them usually have more CO2 than they can take to begin with, they usually are releasing CO2 back into the atmosphere.”

The release of that CO2 into the atmosphere means that the carbon dioxide does not often have the same influence on the pH — or measure of how acidic or basic water is — alkalinity, in an estuary.

The measure of pH ranges from 0-14. A measurement of 7 is neutral, those less than 7 indicate acidity and those greater than 7 indicate a base.

Scientists say increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere driven by human activity is causing the ocean to absorb more carbon dioxide, which decreases pH, causing the ocean to become more acidic.

Increasingly acidic seas are threatening species like oysters, corals and some calcifying planktons. Threats to these species, scientists say, will create a rippling effect up the ocean food chain.

The Neuse River Estuary-Pamlico Sound and Chesapeake Bay study corroborates previous findings of how production of phytoplankton, or microalgae that float in the upper layer of fresh and marine waters, swamp out from estuaries signals that detect acidification in the ocean.

But the study also found something Hall was not expecting.

Scientists assess the amount of phytoplankton in water by measuring concentrations of chlorophyll. Phytoplankton contain chlorophyll to carry out photosynthesis by absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide to create sugars for fuel.

“If chlorophyll is going up we assume that there’s more production,” Hall said. “And, in most cases, we think that should increase the pH as CO2 is taken out of the water from phytoplankton production. But what we actually saw in both of these estuaries is that, during the summer, periods of high chlorophyll were correlated with low pH water and that was a real headscratcher. The pH is going down during these phytoplankton blooms.”

Researchers think that, during the summer, nutrient loading that cause algal blooms also load a lot of dissolved organic carbon, which is fuel for bacteria. As the bacteria break down that organic carbon that produces CO2.

“So even though the phytoplankton are growing on the nutrients that came in from the pulses of runoff, the bacteria are growing and producing more CO2 than phytoplankton are taking the CO2 up,” Hall said. “It’s not something that I think had been seen or really shown before. It just makes things complex. The more you learn about something the more you realize, holy cow, this really is not straightforward.”

He theorizes that swamps in the watershed inundated by flooding from tropical cyclones load a lot of that organic matter into the estuary while, at the same time, dumping a lot of nutrients into the estuary that cause algal blooms.

“I think that’s fuel and the production of all the carbon dioxide that ends up making the pH go down,” he said.

This complicated system makes it challenging for researchers to provide definitive answers for how to try and manage these waters.

As Hall sees it, the study reveals eutrophication in estuaries as a kind of double-edged sword, a trade-off.

“I think that’s something that people are really just starting to talk about,” he said. “I think another thing the study shows is we have this global pressure of higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere, but how that affects pH is very estuary-specific and so we just can’t make assumptions that estuaries are going to decrease in pH. A lot of estuaries are probably not going to be really sensitive to the increase in atmospheric CO2 and some may be. We’ve really got to take it by an estuary-to-estuary basis to really understand which ones are going to be more sensitive and which ones are not.”

This report has been updated to remove the trademarked product name referenced in the study, which is not the device shown in the photo.

A recent study estimates that 230 billion tiny pieces of plastic the thickness of a human hair and 670 million microplastics about than the size of a grain of sand flow into the Pamlico Sound from the Neuse River Basin each year.

To reach that estimate, North Carolina State University and North Carolina Sea Grant researchers sampled 15 freshwater locations between Wake County to Craven County from August 2020 to July 2021.

The presence of microplastics, which are less than a fifth of an inch, were found at all 15 sites, though the concentration varied depending on location, according to the research funded by National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration Marine Debris Program and North Carolina Sea Grant. The most common microplastics detected were polyethylene and polystyrene.

“This study effort completed the first sampling of microplastics (smaller than 5 mm) for North Carolina freshwater rivers and streams,” states, “Engaging Partners to Evaluate Plastics Loading to the Pamlico Sound from Urban and Rural Lands via the Neuse River in North Carolina,” the study published earlier this year.

Microplastics come in a variety of shapes such as fibers, fragments, pellets, spheres, flakes, foams and films, and originate from point and nonpoint sources including wastewater, industrial processes, tire wear, and degraded plastic bags, bottles, food containers and other discarded plastics.

The primary goal of this study is taking “the first step in characterizing and quantifying the annual loading of plastic pollution to our coastal waters from inland sources by examining contributions through the Neuse River watershed to the Pamlico Sound. The secondary goal was to use research results to raise awareness of plastic pollution since quantifying the scale of the problem in a local context has been shown to increase stakeholder engagement and interest,” according to the research.

The Neuse basin is home to over 2.5 million people, mostly concentrated in the highly developed upper watershed, while the lower watershed is mostly agricultural and forested land uses. Sample locations were selected to include a range of drainage area sizes, a variety of land uses, and to encompass locations throughout the basin, the research notes.

The highest number of all microplastics were observed in urban streams. “There was a significant correlation between streamflow and MP concentration in the most urbanized locations,” the study states. The study refers to microplastics as MPs.

The authors of the study, North Carolina Sea Grant extension specialists Dr. Barbara Doll and Gloria Putnam, and NC State Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering research scholar, Jack Kurki-Fox, shared highlights of their research in the article, “A River of Plastics,” in the summer edition of Coastwatch, North Carolina Sea Grant’s quarterly publication.

“Our study was the first to sample microplastics in North Carolina’s freshwater rivers and streams, focusing on 15 locations throughout the Neuse River Basin, from Wake County to Craven County. We evaluated the presence of microplastic particles by trawling for several minutes using a net with 335-micron openings (about the size of a small grain of sand) and by bailing 100 liters (about 26.4 gallons) of water through a 64-micron mesh opening (roughly the thickness of a human hair),” they wrote in the Coastwatch article.

“We estimate that about 670 million microplastic particles larger than 335 microns enter the Pamlico Sound from the Neuse River Basin each year. For microplastics larger than 64 microns, that estimate is about 230 billion particles per year,” the article continues.

Researchers sampled for macroplastics, as well, according to the study. They used three different methods in the upper portion of the river basins. They regularly collected trash at seven streams, captured debris during stormflow at two highly urbanized streams using a trap device and visually counted floating trash during stormflow events at two large tributaries and at one small highly urban stream in Raleigh, according to the research.

All three macroplastic sampling methods show that the bulk of trash washing into streams is plastics.

“Floating trash was nearly all plastics and plastics also dominated the litter captured during storm flow using the trash collection boom and basket (96%). Styrofoam pieces were the most common litter type observed using these two sampling methods,” the study states. “Grid samples in contrast contained a more diverse trash profile with plastics comprising about 74% of all samples collected.”

Urban streams were found to produce much higher counts of trash and macroplastics. The study’s findings indicate that plastics are commonly transported downstream during high flows and are likely flowing into the mainstem of the Neuse River where it will continue to wash into the Pamlico Sound.

“Therefore,” the executive summary concludes, that “programs to prevent this litter from being deposited on the ground and washed into the stormdrain system are critical to plastics from entering stormwater systems in urban areas and being transported to downstream rivers and estuaries of critical social, economic and environmental importance.”

“Most of us don’t witness the ‘plastic flows’ in our state because we aren’t out during storm events,” Putnum told Coastal Review.

“But our trash traps and the visual assessments of floating trash we conducted during high stream flows, show there is a large quantity of plastic, especially plastic bottles and foam pieces, moving through some of our urban streams,” she continued. “Next, we need to identify where it ends up and move toward prevention, because removing it once it’s in the water is costly and extremely challenging.”

Doll, who also is on the faculty for the NC State Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, told Coastal Review that, in a way, it was not surprising they found microplastics in all of their samples, and found strong links between the macroplastics and the microplastics.

“Polystyrene, polyethylene these were really common microplastics and lo and behold, very close to the items that we were finding in our trash collection research component as well,” she said.

Doll explained that she has long history with freshwater streams and has worked on nonpoint source pollution and stream improvement for all her career, and “trash has always been at the forefront of my concern from childhood.”

After hearing about the funding through Sea Grant to work on marine debris and plastics, Doll said they decided to take advantage of the funding opportunity.

Because of her work conducting stream morphology assessments, or collecting data on streams, she said she sees in the urban areas “a lot of garbage and it’s pretty disheartening.”

She was also hearing more about the issue of microplastics. She mentioned international articles about researchers looking at pollutant loading into the ocean from riverine systems.

“I believe it,” she said about what she had been reading, “because of all of the garbage I see in just our small creeks, and these creeks are connecting to bigger waterways and into the main river, and then that’s going to go into our estuary. And in some cases, like the Cape Fear, dump right out into the ocean.”

Between the amount of trash she was finding while out in the field and the recent attention on microplastics, it made her ask, “How do we get a handle on that? We had not heard of any type of this work looking at trash and plastics — microplastics and riverine systems — reaching coastal waters in our state.”

Doll said that she anticipates a push to regulate debris in waterways. If that’s the case, there needs to be research on how to quantify the debris, how to prevent it, determine what the real scale is, and “Would this be the right thing to do, to require cities and counties to clean up?” Doll said. These questions are important, and the funding seemed like a real opportunity to jump in to get answers, data and experience.

“We were very interested in this topic,” she said, and since there’s a lot of questions “let’s just start to take a bite out of that, and here’s some funding that could help us.”

Doll said the team had to adapt early to some obstacles when they began collecting samples. One was the amount of organic material they had to sort through.

“This was our biggest challenge. We spent several months, maybe almost a year, dealing with the amount of organic matter that had to be digested, filtered out, removed, separated, so we could quantify these plastics,” Doll explained, adding that the Plastics Ocean Project Executive Director Bonnie Monteleone and her team separated the plastics from the debris in their laboratory in Wilmington.

Once that was resolved, they had a solid procedure for getting that separated and identifying the plastics.

Another challenge that was surprising, Doll noted, is that when these plastics break down and degrade in the environment, it changes the plastic’s chemical signature, but the databases they were using to identify what kind of plastics they were finding were based on pristine plastic. “That became a big challenge as well,” she said, because some samples would give a signature of a food additive, but they were actually degraded plastics.

Capturing the trash during storm flow also took some adapting. The first net they put across a stream to catch trash, collected, leaves, pine straw and sticks, and ultimately failed.

“We had to kind of research about different trash-capturing devices and found some people that have been doing work in that,” including the litter getter trash trap.

During the project, Doll said they learned so much about the sampling techniques that now they can share that information with municipalities and others on how to monitor for microplastics, macroplastics, or general marine debris.

“We’ve learned a lot, and I think that that’s really important to moving ahead in the future, where we really start to grapple with this serious issue. We found very high levels of trash and microplastics from the urban areas, and that increases with higher levels of storm flow,” Doll said. “That says that those are the areas we really need to target to reduce this contribution in our particular rivers and sounds here in North Carolina. We need good strategies, and good tools and practices and to be consistent.”

If a Raleigh-area volunteer effort to help fill the gaps in wetlands data continues its current path, the monitoring program could expand across the state.

The Carolina Wetlands Association, North Carolina State University and RTI International have been developing the pilot wetlands monitoring program over the past few years.

Michael R. Burchell, professor and extension specialist with N.C. State’s Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, recently explained to Coastal Review that the project that’s funded through the Environmental Protection Agency’s wetlands program development grant was designed to see how viable it is for volunteers to collect wetland data.

The pilot program was awarded funding four years ago, right before COVID-19 restrictions were put into place. During the last year, Burchell said the team has been able to move forward with the project.

When Burchell presented the project on behalf of the team during the N.C. Water Resources Research Institute’s annual conference at N.C. State University’s McKimmon Center in Raleigh earlier this year, he explained that a benefit of a sustained ambient monitoring program is understanding the health and promoting protection of wetlands are critical to preserving our ecosystems.

“Monitoring and having some sort of ambient monitoring program could be really important to track wetland loss impairment. Wetlands can serve almost as a canary in the coal mine. If you know what the quality of the water coming into a wetland is, you get some ideas about what’s going on your watershed, hopefully, before it starts impacting your stream and other surface water quality,” Burchell said during the conference. But these programs are hard to fund, and a volunteer science program may be the answer because the project could be sustained in the long term with limited financial support.

Burchell told Coastal Review that the project came about after years of funding challenges made it hard for the state to maintain wetland monitoring.

Partners for the project, which includes Carolina Wetlands Association Executive Director Rick Savage, began pursuing the idea. In the process, they found that there’s not many volunteer-based wetlands monitoring programs.

“It’s not the norm at all,” Savage told Coastal Review, normally volunteers monitor streams or rivers, not wetlands. Burchell added that this is because wetlands are more complicated to monitor. 

Burchell said the partnership with the Carolina Wetlands Association allowed for the volunteer program to build on the association’s established goal, and give the program presence on the association’s existing website. The program page includes the training for volunteers that the team developed, which covers basic safety, field work, data-collection software, and other resources.

Work also went into recruiting volunteers through the association’s online presence and network. Savage said they have about 40 volunteers now, in some capacity, ranging in age and experience.

Between February 2022 and March of this year, there have been five monitoring events. The groups of up to 10 volunteers have collected data on hydrology, water chemistry, soils, vegetation and wildlife at Mason Farm Biological Reserve in Chapel Hill, Hemlock Bluffs Nature Preserve in Cary, and Robertson Millpond Preserve in Wendell.

“Right now, the pilot appears successful. We’ve only done this one year, but it certainly seems to be gaining momentum,” Burchell said at the conference.

Burchell explained to Coastal Review that they tell the volunteers that this kind of project hasn’t really been done before and they are always looking for feedback on what works and what doesn’t, or if things should be done differently.

“Ultimately we want to be reporting about what went right, what didn’t go right, what we did to fix it, and where we think that it could go in the future,” Burchell said.

Savage added that they’ve “been pretty happy with the way it’s been going. We’ve learned a lot and we’ve made adjustments accordingly, and we still are to some extent.”

Burchell said that they chose the Raleigh-area wetlands because of logistics. These sites are close to the university and the Carolina Wetlands Association headquarters, and are diverse, high-quality wetlands that are under some management as part of a conservation site.

“We want the data to actually be used by other wetland managers — whether it’s people in DEQ or the Coastal Federation — looking at doing a conservation easement. Or if they want to know what the hydrology of a similar wetland might be, they could use this data,” Burchell said. Or “perhaps people who are in the restoration industry are curious about what they would expect the water quality to be from one of these areas.”

Currently, they’re still in the data-collection stage, and the data sharing part of the project is under development.

Savage said the next important phase that’s probably going to get the most emphasis is getting the data portal set up, most likely on the association’s website. RTI International is developing the data portal as its part of the partnership.

The partners plan on applying to the EPA soon for funds to continue the project “but expansion has got to be the key word there,” Savage said.

In addition to the training and materials that have been and will need to be created, Savage said as the project expands, the team is looking for organizations to help with the volunteers.

The Carolina Wetlands Association will be the lead for the program and would provide training to organizations and volunteers, Savage said, but “ultimately, it’ll be the organization that manages the volunteers.”

This means making sure the volunteers collect data from the sites at the right times of year, complete certain tasks and collect the necessary data.

“I think that’s going to be a really important aspect,” to expand the program to reach the long-term goal of a self-sustaining wetlands monitoring program across North and South Carolina, Savage said. It would be overwhelming to manage all the potential volunteers. “We’re going to need organizations to work with us to manage the volunteers.”

Savage added that the organizations would be encouraged to engage their volunteers year-round.

“That’s probably as important as anything,” he said, explaining that outreach may be easier for these existing organizations. This the project team’s first time with this kind of work, and while “I think we’re doing OK” at keeping the volunteers excited and engaged, “we can always learn.”

Savage said they’ve had a couple of organizations already contact them to get involved, but the program is not quite set up for that step, yet.

‘I think this is exciting. It means, I think, that we’re doing something right and we’re getting other organizations interested,” Savage said. The goal is to reach out to these organizations and include them in this network as soon as possible, but most likely during the next funding cycle. “I’m really pretty excited to see how we get expanded out and work with these organizations.”

A hope is that with the next phase, there are volunteers from under-represented populations and groups from communities with wetlands, Burchell added.

ROANOKE ISLAND — Archaeologists have unearthed artifacts that appear to confirm the site of the Algonquian village on Roanoke Island, where Native Americans shared their dinner with the first English explorers.

“This is firm evidence that this locality was Roanoac, the village of first contact,” Eric Klingelhofer, vice president for research of the nonprofit First Colony Foundation, told a small group of reporters Friday during a briefing at the excavation site. “We’ve known about the village because that’s the place where English explorers sent by Raleigh first came.”

Pointing to broken pieces of pottery laid out on a makeshift table — a sample of the finds — the veteran archaeologist explained that the sherds came from Algonquian Colington ware and burnished ware pottery, both found during a recent excavation of the 16^th century strata. 

“Now that’s not the full story,” Klingelhofer added with a sly grin as he reached for small plastic bag. ‘’We found something else.”

He then gently pulled out a thread of copper that was bent into a ring shape, and was buried about 3 feet down in the top layer. Copper was much sought-after by Natives in the Southeast, but it was rare in the region and was nearly all acquired through trade.

“I was extremely pleased because I knew what it meant,” said Klingelhofer, referring to English contact. As he spoke, the waters of Roanoke Sound could be heard lapping at the shoreline behind the dig site, hidden by lush trees and bushes at the privately owned Elizabethan Gardens adjacent to Fort Raleigh National Historic Site.

Copper was a known currency for the first generation of American colonization, Klingelhofer said, adding that the copper strand most likely was a trade item that may have been worn by a Native as a ring. 

“There’s no other reason it would be here,” he said. “It must have come from the colonists.”

The Foundation team has asked conservators at Jamestown to analyze the copper, he said.

English explorers Phillip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe visited Roanoac in 1584 as part of a reconnaissance mission planned by Sir Walter Raleigh. The men were welcomed by the Algonquians, who invited them to dine and exchanged gifts with them. The Englishmen later described Roanoac as having nine cedar houses fortified in a round of “sharp trees.”

The following year, Ralph Lane, who was part of a larger Raleigh expedition, had been sent to Roanoke Island with about 100 soldiers to establish a fort and a settlement. Lane abandoned the island in 1586 because of hostilities — much apparently provoked by him — between the Native population and the English. Nonetheless, about 117 men, women and children from England arrived on Roanoke Island in 1587 to establish a permanent settlement. Known today as the “Lost Colony,” it disappeared without a trace and is often called the oldest mystery in American history.

Founded in 2003 by Klingelhofer and other professional archaeologists, the First Colony Foundation has conducted numerous archaeological explorations in and around Fort Raleigh National Historic Site on the north end of Roanoke Island, which is where the Lost Colony settlement is likely to have been built, as well as sites in Bertie County at the headwaters of the Albemarle Sound where, artifacts show, a small number of colonists likely had fled.

Findings over the years from Foundation digs have ranged from remnants of early wells, sherds from olive jars and pottery, a Cashie-type Indian pot, tobacco pipes, French ceramic flasks, glass trade beads, and an entire necklace of cut diamond-shaped copper sheets that the team believes may have been presented to a Roanoac noble. Advancements with remote-sensing technology have enabled First Colony researchers to eliminate some sites while homing in on other areas.

Klingelhofer and Foundation Co-Vice President Nick Luccketti had been part of late archaeologist Ivor Noel Hume’s Virginia Company Foundation team in the 1990s that determined that an area presumed to be associated with the reconstructed “Fort Raleigh” earthworks was instead the 1585-1586 workshop used by scientist Thomas Harriot and the metallurgist Joachim Gans — a notable discovery.

Further tests revealed evidence nearby of charcoal making and a brick kiln and led to other digs to the north and west that found 16th century artifacts. The work with Hume directly influenced establishing the First Colony group to create a partnership agreement with the National Park Service so that Elizabethan-era explorations could continue.

Although the Foundation, which includes academics and historians with expertise in precolonial and early colonial American activity and Native American culture, would welcome finding evidence of the Lost Colony, its focus has always been the broader story of the 1584-1590 Roanoke Voyages, which served as the playbook for English colonization and ultimately, for what became America.

Klingelhofer said that the team is up against time, as increased shoreline erosion consumes places to explore, and storms reconfigure potential historic areas.

Going back as far as the Great Chesapeake Hurricane in 1769, sand had buried the 16^th century site where archaeologists have recently dug. So far, Klingelhofer said, about 100 feet of shoreline has been lost on the north end of Roanoke Island, and water in the Albemarle Sound is about 3 feet higher than it was in the 1580s.

For the time being, he said, work on Roanoke Island is done. Meanwhile, he said he was looking forward to publication in November of a book detailing archaeology and historic research done by the Foundation and its predecessors, “Excavating the Lost Colony Mystery, The Map, the Search, the Discovery,” which is edited by Klingelhofer.

But the team plans to resume explorations soon at other sites in and around Fort Raleigh and Bertie County. They will also expand beyond the Native American village excavation to see how far it goes, now that the location has been nailed down to their satisfaction.

“So it’s been a good little dig,” Klingelhofer said. “We are very happy to bring our search for Roanoac to a conclusion.”

More than 4,500 eighth graders during this school year have been helping the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences identify hundreds of microfossils.

In its first year, the Cretaceous Creatures public science project, a part of the upcoming “Dueling Dinosaurs” exhibit at the museum, has provided tools and training to 55 classrooms in 32 counties in the state, Project Coordinator Dr. Elizabeth Jones told Coastal Review. 

Fully funded by Bank of America, teachers are given lesson plans, presentations, videos and kit materials at no charge, giving students an opportunity to discover fossils and make identifications. 

The kits are made up of small, rectangle boxes containing microfossils, a lens, tweezers and paintbrushes, all tools used in the field. Working in teams of three, each student gets their own box to make sure everyone has equal access, Jones said.

The “Dueling Dinosaurs” exhibit, which is currently under construction at the museum in downtown Raleigh, includes the skeletons of a Triceratops and a tyrannosaur in what appears to be a predator-prey encounter “rapidly buried in a single event” 67 million years ago. The new exhibit will allow visitors to watch researchers study the specimens still entombed in sediment from the Montana hillside where they were discovered.

Jones, a postdoctoral research scholar at North Carolina State University and historian of science, explained that the sediment the students are studying is from the Hell Creek Formation in Montana, near where the dueling dinosaurs were found, and is about 66-67 million years old.

For the 2023-24 school year, Jones said the hope is to reach classrooms in all 100 North Carolina counties. Educators can register now on the Cretaceous Creatures website to join the project. 

Jones explained that the soil from the site is special because it contains “teeny, tiny fossils, or microfossils,” which are small bones, teeth, shells and scales of the ancient animals that lived around the time of the dueling dinosaurs. 

The microfossils “tell us about their ecosystem as it existed back then, just before the end of the Cretaceous, and the extinction of all the nonavian dinosaurs,” Jones said. Nonavian dinosaurs are all dinosaurs except birds.

Jones said the Cretaceous Creatures team worked with N.C. State University web developers to create a training module and a fossil discovery module that has digitized videos, images and rotating videos of all the possible different microfossils they could encounter. 

There are close to 50 different possibilities of what the students may find in their little box of soil. The students work through a multiple-choice program that asks questions about the fossils to try to get to the correct answer, she explained.

The students record their findings in an online database and send the fossils back to the museum. 

“The process of identifying fossils is part of the process of learning about fossils. We have strategic questions in place to get the students to look at certain features that are unique or perhaps shared amongst other fossils in order to help them figure out what they might be looking at,” she said. 

“The fun part is we get to analyze what they identified for accuracy, and update any of the IDs if we need to, and then we catalog everything into the museum’s paleontology collection,” Jones added.

The eighth graders so far have correctly identified about 1,500 fossils.

“It’s looking like they’re getting it correct about 40% of the time, which is actually pretty remarkable considering they’ve never seen microfossils before. They have a limited amount of time to learn and try to identify it. And also, identifying microfossils can be pretty hard because they’re super, super tiny,” she said. 

Eventually, the students’ findings will be available on an online database for all researchers to access.

Jones said the teachers have been providing feedback on the program, such as what worked, what didn’t work, what they would like to see more of through a survey.

“And luckily for us, the feedback is overwhelmingly positive. Everything seems to be working pretty smoothly,” she said. “We’re getting extremely good feedback in that the teachers can take all these resources and execute it pretty easily,” but also, it adds another element. “We’re not just sending the fossils, so the kids can do stuff with it, but they’re contributing to a bigger part of the research process and that they have felt like it’s really cool.”

After analyzing the data from the students, the Cretaceous Creatures team sends a report back detailing how many and what kind of fossils the class identified, “And then we give them some fun facts about the different ancient fish or lizards or dinosaurs or mammals,” Jones said. 

They chose eighth grade students because a lot of research shows that this is a prime age to increase interest in the sciences, but it’s also a prime age to lose interest in science, so “we’re getting them at that sweet spot,” she said. 

The program meets educational science standards for eighth grade’s evolution and fossil units. It gives them a “unique and authentic experience that might tap into that either increasing or decreasing interest in order to help retain it in their later years.”

Jones said this is one of the few public science projects that involve students, or the public, handling fossils.

“We know that paleontology is one of the most popular of the sciences among the public and has been for a good 200 years,” she said. 

There are thousands of public science projects but there are really only a handful that actually involve students or the public in directly handling fossils, taking measurements, making identifications, or analyzing the data in a way that scientists actually use for their own research purposes.

“We’re probably the biggest one in terms of scale, and we’re expanding,” Jones said.

The plan for year two is to be in eighth grade science classes across North Carolina specifically. In year three, they hope to send the project out to schools in different states, and then in the fourth year, the intention is to go international and collaborate with schools in a couple of different countries. 

Jones, who has been project coordinator for about a year and a half, said the idea for the project came from Dr. Lindsay Zanno, Head of Paleontology at the Museum of Natural Sciences and Associate Research Professor at N.C. State. The project has been in the making for several years and came along with the acquisition of the dueling dinosaurs specimen. 

The lab staff head west in the summer for field work in New Mexico, Utah and Montana and have access to the microfossil sediment. There are thousands of fossils and not enough people and not enough time, and one of the focuses of the lab is not just talking to the public about science but having them participate and contribute to the actual research.

Zanno told Coastal Review that the Cretaceous Creatures program is an opportunity to experience science firsthand.  

“In designing this project, we wanted to give kids all over North Carolina the chance to be a part of our scientific team. These students will get to make real discoveries, do real science. The data they collect will become part of the museum’s permanent collections,” she said. “We want them to experience the thrill of discovery for real, to know what it feels like to discover something no one has laid eyes on before. This is the best part of being a scientist.”

State-by-state emergency plans aimed at minimizing the impacts of natural disasters overwhelmingly understate extreme heat as a hazard to human health, according to a Duke University analysis.

The recently released policy brief, “Defining Extreme Heat as a Hazard: A Review of Current State Hazard Mitigation Plans,” highlights the need for states to better evaluate the growing threat of extreme heat as the climate changes, identify populations of people most vulnerable to high temperatures, and implement plans to educate and assist those populations.

Ashley Ward, a senior policy associate with Duke’s Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment and Sustainability and co-author of the brief, said the report is not a critique, but rather a guide to help states’ emergency management departments better incorporate extreme heat in their hazard mitigation plans.

“We want to give them some easy-to-pick-up roadmaps about how they can do so,” Ward said in a telephone interview. “Our hope is to make their job easier and to supplement what’s already happening at FEMA. We want to be of assistance. That’s what we’re trying to do here.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency recently announced states must incorporate climate change into their hazard mitigation plans, a move Ward called a “really big deal” in part because it prioritizes extreme heat as a hazard.

Extreme heat is when daytime temperatures rise above 95 degrees and nighttime temperatures do not dip below 75 degrees.

Unlike natural disasters such as hurricanes or tornadoes, extreme heat is not a Stafford Act hazard.

The 1988 Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Act, which amended the Disaster Relief Act of 1974, authorizes the president to declare disasters and provide financial assistance to state and local governments.

The law mandates states update their hazard mitigation plans every five years. Many states are in the process of renewing their plans, Ward said.

So, the report focuses on current states’ plans, half of which lack a dedicated section to extreme heat, the analysis found. 

Ward and co-author Jordan Clark, a postdoctoral associate for the institute’s Water Policy Program, used a scoring system created by the National Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, to assess each states’ plan.

The NRDC used the scoring system to look at the incorporation of extreme heat in southeastern states’ hazard mitigation plans.

“As we know, this is certainly a pressing problem in the southeast, but we know the southeast isn’t the only region in which heat is a problem,” Ward said.

Heat, she said, is one of the most misunderstood weather events.

Ten years ago, researchers in her field focused on something called the urban heat island effect, which is created when natural landscapes are replaced with pavement, buildings and other surfaces that absorb and retain heat.

This effect is very important and very real, Ward said, but its sole focus is on urban areas, leaving out whole populations impacted by extreme heat.

“In North Carolina, heat illness rates are about seven to 10 times higher in rural areas than they are in urban areas,” she said. “And, in fact, what we’re seeing in the small amount of research that’s coming out of the southern part of the United States is that’s not a North Carolina phenomenon. A recent study came out of Florida that showed the same thing. There’s a lot of reasons this is the case, but that just gives you one example of how broadly heat has been misunderstood.”

North Carolina has an enhanced hazard mitigation plan, also referred to as the 322 Plan, which includes natural hazards as well as man-made, technological and human-caused hazards.

The plan addresses different populations identified by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, which narrows down the largest group of people who suffer heat injuries as men between the ages of 18-34 either involved in athletics or outdoor work such as farming and construction.

The plan was updated last year and approved by FEMA in February. The current plan expires February 12, 2028, according to Chris Crew, North Carolina Emergency Management mitigation plans manager.

Crew explained in an email responding to questions that the plan’s definition of extreme heat is taken from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and National Weather Service, which identify extreme heat as hotter and/or more humid than average summertime temperatures and unusually hot and humid weather lasting at least two days.

The first recommendation offered in the report is for states to establish their own, specific standard definition of extreme heat.

“That is because extreme heat in North Carolina is not the same as extreme heat in Oregon and it’s important that people think about their geography with respect to how we define extreme heat,” Ward said.

That and other recommendations are intended to provide education and awareness about the complexities of heat, she said, how things like how extreme heat correlates to effects on human health.

Take temperature metrics. Heat index, a metric that combines air temperature and humidity, is a common metric decision makers use to define extreme heat, but it is less robust in determining potential adverse health outcomes than a metric known as wet bulb globe temperature.

Wet bulb globe temperature, or WBGT, measures heat stress in direct sunlight and includes temperature, humidity, wind speed, sun angle and cloud cover. This standard metric is used by the military and high school athletic associations, Ward said.

“And that’s important because if you’re sweating outside and it’s very humid there’s a lot of moisture in the air so your body is not evaporating that sweat off of your skin,” she said. “However, if it’s windy outside then the wind is drying the sweat off your skin and that mimics that evaporative cooling process and actually provides a protective factor for you.”

Therefore, in coastal counties especially, it’s important to think about wind speed, Ward said.

North Carolina’s Sandhills region has the highest rate of heat-related illnesses in the state. Roughly 75% of those who go to emergency departments for treatment are men between the ages of 15 to 45, Ward said.

Counties within that region, including Bladen, Hoke, Robeson, Sampson and Scotland counties, are included in a heat-health alert system through the N.C. Building Resilience Against Climate Effects program.

This CDC-funded program is tailored to vulnerable populations, including low-income and elderly communities, farmworkers, and youth in sports, according to the state’s plan.

“The State’s position is ‘Extreme’ heat is more of an individual and regional value than a specific value for everyone across North Carolina,” Crew said in an email. “Setting a statewide definition of extreme (heat) would limit the State into responding to a single type of weather scenario statewide when the State health agencies need the flexibility to respond to different weather conditions in different regions to the State.”

Ward praised North Carolina’s emergency management department, calling it a “gold star in the nation.”

While the state does include an assessment for heat hazard, it could better incorporate socially or medically vulnerable populations and teach residents how to protect themselves from extreme heat, she said.

Some ways to cool off after being exposed to extreme heat include taking a cool shower then sitting in front of a fan or placing your feet in cool water.

North Carolina’s plan notes the North Carolina Climate Science Report, which projects that much of the Piedmont and coastal plain will experience a jump in very hot days by 10 to 20 days per year between 2021 and 2040 as compared to the 1996-2015 average.

The number of warm nights in those regions is projected to increase anywhere from three to 15 nights a year. Some areas within those regions could see an increase by 18 or more nights a year.

Beaufort’s historic Front Street is a bustling hub for local businesses, and strolling around the area is a must-do for tourists. But all this activity is disrupted when the town experiences flooding.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, this has been happening more frequently over the past 20 years and will become increasingly common as sea levels continue to rise.

Thoroughly understanding flood dynamics is important for protecting people and property along the North Carolina coast.

A new study from University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University researchers, led by former UNC Institute for the Environment researcher Adam Gold, has illuminated a hidden aspect of flooding not captured by NOAA’s flood observations. Gold currently is with the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund.

The researchers, who work together on the Sunny Day Flooding Project, used Beaufort’s Front Street as a case study to test a new, real-time sensor framework for detecting and measuring coastal flooding.

NOAA flood observations are based on data from tide gauges, which measure changes in water levels due to the tides, storm surge and river flow. But, the researchers found, they don’t capture flooding caused by rainfall, which accounted for 25% of the 24 flood events they observed in Beaufort during the five-month study period from June to November 2021.

These new measurements of rainfall-induced flooding begin to fill an important gap in flood records.

“It’s kind of an insidious problem,” Gold said. Because downtown Beaufort is so developed, rain can’t soak into the ground, and it runs into the underground drainage system instead.

“Ideally that would flow out to the sound or to Taylors Creek,” Gold explained. “But what we’re seeing is with these higher water levels in the tidal creek, that water is creeping up into the stormwater network.”

The drainage system eventually fills and water spills out onto streets and sidewalks.

“That’s the exact kind of flooding that future projections of coastal flooding don’t take into account,” Gold said.

This type of flooding, caused by the combined effect of sea level rise and rainfall, is called compound flooding. Colloquially, it is known as rainy-day flooding. Its counterpart, sunny-day flooding, occurs during exceptionally high tides in the absence of precipitation. Sunny-day flooding accounted for the remaining 75% of floods during the study period.

“Compound flooding is important to measure because flooding frequency is increasing with local sea level rise combined with heavy precipitation events,” said Molly Bost, an estuarine research scientist on contract with NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Science Coastal Resilience, Restoration, and Assessment Branch in Beaufort and who was not involved with the research.

In addition to increasing scientific understanding of compound flooding in Beaufort, another benefit of the sensor framework the Sunny Day Flooding Project researchers developed is that it is linked to a publicly accessible web app. This means anyone with an internet connection can access the camera to see water levels on Front Street in real time. Headed to New Bern, Down East Carteret County, or Carolina Beach? Additional cameras extend the app’s reach to thoroughfares there, as well.

Bost said having real-time data and flood cameras can help mitigate risk. “Compound floods make roads impassable, hindering day-to-day operations across many industries at the coast,” she explained while pointing out that chronic flooding also degrades infrastructure.

The root cause of all this flooding — whether it occurs on sunny or rainy days — is sea level rise. Even on sunny days, during high tide, water can spill out onto roadways through stormwater drainage systems. The problem is magnified on rainy days. And it will only get worse: a 2022 report led by NOAA predicts sea levels along U.S. coasts will rise, on average, by 10-12 inches over the next 30 years.

Both Gold and Bost said quantifying the frequency and severity of compound flooding will help communities better adapt to sea level rise. Flooding can be hyperlocal depending on an area’s vegetation cover, distance to water bodies, topography, and even winds.

The sensor framework the Sunny Day Flooding Project team describes in their study published March 27, which is relatively inexpensive at just $650 for a pressure logger, subaerial camera and communications equipment, could be deployed elsewhere around Beaufort and other communities to see which locations are most susceptible to compound flooding.

This information could then inform adaptation planning. For example, on a street vulnerable to rainy day flooding, one-way valves in the stormwater drainage system are likely a better solution than higher sand dunes or waterfront bulkheads.

As towns up and down the North Carolina coast grapple with how they will adapt to flooding, one thing individuals can do is sign up for flood alerts through the Sunny Day Flooding Project’s web app. The system is still preliminary, but anyone can sign up to get an email when the sensor network detects likely flooding. 

When bird expert Brian O’Shea travels for field work, he heads to northeast South America, taking a similar route as the long-distance migratory shorebirds he studies.

O’Shea, who has been the ornithology collection manager for the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences since 2011, heads to Guyana or Suriname three or four times a year for various projects, including documenting major shorebird concentration points.

He said there is a “massive effort” to study the diverse group of shorebirds that migrate between the Arctic and Guiana Shield, the region between the mouths of the Orinoco and Amazon rivers.

Most shorebirds are extreme long-distance migrants. After spending four to six weeks in the Arctic during the summer to breed, “they fly extraordinary distances, sometimes nonstop, across patches of ocean that take them several days to cross.”

There’s been quite a bit of tracking work on shorebirds, especially on larger species, and a lot of those birds move up and down the coast.

Of the 30 or so shorebird species that come through North Carolina, “I would say roughly 20 of those species are regularly along the coast of the Guianas as well,” O’Shea said.

His work studying these shorebirds in South America helps us better understand the behaviors of and threats to the same birds we see on the North Carolina coast.

Worldwide, shorebirds have declined quite a bit, at least 40% with the long-distance migrants, he said, adding those found along the coast of the Guianas having declined more than most.

“By most accounts, the populations of certain shorebirds from the coast of the Guianas are down roughly 80% from where they were 40 years ago. They are declining very rapidly and there’s a lot of interest in identifying key habitat and taking whatever conservation measures we can to help protect them,” O’Shea continued.

“The network of people that is working on this problem and studying shorebirds basically encompasses the entire Western Hemisphere because the birds just travel so much. So, it’s a massive effort involving multiple agencies.”

O’Shea found himself in Guyana in 2000 as the resident ornithologist for the Smithsonian program, Biological Diversity of the Guiana Shield, after graduating from Reed College in Portland, Oregon, in 1998 with a bachelor’s in biology. He earned his doctorate in biological sciences in 2009 from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where he learned how to care for specimens in a museum setting, before joining the Raleigh museum to oversee the ornithology collection.

“I am sort of the guardian of the collection of about 27,000 bird specimens,” he said of the collection that has been growing since about 1879.

The collection contains thousands of seabird specimens including skins, skeletons, fluid-preserved birds, several thousand egg sets, about 1,000 voice recordings of North Carolina birds and two rare specimens, the Carolina parakeet and the passenger pigeon, both extinct, according to the website.

The coast of the Guianas has, historically, been a major stopover for shorebirds flying north across the Atlantic to get to North America, or flying south from New England or the coast of the Carolinas, O’Shea said.

“These birds are, right now, subject to a lot of different pressures all around,” he added. In addition to climate change and pollution, there’s coastal development. These “cascading ecosystem effects” can impact shorebirds disproportionately because of the rather narrow zones that they inhabit along the edges of the continents and on the islands, particularly causing fluctuations in prey abundance.

One issue in Guyana he has been working on is shorebird hunting. Many of the shorebirds are protected while in the United States, but when they leave North America, they leave all the protection that they have here and fly to places where there is very little in the way of protection, he explained.

There has been shorebird hunting in Guyana and throughout the Caribbean, for some time. In places like Barbados, there are shooting swamps, for example, which are areas where shorebirds tend to stop and people go there to shoot the birds, often for sport.

In Guyana, the hunting method is a little different and “is pretty brutal,” O’Shea said. The hunter will whip a wire back and forth to maim or kill shorebirds flying across mudflats.

Shorebird is considered a luxury food item and the hunter will sell the meat to a market or eat it themselves. “And there’s no regulation whatsoever. It’s not even really on the radar of wildlife management in a place like Guyana,” he said.

O’Shea has been working with a grassroots organization, Guyana Marine Conservation Society, on education and outreach about hunting shorebirds with the hope to get laws implemented that will at least establish limits on harvest.

Another concern is an oil-related disaster. While Guyana has historically been one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, a few years ago oil was found off the coast and that’s completely transforming the economy, he said.

“There’s been a lot of concern, not only with sea level rise because 90% of the population lives right along the coast, but also because of the potential for pollution related to the oil development,” he said. “There’s a lot of attention being drawn to the coast now, and shorebirds are just a part of that. You can imagine if there were an oil-related disaster there that it would impact these shorebird staging areas, which are so vital.”

When he’s in the U.S., he’s caring for the thousands of specimens making up the ornithology collection in the museum.

The museum has a long legacy of coastal specimen collection, including the sizable seabird collection started by Dave Lee, who was at the museum from 1975 to 2003, O’Shea said. Lee was a very passionate naturalist who collected the large numbers of seabirds off the coast of the Outer Banks, and “helped document a lot of the birds that we know are out there today at a time when nobody else is really doing it.”

The museum also has the largest specimen series of the black-capped petrel, a bird that breeds mainly on Hispaniola and is now listed as endangered. The bird is quite common off the Outer Banks. “I believe we have 66 of them. And that’s more than any other museum in the world,” he said.

Rehabilitation centers on the coast like Outer Banks Wildlife Shelter in Carteret County and Sea Biscuit Wildlife Shelter in Oak Island contribute to the state’s specimen collection, too.

“When they get birds that don’t survive, they come to us and then we either work to prepare them ourselves and put them in our collection, or we send them to other museums around the country,” he said. “I am doing this to make sure the birds are preserved. We’re establishing long-term documentation of what’s going on in the oceans with these specimens.”

He explained that scientists have used the specimens for a variety of research, from studying the accumulation of plastics in seabirds’ stomachs, to determining where these birds breeding, to tracking ocean pollution by sampling bird feathers from 40 to 50 years ago compared to now. And there’s “a lot of other things that we don’t even know we can do yet. We’re just putting birds away and at some point down the road when the technology catches up the shorebirds will be there.”

Two scientists in the Raleigh-based North Carolina State Climate Office were curious about how land, weather and water have shaped the geology, cultural history and climate of the coastal plain.

Associate Director Dr. Sheila Saia and Assistant State Climatologist Corey Davis, in collaboration with N.C. State’s Coastal Resilience and Sustainability Initiative, decided to take a deep-dive into the topic and find out.

To do this, they interviewed more than a dozen experts on topics like oceanography, geography, anthropology and climate science, then took what they learned and wrote the series, “Our Curious Coast” that they published in the office’s Climate Blog.

The series is broken up into the following five blog posts: geography and coastal climate, soils and agriculture, the ocean and our coastline, rivers and wetlands, and adaptation and resilience.

The series along with other weather and climate news written over the last decade are on the State Climate Office’s website.

Saia and Davis presented their findings during the recent N.C. Water Resources Research Institute annual conference at N.C. State University’s McKimmon Center in Raleigh.

For two days in March, professionals, students, consultants, local, county and state representatives and others shared new research, restoration, planning, stormwater management, hydrology, community engagement and more water-related topics. WRRI is a federal/state partnership funded by U.S. Geological Survey and the UNC System. Susan White is executive director of WRRI as well as for N.C. Sea Grant. The two programs regularly partner together, including on the conference.

Davis began the presentation by explaining that the climate office is a public service center for North Carolina, which means “we try to provide data or information or decision support” to answer weather- and climate-related questions.

One way the office does this is through its Climate Blog, he said, calling it a “timely avenue” to share weather news, monthly climate summaries and recaps of big events, both now and in the past.

“I really do think they’re very readable, very accessible, and actually may be a little bit fun,” he said, and, occasionally, they pursue a topic, which is how the series on the coast came to be.

Davis told Coastal Review last week that the “Our Curious Coast” series first started taking shape around seven or eight years ago as the result of discussions within the office.

“At that time, we realized there were some things we didn’t know about the coastal plain in North Carolina, like whether the cold Labrador Current actually makes it all the way to our northern coastline. As we learned from oceanographers we talked to for the series, it doesn’t,” Davis said. “That idea sat on the back burner for a few years, but when we brought on a new associate director, Dr. Sheila Saia, she and I revisited the idea, and with her background and connections within the hydrology and water resources sectors, it felt like the right time to finally write those posts.”

The series gave them a chance to step back from only talking about the weather, and allowed for a deeper dive that began with answering the question, “What do we mean by ‘coastal plain?’”

Davis said they use the term in practically every blog post, “but it felt kind of enlightening, both for us and for our readers, to actually explain what it is and where it is and why it is the way it is.”

According to the blog, the term, “coastal plain,” itself, “says a lot about what it is: coastal, because it’s adjacent to the ocean; a plain, because it’s broad, flat land that gradually decreases in elevation until it dips beneath the waves at the ever-shifting shoreline.” But the definition doesn’t stop there. The blog delves into the specifics of what makes the coastal plain … the coastal plain.

After defining the term, Davis said they could then write about how its geography affects the climate, and vice versa, like winds and waves and storms shifting and eroding barrier islands. And how those factors presented opportunities and challenges for human civilizations, from the earliest Native Americans to the cities and communities that dot the region today.

Davis said they knew it would take a lot of work to write the posts well, from identifying experts who could answer questions and organizing that information into readable blog posts. It took several months but he thought the end result was well worth the effort.

“One of the best parts, which we heard in the feedback, was that these posts were getting seen and read by a very broad audience. There were people in climate science, in earth science, in agriculture, in oceanography — all the same topics we covered in the posts — who read and shared them with their own circles, and it seemed like we were able to pretty seamlessly connect all of those areas within the context of the coast of North Carolina,” he said.

Saia said during the conference that the hope was that the reader takes away from the series a sense of how water is important to the coastal plain in terms of climate, geology, geography and to the communities that live there, and that in the face of climate change, water poses a threat to these communities.

“We spoke a lot about how communities are actively preparing and responding to and preparing for the future,” she said. Many of the experts really emphasized the importance of community engagement and involvement.

The office has been producing the climate blog for more than a decade and the goal is the same today as it was then, Davis said.

As editor, he wants to include interesting, informative content that is accessible to anyone and available in a timely way — within a day or two after the month ends, or after a big weather event happens — “to put our weather and climate into perspective.”

While the climate blog is only one of his duties, Davis said it is a high priority, knowing that people rely on that information. The office’s director has been a big supporter as well and “that support and growth were among the reasons why we felt like we could do something a bit different and more ambitious like the ‘Curious Coast’ series.”

Davis began working with the climate office as an undergraduate intern in 2008.  At that time, the staff was producing a monthly newsletter with summaries and statistics about the previous month’s weather.

The main issue with the monthly newsletter was timing. “For instance, if a hurricane came through in the beginning of August, our August summary might not go out until the middle of September, more than a month later. By switching to a blog format, we could more easily push out information anytime we wanted to, without being bound by the limits of the newsletter format,” Davis said, adding that another big factor in starting the blog was “my own procrastination.”

During the fall of 2012, when he should have been engrossed in his master’s research, he said he be drawn into climate-related side conversations with co-workers and other grad students.

“Several times we found ourselves wishing we could share that information with a wider audience — beyond even scientists, and going all the way to the general public — and a blog, again, seemed like a great way to do that,” Davis explained.

Near the end of 2012, the office launched the Climate Blog and published its first winter outlook series, which “encapsulated everything we wanted from the blog,” he said, including “explaining concepts like El Niño or La Niña and their impacts on North Carolina in ways that anyone can read and understand.”

One challenge is balancing when and how much to simplify information for some readers without making it feel too simple for others.

“I think we have found a nice balance since we hear great feedback from both the public, like grandmothers who heard about the blog from their gardening club, and from other atmospheric scientists. The National Weather Service and North Carolina Emergency Management have both told us that they really appreciate the blog because it puts our weather into a historical context, and because our turnaround time in getting those summaries ready is so quick,” he said.

Davis added that they publish winter outlooks every year, “and I think that has become our most highly anticipated content. Starting in October or early November, we’ll get questions about when our winter outlook is coming out. It’s usually the week before Thanksgiving, by the way.”

Though some of the blog’s content, like the monthly climate summaries and winter outlooks, are standard, Davis said he tries to find ways to keep those posts feeling fresh “so every hot July doesn’t sound exactly the same as the one before it.”

The Climate Blog has featured a few other series including the 2019 “Stormy Summer” series that looked at several notable hurricanes.

“One of my favorite parts of that series was talking to and telling the stories of people who experienced those events first-hand. That sort of narrative format served as an inspiration for the ‘Curious Coast’ series as well, since I think it’s more meaningful to hear directly from people at the heart of an issue than to read a paraphrased version of their comments,” he said.

Davis said that with this year is the 20^th anniversary of Isabel, and the fifth year since Florence, they’re working out how to tell the stories of both events. His plans are talk to those who experienced these storms and their impacts, and then share that with readers.

He finds the storytelling aspect of the blog to be valuable because “any given day or month or weather event is more than just the data that describes it. It’s also how we personally experience it, and the impacts it has on our society. I like to think that the blog gives the best of both. It captures the essence and importance of the data but wraps it in the story of how it evolves over time and how it affects us. I think — or hope — that’s the unique perspective that the Climate Blog is able to give that you might not find from many other sources.”

Davis has an obvious passion for creating accessible science content for all readers.

“Science communication, when done well, is always rewarding because it feels like you’re unlocking peoples’ brains to new knowledge or understanding. It’s especially rewarding when you can do that with a technical topic,” Davis said. “To some people, science can seem like a totally different language, so this style of writing is like being a translator and giving meaning or context or a cause-and-effect relationship to those technical things, whether it’s what La Niña is or how climate change affects us locally.”

ROANOKE ISLAND — At first take, it was as dull as watching someone mow a lawn. But the man pushing an odd, three-wheeled cart back and forth over an open, grassy area at the Elizabethan Gardens on Wednesday could help archaeologists find one of the most significant locations in Colonial American history: the place where Native Americans had their first contact with the English.

“He’s looking for anomalies below 9 feet,” explained Eric Klingelhofer, a veteran archaeologist and founding member of the nonprofit First Colony Foundation, who was observing nearby.

Robert Chartrand, owner of Chartrand Geoarchaeological Solutions of Williamsburg, Virginia, was using GPS technology to survey about a fifth of an acre within the gardens that archaeologists believe could potentially contain artifacts from the Algonquian village of Roanoac, whose members interacted with English explorers in 1584.

Klingelhofer, one of the foundation’s vice presidents for research, said that reexamination of a previous 1953 exploration done by National Park Service archaeologist Jean C. Harrington indicated that there may be more to find.

During a dig that year at the Elizabethan Gardens, which is owned by the Roanoke Island Historical Association and is supported as a subsidiary of the Garden Club of North Carolina Inc., Harrington had unearthed a portion of a Colington Ware pot that was likely from the 1500s, according to a 2022 paper by Klingelhofer and Eric Deetz, “Searching for Roanoac, Archaeology in the Elizabethan Gardens 1953-2022.”

But in the foundation’s recent review of Harrington’s field notes, which were provided by the National Park Service, it appears that Harrington’s digs stopped at about 6 feet, rather than the 9-foot depth where circa-1600s artifacts would be, Klingelhofer recently explained to Coastal Review.

“So, we’re going to get a much better picture,” he said, watching as Chartrand worked. “About 90% of the grassy area here is untouched.” That means when the archaeologists reach the Native American ground surface level and go below it, they would have a better chance of finding evidence, such as post holes, food storage pits, or midden, than if the area had been disturbed.  

Chartrand, who is an archaeo-geophysicist, had also worked with archaeologists at Jamestown Island from 2015 to 2019. Although it looks like he’s simply pushing a cart with a small box in the middle, the description of his work is complex and highly technical.

“I’m systematically collecting data at certain intervals,” he explained in the simplest terms.

Every foot or so, working to the east, then to the west, from the center line he marked out on the grassy area on the north end of the gardens, the attached GPS device takes an image 1.5 to 3 meters, or about 5 to 10 feet, below the surface.

Once the data is collected, Chartrand will use software with a standard ground-penetrating radar program to interpret it.

“I can look at the cross section and then I’ll be able to create a 3D image based on all the lines (of data) I’ve collected,” he said, adding that the image is a bird’s-eye view.

“I can change the elevation so I can see the progression of what’s beneath the surface.”

Chartrand said that, in essence, the algorithm defines “unknown space based on known space” on the landscape. The program uses standard coordinates, which he defines, so that any ground-penetrating radar operator can later find them.

“So if an archaeologist wants to go back to excavate a subsurface anomaly, they can relocate it with the GPS,” he said.

The final report will take about a month to complete. At that point, the First Colony Foundation will determine whether excavation is warranted, Klingenhofer said. If so, it would have to be conducted with the cooperation of the Elizabethan Gardens, and the funds for the dig would have to be raised by the foundation.

“The Elizabethan Gardens is a memorial to the lost colonists and will forever be a part of that mystery,” said Elizabethan Gardens Executive Director Theresa Armendarez in an April 11 foundation press release. “To find artifacts from that time in America’s early history would be an exciting addition to our unique history.”

As the first of the 1584-1590 Roanoke Voyages, Sir Walter Raleigh sent explorers Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe on two ships to Roanoke Island with a mission to investigate land west of the barrier islands.

When the explorers landed on the island, Algonquian leaders greeted them. The Natives later shared food and clothing with the English strangers and invited them to warm over their fire at their village, which the explorers described as “nine houses, built of cedar, and fortified round with sharp trees.”

“This notable moment of hospitality, where Englishmen first entered the home of an Algonquian noblewoman, and were treated with such respect and kindness, is the true First Contact between the cultures,” according to the paper.

Those first English visitors were dazzled by the Natives. “We found the people most gentle, loving, and faithful, void of all guile and treason, and such as lived after the manner of the golden age,” the explorers wrote.

Unfortunately, the good feelings did not last long, with later Roanoke voyages marked by attacks on tribes and retaliation by the Native Americans, perhaps leading to the failure of the 1587 settlement of 117 men, women and children which disappeared without a trace.

While the so-called “Lost Colony” that was last seen in August 1587 gets the most attention, the foundation, from its beginning in 2003, has been focused as much on the earliest English explorations on Roanoke Island. They served as a lesson plan for later colonization in 1607 at Jamestown.

Whether or not there are anomalies found by Chartrand’s technology, the work will lead to an answer of where — or where not — to look for Roanoac and the “Point of First Contact,” Klingelhofer said.

But with accelerated erosion of the Roanoke Sound shoreline along the border of the Elizabethan Gardens, there is a sense of urgency for the foundation. Much of the land that may have revealed secrets has already been lost.

“Since the 1800s, the shoreline here has receded more than a hundred yards, with numerous Indian artifacts found in the water and beach,” the 2022 paper said. “It must be watched carefully for archaeological artifacts and features being destroyed by coastal erosion.”

Though millions of people would qualify for drinking water protections under a nationwide proposal to limit certain chemical compounds in water sources, millions more would not, a new study concludes.

Nearly half of the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, found in drinking water samples collected across 16 states, including North Carolina, are not monitored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, according to the peer-reviewed study by Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit international environmental advocacy group.

In the community-led pilot study published in the Science of the Total Environment, commercial global laboratory Eurofins Regulatory Science Services tested for 70 PFAS. That’s 41 additional PFAS that are not covered by the EPA’s test methods.

Of 44 samples collected from both public water sources and private wells, 30 were contaminated with PFAS.

“Every single one of those samples had a PFAS that was not monitored by the EPA methods,” said Anna Reade, Natural Resources Defense Council senior scientist. 

Samples collected in North Carolina contained the highest levels of unmonitored PFAS.

The samples, taken in Ocean Isle Beach and Oak Island in Brunswick County, also contained the highest concentrations of PFAS, along with samples from Maine, Colorado and Texas.

Sixteen different types of PFAS were found in water collected in Ocean Isle Beach and 12 chemical compounds were in the water sample from Oak Island, Reade said.

Tap water tested from Brunswick County came from the county’s northwest treatment plant, which is sourced by the Cape Fear River.

For nearly 40 years, a chemical manufacturing plant nearly 80 miles upstream of Wilmington discharged PFAS directly into the river. The river is the drinking water source for tens of thousands of residents.

The company responsible, Chemours, is under a consent order to meet a host of compliances to reduce the amount of PFAS discharged from its Fayetteville Works facility in Bladen County.

A thermal oxidizer has been installed at the plant to capture more than 99% of PFAS from being emitted into the air. The company also plans to build an underground barrier wall on-site to stop PFAS, including GenX, a chemical compound specific to the Fayetteville Works plant, from traveling through the ground into the river.

The EPA is proposing to set limits on GenX and five other PFAS in public water systems. The agency’s proposal includes limiting the chemical compound in combination with three other PFAS: Perfluorononanoic acid, or PFNA, perfluorohexane sulfonic acid, or PFHxS, and perfluorobutane sulfonic acid, or PFBS.

The agency also is proposing to set maximum contaminant levels, or MCLs, on perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and Perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS, at 4 parts-per-trillion, or ppt.

Natural Resources Defense Council’s study found that out of the 30 drinking water samples that contained PFAS, 15 would exceed the EPA’s proposed contamination limits.

The proposed maximum contaminant levels are a big set forward, Reade said, one that, according to EPA estimates, would qualify between 70 and 90 million people for drinking water protections.

“But our study shows that there will be communities that will be left behind because, as industry adapts and changes to the regulatory environment, they’re going to use different PFAS that are unmonitored, unregulated and there’s no way that the science and regulatory community can keep up,” she said.

According to information provided in the study, there are around 14,000 PFAS. To expect the EPA to study each individual chemical, its potential associated health effects, and establish drinking water standards for each could not be done in several generations’ time, Reade said.

Under the EPA’s proposed rules, expected to be finalized later this year, public water providers would be required to monitor for the six PFAS and report the results of sampling to the public if levels exceed the regulatory standards. Water utilities found to have one or more of the chemicals above the proposed limits would have to reduce the levels to meet the proposed limits.

EPA officials say that the anticipated benefits of establishing maximum contaminant levels on the six chemical compounds would lead to reduced cases of kidney cancer, strokes and heart attacks, and developmental effects in children, including low birth weight.

Reade said that there will likely be co-benefits for customers of public water providers who would have to upgrade their systems to meet the maximum contaminant levels.

“It will probably treat for a lot of other types of PFAS,” she said. “It will probably treat for disinfection of byproducts and pharmaceuticals.”

But the worry is that unmonitored PFAS, particularly newer, smaller ultra-short-chain substances, will likely slip through drinking water treatment if they’re not accounted for, she said.

These types of chemicals were the most prevalent found in the Natural Resources Defense Council study.

“That was really surprising for a lot of our community members and, to be honest, a bit surprising for us because it is not a well-monitored-for PFAS and we don’t have any studies on the health effect of being exposed to it, which is always a very hard thing to report back to people who are being exposed to a chemical,” Reade said.

An ultra-short-chain substance called perfluoropropionic acid, or PFPrA, was predominantly found at the highest concentration in samples submitted for the study.

Ultra-short-chain PFAS may be harder to capture through filtration systems because they’re so small, Reade said. 

PFPrA was found in both samples from North Carolina.

“I think this (study) is just another data point highlighting the need to manage PFAS as a class,” Reade said. “North Carolina’s the prime example of why we need to do a class-based approach because we are not keeping up with the current exposure conditions for communities like yours.”

Clean Cape Fear stated in a release that residents of the Cape Fear region continue to be exposed to “dangerous daily doses” of PFAS, the potential health risks of which little are known.

“While the PFAS regulations proposed by EPA last month are a good start, we demand a whole-of-government approach to stop all PFAS exposures,” Clean Cape Fear Co-Founder Emily Donovan said in a release. “Our basic human rights are under attack. Communities like mine will no longer sit by as our children’s lives and our hopes for a healthy future are stolen by the greedy and irresponsible chemical industry.” 

The study includes samples also taken from Alaska, Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oregon and South Carolina.

A PFAS finish on indoor fabric does not prevent water- or oil-based stains any better than fabrics without the chemical coating, unless the conditions are “ideal,” researchers found in a recent study.

The report “Evaluating the Performance of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substance Finishes on Upholstery Fabrics,” was published April 3 in the American Association of Textile Chemist and Colorists Journal of Research and funded by the Green Science Policy Institute. The institute promotes the safer use of chemicals to protect humans and the ecology.

The research team found that the water-based stains, which were made with instant coffee droplets, “were minimal and easily removed from finished and unfinished fabrics alike.” For the oil-based stains, which were made with a balsamic vinaigrette salad dressing, the PFAS finish helps in “ideal conditions when the finish is unabraded, stains are set gently on the fabric, and stains are cleaned quickly. Departures from these ideal conditions can lead to staining similar to or worse than on unfinished fabrics,” according to the study. 

PFAS are long-lasting chemicals, and the study says exposure to some PFAS may be linked to health hazards. When fabric has a PFAS finish, the fabric has been soaked or coated with a PFAS solution to protect it from stains. Unabraded means that the finish has not been damaged or worn off. 

Lead author Jonas LaPier, a doctoral candidate in civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, said in a statement that he was “surprised that these harmful but supposedly indispensable chemicals had no practical benefit. It makes you wonder what other uses of PFAS are also unnecessary and could be easily eliminated from products without noticeable change in performance.”

Not only are the consumers who are using the finished fabric being exposed to PFAS, exposure can occur during the manufacture and disposal of finished fabrics. This can lead to health issues for workers, consumers and communities near production sites, plus environmental harm, the study notes.

“PFAS are a public health nightmare and should only be used when essential,” said Carol Kwiatkowski, co-author and scientist at the Green Science Policy Institute. “In the case of these fabrics, they aren’t delivering the desired performance of stain repellency, and like lipstick or car wax, they get reapplied, which introduces more PFAS into the environment and increases the risk of human exposure. There’s simply no justification for continuing to use them in furniture.”  

LaPier told Coastal Review on Tuesday that the study came about after hearing from industry experts that PFAS stain-repellency coatings were not performing effectively on their products, and many of their customers were seeing staining or would need to frequently reapply the PFAS coatings. 

“The motivation was then to take these anecdotes and turn them into a scientific study where we could evaluate the performance of the PFAS treatments by simulating real-world conditions,” he said.

To do this, the team tested three kinds of fabric under three different conditions to see if the drops of coffee or drops of salad dressing would stain. 

The fabrics were a midweight cotton/nylon fabric, a polyester material designed to mimic the look and feel of wool, and a lightweight polyester with twill texture and a slight stretch. 

A piece of each kind of fabric was kept unfinished for the control, another piece dipped in PFAS solution, and a third piece coated with PFAS foam. A total of nine pieces — six with a PFAS finish and three without – were tested. 

Fabric type made for the largest difference in stains, which could be attributed to differences in material, construction and color. For example, stains were more difficult to identify on patterned fabrics.

The study did note that the PFAS finishes were most effective when the droplet was wiped off the unabraded fabric shortly after being placed versus when the finish was abraded and the stains could more easily penetrate the fabric surface.

“The results of the study align with what I’ve seen first-hand,” said co-author Betsy Phillips, director of Environmental Initiatives of Maharam Fabric Corp. based in New York. The fabric company supplied the materials.

“The presence of PFAS-based finishes doesn’t prevent textiles from staining, especially after the finishes have become worn with use,” Phillips continued in a news release. “The best way to prevent staining is to promptly clean up spills. When prompt cleaning isn’t possible, choosing a thicker, darker, patterned fabric will help mask any stains that may permeate. Beyond staining, omitting PFAS is simply better for our health.”

LaPier reiterated to Coastal Review his surprise at how dramatically the water and oil repellency disappeared on the abraded fabrics. 

“The oil and water drops went from neatly beading up on the surface to completely soaking into the fabric within seconds in nearly every test of abraded fabric,” he said. “This was happening at 15,000 abrasion cycles, for context the fabrics are tested for durability at 100,000 cycles, so the coatings are much weaker than the fabric itself.”

The two styles of polyester and one cotton/nylon blend they chose are materials that make up a large fraction of the commercial textiles market, LaPier continued. “We originally looked at a few more fabrics but settled on these three because we needed the manufacturer to make these custom for us with two different types of PFAS finish as well as an unfinished version.”

LaPier explained that while they found stain-repellent coatings do their job in ideal conditions, they quickly lose their repellency with wear and can even stain worse than untreated fabrics. 

“Unless you are willing to constantly be reapplying — and inhaling — these chemicals, your furniture will not stain any less and prompt cleaning of stained fabric will still be necessary,” he said. 

And while LaPier said the study did not specifically identify what factors make a fabric less prone to staining, “Betsy, our textiles expert at Maharam, says choosing a darker and thicker-patterned fabric works well to mask stains,” he said. 

To figure out if your fabric has a PFAS coating, LaPier recommends dribbling a little bit of water on it. 

“If your droplets form neat little beads, chances are your furniture has a PFAS coating. If you want to be extra certain, do the same test with olive or vegetable oil. If you get more beads, you have a finish, very likely PFAS. But even if your water and oil don’t bead up, the coating may just be worn and ineffective, as we have seen,” he explained. 

Looking at PFAS as a whole, much of the focus of PFAS research looks at issues you might expect, such as What are the health effects of these chemicals? How are we exposed? How can we clean them up? LaPier noted. 

“More specifically in textiles research, the focus is on finding alternative coatings, but it seems like no one had asked if stain repellency finishes were necessary in the first place. This study is different because we took several steps back and asked, ‘are the PFAS coatings even helping at all in real-world conditions?’ Because if that answer wasn’t a resounding ‘yes,’ then we just don’t need them on our couches. The more we can eliminate these ’nonessential uses’ of PFAS the less we need to worry about health effects, exposures, and cleanups later on.” 

A study recently published in Nature Climate Change found that the global food sector alone, the way it is now, could add nearly 1 degree Celsius to global climate warming by the year 2100. But over half of this anticipated warming could be avoided if there were simultaneous changes made to production and food waste systems, the energy sector, as well as universal diet changes.

It is exceedingly hard to estimate warming associated with agriculture at the global level. One of the biggest reasons for this is that the agricultural sector emits multiple climate pollutants, things like carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Often, to make it easier to estimate emissions, a strategy is used called “carbon dioxide equivalents.” This puts all emissions on the same comparable scale, making it easier to measure aggregate impact.

The downside of this method is that different pollutants spend varying amounts of time in the atmosphere and trap different amounts of heat. So when you only look at these emissions through the lens of carbon dioxide, you risk blurring the picture of what agricultural emissions actually look like, and what can be done to address them. This study aimed to paint a clearer image.

Previous research has shown that one of the biggest pollutants from the agriculture sector is methane, which stays in the atmosphere for a far shorter amount of time than carbon dioxide but has a stronger warming effect on the atmosphere per mass. So looking at a long-term timescale in carbon dioxide equivalents would really downplay the role of methane emissions in the agriculture industry.

In order to get a better idea of how different pollutants could impact warming by the year 2100, the researchers had to look at the emissions individually, not as an aggregate.

“It just made it very apparent that when people are doing lifecycle assessments and when they’re doing this kind of work, the need to report those emissions in the explicit gas emission rather than an aggregate it is really essential,” said Catherine Ivanovich, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and lead author on this study. “And the more that people can do this type of work can reduce future uncertainty.”

The researchers analyzed literature on the food sector including agriculture, fisheries, ranching and more. One of the findings of this study was that consumption of meat and dairy will be responsible for more than half of food-associated warming by the year 2030, and continuing through 2100.

The researchers explored four different possible arenas in which to mitigate anticipated warming: production, consumption, the energy sector and food loss/waste.

Optimizing agricultural production practices could contribute 25% of possible reductions by 2100. Decarbonizing the energy sector by 2050 would decrease the anticipated warming from the food sector by 17% by the end of the century.

A global diet shift based on health recommendations could decrease projected warming by 21%. Finally, if the world were able to cut consumer and retail food waste in half by the end of the century, it would decrease anticipated warming by 9%.

Changes to production, the energy sector and food loss/waste would all be largely structural or systemic changes, while changing the ways in which people consume food through diet is more of a behavioral shift. The limitation of this method is that making any kind of change on a global scale is very difficult and maybe unlikely. But the benefit is that taking a simplified approach allows people to see the full extent of what could be possible with these kinds of shifts.

“We can really just think of it as a very theoretical test of the rough magnitude these storyline scenarios might be expected to trigger,” Ivanovich said.

Regardless, Ivanovich says that both supply-side and consumer-side interventions, at multiple scales, are going to be critical to reduce anticipated warming in the food sector.

Questions about how to advance in the food sector are made even more complicated when moving beyond consideration of greenhouse gases. Other important factors to consider are how different food production techniques impact the environment and space use on the land and in the ocean.

“In order to make meaningful change in this sector, which is a really essential aspect of human life — supporting people, ensuring that we’re pursuing global food security and also sustaining economic livelihood for people who are producing our foods — we really need a multi-angle approach,” Ivanovich said. “We can really work towards increased food security, and providing people with nutritious diets, all the while working towards a more climate-safe future.”

According to the North Carolina Local Food Council, climate change poses a notable threat to the state’s food system. But a more resilient local food system focused on food waste recovery, local food infrastructure, better support for cultivators and addressing racial inequities in the food sector, among other things, would make the state less vulnerable in the face of pressures like climate change. There are resources on the Local Food Countil’s website toward that end.

There are also reasons to be optimistic, said Ivanovich. When you separate the different pollutants, you can see that nearly 60% of the warming by the end of the century is because of methane. And since methane is a short-lived emission, making rapid changes in that sector now could make a big difference in slowing down the rate of warming associated with the food sector.

It also underscores the urgency for action, according to Ivanovich.

“Everyone has to eat,” Ivanovich said. “We have to ensure that we can sustain our global population with nutritious food that supports people at a local scale. This is the problem that we can’t really shy away from.”

The Naturalist Center in the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh currently is closed to the public during construction of a new dinosaur exhibit, but the museum staff has continued to answer nature-related questions or make identifications through the “Ask a Naturalist” program.

Cindy Lincoln, who manages the center, said the program established well over a decade ago provides the opportunity for anyone anywhere to ask a question about something in nature. All they need to do is fill in the online form on the museum website and include a photo, video or audio.

Lincoln has been center manager for the past 10 years and handles daily operations along with training and managing staff, interns and volunteers. Greg Skupien is curator and has been with the museum since 2015. He oversees the maintenance of the collection, which includes over 20,000 specimens showcasing the biodiversity of the Southeast. 

The two coordinate the Ask a Naturalist service and process all questions that come through. 

Lincoln continued that while the service isn’t unique — there are other methods such as iNaturalist social network for nature enthusiasts for sharing nature observation — Ask a Naturalist provides a way to connect with educators, curators and scientists and tap into the vast amount of knowledge and expertise at the museum.

The most common question posted on Ask a Naturalist is, “Is this a meteorite?” The cutest question, “Do turtles get concussions?” Lincoln said.

She also gets questions from the coast, particularly about beach finds. 

“Interesting fossils may turn up on the beach after storms or beach renourishment projects. The Ask a Naturalist form allows beachcombers to submit their finds for identification,” she said. “Most of the coastal fossil specimen identification requests fall under the ‘worn marine mammal bone’ or ‘fragment of shark tooth’ categories. A lot of these questions in the past year were from Holden Beach area.”

Lincoln said that she and Skupien receive and sort the questions and if either can make an identification or answer the question, they do. More often, they share the question and video or photo with the appropriate museum expert, or reach out to nearby universities. Lincoln said the museum doesn’t have a mycologist on staff and fungi are exceptionally difficult to correctly identify, so she forwards all the fungi identification questions to specialists at North Carolina State University. 

The key to help staff answer the question or make the identification is a good-quality photo or in-focus video with different angles, closeups with size references like a coin, ruler or other common object. “There are many times when even a high-quality photo isn’t enough to identify an invertebrate, plant or fungi to species, but we can usually get close,” she said. 

After receiving an answer back from the expert, staff send the answer and helpful links to the individual. Some of the museum scientists prefer to correspond directly with the person who submitted the question, but that’s not typical and varies depending on the question or identification, Lincoln added.

“If we know the question is coming from a child, we like to connect them with a museum scientist because of the positive impact that may have. Occasionally this will result in a family coming in to meet one of the research staff or get a tour behind the scenes, but this is very rare,” she said. 

“If the inquiry includes a specimen of potential research significance such as a fossil, then we’ll invite the person to come into the museum to meet with the expert,” and they regularly invite people to visit the center during normal operating hours if they want to bring in something for staff to look at, Lincoln added.

Occasionally, the Ask a Naturalist questions relate to an object that the individual wants to donate to the museum. While donations are accepted on a case-by-case basis, the Naturalist Center can’t accept many objects or specimens because of limited storage space, Lincoln added.

For human artifacts such as arrowheads, the center directs those questions to staff at the North Carolina Museum of History or Office of State Archaeology. They don’t appraise or estimate the value of anything and do not offer medical advice such as what do to if you’ve been stung by an insect, gotten a snake bite or eaten a mushroom, she said.

During the pandemic, She and Skupien wrote a blog called “What’s that? Ask a Naturalist!”

“We would take especially interesting or challenging Ask a Naturalist questions and write a story about them. This is a good place to find some of my favorites such as the ‘solving the maggot mystery,’ ‘batty for batfish’ and ‘armored mudballs,’” Lincoln said.

Her favorite question from the coast was about a marine polychaete worm riding a coconut found at Fort Macon State Park, which they wrote about for the blog.

The center received a video taken from the beach at Fort Macon State Park, according to the blog, leading Lincoln on “an interesting journey into the world of polychaete worms.”

The sender asked “What is that brown, prickly worm thing?” 

“After puzzling over an image that to us looked like a fat, coffee bean-colored caterpillar wrapped around a gooseneck barnacle on a coconut, we knew some expert consultation was needed. Our Curator, Dr. Bronwyn Williams, and Collections Manager, Megan McCuller, from the Museum’s Non-molluscan Invertebrate Unit identified it as a polychaete worm,” the blog states. “Further confirmation came from Dr. Geoff Read, a marine biologist and polychaete expert based in New Zealand, who offered the identification of Amphinome rostrata or marine bristle worm. This particular bristle worm species preys upon goose barnacles often attached to drift objects (in this case, a coconut, the most common ocean drift fruit) throughout tropical oceans worldwide. Our coconut-riding bristle worm may have gotten a little too much sun exposure resulting in its abnormal color.”

Right now, questions may only be submitted through the online form. When the center reopens, they’ll resume onsite identifications, although Lincoln said the Ask a Naturalist form is preferred. “We discourage bringing in live or dead plant, animal or fungal material or personal collections such as rock, shell, or fossil into the museum.”

Before the museum began construction on the dinosaur fossil exhibit called Dueling Dinosaurs, the Naturalist Center was open for visitors to access an extensive collection of specimens for individual research, student exploration or for general interest. 

Lincoln said that the hands-on space was originally on the fourth floor of the Nature Exploration Center building that opened in 2000, around the time she thinks the Ask a Naturalist program began, and has been available ever since. The Naturalist Center was relocated to the second floor of the Nature Research Center on Jones Street when it opened in 2012. While the center is temporarily closed, Lincoln said there is a virtual tour of the Naturalist Center online. 

Lincoln said her background is in botany while Skupien’s is in herpetology, “but we both love learning about almost anything in the natural world. One of the perks of working in a natural history museum is that you learn something new every day. Ask a Naturalist questions frequently stump us but we are surrounded by experts who enjoy tackling questions from the public,” she said. 

“I guess if you define ‘naturalist’ as a ‘student of natural history,’ we both fit that definition,” Lincoln said. “However, there are other staff, past and present, who I consider to be true naturalists because their knowledge spans a very broad range of topics. I think what is almost more important now is understanding how to make good observations, how to research a subject and knowing what sources to trust — that’s what I most enjoy teaching visitors to the Naturalist Center and explaining via Ask a Naturalist.”

You may have noticed that the sneezing, runny nose and itchy, watery eyes that come with seasonal allergies are beginning earlier in the year.

That’s because climate change is making allergy season longer and worse for the 26% of adults and 19% of children in the U.S. that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says suffer from seasonal allergies, a new study finds.

Climate Central, a policy-neutral nonprofit of scientists and communicators who research and report on the changing climate, released Wednesday the report, “Seasonal Allergies: Pollen and Mold” that states, “A growing body of research shows that warming temperatures, shifting seasonal patterns, and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere –all linked to climate change and greenhouse gas emissions — are affecting the length and intensity of allergy season in the U.S.”

Climate Central Meteorologist Lauren Casey explained to Coastal Review Tuesday that as a thickening blanket of carbon dioxide, or CO2, in the atmosphere traps heat and warms the planet, winters are shortening and there are longer growing seasons. This leads to allergen-producing plants pollinating both earlier and later in the year. 

“So, allergy sufferers feel the effects for weeks or even months longer than they did before,” she said. “But as CO2 concentrations rise, many plants respond by producing more pollen, and pollen with higher concentrations of chemical compounds that trigger allergic reactions. So, it’s not just higher temperatures and shorter winters that make allergy season worse.”

Essentially, the warmer temperatures increase the length of the growing season, which begins with the last freeze of spring and ends the first freeze of fall, leading to plants releasing more allergy-inducing irritants like pollen and mold spores for a longer period of time. 

The report also found that there’s a connection between thunderstorms and increased asthma. 

“A number of studies have shown associations between thunderstorms and asthma attacks or asthma-related hospitalizations — a phenomenon known as ‘thunderstorm asthma’,” according to the report.

For the study, Climate Central scientists looked at temperature data since 1970 for 203 U.S. cities. They found that the freeze-free season is lengthening across the country, giving plants 15 days longer on average to grow, flower and release pollen. 

Of the cities analyzed, 85%, or 172, saw their freeze-free seasons lengthen during the study period, including four of the five studied in North Carolina: Asheville by 33 days, Greenville by 25 days, Raleigh by 29 days, and Wilmington by six. Charlotte’s season shortened by nine days.

Since 1970, the freeze-free season lengthened the most in the West to 27 days among the stations analyzed. The season lengthened in the Southeast by 16 days, the Northeast to 15 days, and in the South to 14 days. The Central region saw the freeze-free season lengthen by 13 days.

Casey said that in the Southeast, depending on what triggers their allergies, many are experiencing an extra month of allergy season compared to the 1970s, such as Greenville and Raleigh residents.

“That means allergy symptoms, which can heighten the risks of asthma attacks, can appear earlier than they used to, catching people by surprise,” Casey said. 

With the association between thunderstorms and asthma attacks or asthma-related hospitalizations, while the science behind the connection isn’t fully understood, research shows that pollen and mold spores are playing a part.

“Thunderstorms bring pressure changes and winds that blow around pollen and mold spores — breaking them into smaller, more easily inhaled particles and transporting them through the air. Studies have shown high pollen and mold counts around thunderstorms correlate with increased asthma symptoms and hospital admissions,” according to the study.

“Because researchers are still learning about this meteorological health risk, it’s difficult to predict who might be affected or where another thunderstorm asthma event might occur. There is enough evidence for some health professionals and researchers to caution people with asthma or seasonal allergies to be alert for symptoms when thunderstorms are approaching,” the study continues.

Casey said that Climate Central pursued the study because climate research has documented the change in growing seasons, which affects many pollen producers, “thus it made sense to look into what longer seasons meant for allergy sufferers.”

Regarding the results of the study, Casey said “the longer and more intense pollen seasons weren’t a surprise, and neither was the role that molds play in allergy season, even outside conventional growing seasons. But we didn’t expect to find as much documentation of the connection between allergens, thunderstorms, and asthma risk. Particularly in the East, where thunderstorm potential is rising, the link to allergy-related asthma reactions might surprise people.”

She added that rain can be a double-edged sword when it comes to pollen and mold. 

“It does serve to cleanse the atmosphere initially, however rain also causes the pollen grains and mold spores to break into tinier bits – more likely to be airborne once dry and reduced to a size that can easily enter the nose and sinuses,” she said.

Managing allergies can be expensive and can have significant health impacts, such as triggering or worsening asthma. The report notes in the U.S. that the total cost of allergies is more than $18 billion a year. During 2008-2013, the annual medical cost of asthma was just over $3,200 per person. Additionally, one study suggests that pollen exposure can increase susceptibility to respiratory viral infections, including COVID-19. 

“And the health effects from allergies and asthma can be compounded by other environmental pollutants linked to our warming climate, including ozone and diesel fuel pollution,” the study states.

To help avoid the worst impacts, Casey recommended those with allergies purchase quality air filters and limit their time outside during seasonal peaks. “But of course, reducing CO2 emissions is the only long-term way to limit the warming and seasonal changes we’re experiencing.”

Before joining Climate Central, Casey was a broadcast meteorologist for more than 15 years, most recently at the CBS station in Philadelphia, when she said she collaborated with Climate Central on several climate-related stories. She has also been working toward her master’s with much of her coursework centered around climate change, “this in combination with Climate Central’s powerful mission inspired my transition to the organization last spring.”

Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientists and engineers are on their way to deploy test moorings off the coast of Nags Head to better understand conditions before relocating the Ocean Observatories Initiative’s Pioneer Array ocean-observing system, which most recently was collecting data about 75 nautical miles south of Martha’s Vineyard.

The science team headed out Tuesday on the research vessel Neil Armstrong for a test mooring and mapping cruise for the Pioneer Array Mid-Atlantic Bight, or MAB, from where the vessel was in dry dock for a hull inspection at Detyens Shipyard in North Charleston, South Carolina, according to a blog post Tuesday on the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution website.

The Ocean Observatories Initiative, which provides free access to a wide range of data collected from around the world’s oceans, is funded by the National Science Foundation through a cooperative agreement with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, an independent nonprofit dedicated to ocean research, exploration and education and based in Massachusetts. 

“This new Pioneer Array location in the MAB offers many opportunities for scientists to obtain data to further their research, and will provide better insight into conditions in the area for a variety of stakeholders,” Al Plueddemann, project scientist for Ocean Observatories Initiative’s Coastal and Global Scale Nodes group at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said in a statement. “We welcome researchers, educators, and industry members to reach out to us to explore ways we might work together to maximize the usefulness of the data.”  

The data collected by observing the ocean can help track, predict, manage and adapt to changes in the marine environment and coastal communities can use the data to prepare for floods and other natural disasters, according to the initiative.

Plueddemann responded to Coastal Review in an email Tuesday evening while underway from Charleston that the data collected will be primarily used for research, but also made publicly available for anyone with an internet connection. “We have had users ranging from high school students to commercial fishers,” he said. 

In addition to serving as project scientist for the Pioneer MAB Array, Plueddemann is the senior scientist in the Department of Physical Oceanography at Woods Hole.

The team will be offshore for a week or so on the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s vessel to map the seabed using sonar, perform remotely operated vehicle visual inspections and deploy the test moorings at two different depths.

A surface mooring designed to examine coastal-scale phenomena and withstand the challenging conditions of shallow coastal environments will be deployed at 30 meters, or about 98 feet deep, according to the initiative.

A coastal profiler mooring will be deployed at 600 meters, or 1,968.5 feet, deep. This type of mooring contains a wire-following profiler that moves through the water column, continuously sampling ocean characteristics from about 75 feet below the surface to 75 feet above the sea floor.

Plans are to collect the test moorings in the fall and prepare to install the Coastal Pioneer Array in 2024.

Once the array is fully operational, the ocean data collected will be available online to anyone with an Internet connection on the website for Ocean Observatories Initiative, a science-driven ocean observing network that delivers real-time data from more than 900 instruments to address critical science questions regarding the world’s oceans.

The two test moorings being deployed now will help the researchers better understand the specific ocean conditions and make sure the Coastal Pioneer Array can withstand the environment.

“We have a good track record with the moorings on the New England shelf, but the MAB moorings will be at different water depths and will experience different environmental conditions (wind, waves, currents). We want to test our mooring designs to ensure they are properly ‘tuned’ to the new location,” Plueddemann responded in the email.

Plueddemann said the array is comprised of instrumented moorings, ocean gliders and propeller-driven autonomous underwater vehicles, often called uncrewed underwater vehicles. 

“They work together to observe different space and time scales. For example, an instrumented mooring can do very well resolving time, sampling every few minutes. But at only one location. Ocean gliders do very well covering space, but a lot of time goes by (e.g. a week or more) before they can get another data point at the same location. The combination is more powerful than any one element,” he explained. 

The first deployment of the Pioneer Array was off the New England coast at the continental shelf and continental slope interface, where it collected data from 2016 until it was recovered in September 2022.  

“Researchers have some very interesting results from the New England array,” Plueddemann said. “In short, the Array was intended to capture the exchange of properties (temperature, salinity, nutrients, …) between continental shelf waters and the deeper waters offshore. That was done successfully, and it was found that important aspects of this exchange happened in ways we had not anticipated.”

Plueddemann said that relocating the Pioneer Array was always part of the plan for Ocean Observatories Initiative. The idea was to deploy for five to seven years in the initial location chosen based on input to National Science Foundation, then go out to the community for input to determine the next location through a series of workshops. 

Participants during a series of workshops in 2022 recommended the southern Mid-Atlantic Bight between Cape Hatteras and Norfolk Canyon for the new location. 

“This region offers opportunities to collect data on a wide variety of cross-disciplinary science topics including cross-shelf exchange and Gulf Stream influences, land-sea interactions associated with large estuarine systems, a highly productive ecosystem with major fisheries, processes driving biogeochemical cycling and transport, and fresh-water outflows during extreme rain events. The location also offers opportunities to improve our understanding of hurricane development, tracking, and prediction, and to form partnerships with the nascent offshore wind industry,” the Ocean Observatories Initiative said.

Plueddemann said that the area off the Outer Banks is an important region of the US coastal ocean, “and has a vibrant ecosystem associated with complex physical processes. Arguably more complex than the New England site. So, it is challenging to understand the physical processes and how they impact the ecosystem. Yet the same techniques (moorings, gliders, AUVs) used for the New England Array are applicable to observing the MAB. So, relocating the array makes sense, and will likely have a big payoff in terms of new understanding.”

Preparation and testing will continue through this year and the array will initially be deployed in spring 2024.

Plueddemann said that the researchers plan to follow the same timeline as was followed for the original Pioneer Array deployment. The expectation is for the array to be in place for five to seven years and then be relocated again. 

“We are still evaluating the land-based needs to maintain the array,” he added.

Across the globe, the Ocean Observatories Initiative has seven total arrays with five currently active. 

“We know the ocean is dynamic, changing on time scales from hours to decades. There are many benefits to being able to understand and predict these changes, but if the system is not well understood, the predictions will not be good,” he said. “Researchers don’t currently have a complete enough understanding of how the ocean works, particularly on regional and smaller scales, to make accurate predictions. The OOI infrastructure is meant to provide observations that will help the research community with understanding, thus leading to better prediction.”

Dr. Reide Corbett, executive director of East Carolina University’s Coastal Studies Institute in Wanchese, is enthusiastic about the opportunities the Pioneer Array will bring to the region, the initiative announced Tuesday.

“The cross-shelf suite of instrumentation off northeastern North Carolina’s coast is in a region of complex physics and critical ecosystem dynamics that draws interest from many disciplines and creates opportunities for transformational science. This is also in a region with a growing renewable energy sector, including two active offshore wind leases, with opportunities to partner with the agencies involved,” Corbett explained. 

“The Coastal Studies Institute is excited about the observations that will be made from these instruments, allowing us to better address climate change influences in the coastal ocean, and improve ocean/weather/storm forecasts through data sharing.  Beyond just the instruments in the water, the new partnerships and collaborations created as part of this deployment will provide the ability to better engage this socio-economically diverse region, with disadvantaged groups more impacted by sea level rise and climate change compared to many coastal regions. This broad network of partnerships across the region will provide a mechanism to drive knowledge to action.”

Plueddemann is to give an update on the Pioneer Array relocation at 6 p.m. April 20 at the Coastal Studies Institute as part of its monthly “Science on the Sound” lecture series. Plueddemann will discuss the Pioneer Array infrastructure, instrumentation, and what is planned for its upcoming move off the North Carolina coast. The event is free and open to the public. For those unable to attend, the program will be live-streamed, as well as archived for later viewing, on the CSI YouTube Channel.

MOREHEAD CITY — Tucked away on the floor near a couple pieces of equipment in the busy aquaculture lab at Carteret Community College is an unassuming round, nearly waist-high, clear tank with a few sections of hard, white plastic pipes roughly the diameter of salad plates placed on the bottom.

Inside one section of T-shaped pipe, a female common octopus, Octopus vulgaris, has been incubating her eggs. Over the last week, her hundreds of thousands of eggs have been hatching, filling the tank with tiny gray wiggly specks, the paralarvae or newly hatched octopuses. 

Aquaculture Operations Manager Bryan Snyder explained Wednesday morning that the female octopus had been hiding in the pipe with her remaining eggs. Aquaculture is the farming and husbandry of aquatic organisms. 

“She probably still has a few unhatched eggs in there. They don’t hatch at exactly the same time,” Snyder said, adding that the mother’s job while the eggs are incubating and hatching is to protect her eggs and keep water moving over the eggs.

Snyder was in the middle of teaching students in his hatchery management II class how to spawn clams. They were standing around a spawning table, a long, narrow tank that can hold about 6 inches of water. The students had carefully placed rows of clams in the water, which was set at a temperature to simulate winter conditions in the wild. Snyder was explaining how to properly increase the temperature to encourage reproduction.

The class focuses on facility needs, hatchery production planning and propagation techniques for species, including clams, shrimp, catfish, hybrid striped bass and rainbow trout. It’s the next step for students after taking the basics of fish and shellfish propagation taught in hatchery management I.

The classes are part of the college’s Aquaculture Technology program that focuses on saltwater species like oysters, clams, softshell crabs, and marine finfish like flounder, drum and bait minnows, according to the website. Program graduates have the option to continue their education at the college, transfer classes to a four-year university, start their own fish or shellfish farm, or work as a technician at any aquaculture operation.

Aquaculture Department Chair David Cerino told Coastal Review Thursday that the program has had several octopuses lay eggs over the years, but they didn’t have all the live feeds needed for successful rearing. “We are hoping to have a better chance this time applying what we have learned in previous attempts,” he said.

Cerino said they collected the female octopus along with a male Nov. 4 at Radio Island. 

“We put both in the tank together and they immediately mated,” he explained. “We then released the male that same day to avoid aggression between the two.”

Snyder said while looking at her tank Wednesday that the octopus she was older and had probably already mated before. “They can hold onto the sperm package from the male for quite a while before they fertilize their eggs, but we actually watched this one mate. We took the male out because they are cannibalistic, they’ll eat each other.”

The female stored sperm until about Jan. 18 when she laid the eggs. The eggs incubated for 21 days before they began hatching and have continued for about a week with peak hatch on days two and three, Cerino said.

Typically, a common octopus will lay between 100,000 and 500,000 eggs at a time. After the eggs hatch, the mother octopus usually dies. 

“That’s the normal lifecycle,” Snyder said. “They’re not very long-lived animals, they normally live a year or two, and then once they reproduce that’s the end of their natural life cycle, generally.”

Snyder continued that having a pregnant octopus while a hatchery class is taking place is “a good trial for not only our students but us as well” because larvae are difficult to raise, and most people are not successful.

Snyder said they’ll release some of the paralarvae back into the wild and they’ll also try and raise the octopuses.

Snyder said that they’ve built a larval system in the lab to raise the paralarvae. This system has four tanks that can house up to 6,000 paralarvae per tank. Snyder said they move the paralarvae by scooping them up with a lab-grade pitcher, then the pitcher is floated inside the tank so the water temperature in the pitcher will acclimate to that of the water of the tank and then they’ll gently release the paralarvae into the tank.

“We don’t know how successful we’ll be once they turn into hatchlings — to juvenile octopus,” he said, adding that’s when they turn cannibalistic. “We have to add a lot of hiding spots to the tanks so they don’t eat each other.” 

Cerino said that the tanks are 100-gallon black tanks with moderate aeration. 

“We add brine shrimp nauplii and two species of copepods daily as food for the paralarvae and add three species of microalgae to nutritionally enrich the feeds and add color to the water, reducing light penetration and improving visual contrast of the prey for feeding,” Cerino said. “We periodically exchange the water in the tanks to maintain water quality. Published reports of rearing attempts suggest that successful rearing for the first 30 days is readily achieved, but survival to juvenile octopus at about 45-50 days is very low.” Nauplii is plural for nauplius, the is the first larval stage for many crustaceans. Copepods are small crustaceans. 

As of Thursday, “we have very high survival and the paralarvae are feeding well,” Cerino said.

In the lab beside the female octopus’ tank, it’s hard not to notice the row of tanks housing pairs of clownfish, another species the class is learning to breed.

The way the tank is set up, a shelf placed inside acts as a reef rock, where the clownfish will stick the eggs, “but sometimes if their water quality isn’t just right or they get stressed out, they’ll actually eat their eggs and try again,” Snyder said Wednesday.

The bigger fish in the tank is the female and the next biggest is the male that she breeds with and there’s a bunch of other males that just kind of hang out, Snyder explained. When the female dies, the biggest male will turn into a female and then the next biggest male will move up the ranks.

Snyder said they’re trying to grow corals, too, and have a touch tank onsite filled with animals collected from Bogue Sound, which is just behind the aquaculture building.

The touch tank has whelks, clams, vegetarian snails and other marine life, he said. The tank is a way to teach students how to care for a bunch of different animals and learn which can live together.

A new study out of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication investigated the differences in how Americans perceive the phrases “carbon pollution,” “carbon emissions” and “greenhouse gas emissions.”

Colloquially, these three phrases are often used interchangeably regarding climate change. The research, published in Environmental Communication, showed that “carbon emissions” and “carbon pollution” ranked similarly in terms of how they were perceived to impact human health, the environment and air quality. But the phrase “greenhouse gas emissions” was consistently perceived as less of a threat than the other two.

“It’s essential to understand what people think about these words, concepts, ideas — in order to best shape our efforts to educate, inform and motivate the public,” said Dr. Matthew Goldberg, associate research scientist at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and co-author of the paper.

The research team at Yale used a mixed methods survey to collect data from 2,859 participants. They recorded demographic data such as political background, gender and age. They asked each participant a series of open-ended and closed questions to determine how they perceived each term. This approach allowed the researchers to get at the specific thoughts that each term triggered for participants, while also capturing the spontaneous “top-of-mind” associations. This mixed-methods approach created a nuanced portrait of each phrase.

“Reality is complicated,” Goldberg said. “And we try to reflect it as best we can.”

The study intended to represent specifically how Americans respond to these terms.

“You want to have your research be as relevant as possible to the largest audience as possible,” Goldberg said. “But that also makes it difficult to understand sub-audiences more deeply.”

Still, the researchers had an opportunity to see some of the ways that things like political views impacted reception of each term. The differentiation between terms was fairly consistent across people who identified as either Republican or Democrat. Both parties saw “carbon pollution” and “carbon emissions” as more potent words than “greenhouse gas emissions.”

While the terms “carbon pollution” and “carbon emissions” appear to carry more weight in conveying the threat to human health, in some circumstances, “greenhouse gas emissions” is the more appropriate phrase. It’s the only term of the three that encompasses other emissions that lead to climate change, such as methane.

These insights can inform climate change communication, Goldberg said, as long as they aren’t taken within a vacuum. Larger context, the messenger and other factors also play a significant role.

“It’s just one important piece to a larger set of communication factors,” Goldberg said.

This research underscores the importance of language and wording when communicating a message.

From the archives: Signs Of Change Are Clear, If Language Is Not

“This phenomenon is called framing,” said Dr. K.C. Busch, assistant professor of STEM education at North Carolina State University. “It’s this concept of framing, which is that language matters. And language is not accidental. And that even though different words might refer to the same phenomena, we react differently to different words, because it elicits a different schema in our head as to what this issue is about, or who’s responsible.”

Busch has also conducted research examining how wording impacts climate change communication. In one project, she took a real school textbook and slightly altered the text. The original version conveyed high uncertainty about climate change and its causes, and the new text conveyed more certainty. For example, “not all scientists agree about the causes of global warming” became “97% of scientists agree about the causes of global warming.”

She found that middle school and high school students who read the different texts were affected by the implications from the wording differences, regardless of their prior knowledge or understanding of climate change. Many of the students, she found, took the credibility of the textbooks as a given, even though the altered text was more functionally correct than the original.

“I think my greater concern, especially with adults, is that they’re no longer subjected to school textbooks,” said Busch. “They’re subjected to the landscape of climate change rhetoric out there, which is even worse.”

As there is a never-ending stream of information out there on the internet, the best approach, said Busch, is to make sure people are equipped with the ability to discern both credible sources and the nuance of language.

“I don’t think it’s disingenuous or manipulative to be conscious of the language that you’re using with different audiences,” Busch said. “I just think it’s good communication. As long as it’s still truthful and honest information, I think word choice is just an act of being a good communicator.”

To help a coastal conservation organization learn more about the kind of debris littering southeastern shorelines, around 40 citizen scientists collected over 2,000 samples of microplastics between May and October of last year.

The samples of microplastics, which are tiny pieces of fishing line, bottles, balloons, takeout containers and other plastics measuring less than 5 millimeters, were gathered from more than a dozen sites on the sound and beach between North Topsail Beach and Sunset Beach. 

The volunteers recorded their findings for the North Carolina Coastal Federation-led report, “Microplastics in Southeastern North Carolina: A monitoring and recommendations report” released in late January.

The report was motivated by the amount of microplastics found during the many large-scale cleanups that the Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, had organized after Hurricane Florence caused immense damage in 2018, especially to docks and piers.

Report results point to the unencapsulated polystyrene, or foam, used in pier and dock construction contributing a significant amount of microplastics in those waters.

Volunteers collected 295 sample sets that they categorized into the five microplastics categories. In total, they collected 252 fragments of rigid plastics and firm, brittle pieces; 163 pellets, or plastic beads; 221 pieces of fishing line or plastic rope; 88 films such as balloons and shopping bags; and 1,418 pieces of foam, according to the report.

In addition to microplastics, volunteers found pieces of plastic bottles like caps and labels, cigarette butts, plastic utensils, and large fragments of foam.

Federation Coastal Specialist Georgia Busch told Coastal Review that the results were unsurprising, considering that type of microplastic was the impetus for the citizen-science project.

What did come to light during the sampling period, she added, is that the volunteers with access to marshes, sounds and waterways found more and diverse microplastics in those locations versus on beaches. The tiny foam pieces seemed to accumulate and last a bit longer soundside as compared to the oceanfront.

The concern with microplastics is that they are a type of plastic pollution, and all kinds of plastic waste can break down into microplastics that will persist forever, Busch explained. Microplastics don’t belong in the ecosystem, are impacting all levels of the food web, and are a risk to human health through eating anything sourced from the ocean.

About a third of the seafood species consumed in North Carolina currently do and will consistently have traces of microplastics in them, Busch said. While that doesn’t necessarily mean that your filet is going to be covered in plastic, there’s a toxicity level to be concerned about. 

Busch said that the citizen-science project is a continuation of the Coastal Federation’s work to recover marine debris after Hurricane Florence in estuaries and wetlands.

During the Hurricane Florence recovery project that has taken place over the last few years, 85% of the debris the field crews collected in marshes was from damaged residential docks and piers. 

“One of the common main components for a floating dock of that type is a big polystyrene brick,” Busch said. This material is typically unencapsulated, or not protected with an outer cover to prevent the polystyrene from breaking down in the elements into tiny foam beads. These pieces eventually break down small enough to be considered microplastics.

Though the field crews were not looking for microplastics during the large-scale cleanups, they did find evidence of the polystyrene breaking down. This citizen-science effort with longtime Coastal Federation volunteers — and new ones — provided quantitative data to support the hypothesis that microplastics can come from larger-scale debris.

Wilmington-based Boy Scout Brooks Ford reached out to the Coastal Federation with the idea to follow the Environmental Protection Agency’s protocol to sample microplastics in area beaches for his Eagle Scout project, Busch said.

The EPA’s “Microplastic Beach Protocol” was designed for citizen scientists to collect data on microplastic pollution on marine beaches and shorelines to determine local, regional and global marine debris trends, according to the report.

Ford is in Troop 234, chartered by Wesleyan Chapel United Methodist Church in Wilmington, and currently a sophomore in high school. He completed the project in spring 2022 while still a freshman. 

With sponsorship from area hardware stores, restaurants and supporters, he was able to provide 24 microplastics collection kits for the volunteers to use. The kits were designed and the sieves handmade using EPA guidelines. Ford, with help from his troop, worked on the project for six months.

“In scouting, I have been taught to leave no trace,” Ford said in an email response for comment about why he chose this project. 

“While we enjoy nature and the great outdoors while hiking, camping, and participating in recreational activities, we must also respect wildlife and the environment. This project gave me an opportunity to learn how our heavy use and disposal of plastics negatively affects our environment, specifically the coastline I have the privilege of enjoying,” he said. “As a Boy Scout, I feel I have a lifelong duty to educate, model, and advocate for environmentally sustainable practices. Working with the North Carolina Coastal Federation to complete my Eagle Scout project opened my eyes to a new world of understanding the need to restore and protect the natural habitats of our coast.”

With Ford’s effort and knowing what crews found during the large-scale cleanups, Busch said that they were encouraged to assess on a smaller scale how microplastics are impacting area beaches.

During the six-month collection season last year, volunteers would head out weekly with their kits made up of 5-gallon buckets, hand shovels, brushes and 5-millimeter mesh to sift microplastics out of the sand. They’d work a 10-square-foot space somewhere between the wet sand and the high-tide line. 

Then, the volunteers would record what they found, the time of collection and how busy the beach was, what the weather was like and the status of the tide and submit that information to Busch. She said that there were some days when volunteers would find very few samples, but that depended on where they were working.

Elise Snavely is among the dozens of volunteers who helped with the project.

Originally from Martinsville, Virginia, Snavely said in an interview that she has a background in marine ecology and wanted to become more involved with the Coastal Federation. She earned a bachelor’s from University of North Carolina Wilmington in 2019 and a master’s in biodiversity and conservation at the University of Ghent in Belgium in 2016.

“I was initially asked to get involved in the microplastics sampling back in the spring, but wasn’t able to commit to the weekly sampling then. But in the summer, I met another volunteer, Dennis Doll, at a Coastal Ambassador meeting and he invited me to go sampling with himself and his sampling buddy, Sue-Ann Rush out at Fort Caswell. I had a blast and was told it was nice to have a set of ‘young eyes’ around for the sorting so I ended up going several more times through the summer and fall,” Snavely said. Coastal Ambassadors is a program for Coastal Federation volunteers.

While much of her past sampling work has been in marshes and mangroves, she never sampled on the beach. 

“It was a really nice change! Barefoot sampling with no risk of stepping on oysters is something I could get used to. Keeping the tiny plastic pieces we uncovered from blowing away once the sand was sifted out was a bit challenging,” she said. 

One challenge, Snavely said, is that it was occasionally really difficult to tell small pieces of plastic from organic matter.

“There was one week when there was some sort of worm casing or egg sack all over the beach, they looked and moved a lot like the plastic films or straw wrappers we had found previously,” she said. “I still don’t know what they were, but we ended up consulting Georgia (Busch) because we just weren’t sure when we were on the beach sampling. The thing that surprised me the most though, was that we didn’t find more plastics. Our sampling location was right at the mouth of the Cape Fear, I was surprised there wasn’t more plastic deposition there.”

Busch said that one of the goals behind the report is to keep those interested up to date on what the Coastal Federation is physically finding and any advocacy or recommendations developed as a result.

Busch encouraged residents concerned about microplastics in their community to speak to their elected officials and local governments. 

A few local governments already have taken steps to eliminate microplastics resulting from damaged residential docks and piers in the region. North Topsail Beach, Surf City, Topsail Beach and Wrightsville Beach have passed ordinances prohibiting the use of unencapsulated polystyrene as structural components for any new floating docks.

“That’s a huge win for us,” she added. 

Contact Busch at georgiab@nccoast.org or 910-509-2838 ext. 206 to learn more about the report, the sampling program or information on ordinances to prevent microplastics pollution.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Educating, engaging the public

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Collaborations like this are vital to Plaas’ research.

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

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

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

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

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

Know the warning signs

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

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

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

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

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

It took a lot of collaboration to get an 800-pound manatee carcass that washed up on a beach in Kill Devil Hills in early December 2021 to Lisa Gatens, the mammalogy collection manager at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh.

The carcass was delivered in mid-December 2021 and buried in manure to decompose, leaving just the bones. After about a year, the bones were dug up, cleaned, put in a freezer to get rid of any critters, cleaned again and, as of last week, each bone was being entered into the mammalogy collections catalog.

With around 20,000 specimens, the collection is one of the largest regional mammal collections in the Southeast and contains study skins, tanned hides, skulls, complete skeletons, and fluid-preserved samples. This is one of numerous research collections at the museum. In addition to the mammalogy, the museum has research collections for geology, amphibians and reptiles, fish, fossils, meteorites, mollusks, non-molluscan invertebrates and birds.

Vicky Thayer, Marine Mammal Stranding Network coordinator for the state Division of Marine Fisheries and adjunct for the College of Veterinary Medicine at N.C State University, said in an interview last week that she and partners at Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Jennette’s Pier and the University of North Carolina Wilmington were notified by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission about the manatee, which was still alive when it stranded.

Thayer contacted Terri Calleson, Florida manatee recovery lead for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, about saving the manatee. Calleson got together a team from Fish and Wildlife Service and Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge to go to the manatee to transport it live to Florida.

“Manatees do quite well when they strand alive if they’re transported to rehabilitation,” she said but this animal died before it could be transported.

Since the animal died, the Alligator Refuge transported the manatee to the NC State Center for Marine Sciences and Technology, or CMAST, in Morehead City, for a necropsy performed by Thayer and veterinarian Dr. Craig Harms, professor in the Department of Clinical Sciences at CMAST.

Thayer said the manatee, a female, was emaciated and stranded alive north of the typical winter range for manatees, which do not do well when it’s cold. They suspected the death was caused by pneumonia.

After the necropsy, Keith Rittmaster, natural science curator with the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort, stepped in to help transport the remains from Morehead City to Raleigh.

He told Coastal Review last week that when he had learned that Gatens might want the skeletal remains of the manatee and that Thayer was trying arrange the storage and transportation, he offered to drive it from the CMAST to Raleigh in a pickup truck donated to the nonprofit Friends of the N.C. Maritime Museum for use at the Beaufort-based Bonehenge Whale Center. The center focuses on research and education on cetaceans, or whales, dolphins, and porpoises. Rittmaster noted the enormous amount of collaboration that took place to move the manatee, which he said is common and necessary in much of the work they do.

Gatens and Jonathan Pishney, museum head of communications, arranged to meet Rittmaster on a Sunday in mid-December 2021.

Upon Rittmaster’s delivery, they placed parts of the manatee in large boxes made of hardware cloth, which is a small-weave wire-mesh, covered them with horse manure from N.C. State’s veterinary program, and then covered the box. The hardware cloth is to prevent losing any of the smaller bones, and the boxes are fenced off to keep away scavengers and predators. “We make every effort we can to protect it,” she added.

“I’ll go out every so often, especially after a good storm to make sure that if it rains really hard, not too much manure has washed off,” Gatens explained, adding, “We left it out there for almost a year. When we got it out of the manure, it came out super clean, which sounds kind of funny that you can bury a carcass of a large marine mammal in horse manure and it comes out clean. It’s a fantastic process.”

Next, they meticulously photograph and remove the bones from the manure before hosing down the bones to get off any residual horse manure, which has a lot of sawdust in it, at the museum’s research lab near Prairie Ridge EcoStation.

Then the bones get a little scrub with soap and water, Gatens said. The bones dry outside before the being transferred downtown to the Natural Sciences Museum second basement level, “where the specimens are housed and where this manatee will spend eternity.”

Gatens said they spread the bones out on tables in their lab to finish drying before putting them in a freezer to kill anything that might be hiding in little crevices or holes. After a week in the freezer, they give the bones another thorough cleaning, making sure the bones are “beautifully, beautifully clean.”

Gatens, as of last week, was still working on cataloguing the bones. Each specimen in the collection has its own catalog number. The manatee will have its own unique number that will be written on every single bone and document to connect everything to the specimen that will be stored in boxes.

That number is also recorded by hand with indelible ink in a leatherbound book with cotton rag paper. The handwritten catalog is stored in a fireproof filing cabinet.

“We literally make a written record of everything that enters our collection,” Gatens said, adding this is the third volume of the catalog. She takes the first step of recording the data by hand before logging it in the database to keep the information secure. The handwritten information will then be entered into the online database.

“We want it in the database because the database will be searchable by people from outside. Any researcher that wants to know about our holdings of manatees or whatever can then search our online database once we get everything entered and uploaded to the website,” she said.

She reiterated that many people, organizations, agencies and volunteers are involved in the process of getting the manatee entered into the collections, from the beginning when it’s first reported after being found until it’s put away in the cases in the collection. Such as the necropsy, which is done to learn as much about the health of the animal as possible, “that’s just valuable, valuable information for them and us” Gatens said.

Gatens explained that her job is to maintain the research collection, a charge she takes quite seriously.

“My job is to maintain the research collection. And in doing so, providing care for each specimen that comes in,” and they’re not always manatees, sometimes it’s mice. “I take quite seriously my charge to make sure it’s protected properly, because we know that if researched collections are properly cared for, they’re going to last and be in really good shape for at least a few hundred years because that’s how old the oldest collections are. Darwin specimens are still in the Museum in London,” she said.

Some specimens in the mammalogy collection date back to the late 1800s.

When these were collected, it served more as evidence that this specimen existed at a certain place and time. When those earlier specimens were collected, the researchers did that for documenting biodiversity.

“When I first started doing this work a few decades ago, we didn’t keep tissues,” she said. Researchers realized they could use the specimen to answer questions about functional morphology, or function and structure of the organism, such as how does a limb work? How does a limb on one animal compare to another animal?

“With the interest in functional morphology, we started saving postcranial skeletons and so that’s our standard now. We save skins, skulls, and the postcranial skeletons. And who knows how they might be used,” Gatens said.

Pishney added that the museum has so many specimens and collections that can be used to answer the millions of questions out there. For example, they have on staff a bryozoan expert, one of the few worldwide who studies tiny aquatic invertebrates. She’s able to find these bryozoans in specimen collections like crabs, fish and shrimp, basically bycatch, that have been used for entirely different research up to this point.

“(Bryozoans) haven’t been studied because nobody really looked for them, nobody thought to ask that question before she came on board,” he explained. “With the new people, new questions, new, technology, it’s (the collections) just sort of a never-ending resource of a discovery. Research in itself is constantly evolving. And it’s important to have these specimens.”

In addition to preserving thousands of mammalian specimens, her department works to help living mammals.

She and Michael Cove, research curator for the mammalogy collection, serve on the Scientific Council on Mammals in the state. The group of professionals, each with a different specialty, meet periodically to review the status of every species of mammal in the state and present their information to the Wildlife Resources Commission. Gatens said they sometimes recommend a species be considered for listing as threatened or endangered at the state level and whether it is at the federal level. If it’s listed at the federal level, it’s automatically listed at the state level. However, the state could have a declining population of one species that might be OK elsewhere in its range, which means North Carolina can have species listed that aren’t listed federally.

“We can look at collections and say, for instance, this one species of jumping mouse, based on some of the Brimley specimens, we know occurred in Wake County in the late 1800s,” she said, adding she would be shocked if the jumping mouse was found here now, because they’re they occur in old fields.

The Brimley specimens are acquisitions made by Herbert H. Brimley and Clement S. Brimley, the museum’s cofounders and first curators, starting in the 1880s, according to the museum. Herbert H. Brimley between 1890 and 1899, articulated and exhibited the skeleton of Mayflower, a 50-foot right whale taken near Shackleford Banks, beginning the museum’s mammal collection.

“We can look at our collections and say we know that they occurred in this region once upon a time,” Gatens said, which “helps direct where we might want to consider looking for research that’s conservation based. The collections help direct that, too.”

The mammalogy collection will not go on display. It is only available for research. Gatens said that people can access the collection by scheduling a visit with her or contacting her to borrow specimens for research.

Seagrasses clean the water around them, are vital to marine life, reduce erosion and help fight climate change by capturing carbon, storing it and burying it on the seafloor.

And, no thanks to warming water temperatures, these jacks of many trades are dying off along North Carolina’s coast.

A pair of University of North Carolina Wilmington researchers aims to pinpoint which seagrass populations are more resilient in an effort to try and reverse the course of declining underwater meadows.

Associate professors Jessie Jarvis and Stephanie Kamel, both with the university’s Department of Biology and Marine Biology and Center for Marine Science, recently received a nearly $400,000 National Estuarine Research Reserve Science Collaborative Grant to enter a new phase of their studies on seagrasses.

Their project, “Evaluating and Enhancing Eelgrass Resiliency and Restoration Potential in a Changing Climate,” aims to find out why some species of seagrasses appear to be adapting to rising water temperatures and how those grasses may be used to help restore declining meadows.

“In the past, a lot of the research that we’ve done with seagrasses, especially in North Carolina, is to figure out the trends in seagrasses, if they’re healthy, if they’re increasing or decreasing,” Jarvis said.

That research has led them to find that some populations of eelgrass, or Zostera marina, are declining in the state’s salt waters, particularly in the past decade, but that’s not the case across the board.

“In North Carolina, we’re finding pockets of eelgrass and Zostera that are able to resist the high temperatures that they’re experiencing and so the question really is why,” Kamel said. “Can we figure out what exactly these mechanisms of resilience are and then can we use that information to inform restoration.”

One of the places where eelgrass populations appear to be adapting to warming waters is in Back Sound, which spans more than 8 miles from the southern part of Cape Lookout National Seashore to Beaufort Inlet.

That’s not the case farther north in Virginia’s lower Chesapeake Bay, where the warming sea is being attributed to a decline in the bay’s meadows.

Researchers plan to take a trial-and-error approach by planting seeds of eelgrass from North Carolina that appear to be adapting to the warming waters in areas of the Chesapeake Bay.

Jarvis and Kamel are working with stakeholder groups, including state employees in North Carolina and Virginia, the National Park Service, and Smithsonian, to identify meadows where there is evidence they are adapting to warming water temperatures.

In all, 10 spots will be selected in North Carolina and 10 in Virginia.

In May, researchers will collect seeds from those areas and test the genetics of those seeds, then plant them in the fall. Seeds from Virginia will be planted in North Carolina and seeds from North Carolina will be planted in Virginia.

Once the seeds are planted, their growth will be monitored. The idea is to use the information collected from that monitoring to help with future restoration plans.

The uniqueness of the project is twofold. It brings two very different scientific fields together. Jarvis is a physiological ecologist and Kamel is a population geneticist.

“We’re approaching this really important problem from two pretty different perspectives and that just makes for a really complementary science and we’re just learning a lot of new and different things in two different fields and I think that’s really important going forward to think about how to do restoration,” Kamel said.

This project is one of the first to take a step toward creating resilient seagrass meadows.

“We’re hoping to make existing meadows even more resilient and the idea that it is really a lot easier to protect them than it is to restore them,” she said. “The impacts of their loss are felt years beyond their loss so it’s really important to try to get ahead and be more proactive.”

Their hope is to create one of the first in a series of reciprocal transplant sites along the entire East Coast.

“There’s no formal plans for that at this point in time but we have been talking with some other folks in places like New York and one of our stakeholders is in Massachusetts where they don’t currently have the high temperature stress that we have, but they see the water temperatures increasing and they want to get ahead of the game,” Jarvis said. “It’s a lot easier to conserve seagrasses and protect it than it is to restore them. With bringing in these more temperature resistant plants from North Carolina we can maybe help give them a head start.”

On the last day of November, a particularly cold day, a 450-pound sharptail mola washed up on the beach beside SeaView Fishing Pier on North Topsail Beach.

North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences researchers in the Ichthyology Collections lab coordinated with volunteers in the area to move the fish into the back of a truck filled with ice. From there, they transported the specimen to N.C. State University’s veterinary program to weigh it using a livestock scale before heading to the lab that studies fish in Raleigh, where it’s currently being preserved.

Once the preservation process is complete, it will become part of the sizable ichthyology research collection at the museum. The collection has more than 1.4 million specimens, some dating back to the mid-1800s.

Lily Hughes, curator of ichthyology, told Coastal Review in a recent interview that the fish is soaking in formalin as part of the preservation process, one that will take at least another month.

Ichthyology Collections Manager Gabriela Hogue added that they’re working with a company on a design for a stainless-steel tank with a removable lid and plexiglass cutouts to display the fish. Though they’re unsure of the cost of the tank, the hope is a donor will step in “so everyone in North Carolina that visits the museum will be able to see this beautiful creature and researchers and students will be able to study it.”

In addition to the fish collection that spans 42 countries and represents one of the largest and most complete regional collections in the United States, the museum houses research collections containing fossils, birds, non-molluscan invertebrates, mammals, bivalves, amphibians and reptiles, geology, microbiology, astronomy and astrophysics, and veterinary sciences, according to the website.

Hughes explained that there are currently about 36,000 species of fish living today and they’re pretty biodiverse. Molas are ocean sunfish and there are five known species of mola. The mola that washed ashore Nov. 30 is a specific species called the sharptail mola.

“They are the heaviest fish that live in the ocean today. This one weighed 450 pounds, but the largest ocean sunfish that’s ever been caught was more than 6,000 pounds,” Hughes said.

She explained that they’re not sure why it washed up, though it’s not uncommon for molas to be found on beaches.

Reasons range from being ill from parasites, “they’re famously covered in parasites,” Hughes continued. The massive fish could have gotten tangled in fishing gear, struck by a boat, consumed a plastic bag, or been cold shocked. There were no obvious signs of cause of death, “so we don’t know right now. We may never know,” but those are some of the more common causes.

When the fish washed up next to SeaView Fishing Pier on North Topsail Beach, an employee called the state Division of Marine Fisheries for guidance, and eventually were put in contact with Hogue and Hughes.

Hughes said the fish was not healthy when it washed ashore, where it died a few hours later.

“It was actually very good that it washed up where it did and when it did,” Hogue added, explaining that the cold weather those few days kept the fish from deteriorating.

Immediately after the fish died, part of the fin was clipped and preserved in 95% ethanol for DNA study, Hogue said.

A group of volunteers offered to transport the fish the day it was found, but the nearly 500-pound creature was too large to fit in the bed of the truck.

The next day, Thursday, Dec. 1, Hogue and museum Chief Veterinarian Dan Dombrowski drove from Raleigh in a bigger truck to North Topsail Beach to collect the fish. By then about a half-dozen volunteers had moved the fish from the shore to the parking lot by the pier.

The volunteers helped get the fish into the back of the truck. The fish was iced down before Hogue and Dombrowski headed back to Raleigh.

The next question was “how do we weigh this thing?” Hogue said.

Dombrowski reached out to the veterinarian school at N.C. State to use its scale. Because it was still cold in Raleigh, they were able to leave the specimen in the truck overnight, after covering it with more ice, and then brought the fish to the school Friday morning, Dec. 2, to weigh it.

Hogue said students and staff helped move the fish on and off the bed of the truck to weigh it at the university. A group followed the truck carting the fish back to the research lab, also in Raleigh, where Hogue and Hughes do their work.

Because they didn’t have a vessel to store the specimen during the preservation process, Hughes and Hogue initially thought of a kiddie pool, but those are hard to find in December. Someone recommended an agricultural supply store, where they found an 8-foot stock tank.

Right now, the whole specimen is being preserved in a 10% formalin solution. Formalin is a derivative of formaldehyde. This chemical completely stops tissue deterioration, Hogue said. Because of the specimen’s size, the solution needed to be injected into the body cavity, which they spent all day doing the Friday the fish came into the lab.

After the fish is preserved by the formalin solution, which should be another month, the fish will be soaked in water to remove the solution. For the long term, the fish will stay in a 70% solution, a form of alcohol.

There’s already a line forming to study the sunfish.

Hogue said a fellow collections manager and curator would like to examine the parasites on the fish. The fish will likely undergo a body scan and probably be opened up to see if there’s any parasites inside.

“This is what it’s for,” Hogue said. “I like to think, of every specimen we have, let’s make it have died for a reason. And so, this can be used in perpetuity for whatever parasite studies want to be done. If somebody wants to come and do a gut analysis, if they want to look at what sex is it, how old.”

Once the fish is completely preserved, it will be entered into the ichthyology database that is globally accessible.

“Anyone in the world will have all that data. Everything from where it was collected, how it was collected, if in the process any parasites are found, all of that will be put into our database,” Hogue said.

She spends a lot of time making sure the specimens are properly preserved because she wants “to make sure that this stuff stays in perpetuity and so that’s what makes it all worth it, when people use the collection,” Hogue added.

The collection really is used all over the world, Hogue continued. Not just the data, but the specimens themselves, and the substantial tissue collection.

The collection, which has everything from eggs all the way to an almost 13-foot thresher shark and everything in between, is made up of different collections and research expeditions from different curators and researchers and donations. They also have a lot of deep-sea specimens, even specimens from Antarctica, and the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences collection.

The idea with the fish specimen collection is to preserve things not just for right now, but for the long term, Hughes said.

“Our collection is very diverse. We’re the fifth-largest regional repository in terms of collection,” Hogue added. “It’s the most Southeastern collection, which is wonderful because you know, the Southeast is such a hotspot for biodiversity. There’s so much going on. The cool thing about North Carolina is we’re the southernmost distributional point for a lot of fish species. And the northernmost point.”

In addition to researchers, the information is available to teachers and educators, “because they can look at things and say, ‘hey, you know, we live in North Topsail, what kind of things have been collected right off of our coast?’ and they can create a better picture of ‘what’s in my backyard?’” using the data, Hogue said.

As water temperatures change, they’re finding “a lot of weird stuff, too,” Hogue said, in both saltwater and freshwater. These changes are something the researchers wish to track over time.

Along with data being collected in the present day, the collection holds a trove of historical data and “that really is the basis for conservation and management,” specifically for the Wildlife Resources Commission and the Division of Marine Fisheries, Hogue said.

“They can look at the historical data and they can say, ‘OK, this is where we should be finding these species,’ and then they can target their studies from there and they can say, ‘OK, well now we’re not. Let’s check out: How do we conserve this? How do we manage this? What do we do? What do we need to do better?’” Hogue continued.  “We’ll get changes over time in that aspect, and, really, I think make much more informed management and conservation decisions. Having the specimens vouchered here that they can go back and look at and verify identifications, if need be.”

Editor’s note: Assistant Editor Jennifer Allen’s husband is a member of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences advisory commission.

Ever mosey through a museum and pass by a display of those little ethanol-filled jars holding spineless creatures and think “big deal” as you head to check out the dinosaur exhibit?

Turns out, the contents of those jars are rife with clues that may help researchers unlock some of the mysteries of our coastal environment and help them better gauge the effects of climate change and pollution.

“The power of museum collections is that they’re a combination of donations from a variety of different sources, each with their own stories and usefulness, but when you put them together that really provides something that can be used in ways that we may not comprehend quite yet,” said Bronwyn Williams, research curator of non-molluscan invertebrates at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh.

Williams and Megan McCuller, collections manager of non-molluscan invertebrates, oversee what is ostensibly the largest research collection at the museum.

Non-molluscan invertebrate is a fancy term for animals that don’t have spines — think shrimp, worms and crabs.

Since its creation in 2017, this collection has grown to include tens of thousands of specimens collected as far back as the mid-1800s from freshwater, land, and near and offshore marine habitats of the Carolinas, mid-Atlantic region, and the Southeast.

It is a separate collection from the museum’s mollusk collection, including mussels, clams, snails, octopuses and squids.

Specimens preserved in ethanol-filled jars, vials and, for the larger critters, buckets or tanks, are housed in a building suitable for storing thousands of containers filled with flammable liquid a few miles away from the Museum of Natural Sciences main building in downtown Raleigh.

This means the collection is primarily out of view day to day, barring the occasional display of a small fraction of non-molluscan invertebrate, at what is said to be the state’s most-visited museum.

Williams’ and McCuller’s work is more of a behind-the-scenes job, one that entails cataloging information that can include details about who got a specimen, where and when it was collected, and why it was collected.

And the specimens have come through a variety of means, whether from someone fishing off a pier stretching out from the ocean shore, a research vessel, orphaned collections donated to the museum, employees of the museum, even a World War II American airman who collected specimens from the shores of Australia during a stint overseas.

In many cases, the more Williams and McCuller dive into that history, the more they discover, and they want to share that with the public and with researchers.

“We want to teach and tell other people about what is back here,” Williams said. “We want everybody to know what we have here and why it’s so important. This collection is invaluable from a biological standpoint. It can be used to address questions about changes in distribution or connectivity. It can be used to monitor for invasive species. People have used it to dig in and identify diversity that we didn’t know we have.”

McCuller is one of only a few researchers who study bryozoans, small invertebrates found in most marine communities that can grow on everything from barnacles to coral skeletons.

When she first took her job at the museum a few years ago, she looked inside a jar of hard skeleton corals and spotted what looked like bryozoans. She has identified up to 19 different species of bryozoan in a single jar.

To date, McCuller has identified more than 1,200 colonies of bryozoans in more than 200 lots from the museum’s non-molluscan invertebrate collection.

The museum’s collection of saltwater crayfish has helped researchers understand the impacts of invasive species to some of North Carolina’s coastal habitats.

Red swamp crayfish, native to many Gulf states, is one of several crayfish species shipped live for human consumption. These delectable edibles were introduced into North Carolina waters decades ago, taking over habitats once abundant with crayfish native to the state.

“It’s actually very rare to find the native crayfishes now and we can document that in the collections,” Williams said. “Invasive red swamp crayfish were not being collected in these areas frequently prior to 2000. After 2000 we’ve seen the red swamp crayfish really explode in terms of its geographic coverage in portions of eastern North Carolina.”

A collection acquired from Charleston, South Carolina, tells the story of an invasion of Asian tiger shrimp off the South Carolina coast after a batch of the species reportedly escaped from an offshore research lab.

Sometime between 2015 and 2016, a father and his young son brought to the museum an Asian tiger shrimp they collected while pier fishing off the North Carolina coast.

“That’s, I think, one critical story of how museum collections can be used to look at changes in the distribution of things,” Williams said. “Our ultimate goal for this collection is to have it be well known and well respected.”

McCuller, armed with a list of “fun facts,” shared a few in a recent telephone interview with Coastal Review.

The oldest specimen in the non-molluscan invertebrate collection is two jars, also referred to as lots, of white shrimp, gathered in 1855.

The largest specimen is a horseshoe crab, roughly 24-28 inches in diameter, collected in 1975 from Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina.

One of the most popular among museum guests is a giant isopod, a distant cousin of crabs found in deep, cold waters of the sea. It looks, as McCuller describes it, like a “really large roly-poly.”

There are also a couple of deep-sea tube worms collected in 1966 by the Duke Marine Lab at a depth of more than 5,000 meters below the ocean’s surface.

Anyone interested in touring the museum’s fluid collections may contact Williams at bronwyn.williams@naturalsciences.org or McCuller at megan.mcculler@naturalsciences.org.

You may also follow them on Twitter at @mccullermi and @bwwilliamslab.

In September 2018, Hurricane Florence made landfall at Wrightsville Beach as a Category 1 hurricane. Tropical storms and Category 1 hurricanes are classified as “weak tropical cyclones,” and account for 70% of all tropical cyclones. Despite their name, weak tropical cyclones can still do a lot of damage — and their impact may be getting worse.

A recent study has shown that storms like this have been intensifying around the world from 1991 to 2020, something that scientists say is tied to global climate change.

The study, which was published in the journal Nature in November, included as a contributing author Dr. Wei Mei, assistant professor in the Department of Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Mei and the research team found that in all ocean basins, weak tropical cyclones have been intensifying by 15-21%.

Storm intensity is not an easy thing to measure. Traditionally, tropical cyclone strength has been measured using satellite images, a method called the Dvorak technique. But using satellite data to calculate intensity creates information gaps.

“It consists of several steps that can introduce uncertainties because of the inherent subjectiveness,” Mei said. “As a result, the intensity of a tropical cyclone estimated by different trained meteorologists based on the Dvorak method can be very different, resulting in large uncertainties in the analysis of tropical cyclone intensity.”

Theoretical and mathematical models indicate that tropical cyclones intensify as surface waters get warmer — and research has shown that the oceans have gotten warmer and continue to warm. Unfortunately, satellite imagery cannot support the hypothesis of storm intensification in weak tropical cyclones, due to the interference of things like clouds and ocean spray. To find out whether or not weak tropical cyclones were truly intensifying, the research team would need to approach analysis of intensification trends using a different method.

To do so, the research team took advantage of the close relationship between ocean currents and storms. They used highly accurate current measurements taken by floating devices called surface drifters. These drifters were deployed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and they provided data that was able to complement traditional satellite imagery in quantifying storm intensification. The drifters were equipped with “holy sock” drogues, things that help stabilize the drifters’ position in the water. The drifters record measurements like location and water temperature, communicating that data to a satellite. Using the Ekman Theory, which is the understanding that winds transfer energy to surface waters and drive currents, the research team was able to estimate wind speed at a 10-meter height after identifying near-surface current speed. In other words, the scientists used their data on the ocean currents to calculate wind speed, therefore generating a better understanding of the storm intensity.

This new approach helped the scientists overcome the challenges of satellite imagery and shows that weak tropical cyclones have been intensifying during the three-decade study period. These results can help inform tropical cyclone models and increase their accuracy, which in turn can help coastal communities be better prepared for these kinds of storms. It is important for accurate information about weak tropical cyclones to be included in projections and models since weak tropical cyclones make up the vast majority of tropical cyclones.

It also helps scientists understand tropical cyclones in remote areas. And as more surface drifter data becomes available over time, the method used by these researchers can provide a much fuller picture of storm intensity and evolution.

According to Mei, there’s a link between this demonstrated storm intensification and climate change.

“Under global warming, the surface ocean gets warmer, providing more energy for tropical cyclones to develop and intensify,” Mei said. “Our earlier research has identified positive connections between ocean warming and storm intensification rate, particularly in ocean areas that are warming faster than other areas.”

What this means for coastal communities is that as the climate warms, tropical cyclones are expected to get stronger. Storms that may not have caused a lot of damage several decades ago are going to have a greater impact. This can make a critical difference for ecological communities — as shown in another recent study that theorizes that otherwise-resilient estuarine fish might have a harder time recovering from stronger storms — and human communities along the coast.

“The coastal communities need to be better prepared,” Mei said.

WANCHESE – The federal government recently announced new offshore wind energy lease areas off the North Carolina coast, but for Dr. Mike Muglia, assistant director for science and research with the North Carolina Renewable Ocean Program at the Coastal Studies Institute, there is tremendous additional potential for power generation in the ocean’s waters.

Much of Muglia’s research focus has been on how ocean currents can be harnessed, and he said the potential is huge, and while the obstacles are big too, the Gulf Stream could be the largest single focused source of renewable energy identified to date.

“That’s all the water in the Atlantic Ocean that’s flowing north on the surface layer,” explained Muglia, who spoke during a recent Science on the Sound lecture. “Drive the rest of the way across the Atlantic Ocean and the water’s coming back south. You’re moving about 30 times the flow of all the rivers on Earth off Cape Hatteras in the Gulf Stream, an immense amount of energy and volume of water.”

The monthly lecture series at the Coastal Studies Institute on the East Carolina University Outer Banks Campus examines coastal topics and issues relevant to the state’s northern coast. Each lecture is also livestreamed and archived on the institute’s YouTube channel.

Standing in front of a map showing the confluence of the Gulf Stream, Labrador Current and the boundary waters, Muglia said the Outer Banks is an outstanding location for ocean studies.

“We happen to live in one of the best places in the world for oceanography and the coolest, most exciting place ever,” Muglia said. “We have this huge confluence of all these different water masses occurring right off of Cape Hatteras in our backyard.”

There is an extraordinary amount of energy in those water masses, he said, and ocean energy in general is a resource of almost extraordinary potential that could represent a significant third renewable energy resource joining wind and solar. But the technology is still in its infancy, Muglia noted.

“It’s a pretty new industry, which is why it’s not necessarily cost-competitive with wind and solar that have been around for 50 or 100 years,” he said.

Research to bring down the cost of generating ocean energy is moving forward. One of the advantages ocean energy offers is the range of options.

Muglia said it appears straightforward, but it’s not that simple. 

“I’m a physics guy. I work with engineers, and we all think the same, which means, ‘All right, let’s see how much we have out there. Where’s the best wave resource? Where should we go put this thing and then how can we build something to get that energy?’ We think that’s all there is to get energy. And that’s totally wrong,” he said.

A big obstacle is developing mechanisms to capture and convert ocean energy and transmit it to the power grid.

“This is a really new endeavor,” he said. “There aren’t people building wave energy converters. We need to bring those people up to speed on what we’re actually doing and teach them, and then they’ll surpass us. “

If grid-level ocean energy production is still years in the future, there are already smaller devices that Muglia is working on that may have commercial application. Two devices in particular, a tethered coaxial turbine and an ocean kite may have commercial potential, and prototypes are being tested.

Developed by a North Carolina State University team, the coaxial turbine looks like a torpedo that is tapered at both tips. It features two rotors, one at each end. When deployed, the turbine will be tethered and operate at an angle — yawed — to the current. The rotors counterrotate to eliminate the torque that would occur if both rotors were to turn in the same direction.

“The reason that it’s yawed is that you can get fresh flow on both rotors,” Muglia said. “If you had a line with the current the second rotor would be in the turbulence of the first. This way it gets clean flow on both rotors.”

The device was recently tested at Lake Norman, a hydroelectric dam reservoir that covers nearly 1,800 square miles, where it was towed behind a boat to simulate an ocean current.

“Lake Norman has these long fetches of very deep water where we can tow for a long time and simulate the current on them,” Muglia said, explaining why the devices were tested at that location.

The Lake Norman prototype was equipped with a generator. The next deployment of the coaxial turbine is planned to take place in waters near the Coastal Studies Institute and will test the device’s ability to desalinate the water.

“The one we’re going to test in our backyard has a pump, so it can do reverse osmosis by pumping water from the device up the line to a reverse-osmosis system,” Muglia said.

The other device, the underwater kite, may be closer to actual application than the coaxial turbine, although it’s not clear whether the public will be seeing it in use any time soon.

With primary design work done by Chris Vermillion at NC State, the Ocean Kite System for Marine Hydrokinetic Energy Harvesting, as it is officially known, will move through the water in in a figure-eight motion, collecting and transmitting energy along its tether.

The ocean kite may be the first of the ocean current-harvesting systems to be deployed. Muglia explained that the kite is part of a project for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which is looking for ways to power an unmanned submarine. The submarine, called the Manta Ray, is designed for stealth movement and minimal drag as it maneuvers beneath the surface.

Desalination technology

Although much of the research Muglia described is focused on how to harness the ocean’s power for energy production, there are other areas of research that use wave action without necessarily generating or storing electricity.

Waves to Water, held at Jennette’s Pier in April, was a National Renewable Energy Lab-sponsored competition calling for relatively lightweight, easily assembled systems that can produce clean drinking water using only wave energy. The lab’s overview described the devices as, “small, modular, wave-powered desalination systems capable of providing potable drinking water in disaster relief scenarios and remote coastal locations.”

Muglia and his team at the Coastal Studies Institute organized the deployment of the four systems during the competition, and all produced fresh water. The winning entry, from Canadian company Oneka Technologies, was able to produce 1,000 liters of water per day.

What may be most remarkable though, is the Oneka system used only the power of the waves to pump water through a membrane. There was no electric-powered pump onboard.

“This device pressurizes water and forces it through a semi permeable membrane so it’s not making electricity,” Muglia explained. “It’s just using this giant device as a pump. And when Trip (Taylor, a research assistant at the institute) got on this to activate it. He said it was incredible because as soon as a little wave hit it, it was like these big lungs just going and just pumping.”

While the applications of ocean energy are still in their infancy, especially for generating power to light homes and businesses, George Bonner, director of the Renewable Ocean Energy Program, has been pushing the microgrid possibilities of ocean energy since he joined the institute in 2019.

Muglia, responding to a question about that technology, expressed support for his colleague’s goal.

“Ultimately, what we’d like to do is to take the energy that we’re getting from these devices and put them in charging stations for cars in the parking lot. That’s what George is hellbent to do and we’re all with him.”

Fish that live in the seagrass meadows of North Carolina’s Back Sound seem to recover quickly from tropical cyclones, demonstrating a capacity for resilience in the face of disruptive shocks, reports a study published last month in Plos One.

The study, which used data collected over the course of 10 years, found that there was no significant difference in the fish communities before and after a storm, or during hurricane years and years with no hurricane. Dr. Y. Stacy Zhang, assistant professor in the Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at North Carolina State University and lead author on the study, hypothesizes that the resilience of the fish communities is tied to the integrity of the seagrass habitats that they depend on.

“Do they have a home to come back to, in the same way where if humans evacuate for a storm, do they have a home to come back to afterwards?” Zhang said. “That’d be changing the numbers.”

The study used data from a long-term trawl survey run by Dr. Joel Fodrie at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and consisting of two-minute trawls through seagrass meadows in Back Sound in Carteret County. They trawled monthly, randomly selecting a few sites to trawl each time and documenting how many fish came up and what types. The frequency and longevity of this sampling allowed the researchers to look for short-term trends — within three weeks of impact — as well as seasonal shifts.

“The fact that this project used 10 years of data and looked at multiple different storms, I think is a really beneficial approach to take,” Zhang said. “Because we are trying to capture some of that variability that you wouldn’t get if you looked at a single storm alone.”

The seagrass data was not from one standing data set, but sourced from multiple monitoring projects that had occurred in the area. These seagrass surveys indicated that the seagrass meadows were principally undamaged by storms.

Fish population dynamics are highly variable, and so are estuarine ecosystems. To document storm-related effects in spite of this variability, Zhang and her team ran multiple analyses on their data, examining things like fish community structure, tropical cyclone intensity and the difference between storm years and years without storms.

“(Estuaries) are such dynamic systems, they’re so variable just on a daily basis, it leads us to think that most of the fishes, the seagrasses, the oysters — all of those organisms are adapted in some way, shape, or form to withstand and live in this highly dynamic system,” Zhang said.

Dr. Christopher Patrick is the lead principal investigator at the Hurricane Ecosystem Response Synthesis Network, or HERS, a National Science Foundation-funded Research Coordination Network based out of the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences with co-principal investigators based at the University of New Hampshire, Florida International University and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. HERS brings together specialists of different disciplines to develop a comprehensive understanding of ecosystem responses to tropical cyclones.

“Globally, the frequency of extreme events is increasing to the point where they’re not really extreme in a lot of cases anymore — they’re something that we should be expecting,” Patrick said. “We need to understand what the consequences of those changes in disturbance intensities, frequencies and distributions are for coastal systems so that we can plan accordingly.”

While these analyses didn’t show storms having strong overall impacts on fish communities, the figures do indicate that effects increase with storm strength. This suggests that a really severe storm would have a stronger impact.

“That’s the kind of thing that we may be seeing more of with warming waters,” Patrick said.

Because climate change implies more intense storms, Zhang said this could impact how resilient fish communities are in the face of these types of stressors in the future.

“We see that the fish communities and the seagrasses are pretty resistant to these pulse disturbances,” Zhang said. “But if, as it’s predicted that hurricanes are going to become more intense with climate change, is that going to actually start shifting the dynamic of whether or not these communities are resistant to the storms?”

How seagrass-associated fish communities will respond to the combined stressors of climate change, habitat changes and storms in the future remains an ongoing question. But, according to Zhang, there’s hope.

“The communities are pretty similar, regardless of whether it’s a hurricane year, or a nonhurricane year, or before or after the storm,” Zhang said. “There’s seasonality in the communities, but there’s no massive shift to the system as a result of the hurricane itself.”

Blue whales off the coast of California may be consuming as many as 10 million pieces of microplastics per day, finds a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications.

More research is needed to determine the extent of the problem for whales off the East Coast and beyond, where previous studies have identified microplastics in the ocean food chain.

These tiny pieces of plastic material have been commercially produced or are the breakdown of larger pieces of plastic like water bottles, children’s toys and disposable containers. Because of their small size, less than 5 millimeters, microplastics can be hard to detect, but when they enter the environment are a hazardous pollutant.

A group of California scientists decided to investigate the extent to which whales off the coast of California might be exposed to microplastics pollution.

“They’re really big animals that strongly affect the ecosystem if they’re going to be faced with other stressors,” said Dr. Shirel Kahane-Rapport, postdoctoral scholar at California State University, Fullerton, and lead author on the study.

Kahane-Rapport and her team used data collected by 191 tag deployments on baleen whales off the coast of California. The tags are noninvasive monitoring devices that attach to the whale via suction cups. The data collected by the tags helps the scientists record things like where the whales are, when they are feeding and how often they are feeding.

They were able to juxtapose this tag data with published works detailing the microplastics concentrations in both the water column and the prey species that the whales target.

Microplastics are likely primarily passed through the food web, and the scientists predict that the exposure to microplastics corresponds to the number of organisms the whales are eating.

Therefore, blue whales that go after many small krill are consuming much higher levels of microplastics than a humpback whale, which goes after smaller numbers of bigger fish. Blue whales off the coast of California could be consuming about 10 million pieces of microplastics per day, whereas humpback whales may be consuming 200,000 pieces per day.

Even though microplastics are small, plastic consumption at this volume is substantial. According to Kahane-Rapport, the size and weight of microplastics vary.

“You may have a piece of cellophane, or you may have a piece of more dense plastic, like the top of a water bottle — those of course weigh differently,” Kahane-Rapport said. “So people generally, in this work, have been counting pieces and not weight.”

But, Kahane-Rapport said, it could mean that baleen whales are consuming an average of 20 kilograms of plastic per day. That weighs roughly the same amount as a 5-gallon bucket of water.

According to Kahane-Rapport, quantifying the exposure of this human-caused pollution on whales is not just important for the health of the animals, but the rest of the ecosystem, too.

“It could seem like just a sad story about whales,” Kahane-Rapport said. “But it’s also a story about humans.” Humans eat many of the same fish species as whales, making us part of the same food web. “It’s all part of our ecosystem. And if that part of our ecosystem is damaged, it will affect us too. It’s not really just a story about whales, it’s also about us.”

Now that they’ve quantified exposure, Kahane-Rapport will continue studying the effects that microplastics have on whales, in terms of how it moves through the whale’s system.

The other aspect of this work is to examine this issue in other locations. Whales like the North Atlantic right whale, which depend on habitat off the coast of North Carolina, are already critically endangered, and yet nothing is truly known about their exposure to microplastics.

This is not just an issue in California, Kahane-Rapport explained, but in ocean waters across the world.

“Solving microplastic pollution is going to be a global project,” Kahane-Rapport said.

Researchers for a recent study found that 57,412 sites nationwide, including 1,452 in North Carolina, are presumed to be contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.

The PFAS Project Lab research team published in mid-October its findings, “Presumptive Contamination: A New Approach to PFAS Contamination Based on Likely Sources,” in Environmental Science & Technology Letters. The team concluded that PFAS contamination should be presumed at certain industrial facilities, sites related to PFAS-containing waste, and locations where fluorinated firefighting foams have been used.

The PFAS Project Lab, based at Northeastern University in Boston, studies social, scientific and political factors related to PFAS and researches contamination through collaboration with impacted communities, researchers and nonprofits. The lab is supported by the National Science Foundation, The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and Whitman College.

Researchers explain in the paper that because data on the scale, scope and severity of PFAS releases and the resulting contamination nationwide are uneven and incomplete, the team developed what they call the “presumptive contamination approach” to determine possible sources of contamination.  

To do this, the team used previous research that identifies suspected industrial PFAS dischargers, state-based studies that use PFAS testing data to identify suspected categories of contamination, self-reported PFAS release data from industrial users, and numerous studies on specific PFAS-contaminated sites to compile the single map to find probable contamination. The map includes sites that are often sources of contamination, but where testing has not confirmed the presence of PFAS, according to the study.

Of the 57,412 sites presumed to be contaminated with PFAS in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., 9,145 are industrial facilities, 4,255 are wastewater treatment plants, 3,493 are current or former military sites, and 519 are major airports. The report adds that proximity to contamination is consistently related to higher PFAS levels in drinking water, and consuming contaminated water is associated with higher PFAS blood levels.

“While it sounds scary that there are over 57,000 presumptive contamination sites, this is almost certainly a large underestimation,” Dr. Phil Brown, director of Northeastern University’s Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute and coauthor on the paper, said in a statement. “The scope of PFAS contamination is immense, and communities impacted by this contamination deserve swift regulatory action that stops ongoing and future uses of PFAS while cleaning up already existing contamination.”

PFAS exposure has been associated with increase in total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol, decreased antibody response to vaccines in children, decreased fertility in women, increased risk of pregnancy-induced hypertension and/or pre-eclampsia, kidney and testicular cancer, thyroid disease, chronic kidney disease, elevated uric acid, hyperuricemia, and gout Liver damage, immune system disruption, and adverse developmental outcomes, including small decrease in birth weight and altered mammary gland development, according to the lab.

Related: Webinar, meetings set on PFAS blood test results

Dr. Linda Birnbaum, coauthor on the paper and scientist emeritus and former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program, reiterated to Costal Review that “Contamination is everywhere — often in places we never suspected.”

She said in the release that “not only do we all have PFAS in our bodies, but we also know that PFAS affects almost every organ system. It is essential that we understand where PFAS are in our communities so that we can prevent exposures.”

Dr. Alissa Cordner, senior author on the paper and co-director of the PFAS Project Lab, said that they know PFAS testing is very sporadic, and there are many data gaps in identifying known sites of PFAS contamination.

“That’s why the ‘presumptive contamination’ model is a useful tool in the absence of existing high-quality data,” she said. 

Cordner explained to Coastal Review in a follow-up interview that because most of the country does not have extensive testing data on PFAS contamination sites, the researchers’ model — presumptive contamination approach — can help decision-makers prioritize locations for future testing and regulatory action. 

The research team used already-published scientific studies and government research programs that have identified specific types of locations that were sources of PFAS contamination. 

“For example, extensive testing at Department of Defense sites suggests that military bases are presumptive sites of PFAS contamination because of the use of fluorinated firefighting foams,” she said.

“We also gathered information about what types of industrial facilities are likely using and emitting PFAS. We found 11 high-quality studies or regulatory processes that targeted or identified specific types of industrial facilities, and we chose to include industry categories if they were identified on at least four of these lists,” Cordner said. 

“We then gathered all of the publicly available, high-quality, nationwide data we could on the different types of presumptive PFAS contamination sites, and we kept in only the data that was specific enough in terms of its geolocation data that we could use it to create a nationwide map. This left us with over 57,000 identified sites in the United States.”

The research team checked their model’s accuracy by comparing 500 known contamination sites from the PFAS Project Lab’s Contamination Site Tracker against the likely contamination sites identified with the presumptive contamination map. They found that 72% of known contamination sites were either included in the map of presumptive contamination sites or captured by the overall conceptual model, even if those sites couldn’t be mapped at the national scale, according to the report. Some suspected sources of contamination, such as airplane and railroad crash sites, hydraulic fracking sites, and sewage sludge land application sites were not included on the map because of a lack of available nationwide data.

With the development of the presumptive contamination concept, plus validating the model against known contamination sites, the paper states it “provides a rigorous advancement to previous academic and regulatory models and having a standardized methodology allows researchers, regulators, and other decision-makers at various geographic scales to identify presumptive PFAS contamination using publicly available data.”

Dr. Kimberly Garrett, post-doctoral researcher at Northeastern University and coauthor on the paper, said that because PFAS testing is expensive and resource intensive, “We have developed a standardized methodology that can help identify and prioritize locations for monitoring, regulation and remediation.”

In response to a request for comment on the study, a representative with the state Department of Health and Human Services said in an email that the department continues its work to understand the impact and effects of PFAS and other “forever chemicals” on the health of North Carolinians. 

“The article provides a valuable estimate of PFAS contamination in NC that can help NCDHHS, communities, and private well users be more aware of sites where people might have more exposure to PFAS,” according to representative.

“Private well users can utilize the map and community resources from the article, in conjunction with other NCDHHS private well guidance, to help decide whether they should test their wells for PFAS or other potential contaminants. To assist with these efforts, NCDHHS has developed several documents to help residents in impacted communities understand more about PFAS, see here: PFAS Factsheet,  GenX Factsheet,  PFAS Testing and Filtration, and PFAS Clinician Memo.”

A new peer-reviewed study found harmful levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in school uniforms labeled “stain resistant.”

Researchers purchased children’s products like school uniforms, bibs and hats, marketed as stain-resistant or waterproof to see if these items contain high levels of PFAS and can be a source of exposure to children and the ecosystem.

The researchers tested 72 products and found PFAS in all “stain-resistant” items, states the report, “Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances in North American School Uniforms,” published Wednesday in Environmental Science & Technology.

“PFAS don’t belong in any clothing, but their use in school uniforms is particularly concerning,” Marta Venier, senior author and professor at Indiana University, said in a statement. “School uniforms are worn directly on the skin for up to eight hours per day by children, who are particularly vulnerable to harm.”

PFAS are man-made chemicals used for decades in industrial and consumer products such as firefighting foams, food-packaging materials and treated textiles. These chemicals are associated with a range of health harms, including compromised immunity, cancer, obesity and more severe COVID-19 outcomes.

“PFAS-treated goods such as clothing may be an important source of direct human exposure, especially for children, as well as a source of PFAS to the environment (and hence indirect human exposure),” the study states.

A tiny fraction of the more than 10,000 PFAS that exist have been tested for toxicity, and all PFAS are either persistent in the environment or break down into persistent PFAS. Some newer PFAS first claimed to be safe have been determined later to be harmful to human health, according to the Institute.

The treated uniforms are a source of PFAS contamination in the environment when they are worn, laundered, discarded or recycled.

Children can absorb PFAS in treated uniforms through skin contact or ingesting the chemicals if they eat with unwashed hands, hand-to-mouth behaviors, mouthing clothing, and through inhalation. They may face higher health risks from PFAS exposure than adults because of their lower body weight and due to the fact children are developing, the study continues.

Rebecca Fuoco, a spokesperson for the Green Science Policy Institute, told Coastal Review that the research team isn’t releasing the brand names that were tested. The Green Science Policy Institute is an independent, nongovernmental organization of scientists and policy experts who develop and communicate peer-reviewed research about chemicals of concern.

“However, the takeaway is that uniform pieces from any brand that are labeled as ‘stain-resistant’ are likely to have PFAS,” she said.

In the 2017-18 school year, 20% of public schools in the United States required students to wear uniforms, according to the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. That year, 23% of primary schools, 18% of middle schools and 10% of high schools required uniforms. Schools that require uniforms were more predominant in cities than in suburban areas, towns and rural areas. At least 76% of the students in city schools that require uniforms were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.

Fuoco said that parents who want to move away from PFAS-contaminated clothing should check if any of their children’s uniform pieces are advertised as “stain resistant.” 

“If so, they should ask school administrators to update their uniform policies and specify PFAS-free uniform options from manufacturers. For already-purchased uniforms, there is some evidence to suggest that multiple washes can reduce PFAS concentrations. For this reason, hand-me-down and used uniforms are a better option than newly purchased stain-resistant uniforms,” she said.

Reaction to the findings

Dr. Jamie DeWitt, an associate professor in the department of pharmacology and toxicology of the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University, studies environmental contaminants and the role they play in affecting health, including PFAS.

She told Coastal Review that this study on stain-resistant uniforms demonstrates that PFAS are detectable in many types of clothing worn by children and raises the question of whether PFAS are essential in creating these types of consumer products.

“For example, bibs are worn to protect clothing from spills and it is expected that bibs will become stained and dirty. Is stain resistance an essential function of a bib requiring the use of PFAS?,” she asked. “Similarly, hats worn by infants, toddlers and children likely do not require stain or water repellency, such as water repellency that might be required for those performing in extreme environments, so again, is stain or water repellence an essential use of PFAS for these materials? Most likely not.”

She acknowledged that school uniforms are more challenging to address from a stain-resistance standpoint.

“First, they are worn all day everyday by children who use them, so dermal contact exposure concerns are greater. We don’t yet know the total contribution of PFAS from clothing to the overall burden of exposure, but it likely exists through dermal contact and inhalation of dusts from the clothing,” Dewitt said. “Second, there may be requirements for the cleanliness of school uniforms and some families may not have a budget for high numbers of school uniforms, washers and dryers in the house, or a budget for frequent trips to a laundromat. For these families, stain resistance may be an essential function of school uniforms,” but is PFAS essential?

PFAS has long been a concern for Clean Cape Fear, which formed in June 2017 after learning Chemours, formerly DuPont, dumped large quantities of PFAS into the Cape Fear River, a drinking water source for millions in the Wilmington area.

The grassroots community action group has been working since to restore and protect air, soil, water and food supply from PFAS contamination, as well as spotlight deficiencies in government regulations that adversely impact our right to these basic needs, according to the website.

“We should be using the precautionary principle when we don’t have verifiable data,” co-founder Emily Donovan said, regarding the school uniforms having PFAS, “When no one can come to a parent and tell a parent that they can prove with 100% certainty that PFAS in that uniform will not harm the child, you cannot say that it is safe. You have to be able to prove it. That burden should fall on the chemical industry and not the concerned parents.”

Another point she raised that isn’t often discussed is how products, like these uniforms, are getting made. “We’re not talking about the textile manufacturing process and the communities that are suffering around them for that use. So, it’s more than just the child getting harmed. There’s also the risk of the communities that have that manufacturing in their backyards, and what is being done to protect those communities,” she said.

“I think we have a right to be concerned, especially when you put it in the context of another study that was published recently,” she said.

Donovan explained that the recent study found that cancer is now the leading cause of death by disease among American children under the age of 15 years and “chemical exposure is believed to be the driving force.”

She was speaking about the report, “Paediatric Cancer and the Environment: A 50-year Perspective,” Professor Philip Landrigan, director of the Global Observatory on Planetary Health at Boston College, published in June.

While the report doesn’t call out PFAS specifically, the big picture is that all of these chemicals are persistent and bioaccumulative, which PFAS are, and they’re causing some serious health harm. “It’s time that we start taking this a little more seriously.”

The state Department of Health and Human Services has developed several documents to help residents in impacted communities understand more about PFAS, including PFAS Factsheet,  GenX Factsheet,  PFAS Testing and Filtration, and PFAS Clinician Memo, Summer Tonizzo with the Office of Communications told Coastal Review.

She said that the department continues its work to “understand the impact and effects of PFAS and other ‘forever chemicals’ on the health of North Carolinians. We regularly review new environmental data about PFAS exposures to better understand potential public health implications and recommend actions to reduce exposure and protect public health.”

About the report

Fuoco told Coastal Review that the researchers decided to pursue this study because they were concerned about the potential exposure of PFAS in children’s products and PFAS in these products entering the environment.

“The team knew from the literature that outdoor and adult activewear clothing labeled ‘water-resistant’ and ‘stain-resistant’ could contain PFAS. That prompted them to look at school uniforms labeled ‘stain-resistant’,” she said.

Of the 72 products tested for this study, 34 were purchased in the United States in March 2021 and 38 from the Canadian market in November 2020 and February 2021. 

Researchers chose products to test that were labeled waterproof, water-resistant, durable water-repellent, stain-proof, stain-resistant, easy care stain release, windproof, or wrinkle resistant, the study states. Items included school uniforms, weather-resistant outdoor wear such as rain suits, snowsuits, snowshoes and mittens, and miscellaneous children’s products such as bibs, hats, stroller covers, swimwear, sweatshirts, and baby shoes.

Total targeted PFAS levels in school uniforms were significantly higher than in other items such as bibs, hats, stroller covers, and swimsuits, but comparable to outdoor wear. Higher total targeted PFAS concentrations were found in school uniforms made of 100% cotton than synthetic blends. Perfluoroalkyl acids, or PFAAs, precursors were abundant in school uniforms, the report states.

A couple of studies released earlier this year had similar findings for water-resistant and stain-resistant products.

A paper published in January by Toxic-Free Future found toxic chemicals in most products labeled stain- or water-resistant, with 72% testing positive for PFAS. The report, “Toxic Convenience: The hidden costs of forever chemicals in stain- and water-resistant products,” notes that rain jackets, hiking pants, mattress pads, comforters, napkins, and tablecloths contain these chemicals.  

“Our testing finds continued, unnecessary use of the toxic chemicals known as PFAS in outdoor clothing and home furnishings like bedding and tablecloths,” said Erika Schreder, study author and science director for Toxic-Free Future, in a statement when the report was released. “When companies use PFAS to make products stain- or water-resistant, they are using chemicals that contaminate homes, drinking water, and breast milk with highly persistent chemicals that can cause cancer and harm the immune system.”

In May, “How Well Do Product Labels Indicate the Presence of PFASs in Consumer Items Used by Children and Adolescents?” was published in Environmental Science & Technology, which found “some children’s products advertised as water- or stain-resistant contain PFAS, even items labeled ‘green’ or ‘nontoxic’.”

Of the 93 items measured, 54 contained fluorine, an indicator of PFAS, and 18 of those had measurable levels of at least one PFAS. A total of 19 had precursor compounds “that can be transformed into highly stable perfluoroalkyl acids when oxidized in the environment or the human body,” according to a release. “PFAS and their precursors were only found in items specifically labeled with trademarks for water- or stain-resistance, or that used similar wording, such as ‘waterproof,’ “stainproof’ or ‘leak-proof.’ ‘Some of these products also had green certifications or claimed to be nontoxic.”

The researchers were not surprised by the results, the release continues, “because many certification processes don’t include a check for PFAS, or they have higher acceptable limits than the levels found in this study. Overall, products marketed toward young consumers as water- or stain-resistant could contain PFAS, which the researchers say represents a nonessential use of these substances.”

Essentially all marine life is vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

To develop adaptation strategies, a thorough understanding of how climate change impacts individual species and ecosystems is necessary. That’s why a group of researchers led by Dr. Daniel G. Boyce of the Bedford Institute of Oceanography developed an extensive index for evaluating the risks that climate change poses to marine life.

Their work, published Monday in Nature, looks at climate risk for marine life through two possible emissions trajectories, called shared socioeconomic pathways.

“These are basically scenarios for how human development will continue into the future — how our activities will affect our greenhouse gas emissions,” Boyce said.

Under the high-emissions future, wherein emissions continue to increase and raise the global temperature by about 5 degrees from preindustrial levels, the outlook is dire. Nearly 90% of the 24,975 studied are classified as at high or critical risk by the year 2100. However, the extreme mitigation pathway, a negative emissions scenario, reduces the risk across the board for 98.2% of species.

“We used the two most extreme scenarios to paint the two most extreme pictures of how climate risk for species would vary,” Boyce said.

When it comes to marine conservation and climate change management, the researchers hope this index can help prioritize vulnerable species and ecosystems.

Climate change spurs environmental changes and the loss of biodiversity. This, in turn, affects things like species health and food security for humans. Climate change vulnerability assessments are one of the ways in which humans can plan to adapt.

In the past, said Boyce, vulnerability assessments have not been thoroughly incorporated into policy and management. The researchers here attempted to create an index that was comprehensive and flexible enough to be applied to different conservation scenarios over time.

“I think that there’s been a limited uptake of the knowledge produced in those studies to conservation and management decision making,” Boyce said. “And that was sort of the gap that we were trying to remedy with this study.”

The researchers evaluated 24,975 marine species and ecosystems across the world. They focused primarily on what can be found in the upper 100 meters – roughly 330 feet — of the water column, since temperature changes will be felt most severely here. They assessed mostly animals, but also other marine life such as plants and bacteria.

The researchers used 12 climate change-related indices to calculate present-day risk, future exposure and future potential adaptability. This helped them generate an absolute risk score for each species.

Climate vulnerability varies substantially, both across species and from location to location. The highest vulnerability score that the researchers found belonged to the Chinese puffer, at a highly impacted nearshore site under the high emissions pathway. The Chinese puffer is already a species at risk because of high demand for it.

Higher risk areas for ecosystems include the tropics, some polar regions, and nearshore areas. They also found that top predators were at a greater risk because of climate change than those at the bottom of the food web. This suggests that climate change will destabilize ecosystem function and energy transfer. The data implies that the mitigation pathway will reduce the need for ecosystem restructuring.

“There are factors other than the projected future climate which contribute to the overall climate risk for species,” Boyce said. “If you have a species that has a very small geographic range, and its range is very fragmented, it’ll be much more susceptible or at risk to climate impacts, because it just can’t go anywhere else. It has to live in its narrow, small environment.”

The researchers took their framework a step further, and applied their index to commonly fished species to evaluate the relationship between climate risk and socioeconomic equity.

They found that low-income countries, with lower levels of food security and a high dependence on fisheries, will experience a systematically higher climate risk to their fisheries in the high-emissions pathway.

However, under the mitigation pathway, they also experience the greatest risk reduction. These are generally countries that contribute the least to global emissions, but are also among those impacted the most by climate change. Therefore, climate change threatens to deepen an already existing socioeconomic divide.

Low-income countries are already very poorly positioned to adapt to climate change, Boyce said. “And this is another stressor on top of that.”

These results show that the climate risk for marine life strongly corresponds to the level of future emissions. As the effects of climate change get worse, this index can help inform priority areas for conservation and other evidence-based policy. The researchers hope that the index can help reduce the number of extinctions, increase adaptability to climate change and thereby build resilience.

High tide flooding will continue to become increasingly common for coastal communities because of sea level rise, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researchers predict.

NOAA released its State of High Tide Flooding and 2022 Outlook for the U.S. earlier this month, a report that concludes that coastal communities likely will see between three and seven days of flooding on average through next April. NOAA has released an annual outlook on coastal high tide flooding since 2014.

The 2022 outlook predicts that, in addition to continued frequent high tide flooding over the next meteorological year, by 2050, high tide flooding on a national scale is expected to be between about 45 to 70 days per year on average. The long-term projections are based on the range of expected relative sea level rise, about an inch by 2050, using information from the 2022 Sea Level Rise Technical Report.

Also called nuisance or sunny day flooding, high tide flooding happens when tides reach anywhere from about 1¾ to 2 feet above the daily average high tide, causing water to spill in the streets or bubble up from storm drains that aren’t really built to handle that much water, William Sweet, oceanographer with NOAA, explained recently during a media conference available on YouTube about this year’s outlook. 

“We released information documenting record breaking coastal flooding or high tide flooding caused by sea level rise this past year, and that is to be expected to continue into next year, and into the foreseeable future,” Sweet said during the Aug. 2 livestream. “As sea level rises, damaging flooding that happened only during a storm will now happen more regularly, even without severe weather.”

He said that in most U.S. coastal locations the number of high tide flooding days per year is growing. 

“It’s accelerating, in fact, along most East and Gulf coastlines,” he continued. “Nationally about two-thirds of locations experienced similar or more days of high tide flooding than the year before and the rate of flooding is more than twice it was about 20 years ago, or around year 2000.”

During the 2021 season, the northern Atlantic Coast saw eight flood days on average, which is about a 200% increase of what would have been typical around year 2000. The southern Atlantic and western Gulf Coast regions each had six flood days, which are a 300% and 500% increase, respectively, and the eastern Gulf Coast saw four days of flooding, a 200% increase, since around 2000. The West Coast experienced some flooding, one day on average along the southern West Coast and seven days along the northern West Coast.

Sweet emphasized that some communities are experiencing more flooding than others, “such as the 10-plus days of high tide flooding seen last year at locations along the coasts of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia and North and South Carolina, Mississippi and Texas. All these regions are experiencing high rates of sea level rise and a growing coastal flood problem,” he said. 

“In short, sea level rise impacts are occurring now and are growing rapidly, which is complicating preparedness planning,” Sweet added. 

At about a quarter of locations, this year’s outlook is higher than last year’s, largely due to continued effects of sea level rise.

High tide flooding is predicted to be highest along the northeast Atlantic and the western Gulf Coast, somewhere between six and 11 days on average, and slightly lower along the southeast Atlantic and eastern Gulf Coast at somewhere between three and seven days on average.

He said the predicted inch in sea level rise by 2050 will be a very noticeable change. With water levels nearing the brim in many communities — having sunny day flooding with no storm — flood defenses, old sea walls are being overwhelmed, and water is coming up through stormwater systems into the street. 

“And that extra inch isn’t helping one bit,” he said. “In fact, it’s definitely increasing the number of days or events that waters can actually reach these heights.” 

The flooding frequency may be five to 10 events now but would jump to 60 to 80 events in 30 years. “So, we do know that every inch matters at this point,” Sweet said.

He said that by using the data, coastal communities can make informed decisions about how to handle disruptive flooding next year and for the next several decades. “This is information needed to protect life, property, the economy and our environment for future generations.”

Sweet acknowledged that while the threshold of 1¾ to 2 feet doesn’t fit all coastal areas, the goal was to provide national coverage and guidance for “what typically is a depth when impacts occur and these thresholds that we have chosen to highlight and provide information on are calibrated to those that the National Weather Service have established in conjunction with local emergency managers.”

NOAA researchers use data collected by tide gauges on United States coastlines to make their predictions. The gauges monitor “the steady creep of sea level rise in a rapid uptick in high tide flooding,” Sweet said. 

“Our 2022 state of high tide flooding announcement brings together data recorded at 97 of these NOAA tide gauges between May of 2021 and April of 2022. The data shows that US communities saw four days on average of high tide flooding in 2021, just shy of the record of five days set a few years ago,” Sweet continued.

One of those tide gauges is in Beaufort, where Miyuki Hino, assistant professor in the City and Regional Planning and the Environment, Ecology and Energy Program at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, is working with a group of researchers from UNC and North Carolina State University on the Sunny Day Flooding Project.

The researchers are measuring high tide flooding on Front Street in Beaufort. They recorded from June 2021 to May 2022, 35 events when there was water on Front Street. This could be any water, from a puddle to a flooded road, and there could have been multiple events on one day if each high tide caused flooding, Hino said.

Hino told Coastal Review that the NOAA findings and the measures of high tide flooding that NOAA uses are helpful in providing a big picture of what’s going on across the United States and how sea level rise is manifesting more and more in day-to-day life. 

By using this nationally standardized way of defining what a high tide flood is, and by using that same measure everywhere across the US, Hino said NOAA can paint a “picture of, ‘we only saw this many days 20 years ago, now we’re seeing this many days and in 2050, we’re probably going to see many, many more.’”

She agreed with Sweet’s assessment that the measurements for a nationally standardized approach aren’t always perfect reflections of what is actually happening in a specific place. “So their measurement might not correspond exactly to how many floods you see on your street or in your neighborhood, because they’re trying to take an approach that works everywhere across the country,” Hino said.

 “I think there are a couple of really key takeaways,” she said. “One is it’s very, very clear that we’re just starting to see the impacts of sea level rise through these types of floods, but that it’s going to become much, much more often in the next couple of years, in the next couple of decades. And that’s true, really, regardless of where you live.” 

In the U.S., because the sea level rise signal is becoming stronger and stronger, Hino said it’s clear that the problem is going to get bigger over time and that the NOAA report does a good job of demonstrating that. 

“I think the second thing that’s worth pointing out is that communities in North Carolina are not alone in facing these challenges. So for those people who are seeing this already and who are really concerned, it’s a problem that’s not unique to North Carolina,” she said. “It’s a challenge that a lot of communities are trying to confront. And I think that by continuing to both try to develop innovative solutions locally and continuing to learn from communities elsewhere that are working on this problem themselves, there’s a lot of opportunities for adapting to sea level rise and mitigating these types of floods. If we really both work on it within our communities and engage a lot with what’s happening elsewhere.”

A recent report offers health care guidance for physicians, nurses, pharmacists and other professionals treating those with a history of elevated exposure to PFAS. 

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine released the report last week. It also suggests ways the Center for Disease Control and Prevention can update its health recommendations for patients with PFAS exposure. 

Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are a class of chemicals with more than 12,000 different compounds found in thousands of products, such as carpeting, nonstick cookware, firefighting foams, fast-food wrappers and protective gear.

Used since the 1940s for its oil- and water-repellent properties, PFAS have a variety of distinct chemical properties and toxicities, some of which can become concentrated in the body or environment and stay there, while other PFAS can transform pretty quickly, the report states. “The PFAS that do transform, however, will become one or more other PFAS because the carbon–fluorine bond they contain does not break naturally,” which is why they’re described as “forever chemicals.”

The report found that there’s “sufficient evidence of an association” between PFAS exposure and a greater risk of decreased response to some vaccines, abnormally high cholesterol, decreased infant and fetal growth, and increased risk of kidney cancer. Additionally, there is suggestive evidence of an association for increased risk of breast cancer, liver enzyme alterations, increased risk of pregnancy-induced hypertension, increased risk of testicular cancer, thyroid disease and dysfunction, and increased risk of ulcerative colitis.

As a result of these connections between PFAS exposure and health risks, the report recommends that clinicians should offer PFAS testing to patients that are likely have a history of elevated exposure. The report also recommends that those patients with PFAS levels linked with an increased risk of adverse effects should receive regular screening and monitoring by their health care professionals. The report notes that establishing these recommendations came with challenges because there’s a great deal of uncertainty, such as what level of exposure comes with what type of health risks.

Dr. Jane Hoppin, a professor of biological sciences and the deputy director of the Center for Human Health and the Environment at North Carolina State University, is on the committee the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine appointed to develop the report. 

“I think this report actually provides guidance for people who have been exposed to PFAS. The recommendation is that people with more than 2 nanograms per millimeter total PFAS in their blood should receive some kind of medical follow-up and those people with more than 20 should receive more,“ Hoppin told Coastal Review Friday.

She said that about 9% of people exceed that 20 nanograms per milliliter value, and some parts of the United States probably have higher exposure.

“PFAS exposure is widespread throughout the U.S. and particular regions of the United States have higher exposures. What this report really does is, for the first time, provides medical recommendations for people who’ve been exposed to PFAS,” she said. 

When blood was monitored in the past, researchers have only been able to say the number of nanograms in a person’s blood. “But now, what this report does, not only does it say that if this is your number, this is what should be done, but also gives guidance for clinicians on how they should do that. So I think that’s a really important point here for North Carolina and the U.S. as a whole.”

Recommendations

Hoppin was referring to the levels of PFAS concentration found in patients.

Patients whose tests show a PFAS blood concentration below 2 nanograms per milliliter are not expected to have adverse health effects, according to the report. Patients with test results between 2 and 20 nanograms per milliliter could face the potential for adverse effects, especially in sensitive populations such as pregnant individuals. Patients with test results above 20 nanograms per millimeter may face a higher risk of adverse effects.

Patients who test between 2 and 20 nanograms per milliliter should prioritize screening for dyslipidemia, hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, and breast cancer based on age and other risk factors. 

Clinicians with patients who have more than 20 nanograms per milliliter should also test thyroid function and assess for signs of kidney cancer, testicular cancer and ulcerative colitis during all visits.

In addition to regular monitoring of patients, the study recommends that clinicians discuss with their patients ways to avoid PFAS exposure. There also should be improvements in environmental health education, particularly in communities where PFAS exposure is identified. 

Clinicians should also discuss infant feeding and steps that can be taken to lower sources of PFAS exposure, though the report notes that there is a critical need for more data to understand exposure among breastfed infants.

To get the word out to clinicians and the public, the report states that the CDC, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and public health departments should create educational materials on PFAS exposure, possible health effects, what can be learned from and the limits of testing, and the benefits and negatives of testing. 

Laboratories conducting PFAS testing should report the results to state public health authorities to improve exposure surveillance.

Study background

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry released in 2019 “PFAS: An Overview of the Science and Guidance for Clinicians on Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances.” 

While this overview provided general information about PFAS health studies and suggested answers for example questions from patients, the guidance did not provide information for clinicians on when to test for PFAS, how to order the tests, how to interpret the results or follow up, according to the report. 

In response to the frustration voiced by some in PFAS-impacted communities that the clinical guidance lacked clear recommendations, the registry and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences approached the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to form an ad hoc committee to give advice on PFAS testing and clinical care for patients exposed to PFAS. 

The committee was asked to advise on principles for biological testing and clinical evaluation, given substantial scientific uncertainty about the health effects or the value of such measures in informing care; review the human health literature for the health effects of PFAS; and characterize human exposure pathways and develop principles for exposure reduction, the report states.

The committee also was asked to recommend options and considerations to guide decision making for PFAS testing in a patient’s blood or urine, PFAS concentrations that could inform clinical care of exposed patients, and appropriate patient follow-up and care specific to PFAS-associated health endpoints for those patients known or suspected to be exposed to PFAS.

The committee was not asked for community prevention guidance or advice on policies that would reduce PFAS exposure, the report notes.

Uncertainty 

There are 2,854 locations in the country, all 50 states and two territories, that have some PFAS contamination, but not all exceed the level in health advisories, and almost 100% of the country’s population is exposed to at least one PFAS. 

The report acknowledges that though there is uncertainty about the exact nature of risks from PFAS exposure, clinicians will still need to advise and make decisions with patients regarding their exposure. 

“While there is evidence of an association of PFAS with several health outcomes, the likelihood that a particular individual will have any specific adverse health outcome following exposure to PFAS cannot currently be determined with great specificity,” the report states. Adding, that while there are gaps in information about how individuals can reduce any potential risks related to PFAS exposure, many individuals and communities expect clinicians to address PFAS-associated risks as part of routine health care delivery.

“Ongoing and future research should eventually guide clinicians in predicting patient risk and provide an understanding of the benefits and harms of interventions designed to avoid adverse health outcomes,” the report continues.

“Our report shows that we are going to need robust and effective collaboration between local communities, states, and federal agencies in order to respond to the challenge of PFAS exposure,” said Ned Calonge, associate professor of family medicine at the University of Colorado, Denver, associate professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health, and chair of the committee that wrote the report. “We need to continue to identify communities with elevated PFAS exposure, learn more about specific health impacts, make testing available to patients, and give clinicians more strategies for counseling patients and providing preventive medical care.” 

PFAS in North Carolina

Residents of Bladen, Brunswick, New Hanover and Pender counties learned five years ago that their primary source of drinking water, the Cape Fear River, was contaminated with GenX and other emerging PFAS. The Wilmington StarNews first reported on June 7, 2017, that a group of North Carolina State University researchers had detected the forever chemicals in the river.

The following week, the state’s Department of Environmental Quality and Department of Health and Human Services began investigating. The Chemours facility in Fayetteville was identified as the company producing the GenX that was being discharged into the Cape Fear. Since then, the state and environmental groups have worked to clean up the Cape Fear River. 

A consent order was signed in February 2019 between NCDEQ, Cape Fear River Watch, represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center, and Chemours. The order requires Chemours to address PFAS sources and contamination at the facility to prevent further impacts to air, soil, groundwater and surface waters. In August 2020, NCDEQ made an addendum to the consent order, making Chemours take significant additional actions to prevent PFAS pollution from entering the Cape Fear River. A summary of actions over the last five years related to the Chemours investigation and consent order is on the NCDEQ website.

A representative from DHHS told Coastal Review that the state agency is still reviewing the report but work is underway to incorporate information from this report and other sources in an update of the state’s guidance to North Carolina health care providers. 

Expanded PFAS testing in blood and serum could potentially help identify areas that have increased exposures to PFAS chemicals, and provide residents with more information to help understand their exposures and how they could be impacting their health, DHHS officials said.

Community voices

The committee brought in public input, which they deemed “an important and credible source of evidence to inform guidance recommendations.”

As part of that effort, 41 community liaisons, including a handful from North Carolina,  were appointed to suggest speakers, topic and discussion questions for public meetings, as well as provided documents and other information.

Dr. Jamie DeWitt, an associate professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology of the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University, was selected as a community liaison. She focuses on the effects of environmental contaminants on the adult and developing immune systems and is the principal investigator, co-principal investigator, and co-investigator of several funded studies on the immune effects of PFAS, particularly the novel and understudied. 

“The report does something that has been needed for a long time with respect to people who live in any community that can be contaminated with environmental chemicals,” DeWitt said Monday. “It really alerts healthcare providers that there are agents in the environment that can have an impact on people’s health, and they can look for tools to help them treat their patients better, and help to uncover potential health risks that their patients might experience as a result of their exposures.”

DeWitt mentioned that she teaches medical students and while students across the country learn about acute toxicology such as poisoning or snake bites, they don’t really learn about how environmental agents can lead to chronic diseases. DeWitt noted that the report addresses medical education and highlights ways that healthcare providers can better educate themselves to provide care for people who live in communities that are contaminated with PFAS.

The committee held several public comment sessions as well as included in the report the testimony of 30 people impacted by PFAS contamination, which “moved the committee’s work from an academic exercise to a personal reality.”

Clean water advocate Beth Markesino, founder of North Carolina Stop GenX in Our Water, is a community liaison who shared her story with the committee during a public comment session.

A Wilmington resident, Markesino, who participated in the first GenX study, has multiple endocrine issues associated with PFAS, including a thyroid tumor, an adrenal tumor, and placenta problems during her pregnancy that resulted in the death of her son. 

Her organization was awarded a grant to provide 120 filters for low-income residents in the Lower Cape Fear region and she lobbied against DuPont scientist Michael Dourson’s appointment to the Environmental Protection Agency.

“I started North Carolina Stop GenX In Our Water the day that we found out about our water contamination, so on June 7, 2017,” she said. “We started the organization as a way to inform our community about our water contamination.”

The group first began on Facebook, but after learning the urgency of the situation, the group became a nonprofit organization. 

“The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine had reached out to a bunch of not only North Carolina advocates, but also advocates throughout the United States wanting to know our opinions about PFAS and health and data,” she said. “Out of every other state, I want to say we got a very good representation of our water contamination and our views, which was really great. In the last five years, it might seem like we haven’t got a lot accomplished, but we really have and with this report coming out, this catapults us to a whole new level.”

She and her husband moved to the Wilmington area for the weather. As a marathon runner, she said she was drinking a lot of water. She became pregnant with her son in 2016, when she was in the best health of her life. 

“We had no clue about our water contamination in 2016. You know, none of us knew the health effects of PFAS or anything like that. And long story short. My pregnancy did not go very well. I already had a very healthy pregnancy with my daughter and my daughter’s 10. Now she’s an amazing sassy, little 10-year-old, but with my son Samuel, he did not develop his kidneys, bladder or bowels and I had placental problems,” she said. 

They found out around 20 weeks through the 24-week period that she had next to no amniotic fluid … “Just think about your worst nightmare. And that was it for me.” 

She ended up in Michigan to deliver their son at 24 weeks via cesarean because a natural birth would have caused health complications. “We did get to hold Samuel. We got to baptize him, and we got to bury him in our family plot in Detroit.” 

Six months after they buried their son and were grieving, “that’s when we found out about a Gen X contamination,” Markesino said. “As a pregnant mom, I never knew our water was contaminated. I never knew that drinking this water could possibly affect my pregnancy. Five years later, we know that PFAS and Gen X does affect pregnant women, it does transfer from the placenta to the fetus.”

Being a community liaison for the study made her feel like she could help other women that are pregnant be able to talk to their doctors about PFAS.

“We may not have known it five years ago, when I was going through all of that, but we know it now and through committees like this that I was a part of — many of us in the PFAS community have similar stories to mine and my son who have shared our stories and shared our concerns with this committee and even though we couldn’t fix the pain and agony — we shared our stories so that doctors can be educated and that they can now tell their patients about the science now that we know of the harm of these chemicals, so that nobody else has to go through what we went through.”

Usually right after a hurricane, dollar estimates of the damage are calculated and reported in the media and in academic and government papers, but the human toll exacted when floodwaters enter or destroy homes cannot be expressed in strictly monetary terms and may not be fully understood.

A collaboration of social and environmental scientists and engineers has been working to better grasp how flooding disasters disrupt people’s day-to-day lives in coastal North Carolina and how these communities respond and rebuild.

In addition to the economics, the effort, called Dynamics of Extreme Events, People and Places, or DEEPP, is working to gauge the environmental, social and psychological damage that hurricanes and flooding inflict. The goal is to help people in flood-prone areas better prepare and recover.

To accomplish this, DEEPP is piecing together information derived from surveys of families and individuals in affected communities along with satellite photos and flood and storm surge mapping. 

The project has focused on select areas within four counties, with communities chosen to represent diverse ecosystems and ecological environments that were also different economically and demographically. Interviewers have been working in the Hatteras area of Dare County, mainland Hyde County and Ocracoke, Beaufort and Down East in Carteret County, including Merrimon and North River, and most recently in New Bern in Craven County.

“Those areas span pretty different places, different kinds of livelihoods, and different degrees of damage from both Florence and Dorian,” said University of North Carolina researcher Dr. Elizabeth Frankenberg, director of the Carolina Population Center and a primary investigator with the DEEPP project. Among her areas of study is how people who survive disasters are changed, including their physical and psychosocial health. 

As guest speakers for a recent “Parlor Talk” hosted by the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center at its Morehead City museum store, Frankenberg and Dr. Nathan Dollar, a social demographer at the Carolina Population Center and project director with the DEEPP household survey, and members of the household survey team discussed their experiences and findings – so far. They said the work is the beginning of a long commitment to these counties and could lead to improved disaster response.

“Typically, we’re talking about the effect of an extreme weather event in terms of property damage,” Dollar said. “We know less scientifically about how people in communities are affected, how to prepare and how to recover and the complexities and the duration of that recovery.”

Frankenberg said that an early observation, although not a particularly surprising one, is that these coastal areas include a relatively higher number of residents with multigenerational ties to the community, as compared to more urban areas. 

“And that has generated, I think, a very deep attachment to place,” she said, adding that the feeling is complicated by residents’ anxiety about the future, with worries such as, “Is this going to be a viable place for my children or my grandchildren to make a living economically?”

“Looking backwards, it’s also clear that these major hurricanes had left scars on people’s economic outlooks and on their health or psychosocial health. Their recovery process is long, and it’s slow, and it’s complicated, and it’s hard to know in what order to do things and where to turn for potential assistance and whether you’re trying to move fast or whether to try to take your time and figure out what might be the best long-term solution for your home or your property,” she said.

Frankenberg said she had a deep connection to the coast, in particular Carteret County, where her father worked at the UNC Institute of Marine Sciences in the 1970s, and that she had long wanted to better understand the area.

“That’s partially because I spent a long time studying the Indian Ocean tsunami in Indonesia, of all places, and got very interested in how water changes landscapes and then ultimately peoples’ lives lived in those landscapes,” she said.

She said the DEEPP project is to learn more about how families go about putting their lives back together after a flood.

“If you read the papers around hurricanes, a lot of effort goes into calculating property damage after big events and how many counties have disaster declarations, but then it quickly kind of drops off the papers. And I know from Indonesia that the process of trying to recover, trying to get your life back together and trying to rebuild what you want to rebuild, and also just thinking about your future, it’s really a months- and yearslong proposition after a really major storm,” Frankenberg said.

Random samples of tax parcel data provide the names and addresses, and DEEPP survey teams then go out to find those addresses and interview the residents. Sometimes, the addresses are long-term nursing care centers, sometimes the residents are homeowners, other times they’re renters. Some are full-time residents, sometimes the addresses are second homes.

“Sometimes, we’ll find that people have moved out. And ideally, we try to find them and understand their decision to move away from a particular place,” Frankenberg said.

Talking to every member of a family is how the researchers are trying to gain a deeper perspective of recovery. The surveys include modules for the entire household but also questions for each member of the household 15 and older. 

“So, we get the high schooler’s perspective on missing school and the mom’s perspective on not having daycare or babysitting or disruptions to work, and the dad’s perspective on trying to do the pieces that he’s taking responsibility for,” Frankenberg said. “Ideally, we talk to everybody in the household to collect this information.”

Some who are contacted are willing to talk to the interviewers, others not as much. Dollar said one of the biggest impediments to the success of the project is that people don’t like surveys. “And I don’t blame them. And our survey is not your typical 10-question survey. It takes a while,” he said.

There are also trust and privacy concerns for some, such as mistrust of outsiders coming in asking questions or worry about neighbors knowing their business.

Members of the survey team who were also present at the discussion said many were just happy that someone was willing to listen, that their voices were being heard.

Frankenberg said that the team’s approach was important in breaking down any barriers.

“It’s not so much that people don’t want to talk about the topics that we’re talking about, but it’s how to kind of ease into the interview, as opposed to just a normal conversation. And the more we can make it like a conversation, I feel like the better it goes,” Frankenberg said.

The information collected could have significant implications in terms of preparing for and responding to flooding disasters, the researchers said.

Dollar said that because of the Census Bureau’s undercount in mainly rural areas, the census doesn’t provide reliable information on not only population but also the age breakdown in that area.

“There are some serious significant issues related to aging on the coasts,” Dollar said. “All of these coastal counties are getting older and age is the factor that shapes people’s ability to prepare for and recover from storms. And I’ll say one of the strengths of kind of the household-based, tax parcel, methodological sampling approach is that we have really rich, representative data. We’re going to have a really good picture of what the population looks like in these counties.”

He said a better picture of the demographic composition of coastal counties could be important for planning and emergency preparedness.

“We really hope that data could be useful to the communities themselves,” Dollar said.

He said the researchers had been discussing their findings with officials at the Department of Emergency Management. “They’re very excited about the data that we’re collecting,” he said, adding that state officials were especially interested in “more people-centered emergency management approaches.”

A University of North Carolina Wilmington professor is part of a collaboration of researchers working on a project to drastically cut carbon dioxide emissions generated in the cement-making process.

Catharina Alves-de-Souza, director of UNCW’s Algal Resources Collection, has been awarded a $1 million grant to study how to most effectively grow microalgae that produces limestone, a main ingredient of cement.

If produced in mass quantities, biogenic limestone, or that which is created by lab-grown microorganisms, could be used in the place of a percentage of limestone mined to make cement.

“So instead of having cement that is 100% made by limestone that you find in nature, we’ll have 50%,” Alves-de-Souza said.

That may not sound like a lot, she said, “but actually it can make a lot of difference. We need to show that’s possible.”

University of Colorado Boulder Associate Professor Wil Srubar, head of the university’s Living Material Laboratory, in 2020 began exploring how to grow limestone particles using coccolithophores, one-celled marine microalgae that produce calcium carbonate.

“It is a carbon negative form of calcium carbonate, or limestone, and that has real implications for the cement and concrete industry in the United States,” Srubar said.

Portland cement, the most common type of cement used throughout the world, is made from quarried limestone burned at high temperatures, which releases large amounts of carbon dioxide.

This process is responsible for 7% of annual greenhouse gas emissions.

Most atmospheric CO2 dissolved in seawater is rapidly converted to bicarbonate. Coccolithophores use this bicarbonate to create limestone, which is a form of carbon capture.

Srubar’s team discovered that substituting lab-grown limestone in the place of natural limestone creates a net carbon neutral way to make portland cement.

Replacing traditional methods of cement manufacturing would curtail about 2 gigatons of CO2 emissions each year around the world, “simply by using this limestone that we grow instead of quarrying it out of the ground,” he said.

To make the trade out work, coccolithophores will have to be produced in mass quantities.

Based on their calculations, Srubar’s team believes about 1 to 2 million acres of open pond systems would be needed to grow enough microalgae-producing limestone to meet the demand for cement production, which is about 90 million tons annually, in the United States.

About 100 million acres of land is used to grow corn in the United States.

“What we found is we need just 1% of that to satisfy the demand of cement production in the United States,” Srubar said.

This is where Alves-de-Souza comes in. Her lab is equipped to grow biogenic limestone in large volumes.

Using the knowledge Srubar’s team has on microalgae’s biology, ecology and physiology, Alves-de-Souza is testing the best conditions to grow mass quantities of coccolithophores.

“We are going to grow them and we are going to expose them to the conditions that we want and we’re going to select the cells that are growing better under these conditions. It’s a lot of experiments,” she said.

How microalgae get bicarbonates from salt water to form calcium carbonate is a process that depends on a variety of things, including the pH, or measure of acidity or alkalinity, and nutrients in the water.

Timing is also key because coccolithophores grow quickly and, if used in cement manufacturing, will have to be harvested at just the right time.

Alves-de-Souza began producing the microalgae in small amounts in her lab last August, making small adjustments to find the right balance of nutrients, the right amount of pH, and timing.

“I have figured out a lot and that’s why we’ve used preliminary data for the project,” she said.

That helped researchers obtain a $3.2 million grant split between UNCW, CU Boulder and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory from the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.

The microalgae will be grown in the lab at UNCW in a 100-liter bioreactor and a 1,000-liter bioreactor. Alves-de-Souza will send monthly shipments of the microalgae produced in her lab to her collaborators at CU Boulder, who will extract not only limestone, but other biomass from the microalgae, including proteins, lipids and carbohydrates.

During the three-year project, Alves-de-Souza expects to produce at least 5,000 gallons of coccolithophore cultures.

“Right now, we are working with one culture, one microalgae, but the idea is that we are going to isolate to get more of these cultures from nature and at some time we are going to use artificial selection to get better cultures, cultures that are doing more of what we want. They are calcifying more,” she said. “We still have a lot to do.”

In order to bridge the gap to commercialization, Srubar’s team last year founded Minus Materials Inc., a startup to attract corporate partnerships.

Srubar, a co-founder and acting CEO, said Minus recently completed a pilot-scale project with a local concrete company in Boulder and has plans in place to produce ton-scale quantities of biogenic limestone within the next 12 to 24 months.

“I think this is a really exciting time for our team and we’re looking forward to not only embarking on this project, but also seeing this through to commercialization,” he said.

A recent study published in Nature has found sugar concentrations in the pore waters of sediments beneath Posidonia oceanica, a seagrass found in the Mediterranean Sea and commonly known as Mediterranean tapeweed or Neptune grass, to be about 80 times higher than previously observed. Posidonia oceanica secretes this sugar into the sediment beneath it.

It’s a finding that will help increase the understanding of what’s going on in the sediment below and around seagrass root systems, which in turn could help improve seagrass conservation approaches in the future.

“Sucrose is a sugar that we would use to sweeten our coffee in the mornings,” said Dr. Maggie Sogin, assistant professor in the Molecular Cell Biology Department at University of California, Merced, and lead author on the study. “One of the important things about sugar and sucrose itself is that microorganisms can gain a lot of energy and nutrition from that sugar molecule.”

Microbial colonies — organisms not visible to the naked eye that are critical to ecosystem function — often consume this sugar rapidly. In terrestrial environments, you would likely not detect sugar at such high concentrations because microbes are putting it to use. Therefore, Sogin was surprised to find so much sugar beneath seagrass.

The underground area beneath a plant where the root system interacts with the surrounding soil or sediment is called a “rhizosphere.” A lot less is known about these underwater rhizospheres in comparison to land-based rhizospheres.

A key difference is that oxygen is consumed very quickly by microbes in upper sediment layers in aquatic environments, so in much of the sediment there is no oxygen available. Sogin found during lab experiments that the microbial communities living in the rhizosphere do have the ability to break down sucrose, but they also have the ability to break down phenolics, a class of organic compounds. In the absence of oxygen, the presence of phenolics limits their capacity to break down the sugars.

Sogin’s ongoing work continues to investigate microbial communities in seagrass rhizospheres. She hypothesizes that since her team observed high sucrose levels under three other species of marine plants, the combination of a low-oxygen environment and plant-produced phenolics allows for things like sugar to amass in aquatic rhizospheres. Filling in the blanks of what’s going on in these rhizospheres can lead to improved management of seagrass meadows, a very valuable resource in aquatic ecosystems.

“If we can better understand the interactions that are occurring and how microbes help promote the health and metabolism and maintenance of seagrass meadows, then maybe we have a better way of thinking about how we can restore seagrass meadows or how we can protect them for future climate change scenarios,” Sogin said.

North Carolina has the most seagrass acreage on the Atlantic coast, but even these expansive meadows are not immune to long-term threats.

Dr. Jud Kenworthy worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for more than three decades. Retired from NOAA now, he continues to partner in a volunteer capacity with the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership, and is a adjunct member of the faculty at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Kenworthy was involved in the development of a submerged aquatic vegetation program in Beaufort through NOAA in the 1970s. He went on to work with seagrass for the majority of his career.

North Carolina, said Kenworthy, is a unique area when it comes to seagrass, but its role in the ecosystem is irreplaceable.

“It’s an incredible place because we have this mix of temperate and tropical species,” Kenworthy said.

North Carolina has a unique physical location with the Gulf Stream coming up from the south, and the Labrador Current flowing down from the north. As a result, you will find seagrasses at their northernmost and southernmost limits in North Carolina. From the standpoint of climate change, said Kenworthy, this makes North Carolina’s seagrass meadows a bit of a “living laboratory.”

Seagrass does a lot for the ecosystem. Its root systems hold sediment in place and protect the shoreline by preventing erosion. The structure it provides offers food and habitat to countless underwater species. Seagrass is a highly effective carbon sink, and helps improve water quality.

But seagrass also faces encroaching threats from pollution, climate change and urban development. APNEP research shows that between 2006 and 2013, total seagrass coverage decreased by about 5.6% in the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuary.

Kenworthy said it’s important to conserve seagrass because nothing else provides all the same ecosystem services to a comparable degree. There’s no equivalent substitute for it. And once it is gone, restoration has a really low rate of success.

“It’s hard and expensive to bring it back once we’ve lost it,” Kenworthy said. At their most effective, restoration efforts have a success rate of only 42%. “It’s not even as good as a flip of a coin.”

This story has been updated to include the link to the published report.

As spring gives way to summer and temperatures rise, the rivers and streams that are part of the Albemarle Sound Basin in northeastern North Carolina are home to an increasing number of algal blooms. New research draws a connection between the presence of these blooms and potentially hazardous fine particulate matter in the air.

In 2021, the Albemarle Resource Conservation and Development Council noted on its website that, “After an absence of 25-30 years, algal blooms have returned to parts of the Chowan River, Edenton Bay, Albemarle Sound, Little River, Perquimans River, and Pasquotank River. The summer blooms in 2015-2020 triggered state advisories for swimming and consuming fish.”

The algal blooms triggering the advisories are caused by cyanobacteria, a form of bacteria that produces its own food through photosynthesis. Cyanobacteria are responsible for the blue-green blooms in the waters of the Chowan River and its tributaries.

Although not all cyanobacteria are harmful, those that are have been shown to contain neurotoxins, hepatotoxins that cause liver damage, cytotoxins that cause cellular damage, and dermatoxins that potentially cause skin irritation, necrosis and damage to mucous membranes. 

Cyanobacteria blooms have become a global health concern. Writing in the introduction to their paper, the authors note, “Water security across the globe is threatened by the recent expansion of toxin-producing cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (CHABs) in freshwater and estuarine ecosystems.”

The paper, which was posted as preprint access at SSRN, had not been peer reviewed, although final review was expected by the end of June. Update: The peer-reviewed final publication is at Science Direct. 

The release of toxins from cyanobacteria blooms into the air was an area of research that doctoral student and lead author of the paper Haley Plaas told Coastal Review had not been studied as extensively as the toxic effects of the bacteria in the water.

“What has been understudied is if their toxins and their cells have the potential to go airborne, and we know very little about what the health impacts might be for people and wildlife and pets,” she said. “These toxins have been studied quite a bit for their impact when it’s ingested via drinking water, or absorbed through the skin. We know a lot about those health impacts. But we know significantly less about what the health impacts might be if it’s inhaled.”

The ability of red tide algal blooms in the ocean to release their toxins into the air have been studied extensively. For Plaas, the red tide algal booms in Florida were what led to her work at the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City.

“I was studying the red tide and the Gulf of Mexico, which is another type of harmful algae whose toxin can easily get into the air, which will shut down beaches all across the west coast of Florida,” she said. “I became really fascinated by this. This microscopic organism having such a big impact on human health and the economy… how water quality can impact human health.”

Cyanobacteria have not been studied as much as the algae that causes red tides.

Colleen Karl, chair of the Chowan-Edenton Environmental Group and one of the co-authors of the paper, said not as much was known about blue-green algae. It was not until recently that environmental conditions had become more conducive to the freshwater blooms.

“Blue-green algae, the cyanobacteria, are pretty much a newcomer,” she said. “They’ve been around for eons. I mean, in the last 10 or 20 years, we’ve started talking about this more as they’re showing up more in local ecosystems.”

Compared to ocean algal blooms, there are relatively few studies looking at the effects cyanobacteria blooms have on air quality. The work by Plaas, Karl and their colleagues sheds new light.

“As far back as 2010, they started looking at the ability of the cyanobacteria toxins to get into the air, but there have been less than 10 studies that have really looked at this,” Plaas said. “Where our study is unique, we’ve actually found a correlation between increases of particulate matter, the PM2.5, and association with bloom periods.”

PM2.5 refers to particulate matter 2.5 microns in size or smaller, air pollutants that the Environmental Protection Agency considers to be of “the greatest risk to health.”

The Chowan River study does not specifically identify cyanobacteria toxins in the particulate matter. Rather, the authors were looking for toxins called microcystins. Microcystins, a family of the bacteria that the EPA considers a “a potent liver toxin and possible human carcinogen,” had previously been shown to be present in area waters “on numerous occasions,” according to the paper.

During the study period, however, microcystins were not the dominant blue-green algae found.

“In our study, we didn’t see a lot of microcystins,” Plaas said. Instead, the research found a lot of another type of cyanobacteria that is not as frequently associated with microcystins production.

Nonetheless, the researchers established what they say is a clear connection between different stages of cyanobacteria bloom and aerosol particulate matter. The authors found that more particulate matter was present early in the life cycle of a bloom, even though it’s at the end of the cycle when blooms can get pretty smelly and their presence is most readily apparent.

“It’s when they’re just beginning their lifecycle when they’re ramping everything up,” Plaas said. “What we are predicting in our preliminary findings, at that early stage, more toxins are being produced when you don’t have as much of the herald signs of a bloom. Toward the end, that’s when it’s potentially less toxic.”

Plaas was cautious about linking the increase in particulate matter specifically to airborne toxins, saying, “It’s not a smoking gun because we can’t say for a fact, ‘Yes, those PM 2.5 particles were made of cyanobacteria or something from the cyanobacteria.’ But we did a robust statistical analysis looking at that time period during the bloom versus not during the bloom and found a significant association.”

The study did not examine why more cyanobacteria blooms are occurring in freshwater bodies worldwide. For that, Dr. Hans Paerl, Kenan Distinguished Professor at UNC Institute of Marine Sciences and a co-author of the paper, pointed to nitrogen, especially in the Albemarle-Chowan River basin.

“Nitrogen ends up being kind of on the short end of the stick. So, any new nitrogen that’s coming into the system will help promote the growth of algae and blooms,” Paerl said.

He said there had been a steady increase in the potential for algal blooms in northeastern North Carolina for some time, as shown in North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality data.

“The thing that we’ve been doing … is analyzing data that’s been collected by DEQ on Albemarle Sound” he said. “The amount of chlorophyll in the water, which is indicative of how much algae is there has been steadily increasing since … back in the probably late ‘90s or so.”

What is causing the increase, however, may be a complex interaction of factors and global climate change may play a role. But Paerl cautioned against looking solely at rising temperatures as the driving factor.

“Temperature is definitely important, and during the summertime when the temperature is up, you have a greater potential for getting blooms of cyanobacteria, which are the problematic bloom organisms,” Paerl said. “But if you look at the long-term data from DEQ, it’s hard to see a signal that’s significantly different from the natural variability out there.”

Paerl said that even though temperatures in Albemarle Sound are rising, “it’s not the increase in temperature that’s responsible for the increase in blooms.”

That’s not to dismiss climate change as playing a significant role. Paerl noted that extreme weather — hurricanes and violent storms — flush lawn, farm and animal waste nutrients into the watershed.

“Climate change may play a role, not so much in terms of the increase in temperature, which is very subtle, but more extreme events,” Paerl said. “More major storm events and floods, and those, of course, would lead to more discharge of nutrients into the system.”

Submerged aquatic vegetation, which scientists call SAV and most of us know as seagrass, is critical to the health of aquatic ecosystems. Not only does it provide habitat for fish and other species, but it prevents erosion and sequesters carbon.

Seagrass has also been shown to be an economically significant part of the environment. Even losing 5% of the state’s seagrass beds could cost North Carolina millions of dollars over the next 10 years.

Seagrass beds across the world are experiencing declines, and North Carolina’s are not immune to the threat. North Carolina has some of the most expansive seagrass meadows on the East Coast, with about 100,000 acres of growth. A report from the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership, or APNEP, revealed last year that between 2006 and 2013, seagrass beds in the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuary had decreased by 5.6%, a total of 5,686 acres. These findings could indicate that water quality in the estuaries is poorer than in previous years.

Seagrass is important environmentally and economically, but it depends on healthy waters to thrive and it is particularly sensitive to diminished water quality.

New research shows that the state’s current standards for water quality relative to chlorophyll-a and turbidity are insufficient in protecting seagrass in high-salinity environments.

Dr. Nathan Hall of the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences led the project on behalf of APNEP, looking specifically at how high turbidity and chlorophyll-a levels could reach before inhibiting the photosynthesis process for seagrass, and then, examining how those thresholds compare with the state’s water quality standards.

“If we look at the huge body of research that was done to establish what light levels the grasses need, and then we look at the current light levels that the grasses have in North Carolina waters, we’re either right on the edge of what they need, in most cases, or we’re already at the point where they don’t have what they need,” Hall said.

Chlorophyll-a is the green pigment in a plant, which is responsible for light absorption to supply energy for photosynthesis. In this study, it is an indicator of how much algae are in the water. The state’s current chlorophyll-a limit for slow-moving bodies of water is 40 micrograms per liter. At this concentration, the water is likely visibly green.

Turbidity evaluates how much nonalgal particulate is in the water. This may be mineral sediment or detritus. This is material that might be kicked up by disturbances like storms, erosion or development.

The reason these two factors pose a threat to seagrass is because SAV needs access to sunlight to photosynthesize. Growing underwater, this means that water must be clear enough for sunlight to make it through to the seagrass beds. Seagrass can handle some time with restricted sunlight availability, but continual deprivation will cause it to die off.

Both turbidity and algae affect the clarity of the water, and that’s why it is important for seagrass — and by extension, the entire estuarine ecosystem — that those things stay at manageable levels for photosynthesis to take place.

To investigate this issue, Hall used a previously established bio-optical model, an equation to help determine the water quality thresholds that allow seagrass enough light to photosynthesize. The bio-optical model was originally calibrated for the North River, which is high in salinity but not strongly linked to the rest of the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine System. Before the model could be used across the study area, it needed to be evaluated to see if it would work in different types of waters. Hall found that the model was not compatible with low-salinity waters.

But the model showed that in high-salinity waters, by the time that water quality was poor enough to put a body of water on the state list of imperiled waters, the federal Clean Water Act Section 303(d) list, seagrass would already be existing in a threatening environment where it is not getting enough sunlight to survive.

This information could be useful for the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and other managers as they consider how to adjust water quality standards or their evaluation to better protect seagrass.

An upcoming priority is to recalibrate the model to make it accurate for low-salinity waters as well. One of the biggest needs to address is a data gap — to accurately monitor water quality and seagrass, more extensive sampling must take place.

“A lot of areas where seagrass beds exist, we don’t have routine monitoring of water quality,” Hall said.

Indigenous peoples in North America and Australia sustainably harvested oysters for thousands of years before colonials moved into coastal areas, according to a newly released archaeological study.

The study, released Tuesday, makes the case that the future of oyster management lies in big part in Indigenous communities of the past.

“One of the takeaways I really hope that biologists and members of the public get from this is that Indigenous peoples in North America and Australia and, really all over the world, have long histories with their local ecosystems and that includes oysters,” Torben Rick, curator of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History’s North American Archaeology Department of Anthropology and co-author of the study, told Coastal Review. “To effectively steward or manage oysters in the future I think the first thing we need to do is broaden the dialogue, widen the table and involve Indigenous communities in discussions about how to manage oysters in the future.”

The history of the critical decline of North America’s oyster populations after colonists settled in the early 1600s is a well-known, well-documented story.

Overfishing, development, wetland loss and steadily declining water quality are among the culprits that have led to today’s great decline in oyster reefs and oyster populations sitting at historic lows.

Written records tell us the numbers of oysters harvested, where they were harvested and their market value dating back to the early 1700s.

But that information is limited to colonial, capitalist economy oyster fisheries.

“As a group of archaeologists working in these regions, we always thought there’s so much more to this story,” he said. “We knew there were Indigenous peoples in these areas for thousands of years prior to that who were harvesting oysters.”

What do their stories have to offer us? How can they, as archaeologists, paint a more wholistic picture?

They started by picking up on a study published in 2004 that examined the history of oyster fisheries in eastern and western North America and part of Australia after colonists moved into coastal areas on those continents.

“For Indigenous fisheries, we don’t have that kind of information,” Rick said.

For one, Indigenous peoples were engaged in oyster harvesting in a much different fashion than capitalist economies, he said. And there aren’t many written accounts of Indigenous oyster fisheries. What remains is some ethnohistory and historic accounts and Native American oral tradition.

“But really the way we understand past oyster harvest is looking to archaeology,” Rick said. “We often don’t know about it, but literally right underneath our feet are archaeological sites that are a testament to Indigenous peoples’ use of the landscape that persist through communities that are here today.”

All around and along our coasts, written in the landscape, are historical records that span hundreds to thousands of years of indigenous oyster harvests.

They’re called middens, mounds of shellfish, fish and deer bones and plant remains — all the things Indigenous peoples were harvesting from the landscapes around them.

There are literally thousands of middens up and down the Atlantic Coast.

Many are small and ephemeral. Others, such as those in Crystal River, Florida, are massive.

For a long time, archaeologists referred to middens as trash pits, a false characterization, Rick said.

Middens were deeply intertwined with Indigenous peoples’ ceremonial and ritual lives. These sites embody their daily activity.

By pairing historical written data with what they excavated at the sites, archaeologists were able to glean that different indigenous communities used oysters in different ways. In Georgia and South Carolina, for example, Native Americans used oyster shells as a form of engineering to construct shell rings, curved shell middens next to estuaries.

Such massive mounds of oyster shells, also found in the San Francisco Bay, show that Indigenous peoples had practices in place to steward and manage oysters.

“They persisted,” Rick said. “They don’t collapse like we see in the historic period. They don’t get dramatically affected by overharvest and that’s not to say there wasn’t overharvest in the past because there are localized examples, but on a large time scale people were doing and living in a way that they were able to harvest these sustainably over a long period of time.”

North Carolina is not included in the study. That’s not because middens do not exist here, Rick said, but rather because there is not as much published information about the archaeological sites in this state.

Bonnie Newsom, an assistant professor at the University of Maine and a member of the Penobscot Indian Nation, knew before she took part in this study that Indigenous peoples had sophisticated systems of food procurement for millennia.

“What I learned through doing the research to help with this paper is that it wasn’t just a short period of time,” she said. “I think, for me, one of the things that I took away with the work was to realize that it is something that has not faded away or is gone, it’s just changed over time.”

Indigenous peoples in Maine have a strong birch bark tradition, one that harvests bark in a way that doesn’t damage the tree.

“I like to tell people that if indigenous people were not sustainable in their efforts there would have been no birch here,” Newsom said. “In some ways I feel like it’s the same thing for oysters. If they hadn’t practiced these kind of sustainable harvest methods for millennia there wouldn’t have been any here for people when they came here. I think there’s a lesson in that that when we’re thinking about our future generations, we need to make decisions for them, not for our current purposes.”

She cautions that, while it is important to engage Indigenous peoples in that conversation, it needs to be done in a way that benefits Indigenous communities.

“I think what has to happen is there has to be some sort of partnered agreement where everybody benefits from working together on managing oysters better,” she said. “The first thing is building relationships around this topic and all topics and then coming up with a way to make sure that everybody is recognized for their contributions.”

As weather-related disasters impact shorelines throughout the world, there is an increasing need to know how to respond. The physical devastation, the loss of power, communication — all of it is part of the recovery process.

But nothing happens without clean water, something George Bonner, director of the North Carolina Renewable Ocean Energy Program at the Coastal Studies Institute in Wanchese learned in 1998 when he was serving with the Coast Guard.

“I was in Puerto Rico after Hurricane George back in ’98. We lost power and water. You realize that power is important but maybe more important is to go the toilet and take a shower. It’s kind of like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs — water’s way out there in my mind, above electricity.”

But how can fresh water be produced if there is no energy in the power grid.

Addressing that problem was at the heart of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Waves to Water Prize, the final phase of which was held April 3-6 at Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head. Four competitors took to the waters off the pier, deploying wave-powered desalination devices. The devices worked as expected, producing fresh water from seawater, and provided much-needed insight into how to improve systems, said Scott Jenne, the National Renewable Energy Lab principal investigator for the Waves to Water Prize.

“This competition shows that wave-powered desalination systems are capable of supplying clean water to people in coastal locations, including in disaster-recovery situations,” he said in a statement from the lab after the event.

“These teams deserve a lot of recognition for doing something that very few people in wave energy have ever achieved. They all built functioning in-water prototypes,” he wrote about the competition in an email response to Coastal Review. “There’s still a long road to go before we understand every challenge, but we learn a lot every step of the way.”

The CSI team was responsible for deploying the devices. Dr. Mike Muglia and Dr. Lindsay Dubbs, both working with the North Carolina Renewable Ocean Energy Program, were lead investigators for the project and handled getting the devices in the water. According to Muglia, there were numerous challenges involved with that.

“There was the logistics of getting all the equipment and for a project that we haven’t done before,” he said. “There was lots of different delays with supply chain issues for the competitors, as well as some of the companies that rent us the cranes and deliver the cranes and set up the fence (for the deployment area at the end of Jennette’s Pier).”

The biggest challenge, though, may have been the weather. The devices were placed in the water April 3, and that night and into the next day the winds gusted to more than 30 knots with waves breaking in the deployment zone at the end of Jennette’s Pier. For the competitors, it was the first time in the water experiencing conditions so harsh, and all four devices broke from their moorings and had to be retrieved.

“Figuring out how to build a mooring for the whack in a breaking wave, which is what we experienced, I think was a surprise for them,” Muglia said.

The devices were retrieved — two on land and two at sea but accessible.

Regardless of the weather, what the competitors accomplished was what the National Renewable Energy Lab had hoped would happen.

“Every team was able to produce drinkable water from the ocean using nothing but wave energy,” Jenne wrote, adding, “Very few individuals have ever done that outside of a lab environment.”

Competitors were vying for several awards, including a grand prize of $500,000 that went to the Canada-based Oneka Technologies Snowflake. The design also was awarded an additional $125,000 prize for producing the most water: 1,000 liters per day. If used only as drinking water, that would be enough to sustain 400-450 people per day.

Perhaps most remarkably, all the units that were put into the ocean used readily available parts.

“Operationally, you don’t want to have really fancy, complex parts,” said Dragan Tutic, CEO and founder of Oneka Technologies. “So, the whole system is made with a readily available things you can buy at the hardware store.”

Oneka has been working with wave-powered desalination since 2017 and was the company with the most experience in building and deploying the units, and most with much larger capacities. The Snowflake, however, has an important role.

“It’s our small-scale unit that’s intended for emergency relief, that’s easy to ship and deploy with really minimal equipment,” Tutic said.

The harsh conditions at Jennette’s Pier were a test for improvements that had been made earlier in the year on an earlier version of the Snowflake.

“Snowflake 2 that was deployed in North Carolina, that one has a much stiffer float which, even in the very harsh condition — the system itself is still pretty intact,” Tutic said. “There are some minor things that we corrected, but the device itself as a whole, it was very resistant to even the very harsh conditions.”

Originally scheduled for five days, the Jennette’s Pier completion had to be shortened because of weather conditions. However, Muglia was quick to note that the information learned will be invaluable.

“It was definitely not a failure,” he said. “We’re going to learn how we could make these better and move forward.”

Jenne with the National Renewable Energy Lab echoed the point in his email, saying the conditions were something they knew they would eventually have to face. “The conditions we saw have already informed NREL and the Water Power Technology Office at DOE what research we need to focus on next,” he wrote. “There’s still a long road to go, but we learn a lot every step of the way.”

Prize winners

The Oneka Snowflake took home the $500,000 grand prize, and the team received an additional $125,000 for producing the most water with their device.

Another $125,000 was awarded to Team Water Bros, whose members hail from the University of North Carolina Charlotte, for delivering the lightest device.

And $125,000 was disbursed among the four teams for the Simplest Assembly award. The amounts awarded, based on the time taken it took each team to assemble its device, were as follows:

• Oneka: $80,000
• Mark Zero Prototypes, LLC: $20,000
• Water Bros: $17,000
• Project 816: $9,000

Finally, $125,000 was also distributed among the teams based on the ease of deployment and retrieval for each device. The awards were as follows:

• Mark Zero Prototypes LLC: $38,000
• WATER BROS: $36,000
• Project 816: $26,000
• Oneka: $24,000

Since the teams were unable to test their devices for the full five-day window because of foul weather, each will have the opportunity individually test their own device again in North Carolina this summer.

A network of towers that track small migratory animals is providing researchers with information that may help in conserving populations of insect, bat and bird species that are declining at alarming rates.

At present, only a small number of automated radio tracking towers tied into the Motus Wildlife Tracking System exist in North Carolina.

But researchers and conservationists are hoping that will change under a multistate and nonprofit collaborative effort to snag a $1 million federal grant to put more Motus towers on the ground in the Southeast and maintain hundreds of towers in the Northeast.

North Carolina, along with Pennsylvania, Vermont and Alabama, have led the charge in applying for a Competitive State Wildlife Grant, one that would bulk up the presence of a tracking system that is giving researchers insight on the finer details of migration patterns of small animals.

Motus towers track receivers designed to tag the smallest of migratory animals like dragonflies, microbats and species of little birds like the warbler and sparrow.

Tracking the movements of these animals helps researchers to understand migration timing — where and for how long animals stop to rest, feed and breed — and the areas that are important for different species, said Marae West, a doctoral candidate at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and a Cape Fear Audubon Society board member.

“All of that is super important for conserving them,” she said. “If we don’t know where they are or where they’re going, it’s really hard to conserve a species. So, I think a lot of this is really helpful in understanding how birds are migrating, why they’re moving, how they are moving and then how we can best conserve areas that they use.”

For example, West, who is studying the winter population biology of saltmarsh, seaside and Nelson’s sparrows, was able to see that one of the birds tagged for her study stopped over in Delaware for 15 days.

Earlier this year, West finished an effort initiated by her academic advisor, UNCW assistant professor Raymond Danner, who in 2018 wanted to install Motus towers in the region.

Thanks to her efforts, the newest Motus tower in North Carolina stands 20 feet high on Lea Island, an uninhabited barrier island that stretches between Topsail Island and Figure Eight Island.

Motus towers are not built from kits. They’re assembled from parts that can be purchased from any number of vendors. They can be built as freestanding towers, as is the case on Lea Island, or attached to existing towers, such as the one funded by a private donor on Bald Head Island.

The costs to build them range anywhere from $3,000 to $7,000.

When a tower picks up a signal from a tagged animal – as far away as 9 miles – the information about that individual animal is sent to the worldwide Motus network and uploaded to Motus.org.

Motus tags initially read at a frequency of 166 megahertz, but with ever-evolving technological advances, updated towers can read tags with a frequency of 434 megahertz.

Kendrick Weeks, North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission’s western wildlife diversity program supervisor, explained that the Motus system gives researchers a picture of the full life cycle of a species, which is a missing piece of information on migratory land birds that breed in north America and then winter in the Caribbean, South America and Central America.

“Because they can experience threats anywhere along that life cycle, on the spring grounds, during migration, on the wintering grounds and, of course, back in fall migration,” Weeks said. “Because of that large range of these birds, it takes something like this, a collaborative effort, to do monitoring.”

He points to the results of a comprehensive 2019 survey conducted by U.S. and Canadian researchers who found that North America has lost 3 billion birds since the 1970s.

“A lot of those are these neotropical migrants,” such as shorebirds and grassland birds, Weeks said. “Interestingly enough, in that analysis waterfowl were not found to have been reduced. It really points to that effort, that conservation that’s been done over the past 50 years for waterfowl. All that work to conserve their habitat and regulate hunting really helped waterfowl populations. We don’t necessarily have that model for a lot of other birds.”

In order to do that, researchers and conservationists have embarked on a wider collaborative effort to broaden the information collected through Motus.

There is currently one Motus tower in western North Carolina. Two more are in the works. There are none in the Piedmont, a popular region for thrushes.

The grant would be split 50-50 between the Northeastern states and Southeastern states. Grant recipients are expected to be announced later this year.

The grant would help fund a “fence” of towers about 18.5 miles apart along the southern mountains of North Carolina, Weeks said. That would be about a half-dozen towers.

“That’s our primary focus at this point, but we would like to expand it more and more throughout the mountain region as well as the state,” he said.

Neotropical migratory land bird diversity is much higher in the state’s mountain region, where there’s a large assortment of warblers, including golden-winged warbler, cerulean warbler, Canada warbler and prairie warbler.

Weeks also points out that the monitoring potential goes beyond birds, from bats to butterflies to dragonflies.

“We’re really working with partners to try to get this network set up,” Weeks said. “We can’t do it alone. As a state agency, we are involved a little bit in research, but a lot of that is done with academic institutions. There’s a lot of bird conservation organizations that can be helpful.”

Adam Smith, a quantitative ecologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Wildlife Refuge System’s inventory and monitoring branch in the South Atlantic-Gulf region and Mississippi River basin, said collaborative efforts to expand Motus is one of his favorite aspects of the system.

“But it’s also one of the more challenging ones,” he said. “Conservation dollars and staffs are small or shrinking and really this kind of collaborative effort is increasingly becoming one of our best chances at actually accomplishing meaningful conservation work. With something like Motus, individuals can still do their projects of interest, but at the same time can benefit a whole host of other projects that are completely unrelated outside of just using the same technology.”

Smith installed the first tower in North Carolina in 2015 on Cedar Island. He placed a few more in coastal South Carolina.

The initial focus then was to build up a coastal network of towers to track saltmarsh sparrow.

There are about a dozen Motus stations, most all of which read at the 166-megahertz frequency, on refuges in Florida. Smith said during an April 15 telephone interview with Coastal Review that he would soon be traveling to Florida to upgrade those towers to be able to also read 434 megahertz.

He updated the five stations on refuges in North Carolina to that dual-mode capability last year.

“The advance of Motus or the use of Motus that really is driving us is that lots of migratory birds are declining for various reasons, some of which we partially understand and some of which we don’t,” Smith said.

“But they have these really complex annual life cycles that are only part of the time on the breeding grounds and part of the time somewhere in Central or South America or the southeast U.S. and then they spend a very large chunk of their year moving from those places and back again. There’s pretty good evidence to suggest that active migration is the part of the life cycle where it’s the hardest to survive,” Smith continued. “I think Motus has that potential to really inform kind of that first step to try to identify these broad-scale patterns and look for things that stick out as areas that are consistently being used and worthy of a deeper exploration as to how birds are using that site and what particular areas in that general region are worth acquiring or protecting or doing something for conservation work on.”