The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has scheduled an online informational meeting for 6-8 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 29, to update the public on the Red Wolf Recovery Program.

Fish and Wildlife officials said the session will cover topics such as recovery efforts for the species, the status of recovery efforts in the eastern North Carolina red wolf population area, coyote-management strategies, and future planning efforts for the recovery of the species.

“With interest in the Red Wolf Recovery Program spanning areas across the historic range of the species, we invite all to attend this virtual informational meeting,” officials said in the announcement Friday.

Service officials encourage participants to submit their questions in advance during the registration process, to assist in planning their presentation. Questions will also be taken live online. Register online.

Officials said the meeting is part of their continuing efforts to increase communication and transparency on red wolf recovery.

America’s red wolf, which officials defined as a distinct canid species native to the United States, is one of the most imperiled species of canids in the world. At one time they were declared extinct in the wild, but officials said recovery efforts have set the stage for several subsequent large carnivore reintroduction efforts across the nation.

Successful recovery for the red wolf will require collaborative efforts with landowners, partners, and other interested parties to advance solutions that support rural livelihoods and working lands while contributing to the species’ recovery.

Visit the Red Wolf Recovery Program website.

The legislature cut from the budget this summer a state-run $275,000 environmental education program, leaving in the lurch the two staff members who manage the North Carolina Office of Environmental Education and Public Affairs and the thousands who have relied on the resource over the last 30 years.

After months of uncertainty and an outpouring of support for the program, the public learned this week that the office and its North Carolina Environmental Education Certification Program will transition to Catawba College’s Center for the Environment starting Oct. 1 from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

Related: State budget eliminates Office of Environmental Education

“We ask our students to consider their stewardship as citizens, about how they can serve others,” Catawba President David P. Nelson said in the announcement. “We ask the same questions of the College. This program has served our state well, and we are glad to respond to this opportunity to serve the people of North Carolina by carrying on this important work.”

More than 1,600 environmental educators have been certified through the program and hundreds more were working through the multistep, multiyear process when the program was cut. The certification program is part of a broader state environmental education effort that began in the early 1990s.

Though details of the transition to the campus in Salisbury are being finalized, officials said in a press release that the transition will preserve the certification program, its staff, and all the programs and resources that connect educators across the state, including its listserv and calendar.

Certification participants and educators who use the program’s resources are not expected to experience delays or interruptions in access.

Lee Ball, executive director of the Center for the Environment, and staff from DEQ’s Office of Environmental Education and Public Affairs announced the transition last week at the 35th annual conference of Environmental Educators of North Carolina, the state’s nonprofit professional association for environmental educators. The announcement drew a standing ovation, the press release explains.

“This transition will extend the Center’s work in environmental education and create opportunities for our students to learn from and work with educators serving communities across North Carolina,” Ball said.

“The Environmental Education program has been a resounding success for 30 years, awarding Environmental Education Certificates to more than 1,600 people,” DEQ Secretary Reid Wilson said. “Educating children about the natural world and their role in protecting it is more essential than ever. The Center for the Environment at Catawba College deserves a huge thanks for taking on the leadership of the program in the wake of the new state budget’s removal of its funding.”

Lisa Tolley, program manager for the environmental education program at DEQ, thanked Ball, the center, Catawba College, Wilson, the leadership of Environmental Educators of North Carolina and the statewide community of educators for supporting the transition.

“This transition preserves North Carolina’s environmental education legacy and allows an important statewide career-development and community-building resource to continue,” Tolley said.

Marty Wiggins, program consultant for the environmental education program, said the certification program will continue to serve the entire state.

“Our plan is to make a seamless transition to the Center for the Environment,” Wiggins said. “All of the resources that support the program, such as the NCEE listserv and calendar, will continue to be an integral part of the certification program.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” He may as well have been talking about fishing.

When is the best time to go fishing? There are people who will point to all kinds of secret signs. Some guys swear by lunar cycles. Others will tell you that when the cows sit in a certain pattern is best (Yeah, I made that one up once … or twice). But the truth is, the absolute best time to be on the water is anytime you can during the fall.

Autumn. The combination of events that occur during this time of year makes fish do things that will not happen during any other timeframe. Let’s take a look at what’s going on and make some magic.

As before in this series, we will define when fall occurs, and we’re saying September through November. Yes, it can get cool in August and get things going, and sometimes we do see fall-like weather into December, but that is not usual.

Many years the season ends with a bang-up storm around Thanksgiving. I have spent many a turkey day feasting and watching the wind blow away the good fishing I had been sitting on. That’s the nature of fishing. But I have also had amazing action on Thanksgiving Day itself in the morning before festivities begin. The very reason the action is so great is because it can end just that quickly. The fish have to do what they need to do quickly.

In September, as water temperatures fall through the 70-degree range, speckled trout will begin to gather in creeks off bigger water systems that lead toward the ocean. They have been doing their thing, scattered around in smaller schools, or even in solitary, during summer. They know that in order to make it in the ocean, they need a number advantage. There are sharks waiting for them.

Luckily for the trout, Atlantic silversides feel the same way. You may know them as glass minnows. Trout call them “snacks.” There will be clouds of them, and trout will eat them nonstop when situations arise. Find them and you’ve done what was needed.

Primarily this will occur in channels that feed toward inlets. My favorite spots to fish were always where a creek would be obstructed or contracted in a way that cut the minnows’ escape routes. This could be a narrowing, or a creek that’s shallower on one side, and the most popular spots often have jetties or sea walls.

Probably THE most popular lure choice is a plastic-tail jig head. Seriously, just pick one. I will add that the 5-inch Zman Jerk Shadz were favorites of mine due to their high durability. But the same curly tails you have left over from 1979 will still get bites for you. That’s assuming, of course, that they still wiggle and aren’t dried up from sitting in the garage.

Cast and twitch. Try different colors. If your buddy is getting them on a different color, try that. Incoming tide is key. Often the fish will be snapping and then, just like that, it’s over with the end of the rise.

As we move into October the best ocean fishing of the year occurs. Spanish mackerel and bluefish schools can be seen that stretch to wherever. King mackerel fishing can be astounding at times. The peak is often around Columbus Day. Why? It just happens that way sometimes.

Bluefish and Spanish mackerel fans will want to have small epoxy jigs like The Gunslinger ready to fire. False albacore will be around sporadically. Be prepared to run and gun.

Use a bite leader for macks and blues, or the connection may be short lived.

Great action on red drum will happen all over. Until it starts to drop below 60 degrees, count on them to continue to react well to the same presentations that worked all summer. If you find them, they will give a good smack. Finding them will become the issue as the season progresses, they will get into tighter and tighter schools as it gets colder, making them progressively more difficult to find.

The end of October will see the big runs of false albacore make their appearance. We will see them chasing bait balls all along our coast, the epicenter being the Cape Lookout area.

The unique shape of our coast here provides sheltered water that favors both the fish and anglers. East-West beaches give shelter from prevailing North winds, in turn, multiple inlets close together give plenty of feeding opportunities as glass minnows get swept out. Make sure to get out at any opportunity with a mild north wind. Southwest blows kind of mess up the action. The days go by so fast.

Speckled trout begin moving toward the inlets. Being out there early to find a school right behind the break in the surf is a special thing. This is the time to get it all to yourself because many won’t be out there until they hear about it on the internet. Locals who know, can clean up in October.

November will often give us the absolute best fishing of the year on all the inshore glamour species. One thing I always looked forward to was the specks in the surf. If the wind is light from the northwest, get your waders on and get an early start. Even Fitzgerald couldn’t complain about this kind of repeat of the past when it involves a beautiful sunrise and trout-thumping plugs.

Of course, the absolute nirvana of the false albacore run is November. There were many days when instead of chasing schools around, we would just set up along the beach and a conga line would just dance toward us. This literally could occur anywhere. I remember one day casting from Bogue Inlet Pier in Emerald Isle with not a gull, a splash, or jumping fish in sight, and hooking 18-pounders on every cast on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Next day, we had a storm and it was all over.

When the weather was right, my buddies and I would pier fish on Thanksgiving morning for specks using a tandem rig of a Gotcha Plug and DOA shrimp. Get a limit early enough to get the turkey and potatoes going.

Fishing in fall can indeed be great. The bittersweet thing is that it is like a green light at the end of a dock, you don’t want to miss the chance. Spring is the promise of things to come. Summer is the fulfillment of that promise. Fall signifies the end. While winter holds different promises, it’s really just a way to get through to start over and beat on against the tide.

State transportation officials have three career fairs scheduled to recruit temporary administrative associates to assist with new toll collection operations.

All taking place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., the career fairs are planned for Tuesday at the Currituck Ferry Terminal, Wednesday at Hatteras Ferry Terminal and Thursday at Bayview Ferry Terminal in Bath.

The Ferry Division has multiple entry level positions open at multiple locations. Training is provided. Employees will work a seven-days-on, seven-days-off schedule.

The career fairs will give prospective employees an opportunity to learn more about the available positions and the experience of working for the Ferry Division.

People interested in an entry-level opportunity with a unique work schedule are encouraged to attend the career fair most convenient for them, or visit the N.C. Jobs website and apply online.

The North Carolina General Assembly passed a state law this summer directing transportation officials to establish and begin collecting tolls on all ferry routes starting Jan. 1, 2027. Under the law, tolls will be required on the Currituck-Knotts Island, Bayview-Aurora, Hatteras-Ocracoke and Cherry Branch-Minnesott Beach vehicle ferry routes. Tolls are already collected on the division’s other routes.    

Several nonprofit arts organizations, schools, after-school programs, municipalities and artists in coastal counties have been selected this year to receive state funding through the North Carolina Arts Council.

A division of the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, the council announced last week that 340 grants totaling $10.99 million for fiscal 2026-27 have been awarded through the competitive grant programs, and facilitated $1.12 million in direct appropriations to the Roanoke Island Historical Association, which produces “The Lost Colony.”

“Our state’s investment in arts and culture is essential to the strength of our communities and our statewide economy,” Department Secretary Pamela B. Cashwell said. “Through these grants and the work of the N.C. Arts Council, lives are enriched and communities across all 100 counties grow stronger. We appreciate this continued investment from Governor Stein and the General Assembly.”

The state said priorities with the program include emphasizing community outreach and audience engagement, Improving organization’s capacity and capabilities, connecting K–12 students with artists, fostering public-private partnerships, and supporting local arts partners.

“As we continue our Sustaining Support for Arts Organizations grants, we’re seeing how added stability in operating expenses empowers organizations to grow and innovate,” Arts Council Executive Director Jeff Bell said. “It’s inspiring to see the positive impact that these organizations are having in their communities and across North Carolina.”

Sustaining Support grants help to fund the ongoing artistic and administrative functions of arts organizations. The grants are reviewed and awarded on a three-year cycle by discipline, with this cycle’s grants going to the Literature, Visual Arts, Film and Dance categories.

The Arts Council also announced that historian and artist Ben Watford of Craven County is among the 2027 North Carolina Heritage Awards recipients. Past recipients of the Heritage Awards range from internationally acclaimed musicians to folks who quietly practice their art in family and community settings. He was awarded $10,000.

Project Support grants, which help organizations that produce or present specific arts programs, include these awards:

• $8,000 to the 2027 North Carolina Rice Festival in Brunswick County.
• $12,000 for a a jazz performance by Tito Puente Jr. at Duck Jazz Fest in Duck.
• $8,000 for a performance by Virginia Symphony Orchestra featuring violinist Grace Park and master class activities to the Outer Banks Forum for the Lively Arts.
• $12,000 to the 37th Annual Meherrin Indian Powwow in Hertford County.
• $10,000 to Thalian Hall Center for the Performing Arts, Inc. for a community-based residency with Achinta McDaniel & Blue13 Dance, including a performance and educational programs.
• $5,000 for sixth annual Onslow Veterans Powwow.
• $8,000 for Pamlico Musical Society Celebration of Abundance: Three concerts and related audience activities.

Recipients of the Artist Support Grants for Lead Partners, which funds regional consortia of local arts agencies that award project grants to artists within their area, include the following:

• $5,000 to Craven Arts Council & Gallery Inc. for artists in Carteret, Craven, Duplin, Jones, Lenoir, Onslow and Pamlico counties,
• $2,500 to Dare County Arts Council for artists in Beaufort, Dare, Hyde, Martin, Tyrrell and Washington counties, and
• $12,500 to Arts Council of Wilmington and New Hanover County for artists in Bladen, Brunswick, Columbus, New Hanover and Pender counties.
• $2,000 to Arts of the Albemarle for artists in Bertie, Camden, Chowan, Currituck, Gates, Hertford, Pasquotank and Perquimans counties.    

Grants through the Grassroots Arts Program, which provides arts funding to all 100 counties through an extensive network of local arts agencies and partner organizations, include the following organizations:

• $37,020 to Beaufort County Arts Council.
• $21,951 to Bertie County Arts Council.
• $113,349 to Brunswick County Arts Council Inc.
• $19,146 Camden County Public Library.
• $52,322 to Arts Council of Carteret County.
• $20,390 to Chowan Arts Council.
• $71,507 to Craven Arts Council & Gallery Inc.
• $30,998 to Currituck County Schools.
• $34,026 to Dare County Arts Council.
• $18,328 to Gates County Educational Association For Excellence.
• $23,187 to Gallery Theatre Inc. in Hertford County.
• $15,424 to Ocracoke Alive.  
• $75,171 to Arts Council of Wilmington and New Hanover County.
• $131,929 to County of Onslow.
• $20,176 to Pamlico County Arts Council.
• $35,527 to Arts of the Albemarle in Pasquotank County .
• $20,415 to Perquimans Arts League.
• $14,855 to Pocosin Arts Incorporated in Tyrrell County.
• $18,551 to Alliance for Greater Eastern North Carolina Washington County.

Sustaining Support grants, which provides flexible funding to arts organizations, include the following:

• $11,000 to Ocracoke Alive. 
• $22,000 to Cucalorus Film Foundation.
• $54,000 to Louise Wells Cameron Art Museum.
• $16,000 to Narrative Arts storytelling project.
• $19,000 to Wilmington Symphony Orchestra.
• $12,000 to Snow Productions Children’s Theater.
• $24,000 to DREAMS Center for Arts Education.
• $13,000 to Brooklyn Arts Music Academy.
• $23,000 to Pocosin Arts Incorporated.

For a complete list of grant recipients, visit ncarts.org/fy26-27-ncac-grants-county.

Featured Image

Kristen Fulmer of Mebane submitted this photo made on a peaceful morning earlier this year at Wrightsville Beach. “The soft morning light reflected across the wet sand as surfers made their way into the water near the pier,” Fulmer noted with her submitted photo. “I loved how the silhouettes of the surfers, the waves, and the hazy light came together to capture the calm feeling of an early morning on the North Carolina coast.”

Snapped an image of the North Carolina coast worth sharing? Submit your photo.

Since May 2023, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that wetlands must be connected to navigable bodies of water to be protected under the Clean Water Act, the last two administrations have attempted to align the federal definition of “waters of the United States” with the court’s finding.

Most recently, the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers announced alternatives to definitions in the draft “Updated definition of ‘Waters of the United States” published Nov. 20, 2025, in the Federal Register.

The agencies are asking for comments on “revised definitions of ‘relatively permanent’ and ‘continuous surface connection,’ and adding a definition of the term ‘perennial,'” in the supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking published Sept. 9 in the Federal Register. The 30-day public comment period ends Oct. 9. The supplemental proposal and information on how to comment can be found on the Federal Register.

“The EPA’s goal is a durable WOTUS definition that follows the law and ends burdensome regulatory uncertainty,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement. The supplemental proposed “reflects our continued commitment to transparency and public input, ensuring we have fully considered a wide range of potential policy options.”

Officials clarified that this additional language does not replace anything in the 2025 document but is to be treated as alternative definitions to consider.

Environmental groups argue that these supplemental draft definitions limit the scope of WOTUS, particularly for isolated wetlands, even more than the initial language in the 2025 proposed rule from last November.

“The proposal would limit federal protections for tributary rivers, streams, and lakes to those with standing or continuously flowing water throughout the year, during ordinary conditions. It would also sharply narrow protections for wetlands, requiring them to have continuous, perennial surface water connections to another protected water or, alternatively, be indistinguishably part of a traditional navigable water, the territorial seas, a jurisdictional impoundment, or a jurisdictional tributary,” the Waterkeeper Alliance said last week.

Waterkeeper Alliance Senior Attorney Kelly Hunter Foster said in the organization’s call to action that if the proposal is finalized, “it would be the most consequential attack on clean water since the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972.”

WOTUS timeline

There are decades of history, amendments, revisions and lawsuits leading up to this latest move to update the definition of WOTUS.

Congress established in 1948 the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, the country’s first major law to address water pollution. That act underwent extensive amendments in 1972, becoming known as the Clean Water Act, and gives the EPA and Army Corps federal jurisdiction over “navigable waters” defined in the act as the “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS.

While the Clean Water Act defines “navigable waters” as “the waters of the United States, including the territorial seas,” there is no further explanation on they types of waterbodies are considered navigable. Rather, the definition of WOTUS can be found in the code of federal regulations as applied to the jurisdictional limits of the authority of the Corps of Engineers and EPA under the Clean Water Act

The agencies established core regulations to define WOTUS in the 1980s, but because of Supreme Court rulings in the 2000s, the scope of protected waters was narrowed. In 2015, the agencies issued a Clean Water Rule to overhaul WOTUS with the intent to clarify regulatory jurisdiction – the first time since the 1980s — but was met with lawsuits around the country, congress.gov states.

The 2015 Clean Water Rule put in place during the Obama administration was rescinded on Oct. 22, 2019, during Trump’s first term, returning WOTUS to the 1980s regulations until the Navigable Waters Protection Rule went into effect June 22, 2020, which also narrowed “the scope of waters that fell under federal jurisdiction,” and was challenged in court, per the EPA.

The Biden administration once in office went through a series of actions to amend WOTUS, landing on the final “Revised Definition of ‘Waters of the United States’” that took effect on March 20, 2023. Then the U.S. Supreme Court in the Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency lawsuit ruled in favor of the Idaho couple who had been fined for backfilling what the EPA considered protected wetlands on their property. The justices found that “wetlands are covered by the Act only when the wetlands have a ’continuous surface connection’ to waters of the United States—that is, when the wetlands are ‘adjoining’ covered waters.”

The Clean Water Act’s use of the word “waters” only refers to geographical features described in everyday language such “as ‘streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes’ and to adjacent wetlands that are ‘indistinguishable’ from those bodies of water due to a continuous surface connection,” the majority continued.

The ruling did two things: It narrowed the types of wetlands protected by the Clean Water Act, and it made the January 2023 final rule inconsistent. A “final rule to amend” the final “‘Revised Definition of ‘Waters of the United States’” went into effect Sept. 8, 2023, to comply with the Supreme Court ruling.

Shortly after Trump began his second term as president, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin committed on March 12, 2025, to “deliver on President’s Trump’s promise to review the definition of ‘waters of the United States’” and to revise the 2023 definition. EPA and Army Corps jointly issued a memorandum the same day with guidance on the agencies’ views on the proper implementation of the definition of WOTUS, with “respect to adjacent wetlands,” in consideration of the Sackett case.

The agencies followed through and put out for public comment on Nov. 20, 2025, “a proposed rule that would clarify the definition of “waters of the United States” and fully implement the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency.”

Proposed revisions to the 2025 rule

Revisions to WOTUS in the initial 2025 proposed rule “would fully implement” the Sackett decision by “ensuring federal jurisdiction is focused on relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water—such as streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes—and wetlands that are connected and indistinguishable from such waterbodies.”

The agencies asked for public comment during the 45-day window that closed Jan. 5 on adding draft definitions for “continuous surface connection,” “ditch,” “prior converted cropland,” “relatively permanent,” “tributary,” and “waste treatment system”; removing interstate waters; revising exclusions for waste treatment systems, prior converted cropland and ditches; and adding exclusions clarifying that groundwater is not considered WOTUS.

After the draft rule was published, officials said they have received around 220,000 public comments asking for clarification and recommending alternatives to what was initially proposed.

In response, the EPA and Army Corps on Sept. 4 announced the “additional regulatory options” for the 2025 proposed rule to “provide greater regulatory certainty and increase Clean Water Act program predictability and consistency by clarifying the definition” of WOTUS, which was published Sept. 9 in the Federal Register.

The agencies are specifically asking for comments on revised definitions in this latest document for “‘relatively permanent’ and ‘continuous surface connection,’ and adding a definition of the term ‘perennial.'”

The alternative definition for “relatively permanent” is “‘perennial bodies of water.’” And would state that “‘A body of water does not lose its relatively permanent status if it dries up as a result of anomalous events such as drought or dry spell. A body of water also does not lose its relatively permanent status if it dries up for no more than a single period of up to 30 consecutive days in any given year as a result of non-anomalous events resulting in a temporary interruption such as low tide or a regularly occurring dry spell.’”

The agencies proposed in the first update to “define ‘continuous surface connection’ to mean having surface water at least during the wet season and abutting (i.e., touching) a jurisdictional water” and the “’wet season’ for continuous surface connection was intended to be implemented as it was for the proposed definition of ‘relatively permanent.’”

In this supplemental proposal from last week, the agencies are requesting comment on an alternative definition of “continuous surface connection” to mean “’perennial surface water in a wetland that is continuously connected with the surface water in the jurisdictional water such that it is difficult to determine where the jurisdictional water ends and the wetland begins. A temporary interruption in the surface water connection may occur as the result of anomalous events such as drought or a dry spell. A temporary interruption in the surface water connection lasting for no more than a single period of up to 30 consecutive days in any given year may also occur as a result of non-anomalous events such as low tide or a regularly occurring dry spell.’”

The agencies propose defining “perennial” as having “in the regulatory text to mean ‘“’having standing or continuously flowing water every day of the year during ordinary conditions’”’ or, alternatively, to mean ‘“’surface water flowing continuously year-round,’ consistent with the 2020 Navigable Waters Protection Rule.”

Officials said they plan to continue reviewing comments on the 2025 proposed rule along with those received during this new comment period that began Sept. 9. The agencies said they will continue to consider the regulatory options proposed in the 2025 proposed rule in tandem with the supplemental regulatory options and any comments received.

Responses to supplemental proposal

Associated Builders and Contractors Vice President of Government Affairs Kristen Swearingen said that the national construction industry trade association “appreciates the Trump administration’s continued work to establish a clear, durable and reasonable definition of WOTUS that brings clarity to ABC contractor members and maintains important water quality protections.”

The Southern Environmental Law Senior Attorney Mark Sabath said that this latest version is “yet another affront to communities that rely on clean water and healthy wetlands. The words have changed, but the result would be the same if this rule is finalized: more severe flooding and greater threats to water quality.”

American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall commented that “the new proposed rule “provides a clear understanding of federal jurisdiction, which is critical for farmers who may face severe penalties or even jail time for unknowingly violating the law.”

The National Wildlife Federation argues that the revised proposal “greatly” limits the streams and wetlands that can be protected by the Clean Water Act. “One thing is clear: If we don’t protect our streams and wetlands the cost of dirtier drinking water and increased flooding will flow downstream to households at a time when most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck,” Jim Murphy, the associate vice president for legal advocacy, said.

Natural Resources Defense Council’s Director of Freshwater Ecosystems Jon Devine said that this proposal “denies federal protection to virtually all wetlands and more than three quarters of our streams, endangering drinking water supplies and flood-prone communities – and the agencies admit it themselves. The proposal would virtually eliminate protection for freshwater wetlands.”

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Marine Fisheries plans to hold a scoping period for the fishery in October on red drum, also known as puppy drum, redfish, bull drum, channel bass, or the state’s official state saltwater fish.

The monthlong scoping period is to give fishermen and other stakeholders an opportunity to share ideas on potential management strategies for the scheduled comprehensive review of the North Carolina Red Drum Fishery Management Plan.

The division is statutorily required at least every five years to conduct a comprehensive review of each state fishery management plan and scoping is the first stage of that process.

More information, including a scoping document with background information and links to the virtual meeting registration and public comment forms, will be made available closer to the opening of the scoping period, officials said.

Beginning Oct. 1, the public may provide input in writing or at any of the scheduled scoping meetings, including on Oct. 13 at Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington; Oct. 15 at N.C. State University’s McKimmon Conference Center in Raleigh; Oct. 20 at Craven Community College in New Bern; and Oct. 22 at the College of the Albemarle in Manteo. There will be a virtual option for the Raleigh meeting. All meetings are 6-8 p.m.

Division staff have not developed management options for the red drum management plan but are to consider the input gathered during this time to determine if management changes are needed. If changes are identified, the division will draft an amendment to the plan. If no changes are, the division may develop an information update to maintain current management.

The North Carolina red drum fishery management plan must comply with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s red drum plan.

The Division of Marine Fisheries acts as staff to Marine Fisheries Commission and carries out the rules and regulations they establish.

The state has launched a new online guide on the Topsail Nature Preserve that highlights public access, responsible recreation, management and stewardship efforts.

Now the Topsail Nature Preserve, which is at the southern end of Topsail Island in Pender County, on land known as “The Point” was the focus of a conservation effort that culminated with North Carolina Costal Land Trust purchasing the property.

Found on the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s website, the web-based resource follows the transition of the property in May from the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust to Division of Coastal Management.

“The Topsail Nature Preserve is an extraordinary coastal resource, and its long-term protection depends on both thoughtful management and responsible stewardship by those who enjoy it,” division Director Tancred Miller said. “This new online resource gives the public an easy way to learn about the Preserve, plan a visit, understand how to enjoy it responsibly and join us in protecting it for future generations.”

The webpage includes information about the preserve’s natural resources, public access and visitor information, rules and guidelines for responsible use, division management and stewardship efforts, protecting sensitive habitats and wildlife, management updates and future stewardship opportunities.

The division said it would update the page as additional information and resources become available.

Management of the preserve builds upon conservation efforts led by the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust and reflects continued collaboration among the division, the town of Topsail Beach, conservation organizations and other state and local partners, officials said.

“Protecting natural coastal areas such as The Topsail Nature Preserve helps conserve important habitats, maintain opportunities for public access and recreation, and contribute to a more resilient North Carolina coast,” according to the press release.

Learn more and plan your visit at the Topsail Nature Preserve webpage.

Sections of N.C. 12 in Currituck and Dare counties will return to its off-season speed limit of 45 mph starting Tuesday.

North Carolina Department of Transportation officials said that on Tuesday, weather permitting, crews will replace the seasonal 35 mph speed limit signs with the off-season 45 mph signs.

Off-season speed limits will resume in Rodanthe, Waves, Salvo, Corolla, Frisco and areas of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, such as the area near the Haulover parking lot south of Avon.

Seasonal speed limits are scheduled to return on May 14, 2027.

What’s the first thing native Southerners warn newcomers about when they move to the North Carolina coast from … “Off?”

“Watch out for fire ants and sandspurs!”

Giving you that disbelieving side-eye that says they’ve been invited on a snipe hunt before, and they’re not falling for it again, they generally nod and say, “Uh huh.”

Southerners just grin. They’ll figure it out.

Meanwhile, Southerners learn early to watch out for anthills and suspicious-looking grass.

On the other hand, it’s nearly impossible to walk past a fire ant mound without jabbing a stick into it, kicking it, or even gleefully running over a giant mound with the lawnmower. That’s the worst thing you can do.

Fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) are always around. Dry weather drives them deeper underground. Rain brings them springing to the surface — like an inflatable raft held underwater and then released. Hurricane rains send them scurrying for higher ground, aka your porch, car, house, or even your outside heat pump unit. Heat pump casings — when the heat pump isn’t running because there’s no electricity — are like Dubai for fire ants.

Every fire ant mound has multiple spare queens. Any disturbance to the mound causes soldiers to grab those spare queens and head for the hills. That is why, even when you kill the original mound, if you disturbed it beforehand, more mounds will pop up in a couple of days. Some sprays will instruct you to disturb the mound first, and depending on the chemical and the application, sometimes that’s the best method. Baits, on the other hand, work in the opposite way, and you need to be sneaky in your application.

I wonder if anteaters would go after fire ants … a question to explore another time.

While fire ant mounds are conspicuous and fire ants probably the most-hated insects ever, many other ants out there are most beneficial.

Almost everyone is familiar with the pepper-flake-sized black ones known as sugar ants, or Tapinoma sessile. These are the ones that love to congregate on your kitchen counters. On your kitchen table. In your pantry.

Their other, more common, name comes from a 14^th century term, pismire, and for the strong formic acid scent some of them release when crushed. Or maybe it’s just because they annoy the pee out of you.

Annoying as all get out, these ants are usually attracted to sweets, hence their common name. Baits such as Terro, a sticky syrup laced with boric acid powder will usually get rid of them – because there’s nothing like biting into a cookie or other sweet and finding out it has extra protein. Or like pouring a bowl of cereal only to watch the little buggers trying to surf the tsunami of milk. Bleh!

Ants of any variety annoy humans to no end, especially when they invade our homes.

But why is this the case? Ants are just doing their job. Think of them as the janitors of the insect world. Ants are hardwired to find the tiniest crumbs of anything edible and then clean it up by taking the food back to their nests, crumb by crumb.

Once they find food, they will scout and scour the entire surrounding area. Outdoors, that’s a great thing. Inside, not so much.

Fire ants are probably the most well-known in the ant kingdom, simply because they’re invasive and nasty. How do they swarm your hands or feet without you noticing them, and then upon some silent-to-humans command, they all start biting at the same time? Grrr.

For the most part, ants just go about their tiny ant lives and do their tiny ant jobs. Fascinating to watch, ants come in multiple colors and sizes.

If you have ever just watched ants anting, you’ll see how incredibly strong they are for their diminutive size. Ants can be fascinating for adults as well as children, and their antics can offer a glimpse into exotic worlds. We have leafcutter ants here. They’re not just a South American movie plot device, or a scene in a nature documentary, and they are really cool to watch.

Large populations of ants on your plants are often good indicators that a plant has mealy bugs or aphids or scale. The ants will protect the bugs attacking your plant because the insects produce a sticky sap called honeydew that the ants like to eat.

If you’ve ever seen an animal skeleton or turtle shell picked clean? Thank the ants! And beetles, but that’s a subject for another time.

Humans tend to lump ants into a general, one-size-fits-all category of icky bugs that need to die, but ants are valuable for many ingenious purposes.

Ants aren’t generally very good pollinators, because even though they’re attracted to sweet nectar, they have naturally occurring antibiotics that kill pollen grains. Still, some plants are seeded by ants. Such plants, including trilliums (Trillium), bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis), violets (Viola), and many others, have nutrient-dense coatings called elaiosomes on their seeds.

In a process called myrmecochory, ants scrounge the seeds for food and carry the seeds back to their nest. Once the coating is eaten, the seeds are discarded to the ants’ midden, or trash, pile. Everybody wins! The plants get their seeds dispersed, planted, and fertilized while the ants get food.

Excellent scavengers and foragers, ants can be found on every continent except Antarctica and a few islands such as Greenland and Iceland. Mostly nesting underground, with their tunneling and moving things about, ants play a vital role in aerating and enriching soil. Depending on the type, ants can also nest in trees, under rocks, in rotting wood, or among leaf debris.

They’re everywhere!

In fact, it’s been estimated that for every human on Earth, there are about 2.5 million ants. Talk about being vastly outnumbered!

Communicating mostly using chemicals, which they scent with their antennae, ants can express to other ants every kind of message, from “food!” to “intruders!” They can leave scent trails for other ants in their colony to follow once the scouts have found something edible.

If you’ve ever wondered how the ants manage to find a hummingbird feeder hanging multiple feet above ground, it’s because, once an ant detects the most minuscule trace of sap, in this case hummingbird nectar, they keep spiraling outwards and upwards until they locate the source. Curious and resourceful, ants excel at what they’re designed to do.

Fascinating creatures, ants can be a nuisance, but they play an invaluable part in our wonderful world.

Residents and visitors are advised that training will be taking place at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, its outlying fields and training areas the remainder of the month.

Amphibious training will take place in and around the Cherry Point waterways and into and out of Bombing Target 11 at Piney Island in the Pamlico Sound Thursday and Friday. The training will include live-ammunition exercises, base officials said Monday.

Throughout the week of Sept. 21, underwater remedial environmental investigations and munitions response activities will take place at Bombing Target 2 at Cat Island in the Bogue Sound. These activities may include terrestrial and underwater detonations.

Explosives Ordnance Disposal Marines will be conducting explosives training at MCAS Cherry Point. The neighboring community may hear occasional loud explosions at the air station.

The public should follow all posted warnings and safety instructions.

Brunswick County is holding a Free Cleanup Week starting Monday at the landfill in Bolivia.

Brunswick County property owners and residents can dispose of all materials, except for regular household trash and hazardous waste, free of charge during Free Cleanup Week that ends Sept. 26. View a list of items accepted during Free Cleanup Week on the website.

Participants must show proof of county property ownership or residency. Businesses and commercial vehicles will be charged normal tipping fees.

Brunswick County accepts various items at the landfill year-round at no charge to property owners and residents. See a full list of accepted items on the Accepted Items and Tipping Fees webpage.

For questions, contact Brunswick County Operation Services at 910-253-2520 or operationservices@brunswickcountync.gov.

Commercial and recreational fishermen, scientists and others with an interest in fisheries are needed to serve on various advisory committees.

The North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission is looking for volunteers to serve on the northern and southern advisory committees, and finfish, habitat and water quality, and shellfish/crustacean advisory committees to review matters referred by the commission, such as draft fishery management plans and the Coastal Habitat Protection Plan. Committees may also bring fisheries issues pertaining to their region or subject matter to the Commission’s attention.

The commission chairman appoints members for three-year terms that begin Jan. 1. Several terms will expire at the end of this year. To qualify to serve on a committee, applicants must not have had a significant fisheries violation within the past three years.

Individuals interested in serving as advisers should be willing to attend meetings up to four times per year and actively participate in the committee process, including reviewing scientific documents and issue papers to develop recommendations on management strategies.

Advisers who complete the necessary paperwork will be reimbursed for travel and other expenses incurred in relation to their official duties.

To apply, complete the online MFC Advisory Committee Application, download this printable application to mail or email, or call 252-515-5500 to request that an application be sent by mail. All applications must be received or postmarked by Oct. 30.

The North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries carries out the rules and regulations established by the commission, and both are under the Department of Environmental Quality.

For questions about the advisory committees, contact coral.sawyer@deq.nc.gov or call 252-515-5527.

“The Cigarette Surfboard” is a documentary about the environmental impact cigarettes can have, and the film about a surfboard created using thousands of butts collected from beaches also serves as a cautionary tale about the damage that pollution has done and will continue to do to the world’s oceans.

“The Cigarette Surfboard” online premiere will span Tuesday through Sept. 27, which is timed in conjunction with International Coastal Cleanup Day Saturday, Sept. 19. As part of the live premiere, and included with the $10 film ticket, virtual Q&A sessions are planned with pro surfers and ocean activists who appear in the film.

The star of “The Cigarette Surfboard” is a surfboard that was made with cigarette butts by the movie’s co-producer, Taylor Lane, who is introduced in the film as an “industrial designer/average surfer.”

Lane created the surfboard in 2017 and entered it into the Vissla + Surfrider Creators & Innovators Upcycle Contest, which was held that year in San Juan Capistrano, California. The Vissla contest features boards made of “upcycled” materials.

Taylor’s cigarette surfboard won first place, and that was the beginning of a remarkable voyage of discovery.

Judkins, who has known Lane since they were college students, began filming the story of the cigarette surfboard, “from the very first beach cleanup. We kind of embarked on this journey together, and we had no idea where it would take us, and that’s the beauty of documentary, you start with an idea, you follow that, you become passionate about it, and it leads you to all sorts of of new and interesting places,” he recently told Coastal Review.

Cigarette butts and the pollution they represent are the film’s focus. As Judkins takes the viewer on a journey that includes talking to professional surfers in Hawaii, Ireland, Fiji and other places around the world, he never loses sight of the “single cigarette butt and the symbolism of that,” he said.

“We wanted to talk about everything,” he said. “We wanted to talk about all of these issues that are plaguing the ocean, all of these solutions that are happening in in response to those problems, but at the end of the day, it all had to make sense in the context of a 90-minute film centered around the cigarette surfboard.”

After winning the upcycle contest, Lane began to think about other ways the cigarette surfboard may be used to serve larger purpose. “Could I use this surfboard to connect with professional surfers, to tell a bigger story about surfers protecting and restoring the health of the ocean?” he wonders aloud in the film.

That first cigarette surfboard was a prototype, the first of 10, and improvements were needed. Lane took it to Hawaii and asked Dr. Cliff Kapono, a molecular bioscientist and professional surfer, to ride it. The board weighed 18 pounds, three times the weight of a normal surfboard of the same size. And, Kapono observed, “It was one of the most difficult surfboards I had ever ridden.”

For Lane, the quest to create a lightweight, professional quality surfboard was its own voyage of discovery. Among other things, he had to invent a machine that would flatten the cigarette butts using what he described as a “funky homemade contraption” that was a modified printing press.

It took him, he said, “years to figure it out.”

But Lane did figure it out, and when he went back to Hawaii and had Kapono ride the new “Ciggy Board,” his reaction was, “Whatever version I’m riding now, it’s insane. I love it.”

With this, Lane and his cigarette surfboards began their travels around the world. In Ireland, he met with Dr. Easkey Britton, a social ecologist and professional surfer. They discussed the ocean’s relationship with society and took a board out to ride some waves.

He journeyed to England and met with Cliff Hines and Steve England, co-founders of the U.K. charity, Surfers against Sewage, which took on waste-disposal practices of the 1990s when raw, untreated human waste was still being discharged into the ocean.

In the film, Hines recalls being told, “You’re just a bunch of surfers. You can go to hell.” That was followed by a trip to court where, he said, “We whipped their asses.”

The film crew also journeyed to Fiji, where professional surfer Hannah Bennett took them to see the plastic pollution covering the island nation’s beaches.

Among the film’s standout segments were interviews with Dr. Tom Novotny, University of San Diego professor of public health and a researcher of tobacco product waste.

“Cigarette butts are the single most picked-up item off of beach and urban cleanups, and that’s been the case for the last 30 years or so,” Novotny says in the film, going on to describe their nicotine filters as, “a piece of litter, but also a toxic, hazardous waste product, both in terms of the plastics as well as the chemicals that are in it. Cigarettes contain about 4,800 chemicals. Two-hundred fifty of these are known to be toxic in some form. Fifty of those are carcinogens.”

It was Novotny who suggested a possible remedy. Cigarette companies like “getting brigades out there to clean up their mess for them,” he noted. But, he said, “What will really work is if we ban the sale of filtered cigarettes.

“It’s a simple solution,” he said.

Simple in concept, maybe, but the political reality turned out to be far different. The film tracks an ill-fated bill in the California State Assembly that would have banned single-use cigarette filters. That bill was never brought to the floor for a vote.

What followed, however, was a more successful attempt, this time, working at the local level. The film follows Lane and others in 2022 as they address the city council in Santa Cruz, California. Judkins told Coastal Review that local governments in Santa Cruz County, the city of Santa Cruz and Capitola, also in Santa Cruz County, have acted, and in these locations, the ban will “go into effect in 2027.”

But political action, Judkins said, wasn’t the initial aim of the cigarette surfboard project. “It was just a couple surfers, a couple friends who had a wacky idea, and we wanted to see it through, and we rode that wave (to see) where it took us.”

The state reached a $590 million settlement last week with Chemours and related companies in a long-running lawsuit for damages related to their decades of discharging toxic compounds, including the product GenX, into the environment from industrial operations near Fayetteville.

Attorney General Jeff Jackson and North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Reid Wilson on Thursday announced the deal between the state, 11 local governments and Chemours and DuPont for decades of PFAS contamination in North Carolina. According to the statement, the settlement amounts to the largest total environmental damages recovery in the state’s history.

Environmental advocates say the deal doesn’t go far enough.

The compounds, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are persistent in the environment and virtually indestructible, earning the name “forever chemicals.” According to a recent United Nations Human Rights Council report, exposure can affect endocrine systems, with resulting fetal growth and development issues, immunotoxicity, increased risk of kidney and testicular cancers, liver damage, increased cholesterol levels, hormonal interference and reduced vaccine responsiveness.

“Chemours and DuPont devastated North Carolina’s water and natural resources for decades,” Jackson said. He said the deal forces the companies to pay for the harm they caused.

“DuPont and Chemours knew they were dumping toxic forever chemicals into our drinking water, but they put their profits over our people – which is why I sued them in 2020,” said Gov. Josh Stein in a statement.

“This settlement is a huge victory for North Carolina,” said Wilson. “These companies are finally paying for the damage they caused to North Carolina’s land and waters.”

Wilson said that, while no amount of money can fully compensate residents for the harm the companies had done to public health and the environment, the settlement strengthens the existing, 2019 consent order with the state and Cape Fear River Watch, under which Chemours is permitted to continue operating. That order required Chemours to cut GenX emissions by 99% and reduce air emissions by 99.99%.

Jackson called the deal “a massive step forward” toward funding clean water programs. He said the settlement “puts even more teeth behind the consent order with NCDEQ. Chemours made this mess, and we’re making sure Chemours cleans it up.”

Cape Fear River Watch released a statement, saying the settlement “won’t come close to making us whole again after all the harm DuPont and Chemours have done to the communities of the Cape Fear Region.”

The River Watch group noted that Chemours still wants to expand its Fayetteville Works facility and discharge more PFAS into the environment, and this while acknowledging that the company hadn’t identified all contaminated private wells, nor had it compensated the Cape Fear Utility Authority or its customers for the millions spent to upgrade water treatment plants.

“Chemours is still discharging high levels of ultra-short-chain PFAS—the hardest PFAS to filter—and those PFAS are still showing up in our drinking water,” the group said.

“We are one of the most severely PFAS contaminated communities in the country and it’s more than just our tap water,” Clean Cape Fear co-founder Emily Donovan said in a statement, adding that the Chemours Fayetteville Works facility discharged more than 250 different compounds into the Cape Fear River. “Our beaches, farms, backyard gardens, honey, fish and other wildlife were all contaminated at extreme levels. We are thrilled 11 counties will receive important funds to address clean drinking water. However, it doesn’t sound like much is left over for the state’s other natural resources like our soil, river sediment, fish and beaches.”

The agreement guarantees $455 million to the state and to 11 local governments that joined the deal, to be paid over the next 10 to 15 years. Of the total, $75 million will be allocated to the state with what officials said was “roughly $55 million going to an Emerging Contaminant Mitigation Fund recently created by the North Carolina General Assembly.”

The remaining $380 million, according to the announcement, will be divided among the local governments affected and had previously sued Chemours and DuPont. Among those are Brunswick County, New Hanover County, Wrightsville Beach, Village of Bald Head Island and the Lower Cape Fear Water and Sewer Authority.

The deal creates a $135 million reserve fund from DuPont and sister company Corteva to guarantee the work that Chemours must continue under the 2019 consent order.

State officials, in the statement, said the deal was “a vast improvement over the Environmental Protection Agency’s deal with Chemours earlier this year, which promised only $90 million in environmental projects across three different states, with no guarantee of any of that money coming to North Carolina.” The EPA and Chemours reached that deal without consulting the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office or the Department of Environmental Quality.  

A case brought by the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority against Chemours and DuPont seeking additional contamination cleanup funds for the utility’s service area in Wilmington and parts of New Hanover County is ongoing and not affected by the settlement.

Jackson is litigating six other cases against other companies that manufacture aqueous firefighting foam that contains PFAS that have contaminated military bases, airports and fire training facilities across the state.

Editor’s note: Coastal Review regularly features the work of North Carolina historian David Cecelski, who writes about the history, culture and politics of the state’s coast. More of his work can be found on his personal website, including the series leading up to this last installment about his recent trip along the Cape Fear River, beginning in Fayetteville and ending up at Bald Head Island on Aug. 30.

This morning I am at the mouth of the Cape Fear. I can see “Old Baldy,” the island’s lighthouse, just down the road here.

Beyond the inlet, I can see the Oak Island Light.  Across the way is Cape Fear, Frying Pan Shoals and the Atlantic.

I took the ferry out here two nights ago. Last night I gave a lecture here for the Old Baldy Foundation.

My lecture was based on my book “The Waterman’s Song,” which focuses on the history of African American maritime life and rebellion on the North Carolina coast from the 17th century through the Civil War.

The audience was wonderful. My hosts were more than gracious. The view, spectacular.

From where I stood to give my lecture, I was facing a large bay window out of which I could watch a flock of ibis feeding in the salt marsh. It was a lovely place to talk about our coast’s history.

I have been on the road a lot this year, often feeling, considering the times we are in, as if I was telling stories while they can still be told.

Earlier in the day, before my lecture, I had the great pleasure of touring both the Old Baldy Lighthouse and Smith Island Museum and the museum’s off-site archival storage facility.

My guide, Travis Gilbert, is a public historian and preservationist who is extremely knowledgeable about Bald Head Island’s history.

Currently, Travis is also the Old Baldy Foundation’s director of philanthropy.

Travis took me first to the museum’s archival storage facility. It is a temperature and humidity controlled warehouse where the Old Baldy Foundation preserves historical manuscripts, photographs, and other artifacts for which the museum currently has no space for public display.

I love visiting places like that. You never what discoveries lie waiting within them.

We could only stay for a short time, but while we were there, Travis showed me the original copy of a famous 1806 pen-and-ink drawing depicting a waterspout at the mouth of the Cape Fear River.

It is an amazing scene that shows the waterspout, the lighthouse that was here at the time, and a seagoing vessel that looks as if its captain has just run the inlet and is headed out to sea.

It is the only known image of Bald Head’s first lighthouse, which was here on the island from 1794 to 1813, other than a little sketch that appeared on a map in 1794.

While we were at the storage facility, Travis also showed me other interesting historical artifacts.

I was especially excited to see a ledger of local shipwrecks that was kept at the Cape Fear Life Saving Station from 1883 to 1906.

The ledger lists every shipwreck on the waters around Bald Head Island during that period.

I would have loved to spend a whole day with the log. It is marvelously detailed. Every entry describes the vessel and its cargo, the captain and crew, the weather or other circumstances that led to the wreck, the rescue attempt, if one could be made, and the losses of cargo and human life.

Just looking through the logbook quickly, I got the feeling that, with time and patience, and a little creativity, you could forge a compelling work of maritime history simply out of the information on its pages.

By the time that Travis pried the logbook from my hands and dragged me kicking and screaming out of the storage facility, it had grown late in the morning.

All the same, we could not resist a short stop at the Old Baldy Lighthouse and Smith Island Museum so that he could show me at least one artifact that was on public display there.

That artifact was a rare gold gilded tunic button from a British officer’s coat dating to the American Revolution. University of North Carolina Wilmington archaeology students discovered the button on the island just a few years ago.

The button’s importance was symbolic. It evokes the experience of the American Revolution on the island.

During the Revolution, British generals established a small fort and hospital called Fort George on the island and used it as a staging ground for blockading American shipping into the Cape Fear River.

The gold button is a relic of that moment, now 250 years ago, back when the United States of America was just being born.

* * *

After my lecture last night, I visited with some friends of friends who are staying out here, but then I had most of the evening to myself.

A little before sunset, I walked out to the ibis rookery, then spent an hour or so strolling along the marshes below the lighthouse.

At dusk I listened to the clapper rails calling back and forth, and when it got darker and they went silent, I just enjoyed the quiet.

While I was down at the marsh, I thought about the places I had gone, the things I learned, and the host of brilliant and dedicated educators with whom I had the chance to work.

They were all just so inspiring. To see how caring they were, and how strong, and how thoroughly they understand how much we look to them in these times – they really did fill me with hope.

As I walked along the marsh in the dark, the lighthouse flickering just across the way,  I lifted a little prayer of gratitude to them all.

And I hoped that they believe what I told them at the end of every event where I had a part, that I will always come when they call.

Guest Commentary

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues.

For the past two weekends, I spent hours pickling okra and beets in the same sturdy glass jars my grandmother once reused season after season. As Granny Jean liked to say, “A good Mason jar never goes out of style.”

Today, that tradition of reuse has been replaced by a throwaway economy built around single-use plastic. If you want to appreciate the sheer absurdity of single-use plastic, try keeping count of every piece of plastic that passes through your hands on a random day. I did it once, and it was eye-opening.

You wake up, use toothpaste out of a plastic tube, squeeze shampoo out of a plastic bottle, pump hand soap from a disposable container, tear open a plastic seal on a coffee bag, and pop a plastic cap off a milk carton, all before 8 a.m. Exhausting just to read, isn’t it? Yet, every day, we use a material — refined from fossil fuels and engineered at a molecular level to last for years and years — for mere seconds, throw it in a bin, and treat it as if it just vanishes.

It doesn’t vanish. Approximately 40% of the plastic produced worldwide each year is for single-use plastic and packaging. Less than 6% of plastic waste in the United States gets recycled, leaving the rest to clog landfills, burn in incinerators, or drift down our waterways. Once in our environment, large plastic packaging bakes in the sun, gets battered by wind and waves, and breaks up into microplastics and nanoplastics. These tiny fragments flood our rivers, seep into our estuaries, and contaminate our drinking water.

The physical toll on marine wildlife is severe. An Oceana evaluation documented nearly 1,800 marine mammals and sea turtles that had swallowed or become entangled in plastic debris in U.S. waters between 2009 and early 2020, the vast majority from species listed as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Even when ingestion isn’t immediately fatal, plastic can block digestive systems, suppress reproductive hormones, and leave marine life vulnerable to disease.

Continuing down this path comes with a staggering price tag. A landmark report from the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability at Duke University found that the “social cost” of plastic to the United States, including healthcare expenses, environmental cleanup, and lost productivity, reaches up to $1.1 trillion annually. Between microplastics contaminating our local waterways and toxic additives in packaging, single-use plastics aren’t cheap; their true costs are quietly passed on to American consumers.

It’s easy to look at the sheer scale of the problem and feel like we’re trapped in a cycle of waste. But we don’t have to live like this. Before plastics dominated the market, people relied on a system built around durable, long-lasting materials and repeat use, just like Granny Jean.

The nostalgic comeback of reuse and refill

Throughout the early to mid-20th century, glass and metal were the gold standards for everyday packaging. Milk bottles and other containers for household staples were routinely returned to local producers, sanitized, refilled, and sent right back to consumers.

Returnable commercial packaging operates on that exact same principle, and it’s making a comeback.

Across North Carolina, we are already seeing reuse systems begin to resurface. On college campuses, dining centers use returnable container systems for meals to eliminate thousands of disposable boxes every semester. Local craft breweries from Wilmington to Asheville have long relied on refillable growler stations, while a growing number of refill shops are bringing the same approach to everyday products like soaps, cleaners, and shampoos.

Because these products require far fewer raw materials and water throughout their operational lifespan, they offer a sensible, profitable path forward. Global economic projections indicate that replacing just 20% of single-use plastic packaging with reusable infrastructure represents a $10 billion business opportunity with major cost-saving benefits for consumers.

Coastal Carolinians have long been ready to address this issue locally. Years ago, Dare County successfully demonstrated that businesses and residents could adapt to a plastic bag phase-out along the Outer Banks to protect their home waters. However, local momentum was forcibly halted when language tucked into a previous state budget effectively handcuffed our cities and towns, barring local governments from enacting ordinances to curb single-use containers and retail packaging.

Phasing out single-use plastic isn’t speculative theory: 15 states and more than 400 counties and cities across the country have already enacted policies to tackle this issue. However, state and local actions alone cannot build out the large-scale system needed to make reuse an accessible option for every business.

Federal action naturally complements the groundswell of local momentum. National infrastructure can make returnable packaging and refillable products viable everywhere.

A pragmatic, bipartisan path forward

Fortunately, the public is ready for a change, and lawmakers are beginning to catch on. According to a nationwide poll conducted for Oceana in 2024 by the nonpartisan polling company Ipsos, 85% of registered U.S. voters support increasing the use of reusable packaging and foodware, while 88% express concern about microplastics in our food, water, and bodies.

Congress has an opportunity to help scale these solutions nationwide through bipartisan legislation like the Research for Environmental Uses and Sustainable Economies (REUSE) Act (House Resolution 7370, Senate Resolution 2110).

The REUSE Act takes pragmatic, evidence-based approach to the plastics problem: it would direct the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to create a report on reuse and refill systems in the U.S in various sectors, such as consumer packaging, personal care products, and wholesale shipping of retail goods. The study would explore viable reuse and refill strategies, the potential of this sector to create jobs, and barriers to implementing reuse and refill infrastructure.

By requiring the EPA to deliver a report within two years after the bill is enacted, the REUSE Act is an opportunity to highlight and expand proven solutions to the plastic pollution crisis. The U.S. Senate has already passed the REUSE Act, and this fall, the House of Representatives must follow suit.

As I sat in my kitchen listening to the satisfying pop of those Mason jar lids sealing one by one, with fingers tightly crossed in hopes that my very first solo batch of pickled okra is actually edible, it hit me just how natural reuse really is. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel to protect our coastal waters and human health; we just need to nationally implement systems that last. Supporting the bipartisan REUSE Act is a straightforward, commonsense step toward building a future that values durability, protects our health, and leaves the throwaway economy behind.

Take action for our coast

Our elected officials need to know that coastal North Carolinians expect plastic-free waters and healthy ecosystems:

• Contact Your Lawmakers: Call or write your U.S. Representatives and urge them to cosponsor the bipartisan REUSE Act.
• Join the Movement: Sign the petition to help reduce plastic pollution in our ocean.

If we’re lucky enough to ever meet one or even two people who have had incredible impacts on the way we go about our day-to-days, we might consider ourselves blessed. For me, fly-fisherman, conservationist, publisher and techno whiz Marshall Cutchin is one of those people.

Cutchin’s influence on fishing and how we use information technology as a learning tool to get better at it for the betterment of us all is immeasurable. The irony is that most of you reading this now may not have heard of him, and the fact you’re reading about it at all is in large measure due to the work he has done.

But let’s take it back to the beginning. This recent resident of the Wilmington area has had a long and varied life in fishing, both as a guide and as an “influencer.” Let’s take a look at where he’s from, where he’s been, and what he’s done for all of us.

He was born on a farm near Charleston, South Carolina, and Cutchin’s early experiences were shaped by his grandparents Joe and Frances Cutchin.

“My grandmother Frances’ house on Isle of Palms was in the family for 40 years or more. We spent most of our summers there fishing, crabbing, and shrimping,” Cutchin said.

Cutchin loved fishing from an early age. “My biggest influence in those years was my grandfather Joe, whose favorite thing in the world was to fish from our dock,” he said. 

In later years, he counts two influential Key West-based fishing guides as prime examples.

“Jan Isley, the Key West guide whom I first booked while I was still in college, was the one who eventually convinced me to get my captain’s license,” Cutchin said. “Then, once I had really committed to being a skiff guide, Steve Huff was a big inspiration: He set a standard for the work that I spent the rest of my career measuring myself against.”

For the next 11 years, Marshall spent more than 300 days on the water poling a flats skiff for, “… permit, tarpon, and bonefish, with additional trips guiding and fishing in Belize, Mexico, and the Amazon. I once counted my daily poling distance during permit season, and it averaged out to 13 miles a day.”

While Cutchin’s never been much for joining committees, “I’d rather add my voice where it’s directly useful,” he did get involved with conservation organizations in which he could see how they involved the water he was working on directly.

“A couple of years into my guiding career I became a founding board member of Reef Relief, the Key West reef-conservation group that was instrumental in the push for what became the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.”

This effort was met with influential recognition, “In 1991 we received a Point of Light Award from President George H. W. Bush.”

In 1997, Cutchin left Key West, and eventually ended up in the tech industry hub of Cary, where he began the life that he’d become known for and the work that would change the fishing community as we know it.

“May of 2003,” Cutchin explained, “I started MidCurrent, an online fly-fishing media channel, back when ‘blog’ was still a word you had to explain to people. Within a year, it had become the most-read fly-fishing site on the web, and I’ve been involved with it for more than two decades now.”

Midcurrent is still a powerhouse publication for fly-fishers, and it has outlasted numerous competitors. Cutchin said that this success stems from being committed to the founding core principles: “Staying focused on service to fly-anglers and always trying to provide consistently helpful information.”

These days, Cutchin is still the publisher of Midcurrent, “but I no longer own the media company. I help steer it, including our membership community, Midcurrent Plus.”

From a technology standpoint, Cutchin is closely watching the development of artificial intelligence. AI is still in a transitional era, he said.

“I’ve been helping small businesses and nonprofits figure out how to put AI to work, which turns out to be the same kind of translation job I did in the early days of the web,” Cutchin said. And while it may be a great technology leap, we need to be careful, he said.

“There are obvious downsides in terms of environmental impact, and it remains to be seen how much good can come out of having intelligent models help solve our most difficult problems. But the potential is there.”

Cutchin has been in publishing for a long time and sees AI usage in publishing as an almost inevitable future but, “As someone whose first publishing project was set in hot metal type on an old German Linotype machine, it’s been fascinating to watch.”

As for fishing, he still fishes the Keys several times a year.

“I do miss it like crazy,” he said.

Cutchin also has been trying to get settled in at his new home near Wilmington.

“We’ve only been here a year, so I’m doing what I tell everyone else to do by learning one piece of water slowly,” he said.

There’s a good chance he’s going to have as much help as he wants from some guy he knows.

“You rarely get the chance to learn a new area from scratch more than once in a life. I intend to enjoy it,” he said. 

Cutchin is a fly-fisherman first, he said. “My favorite way to fish is sight-fishing in shallow water, either poling or wading, one fish at a time, where you see everything happen — or fail to.” 

It’s the ability to see things that counts.

“There’s no place I’d rather be than up on a big grass flat with a bright sun and strong breeze hunting for permit, or pushing a skiff with laid-up tarpon around,” he said, explaining that careful attention to details is the most important skill to have.

“The anglers who catch fish consistently are the ones who notice things, like what the tide is actually doing versus what the chart says, which way the light is working, where the bait went, and what changed in the last 20 minutes. At some point, fishing stops being long stretches of boredom punctuated by excitement, and becomes something better: a state where every moment might be about to show you something, and deserves a calm, clear focus.”

The best days are the ones in which we decide what the day means, he said.

“What I remember from almost 12 years of guiding are hardly ever the big-number days. It was the days in which we read the conditions right, worked hard, trusted each other, and got what the day was willing to give,” said Cutchin. “If a successful day means a specific fish of a specific size, you might have a few good days a year. If it means paying real attention to a piece of wild water with people you like, you’ll rarely have a bad one.”

Local governments from the 20 coastal counties are invited to participate in the second of two North Carolina Marine Debris Action Plan workshops aimed at increasing the resiliency and enhancing the management of residential docks and piers and abandoned or derelict vessels in their communities.

Hosted by the North Carolina Coastal Federation and the North Carolina Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Research Reserve, these workshops will provide crucial resources and knowledge to implement effective inspection programs for docks and ordinances addressing abandoned and derelict vessels, aka ADVs, in their jurisdictions.

The workshop will be held 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sept. 15 at the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Washington Regional Office (Hearing Room), 943 Washington Square Mall.

”Local governments are often the first call when an ADV or floating dock appears on the waterway or in the marsh,” stated Coastal Federation Marine Debris Program Director Ted Wilgis. Providing toolkits with resources, contacts and guides to respond to these issues is the goal for this workshop.

The North Carolina Marine Debris Action Plan workshops will provide local governments in the 20 coastal counties with resources for implementing an inspection program for residential docks and piers and for developing and implementing a program or ordinance regulating these vessels.

Since 2019, more than 6.3 million pounds of large-scale marine debris and ADVs have been removed from North Carolina coastal waters. While progress is being made in the removal and reduction of marine debris and abandoned vessels, it is much less expensive and easier on the environment to prevent the occurrence of these types of debris. Enhancing local governments’ abilities and tools to proactively manage residential docks and piers and ADVs in their jurisdictions will greatly expand marine debris prevention efforts, organizers said.

The workshop is offered for local governments, agency partners, marine contractors, engineers, community leaders and other interested individuals. Participants will get opportunities to learn about and discuss the following:

• Incorporating resilient residential docks and piers into local building codes.
• Addressing ADVs through ordinances, the state program, and accessing support.
• Engagement opportunities through the North Carolina Marine Debris Action Plan: 2026-2030.
• Resources, guides, and toolkits for adopting and implementing their own programs.
• Panel discussions will feature local and regional stakeholders sharing real-world experiences, implementation challenges, lessons learned and opportunities for continued collaboration.

Lunch will be provided, along with coffee and light refreshments in the morning. Full or partial mileage reimbursements may be available.

Continuing education credits available include the following:

• American Institute of Certified Planners, 4 Certification Maintenance credits: Wilmington, ID 9332178; Washington, ID 9332180.
• Certificate of Participation, 4 hours, provided to self-file for other professional credits such as engineer PDHs.

The workshop was also offered in Wilmington for local governments, agency partners, marine contractors, engineers, community leaders and other interested individuals in August.

These workshops are made possible by support from a 2023 award from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Marine Debris Program and support from the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation.

Register for the Washington Workshop.

The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

Get a rare glimpse of avian field research in action as the nonprofit Cape Fear Bird Observatory is set to host free public birdbanding demonstrations this month in New Hanover County.

The organization’s monthly painted bunting banding demonstration is from 7-11 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 12, at the flagpole in the park marina at Carolina Beach State Park, 1010 State Park Road. Organizers note that, as with all wildlife research, painted bunting activity is subject to natural variation and cannot be guaranteed.

A free banding demonstration is also slated for 7 to 10 a.m. Sept. 20 at Greenfield Lake in Wilmington.

Attendees are welcome to join at any point during the morning to learn about how the organization studies and processes the birds that call the park home. Painted buntings not included this time, organizers said.

“The public is always welcome to stop by while we are banding, but these advertised events are the best time to visit, with plenty of CFBO folks on hand to answer questions and show you what we do,” the group said in its email newsletter.

Founded in 2020, the Cape Fear Bird Observatory strives to promote conservation of birds and their habitats in North Carolina through research, education, outreach, and community involvement. The organization actively works to better understand the avian communities of the Cape Fear region by monitoring migration, studying regional species, collaborating with environmental groups, and exploring the outdoors with local school children.

This demonstration is organized as a way for people to connect with their city, its parks, and the wildlife that these green spaces support.

A group of more than 80 volunteers recently descended upon locations across Pender County here on the coast, as well as sites in Bladen, Columbus, Cumberland and Robeson counties, to participate in the most recent “Bat Blitz,” a three-night species inventory event across North Carolina’s coastal plain.

This particular Bat Blitz was co-organized by Lisa Gatens, the collection manager in mammalogy at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, and Ed Corey, the inventory biologist for North Carolina State Parks. Like past Bat Blitzes, it is hosted under the umbrella of the Southeastern Bat Diversity Network, a regional consortium dedicated to bat conservation.

“This is the third one that we have organized together, and this particular one that’s housed in Singletary Lake State Park (in Bladen County), that’s our home base,” Gatens said. “We did this 10 years ago, and so in part we are going to be revisiting sites that we surveyed then, and we’ve added lots of new sites too.” 

Most of the participants are biologists from the North Carolina Bat Working Group, an organization focused on bat research and conservation. During the blitz, they gathered a great quantity of information on species diversity, population numbers, age, sex and general health.

They also checked for signs of white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that has caused millions of bat deaths nationwide. The disease itself won’t be present during the warmer months, but Blitz participants examined bats for physical damage indicative of the fungus. White-nose has only ever been recorded in North Carolina’s mountain region, but because all bats are migratory to a certain degree, it’s something that researchers are always looking out for.

The exact nature of bats’ migratory patterns is something of an unknown, however. Some species only travel short distances and will return to the same roosting spots on a seasonal basis. But others, like the silver-haired, eastern red, Seminoles, and hoary bats, are more solitary and prefer to roost in trees, making them more difficult to track. And while these species are far less likely to contact white nose syndrome, they are more susceptible to other environmental hazards. 

“Those bats are actually impacted by poor placement of wind turbines. So if you have ridgetop wind turbines, that can impact migratory bats. It can also impact birds, too. But wind turbines can have severe effects on migratory bat species,” Corey said.

Bats are an incredibly valuable part of their ecosystems. They serve an important role as pollinators, and the economic benefits of healthy bat populations are documented. A single bat can consume its body weight in insects every night, which can be especially beneficial for farmers dealing with agricultural pests.

But Gatens believes that bats’ value lies beyond their monetary benefits. “They’re not doing this for us per se, and their value is inherent. It isn’t in what they do for us, in my humble opinion,” she said.

“A blitz is a way to efficiently cover a lot of area in a short period of time and gather an awful lot of data,” Gatens said. “If we don’t have a before and after, then how can we say what the impact is.” 

Gatens loves the blitzes for many reasons, not least of all because she just loves the work.

“You can walk along a trail during the day, but when you’re out there at night, everything looks and sounds and smells and feels different than it did in the day, and you’re experiencing it in a completely different way,” she said. “You get to work with fantastic people, and it really is just loads of fun.” 

Corey agreed. “I love it. It’s like Christmas every time you get to it. You never know what you’re going to see, and it’s just great to see. You know, great to see how people do things. So you can go out with 10 different people, 10 different leaders, and see 10 different ways of catching bats.”

The Army Corps of Engineers has released a draft environmental impact statement regarding the effects of North Topsail Beach’s proposed, unfunded inlet and shoreline protection plan that includes as its preferred alternative construction of a terminal groin at New River Inlet.

The Corps’ Wilmington District is soliciting public comments on the draft statement through Oct. 19. Input received is to be used to evaluate the proposed alternatives for a roughly 3.2-square-mile study area at the north end of Topsail Island in Onslow County.

A public hearing is scheduled for 6 p.m. Sept. 22 at the town hall, 2008 Loggerhead Court, North Topsail Beach. Attendees may submit written comments and/or verbal comments regarding the proposed alternative Nos. 1-5 of the town’s New River Inlet Master Management Plan during the hearing. Submit comments online via the federal Regulatory Request System.

You may also submit comments to Emily Hughes at U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Wilmington District, Attention: Emily Hughes, 69 Darlington Ave., Wilmington, NC 28403.

The study area encompasses the town’s 1.5-mile-long north-end reach of Topsail Island and the milelong south-end reach of Onslow Beach, with both backed by shallow lagoonal estuaries and tidal salt marsh complex that extends to the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. The New River Inlet system drains the New River and connects the back-barrier estuaries with the Atlantic Ocean.

The Corps notes that the project falls within its jurisdiction as it would affect waters of the United States and navigable waters of the United States associated with New River Inlet and the Atlantic Ocean.

In addition to the town’s preferred alternative, options include no action, or status quo; abandon and retreat with no federally authorized beach or inlet management by the town; beach nourishment only; and beach nourishment and terminal groin.

The preferred Alternative 5 would include beach nourishment, terminal groin, and inlet management.

More detailed descriptions of each alternative are in Section 3 of the draft statement.

Comments received will be used in the development of the final environmental impact statement expected to be released in March 2027. All comments received will become part of the administrative record and are subject to public release under the Freedom of Information Act.

Featured Image

A squall line moves quickly across the Newport River toward Bogue Banks and Onslow Bay in Carteret County Saturday afternoon, when the National Weather Service says the high in the Newport-Morehead City area reached 93. Temperatures Sunday and Monday were cooler, in the mid- to upper-80s, but highs in the 90s are forecast to return later this week, and fall begins in two weeks. Photo: Dylan Ray

When the North Carolina Aquariums in Roanoke Island, Pine Knoll Shores and Fort Fisher first began public outreach as marine resources centers in 1976, the facilities were as small as the budget.

Now, five decades and multiple renovations later, the three facilities and Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head, which joined the N.C. Aquariums divisions in 2011, can accommodate more than $1.4 million visitors a year.

With the 50th anniversary of the Roanoke Island location opening on Sept. 9, 1976, and Fort Fisher and Pine Knoll Shores on Sept. 10, 1976, N.C. Aquariums division has been celebrating five decades of “inspiring wonder” with a year of events.

“Honoring the rich 50‑year history of the North Carolina Aquariums with a celebration at the place where it all began — the NC Aquarium on Roanoke Island — fills us with tremendous pride,” Aquarium Division Director Hap Fatzinger told Coastal Review Friday.

“It reaffirms the partnerships we’ve built, the connections we’ve strengthened, and the meaningful impacts we’ve made across the state. As we commemorate this milestone, we’re also looking ahead, expanding our focus toward even greater opportunities that will shape the future of conservation in North Carolina,” he added.

When these three locations first opened, exhibits highlighted habitats, education and research, underwater archaeology, barrier island ecosystems, fossils, regional fish life, touch pools, guided marsh tours, seafood harvesting and insect control, according to information from the aquarium.

The facilities were renamed in 1986 to what they’re known as today, the North Carolina Aquariums at Roanoke Island, Fort Fisher and Pine Knoll Shores, and transitioned from the North Carolina Department of Administration to what is now the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

The nonprofit North Carolina Aquarium Society formed in 1986, as well, and continues to support the aquarium system as its fundraising partner.

“It is an honor to celebrate five decades of inspiring wonder, saving species and enriching the understanding of our aquatic ecosystems alongside our partners, the Aquarium Division,” Society President Liz Baird said Friday. “We are grateful to the donors and members who have helped build this legacy and are supporting us into the future. Fifty years is a remarkable milestone to reach, and we look forward to reaching many more.”

Jay Barnes, a name that has been associated with the state aquariums for decades, began his career at the Pine Knoll Shores aquarium in 1980. He was promoted to director 1989 and retired in 2009, when he transitioned to the nonprofit support partner, the North Carolina Aquarium Society. He became CEO and president, retiring from that role in 2023.

He told Coastal Review in a past interview for an article the 50th anniversary of Pine Knoll Shores aquarium that when he began at the aquarium 40 years ago, all three facilities were modest in size and budget, operating on small staffs who created the few exhibits that began drawing in visitors.

“We became accredited in 1990 with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums,” Barnes said about the international organization that strive to promote excellence and visitor safety and staff safety and animal welfare all across the world. “It’s a very high bar to be an accredited zoo or aquarium.”

In the mid-1990s there was momentum to renovate and expand the three sites to accommodate the growing number of visitors. The three sites were expanded in the early 2000s to roughly three times their original footprint and the exhibits were updated.

Barnes said these renovations in the early 2000s offered a new generation of aquarium visitors a new experience.

“We all recognize that when you have an attraction like the zoo or the aquariums, you have an educational mission,” he said, but these also attract visitors, “which generates support for the coastal community, and, that economic impact is not a small thing. Yes, we always have billed ourselves as conservation and educational facilities, but we recognize that along with that comes the joy that people have of being able to experience a place like the aquarium while they’re on vacation.”

The Roanoke Island aquarium was renovated first. The site was closed for about two years while the 15,000-square-foot facility was expanded to 61,000 square feet on 16 acres on the Croatan Sound. The destination reopened in 2000, with the 285,000-gallon Graveyard of the Atlantic exhibit as the centerpiece.

Fort Fisher was also expanded to around triple its size and reopened in 2002 and Pine Knoll Shores was renovated then reopened in 2006. The state is working on another round of renovations.

The Fort Fisher facility is currently closed and has been since earlier this year while a 30-month renovation. The aquarium has a presence at Independence Mall in Wilmington called Discovery Bay that has ambassador animal encounters, marine life habitats, environmental education programs and a gift shop.

Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head became part of the aquarium system in 2011. The pier built in 1939 was the first on the Outer Banks and has been rebuilt several times since because of storm damage. The now 1,000-foot-long concrete platform offers a place to fish and to learn.

Roanoke Island Aquarium Director Larry Warner joined the aquarium staff in February of 2010 as exhibits curator.

During his almost seven years in that role, he said he worked closely with various departments to accomplish “such impactful additions as the Soundside Pier,” which he said allows “guests access to the waterfront and a bevy of new educational programming opportunities.” The 200-foot pier and gazebo that stretches over the Croatan Sound was build in 2013.

Warner was also involved in getting the 3,000-square-foot Sea Turtle Assistance and Rehabilitation, or STAR, Center opened in 2014, and in 2016 a $6.75 million interior renovation of the entire facility. The STAR Center is the onsite sea turtle rescue and rehabilitation hospital.

“It was a time of tremendous growth for the aquarium,” Warner said.

He left for a few years in 2016 when he was director of exhibits at Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut but returned to Manteo 2019 to serve as the aquarium director, “and I couldn’t have been more delighted to return to a facility I was intimately familiar with and a community that I had come to love and value.”

Warner added that he celebrated seven years as director just last week and he is “as excited today, as we celebrate 50 years of the NC Aquariums, as I was when I began in 2010.”

The aquariums and Jennette’s Pier “have embarked on an exciting new strategic plan that will help lead us in education and conservation for many years to come,” he continued.

The “amazing and dedicated” teams at the Roanoke Island aquarium, as well as those at each of the other facilities and within the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources “makes every day worth pushing our great new mission forward as ‘we inspire care and conservation of nature by connecting people with the aquatic world!’”

Roanoke Island Aquarium Communications Manager Andi DiDario said that it has been “really exciting to look back at 50 years of connecting people with aquatic life and our coastal environments, while also looking ahead to many more years of fulfilling our mission and welcoming people through our doors.”

Weekend celebrations

Pine Knoll Shores aquarium celebrated the golden anniversary with a birthday bash in July and staff at the Roanoke Island location are gearing up for a week of the same, starting with special programming included with general admission Sept. 9 to recognize the anniversary date 50 years ago.

Organizers said the daytime program on Wednesday will feature interactive stations, shipwreck stories featuring divers speaking with guests from inside the 285,000‑gallon shark habitat, creature features with animal ambassadors, and other special experiences throughout the aquarium.

That weekend, the “Sea‑lebration by the Sound” is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. Included with admission, there will be face painting, sandcastle building, craft and creation stations, an inflatable slide, carnival‑style games, a scavenger hunt, prizes, photo opportunities with the giant inflatable crab, and regular programming such as creature features with animal ambassadors. The on-site Shark Bites Snack Bar will have an exclusive menu including special root beer floats and corn dog bites for purchase.

The aquarium is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day. Organizers recommend reserving their general admission ticket in advance online, visit the website.

That evening the “Golden Tides: Celebrating 50 Years of the NC Aquarium on Roanoke Island” will give guests a chance to visit touch pools, encounter aquatic animals, watch the sunset and observe a live painter creating an original work inspired by the aquarium. Tickets are $75 for nonmembers and $65 for members and can be purchased on the website. Must be 21 or older.

“Golden Ties” is the first event of its kind at the aquarium. The 21-and-up celebration “gives adults a chance to experience the Aquarium in a completely different way” and features live music, sustainable seafood, an oyster roast station, a raw bar, drinks, and adult beverages sponsored through the North Carolina Aquarium Society, DiDario said.

Each ticket for the event sponsored by the aquarium society includes two complimentary drink tickets, unlimited seafood and hors d’oeuvres, after‑hours access to the aquarium, exclusive 50th anniversary gifts including a commemorative koozie, pint glass, and specialty photo keepsake, and access to all scheduled entertainment.

“We’re really excited to offer both events and celebrate the Aquarium’s 50th anniversary with our community,” DiDario said.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation announced Friday that its Ferry Division will temporarily suspend service on the Southport-Fort Fisher ferry route beginning Sept. 12 to allow crews to make critical repairs to the ferry ramp at the Southport Terminal.

Officials said the work will complete the ramp repair process that began in March and is necessary to ensure the continued safe and reliable operation of the route.

The repairs will require the Southport-Fort Fisher route to suspend operations for no more than four days. Ferry service will resume its regular off-season schedule no later than Sept. 16.

Travelers who normally use the Southport-Fort Fisher ferry should plan accordingly while the route is out of service.

The Ferry Division said it “appreciates passengers’ patience and understanding while crews complete this important work.”

The North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries has released its annual review of scientific and management information for managed coastal species in the state.

The 2025 Fishery Management Plan Review includes a dozen species or groups of species that are managed under DMF-implemented fishery management plans, 21 species or species groups that are managed by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission or federal councils, and two species that are managed by N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission rule.

The review compiles information collected during the previous calendar year and includes fishery-dependent data gathered from commercial and recreational fishermen as well as data collected by researchers in the field.

Summaries of life histories, stock assessments, fisheries and management of each species or species group is also included. The review is in addition to the comprehensive management plan reviews conducted every five years for the 12 state-managed species or groups of species.

The division notes this year’s review entails a number of highlights, including the following:

• No immediate need for management changes for bay scallop, leading division officials to request delaying the next bay scallop management plan comprehensive review until 2027.
• No required management changes in the state for red drum. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s 2024 regional benchmark stock assessment indicated that the north stock of red drum is not overfished and that overfishing is not occurring. However, the assessment noted concerning trends if fishing mortality. Changes in management that may result from the North Carolina red drum management plan review will have to comply with requirements of the ASMFC plan.
• Despite a cold stun event in 2025, indices in the spring and fall of that year showed higher relative abundance of spotted seatrout than the timeseries average. Under an amendment adopted by the state Marine Fisheries Commission in March 2025, all harvest of spotted seatrout will close through June 30 if a significant cold stun event occurs.
• Data from recreational and commercial fisheries show an increase in the proportion of larger southern flounder, a positive sign for that species’ stock. The division’s fishery-independent surveys indicate fluctuations in abundance indices, with no increasing or decreasing trends.
• Commercial landings of striped mullet have remained high since an amendment was adopted in May 2024 to end overfishing and rebuilt the stock. The review found that relative abundance has increased, which may correlate with high landings. DMF plans to further review and analyze available striped mullet data to assess trends and stock characteristics until a stock assessment for this species is scheduled.
• Commercial landings, trips and fishery-independent indices of juvenile blue crab abundance show declines, measures that support the 2018 stock assessment findings that juvenile recruitment is in decline and has remained low. Results of the division’s benchmark stock assessment for blue crab are expected by late this year.

A committee of the Environmental Management Commission when it meets this month is to hear progress on the 2026 draft update to the state’s long-term plan to protect and preserve habitats that support coastal fisheries.

Committee meetings are scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. Wednesday and the full commission is to meet at 9 a.m. Thursday, both in the Archdale building in Raleigh. Details on how the public can stream the meeting online, the full agenda and meeting materials are posted on the commission’s website.

North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality staff are to present the status of the Coastal Habitat Protection Plan, or CHPP, to the water quality committee during its meeting at 12:30 p.m. Sept. 9.

CHPP is a mandate of the Marine Fisheries Act of 1997. The law directs NCDEQ staff to draft a plan that the Marine Fisheries, Coastal Resources and Environmental Management commissions adopt. These three commissions set policies and rules that NCDEQ’s divisions of marine fisheries, coastal management and water quality implement and enforce.

The first plan was released in 2005 and the five-year updates required by the law were released in 2010, 2016, 2021, and the 2026 update is underway. Staff presented the current draft to the Marine Fisheries Commission on Aug. 20, and to the Coastal Resources Commission on Aug. 26. A similar presentation is expected at the water quality committee meeting. The three commissions are to give feedback on the content, which will be incorporated and presented again before the members vote to send the document out for public comment.

The water allocation committee begins the day of meetings at 9 a.m. Sept. 9 to hear from Division of Water Resources staff about harmful algal blooms, including what they are, the state’s monitoring and reporting system, and subsequent action for mitigation.

The groundwater and waste management committee that follows at 10:30 a.m. is to consider sending to the full commission proposed technical edits for existing rules on soil remediation and groundwater quality standards that are undergoing the required 10-year periodic review process.

When the full Environmental Management Commission meets at 9 a.m. Thursday, members are to consider a handful of technical rule changes, including changes the language for national ambient air quality standards.

The Clean Air Act requires the national standards, or NAAQS, to be updated every five years. Currently, these standards are listed in the state’s rule text, and each time the Environmental Protection Agency adjusts those standards, the commission has to go through the rulemaking process to reflect those changes. The proposed amendment removes the list and includes the language, “adopt by reference the National Ambient Air Quality Standards in 40 CFR Part 50, including subsequent amendments and editions.” Referencing the title of the standards in the Code of Federal Regulations eliminates the need to go through the rulemaking process each time the EPA changes the numbers.

The commission will also consider sending to public comment proposed air quality rule updates that are mostly technical edits or minor amendments, and proposed amendments to mitigation services rules going through the 10-year periodic rules review process, and hear information items about proposed stormwater rules and reclassifying the Yadkin Pee-Dee River Basin.

MANTEO — On an oceanfront beach where houses collapse and scatter their debris on the shoreline, the remains of their septic tanks sitting for months or even years in the swash and littering the sand adds insult to injury.

Exposed and broken wastewater treatment systems on eroded ocean shorelines in North Carolina have become an intractable public health and safety hazard, but the current regulations, while ineffective, have been stubbornly difficult to update. 

That persistent challenge was illustrated last week during a meeting of the state’s Coastal Resources Commission, when two proposed septic rule amendments were under consideration. But after much wrangling, the measures could not be wrestled to the ground, and the panel decided to table them for further review.

The nut of the problem is how the commission rules should restrict or permit repair and replacement of septic systems that become exposed.

“Under the existing framework, we’re seeing systems fail, be repaired, remain exposed, and subsequently fail again,” Cameron Luck, coastal policy analyst with the Division of Coastal Management, told commissioners during the Aug. 27 commission meeting in Dare County.

“The recurrence cycle is one of the primary issues these amendments are intending to address.”

In his presentation to the panel about the proposed amendments, Luck pointed to images of partly submerged septic tanks and debris from the systems scattered in the sand.

“You can see that as the shoreline is migrated landward, wastewater infrastructure that was once in compliance with setback rules is now exposed directly on the beach,” he said.

Currently, even imminently threatened structures can remain on the beach for up to eight years, barring it subsiding or collapsing, Luck said. The rule doesn’t force immediate removal of exposed systems; typically, the systems were in compliance with setback rules before the forces of erosion ate away the shoreline and the first, second or third lines of vegetation. 

“While Rodanthe and Buxton have provided the most visible and well-documented examples, this isn’t necessarily an issue that’s unique to Dare County,” Luck said. “The underlying concern is continued shoreline erosion.”

As explained in division documents, the proposed amendments to the existing rule would address repeated failures of onsite wastewater systems on the beach “due to shoreline migration,” while maintaining consistency with the state Department of Health and Human Services’ authority over the permitting of the systems. 

Otherwise, the proposals don’t change existing requirements for siting septic or commission standards for new developments within Ocean Hazard Areas. A repair or replacement of systems on the ocean side of vegetation or other appropriate lines would require a Coastal Area Management Act permit, but maintenance work would not need a CAMA permit. 

“Right now, the septic tank is considered part of the house — that’s one of the things that we talked about the last meeting was whether to separate the value of tank to its own entity versus the house,” said Commission Chair Renee Cahoon.

Cahoon later suggested that the commission needs to decide whether to make that change. “Right now, it’s always going to be a repair permit because the value of the house is always going to be worth more than the septic tank system,” she said. “If it’s not, then something’s wrong.”

Another complication to rulemaking is that the vegetation line and the demarcation of the public trust beach are not necessary the same, Cahoon said. In Rodanthe, for instance, “you have third-row houses that are considered landward of the vegetation line, but they’re not really on the beach themselves,” she said. “Whereas the first-row house probably is on the beach.”

In addition to the federal, state and county stakeholders, not to mention the private property owners, year-round residents and businesses in the villages, there are numerous nonprofits and special interest groups that have weighed in on how to improve the rules for the oceanfront water systems. 

Members themselves had a myriad of questions and comments about how to tweak the proposed amendments, and how inclusive or broad the rules should be, and even when failed systems should run out of chances.

“There are innovative systems that can be permitted … not everything is acceptable to repair,” Cahoon said.

And it is certainly unacceptable to allow damaged or abandoned systems to stay for years on a public trust beach.

“You just can’t keep septic tanks on the beach,” she said.

The commission agreed to ask Division of Coastal Management staff to review the amendments and return revised versions in time for the next meeting in October.

Coastal Review will not publish Monday in recognition of Labor Day.

Brock Davenport of Beaufort is the new state recordholder for his recent catch jolthead porgy, aka Calamus bajonado.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Marine Fisheries announced Thursday that Davenport’s 16-pounder was recently certified the new state record.

Davenport caught the fish Aug. 9, bumping the previous state record jolthead porgy Randy Brock landed in 2015 that weighed 14 pounds, 14 ounces.

Davenport was fishing out of Wrightsville Beach with his friend, Jeffery Thomas, using cigar minnows for bait when he landed the fish on 80-pound braid with a Penn Slammer rod and a Penn 750 reel. The fish measured 29.5 inches total length, from the tip of the nose to the stretched end of the tail, and had a girth of 24 inches. Davenport said it took about 10 minutes to reel in the fish.

Jolthead porgy are commonly associated with hard-bottom and coral habitats and feed primarily on crabs, mollusks and sea urchins. Unlike many other reef fish, large adult jolthead porgy are generally solitary, rather than schooling.

The jolthead porgy can be identified by a long, rounded forehead, a blue line below the eyes and orange corners in their mouths. In the Atlantic waters off the Southeast, jolthead porgy are managed by the U.S. South Atlantic Fishery Management Council as part of the Snapper-Grouper Fishery Management Plan.

For regulation information, including requirements for a descending device for Jolthead Porgy and other snapper/grouper species, visit the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s regulations webpage.

For more information on records for state saltwater fish, go to the division’s State Saltwater Records webpage or contact the North Carolina Saltwater Fishing Tournament staff at saltwater.citations@deq.nc.gov.

Local governments and federally and state recognized tribes in North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties may apply for state funding to help communities design and implement resilience-strengthening projects.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management is accepting applications from municipal and county governments, and tribes that have completed the first two phases, or an equivalent process, of the North Carolina Resilient Coastal Communities Program. Applicants must submit proposed projects that have been identified as a priority project in their communities.

The division has about $2.5 million in funding for phases 3 and 4 of the program, one that was established to help coastal communities in the state address flooding, storms and other coastal hazards through a locally driven process.

Grant funding for phase 3 supports the engineering, design and permitting of priority resilience projects that have been identified by communities and may also be considered for proposals to develop ordinances or policies that strengthen community resilience.

Construction and the implementation of projects that reduce risks to critical assets, people and property from coastal hazards, including flooding, sea-level rise and storm surge, will be funded under phase 4. Those projects should incorporate, where appropriate, natural or nature-based solutions including wetland and stream restoration, flood mitigation, living shoreline stabilization and stormwater management.

The division will host an applicant webinar 2-3:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 13, to provide information about the grants, application process and requirements, and answer questions from prospective applicants. Registration is required.

The application deadline is 5 p.m. Nov. 10.

The Resilient Coastal Communities Program has over the past five years has awarded 91 grants totaling more $16.3 million and helped 60 communities complete resilience strategies.

Under the program, participating communities are provided technical assistance and funding to identify vulnerabilities, develop resilience strategies and advance projects that address local priorities.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation has created an online resource to support communities that want to better understand and respond to abandoned and derelict vessel issues.

“The Abandoned and Derelict Vessels: Toolkit for Local Governments” was created “to provide a guide for local governments as they work to address the many issues surrounding abandoned vessels, including responsible removal and disposal, as well as preventative approaches that can help reduce the number of ADVs,” the organization said Thursday in a release. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

The toolkit offers a step-by-step guide to help understand the roles and authorities involved with managing abandoned vessels, along with information on how to respond to calls about ADVs, planning for removals, and helpful advice from other local governments that have their own successful program. 

“Local governments are on the front lines when it comes to responding to abandoned and derelict vessels,” Coastal Management Program Director Kerri Allen explained. “But knowing where to start can be challenging. We created this toolkit to make that process easier by providing practical resources, lessons learned, and tools that communities can use to develop effective abandoned and derelict vessel programs that fit their unique needs.” 

Abandoned and derelict vessels can create navigational hazards, threaten water quality, damage sensitive coastal habitats, impact tourism and waterfront economies, and become costly burdens for state agencies, local governments, and property owners. 

“Almost 500 abandoned and derelict vessels have been removed from North Carolina’s coastal waters over the last seven years by local governments, state agencies, and the Coastal Federation,” Marine Debris Program Director Ted Wilgis said in a press release. “Each vessel removal is a complex, lengthy, and expensive process.” 

The toolkit also has a checklist of items to have and consider before adopting a local abandoned and derelict vessel ordinance and stresses the need for community education around the topic.

“While significant progress is being made through the cooperation of stakeholders, the ADV problem persists. Even when there are no major storms, dozens of vessels are abandoned each year due to the costs of storage, maintenance, and insurance. Providing resources and support to local governments will help prevent more ADVs and streamline the removal process,” Wilgis said.

The toolkit was made possible with the 2023 award from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Marine Debris Program.

WASHINGTON – Five days a week, John Richards drives the roughly 15-minute commute from his rural Beaufort County home to the Bayview Ferry Terminal or, as he calls it, the “working man’s ferry.”

The half-hour ferry ride across the Pamlico River to Aurora shaves off about 45 minutes that Richards would otherwise have to drive to get to his contracting job at Nutrien. A three-hour roundtrip commute from his home in Pinetown around the river to the phosphate plant would simply not be sustainable, he said.

“Working over there is the best opportunity I’ve got,” Richards said.

Like so many Americans, Richards and his wife feel the pinch at the grocery store and gas pump.

The young couple must now absorb another expense: mandatory ferry tolls.

“It’s like the man sticking it to you again,” Richards said.

The Richards were among a little more than 30 people who flowed in and out of a public listening session North Carolina Ferry Division officials hosted at Beaufort County Community College on Tuesday evening.

It was the first in a series of meetings the division is holding through next week to get public feedback on the new law that mandates tolling all ferry routes by Jan. 1, 2027. Remaining meetings are Sept. 3 at Knotts Island Elementary School, Sept. 8 at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras and Sept. 9 at Ocracoke School.

Related: Officials plan public meetings to address new ferry tolls

The division operates four untolled ferry routes: Bayview-Aurora, Cherry Branch-Minnesott Beach, Currituck-Knotts Island and Hatteras-Ocracoke.

The state budget that legislators adopted earlier this summer is scant on details. Toll-generated revenue may be used only to buy new ferries.

The law does extend an offer to all permanent residents of the state’s 20 coastal counties and active-duty service members the option to buy a $150 annual commuter pass. That cost is per vehicle.

But other details, such as rates for individual trips and how payment systems will be implemented, have yet to be hashed out.

“We’re here to listen” to suggestions on those topics, N.C. Ferry Division Director Jed Dixon said at the meeting.

Residents who attend the listening sessions are given the opportunity to fill out a comment form, which asks questions including which ferry route the person most often uses, how frequently they use that route, how tolls will affect their daily travel, their preferred method of paying for tolls, the highest one-way toll they’d be willing to pay, suggestions regarding passes and accounts, and impacts they expect their community to experience.

Aurora resident Sherri Hollister said the little, historic town she calls home depends on tourists who flock to nearby beaches throughout the summer.

“We’re trying to build up the town,” she said. “If somebody has to pay for a ferry will they come to our town? The ferry is a tourist attraction in and of itself.”

But ferries are also the lifeblood for commuters going back and forth to work, taking their children to school, and going to medical appointments, she said.

“There has to be some kind of relief program for low-income families,” Hollister said of toll rates for permanent residents. “If not, they’re just pushing us away.”

Nearly a dozen coastal counties have adopted resolutions asking Gov. Josh Stein and state transportation officials to waive all tolls ferry system wide for vehicles registered in counties with ferry terminals.

Dare County commissioners on Tuesday joined Beaufort, Brunswick, Carteret, Craven, Currituck, Hyde, New Hanover and Pamlico counties in making that request.

The state ferry division operates 23 ferry vessels, which transport more than 1.4 million passengers each year.

Customers vary by route. For example, 82% of Hatteras-Ocracoke ferry riders are visitors, according to the division.

Meanwhile, 92% of riders on the Aurora-Bayview ferry route are residents, as are 80% of Cherry Branch-Minnesott Beach ferry customers.

“I vowed till my dying day to fight this thing,” Oriental resident Larry Summers said on Tuesday. “The ferries have to be sustained another way.”

He blames state funding cuts on the division’s aging ferry fleet, writing in a local publication that those funding shortfalls “appear to be, largely self-inflicted.”

“They did this to themselves,” he said. “They’ve been cutting the corporate income and individual income tax rates for about 10 years.”

Greg Piner, also of Oriental, wrote in a guest column published by TownDock.net that the simplest solution to fund new ferries is to raise the gas tax by one-tenth of a cent.

He refers to it as the “72-cent solution,” one that would generate enough annual revenue to “allow the Ferry System to focus on what they are trained to do: safely transport as many vehicles as possible every day across the rivers and sounds of North Carolina.”

Dixon said that the division will take a phase approach to implementing a tolling system ferry wide to meet the Jan. 1 implementation deadline.

The division anticipates presenting recommended rates to the North Carolina Board of Transportation at its Oct. 8 meeting. The board is expected to take action on those rates the following month, with a legislative report ready for submittal to Raleigh in December.

Almost everybody knows what mimosas are. Not the orange juice and champagne kind, although those are fairly popular in some circles, rather the plant world variety.

With their feathery leaves, distinct, fuzzy, pink blooms, and sweet scent, mimosas, or Albizia julibrissin, are unmistakable. Also known as Persian/Chinese silk tree or just silk tree, mimosas are native to Southern Asia from Iran to Japan. Introduced to the United States around 1745 as an exotic ornamental, it escaped into the wild.

And it liked its freedom. It really, really liked its freedom. Loved it so much it went wild, like the vegetative version of college kids on spring break.

Considered invasive because of its tendencies to grow anywhere in pretty much any soil, mimosa can often be seen in the wild. It loves roadsides, vacant lots, and other disturbed places. Drought tolerant as well as salt tolerant, mimosa often forms dense groves, sometimes choking or shading out other more desirable plants. If you’ve traveled along Interstate 40 through the mountains any time lately, you’ve probably seen mile after mile of pretty pink blooms lining the highway.

Beloved for its tropical look, long bloom time during summer, and its distinctive flowers, the downside is its shedding. Lots of shedding. Shedding of branches, leaves, spent flowers, and seed pods. No matter how tempting the shade is, under their arching canopy is definitely not where you want to park your car, because of all the shedding.

As far as trees go, mimosa is short-lived, usually lasting around 30 years or so. Mimosas can spread through seeds, roots, or cuttings. In our area, they are susceptible to fusarium wilt, which often kills established trees or even groves almost overnight.

Used for centuries in Chinese medicine — known to that culture as “the Tree of Happiness” — to calm the spirit and lift the mood, the chemicals in mimosa are used to treat things such as insomnia, anxiety, cancer, and skin infections.

Mimosa flowers can be used to make teas or tinctures, and the inner bark can be boiled or dried for medicinal purposes. The flowers can be simmered and made into a soft, yellow dye, while the bark can be used dried, powdered or green to make light, earthy tans and soft browns.

The sweet, light fragrance of mimosa flowers attracts more than just humans. Mimosa might be an invasive species, but pollinators love it. Butterflies, bees of all sorts, and not to mention hummingbirds love the powder-puff looking pink tufts of sweetness.

We tend to think of mimosas as being a standard pink color, but if you look closer, they can vary from light cream to darker pink to rose.

Their leaves, in a stadium “wave” type movement known as nyctinasty, fold downward and close up when it gets dark or during rains, sometimes even when you touch them. This is called turgidity, the process by which plants hold their shape. Loss of turgidity is what allows mimosa leaves to go limp and fold up. Caused by rapid movement of water and potassium ions away from the leaves by specialized motor cells called pulvini, this action is thought to conserve water and discourage hungry herbivores from nibbling.

Members of the legume family, mimosas pull nitrogen from the air and help build soil, a process known as nitrogen fixing. They also produce a chemical that inhibits other plants from growing nearby.

While mostly beloved, mimosas are classed as not merely invasive, but most sincerely invasive in North Carolina. Because they spread so easily — each one of their many legume-like seed pods can hold up to 12 or so “beans” — especially near water sources where the pods can easily be dispersed over long distances, mimosas can be extremely difficult to control. Since the seeds are also spread by wind, our coastal area is especially susceptible to mimosas popping up everywhere: in garden beds, sidewalk cracks, any available spot of soil they can find.

So how can you get rid of them? For the record, that question makes me want to cry. And yet, kind of like someone from “Off,” that geographic place name for anywhere but the central stretch of North Carolina coastline, no matter how long they’ve been here, mimosas will never be natives. No matter how many of them become established, they don’t belong.

Mimosas can be killed by girdling their trunks. Not that kind of girdle, but girdling as it pertains to trees, which simply means cutting a strip of bark all the way around the trunk so vital fluids can’t travel up and down. Small mimosa shoots will probably pop up along the roots, and often from the trunk below the girdled spot. These volunteers can then be sprayed with herbicides.

The whole tree can be cut down, just make sure to paint or spray the stump with herbicides. Sigh.

If you can’t live without the mimosa’s unique Dr. Seuss-like flowers and growing habit, try planting some — supposedly — sterile varieties, such as Merlot Majik or Summer Chocolate. Planting sterile varieties won’t get rid of the plethora of naturalized mimosas, but it can possibly cut down on the spread while allowing you to enjoy your mimosa – possibly even sitting under your mimosa while sipping on your mimosa.

In lieu of planting mimosas, try the following native trees instead: Eastern Redbud (Cercis canadensis), white fringetree (Chionanthus virginicus), sourwood (Oxydendrum aboreum) or buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis). Bottlebrush buckeye (Aesculus parviflora) is another recommendation.

You will be happily amazed by just how many pollinators these natives entice to your yard. Although the seemingly indomitable mimosa isn’t a very good example, natives for the most part, are less susceptible to diseases and insects than nonnatives.

Whether you love mimosas, hate them, or just plain don’t care either way, try to be mindful of the plants you plant. If the first person who introduced mimosas had known what a plague they’d become, they might not have been so eager to try growing them here.

On the other hand, they had no way of knowing what would happen, and mimosas seem like desirable small trees, adding a tropical flair to your landscape.

The most we can do now is make the best of a bad situation. Maybe the medicinal benefits of mimosas will someday outweigh their invasive tendencies.

Hit the water with Cape Fear River Watch for what will be the organization’s final paddle of the season.

Paddlers are invited on Sept. 19 to explore about 5 miles of relaxing Rice Creek with guide Angela Marshall from Kayak Carolina.

Participants may meet at 8:15 a.m. at the Rice Creek Boat Camp, 797 Gordon Lewis Drive in Winnabow.

Early registration is encouraged to secure a spot. Admission to this event is $10 for those who bring their own kayak. Kayaks, personal flotation devices and paddles are available for rent for $25 per boat.

Cape Fear River Watch members who would like to borrow a kayak are suggested to make a $25 donation per boat. Members who would like to rent a kayak should confirm their membership prior to registering.

Membership renewals and those interested in joining the organization may do so online or by calling the office at 910-762-5606.

New and renewing memberships made by Sept. 21 will be entered for a chance to win a new kayak.

Brunswick County Public Utilities on Monday lifted weekslong mandatory water use restrictions.

The county has upgraded from a stage 2 mandatory water conservation alert to a stage 1 voluntary water conservation alert, which means water usage adjustments are now voluntary.

Though the county remains under extreme drought, “encouraging trends in weather forecasts, source water amounts, and overall daily water usage have adequately reduced peak demands” for the county’s water supply, according to a release.

County water system customers, including those in unincorporated areas and towns served by the utility are asked to voluntarily follow an irrigation schedule that applies to automatic sprinkler systems for residential and commercial lawn and landscape irrigation. The voluntary irrigation schedule is applicable for residential and commercial lawn and landscaping, athletic fields, and golf courses that do not use private groundwater wells or reclaimed water.

Customers are asked to use no more than up to one inch of water per week through automatic irrigation systems, including spray and drip irrigation, between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m. on designated days.

The voluntary schedule is as follows:

• Properties with odd-numbered addresses (ending in 1, 3, 5, 7, 9) and non-addressed facilities may irrigate any time between 8 p.m. – 4 a.m. on Tuesday through Wednesday, Thursday through Friday and Saturday through Sunday.
• Those who live at even-numbered addresses (ending in 2, 4, 6, 8, 0) may irrigated during that same 8-hour period Wednesday through Thursday, Friday through Saturday and Sunday through Monday.

Property owners and community members with questions may contact their water service provider directly, Brunswick County Public Utilities at utilityadmin@brunswickcountync.gov, or through the temporary call center.

MANTEO — Over two days last week, the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission and its advisory panel viewed presentations with vivid views of battered oceanfront buildings, severely eroded beaches and remains of various sand barriers and traps designed to hold back ocean forces.

With legislation that would repeal the state’s landmark ban on hardened structures parked in a state Senate committee awaiting further action, the commission had asked its Science Panel and agency staff to provide updated information in a report on the effects of seawalls, jetties and other permanent erosion control structures on the open ocean coastlines.

After months of research and minor tweaking, the final report, “Effects of Hard Structures on Sandy, Open-Ocean Coastlines.” was presented to the commission during its Aug. 27 meeting at the Dare County Government Complex. But through each iteration, the analysis remained consistent: Blocking or trapping sand at one area of beach takes sand from another area of beach.

According to the Division of Coastal Management’s recently updated erosion data, 140 miles of the state’s 320 miles of ocean shoreline are eroding at an average annual rate greater than 2 feet; 135 miles at less than 2 feet yearky; and 100 miles of beach is accreting. Some of the highest erosion rates are on the Outer Banks, where 32 oceanfront houses have collapsed in Rodanthe and Buxton since 2020.

“There is such desire — and it’s completely understandable — to stop long-term, chronic erosion,” Science Panel Chair Laura Moore told commissioners during her presentation about the final report. “Yet in some cases, there’s a desire for a solution, but there really isn’t a solution. What we can do is buy time.

“It’s like getting older, right?” she said. “The inevitable is going to happen, but we can make choices that allow us to do what we want to do for longer …  and long-term chronic erosion that’s been occurring for hundreds of years in these particular places is a little bit like that.”

Boiled down to its essence, not much has changed in the rationale since 1984, when North Carolina was one of the first states in the nation to ban the structures. Except now the state is not alone.

“Every state is moving away from hardened structures, but there’s not a complete ban,” Daniel Govoni, N.C. Division of Coastal Management policy section chief, told the commission, summing up a presentation of 17 coastal states’ current policies.

While Govoni said that it was difficult to compare the complexities of permitting erosion control structures, in general, he concluded, they all preferred beach nourishment and retreat, and the majority discouraged the structural measures.

‘What is the intent?’

For a long moment, members of the panel sat silently, pokerfaced. Soon, Commissioner Jordan Hennessy asserted that some measures may still be worth trying: “I think there are processes in other states we can look at,” he said.

Member Joseph Hollowell followed, asking what would happen “if some miracle comes along” that is a hardened structure that is banned in North Carolina.

“What is the intent of the science committee?” he asked. “Is it to formulate a campaign to keep the law as it currently is? Was it to be innovative … creative?”

Commission Chair Renee Cahoon responded that the CRC was “not trying to rewrite the law.” Instead, she said, the panel is trying to understand the options so it can provide recommendations to the legislature.

The commission decided at this point to interrupt the discussion to allow CRC Assistant General Counsel Christy Goebel to provide her overview of the hardened structures law, which began life as commission policy in January 1985. The ban was upheld in court in 2000, and the policy became state law in 2003. Then, in 2011, a law was passed that allowed four terminal groins, which trap sand near inlets or the end of islands, as pilot projects. The opening has since been expanded to allow seven groins.

Even with the law in place, structures have been allowed to protect infrastructure like roads and bridges as well as historic structures.

Today, she said, there are at least 15 hardened structures on the North Carolina shoreline. Sandbags, which have always been permitted as temporary structures, are currently allowed to stay in place for eight years. At least 12 sites currently have large sandbags as protective measures on the beach.

Hollowell then made a motion to support the proposed legislation to “do away with” the current hardened structures ban. That would open consideration of “all kinds of new technologies that seem to be out there,” he said.

Hennessy seconded the motion.

But Cahoon objected: “That’s asking this commission to take a political stand, which is not something the commission will do,” she said.

As an alternative, she suggested consulting with the North Carolina Collaboratory, which was established in 2016 by the General Assembly to handle research needs and provide expertise on state issues. “If the legislature passes a bill, they will ask us for direction.”

Commissioner Steve Shuttleworth asked for clarification on the motion.

“I would have a hard time supporting or opposing a motion to support something that I don’t understand what they’re asking us to vote on,” he said. “At the end of the day, my two cents, it’s political. It’s been political for 40 years. Sometimes the legislators go one way, and sometimes, now, they want to go a different way.”

Another commissioner, Katherine Skinner, also questioned whether such a motion was premature, considering that the proposed bill was stalled in committee.

“I feel incredibly uncomfortable backing a bill that has not had full debate in the House and the Senate,” she said. “And we are picking a side that we are not being well-informed on.”

The motion failed in a 6-4 vote, with three members abstaining. Then Hennessy followed with a similar motion, which also failed.

‘Life Is Full of Tradeoffs’

In his presentation on Aug. 26 to the Coastal Resources Advisory Committee, titled “Erosion Management Options, Life Is Full of Tradeoffs,” Spencer Rogers, a member of the Science Panel, detailed how waves and currents interact to transport sand to and from the beach. “The beach changes at rates that are far beyond what most people appreciate,” he said.

It is the water depth that controls the height of waves as they head to the beach. With shallower water, friction starts to slow down the wave, Rogers said. When the wave breaks, it forms a smaller wave. Even during a Category 3 storm in North Carolina, he said, the largest wave on land is likely about 6 feet.

Rogers said the wave-breaking phenomenon is critically important in thinking about development on the coast.

“That 30-foot wave is going to break miles offshore, not on your house,” he said.

Even though ocean currents don’t sound very fast — the Gulf Stream, for instance, is considered speedy with its typical 5 mph pace —  but they move tons and tons of sand daily.

On high-energy beaches, such as those on the Outer Banks, the coastal processes that move sand are intensified. That may explain why beach nourishment cannot be assumed to always mitigate the erosion created by hard structures like revetments or offshore reefs.

“The problem with that approach is that almost every place that is likely to come forward with an erosion problem … beach nourishment has already failed,” Rogers said.

Successful beach nourishment requires a moderate erosion rate and regular maintenance, he added. When the erosion rate is too high, which is likely the case in Buxton, “you really can’t afford long-term beach nourishment,” he said.

“And if beach nourishment is successful, you don’t really need a structure,” Rogers said.

The tradeoff between having a beach or protecting a structure works at Fort Fisher, which has an erosion rate of 10 feet and no beach, he said. But the historic structure is protected.

Such a tradeoff, Rogers noted, would no doubt be “more difficult” in locations like Nags Head.

In a letter to the division in support of the Science Panel’s report, the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, said the hardened structures policy was a product of years of research and observation of impacts in other states.

“The report does not suggest that hardened structures are a solution without consequence,” wrote Ana Zivanovic-Nenadovic, the Coastal Federation’s chief program officer. “Rather, it demonstrates that these approaches involve significant tradeoffs that must be carefully weighed against their limited and localized benefits. At a time when sea level rise, stronger storms, and increasing coastal development are creating unprecedented challenges, North Carolina should continue to lead rather than retreat from the principles that have guided coastal management for decades.”

As the CRC wrapped up its hardened structures discussion on Thursday, several members expressed continued optimism that perhaps new technological advances in erosion-control methods, such as reef balls or offshore breakwaters, could offer reasonable mitigation to chronic erosion. But so far, Moore responded, the future offers no easy or ready solution.

“The Science Panel has reviewed all technologies that are available and there is not anything new and flashy on the horizon,” Moore said. “This is a so well-known, challenging problem that’s been addressed in different ways with differing degrees of success and adverse impacts along coastlines throughout the world for a long time. So there’s just not a magic silver bullet.”

Anglers anticipating Tuesday’s opening of recreational flounder season are being reminded that they must report their harvest this year.

Under a law that went into effect Dec. 1, 2025, recreational fishermen must report harvests of flounder, striped bass, spotted seatrout (speckled trout), weakfish (gray trout, and red drum. Anglers are not required to report fish they do not keep.

Fishers must report their harvest immediately after their fishing trip. For those fishing from a boat, reporting must be done once the vessel reaches the shore or a structure attached to the shore.

Recreational anglers fishing from a bank or pier must report their harvest once they are no longer actively engaged in fishing and their gear is stowed away.

Reporting may be done digitally by smartphone, tablet or computer through an online Mandatory Harvest Reporting webform or an iPhone App (search for “NC DMF” in the App Store). An Android App is not yet available.

Fishers who do not have immediate access to a smartphone, tablet or computer may print a paper report card from the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries website or pick up a card at any division office.

Mandatory reporting applies in coastal and joint fishing waters and inland fishing waters adjacent to coastal or joint fishing waters.

“Information collected through the new program will be used in conjunction with data collected by the existing data surveys to better inform fisheries management,” according to DMF.

The mandatory reporting program does not replace the Marine Recreational Information Program, or any other access point surveys conducted by DMF.

High tide is going to be just before dark. It gives the water in the shallows enough time to cool off. The fish will come.

We’re going to be fishing the flooded spartina marshes. These are areas with skinny, twisty creeks and soft, muddy bottoms. On the banks of these creeks grows spartina grass.

Very tall grass grows closest to the creek. The bottom in these areas is extremely soft. As you go back behind the tall grass, it grows shorter and the roots are intertwined, creating firmer areas on which a person can walk.

There are millions of fiddler crabs here. Most of the time, there is no water, and the crabs lead an almost idyllic life. They sift through the mud for tiny food items, they dig little holes, and they try to find a companion with which to make tiny crabs. Their only problems, most of the time, come from birds, and they do their best to stay away from them.

A few days each month, on high tides around the full moon, the water rises high enough for redfish. When they can swim up onto these spartina flats, they are only thinking about one thing: eating those crabs. The water is especially shallow, compared to the channels, but for a brief span of hours, the fish have no trouble getting around.

The cool thing for anglers is that the fish are visible from above. A shallow-draft skiff can be poled onto these flats, and savvy anglers who know what they are looking for can see them prowling. Then it’s simply a matter of presenting a tempting offering. Rig flyrods with flies that imitate small crabs.

When we first get to the flat, we’re planning to wade-fish and go in different directions. As the water gets higher, after an hour or so, we will get back together and fish from the boat, with one poler and one angler.

After pulling into the creek, we drive the boat to the edge of the flat and pole back a ways. Stake the boat off and put on wading boots. We compare flies and decide which way each would walk. We agree to meet back at the boat in an hour. Perfect.

Start stalking along the flat. What we are looking for are the tails of actively feeding redfish or the backs of cruisers. The tail is easier to spot as it sticks straight up and makes a splash. The backs are tougher, but these fish are easier to present with a fly because of their horizontal body position. Their mouth is right in the perfect position to grab a fly, whereas one tailing, or “standing on its head,” can sometimes be difficult to pin down the exact body position.

There is a slight swirl. Sometimes these swirls are made by mullet or other small fish called mud minnows as they feed or swim. Often a blue crab will be seen crawling up a grass stalk trying to get a hold of one of the small snails clinging there. This swirl was the right shape and size to indicate that it was made by a redfish. Someone less experienced might not have even noticed it.

Immediately stop.

The fly is between the left thumb and index finger. It’s a crab imitation of a unique design. To avoid fouling in the shallows it swims with its hook pointing upwards. A weed guard made of two strands of stiff monofilament fishing line helps keep any gunk off. Sixty feet of line is ready to go. All that’s left to do is determine which direction the fish is moving.

Then we see the back and the very tip of the tail, not even an inch of it. From this, we can tell it is facing from left to right. It sits there, about 50 feet away.

Just wait.

When the fish begins to move, you slowly begin to false cast. Once, twice. There is enough line out. Land the fly about 2 feet in front of where the head is, and just far enough beyond its line of travel to make the fly appear to be a crab struggling to get away from its predator. It lands perfectly with hardly a sound, about 4 feet past and 2 feet beyond.

Begin a slow retrieve. Try to imitate that struggling little crab needing to get back to safety. The distance narrows. With a strong burst from its tail, the redfish closes the gap, inhales the fly.

Pull the fly line tight and set the hook. We know right away it is nicely sized fish, over 30 inches probably. It takes off, heading toward the creek channel and perceived safety. Deep water. This is going to be a problem, because the closer we get to the edge of the flat, the softer the bottom becomes. The only chance is to stay back from the edge and then try to work the fish back to where we can stand safely.

It’s quite a distance out. The whole fly-line is off the reel and there is the fish as its tail flops. Slowly we’re able to get the fish turned back and start to regain line. As it gets closer, we get a better look. It’s definitely big. We’ve caught a 32-inch fish on the grass flats years before and had caught a few over 30 inches over the years in different ways.

This is bigger than all of those.

As it approaches the mud bank, there is some worry about getting it up and over. Another step forward and we will sink in mud up to our armpits.

We get it coming toward us with a combination of fast reeling and side-lifting the rod, and it’s just able to get its head up and over the bank. This is pretty much the end of the fight as the fish is out of energy and the shallow water doesn’t give the tail any purchase. Reach down and cradle it under its belly and lift.

Hold it up alongside the rod and see that the fish is longer than 32 inches, more than 15 pounds. It’s the biggest Carolinas flyrod redfish ever. Quickly take a couple of photos. Get the hook out. Carefully lay the fish back into the water and hold it there. It’s a little tired and at first it’s not sure what it to do. Support it and help it get water over its gills by gently pushing it back and forth. When she starts to sweep her tail with some authority, let her go. With three or four nice moves, she’s back into the deeper water.

She’ll be okay and go on to make some nice redfish babies this year.

Catching a fish like that is pretty rare. It’s a moment to savor.

More from the spartina series

• Seagrasses offer habitat; know each type for great fishing
• There’s no substitute for total tidal understanding in fishing
• Fishing spartina flats yields prize catches — with experience

A workshop on the North Carolina Resilient Coastal Communities Program has been set for next month.

The workshop set for Thursday, Sept. 24, targets RCCP communities in North Carolina’s 20 Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, counties.

Participants, including those communities, along with partner organizations and consultants, are invited to reflect on the program’s successes, share lessons learned and discuss findings of the RCCP external evaluation. The evaluation, released in November 2025, found that the program is effectively reaching a wide range of coastal communities and highlights the need for room to grow to help the smallest of coastal towns, which remain underrepresented.

Discussion will also cover ways to strengthen the program, connect peers across the coast to exchange ideas and help the next phase of the program.

The workshop will be hosted 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. at Riverfront Convention Center of Craven County, 203 S. Front St., New Bern. Registration is required.

The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management administers the program to support coastal resilience goals, assess community capacity, and identify and prioritize projects that strengthen resilience to coastal hazards.

After six years of litigation and a nearly six-week trial earlier this year, a Wake County judge has ruled that the state has failed to manage and protect coastal fisheries.

In his nearly 200-page order issued Aug. 17, Superior Court Judge Bryan Collins Jr. explained that the court, “based on the preponderance of the evidence” finds that the state has “breached its obligations under the public-trust doctrine” as directed in the North Carolina Constitution.

Coastal Conservation Association North Carolina and more than 80 others filed the lawsuit Nov. 10, 2020, against the state for what the nonprofit calls “North Carolina’s ‘abject failure’ in meeting its legal duties to properly manage coastal fisheries resources on behalf of North Carolina’s current and future citizens.”

CCA NC Executive Director David Sneed told Coastal Review last week that although this is the outcome the organization wanted, “this is not a moment for celebration. There is no real victory when our fisheries are depleted. The important thing now is that the magnitude of the problem has been recognized.”

During the trial held Jan. 20 to Feb. 25, Collins heard from witnesses representing both sides of the lawsuit, including fisheries scientists, independent researchers, and current and former staff with the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries. The division carries out the rules and regulations that the Marine Fisheries Commission approves and adopts. The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality is the parent agency for the commission and division.

The judge ruled that in the 30 years since the North Carolina General Assembly established the Fisheries Reform Act in 1997, in response to decades of declining abundance, the state has failed to rebuild and maintain healthy fish stocks and protect key habitats.

Sneed said that next steps “are to bring together the general public, scientists, managers, and policymakers to find practical ways to protect and restore North Carolina’s fisheries,” and to fulfill the directive on page 190 of the ruling. “The court ordered both sides to meet and then submit a joint report to the court within 45 days with their views on how the remedy phase of the case should move forward.”

DEQ Secretary Reid Wilson briefed the Marine Fisheries Commission during its Aug. 20 meeting in Raleigh about the judge’s ruling against the state in the case. He explained that staff were reviewing court documents and speaking with their colleagues at the Department of Justice about what happens next.

“There is a next phase, the remedy phase, and I don’t think anyone in this room knows how all this is going to turn out. But obviously, you all on the commission, we at the department, the division, and stakeholders are going to be working together in the coming years, once we have a final answer from the court system about what we’re supposed to do to address what this particular judge found, so that’s going to be a big focus probably for years,” he said.

Based on extensive testimony, the judge ruled that the “State’s failures are not the product of any one decision, but rather, are the product of a systemic, decades-long pattern of risk-prone management dominated by short-term commercial-industry considerations to the detriment of North Carolina’s coastal fisheries and the general public.”

Expert opinions cited in the ruling point to some decisions erring “on the risky side” including the General Assembly amending the Fisheries Reform Act in 2004 to remove the buffer implemented in 1997, which allowed more fish to be harvested. The change put the threshold hovering over the minimum level at which a stock is no longer classified as overfished.

The judge also points to the act’s failing because of gaps in stock mortality data for commercial fishing, bycatch and discards, and a lack of stock assessments for some species, and the interests of the nine-member Marine Fisheries Commission, which votes on the laws for coastal fisheries and fishing.

The appointed board members include two from the commercial fishing industry, one representing the seafood industry, two with the recreational fishing industry, a scientist, and two members at large. “Thus, at least three of the nine seats-a full one-third-are reserved for individuals with a direct financial interest in the private, for-profit harvest of coastal fisheries resources, even though commercial-license holders comprise less than one-tenth of one percent of the State’s citizens,” the judge found.

One witness testified that the way the commission is currently structured, voting is interest based. Another said that commissioners prioritized their sector instead of making informed decisions based on the science and resource-protection materials provided before official meetings.

“The evidence at trial also included numerous examples of instances in which the MFC’s structural defects caused management failures, including where a conservation-oriented measure was recommended by DMF and was defeated at the MFC,” Collins wrote, citing as examples proposed rule changes to commercial fishing gear and harvest reductions.

Collins quoted one witness who said “the MFC has ‘always bowed to the commercial fishing [industry].’”

The North Carolina Fisheries Association attempted to intervene in the lawsuit when it was first filed but was denied. The nonprofit group represents the state’s commercial fishing industry.

Association Executive Director Glenn Skinner told Coastal Review earlier this week that the organization is currently reviewing the ruling and has no comment at this time.

How the state governs coastal fisheries today

Public outcry on the declining stocks in the late 20^th century pushed state lawmakers to restructure how the public-trust resource was managed.

The General Assembly, in recognizing “the need to protect our coastal fishery resources and to balance the commercial and recreational interests through better management of these resources,” enacted the resulting legislation, the 1997 Fisheries Reform Act “to ensure the long-term viability of the State’s commercially and recreationally significant species or fisheries.”

Long-term viability is the legal standard that requires fish stocks to be maintained at healthy, self-sustaining levels and retains a healthy age structure.

Collins writes that the act “was touted as ushering North Carolina into modern fisheries management, and the intended solution for the decline in coastal fisheries abundance observed in the last quarter of the 20th century.” He also notes that the “expectation was that the FRA would be the statutory framework for reversing the long-term trends in declining abundance for multiple managed species or developing precautionary management plans for those fisheries where landings had increased to a point that declines seemed imminent.”

The law authorized the governor-appointed Marine Fisheries Commission to manage and regulate marine and estuarine resources within coastal waters. As part of that framework, the act directed the Division of Marine Fisheries to draft science-based fishery management plans “for all commercially or recreationally significant species or fisheries that comprise State marine or estuarine resources” for the commission to approve and adopt.

The state currently manages stocks through fisheries management plans for bay scallop, blue crab, eastern oyster, hard clam, estuarine striped bass, river herring, southern flounder, spotted seatrout, striped mullet, kingfishes, sheepshead, shrimp and red drum.

“The evidence at trial, however, including from the State’s own witnesses, confirmed that the State is not managing to long-term viability, and instead, is focused on processes, rather than outcomes measured by the long-term viability standard,” according to the ruling. “Given the State’s admissions and the unrebutted expert testimony that not a single one of the 13 state-managed stocks exhibits long-term viability, the State has necessarily failed to meet those affirmative duties.”

The University of North Carolina Collaboratory in January 2026 released its supplemental report on state fisheries management, which the General Assembly had commissioned in 2021, and corroborated the expert testimony, according to the court ruling.

The judge references the study’s findings, notably that the state’s “fisheries are ‘intensely managed,’” and that there are continued challenges in reaching core goals of the Fisheries Reform Act.

Key points in the study, as referred to by the judge, are that the management planning process is slow, the state has failed to manage ecosystems and critical habitats are degrading, the Marine Patrol, the enforcement arm of the division, doesn’t have enough staff to cover the state’s estuarine and coastal waters, and there’s overall dissatisfaction and distrust of state management.

North Carolina Wildlife Federation CEO Tim Gestwicki told Coastal Review in a phone conversation last week that “we have a judge’s ruling that is crystal clear.” In February 2022, the organization filed an amicus brief in support of the CCA NC’s lawsuit.

“The state has failed in its obligation to manage public trust resources, and no gray area, and when the judge says it’s time for drastic changes, that should be a pretty clear signal,” he said, adding that the data has been there a long time.

“When you combine the collaboratory independent study that came out, and you combine this irrefutable judge’s ruling, there is no escape now. Change must occur,” he said. “It’s not the North Carolina Wildlife Federation saying this. It’s not the CCA. It is independent scientists and a long legal journey through which every step the plaintiffs were affirmed. So this is about validation and affirmation that North Carolina has had and continues to have significant deficiencies in managing marine fisheries.”

A Pennsylvania man now holds the North Carolina record for cubera snapper, known scientifically as Lutjanus cyanopterus.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Marine Fisheries recently established the state record for the 85-pound fish that David Ashman of Mohnton, Pennsylvania, caught July 31 off Cape Hatteras.

The fish measured just over 56 inches total length, from the tip of the nose to the stretched end of the tail, and had a girth of 40 inches, according to the division. Ashman told officials it took about 15 minutes to bring the large fish up on the lighter tackle.

Ashman also told officials that he frequently visits North Carolina and enjoys offshore bottom fishing aboard the different head boats around the state.

The previous state record cubera snapper weighed 58 pounds, 8 ounces, and was landed by Thomas Madsen in 2022.

The division said Ashman was fishing aboard the head boat Miss Hatteras when he landed the snapper. He was using squid for bait on 40-pound braid with a 50-pound mono leader with an Avet MXL 5.8 reel and Shimano Trevala rod.

According to the division’s description, cubera snapper are among the largest species in the snapper family, reaching up to 125 pounds. Their range extends from Nova Scotia through southern Brazil. Adult cubera snapper prefer wrecks and rocky ledges in water 60 to 250 feet deep. They can be identified by the large canine teeth that can be seen even when their mouth is closed, counting the number of dorsal and anal fin spines and soft rays, and the triangular shape vomerine tooth patch at the top of the palate.

For regulation information, including requirements for a descending device for cubera snapper and other snapper/grouper species, visit the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s regulations webpage.

For more information on state record fish, go to the division’s State Saltwater Records webpage or contact the North Carolina Saltwater Fishing Tournament staff at saltwater.citations@deq.nc.gov.

Ever dreamed about seeing your art on the back of someone’s car?

Now’s your chance thanks to Battleship North Carolina Memorial. Officials with the iconic ship moored in the Cape Fear River across from downtown Wilmington are calling on current and former North Carolina residents of all ages and abilities to submit original artwork that could inspire the design of a potential state specialty license plate.

Artists, including professionals, students, designers, illustrators and hobbyists, may submit original work that “depicts or interprets” the battleship and her significance as North Carolina’s official World War II memorial.

“Your design should reflect the spirit, history, and meaning of the ship while also being suitable for adaptation into an official North Carolina license plate,” according to a release.

Digital art, illustration, painting, mixed media and other original human-created visual design will be accepted for consideration.

The winning artwork may be selected as the basis for the official custom special license plate design if 500 paid plate pre-orders are made, and pending approval of the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles.

Entries must be digitally submitted by PDF or photo through the official contest portal. Artists may submit up to two design entries, $20 per design, or secure five verified license plate pre-orders from family, friends or supporters.

Submissions will be accepted through Sept. 25. Finalists will be notified by Nov. 30 and the winning design will be announced no later than December of this year.

The nation’s second-oldest federal marine science laboratory is getting a new home on Pivers Island.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced on Thursday plans to fund $64 million from the 2025 Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act to build a new facility for the Beaufort Laboratory.

The longtime home of the Beaufort Lab, as it is more commonly referred, was shuttered in mid-October 2024 after significant hurricane-related structural damage was discovered during a routine inspection in the building’s foundation.

The Beaufort Lab was established in 1899 and predates NOAA by more than 70 years. It houses NOAA’s National Ocean Service and National Marine Fisheries Service’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center, and the North Carolina Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Research Reserve.

“For more than a century, the dedicated experts at NOAA’s Beaufort Laboratory have produced world-class science that supports our economy, advances national priorities, and enhances coastal resilience,” Dr. Neil Jacobs, NOAA administrator, stated in a release. “This state-of-the-art facility, located within the country’s second-largest estuary and adjacent to the Gulf Stream, will enable NOAA to continue its groundbreaking research while strengthening collaboration with industry and academic partners.”

NOAA says the new lab will expand its research and services in the following ways:

• Researching, monitoring and forecasting harmful algal blooms.
• Deploying uncrewed systems for underwater habitat mapping and coral restoration.
• Serving as a research hub to support South Atlantic fisheries management and stewardship of marine resources.
• Evaluating the performance of natural infrastructure for coastal protection.
• Managing the Rachel Carson National Estuarine Research Reserve and providing opportunities for education, research and compatible traditional uses.

Design and preconstruction work on the new facility, which will be built above the floodplain and designed to withstand storm and flooding events, is expected to begin early next year.

Weather forecasts in areas of North Carolina this summer have played like a needle on a scratched vinyl record, bouncing backward in a repeating loop: dry and hot, dry and hot, dry and hot.

Well before high temperatures with heat indexes climbing into triple digits smothered the air hanging over portions of the state, coastal counties being no exception, the land beneath our feet was parched.

The North Carolina Drought Management Advisory Council, or DMAC, announced at the beginning of this year that the state was experiencing widespread dry conditions, the result of a drought the origins of which trace back to August 2025. About a week into the new year, 15 of the state’s 20 coastal counties were classified as abnormally dry.

By June’s end, Brunswick County Public Utilities customers were placed under mandatory water restrictions. As June turned over to July, drought conditions in that county further deteriorated.

Though the western portion of North Carolina’s southernmost coastal county as of Aug. 18 remained under exceptional drought, the highest drought classification, rain since July has relieved dry conditions marginally but enough to prompt the county to ease water, though not completely lift, water use restrictions.

North Carolina has since last month started to see some notable rainfall, particularly in the western part of the state and northern part of the coast, said Klaus Albertin, DMAC chair and water resources engineer with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources.

“Most areas are starting to see improvements, and a lot of the state, lawns, gardens, agriculture is looking good because we’ve been getting regular rains,” he said. “Not everywhere improves at the same rate. That’s kind of the tough part about the summertime in North Carolina. We’ll get some rains that are really spotty, so you’ll have areas that get 2, 3, 3½ inches, but then, not far away, they may only get a quarter of an inch.”

This helped some state reservoirs recover their water levels faster than others.

Rainfall in the watershed above Jordan Lake, for example, helped that reservoir bounce back to its target water level within a couple of weeks, Albertin said.

Falls Lake, which is a little more than 30 miles northeast of Jordan Lake, hasn’t been as lucky.

“It’s going to take some good rains or a lot of smaller, consistent rains to bring all of them back up to where we’d like to see them,” Albertin said.

As for aquifers, he said, “I would say, instead of weeks you probably are looking at months, and some of it just takes a while for the water to percolate down into the aquifers.”

Gabrielle Chianese, DWR’s Groundwater Resource Branch supervisor, explained that there are portions of the state where groundwater, or superficial aquifer wells, are showing decreases.

“However, the deeper aquifers, the only way the drought really impacts those deeper aquifers is due to higher usage,” including lawn irrigation, she said. “That’s when we’ll see impacts to the lower aquifers. But all of these seem to be recovering very well, especially the ones that the deeper aquifers that are being used more, we are seeing recovery in those so that’s good news.”

She encourages private well water owners to have their well water tested, a service typically provided by county health departments for a fee.

Parts of the state continue to face lingering rainfall deficits despite recent summer storms.

As of Aug. 18, Wilmington, for example, was at a 21-inch rain deficit.

“It just goes to show that we haven’t really had a whole lot of rain, especially in some parts of the state, since last August,” of 2025, said North Carolina State Climate Office Director Dr. Jared Bowden.

And the hot weather much of the state has experienced this summer has only aided and abetted drought conditions.

Intense heat paired with dry conditions creates what is called a “hot drought,” which amplifies the loss of moisture in the soil.

“If you basically dry out the soil then all the energy goes into heating up that surface and then it gets just hotter, so it feels hotter, and that’s because all the energy goes directly into heating the surface rather than evaporation,” Bowden said. “There’s this coupling process as the atmosphere continues to warm and it becomes thirstier that you get these hotter and drier droughts.”

This, he explained, is a fingerprint of the changing climate.

According to the State Climate Office, North Carolina over the last 120 years has warmed by about 1 degree Fahrenheit.

“This is less than Earth as a whole, which has warmed by nearly two degrees,” the office states.

But warming has accelerated in recent decades, with the period between 2009 and 2018 becoming the state’s warmest recorded decade.

Wetter weather patterns ahead?

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in early June confirmed that the globe was officially in an El Niño year. El Niño is a recurring weather phenomenon that forms when the sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean are warmer than average.

And, Bowden said, its impacts are already being felt.

“Hurricanes, like them or not, they do contribute to our climatological rainfall into late fall in particular,” he said. “Basically, El Niño is decreasing the likelihood that we’ll have significant rains from a tropical-like system.”

What does that mean for say, Brunswick County? As we move into peak hurricane season, if the probability for a named storm is low, so too is the likelihood of short-term drought relief.

“But, as you go into the fall, when El Niño picks up in strength, the impacts are for a wetter winter,” Bowden explained.

In fact, in the coming months – October, November and into December – North Carolina could experience similar rain events to those of 2015, when there was in a strong El Niño.

“We had our wettest December on record, and the strong El Niño event of 1997 and ’98, we had our wettest winter on record for the state of North Carolina,” Bowden said. “That’s kind of where we’re headed. Ideally, it’s going to be months of needed rain. I mean, of course, you can get the big hurricane — even that would just really put a dent in something like that — but the odds of that type of event are not as likely. It will probably be more steady rainfall over the winter months that would bring places like Wilmington that are currently, over the last year, in 20-inches-plus deficit to get them back to normal. But, the short term is we might stay dry for a little longer across the state.”

The N.C. Department of Transportation will close Janeiro Road to replace the bridge over Dawson Creek.

Beginning Monday, crews will close Janeiro Road to begin construction of the new bridge. The closure is expected to remain in place through the fall, weather permitting.

Due to the construction safety concerns, Dawson Creek Public Park and beach access will also be closed during the project.

While the park and beach access are closed, officials said residents and visitors can enjoy the nearby alternative recreational area at Styron Town Park and Beach Access, 681 Stryontown Beach Road, in Oriental.

Motorists should expect delays and use caution when traveling through work zones.​​

As researchers search for answers related to the blue land crab, such as the extent of the crustacean’s range throughout the Carolinas, state biologists continue to ask people to report sightings of the non-native species.

The crabs, which look like giant fiddler crabs, are native to the southern Atlantic coasts from Brazil to South Florida. Sightings of these difficult-to-catch crabs have been on the rise in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia in recent years, with the species being first reported in South Carolina in 2008.

North Carolina’s first confirmed blue land crab sighting was in summer 2023, according to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Marine Fisheries.

“Since then, there have been 23 confirmed sightings in North Carolina and another 34 unconfirmed reports,” according to DMF officials. “Two of the 23 confirmed cases were this year, both in Emerald Isle.”

These crabs vary widely in color, with adult males typically having the characteristic blue-gray coloring, while females can also be white or ash-gray. Juveniles may color from orangish to dark brown to purple.

Blue land crabs live uncharacteristically long lives and are slow-growing among crab species. They reach maturity at the age of 4 and can survive up to 11 years.

These crabs retreat into burrows deep below the ground and possess a large claw they can use to dexterously defend themselves.

Researchers do not yet know whether the species arrived through natural expansion or human intervention.

“Reporting sightings can help biologists learn more about where these crabs are spreading,” according to a DMF release.

If you spot a blue land crab, snap a photograph and report the date and location of your sighting. Crabs may be more visible following heavy rains, which can drive them out of their burrows.

Those in the real estate business can learn more about the pros, cons and processes associated with living shorelines for erosion control via an online workshop set for next month.

The North Carolina Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Research Reserve in partnership with the Brunswick County Association of Realtors will present “Promoting Living Shorelines for Erosion Control – A Virtual Workshop for Real Estate Professionals” 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. via Webex. Connection details will be emailed once registered, which is required.

Real estate professionals will receive four elective continuing education credits from the North Carolina Real Estate Commission.

Workshop participants will also learn about different shoreline stabilization techniques, including living shorelines, the permitting process, the use of marsh plants and oyster shell to prevent erosion. The session will also cover a toolkit for designing and building more storm-resilient docks and piers.

Whitney Jenkins, training coordinator with the Coastal Reserve, which is part of the Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management, will present “Living Shorelines: Benefits and Limitations,” according to the session agenda.

The reserve’s training program, since 2003, has provided “coastal leaders and professionals with science-based training opportunities to promote informed decisions regarding our coastal resources,” according to its webpage. This access to relevant scientific research and training is presented to improve understanding of the coastal environment and the impact of local decisions on coastal resources. 

Also on the agenda, Mariko Polk, a coastal policy specialist with North Carolina Sea Grant, will present estuarine shoreline-stabilization design techniques.

Genny Ivec, a marine fisheries technician with the Division of Coastal Management, will cover living shoreline permitting details.

Georgia Busch, coastal specialist with the North Carolina Coastal Federation, will discuss best practices for working with marsh plants and oyster shell.

Coastal Federation Coastal Advocate and Coastal Management Project Director Kerri Allen will cover the organization’s Resilient Docks and Piers Toolkit, which was developed in 2025 for homeowners, contractors, and local governments in response to the reinstatement of standards for residential docks and piers in the state building code.

“This resource combines practical guidance with real-world examples from communities across the state to make resilience achievable and relevant for all coastal areas,” according to the Coastal Federation, which also publishes Coastal Review. The organization said these standards for residential docks could be crucial in helping reduce marine debris during storm seasons, because most debris is attributed to poorly built docks and piers.

“The majority of the debris we see after storms comes from broken-up docks and piers that were never built to withstand serious weather,” said Allen in a press release at the time. “These new codes give us a real opportunity to protect our coastlines, our wildlife, and our neighbors from the impacts of that debris.”

BUXTON — When the only highway on your island is situated between an ocean and a sound, and is built essentially at sea level, water on the road from storm surge comes with the territory. But even weather-savvy Outer Bankers were taken aback by a rain deluge in July that in minutes flooded N.C. Highway 12 with so much water that vehicles were swamped, stalling out and driving off the pavement.

National Park Service officials notified North Carolina Department of Transportation staff for this area, and they were already aware of flash flood warnings that had been issued by the National Weather Service. They were prepared for possible flooding, but no one expected the speed and volume of water that fell on the remote stretch of Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge just south of the Basnight Bridge. 

“We really didn’t know if, where, or how much,” explained NCDOT Division Engineer Ronnie Sawyer. “We certainly didn’t know it was going to get to the point where we felt like we needed to close the road.”

Speaking during a community meeting held last week in Buxton to discuss the highway closure, Sawyer described the rainstorm as “an extreme circumstance” that would be difficult or near impossible to plan for. In the 32 years he has worked for the department, he added, he couldn’t recall a time when N.C. 12 had to be closed because of rainwater.

But rainstorms are different now. With climate change, the warmer air holds much more moisture. Flash flooding is when the water level rises significantly in a short period of time. It can happen in minutes or hours, and it doesn’t just happen where there are creeks and rivers, or only during tropical storms, for that matter.

“Where we are, since we’re so close to sea level and flat, it’s almost flash ponding,” Erik Heden, Warning Coordination Meteorologist at the National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office in Newport told Coastal Review in a later interview.

“It does happen quick,” said Heden. “There’s the flash part, but it just doesn’t go anywhere, and it’s just not really moving.” 

About 6 to 10 inches of rain fell between July 21 and July 24, he said, with the peak on the 24th. Rain fell at a rate up to 2 inches an hour, with reports of a foot or more of water on N.C. 12, leading to the road being closed from the bridge to Rodanthe.

According to the nearest rain gauge in Manteo, 10.49 inches fell over five days. The average rainfall total for July is 5 to 6 inches.  

Heden said the storm was what is called “training,” with multiple rain cells moving back and forth over the same location. “Usually, you get an inch or two of rain, it’s a good thunderstorm, and then it moves on about its merry way,” he said. “When you have something stalled out like that, it allows the storm to move or train over the same area over and over again.” 

What’s important is that people pay attention to weather reports about potential impacts of systems in their area, and not just during tropical storms, Heden said. It’s easy to dismiss warnings when those prior ones don’t happen. But sometimes predictions aren’t possible until a couple of days before the event.

“We had very strong language actually leading up to that,” he said, and a flood warning was issued for a Level 3 out of 4 risk. “So just because it’s not tropical-related doesn’t mean it can’t be bad.”

That risk level means a greater than 40% chance of flash flooding, he said. A Level 1 is at least a 5% chance. Level 2 is a 15% chance. And a high-risk Level 4 carries a 70% chance.

“If I told you had a 40% chance to win the lottery,” he added, ”then you’re going to go buy a ticket.”

Sawyer, with NCDOT, said the department had issued multiple alerts and posted messages on road signs and social media, but with the unpredictable nature of the storm, it was not possible to provide enough warning to people traveling on N.C. 12 through Pea Island. And he vowed to continue to work closely with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on drainage improvements in the the refuge.

Dare County manager Bobby Outten also said the county would discuss details about whether pumping would be practical if needed.

“I can assure you we do not want to close the road,” Sawyer said. “It’s a whole can of worms.”

The North Carolina Ferry Division has been awarded a multimillion-dollar federal grant that will be used to pay for the replacement of a severely deteriorated bulkhead at the Cherry Branch Ferry Terminal in Craven County.

The $28.2 million grant, funded through the Federal Transit Administration’s Ferry Service for Rural Communities Program, will cover a significant portion of the project’s $35.2 million estimated cost. This will require about $7 million in state funding.

The Ferry Service for Rural Communities Program is one of three federal programs that support ferry systems across the country by providing competitive funding to states to help ensure that essential ferry service remains available in rural communities.

More than 2,700 linear feet of bulkhead will be replaced at the Cherry Branch terminal.

“This investment is about more than replacing aging infrastructure,” Ferry Division Director Jed Dixon stated in a release. “It will help ensure the Cherry Branch-Minnesott Beach route remains safe and reliable for the communities and travelers who depend on it, and prepare it to meet future transportation needs.”

The replacement project design is expected to begin next year.

Recreational anglers who plan to fish the upcoming flounder season may donate carcasses to the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries for a chance to win a prize.

The division said it will use the donated flounder carcasses for research purposes.

Participating anglers during the 2026 season, set for Sept. 1-14 in joint and coastal waters, must complete the required catch card (one person per fish per card) legibly and truthfully to be entered to win one of five tackle bags filled with fishing line, lures and swag.

Catch cards and donation supplies are located at year-round and temporary division carcass donation sites.

Year-round donation locations include the following:

• Cape Pointe Marina, 1390 Island Road, Harkers Island.
• Clem’s Seafood, 4351 Long Beach Road SE, Southport.
• Eastern Outfitters, 21241 Suite 01 U.S. 17, Hampstead.
• Eastside Bait & Tackle, 1218 John Small Ave., Washington.
• Frisco Rod & Gun, 53610 N.C. 12, Frisco.
• Jennette’s Pier, 7223 S. Virginia Dare Trail, Nags Head.
• N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries Headquarters, 3441 Arendell St, Morehead City.

Temporary sites include the following:

• Carolina Beach Municipal Docks, Carl Winner Drive, Carolina Beach.
• Chasin’ Tails Outdoors Bait & Tackle, 709 Atlantic Beach Causeway, Atlantic Beach.
• Intracoastal Angler, 6332 Oleander Drive, Wilmington.
• Ocean Isle Fishing Center, 65 Causeway Drive, Ocean Isle Beach.
• Quarter Deck, 503 Carteret St., Bath.

Anglers must leave the head and tail intact when cleaning a fish to donate. If possible, fishers should also leave the guts and reproductive organs in the fish. Anyone who fishes for flounder on a charter boat or heat boat should inform the fish cleaner that the carcass will be donated.

Donated flounder will be measured and a division biologist will determine with sex, if possible, and remove the otoliths, or ear bones, to determine the fish’s age. Division officials will use the information to inform future flounder stock assessments.

The 2026 recreational flounder season opens at 12:01 a.m. Sept. 1 and closes at 11:59 p.m. Sept. 14. Anglers may keep one fish per person per day. The minimum size limit is 15 inches total length.

Division biologists will obtain information from commercially caught flounder at fish houses. Flounder carcasses caught by commercial fishermen should not be left in the division’s Carcass Collection Program freezers.

Contact Amanda Macek, division sportfishing specialist, at 252-515-5537 or Amanda.Macek@deq.nc.gov for additional information.

Twenty years from now, the Atlantic’s barrier islands will look different. Beaches will have migrated, marshes shifted, and storms will have redrawn the shore. Yet descendants of a 500-year-old bloodline will likely still be grazing a coastline that never stops changing.

Wild horses have survived here for centuries not because this landscape is stable, but because they learned to survive one that is not.

Few wildlife populations allow such a direct comparison. From the Delmarva Peninsula to North Carolina’s Outer Banks, five horse herds share the same Colonial Spanish ancestry, but not the same conservation trajectories. Though other feral horses exist along the Atlantic Coast, these five are distinguished by centuries of adaptation to barrier-island life, coupled with deliberate management efforts to preserve their historic bloodlines.

Whether their ancestors arrived through shipwrecks, early settlements, or expeditions from the Caribbean remains debated. Their genetics do not. A 2022 study that compared a horse tooth from the abandoned colony of Puerto Real in present-day Haiti with modern populations found its closest living relatives among Assateague’s feral horses. The finding complemented decades of analysis by Texas A&M geneticist Gus Cothran, whose research identified Colonial Spanish lineage in several barrier-island herds. While their bloodlines remained a common thread, the challenges facing each herd did not – leading to not one conservation model, but five.

Congressional protection

Of the five herds, the Shackleford Banks is the only herd protected by an act of Congress – after the isolation that had preserved its ancestry became its greatest vulnerability. The Shackleford Banks Wild Horses Protection Act of 1998 requires the National Park Service to maintain a minimum of 110 horses on the island, a threshold genetic research found necessary for the population’s long-term viability. The law requires the agency and the private Foundation for Shackleford Horses jointly manage the herd using PZP, a contraceptive vaccine, and, when necessary, the selective removal or adoption of individual animals.

Today, park service personnel at the Cape Lookout National Seashore say rising seas, marsh loss, overwash, erosion, changing vegetation, and declining freshwater availability are reducing the island’s capacity to support the horses. In 2025, herd mortality reached 17%, compared with a long-term average of 6%, with most deaths linked to poor body condition associated with inadequate forage.

Dr. Sue Stuska, the park service biologist who manages the herd, said limited forage particularly affects the most vulnerable horses, including older animals, youngsters, and lactating mares.

“Our long-term goal is to maintain the herd along with healthy natural resources,” Stuska stated. “We cannot have the first without the second.”

The Corolla model

Corolla follows a different model, relying on local stewardship rather than federal protection. Roughly 100 horses roam about 7,500 acres in Currituck County at the northern end of the Outer Banks, moving across wetlands, maritime forests, beaches, and developed neighborhoods. The Corolla Wild Horse Fund was formed in 1989 in response to vehicle-horse collisions that increased following the paving of N.C. Highway 12 between Duck and Corolla. Today, the nonprofit manages the herd through fertility control, veterinary care, habitat protection, and partnerships with local, state, and federal agencies.

Testing in 1992 revealed the herd had experienced a severe genetic bottleneck, leaving it with extremely low genetic diversity and a single maternal line. In 2014, a Shackleford Banks stallion was introduced to diversify the Corolla population while preserving its historic Iberian lineage.

Director of Herd Management Meg Puckett has watched those changes unfold over the past decade. She told Coastal Review that the most significant shift has come since the pandemic, bringing “more tourists and more year-round residents in the (four-wheel-drive) area.” She added, “We’re fortunate to work for an organization that allows us to respond in near-real time.”

As more visitors unfamiliar with the animals have arrived, public education has become even more vital to the organization’s work, while preserving the habitat that allows the horses to remain wild is equally important. In Corolla, conservation increasingly means protecting the space they have left to move.

Ocracoke’s compromise

Ocracoke Island embodies a different kind of compromise: conservation through confinement. Like Corolla, the arrival of N.C. Highway 12 brought cars and horses closer together. In response to the increased traffic after the final 3-mile stretch was completed in 1958, local Boy Scouts, who ran the nation’s only mounted Scout troop using the island’s ponies, built a pen under a special-use permit the following year. Mike Barber, a National Park Service public affairs specialist, said the move “marked the first formal management of the herd.” At the request of the local community, the park service assumed responsibility for the horses in 1974.

Today, fewer than 20 horses remain at the Ocracoke Pony Pen, where park service staff and volunteers provide daily feeding and coordinate medical care. Barber said the herd is now managed with its “safety and welfare” as the priority. Unlike Corolla, Ocracoke’s solution traded freedom for safety. Both approaches ultimately rely on fencing, but for different purposes. At Corolla, fences define the boundaries of a landscape where the horses can still roam free; on Ocracoke, they form a protective enclosure. More than six decades later, the park service is developing a new management plan as sea level rise continues to reshape Ocracoke. Barber said rising sea levels are expected to “increasingly affect facilities, forage, and freshwater access.”

Assateague Island’s two approaches

Nearly 200 nautical miles north of Ocracoke, on the Delmarva Peninsula, Assateague Island offers a striking contrast. One barrier island, divided by the Maryland-Virginia line, supports two horse herds and two distinct management philosophies.

In 1961, nine ponies were released on the Maryland side of the island. After Assateague Island National Seashore was established in 1965, a fence went up along the state line to keep the two populations separate. On the Maryland side, the National Park Service manages its herd as a wildlife population, relying on PZP contraception to hold numbers within a target range of 80 to 100 horses. Rather than relying on roundups or removals, biologists control the one variable they can: reproduction. Park service officials credit the program with extending lifespans well into the horses’ 20s and 30s.

Aside from fertility control, feeding and veterinary care are kept to a minimum. That freedom carries its own risks, however, and in August 2026, two horses were struck and killed by vehicles within 13 days. In a statement to Coastal Review, the park service said its staff were “looking at possible changes to traffic rules,” but no decisions have been announced. After the most recent collision, the mare’s foal was relocated below the state line “where he will receive veterinary care and become part of the Chincoteague herd. This move is permanent.”

Cross the fence into Virginia, and the conservation model changes completely; from a largely hands-off to a decidedly hands-on approach. Here, the horses are owned by the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Co., which maintains about 150 adult ponies.

Every year on the last Wednesday in July, saltwater cowboys drive the horses across Assateague Channel to Chincoteague Island for the annual Pony Penning. Most of that year’s foals are sold at auction the following Thursday, with proceeds helping fund the fire company’s continued stewardship – a tradition dating to 1925. When the pandemic forced the auction online in 2020, organizers introduced the remote bidding that continues today through simulcast.

From 2010 through 2019, reported sales averaged about $157,000 annually. In 2025, the centennial auction surpassed $1 million for the first time, while the 2026 event generated $635,600. The fire company retains an average of six or seven foals each year as “buybacks,” selecting animals it wants to return to the Virginia herd after the auction.

Public information officer and Saltwater Cowboy Hunter Leonard told Coastal Review the unique program is one of its most important conservation tools – helping maintain the herd’s health and longevity while promoting genetic diversity. Buyback purchasers receive naming rights, giving them a personal stake in the herd’s future even though the foals remain on the island. On Friday, the remaining ponies swim back across the channel to their permanent home on Assateague.

Home, however, looks different on each island. While these five herds share a historic legacy, each population’s geography, local priorities, and individual pressures produced a unique answer to the same question: How do you preserve an equine lineage on islands that refuse to stand still?

The sand shifts, the channels move, and the forage comes and goes with the tide. An act of Congress, nonprofit stewardship, a fenced pasture, fertility control with minimal intervention, an annual roundup and auction; each offers a solution to the same changing landscape.

What varies is what each island demands — of horses and humans alike. And different as those demands may be, each reflects generations of people doing what they could, with what they had, to ensure these wild horses can continue doing the same.

Post has been updated

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has given the green light to the state’s request to no longer require a permit to fix or rebuild certain waterfront structures damaged due to weather or wear.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management submitted its request Jan. 9, 2025, and NOAA issued the approval last week to change the state’s federally approved Coastal Area Management Program, which Coastal Area Management Act rules and regulations fall under.

At the direction of the North Carolina General Assembly during its 2023-24 session, the Coastal Resources Commission, which makes development rules for the state’s 20 coastal counties, began the rulemaking process to drop the requirement for a CAMA permit to repair or rebuild docks, piers and walkways damaged by natural forces, fire or wear, provided modifications are minor and structures meet specific size limits.

NOAA also authorized establishing a measurement line for dune-building and beach-planting projects in municipalities with permitted terminal groin construction, a directive of state lawmakers through the same session laws.

While the rules have changed regarding A CAMA permit, the state recommends contacting a local code official to determine if the existing pier can be safely repaired or altered without plans that are sealed by a registered design professional.

Materials and documents related to the decision may be examined at the DEQ Public Notices page.

Featured Image

The sun sets behind a cloudbank Saturday as shown from above the Cedar Island National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge off Lola Road on Cedar Island in Carteret County that was established in 1964 occupies 14,494 acres on a peninsula jutting into southern Pamlico Sound, with N.C. Highway 12 slicing through and the 5,500 acres the state conserved in 2019 just to the east. Both offer opportunities to immerse one’s self into nature, such as hiking, paddling, birding and nature viewing, as well as numerous other activities. Photo: Dylan Ray

The recently released Lumber River Basin Action Strategy identifies 17 prioritized actions to help communities within the basin reduce flood risk and strengthen resilience.

The strategy was created to support long-term flood resilience planning and decision-making across the basin. It was developed by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Flood Resiliency Blueprint program with local input and informed by existing flood planning efforts and vulnerability assessments.

Actions identified in the strategy include structural and nonstructural projects such as stormwater system and roadway improvements, protecting critical infrastructure and expanding nature-based solutions.

The strategy also identifies building-level mitigation projects to include elevating or floodproofing buildings, and it recommends five high-priority actions to help guide investments by implementing a range of projects from floodplain and stream restoration, critical infrastructure upgrades, floodproofing and elevating critical facilities, and other stormwater and flood mitigation measures.

A collaborative of experts from state agencies, local and regional governments, nonprofits and academic institutions known as the Lumber River Basin Advisory Group provided technical expertise and guidance and helped identify flood risks, understand local needs and capacity, and prioritize actions to reduce flooding impacts now and in the future.

“Flooding in the Lumber River Basin is getting more frequent and more severe, and this strategy gives communities actionable steps to reduce the damages from flooding,” DEQ Secretary Reid Wilson stated in a release. “The extensive destruction from storms that Lumber River communities have experienced underscores the importance of a coordinated strategy to increase resilience for the next storm, saving lives, homes, businesses and money.”

Resilience actions identified for the Lumber River basin are stored and maintained in the Flood Resiliency Blueprint tool, DEQ’s online decision-making tool, which provides users with data-driven flood risk and vulnerability assessments. This tool lets users develop and evaluate flood resilience actions and allows communities to update localized flood plans with the support of DEQ Blueprint staff as new information and opportunities develop.

Action strategies for the Cape Fear, White Oak and French Broad river basins are to be released in the coming months, according to DEQ officials.

Editor’s note: Coastal Review regularly features the work of North Carolina historian David Cecelski, who writes about the history, culture and politics of the state’s coast. More of his work, including the following from earlier this year, can be found on his personal website.

A few nights ago, I gave a lecture at the Walter N. & Henrietta B. Ridley Student Center at Elizabeth City State University.

For me it was a joyful evening, and I hope it was for all those who attended.

I so enjoyed getting to know so many remarkable students, and it did my heart good to observe the strong and loving bond between the students and the university’s faculty and staff.

I was on campus most of the day. From start to finish, as I visited with the faculty, and saw how they interacted with the students, I kept telling myself, “These are the kind of professors that I wish every college student could have.”  

I also had the great pleasure of meeting Dr. S. Keith Hargrove Sr., the university’s new chancellor. Chancellor Hargrove’s Installation would occur a few days after my visit, but I could already feel the excitement in the air.

I did not have a great deal of free time, but while I was on campus I could not resist taking a little time to explore the University Archives.

I had never visited the University Archives and its extraordinary collection of historical manuscripts, photographs, and artifacts before.

But Paige Hendrickson, the university archivist, gave me a wonderful backstage tour of the archives’ holdings.

Seen through her eyes, the University Archives is a place of a thousand stories.

Located on the second floor of the G. R. Little Library, the collection reaches all the way back to the university’s founding in 1891.

Originally called the Elizabeth City State Colored Normal School, ECSU began its illustrious history as a training school for African American teachers.

I found the historical treasures in the University Archives to be incredibly diverse and fascinating. They speak to every part of the university’s past, and they are also a unique window into the history of Elizabeth City and that whole northeastern part of North Carolina.

I have been thinking about some of the old photographs that are preserved at the University Archives’ holdings ever since that visit.

The photographs date to the period between 1892 and 1914 and feature some of the university’s first students and faculty.

I think that I was so moved by them because, over the years, I have repeatedly encountered historical accounts that refer to the school’s graduates teaching in the small towns and villages of Eastern North Carolina.

They were in the truest sense missionaries of knowledge. Many were destined to teach in the region’s towns and cities, but far more were bound for remote rural communities where books were rare and precious things.

I have seen historical accounts of the school’s graduates teaching in logging camps and lumber mill towns deep in the swamps.

I have seen historical accounts of them teaching the children of field workers in one- and two-room schools surrounded by miles of cotton fields and where it was considered an act of defiance to send your children to school instead of into the fields to work.

Similarly, I have seen historical accounts of Elizabeth City’s graduates teaching on remote, windswept islands and on the edge of tidewater rice fields.

In those early days, wherever they were, the school’s alumni were paid far less, given far fewer books and equipment, and were required to teach far more students in far worse buildings than their white counterparts.

Yet again and again, I have seen in historical records, they found a way. Not just to make do, but to enlighten, lift up, and inspire their students and often the local community as well.

In such places, the teachers who came out of the State Normal School, as ECSU was called then, often boarded with local families and were, in the truest sense, never really off work.

As symbols of knowledge and learning, they were caretakers of body, mind, and spirit. In community after community, children and adults alike looked to them for guidance and tutelage – and as role models.

In these old photographs, those early teacher trainees look so incredibly young and innocent, barely out of school themselves.

Yet when I look at them, I see all those places they went and taught, and the good they did, and all the children whose lives they changed for the better, and all the possibilities they opened up for those young people.

I think too of all the good that their students then did when they grew up, and the families they raised, and the thousand little ways that, over the course of their lives, what they learned from their teachers guided them.

I think about the dangers they survived, or that I pray they survived, and I think how often I have heard their former students, even when they were up in their 80s and 90s, remember those teachers with gratitude, reverence, and love.

In these photographs, the young people are often standing side by side with the school’s founding president, Peter Weddick Moore, a devoted educator who was the son of a couple born into slavery and whose father is believed to have been murdered by the Ku Klux Klan.

Whatever else I did at Elizabeth City State University – visiting the history program, touring the Rosenwald school, giving my lecture – I tried to keep the memory of these photographs with me.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation announced Friday that it will hold a public meeting for a proposed project to improve a section of New Hope Road in Perquimans County.

The meeting will be held 5-7 p.m. Aug. 27 at the Durants Neck Fire Department, 1724 New Hope Road, in Hertford. 

The project will upgrade the roadway on a 4.5-mile section between Woodland Church Road and Woodville Road to improve safety and efficiency. The proposed designs include widening lane widths, realigning substandard curves, and slight intersection realignments at Woodland Church Road, Gibson Road and Whitehat Road.

Project details and maps can be found on NCDOT’s project input website at publicinput.com/newhoperoad-hertford. The information will be available at the meeting allowing for one-on-one discussions with NCDOT staff, but there will be no formal presentation.

People may also submit comments before Sept. 11 by phone at 512-580-8850 project code 1207, email newhoperoad-hertford@publicinput.com, or mail to Justin R. Smith, PE, NCDOT Highway Division 1 Project Manager, 113 Airport Drive, Suite 100, Edenton, NC 27932.

NCDOT said it will provide auxiliary aids and services under the Americans with Disabilities Act for disabled people who wish to participate in this meeting. Anyone requiring special services should contact Tony Gallagher, Environmental Analysis Unit, at 1598 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-1598, 919-707-6069 or magallagher@ncdot.gov as early as possible so arrangements can be made.

Those who do not speak English, or have a limited ability to read, speak or understand English may receive interpretive services upon request prior by calling 1-800-481-6494.

Expect a greater military presence in the coming days as Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, its outlying fields and training areas will be part of a variety of training operations.

Air station officials said Friday that the exercises would continue through the rest of month.

Marines will be conducting parachute operations at Marine Corps Outlying Landing Field Oak Grove in Jones County as late as midnight Aug. 21.

The 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit will conduct training Aug. 24-28 involving both fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft at Marine Corps Outlying Landing Field Atlantic in Carteret County and surrounding training areas.

Residents near the airfield in Atlantic and the surrounding areas should expect increased activity including military vehicle traffic and aircraft noise. The training could go as late as midnight during the period.

Then, on Aug. 24, amphibious operations will begin in the waterways associated with MCAS Cherry Point. This includes Bombing Target 11, or BT-11 and aka the Piney Island Range, in Pamlico Sound as late at midnight.

Explosives Ordnance Disposal Marines will train at MCAS Cherry Point, and the neighboring community may hear occasional loud explosions at the air station. 

In the last six years the Atlantic Ocean has demolished nearly three dozen privately owned oceanfront homes in Buxton and Rodanthe.

These collapsed houses represent a broader coastal management challenge, even pushing the commission that makes coastal development rules to reconsider a decadeslong ban on hardened structures built for erosion control, Dr. Reide Corbett said during a recent talk at Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island.

A coastal oceanographer and geochemist, Corbett, as of July 16, is the new interim dean of the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences on East Carolina University’s main campus. He spent the last 14 years as head of the Coastal Studies Institute, or CSI, in Wanchese, led by ECU. His talk was one of five in the “Water/Ways” speaker series last month organized to complement the Smithsonian traveling exhibit with the same name that was on display at the time.

“There’s no doubt that we are seeing changes along our shoreline,” and because there’s not just one thing driving coastal change, there’s not one simple solution, Corbett said early in the presentation.

“I’ll go ahead and put quotes around ‘solution’ now because I might not do it throughout the entire talk, because a solution to many of these challenges we face is likely only temporary. It’s not going to solve the problem. The process that is driving many of these changes won’t be solved by one thing.”

The process

North Carolina’s coast is protected by low-lying sand deposits called barrier islands. These mobile landforms that separate the mainland from the ocean are in constant but slow motion toward the mainland. This natural process is how these islands maintain elevation and width.

This is nothing new, “barrier islands have always changed,” Corbett said, but now these mobile landforms are developed. “For better or worse, it is where we are. These coastlines have been changing since there were coastlines. The difference is we have a lot of infrastructure today in the same areas where these coastlines are changing.”

The natural process of erosion on the oceanside and growth on the sound side of the island is being exacerbated by increasing sea levels, development associated with population growth, and storm impacts.

The National Oceanographic Atmospheric Administration reported a few years ago that sea level is expected to rise 1 to 1.5 feet by 2050. “To put that in perspective, it took the last almost 100 years for sea levels to change 1 foot in coastal North Carolina,” Corbett said. “And from roughly 2000 to 2050, we’ll expect at least an additional 1-to 1.5-foot rise.”

That is a significant amount, and “When you look at what sea level is doing based on tide gauges up and down our coast, we are right on track to meet that if not surpass that” projection that he said has a 95% chance of happening.

To illustrate, when a house on the Outer Banks gets taken by the ocean, Corbett said the “narrative is ‘often why did people build here? Why would they put their house right there? It’s so vulnerable,’” but when the houses were built in Buxton, for example, in the 1970s and 1980s, there was 100 to 300 feet of beach, or a few dunes, in front at the time. Now, the ocean is on their doorstep.

It’s because these shorelines have been eroding for decades, some at 5, 10 or 15 feet per year every year. Then put a storm on top of that, or this past fall, three storms “one after another after another without any time for recovery, and what you end up doing is deflating the beach, dropping the elevation of that beach, removing significant amount of sand because of the energy in the system.”

There has been roughly a 1-foot rise in sea level since 1975 at this location, and erosion has continued anywhere from 4 to 8 feet per year there. “You put those two things together and this is what you have,” he said.

As Corbett said early in the program, “there’s not going to be a single simple solution for any community” and what may work for one won’t necessarily work for another.

Community questions

Communities need to ask themselves what they are trying to protect. “Is it an individual home? Is it a way of life? Is it an economy? Where are we acting? Where is it most vulnerable? What are we trying to protect? And where is that? You can ask ‘why are we trying to protect that?’ as well if you like. How far are we looking out into the future? Because I think that’s important to consider when acting on a potential solution.”

What can a community do once it decides on a path forward? There area a handful of options, starting with nothing, which Corbett said isn’t really a response. Some areas can be protected. For example, a living shoreline in an estuary could protect infrastructure. Accommodate the change and that might look like houses being raised or a bridge around a very vulnerable location or leave. “Nobody likes to hear the word ‘retreat’ because it seems like you’re giving up. And I don’t disagree with that,” he said, but the idea is to move out of those most vulnerable locations.

Corbett said that hardened structures are “being pointed to a lot today as a way of protection, a solution to the problem. And I think it’s important to recognize the tradeoffs.”

In North Carolina, hardened structures have not been used to control erosion in decades, because of a policy in the 1980s and then a law in the early 2000s.

Corbett noted on the presentation slide that the state law “prohibits the construction of a permanent erosion control structure in an ocean shoreline, including breakwater, bulkhead, groin, jetty, revetment, seawall or any similar structure. This ban was based on extensive studies and technical data documenting the detrimental impacts of erosion control structures, including 150 years of documented negative impacts of shoreline stabilization on the barrier islands of New Jersey.”

The different kinds of hardened structures come with their own sets of problems. A vertical structure like a seawall might protect what’s behind it but will lead to higher erosion rates on either side of the structure and a total loss of recreation beach in front of it, Corbett said.

The houses actively crumbling have pressed the Coastal Resources Commission to consider potential changes to its laws on hardened structures and charged its science panel, on which he serves, in February to draft a report on the various types of hardened structures for oceanfront and the advantages and disadvantages of each type. The report was first presented during the commission’s June meeting.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management, which carries out the development rules established by the commission, announced that the commission is to hear an update on the report during the Aug. 26-27 meeting in Manteo.

But with all those responses, “I think it’s important to recognize that the processes aren’t changing,” Corbett said.

Buxton has three terminal groins that were built in the 1960s that have deteriorated, and the narrative suggests that the deterioration and large holes in the structure farthest south has led to significant erosion.

“My argument is, it’s not just that. It’s an erosional system. There’s a lot of data to show that even with these groins, there’s a reason we moved the lighthouse,” said Corbett, referring to the Cape Hatteras Light, which was moved in 1999 a distance of 2,900 feet from where it was built in 1870 because of its proximity to the waves. “It wasn’t a stable system. And those groins have been there since the late ’60s. And so, this is an eroding system. And it’s been eroding regardless of whether those groins were there or not. And it will continue to erode whether we rebuild those groins or not.”

Nourishment does protect but is a temporary solution. It’s not changing the process causing the erosion.

Beach nourishment is when sand is taken from a borrow area and pumped onto the beach. The amount of time the new sand lasts on the shoreline is no longer projected to be seven years. Now the project planners are calculating for five years. But that’s not long enough either. The sand from a 2022 beach nourishment in Buxton only lasted two years until more was needed.

Corbett’s hypothesis is that nourishment projects are causing the shoreface to steepen 15 to 20 feet from the shoreline. He said he was considering looking further into this untested theory to see if the nourishment areas are becoming more vulnerable.

Data available on coastsat.space, which uses satellite imagery to map ocean shorelines, shows how the beach is changing and responding to a beach nourishment project.  

For south Nags Head, the first nourishment project was in late 2011 or 2012, and data shows that after nourishment, the erosion rate became significantly faster.

“You place a lot of sand on the beach, it’s unnatural. Yes, it provides a wider beach, but you also increase that erosion rate,” Corbett said. “I’m not saying this isn’t protecting infrastructure” but it doesn’t stop the process.

“Nourishment is a Band-Aid for that real physical process of erosion. It hasn’t slowed the process. It is a temporary solution that has to continue. You don’t do a single nourishment, you develop a nourishment program,” he said. “It’s $20 million today. It’s $20 million in five years.”

Ultimately, Corbett said communities need to decide what they want to protect and if they’re willing to accept the tradeoff.

Marine scientists and others at the University of North Carolina Wilmington are waiting anxiously for the arrival of a new $7.5 million, state-funded research vessel that will greatly enhance research capabilities and learning opportunities for students.

While the school’s marine science students hail from far-flung locations, a substantial number are from the Wilmington area and as many as 400 are from in and around Carteret County.

That’s important to UNCW Director of Marine Operations Jay Styron of Cedar Island and Wilmington.

“I’m excited,” he said Monday afternoon.

“We’ve been pushing for this for 16 years. I can hardly believe we’re finally at this point. We are grateful for the state funding. Delivery is imminent.”

The R/V Osprey was built for the university in Bellingham, Washington. Styron went to the shipyard recently and took the 78-foot-long, 27-foot-wide aluminum catamaran out for sea tests and said Monday it handled the tests beautifully.

“It was great,” he said. “It’s everything we hoped for.”

Size alone will be a difference-maker.

The RV Osprey is 15 feet longer than the vessel it’s replacing and will be the largest marine research vessel in the region, Styron said.

“It’s even bigger than the research vessel at the Duke (University Marine) lab” on Pivers Island in Beaufort, he said.

Duke’s vessel is a 77-foot, hydrofoil-assisted, aluminum catamaran built by All American Marine and delivered in 2019.

The R/V Osprey is en route to Florida, where Styron will pick up and sail the vessel home to a berth on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway off campus.

UNCW’s Center for Marine Science has more than 100 affiliated faculty representing all UNCW colleges. It features offices and laboratories for more than 40 researchers and scientists, 65 students and more than 60 staff members.

Styron said one of the major improvements the Osprey will offer UNCW and the region is enhanced geophysical work, especially in identifying locations of offshore sand.

“Sand is gold now,” he said, because local governments along the coast are constantly looking for sand to nourish beaches that are eroding because of sea level rise and the impacts of hurricanes and nor’easters.

In addition, Styron said, the vessel will enhance research into and monitoring of PFAS.

These compounds, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are manufactured chemicals used since the 1950s to make consumer products resistant to water, grease and heat.

Because of their persistence, they are often called “forever chemicals.”

They don’t break down easily in nature or in humans and are believed to cause high cholesterol levels, liver and immune system damage, low birth weights, some cancers and hormone disruptions.

In Wilmington, problems stem from decades of discharges into the Cape Fear River from the Chemours chemical plant upstream in Fayetteville.

But PFAS also have been found in other locations where water has been tested.

Styron said another use for the vessel will be retrieval of weather buoys associated with the Coastal Ocean Research Monitoring Program, or CORMP.

Styron said the university will seek donors to help cover operational costs for R/V Osprey, with a particular eye on the many wealthy people who have flocked to the North Carolina coast in recent years.

Ultimately, he said, he’d like to see an endowment, such as the one for marine science at Duke University, to cover all costs.

Styron added that the new vessel will enable increased collaboration with the many marine science and fisheries facilities in Carteret County and elsewhere.

Design characteristics

A press release from UNCW states that the vessel design will allow researchers to adapt to a variety of projects, providing dependable access to nearshore environments to make North Carolina an exceptional living laboratory.

“As the state’s coastal university, the (UNCW) Center for Marine Science serves as a hub for research that addresses regional, national and global environmental challenges.

“The R/V Osprey enhances the center’s capacity to support projects focused on coastal resilience, ecosystem health, fisheries, water quality and marine technology”

The custom-designed catamaran hull with hydrofoil allows for increased stability and maneuverability in choppy coastal waters.

The hull design, combined with the energy-rated engines and 6-foot draft, provides fuel- efficient performance on a stable platform.

It has an advanced navigation system to fully integrate with instruments and scientists during a cruise.

It includes radar, single-beam sonar, a multibeam sonar, an automatic identification system, or AIS, VHF radio, an an electronic amplification system, or hailer, and a forward-looking infrared, or FLIR, thermal and low-light camera system.

There are berthing spaces for up to 10 crew and researchers with quiet, comfortable rest areas during multiday sea operations, essential for safety and effective operational and scientific work.

Lab space is a climate-controlled environment for processing freshly collected samples, with running seawater, freshwater refrigeration, deep-freeze storage, chemical storage and microscopes. Dry lab space is used for computing and analyzing data collected during cruises. It allows active monitoring of built-in and overboard systems such as acoustic doppler current profiler, or ADCP, to study the water column, a WASSP multibeam sonar system, analytical processes running on scientific computer servers, Wi-Fi, monitors and connection points for geophysical survey equipment.

The 27-foot-wide aft deck is designed to maximize space.

The contractor placing 2 million cubic yards of sand along Buxton’s oceanfront beaches is bringing in another dredge to help with the nourishment project.

Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. headquartered in Houston, Texas, announced that a second dredge, the Amelia Island, is expected to be in Dare County by the end of the week to join the Liberty Island, which has been pumping sand since the Buxton project began July 31. Dare County officials relayed the announcement Tuesday.

With the two dredges operating as planned, officials expect the project will be completed on schedule by Sept. 30 from the Haulover Day Use Area to just south of the Buxton Beach Access.

The Liberty Island left Tuesday for fueling and its annual U.S. Coast Guard inspection in Norfolk, Virginia, and is expected to return to Thursday to resume pumping operations, officials said.

The project is is estimated to take 95 days, depending on weather and ocean conditions.

Third in a series

Another year brought another wave of arguments over shellfish leases in North Carolina coastal waters.

Before summer officially began, legislators added language to a bill that would temporarily ban new leases in the waters behind Topsail Island. This provision was tacked onto legislation originally written to extend New Hanover County’s shellfish lease moratorium another five years, through to 2031.

This was the second consecutive year that representatives from Topsail Island’s three towns attempted to pause new leases in Stump and Topsail sounds.

House Bill 1113, sponsored by Rep. Ted Davis, R-New Hanover, also included a provision to extend a moratorium on new shellfish leases in Carteret County’s Bogue Sound until July 1, 2028. The bill was withdrawn from the legislative calendar and sent to the House rules committee on June 18. It hasn’t moved since.

New Hanover County’s request to continue blocking new leases from its waters was tucked into the state budget Gov. Josh Stein signed July 7. The law grants the county a two-year extension, not the five years originally sought.

That’s two more years that prospective shellfish farmers or those looking to expand their business will remain shut out of the waters in North Carolina’s two southernmost coastal counties. Brunswick County has had a shellfish lease moratorium in place since Harry S. Truman was in the White House.

Lease moratoria and poor water quality have resulted in areas closed to shellfish harvesting farther north, effectively bottlenecking growers into waterways that are still open, including those around Topsail Island in Onslow and Pender counties.

Clashes over shared public waters are not likely to ebb with the tide as North Carolina’s aquaculture or mariculture industry expands.

The North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries received by its Aug. 1 deadline 49 shellfish lease applications for six counties: Carteret, Dare, Hyde, Onslow, Pamlico and Pender, according to information provided by the division.

New lease applications cover a combined 55 acres of bottom and water columns. That includes 15.75 acres in Bogue Sound, where what turned out to be a seven-year moratorium expired on July 1.

In total, six lease applications were submitted for Onslow and Pender counties – four for Onslow and two for Pender.

“We have heard from some private residents and also some fishing guides and some commercial interests about their concerns about, in particular, column leases,” said William Snyder, chair of the Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission. “We know that those concerns are still out there. I think that you could say that there’s some disappointment that we were not able to get the moratorium first and then get a study to confirm or deny the concerns that we have.”

Balancing act

On a positive note, he said, two studies on shellfish leasing — one commissioned by the General Assembly and one lead by North Carolina Sea Grant in partnership with the Coastal Federation — are examining how to balance future shellfish lease site selections, help shape future policy to protect the industry, and ease user conflicts.

“We’ve got to hang our hats on how these studies play out and listen to see what that tells us in terms of conflicting uses of our public trust waters,” Snyder said.

The North Carolina Collaboratory is expected to present an interim report on its study at year’s end.

Last week, Sea Grant and the Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, launched an online survey asking oysters growers in Pender and Onslow counties to share their experiences and perspectives on the use of public trust waters.

The organizations are hosting a meeting next month for shellfish growers.

Back in April, local elected officials, private property owners and recreational water users were invited a public meeting with Sea Grant and Coastal Federation representatives to discuss their concerns about leases in Stump and Topsail sounds.

People at that meeting overwhelmingly expressed worries about water column leases, or those where shellfish growers use floating gear to grow oysters at the water’s surface. Floating cages, they argued, impede boating and kayaking access, infringe on popular fishing spots, and impact waterfront viewsheds.

Recommendations shared with Sea Grant and Coastal Federation staff will help shape updates to the North Carolina Strategic Plan for Shellfish Mariculture, a plan commissioned by the General Assembly in 2017. This document is effectively the state’s roadmap for a sustainable shellfish industry.

The organizations also anticipate publishing next year a Geographic Information System, or GIS, database pinpointing areas where leases may or may not be suitable in the waterways behind Topsail Island.

“It’s important to acknowledge that many residents have some concerns about navigation and access and those are important to take into consideration as part of the conversation, just as the benefits of shellfish aquaculture,” Coastal Federation Chief Program Officer Ana Živanović-Nenadović told Coastal Review last month. “But ideally, those conversations should happen without having to close water bodies to new leases.”

Days after Bogue Sound’s shellfish lease moratorium expired, Carteret County Commissioner Marianne Waldroup and Rep. Celeste Cairns, R-Carteret, held a meeting with state fisheries officials, aquaculture specialists, marine scientists, the N.C. Fisheries Association and other stakeholders to discuss ways to minimize potential user conflicts in the sound.

Carteret Community College Aquaculture Department Chair David Cerino attended that meeting.

Cerino, who also grows shellfish, explained that there aren’t that many sites ideal for shellfish aquaculture in Bogue Sound. Areas dense with submerged aquatic vegetation, or plants that grow under water, portions of the waterway permanently closed around the Morehead City port, and areas closed to unexploded military ordnance, cut down lease space, he said.

“I think once it was shared that there wouldn’t be leases everywhere because they can’t site them there, most of the town representatives were less opposed to it being open for leases,” Cerino said.

The group agreed to hold future talks about identifying low-conflict spots in Bogue Sound and potential buffer zones from the land.

A history of public opposition

About 34% of the state’s coastal waters are permanently closed to shellfish harvest because of pollution and lack of monitoring capacity, according to the 2021-25 Oyster Restoration and Protection Plan for North Carolina.

Today, 6% of coastal waters remain closed to new shellfish leases, according to the Division of Marine Fisheries.

New shellfish enterprises have been blocked from waters in Brunswick County since 1949. Farther north, new leases have not been permitted in Core Sound since the mid-1990s. In 1996, legislators approved a permanent ban on new leases in the sound.

Those moratoria were implemented because of public backlash that leases violate the public trust, according to an April 2020 division report.

“Historically, public opposition to shellfish leases resulting from user conflicts has been a major concern,” states the report. “Shellfish moratorium have been imposed in recent years in areas where user conflict issues have been especially acute.”

Cerino called moratoria a “knee-jerk reaction” and a “nuclear option of just eliminating something because you’re maybe worried about a specific circumstance.”

“What that does is it funnels people to the areas that are still open because a lot of people are wanting to get into this business,” he continued. “I would like to see a moratorium on moratoriums, but I’m biased. They basically take away the opportunity to establish sustainable businesses that have positive environmental impacts and employment opportunities and increase our seafood production and improve local economies and water quality. There are definitely areas where we shouldn’t have shellfish leases, but they are not entire sounds, entire waterbodies that should be closed off.”

The rise in user conflicts has driven up the numbers of legal challenges against the Division of Marine Fisheries, according to the report.

But no growth goes without challenge, Živanović-Nenadović said.

“I think our waterfronts are consistently changing with our human activity. When you build a marina, you change the waterfront,” she said. “When the Coastal Federation builds a living shoreline, we change the waterfront. It’s important to always remember that those are valid and compatible uses of our public trust water bodies and have been deemed to have benefit to society, and that’s why they’re allowed and why we have a public permitting system in place for those uses.”

The challenge, she said, has been and continues to be bringing people together “to get to a point of shared values and understanding and accepting that these water bodies are for everybody to use.”

In 2019, the General Assembly charged the fisheries division with identifying potential shellfish aquaculture enterprise areas, or SEAs, in waters closed to new leases. SEAs are designed to speed up shellfish lease permitting and help reduce user conflicts by grouping leases in large pre-permitted areas.

The state had not established one of these areas at the time this story was published.

North Carolina Department of Transportation officials have scheduled a public hearing next month regarding the proposed Cape Fear Memorial Bridge replacement.

NCDOT has identified two proposed alternatives to replace the 57-year-old four-lane, steel, vertical-lift bridge spanning the Cape Fear River in Brunswick and New Hanover counties.

The bridge, which was completed in 1969, “is becoming functionally obsolete, meaning it can no longer effectively service current traffic demands. While the existing bridge is safe, it is reaching the end of its lifecycle,” according to DOT officials.

Alternative A is a bridge with a movable span with a proposed 65-foot to 135-foot vertical clearance over the river.

Alternative B entails a fixed span bridge with a 135-foot vertical clearance and trumpet interchange improvements that would allow for interchange of secondary two-way streets to a multi-lane roadway with minimal traffic congestion.

Public hearings are set for the following dates and locations:

• Monday, Sept. 14 at Cape Fear Community College’s Daniels Hall, 502 N. Front St., Wilmington.
• Tuesday, Sept. 15 at the Leland Cultural Arts Center, 1212 Magnolia Village Way, Leland.

Doors will at 4:30 p.m. at which time transportation officials will be available to answer questions and receive comments, and the formal hearings will begin at 6 p.m. The formal hearings will also be streamed live.

DOT, in cooperation with the Federal Highway Administration, has approved the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge replacement environmental assessment, which details anticipated impacts to natural, human, environmental, physical and biological resources for the two proposed alternatives.

Public comments made at the hearings will be included in the project record and considered in the selection of the preferred alternative for the project.

Comments may also be submitted until Oct. 15 by phone at 984-205-6615, enter project code 10626, by email to CapeFearMemorialBridge@publicinput.com, at DOT’s public input portal, or by mail to: Project Manager Mason Herndon, NCDOT Highway Division 3, 5501 Barbados Boulevard, Castle Hayne, NC 28429.

Copies of maps detailing study alternatives and the environmental assessment, or EA, are available for review throughout the public comment period at:

• NCDOT – Division 3 Operations, 5501 Barbados Blvd., Castle Hayne.
• Wilmington Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization Office, 525 N. Fourth St.

Copies of the EA only are also available for review at:

• New Hanover County Public Library – Main Branch. 230 Grace Street, Wilmington
• Brunswick County Library – Leland Branch. 487 Village Road, Leland
• Leland Town Hall, 102 Town Hall Drive, Leland.

Auxiliary aids and services will be provided under the Americans with Disabilities Act for disabled persons who want to participate in the public open houses. Those requiring special services should contact Martin Gallagher at magallagher@ncdot.gov or (919)707-6069 to make arrangements as soon as possible.

Interpretive services for those who do not speak English, or have limited availability to read, speak or understand English, will be provided upon request prior to the meetings by calling 1-800-481-6494.

Aquellas personas que no hablan inglés, o tienen limitaciones para leer, hablar o entender inglés, podrían recibir servicios de interpretación si los solicitan antes de la reunión llamando al 1-800-481-6494.​

The North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries is to open a 30-day scoping period in September for the public to share ideas for the state’s Kingfishes Fishery Management Plan.

The scoping period Sept. 1-30 is an opportunity to offer input on potential management strategies and discuss priorities for the scheduled five-year review of the plan.

Southern, gulf and northern are the three species of kingfishes found in North Carolina waters and managed collectively under the state’s kingfishes fishery management plan.

The division has scheduled scoping meetings from 6 to 8 p.m. Sept. 3 at the Morehead City office, which will be livestreamed, and 6-8 p.m. Sept. 17 at the division’s Wilmington regional office, 127 Cardinal Drive Extension.

A listening location will be available at the Manteo Field Office for the Sept. 3 meeting.

Additional information, including a scoping document with background information, links to the livestream and public comment forms, will be made available closer to Sept. 1.

Input gathered during the scoping period and at the meetings will be used to determine whether changes should be made to management of the species.

“If changes are identified, the division will draft an Amendment to the FMP,” according to a release. “If no changes are identified, the division may develop an information update that maintains current management.”

Questions about kingfishes biology, life history and management may be directed to Matthew Doster at Matthew.Doster@deq.nc.gov or 252-515-5623, or to Claire Pelletier at Claire.Pelletier@deq.nc.gov or 252-948-3871.

SURF CITY – If plans go accordingly, this town’s 6-mile-long stretch of ocean shoreline will undergo a major transformation by the end of the decade.

Portions of the beach are expected to be about 50 feet wider than they are today. A newly constructed berm and dune system designed to take the brunt of the ocean’s force during coastal storms and protect the hundreds of homes and businesses landward of the beach will rise from the sandscape.

The federal coastal storm risk management project that the town has been pushing to secure for more than two decades will initially inject about 6.5 million cubic yards of sand onto the ocean beach.

Surf City Mayor Teresa Batts, a lifelong resident, was so over the moon about the announcement earlier this summer that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had been permitted to use previously appropriated federal funds to build the project she wrote (admittedly with the help of artificial intelligence) a song about it.

Batts struck up the tune, “sand money, honey,” Monday morning at the close of a signing ceremony in which the town and the Corps officially sealed their historic partnership.

Dozens of people, including current and former congressional leaders, local elected officials and representatives with the Corps of Engineers Wilmington District, gathered for the ceremony that was hosted on the beach next to the Surf City Ocean Pier.

“Before we sign this agreement, I want to take a moment to share, because this day didn’t happen quickly. This day did not happen by accident,” Batts said. “We faced a lot of delays, as many long-term federal projects do. But Surf City remained committed, Surf City remained resilient. I want to be clear that this is not just a town project. It’s not just a Corps project. It’s a project today because of dedication. It’s a project today because of hard work.”

The project’s origins go back to 2000, when Congress authorized a feasibility study to evaluate a long-term beach restoration project for Surf City and neighboring North Topsail Beach.

Citing money concerns, North Topsail Beach in July 2021 withdrew from the project, a move that initiated additional federal review and approvals.

About three years later, Rep. David Rouzer, R-N.C., secured language in the Water Resources Development Act 2024 directing the Corps to expedite a report specific to Surf City’s coastal storm risk management project.

This past June, the Wilmington District was given the green light to use previously appropriated Disaster Relief Act of 2019 fund for more than $292 million to build the project.

“From this point forward with the signing of this agreement, it opens the door for construction of the actual project,” Rouzer said Monday. “As anything that is noteworthy, as anything that is worthy, sometimes you have a few hurdles to clear. Sometimes you have a few obstacles you didn’t expect that you’ve got to work through. And so today really marks a great achievement for everyone that has been involved in this project.”

Wilmington District Commander Lt. Col. Kenneth Porter said the signing ceremony, “marks the beginning of the next chapter, turning this project from paper into sand, dunes, and real protection for the people who call Surf City home.”

“Surf City sits on a barrier island, and it’s exposed to the full force of the Atlantic,” he continued. “This community has felt that firsthand. Hurricane Florence (in 2018) alone caused significant damage to the beach structures and infrastructure along this stretch of coastline. Storms like that aren’t a question of if; they’re a question of when. And every year without a coastal storm risk management project in place is another year of unnecessary risk to homes, businesses, and the people who live and work here. That’s what changes today.”

Monitoring the shoreline and continued beach nourishment over the project’s 50-year life will provide a strong defense for generations to come, Porter said.

“This project is projected to prevent significant storm damage every single year, but the true measure of success won’t be found in a budget spreadsheet,” he said. “It’ll be measured in the homes that stay standing, the local businesses that keep their doors open, and the families who don’t have to rebuild their lives after the next storm.”

Corps officials said after the ceremony Monday that they anticipate opening bids for initial construction of the project in the fall of 2027, with work beginning in early 2028.

Construction is expected to take about 16 months and wrap around the spring of 2029.

The newly released Tar-Pamlico River Basin Action Strategy identifies more than 30 prioritized actions to help communities within the river basin reduce flood risk and strengthen resilience.

Actions prioritized in the strategy include structural and nonstructural projects such as stormwater system and roadway improvements to protecting critical infrastructure and expanding nature-based solutions. It also includes policy and planning measures to support long-term community resilience and identifies building-level mitigation projects, such as elevating or floodproofing buildings.

The strategy, released Thursday by the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s Flood Resiliency Blueprint program, is a comprehensive framework designed to guide long-term flood resilience planning and decision-making across the basin.

The strategy prioritizes 33 actions, 24 of which were directly submitted either by or in collaboration with local governments. The process was guided by the Tar-Pamlico River Basin Advisory Group, which is made up of state, local and regional experts, nonprofits, and academic institutions. The group helped identify flood risks, understand local needs and capacity, and prioritize actions to reduce current and future flooding impacts.

Resilience actions identified for the basin are stored and maintained in the Flood Resiliency Blueprint tool, which allows users to develop and evaluate flood resilience actions and communities to update localized flood plans with the support of Blueprint staff as new information and opportunities develop.

“The Tar-Pamlico River Basin Action Strategy will help communities identify the resilience actions that will make the most of every dollar that they invest to reduce flood risk,” DEQ Secretary Reid Wilson stated in a release. “Communities in the basin have seen firsthand the destruction that follows hurricanes like Matthew and Floyd, and this Strategy will help them prepare for the next storm, saving lives, homes, businesses and money.” 

Six of North Carolina’s 17 river basins are currently served in the Flood Resiliency Blueprint. The Neuse River Basin Action Strategy was released last month. Action strategies for the Cape Fear, French Broad, Lumber and White Oak basins will be released in the coming months.

Whether you call them lightning bugs, fireflies, or by their scientific name, Lampyridae, how could anyone not love a bug whose butt lights up like a miniature light bulb?

How do they manage that?

Their bioluminescence is a chemical reaction in a special light-producing organ called, aptly enough, the lantern. A heat-sensitive molecule called luciferin reacts with oxygen in the presence of an enzyme called luciferase. Far more energy-efficient than even fluorescent lights, a lightning bug’s light produces almost zero heat.

Since it’s hooked into their breathing, the light can be controlled by oxygen intake.

Many of us have fond memories of twilight summer evenings, gleefully spotting them rising and flashing, fairly begging to be chased and caught. Dancing foot to foot while excitedly asking mom or grandma for a (glass) Mason jar with holes poked through the lid. Then we’d go tearing back outside after an interminable wait, hoping the lightning bugs were still low enough to catch. Running barefoot this way and that through dew wet grass and humid air, leaping and dashing after their flashing lights, we were every bit as intent as an ambulance-chasing lawyer.

Most kids today don’t know the pure enthrallment of carefully snatching the lightning bugs out of the air and putting as many as we could catch in our jars so we could watch them light, over and over. Quite the trick, putting a new capture in without letting the others out.

Many of us older folks have wonderful memories of being all hot and sweaty, sitting on the steps in the dark and oohing and ahhing over our prizes, trying to anticipate which one would light up next. Come bath and bedtime, we’d release them to the night skies, only to repeat the same process again the next evening.

But what, exactly, do lightning bugs have to do with gardening?

Humans, being human, prefer things all neat and tidy: mown grass and trimmed verges and tamed woodlands.

What do lightning bugs need? Taller grasses, brushy understories, and deep leaf litter. While not a true bug at all, lightning bugs are instead flying beetles. Found on every continent except Antarctica, they prefer humid environments. More than 2,000 species of lightning bugs can be found worldwide, with around 150 to 200 in North America, alone.

In our efforts to have neat yards, we have inadvertently diminished the lightning bug’s ideal habitats, and that doesn’t even include the widespread use of pesticides.

Yeah, they’re cute bugs, but so what? Just because there are a lot fewer of them than there used to be, what difference does a few more or fewer bugs with an on-demand light make?

Besides the fact they’re cute as all get-out, scientists are discovering new things about lightning bugs all the time. Think of the possibilities of lights without heat.

Lightning bugs, like butterflies, go through different stages during their lifetime — four, to be exact. Egg, larva, pupa, and adult. Ever seen a glowworm? Lasting one to two years, that’s the larval stage of a lightning bug. A female lays 50 to 500 eggs in soil, damp moss, or leaf litter. The eggs usually hatch in three to four weeks. Some of the eggs also glow.

Lightning bugs spend most of their lives in the larval stage. Voracious predators of snails, slugs, worms, and others tiny critters, they live and hunt in soil, leaf litter and rotting logs. Oak trees are particular favorites as the lichens and fungi attract the types of foods lightning bugs nosh on.

Once the larvae is fully grown, it either makes a mud casing or attaches to a leaf or tree trunk. In a couple weeks, usually in late spring or early summer, the adult will emerge. The adults only live two to four weeks, and some species don’t even eat during that time. Their sole purpose — other than amusing children of all ages — is to reproduce.

Their flashing lights attract mates. If you know what to look for, the color, length, duration, and timing of the lights can tell you which species of lightning bug you have.

So what, exactly, do lightning bugs need to thrive and what can we do to ensure our kids and grandkids can see these delightful bugs for generations to come?

Lightning bugs need humidity, and they are often centered around water. There’s no lack of either here. They also need different levels of grasses, undergrowth and trees.

Does that mean your yard has to look like an abandoned junkyard? Absolutely not! Letting your yard grass get a little taller, even if nothing more than a narrow verge along the edge, close to a fence or woods will help tremendously. Planting native shrubs and flowers will also help. Think of your vegetation as steps, because fireflies need differing levels of greenery to thrive.

The larvae need duff — a damp layer of decomposed organic matter on the forest floor, under the fresh layer of leaves and sticks. Consisting of things such as decaying bark, roots, and other plant detritus, the duff harbors various fungi and bacteria. They also need the leaf litter itself, both to hide and hunt.

The adults often spend the daylight hours in bushes or taller grasses, anywhere there’s shade and adequate moisture. Depending on the species, sometime between twilight and dawn, the males rise and fly, flashing their beacons. The females tend to stay closer to the ground on bushes or plants, calling the males to them by flashing their own mating signals.

Lightning bugs also need dark. Light pollution has been a huge factor in their decline. Outside lights that are motion-sensitive, or lights that can be turned off are best. Tall trees can help shield them from pole lights.

Do yourself a favor and lighten up on yardwork. Let that pile of leaves stay. Let the grass go two weeks without mowing.

Saving one little bug in the grand scheme of things doesn’t seem like much. Unless you’re that bug.

Our amazing world would be a much darker place without these little treasures.

The Currituck Beach Lighthouse in Corolla is holding up remarkably well to be turning 151 in December, but the 162-foot-tall brick tower is showing its age.

To preserve the structure, the organization responsible, Outer Banks Conservationists, or OBC, has invested in a $1 million restoration that’s currently underway.

The work should be finished soon.

“We think by the end of October,” Meghan Agresto, lighthouse keeper told Coastal Review. “But of course, many lighthouse things are weather-dependent.”

OBC, the Manteo-based nonprofit organization that owns and operates the historic lighthouse, is having the work done near the top of the tower, where there are two rows of scaffolding with orange weatherproof sheeting that protects the workers and the work. The lantern room housing the focal plane is clearly visible. The work is on the exterior of the structure and the lighthouse can still be climbed.

“A crew of five masons and metalworkers who will repoint the exterior brickwork on the tower using natural hydraulic lime with a color to match the original, rehabilitate the historic gallery door, railings, and underside of the lantern deck,” Agresto said.

ICC Commonwealth, the same New York-based company that relocated the Hatteras Lighthouse in 1999, is doing the work.

The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was at the time threatened by years of erosion, so the 1870 structure was relocated 2,900 feet to the south to save it. The lighthouse, within Cape Hatteras National Seashore and managed by the National Park Service, is also undergoing restoration but that is a major, multiyear project.

After mentioning repointing the bricks – the process of removing crumbling mortar and replacing it — Agresto clarified that, unlike the Hatteras Lighthouse project where the brick has to be repointed and repainted, the red masonry exterior of Currituck Beach does not require paint.

In the 1870s when the Currituck Lighthouse was built, the metal that was used was iron and “rust mitigation is cyclical, so … we get that done every five to seven years.”

The last rust abatement was done between 2020 and 2021, and during that period, significant additional restoration was completed, including “crack repair on the lower bands of iron, and (we) replaced the cornice pieces on the roof, worked on rust around our tower windows, and stabilized the wood in those five windows,” said Agresto.

The current project is building on the work that was done six years ago.

In addition to the exterior work on the brick and metal, the gallery door inside the tower is being rehabilitated “by removing rust with needle scaling, and restabilizing afterwards,” Agresto said.

The gallery door that leads to the watch room is distinctive, the conservation group notes on their website, because the “Lighthouse may be the only one of its kind that still has the option to double-close a door to either the watch room or the outdoor gallery.”

The ongoing work is meticulous. For example, the tower’s lantern deck has what Agresto described as “unique sunburst prisms, which allowed light from the oil-burning lamp to also illuminate the interior.” Any prisms that cannot be saved, they will be swapped out with reproductions that bear marks to denote that they are replacements.

But the work is in the manner of past, cyclical rehabilitation projects, Agresto said, that “will ensure the lighthouse will remain structurally sound, historically accurate, and will continue sharing its sense of place and awe for future generations.”

Unlike the Hatteras renovation, work on the Currituck Beach Lighthouse is more routine, a periodic process that does not rely upon multimillion-dollar government grants, Agresto explained.

“Funding for big projects comes directly from our visitors, rather than from federal appropriations, which makes it possible for us to keep pace with cyclical maintenance instead of allowing needs to accumulate over decades,” she explained.

She also pointed out that the model for maintaining the lighthouse is close to the way it was originally done. She and her husband, Luis, live at the site, much like the original lighthouse keepers did.

“True to the station’s historic operation (we) live and breathe the lighthouse’s operation, maintenance, and preservation,” Agresto said.

The Currituck Beach Lighthouse was the last lighthouse built on the Outer Banks. Placed between the Cape Henry in Virginia and Bodie Island at Oregon Inlet, it illuminated the final stretch of dark, treacherous coastline along the Atlantic Seaboard.

Invented in 1822 by French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel, the Fresnel lens’ concentric prism rings focus the light from flame in the Currituck Light’s lantern room. Rated by the power of the lens to transmit light, the first-order Fresnel lens was the most powerful available.

When the Currituck Beach Light first shone on Dec. 1, 1875, the press took note. The Wilmington Morning Star reported on the front page of its Dec. 21, 1875, edition that “All masters of vessels trading between this port and the North of Europe or the Northern ports of our own country will realize the benefit of this most important aid to commerce. In a period of less than twenty-two years from 1852 to 1874, no less than fifty-six vessels went ashore on Currituck beach, many of them being totally lost.”

Just three years after the lighthouse became operational, one of the most horrific shipwrecks occurred along the Outer Banks. The three-masted steamer Metropolis ran aground on Jan. 31, 1878. Of the 248 passengers and crew aboard the ship, 85 were lost. The U.S. Life-saving Service, a predecessor of the Coast Guard, was excoriated in the national press for the loss of life, but the ship itself was unseaworthy when it left Philadelphia, bound for Brazil.

Despite that loss, the lighthouse had served its purpose. Placed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, a North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources report written in 1999, claimed the lighthouse helped save lives.

“In spite of the resulting public outcry that the lifesaving station’s inefficiency doomed the Metropolis’ passengers, it can be argued that the lighthouse had done its job; had the ship’s captain not seen Currituck Beach Lighthouse in the distance and realized heading toward shore was his best option, probably all lives on board would have been lost,” the authors wrote.

North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher and Kure Beach are calling all students, from toddlers to college kids and beyond, to join in the annual Back-to-School Beach Cleanup 8-10 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 22.

Taking place at Ocean Front Park in Kure Beach, the town offers free parking for the cleanup volunteers and the aquarium provides reusable gloves, pickers and bags. Volunteers are encouraged to wear their favorite school gear. The most spirited will win a prize.

“These beach cleanups are a great way to begin the school year by keeping the health of our ocean top of mind,” Assistant Events Coordinator Laine Cafferty said. “We hope that by starting the school year with a green mindset, all of us working together can make a difference in protecting species and ecosystems.”

Volunteers are asked to bring their reusable water bottles but not any single-use plastic bags, gloves, water bottles or coffee cups to the cleanup.

The N.C. Aquariums are a division of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

SURF CITY — There was a time when even a quick summer thunderstorm turned stretches of one of the main drags on the island side of this town into a chain of shallow pools.

Habitual flooding on portions of South Shore Drive, aka N.C. Highway 50, effectively cut off residents and visitors on the barrier island south of the Surf City Bridge from safely accessing the mainland.

“That flooding that traditionally would have occurred there has really not happened in the last four years, which is just astonishing,” Town Manager Kyle Breuer said.

That’s all thanks to a multiphase, nature-based stormwater project that was designed and constructed to divert floodwater off the road and into catch basins.

That project, and the subsequent success thereof, became the catalyst for the town to look at putting similar stormwater controls along streets plagued by historic, chronic stormwater flooding.

Earlier this year, the town hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the completion of the Roland Avenue stormwater project, one that included installing catch basins, an underground filtration system to rapidly clear standing water from the road and replacing a traditional road intersection with pervious pavers.

Roland Avenue was one of five stormwater flooding hot spots identified in Surf City through an islandwide resiliency project created under the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management’s N.C. Resilient Coastal Communities Program, or NC-RCCP.

NC-RCCP is a product of the state’s 2020 Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan, which was the result of Executive Order 80 signed in 2018 by then-Gov. Roy Cooper.

The program provides technical and financial assistance to communities in the state’s 20 coastal counties to support locally driven approaches to finding solutions and prioritizing projects designed to help communities bounce back from flooding and storms.

The multiphase program starts with inviting residents, business owners, and local government officials to identify climate-related risks and assess vulnerabilities in their community. In the second phase of the program, communities use that input, risk exposure and local needs to develop a resilience strategy and identify projects.

Surf City, Topsail Beach and North Topsail Beach officials came together in December 2021 for their first public meeting about an island-wide resiliency project.

They agreed that stormwater street flooding is an issue that affects all three towns. So, they created a partnership that would allow them to development solutions that were consistent from town to town, examine each completed project’s performance, and share those results with one another.

In all, 15 stormwater improvement sites have been identified across the 26-mile-long island.

Last year, Topsail Beach hired a civil engineer and consulting firm to map its stormwater system and study areas that experience chronic flooding. The study was released earlier this year.

North Topsail’s initial stormwater improvement plans focus on two areas deemed the most critical in that town – Island Drive at Gray Street and New River Inlet Road at Richard Peters Park. Projects for those areas are pending.

To date, three of the five projects identified in Surf City, including those on Seahorse Avenue, Roland Avenue and the intersection of Mecklenburg Avenue and North Topsail Drive are complete.

A project planned for intersection of Charlotte Avenue and South Shore Drive was, as of Coastal Review’s Aug. 7 interview with Breuer, out for bid. That project will entail replacing portions of asphalt with permeable pavers.

As for the fifth project, this one along North New River Drive, the town has “not addressed that one quite yet, but we will continue to look at that,” Breuer said.

Town officials also have on their radar Old Settlers Beach, an area commonly referred to as the canals at north side of town, as the likely location of their next stormwater capital improvement project site.

“We’re thrilled about the momentum that we’ve been able to carry through in the execution of the projects to try and start making a difference,” Breuer said. “I think we’ve been able to try and look ahead and try to get ahead of things and having a better understanding of how things are functioning from a stormwater perspective.”

The town has in two years received more than $2 million in grants for stormwater improvement projects through the Golden LEAF Foundation, N.C. Department of Environmental Quality, and N.C. Emergency Management.

“We’ve been really, really pleased that the last several projects there’s really been no town funding that has gone towards that,” Breuer said. “Staff has been very forward pressing on getting the projects done even though we’re a small down and we have limited staff capacity to be able to do that.”

Recognizing that “coastal resilience is not something that we can ignore,” the town in 2024 established a stormwater division and implemented a utility fee for all properties within town limits. The fee is $6 a month for a typical single-family home.

The town has also started implementing stormwater mitigation projects within its mainland borders. Last year, the town’s stormwater division restored ditch lines in the rights-of-way along Little Kinston Road.

“We’ll continue to evaluate certain things on the mainland, but a lot of the development that has occurred on the mainland is still going to be under a state-issued stormwater permit and, at this point, the town is not considering taking over those systems,” Breuer said. “We have discussed potential mechanisms for evaluating that, but that’s going to take a very strong partnership with the entity, like the homeowners association, to bring in an engineer to certify or qualify that that system is up to standards before we take on a major maintenance or liability issue with a system like that.”

North Carolina Sea Grant and the North Carolina Coastal Federation are inviting oyster growers in Pender and Onslow counties to share their experiences and perspectives on the use of public trust waters.

The information gathered through a survey and focus groups will help ensure that future recommendations for shellfish mariculture development are grounded in the practical experiences of North Carolina’s shellfish growers while supporting a balanced approach to coastal resource management.

North Carolina Sea Grant is leading this National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-funded project in partnership with the Coastal Federation to improve future shellfish lease siting in North Carolina. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

Through surveys, focus groups, and participatory mapping exercises with oyster growers and other coastal stakeholders, the project will examine potential use conflicts with commercial and recreational fishing, boating, waterfront property owners, and other coastal water users. The goal is to identify practical solutions to help inform future shellfish lease siting. Additionally, findings will support policy recommendations ensuring future siting decisions are informed by both stakeholder input and real-world experience on the water. 

In addition to the survey, North Carolina Sea Grant and the Federation will host two focus groups for oyster growers from Pender and Onslow counties in September. The discussions will provide an opportunity for growers to expand on their survey responses, participate in mapping exercises, share local knowledge, and discuss opportunities and challenges related to shellfish lease siting with project partners. 

Oyster growers in Pender and Onslow counties interested in participating are encouraged to complete the survey and indicate their interest in attending a focus group at the end of the questionnaire. Meeting details and location information will be sent to those who register. 

Four coastal towns were selected to receive a portion of $5.6 million in federal funding awarded to 19 communities for urban and community forestry projects through North Carolina Forest Service’s Urban and Community Forestry Financial Assistance Program.

“This program aims to help municipalities reach a level of sustainable urban and community forestry management that matches their goals and capacity,” Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler said in a statement. “North Carolina is known for its trees and green spaces. Maintaining and developing urban forest resources add to the beauty of our cities and towns and enhance the quality of living in our communities.”

Nine communities including Emerald Isle and Manteo were funded through the Climb to Tree City USA package, which helps municipalities meet the requirements to be designated as a Tree City USA. Castalia, Conetoe, Grifton, Harrisburg, Hobgood, Rich Square and Waynesville were also awarded.

Tree City USA is a national program that provides the framework for community forestry management for cities, according to the forest service.

Elizabeth City, Gastonia, Hendersonville and High Point were awarded through Climb to Managing Community package, which helps existing Tree City USA communities meet tree planning and management needs.

Wilmington, Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh and Wilson, received project funding through the Tree Maintenance and Planting package, which helps Tree City USA communities with completion of tree inventories to support tree maintenance and planting needs.

Hamlet was awarded project funding through the Bad Tree Bounty Project to manage invasive trees on public property and enhance their urban and community forestry program.

Funding is through USDA Forest Service Consolidated Program Grant, Hurricane Helene Recovery and Inflation Reduction Act.

To learn more about urban and community forestry, the Urban and Community Forestry program and financial assistance opportunities, visit the program’s website.

Guest Commentary

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues.

North Carolina has a drinking water problem, and we need our legislature to fix it.

This spring, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced plans to eliminate nationwide drinking water standards for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). These dangerous, long-lived industrial products have well-documented negative health impacts, including low birth weight, thyroid disease and testicular cancer.

Wilmington knows this well, because PFAS are in our drinking water.

The EPA plan is alarming – but not surprising. After all, the current administration has been very transparent about its mission to remove vital health and environmental protections.

What continues to be a surprise is the failure of North Carolina’s General Assembly to step into the gap.

Some legislators seek to claim the mantle of environmental champion; they talk about protecting our families – and yet, industrial chemicals still flow from our taps. Powerful people preach solidarity with communities impacted by PFAS contamination, then fall silent and turn their backs when asked to leverage that power to help them.

All that posturing, and we have yet to see any meaningful action that would remove these toxins from our water. 

For example, state Sen. Michael Lee, senior Appropriations Committee chair and senate majority leader, filed S1043, The Water Safety Act, this spring. If passed, the bill would check two critical boxes in the fight against PFAS contamination: limit how much PFAS is allowed in our drinking water, and regulate how much PFAS pollution industries can discharge into North Carolina’s surface waters. 

In Raleigh, Republicans enjoy what amounts to a veto-proof majority, meaning they get pretty much anything they want – and they do not want PFAS regulation. For the last eight years, every bill to stop industry PFAS pollution or regulate how much PFAS we drink has either failed to pass the Senate or been left to die in committee. So, on its face, Lee’s bill might have seemed brave – heroic, even – given the hostility he and his fellow senate Republicans have expressed toward even the smallest hint of industry regulation. 

But introducing a bill is not the same as fighting for it. And despite his considerable influence and power, Lee stood idly by as his bill stalled: shipped to the Rules Committee four days after it was filed and languishing there ever since. He may have preached protections, but he did not fight – not for the bill, and not for us.

Senator Lee did get new PFAS research funded. Again. But funding yet another study of PFAS is not the same as ensuring your kids don’t have to drink it. And after nine years of funding study after study with no regulation, no help in sight, it starts to feel like one of two things must be true: Either Lee has failed to protect us from PFAS because he’s ineffective, or because he doesn’t want to. 

The current EPA has no interest in protecting people from PFAS contamination. That means our state legislature is our last hope for clean drinking water. As his constituent, I had hoped that Senator Lee was sincere about trying to end this crisis, not just using his bill as political window dressing. But actions speak louder than words, and his inaction tells us everything we need to know.

Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review or our publisher, the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

The restoration advisory board for the Buxton Naval Facility Formerly Used Defense Sites is to meet at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the Cape Hatteras Anglers Club in Buxton.

During the quarterly meeting this week, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is expected to give an update on the current environmental restoration projects, and discuss community interest in continuing the restoration advisory board, or RAB, or adjourning it.

The advisory board is a stakeholder advisory group that meets regularly to discuss environmental restoration at Department of Defense sites, such as the Buxton Naval Facility FUDS property.

Army Corps has been removing petroleum-contaminated soil and infrastructure that remains at the oceanfront site once used by the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard.

For more information, visit the project website Formerly Used Defense Sites/ Buxton Naval Facility or email Cesas-FUDS@usace.army.mil.

Anyone who resides, works or plays in North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties interested in marine debris management is encouraged to take part in planned workshops to offer tools for eliminating or addressing abandoned and derelict vessels and encouraging better construction standards for docks and piers, often a source of storm-related pollution.

The Local Government ADV and Resilient Docks workshops are scheduled for Aug. 28 in Wilmington or Sept. 15 in Washington. Both sessions will run 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Register online to secure a spot.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation and the N.C. Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Research Reserve are leading the two workshops that will provide resources for implementing an inspection program for residential dock and piers, and for developing and implementing a program or ordinance for abandoned and derelict vessels.

Panel discussions will feature local and regional stakeholders sharing real-world experiences, implementation challenges, lessons learned, and opportunities for continued collaboration.

Among the resources are the Resilient Residential Docks and Piers webpage and the N.C. Marine Debris Action Plan: 2026-30. Resilient Docks and Piers is a toolkit that offers best practices for design and construction, permitting guidance, sustainable materials and legislative updates. The Marine Debris Action Plan is a multiagency, five-year effort to reduce marine debris in state waters.

Lunch will be provided, along with coffee and light refreshments in the morning. Full or partial mileage reimbursements may be available.

These workshops are made possible through the support of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Marine Debris Program and the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation.

The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

Preparing for future hazards by strengthening resilience to natural disasters across the state is one of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s top priorities, Secretary Reid Wilson told a few dozen Monday morning at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island.

He, along with Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership, or APNEP, Director Bill Crowell were in the Down East Carteret County community to announce $300,000 through the engagement and stewardship grants program to support the eight projects chosen this year “that advance environmental stewardship and community engagement across the region,” according to DEQ.

APNEP is a collaborative program dedicated to understanding, protecting and restoring the Albemarle-Pamlico estuarine system.

“We are seeing heavier rainfall, more frequent flooding, even on sunny days. While also, on the flip side, more droughts, more wildfires, and I don’t need to tell people from Down East that these conditions place enormous pressure on people’s lives, on infrastructure, and on our natural systems,” Wilson continued.

He said that maintaining healthy water bodies and estuaries is a critical part of this resilience work. “By protecting and conserving these natural systems, we help strengthen our communities and make them safer and better prepared for what is coming in the future.”

Grant funding is from the Environmental Protection Agency and DEQ, which hosts APNEP, the largest of the National Estuary Program’s 28 estuary partnerships. The region covers 36 counties in North Carolina and 18 cities and counties in Virginia.

Wilson said that through APNEP, the state invests “directly in communities through grants that support local efforts to protect and restore this amazing estuary,” and “will support projects that advance environmental stewardship and promote community engagement.”

DEQ has been awarding these grants for about five years, and “saw incredible boost in the number of applications. We got 29 applications for almost $1.6 million. Both of those, the number and the amount of money, are a record, and it demonstrates a clear need for continued funding of community engagement and outreach, so that we can really engage with communities up and down this watershed.”

And, Wilson continued, many of the grantees are bringing their own money and resources to the table, meaning that “every dollar can go a little bit further to protect this amazing ecosystem.”

Crowell briefly summarized the projects, starting with the Down East Resilience Network, housed by the waterfowl museum. The network has been awarded $29,700 to produce videos documenting stories from across the APNEP region and create opportunities for community interactions through field trips through their project, “Building Coastal Resilience Through Community Knowledge Exchange.”

Wilson described the Down East Resiliency Network during his opening remarks as “a truly remarkable grassroots effort” that brings together academics, community members, and local, state and federal government agencies to solve the challenges that the 13 unincorporated communities Down East face as they live on the front lines of environmental change.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, has been awarded $91,600 for “Planting a Culture of Coastal Stewardship: Native Landscapes and Outdoor Classrooms.”

The project is to expand native landscapes and promote water quality and stewardship throughout nature-based stormwater management projects and education activities across the region, Crowell said.

Carteret Community College, East Carolina University, North Carolina Sea Grant and the Mid-East Commission Council of Governments were awarded $49,178 to develop educational materials and implement the Beaufort County Living Shoreline Academy.

“Moving further upstream toward their headwaters, the downstream connections of the Albemarle-Pamlico, the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science will host a series of educational workshops that will focus on water quality and estuarine habitats and key stakeholders and governance structures that oversee the waters throughout the watershed,” Crowell said. The Durham-based museum was awarded $25,000 for “Downstream Connections in Albemarle-Pamlico.”

The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh was awarded $57,915 to host School of Rockfish. Crowell explained that the project is similar to APNEP’s Shad In the Classroom program. Students will raise and release juvenile striped bass in partnership with fishery biologists for North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, while also learning about water quality and habitats in the watershed.

The North Carolina Estuarium in Washington has been awarded $4,396 for “Walking Workshops on the Pamlico” and “Meet and Eat: The Eastern Oyster,” which includes establishing new learning stations on coastal ecosystems and water quality along the town’s waterfront and boardwalk, and to support an oyster-focused program connecting area educators with oyster farmers at the estuarium.

Scouting America East Carolina Council based in Kinston was awarded $36,850 for Camp Bodie Field Science Academy to support explorers in developing and leading field science programming.

“The explorers will learn water quality monitoring techniques, habitat assessment, shoreline ecology, while serving as trained peers for mentors visiting groups, mentors and visiting groups to the camp and the eco center, along with public schools,” Crowell said.

East Carolina University’s was awarded $4,325 for a project to test different interpretation signs at Bertie Beach on the Chowan River, the Roanoke/Cashie River Center and the North Carolina Coastal Reserve’s Kitty Hawk Woods Reserve. This project is intended to improve trail signs and understanding of science communication strategies in eastern North Carolina.

“The Albemarle-Pamlico Estuary System is truly a national treasure. The NEP Citizen Advisory Committee is very pleased to support these projects and partnerships, working to promote engagement and stewardship in the region, and supporting our estuary of national significance,” Crowell said.

Core Sound Executive Director Karen Amspacher, when welcoming representatives from Gov. Josh Stein’s office, DEQ, APNEP and grant recipients, explained that there was never a plan for the “somewhat accidental” Down East Resilience Network that formed soon after Hurricane Florence hit Carteret County in 2019.

“We at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum never intended to be in the resilience business, but we are, and actually, we always have been. Our changing landscape, our crumbling roads, our soggy ground, our somewhat uncertain futures have caused us to be on the front lines of trying to accept and understand, adapt, plan and hope,” she said.

Wilmington has been awarded a $1.5 million no-required-match federal grant to support its urban forest program.

The grant, which was funded through the Federal Inflation Reduction Act and administered by the North Carolina Forest Service, will be used to help the city inventory its street trees, and identify maintenance needs and future planting opportunities.

“The work will focus on federally designated project areas, covering approximately 36% of Wilmington, helping us invest where expanded tree canopy can provide some of the greatest environmental and community benefits,” according to city officials. “This proactive investment will help us prioritize higher-risk trees, improve public safety, reduce costly emergency repairs, and support more strategic, equitable tree planting throughout our community.”

Wilmington’s urban forest includes a variety of species that range from newly planted to more than 100 years old. There are more than 30,000 street trees on more than 450 miles of city-owned streets and about 2,500 trees on 40 miles of N.C. Department of Transportation-owned roads.

Wilmington’s Landscape Maintenance Division staff maintain the urban forest through pruning, removing trees that have declined due to disease, storm damage or are structurally unstable, and, when feasible, plant new trees to replace those that have been removed.

Funding from the grant is also being provided to the city’s nonprofit partners at Alliance for Cape Fear Trees, which aims to preserve, protect and plant trees to enhance the quality of life for residents in the Lower Cape Fear region.

The North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission, during its meeting later this month in Manteo, is expected to continue discussing oceanfront erosion and how hardened structures built to curb sand loss on beaches may affect the state’s coastal shorelines.

The commission’s Thursday, Aug. 27 meeting agenda includes an update on the Science Panel’s draft, “Report on the Effects of Hard Structures on Sandy, Open-Ocean Coastlines,” which includes a number of recommendations related to hardened erosion-control structures and summarizes the tradeoffs associated with those structures and lessons learned from past projects. The meeting Thursday is set to begin at 9 a.m.

The commission will also be provided a history of North Carolina’s laws and rules on hardened structures and receive information regarding other coastal states’ policies on these structures, according to the meeting materials.

The draft report was first presented to the CRC at its June meeting. During that meeting, and afterwards, commissioners had several questions and request for Science Panel Chair Dr. Laura Moore. Members of the commission asked that the draft report incorporate a closer look at other states’ policies, a review of Reef Balls as offshore breakwaters, and the addition of known erosion hot spots along the oceanfront. Reef Balls is the trade name for a type of artificial reef structure.

These requested updates to the draft report come after state lawmakers earlier this summer ultimately passed over a bill to repeal the state’s decades-old coastal hardened structure ban.

The Coastal Resources Advisory Council, a 20-member group that provides the CRC with local government perspectives and advice, will kick off the two-day meeting beginning at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 26 with a presentation on the Science Panel’s report. Time has been allotted for open discussion and public comment following the presentation.

The CRC is scheduled to convene at 1 p.m. that Wednesday with an agenda that includes the consideration of a variance request for an additional oceanfront setback in Oak Island, and a presentation on the draft 2026 Coastal Habitat Protection Plan, or CHPP.

Related: Marine Fisheries Commission to meet in Raleigh Aug. 19-20

The commission is scheduled to hold a public comment period beginning at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday. Members of the public may sign up to speak when they arrive at the meeting.

Staff with the Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Marine Fisheries will review the issues papers in the draft 2026 CHPP, request feedback and suggestions from commissioners, and a vote of the commission signaling preliminary support for the plan.

The commission on Thursday is also scheduled to discuss proposed amendments to rules pertaining to upland basins, septic tanks and pier replacement.

Meetings will be held at the Dare County Government Complex, 954 Marshall C. Collins Drive. The CRC meeting may also be viewed online.

Update Aug. 17: The North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission has modified its draft agenda for the Aug. 19-20 meeting regarding the Coastal Habitat Protection Plan. The commission will hear a presentation on the 2026 draft amendment, as previously planned, but will not vote on sending it out to public comment, as indicated in an earlier draft of the agenda.

The North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission, when it meets this month in Raleigh, is expected to vote on sending out for public and advisory committee review this year’s draft changes to the Coastal Habitat Protection Plan.

The commission is set to meet Wednesday and Thursday, Aug. 19-20, at the Doubletree by Hilton Raleigh Midtown, 2805 Highwoods Blvd. The meeting is open to the public and will be livestreamed on YouTube.

The meeting sessions begin at 1 p.m. on Aug. 19, and at 9 a.m., Aug. 20.

The Coastal Habitat Protection Plan was first adopted in 2004 as a long-term roadmap for improving coastal fisheries by protecting, restoring and enhancing critical fish habitats. It’s a requirement of the Fisheries Reform Act of 1997, and it must be updated every five years. While it was amended in 2021, the plan hasn’t been substantially reworked since 2016.

Work on the rewrite began earlier this year.

The commission is also expected to consider approving the final determination of 335 commission rules as part of the mandatory 10-year review of existing state agency rules.

Members are also expected to set the number of licenses in the Standard Commercial Fishing License Eligibility Pool for the 2026-27 license year.

Electing a vice chair is also on the meeting agenda, in addition to presentations on the following:

• The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Marine Fisheries’ Annual Fishery Management Plan review and accompanying draft Fishery Management Plan review schedule.
• Summary of North Carolina Kingfishes Stock Complex data analysis to aid in the review of the Kingfishes Fishery Management Plan.

The period for public comments begins at 6 p.m. Wednesday and at 9 a.m. Thursday. Those wishing to speak may do so at either time, but not during both comment periods.

If attending in-person, sign up at the hotel prior to the public comment sessions. To facilitate the meeting, and to accommodate as many speakers as possible, the chair will limit each speaker to three minutes, according to meeting materials. Those who wish to provide handouts to the commission during the public comment period should bring at least 12 copies to the meeting.

The public may also submit written comments via an online form; by mail to: MFC Meeting Comments, P.O. Box 769, Morehead City, NC 28557; or by dropping of a hard copy at the Division of Marine Fisheries’ Morehead City Headquarters at 3441 Arendell St. The deadline to submit written comments for this meeting is 4 p.m. Monday, Aug. 17.

The full agenda and meeting materials, as well as a link to the YouTube livestream, are available on the Marine Fisheries Commission Meetings webpage.

The hundreds of thousands of visitors who come to Carteret County each year to observe the wild herd roaming free on Shackleford Banks wouldn’t have much to see if the National Park Service’s proposal in the mid-1990s to dramatically reduce the herd had come to pass.

But when talk began in 1995 about removing a large portion of the wild horses to preserve island vegetation on the undeveloped barrier island, a part of Cape Lookout National Seashore, a group created a nonprofit to fight on behalf of the horses and won.

According to the grassroots nonprofit, the Foundation for Shackleford Horses, formed on Aug. 9, 1996, the park service’s plan to reduce the herd was detrimental, “Because you are talking about something that people identify with this place as much as they do the lighthouse or fishing or the beaches. The horses are an intrinsic part of this place, and this place is an intrinsic part of each one of us that loves it and calls it home.”

Foundation President Margaret Poindexter said the nonprofit evolved after a handful of concerned residents first gathered at public meetings, and then at public protests, in 1995. The foundation members consulted with scientists and collected data, research, and historical information, and approached then-Congressman Walter B. Jones Jr. to help protect the herd.

“Together, they stood up to the government’s ill-conceived policy proposal and blatant disregard for local interests, cultivated public, and eventually, bipartisan political support for their issue, which ultimately resulted in the enactment of unprecedented federal legislation in 1998, the ‘Shackleford Banks Wild Horses Protection Act,’ to ensure preservation and protection of a treasured resource, an ideal, a value,” Pondexter wrote in an email.

Since the legislation passed in 1998, the foundation has been cooperating with the National Park Service to make decisions about contraception, remove horses from the herd, veterinary intervention and humane euthanasia to end a horse’s suffering. DNA testing is also conducted to maintain the records documenting their lineage, and to monitor the overall genetic health of the herd, she continued.

The foundation is commemorating is 30 years at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 15, at Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island. Attendees are asked to bring a covered dish to share during the 6 p.m. dinner before the 7 p.m. program with special guest, behavioral ecologist Dr. Dan Rubenstein, who has studied the herd for decades and was one of the scientists consulted back in 1995. RSVP for planning purposes to shackhorsemail@gmail.com.

Poindexter said that Rubenstein’s “study of the horses has been instrumental in their protection and preservation” and the foundation “believes that, without the study and work of Dr. Rubenstein, the wild herd of Shackleford Banks would not exist today.”

The Princeton University professor and his graduate students have been studying and documenting the social behavior of the Shackleford horses for decades. He was named in 2008 Princeton’s Class of 1877 Professor of Zoology, an endowed professorship, and transferred to emeritus status in 2023.

Rubenstein, who had just returned to the United States from Kenya where he studies zebras, told Coastal Review last week that he remembers when the foundation’s founder and former president, Carolyn Mason, called him out of the blue 30 years ago about his decades of research on the herd.

“She said, ‘You don’t know me. I’m a librarian at Cherry Point, and we have a problem,’” Rubenstein said, “and she explained the problem, and we became friends. And the foundation was started. And long story short, the horses are still there.”

The equine ecologist learned about Carteret County’s wild horses almost by accident, he said, because of his interest in animal behavior while a zoology graduate student at Duke University in the early 1970s.

“I was on main campus, and I was at the beginning of this emerging field called behavioral ecology,” which Rubenstein explained as “behaviors related to the ecology, and it can go both ways. The behavior can change the ecology, or the ecology can impact the behavior.”

But, his interest in animal behavior started a few years before this while an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. He read a study on the family structure of the herd in the Pryor Mountains on the Montana-Wyoming border. The scientist who observed wild horse behavior looked at how the horses organize their social lives.

“I read his papers and said, ‘I want to study those horses’ and the one reason I did is that we were learning in our classes that animals live in groups largely because they have relatives in those groups,” even though “there’s no automatic benefits to living in groups, only costs.” This is because of competition for resources. The cost can be minimized through kin selection, the evolutionary theory that animals help their relatives survive so their shared genes are passed to the next generation.

“Virtually all animal societies are based around mothers staying with their daughters or sons staying with their fathers. So there’s a kin relationship. Horses and bats are unique in the sense that they’re like Western humans. Everybody leaves home,” he said. “Horses represented the toughest case to understand why animals live in groups because the genetic connectedness was not there. So I was interested in that.”

He had planned to head west and study the wild horses on Pryor Mountain but while on a visit to Beaufort in 1973 he learned that there were wild horses on Shackleford Banks.

“I decided I’d go out and camp on the island for a week and learn how to study horses because I’d never studied horses. I didn’t have horses when I was growing up. I didn’t ride horses. I worked on crayfish for my undergraduate thesis at Michigan. I was in the river all the time, snorkeling, cold, miserable,” but with the horses, you can study the behavior.

“And that week was miserable. In the spring, it rained every day. The tent I borrowed had holes in the top. Didn’t have a fly,” but he met a local who had a fish camp on the island and told Rubenstein all about the Shackleford horses, including the myths surrounding the wild herd.

Calling the horses beautiful, he said it was fascinating how they were culturally connected to people from Harkers Island, one of the 13 unincorporated communities making up Down East in Carteret County.

“I also learned on my first trip that they were not behaving like horses should be. They were being territorial, and that has to do with the structure of the island. There are all these channels of water that come in, and the horses used those as boundaries that they didn’t have to mark. That would be dividing lines between groups, and so I got fascinated by that and that’s how I got started studying the horses. And one thing led to another, and the numbers that I had before they took the cows, sheep and goats off the island became the basis for the legislation,” he said, referring to when the park service removed the livestock but left the horses in the early 1980s.

Rubenstein said he’s looking forward to his visit to Carteret County and talking about the process of coming up with the management plan. “I’ll talk on the secret lives of horses, but I’m also going to talk about the secret lives of management,” and how the conservation program was built.

The park service is mandated “to open the land up for the public, but it’s to have land that is stable, sustainable, protected,” Rubenstein said Wednesday. “And horses do have an impact. You know they graze; they’re going to change the plant composition. But by having the numbers at a low enough level, their impact is very minimal, and so the process by which we came up with the management plan is what I’ll talk about to the public next Saturday night.”

A portion of Brunswick County continues to experience the worst drought conditions in the state.

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor report released Thursday, widespread drought throughout much of the state has been eased by recent rainfall, but “most of the state is still in moderate to severe drought.”

Between July 28 and Tuesday areas in eastern North Carolina received more than 2 inches of rain, which helped ease drought in the Coastal Plain.

The public is encouraged to continue to conserve water because many reservoir levels are still below normal.

Near-normal rainfall of about 1 inch fell in some areas of the state last week. It is estimated that nearly 1 foot of rain fell in Surry County throughout last weekend. Rainfall in that county, which is in the northwestern part of the state, caused the worst flooding that area has seen in nearly 50 years, according to the release.

Waterways including Tanasee Creek, Wolf Creek and Bear Creek lakes in western North Carolina, and Lake Norman and Lake Wylie in the Catawba basin remain below target elevations. Falls Lake in Durham, Wake and Granville counties is nearly 3 feet below normal. W. Kerr Scott Reservoir and Jordan Lake are at their target levels.

“A rainy July brought steady improvements in drought conditions across most of North Carolina,” Klaus Albertin, chair of the North Carolina Drought Management Advisory Council and Water Resources Engineer with the N.C.Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources, stated in a release. “Groundwater and reservoir levels have been slower to recover. It’s only the beginning of August so we expect higher temperatures and increased water demand for at least another month.” 

State officials advise water systems in counties in exceptional or extreme drought to follow their water shortage response plans and water use reduction measures. Water systems in those areas are required to report weekly water use and conservation status on the Water Use Reporting website. 

Residents may check with their local water supplier for information on use restrictions and for tips on ways to conserve water.

The N.C. Drought Advisory Council meets weekly and submits drought condition recommendations to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the National Drought Mitigation Center for updates to a map of the nation’s drought conditions.

The council’s map is updated every Thursday, based on conditions through the previous Tuesday.

North Carolina Department of Transportation officials have scheduled meetings in September to review the new tolls going into effect next year for the four vehicle ferries that have historically been free to ride.

The 2026 budget law passed in July mandates that the Ferry Division start collecting by Jan. 1, 2027, tolls for the Currituck-Knotts Island, Bayview-Aurora, Hatteras-Ocracoke and Cherry Branch-Minnesott Beach ferry routes, and establish a $150 annual pass for permanent residents of 20 North Carolina coastal counties.

Related: ‘There’s no way’: Hanig decries rationale, rush to toll ferries

Tolls are currently collected on vehicle ferries servicing Southport-Fort Fisher, Cedar Island-Ocracoke, Swan Quarter-Ocracoke and the Ocracoke Express passenger ferry. The rule calls for tolls to be collected for the untolled routes.

“We are committed to transparency and will communicate regularly, especially with affected communities, as the implementation plan is developed,” Ferry Division Director Jed Dixon said in a release.

The following listening sessions are from 6-8 p.m.:

• Sept. 1: Beaufort County Community College, 5337 U.S. 264 East, Washington.
• Sept. 2: Pamlico Community College Delamar Center, Grantsboro.
• Sept. 3: Knotts Island Elementary School, 413 Woodleigh Road.
• Sept. 8: Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum, Hatteras.
• Sept. 9: Ocracoke School, 120 Schoolhouse Road.

The Ferry Division is developing the policies, rate recommendations, payment and collection systems, and infrastructure needed to implement the new tolling program by Jan. 1. The General Assembly has required that NCDOT report to state legislators on the new tolling system by Dec. 1.

“The timeline is aggressive, with several required milestones before implementation. Division staff will present the proposed tolling plan — including the methodology and recommended rates — to the N.C. Board of Transportation at its Oct. 8 meeting. Ferry leaders will return to the board on Nov. 5 seeking approval of the tolling policy and rate structure before launching the new program,” officials said.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is asking for feedback on identifying areas that may be suitable for commercial aquaculture operations in U.S. waters.

The agency is requesting relevant information on where it should consider future aquaculture opportunity areas, or AOA, which are defined geographic areas that have been evaluated for their potential suitability for commercial aquaculture, according to NOAA officials.

“The AOA identification process takes into account the potential environmental, economic, and social impacts of identifying AOAs and siting aquaculture in those locations drawing from extensive scientific review and analysis,” according to a NOAA release. “Public input is critical to this process.”

The public may submit comments through Sept. 14 in the Federal Register via the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal and type NOAA-NMFS-2026-2179 in the search box.

NOAA has also scheduled public listening sessions, the next of which is set to take place in English-only throughout the day beginning at 9 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 13.

Sessions in English and Spanish will begin at 9 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 31. The public may find specific times by registering for one of the sessions.

NOAA is asking the public for specific information, including regions in the U.S. where NOAA should consider analyzing for potential AOAs, types of aquaculture those areas may or may not support, water depths and distances from shore, locations where aquaculture gear may overlap with areas used by commercial fishers and protected species, and areas that may be important for subsistence harvest or other cultural resources, and for outdoor recreation or conserving natural resources.

NOAA initially sought input on regions to begin identifying AOAs in 2020. Last year, the agency identified 13 AOAs in the Gulf of Mexico and off Southern California totaling more than 21,000 acres in federal waters.

NOAA reports that an estimated $12 billion in farmed seafood was imported into the country in 2025.

“Aquaculture creates jobs, uplifts coastal economies, and complements wild-capture fisheries,” agency officials stated. “It provides healthy and sustainable seafood to American families—bolstering domestic food security.” 

NOAA is also working to identify AOAs in Alaska state waters.

Joan Collins is a regular Coastal Review contributor on topics related to Outer Banks history.

In January 2024, I shared a photograph believed to have been taken some time in the 1930s of a time when the historic Pea Island Station was commanded by a white officer in charge. I had heard my father speak of having served under a couple of white officers when he first reported to the station in February 1940. 

This also was before his uncle, Maxie M. Berry Sr., shown standing on the far left in that image and who began his career there several years earlier, would later assume this role. The story has always fascinated me, as it represents a time when even those most familiar with the inspiring story of the historic station don’t often think about or even realize occurred. Still today, many incorrectly believe that after Keeper Richard Etheridge took command in January 1880, the station remained staffed with an “all-Black” crew for 67 years, until March 1947 when my father, Herbert M. Collins, closed the doors for the very last time. Yet, this stunning photograph reflected otherwise.

Although the photograph I shared then did not include my father, one of the two men seated is Palmer Midgett, a name identified as being an officer in charge in my father’s early U.S. Coast Guard records of his service at Pea Island. These records also reflect the name William Scarborough, the man believed sitting on the right, as being an officer in charge while my father was there. At various times, both signed my father’s performance ratings. So, you can imagine my delight when the photograph published in my earlier January 2024 column first came to my attention. Although my father is not shown, it is an important reminder of his service at Pea Island and the service there of those before him, including his beloved uncle, Maxie M. Berry Sr.

With that background, imagine how delighted I was to learn of these newly discovered images from an unprocessed portion of the “SR.44.47 Conservation and Development Travel Photograph Collection, State Archives of North Carolina.” These photographs were discovered after an inquiry I had made when noticing a recent State Archives Facebook post of a 1938 photograph that is part of this collection. I quickly recognized the photograph as something I had never seen. My excitement was apparent when I telephoned Rebecca Stubbs, audiovisual archivist at the Division of Natural and Cultural Resources and urged her to dig deeper. I wanted to learn what additional photos might be on hand that I had never before seen in my years of researching this topic.

You can also imagine my shock to learn not only one additional photograph existed depicting a time when a white commander was in charge, there were several more – 19 images in total. The white commander shown in several of the images also appears to be William Scarborough, one of the two officers in charge and mentioned in my January 2024 article. Although the photograph in my earlier article was not among these new photographs found, it appears to have been taken on the same day. Palmer Midgett is missing from any of the new photographs found.

I am thrilled to have been granted permission by the DNCR to share this exciting news and this link, Pea Island US Coast Guard Station|Flickr, a digital album created for these 19 images. However, like the photograph published in my January 2024 article, the who, when, and why these newly discovered photographs were taken is not known. The newly found images were discovered in tins and then digitalized to reveal what was enclosed. They are being made available to encourage continued awareness and research about the historic Pea Island station.

Today, while many now know the inspiring story of Keeper Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers about their most famous rescue, the harrowing Oct. 11, 1896, rescue of the shipwrecked E.S. Newman’s crew, there are more stories to tell.

The story of why my father reported to white commanders during his early service at Pea Island is something I have been attempting to unravel in recent years, along with the story of “Checkerboard Crews,” racially mixed crews that existed on the Outer Banks during the Pea Island station era.

Look here for more soon on this and the fascinating story of George Pruden, the individual also mentioned in my earlier article. Pruden’s retirement in 1937, which he would later allege was forced, broke the continuous cycle of Black men being placed in command at the Pea Island station after Etheridge’s command.

A Wilmington man has landed a new state record yellowfin grouper, or Mycteroperca venenosa.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Marine Fisheries recently confirmed that John Theodorakis of Wilmington caught the 45-pound, 9.6-ounce fish on July 2.

Theodorakis broke the previous state record held by Michael Hall, whose yellowfin grouper landed in 2009 weighed 42 pounds, 10 ounces. 

Theodorakis was fishing approximately 45 miles offshore of Carolina Beach aboard the vessel Clearly Hooked when he landed the fish. He used menhaden for bait on 80-pound test line, with a Crowder rod and Shimano Tiagra reel. The fish measured just over 43 inches total length (from the tip of the nose to the stretched end of the tail) and had a girth of 31 inches, according to the division. 

The fish was brought to Island Tackle in Carolina Beach before it was weighed and confirmed by division staff at DEQ’s Wilmington Regional Office.  

Yellowfin grouper is a species of shallow-water grouper managed by the South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council. Yellowfin can be identified from similar grouper species by the yellow edge around the pectoral fin and dorsal spines, its square tail and often red color when first landed.   

For more information on state record fish, go to the division’s State Saltwater Records webpage or contact the North Carolina Saltwater Fishing Tournament staff at saltwater.citations@deq.nc.gov.

The N.C. State Energy Office is accepting public comments on the Weatherization Assistance Program’s Annual State Plan.

The Weatherization Assistance Program is designed to save energy, reduce utility bills and increase home comfort and safety for state residents by providing free weatherization services for income-eligible households. The annual plan describes the administration of the program as required by federal regulations.

A public hearing on the plan for fiscal 2027 has been set for 1 p.m. Aug. 17 in the DEQ Green Square Office Building, training room No. 1210, 217 West Jones St. in Raleigh.

The public may also attend the hearing by Webex or by telephone. The meeting number/access code is 2437 147 5395 and the password is weatherization (93284374 when dialing from a phone). To join by phone, dial +1-415-655-0003 or +1-904-900-2303.

Comments on the accompanying revised Training and Technical Assistance Plan, Health and Safety Plan, and Weatherization Installation Standard Work Specifications are also welcome.

Public comments on the plan must be postmarked, emailed or received by N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s State Energy Office no later than Aug. 19.

Comments may be submitted by mail to the DEQ Weatherization Assistance Program, 1613 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-1613, or emailed to seo.publiccomments@deq.nc.gov, with “2026 Weatherization Comment” in the subject line. 

The idea of a fish story is a tale of fantastic proportions. Webster’s defines it as an implausible, boastful story. Little wonder then that people look at you askance when you tell them of some amazing occurrence that took place when you were fishing by yourself.

With that in mind, we all have them. The longer you spend on the water, and the more proficient you get, you will tend to collect more crazy experiences that will make people look at you and say, “That story sounds fishy.”

The longer the time between the time the story took place and when it gets recounted, the more fishiness it adds.

The very first time I fished the coastal waters of North Carolina, near Morehead City, I was accompanied by my father. I had just purchased my own boat, an 18-foot modified-V, center-console skiff from Cobia. At the time of this excursion my experience in North Carolina saltwater fishing was limited to surf fishing and jetty fishing for reds, trout, and any other things I could wrangle near Fort Macon and Beaufort Inlet. Also, I had done extensive fishing around Tampa and of course all the waters in the state of New York from Lake Ontario to Long Island.

With a little local assistance from an Arendell Street tackle shop that no longer exists, Pete’s Tackle, we proceeded with the recommended jigs and soft plastic tails. We tried quite a few places with no luck. Then the tide changed, both literally and figuratively, we came around a corner using the trolling motor, and I hooked up with a redfish. Seconds later, my father did, too. Knowing the tendency of reds to school, we fired right back. Immediately, we had a double hookup.

We proceeded in this manner, catching and releasing red drum from 17 inches long up to 8 pounds. My father got the biggest. For years, this would be known as “The Day We Got All Those Redfish” in our personal lore. In all the ensuing 30 years of fishing around here, I never caught another fish from that location.

Pete Allred of Pete’s Tackle passed in 2012, and I think of him whenever I go by there.

When we were younger, my father and I would fish for the lake-run rainbow trout of Lake Ontario called steelhead. We usually fished the Salmon River which was an easy 30-minute drive away.  We were up there so often through the 1980s and early ’90s we had our own way of doing things.

On one particular slow day when it seemed like there wasn’t a single fish in the river, Dad found a fly that someone had dropped as he walked down the path.

“I’m going to tie this fly on and catch a fish with it,” he proclaimed proudly. Wouldn’t you know, after just a couple of casts, he did catch a gorgeous silvery steelhead that jumped and put on a wonderful show. So of course, from that day forward, any fly found along the riverbank, would then be tied on. I really can’t remember if it ever worked quite that well again, but he was never afraid of a good story.

As l went along in my fishing career, I became known for false albacore fishing. It took a few years before we could line up a trip for my father to come down and get after them. If you’ve been out there, the fishing can range from all-out blitzes to absolute nothing, sometimes in the same day. Let’s just say this time it was an amazing blitz with fish crushing bait everywhere. You couldn’t ask for a better situation to show one’s parent. We caught them as soon as we could get a fly or jig in the water. Game on.

It was just a couple of years later that he was unable to fish on the ocean. His balance went bad on him, and it was not a good idea anymore. But that day became “The Day We Got the Albies.”

The last time we fished together was at a bass pond. There were a lot there, and they were active. Cast a small Senko plastic worm, as we watch the line as it descends. A little twitch to the side, set the hook. These weren’t big fish like the 10-pounder he had gotten years before in a similar coastal golf course pond, or the 12-pound walleye from the Bay of Quinte in Ontario, or the bright chrome steelheads from the salmon river, but it was our day.

Later that summer I would have a stroke, and that was the last time we’d fish together. So, this was our final fish story. The funny part was, the bass were being so aggressive, I would begin a count when the plastic worm would hit the water, and if a fish wasn’t caught at 10, you had to switch the rod to the other guy. 

I’m sure at this point you know where this is going. The final fish story. Don Churchill passed on June 27, 2026. After we had a service for him, we went out to the lake where he kept his boat for 40 years. My brother spread his ashes on the point next to the marina. As we watched it sweep away, a large fish jumped, completely cleared the surface, and smacked back down.

Fish stories can be true.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation’s office in the Wilmington area is holding later this month its quarterly “Ask an Advocate,” a casual coffee chat with Kerri Allen, the nonprofit’s coastal management program director and coastal advocate.

The discussion is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 20, at the Fred & Alice Stanback Coastal Education Center in Wrightsville Beach. Those wishing to attend are asked to reserve a spot using the online form.

The Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, is a member-supported nonprofit that focuses on protecting and restoring the North Carolina coast with offices in Carteret County and the Outer Banks as well.

“People care deeply about our coast, but sometimes they aren’t sure where to start or how they can make a difference,” Allen explained about the opportunity to discuss coastal management strategies and local and state issues.

“Ask an Advocate is about opening that door and helping people better understand the issues, answer questions, and find meaningful ways to get involved. We want folks to know that their voice matters, and that when communities are informed and engaged, they can have a real impact on the decisions that shape our coast,” she added.

Brunswick County’s Northwest Water Treatment Plant’s new low-pressure reverse osmosis system is expected to be operational by year’s end.

The project’s surety, in this case Zurich American Insurance Co. and Federal Insurance Co., and contractor Oscar Renda Construction anticipate that expanded water treatment capacity at the plant will be available this month, according to a county update.

County officials do not expect the original price of construction, $167.3 million, to change, despite project delays.

Crews have wrapped up work on a new rapid mix structure where raw water will be quickly blended with coagulant chemicals in a process that neutralizes particle charge before moving to the next step of treatment.

Other upgrades that are now complete include the super pulsator clarifier, which combines the process of flocculation, or gentle stirring to combine small neutral-charged particles into larger particles, and clarification functions in one basin; and the addition of eight new dual media filters and backwash equalization tank.

The upgraded treatment system will remove per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, including GenX, and 1,4-dioxane from the plant’s water source, the Cape Fear River. The plant’s capacity is being doubled from 24 million gallons per day to 48 million gallons per day.

“Brunswick County will continue to take all actions necessary to protect the best interests of our residents, who have waited far too long for a solution to remove PFAS from our drinking water,” county officials said in a release. “Brunswick County will provide another update on the latest project milestones in the coming months.“

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is pushing forward its proposal to deepen the Wilmington Harbor by an additional 5 feet and widen segments of the shipping lane up the Cape Fear River.

The Corps-prepared final Wilmington Harbor 403 environmental impact statement, or EIS, sticks with a plan to extend the entrance of the federal navigation channel by about 9 miles, deepen the channel from 42 feet to 47 feet and widen portions of it from the river mouth about 28 miles to the Wilmington port. The construction, which is projected to begin in 2030 and take about six years to complete, is estimated to cost more than $1.3 billion.

The North Carolina State Ports Authority says the project is needed to accommodate larger, deep-draft container vessels at the Wilmington port in U.S. East Coast-Asia trade. Deepening the shipping channel would attract more import and export business and boost job growth in the state, ports officials say.

The Port of Wilmington is the 67^th largest port in the nation when measured by total cargo tonnage. In 2022, about 7.6 million tons of cargo, including 6.6 million tons of largely containerized foreign cargo, and 1 million tons of domestic cargo was shipped through the Wilmington Harbor, according to the Corp’s Waterborne Commerce Statistics Center.  

The final environmental impact statement and accompanying letter report, as required under Section 403 of the 2020 Water Resources Development Act, will be formally submitted this month to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works for review and then a record of decision, or the final stage of the approval process, will be published in the Federal Register.

Once that office receives those documents, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management may submit objections it raised earlier this year about the proposed project, one the division’s director wrote would have “significant adverse impacts to coastal resources.”

Looking back: Port plan would have ‘significant adverse impacts’

“The FEIS acknowledges the State’s federal consistency objection but does not resolve it,” a Division of Coastal Management spokesperson said in an email responding to a request for comment. “DCM and DEQ will continue to come to the table with the Army Corps and the State Ports to discuss a potential path forward.”

Wilmington District Public Affairs Specialist Jed Cayton explained in an email to Coastal Review last month that federal rules outline how a state agency must reply when that agency objects to a federal agency’s consistency choice.

“The regulation provides several potential paths forward, including not proceeding with the action, attempting to resolve differences with the state, or determining that the federal action is consistent to the maximum extent practicable with the state’s coastal zone management program,” Cayton wrote. “The Wilmington District is consulting with its higher headquarters to determine the specific course of action regarding the State’s non-concurrence with the USACE’s coastal consistency determination.”

The Corps anticipates that the record of decision will be issued in October.

Division officials argue that the Corps’ draft EIS failed to adequately assess cumulative flooding impacts or thoroughly detail areas where dredged material would be placed, did not sufficiently account for potential effects on fisheries habitat, freshwater wetlands, shorelines, or state, historic and other sites along the Cape Fear River, and did not evaluate PFAS in the lower Cape Fear River sediment.

Residents, environmental organizations and local governments have widely expressed similar concerns, saying that the project will threaten historic and cultural resources along the river, accelerate erosion and exacerbate flooding, destroy habitat, is not economically justified, and will disperse contaminants in the riverbed’s sediment into marshes and onto public beaches.

“The Final Letter Report and FEIS continue to show that this project is unnecessary and extraordinarily damaging to the environment,” Southern Environmental Law Center attorneys wrote in a July 31 letter in response to those documents. “The costs of this harbor expansion continue to climb as the alleged need and purported benefits simultaneously dwindle. On top of the questionable economic considerations, the project would come with a host of permanent harms to the natural environment of the Lower Cape Fear, cherished by locals and tourists alike.”

The letter, written on behalf of more than a half-dozen environmental and nonprofit organizations, including the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, concludes, “Before the Corps finalizes the record of decision, we implore the Corps to reevaluate the economic justifications for this project, complete all required consultations, and address the significant questions regarding the project’s environmental impacts.”

Looming questions, PFAS concerns

The Corps has identified several areas in which it would place material dredged from the channel, including on nearby beaches in Brunswick and New Hanover counties and bird islands in the river. Dredged material would also be used for intertidal marsh restoration, fish habitat enhancement structures, riverbank protection, and back-bay marsh restoration.

About half of the construction dredge material would be placed for beneficial use instead of within federal offshore sites, according to the final EIS.

But worries persist over whether that material is contaminated by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, that have been discharged into the Cape Fear River for decades by upstream industries.

“Known contamination exists upstream, but it is not known if the sediment proposed to be dredged is contaminated,” the final EIS states. “At the time this EIS was prepared, this concern and the associated controversy remain, and the lack of resolution is hindering resolution of other issues that require state agency approvals and certifications.”

There are no federal or state human health limits for PFAS in sediment.

“The proposed project is not expected to contribute to PFAS contamination or impact drinking water contaminant concentrations. The sediment will be tested in accordance with all applicable requirements, including any new standards that are developed, prior to construction, and the results will be used to guide decisions related to use and disposal options based on the testing results and applicable criteria.”

A peer-reviewed study published by the Royal Science of Chemistry in 2022 confirms the presence of PFAS in the sediment in areas of the Cape Fear River.

The study targeted six PFAS, including legacy chemical compounds PFOA and PFOS, which have been phased out of production and replaced by what are referred to as emerging compounds. For this study, scientists focused on emerging compounds HFPO-DA, commonly referred to as GenX, PFMOAA, PFMOBA and PFMOPrA.

After collecting sediment samples between September 2017 and October 2019, scientists found that the highest concentration of PFAS was found in the sediment at Lock and Dam No. 1, some 39 miles upstream of Wilmington.

The overall trend of the data researchers collected found that PFAS in the Cape Fear River’s sediment “is decreasing as you go down the river,” said University of North Carolina Wilmington Professor Dr. Ralph Mead, program director of the NC PFAS Research Network and one of the study’s corresponding authors.

“There’s PFAS in the sediment, and while the concentration changes, of course, the distribution of PFAS compounds change as you move along the river itself,” Mead said in a recent telephone interview.

“One of the interesting things about the Cape Fear River is, as you move down the river, of course the salinity is going to increase. That salinity increase, depending on the freshwater flow, you can have salty water downtown by the hotels down on the riverfront,” he continued.

This leaves a question that does not yet have a clear answer. If a particle of sediment with PFAS in it floats down the river, will the salt make the particle hold on to PFAS or let it go?

“We all like to think that sediment is the ultimate sink for a lot of organic compounds, but sometimes, if the conditions and water chemistry is right, there can be a desorption that can take place,” Mead said.

He pointed out that researchers also detected a series of unknown fluorinated compounds in their sediment samples that were found by using high-resolution mass spectrometry, which can clearly distinguish tiny mass differences between molecules.

“The significance of this is we do not have standards for any of these compounds,” Mead said. “So, there’s potentially more PFAS present than we know of. I think this all ties back to the idea that there’s a lot of research that’s left to be done. There’s just a lot of questions out there and it’s not just the Cape Fear, there are other waterbodies as well that are impaired.”

Adverse impacts, outstanding issues

The final EIS identifies two “general types of meaningful adverse impacts,” including the destruction of fish habitat during construction and loss of freshwater, forested wetlands in the lower Cape Fear River.

The Corps would compensate for fish habitat loss by improving fish passages at lock and dams No. 1 and 2 more than 35 miles upstream of Wilmington “to enable anadromous fish to access quality habitat upstream of those facilities.”

The proposed plan to offset impacts to freshwater wetlands include preserving high-quality freshwater forested wetlands and upgrading lower-quality sites along the lower Cape Fear.

“Along with the adverse impacts, some beneficial effects would be expected,” according to the final EIS. “The deepened and widened channels would allow the cargo to be transported on a smaller number of larger and more modern and efficient vessels. In addition to the economic benefits, these transportation efficiencies would result in fewer vessel transits through the harbor yielding beneficial effects such as reduced fuel consumption, air emissions, vessel strikes to animals in the channels and shoreline erosion,” when compared to leaving the channel at its current depth.

The final EIS also notes that several controversial issues have been raised about the proposed project.

“Most were addressed and resolved,” the final EIS states.

But other controversial and outstanding issues remain, those “that require more time or additional action to resolve,” including federal review of the project’s impacts to endangered species and their habitat.

The Corps anticipates executing a programmatic agreement with agencies including the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources’ State Historic Preservation Office “this summer,” Cayton wrote. A programmatic agreement aims to address a project’s impacts on cultural and historic resources.

There are nearly 30 historic sites and properties within the proposed project’s area of potential effects, according to the State Historic Preservation Office.

Those sites include Dark Branch, a community in unincorporated Brunswick County where land remains largely owned by the descendants of previously enslaved residents, and Orton, a sprawling, former rice plantation.

Orton’s owner, billionaire hedge fund manager and conservation philanthropist Louis Moore Bacon, remains firmly opposed to the proposed harbor project, one he argues would threaten the expansive, historic rice field system and earthen dike in which he’s invested tens of millions of dollars to restore.

“The Cape Fear’s West Bank exists today because generations of conservationists, landowners, public agencies and local communities made the deliberate decision to protect one of North Carolina’s most important ecological and cultural landscapes,” Bacon said in an emailed statement to Coastal Review. “It would be a profound mistake to unravel that achievement with proposed Wilmington Harbor Dredging Project, which would threaten permanent harm to protected wetlands, wildlife habitat, historic rice fields built by the hands of enslaved African Americans and the historic Gullah Geechee cultural landscape. Before moving forward with what would be irreversible losses, we should be certain the project’s economic rationale still holds, and that every environmental and cultural consequence has been transparently and scientifically evaluated. Once these resources are compromised, nothing can fully bring them back.”

Businesses in North Carolina that are required to obtain Title V air quality permits may no apply online through a process that aims to simply the application process.

The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality announced Tuesday that it has taken another step toward modernizing the state’s environmental application process by offering AccessDEQ as an electronic option for businesses to submit Title V air quality permit applications.

“Protecting North Carolina’s air quality requires a permitting process that works well for everyone,” Division of Air Quality Director Mike Abraczinskas stated in a release. “This is one more way we’re making it easier to do business in North Carolina while continuing to implement effective pollution control measures that keep the state’s air clean.”

Businesses that emit regulated air pollutants above certain thresholds are, under the Clean Air Act, required to obtain Title V air quality permits. Those permits may include emission limits, monitoring, recordkeeping and reporting requirements.

“Title V permits play a crucial role in maintaining safe air for every North Carolinian — especially children, older adults and people with respiratory illnesses,” according to the release. “They also support a stronger economy by helping businesses run more reliably, plan for the future and follow required rules without unnecessary delays. The Title V permitting program has helped North Carolina maintain compliance with every federal health-based air quality standard for more than a decade.”

Materials required for Title V applications may be uploaded to DEQ directly online rather than by mail, which “simplifies a historically complex and paper-intensive process, reducing administrative burdens for businesses and improving efficiency for staff reviewing applications,” the release states.

Businesses in all but three counties in North Carolina regulated by the Division of Air Quality may use the new online submittal process. Buncombe, Forsyth and Mecklenburg counties administer their own local air quality programs.

Later this year, DEQ anticipates offering electronic filing for non-Title V applications, including small and synthetic minor applications. General Title V permit applications for air curtain incinerators were made available on AccessDEQ last year.

The agency plans to add additional permits to the portal “in the next few months” in ongoing efforts to provide better customer service.

North Carolina State University is offering at no charge this fall a two-day conference on climate challenges and viable solutions.

The Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology & Science, or KIETS, Climate Leaders Program‘s annual fall symposium, Think and Do: The Future of Climate Solutions, is scheduled for Oct. 7-8 in the James B. Hunt Jr. Library on the Centennial Campus in Raleigh. The agenda and registration form can be found on the N.C. State website.

This is the fifth year the climate leaders program, which allows students, faculty mentors and internship hosts to partner on developing solutions for mitigating and adapting to climate change, has hosted the symposium.

“Through this symposium, the KIETS Climate Leaders Program and NC State University’s Climate and Sustainability Academy (CaSA) are working together to amplify climate and sustainability collaboration, communication and innovation efforts across disciplines. We are integrating science, technology, education, design, management and the arts and humanities through engaged learning and problem-solving to empower current and future generations,” Organizers said.

According to the website, the symposium is to explore the following four themes:

• Climate science: Translating research, data and modeling into actionable strategies for resilience.
• Innovation and entrepreneurship: Launching climate-tech ventures, piloting market-driven ideas, and exploring opportunities.
• Buildings: Transforming green infrastructure, resilient design, and energy efficiency in the built environment.
• Textiles: Reimagining circular fashion, bio-based materials, and sustainable manufacturing processes.

Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology & Science, N.C. State University’s Sustainability Fund, and the R.L. Rabb Science and Society Symposia endowment are funding the symposium.

Organizers ask that Amanda Mueller at ammuell2@ncsu.edu or Catherine Cole at crcole@ncsu.edu are notified of any cancellations as soon as possible to ensure responsible use of funds.

Dare County and state transportation officials will review N.C. Highway 12 closures, discuss current procedures for monitoring road conditions and gather feedback on ways to enhance communication before, during and after future weather-related closures during a community meeting this month.

The county-hosted meeting is scheduled for 6-7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 18, at the Fessenden Center, 46830 N.C. Highway 12 in Buxton.

County and N.C. Department Transportation representatives are holding the meeting in light of the July 24 closure of the highway, portions of which were rendered unsafe an impassable from the Basnight Bridge to Rodanthe because of significant flooding caused by intense rainfall.

According to NCDOT, some areas had seen as much as 7 inches of rainfall over the span of just 36 hours prior to the July 24 closure. The standing water was not the result of ocean overwash, officials said at the time.

The busiest, most popular route in North Carolina’s vehicle ferry system — the first and, until recently, the largest system in the country — has been between Hatteras and Ocracoke islands on the Outer Banks. Until the state budget was signed into law last month, no proposal to toll the only vehicle access to Ocracoke Island had made it to the governor’s desk. Now it’s part of a provision in a bill that requires tolls be established and implemented for the state’s four free vehicle ferry routes.

The law provided barely six months to develop a plan, identify funding, build the physical and digital infrastructure and inform the public. Immediately, requests were made to extend the Jan. 1 deadline; letters were written, amendments were offered. And during last week’s North Carolina General Assembly sessions to adjust the budget bill, legislators who pushed the tolling provision refused to budge.

“There’s no way,” said Sen. Bobby Hanig, a Currituck County Republican, in response to Coastal Review’s questions regarding the majority’s refusal to consider an extension. “Everyone involved is working their tail off to make this happen … but it’s going to be impossible.”

As Hanig sees it, legislative leaders insisting on the accelerated schedule for tolling show they are “agenda driven” because so little thought has been put into addressing the impacts on the people who use the ferries, or even on the complexity of tolling the sprawling system that serves diverse needs and populations. For instance, school buses were exempted at the last minute, he said, but what about state-owned vehicles, student drivers, emergency workers, waste management trucks, delivery drivers, essential workers?

“You can tell it’s agenda-driven by how it’s probably the worst-drafted provision in the budget,” said Hanig, adding that he had drafted seven amendments to address the deficiencies, including the implementation date for tolling, but legislators at last week’s session wouldn’t hear any of them.

Even the purported reason for tolling doesn’t measure up, he said.

“You know they’re doing this under the ruse of putting it toward new ferry purchases. Well, the best-case scenario, from talking to people that are working on this is, ‘Probably the best we will net is $5 million a year.’ Well, you know, a sound class ferry costs $60 (million). So do the math.”

Telephone messages and emails to Sen. Vickie Sawyer, R-Iredell, and Sen. Mike Lazzara, R-Onslow, both proponents of the tolling measure and its Jan. 1 implementation, yielded no reply.

At the very least, Hanig said, it makes sense to wait for the state auditor to complete the audit of the Ferry Division that is underway and is expected to be presented to the legislature at the start of the 2027 session in January.

Signed by Gov. Josh Stein on July 7, the budget bill’s ferry provision requires tolls be set to fund vessel replacement and upgrades as specified by the Ferry Division’s schedule. The tolling infrastructure and technology must be covered by funds in the division’s operational budget. In addition, the law included an annual systemwide pass for residents and active-duty military to be set at $150 per vehicle, but provided no exemptions or discounts.

Also, Stein noted after signing the bill that he had found the ferry toll provision problematic. “North Carolina’s ferries for many are not a luxury; they’re an essential part of our state’s transportation system that residents rely on for daily life,” the governor said in a statement. “In many cases, ferries are the only practical way for families to access jobs, schools and health care.”

The Ocracoke Access Alliance, which advocates for the ferries, had sent a letter to legislators asking for the tolling to be delayed for a year to provide a more realistic timeframe to set up a program. Alliance Executive Director Justin LeBlanc told Coastal Review that the group had requested an allowance for a free annual residential pass for full-time residents of Ocracoke, “so that we would have at least one route available to us to be able to go to from our homes for free.”

Neither request was granted.

Until recent years, islanders had successfully fought back each time tolling of the Hatteras-Ocracoke ferry bubbled up in Raleigh. Since the only way to “drive” on and off the island is on a vehicular ferry, islanders contended ferries are to them the same as a highway like U.S. 64, which is not tolled in northeastern North Carolina, is for other state residents.

But this time, LeBlanc said that it was better to work with the state to find a reasonable way to help keep the ferry system operational. As stated in the 2024 Ferry Division Vessel Replacement Study, many of the 23 ferries in the state’s fleet are old, with an average age of 26 years in 2023 and the vessel Silver Lake at 55 years old. In today’s dollars, the ferries, which are categorized from small to large as river class, Hatteras class and sound class, cost anywhere from $25 million to $55 million per vessel.

LeBlanc said that the alliance had suggested rates of $20 per round trip, or $10 each way, for the Hatteras ferry, with adjustments for inflation over time.

“There is no established tolls in the legislation now,” he said.

The bill directs the Board of Transportation to develop the tolls under the Ferry Division’s advisement. Boiled down, LeBlanc said, the toll comes down to how much of ferry vessel replacement costs should be covered by tolls, and what is the replacement schedule?

“Because if you want to try to cover 100% of vessel replacement costs, tolls are going to be exorbitant,” he said.

In addition to the Hatteras-Ocracoke route, the Currituck-Knotts Island, Bayview-Aurora and Cherry Branch-Minnesott Beach routes have to date been free to ride. The Cedar Island-Ocracoke, Swan Quarter-Ocracoke and Southport-Fort Fisher routes, as well as the Ocracoke Express passenger ferry, are tolled. According to the ferry report, the 70-year-old North Carolina ferry system transported more than 1.5 million passengers and 700,000 vehicles in 2023, making it the second-largest state-run ferry system in the U.S., behind only Washington state.

While discussions continue behind the scenes, Ferry Division officials said they are fully engaged in the process and remain committed to providing access to the state’s coastal communities.

“The N.C. Department of Transportation Ferry Division will work closely with the N.C. Board of Transportation and stakeholders to execute the state budget requirement that tolls be established on all ferry routes,” Tim Hass, Ferry Division communications officer, said in an email. “In the coming months, we will begin discussions about the pricing system, method of tolling and other infrastructure that will be required for this implementation.”

A California-based company has been awarded a multimillion-dollar dredging contract for the Morehead City Inner Harbor.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Wilmington District tapped Curtin Maritime Corp., which is headquartered in Long Beach, to clear shoaled sediment from the navigation channels within the harbor for $4.3 million. The Corps awarded the contract on July 30.

“Maintaining safe navigable waterways is central to our mission at the Wilmington District,” Wilmington District Commander Col. Ken Porter stated in a release. “This investment ensures that the Morehead City Inner Harbor remains fully operational, supporting regional commerce, maritime industries, and the local economy.”

Curtin Maritime Corp. will, under the direction of the Wilmington District, dredge the channels on a schedule “to align with regional environmental windows to minimize impacts on local marine life and coastal habitats,” the release states.

Sea Tow Wrightsville Beach has added a new vessel to its fleet, one that is expected to decrease response times along the Cape Fear and Northeast Cape Fear rivers by about an hour.

The addition of the 26-foot Twin Vee vessel brings the fleet to a total of seven boats providing on-water assistance in the greater Wilmington, Hampstead and Jacksonville areas.

The new boat operates from Port City Marina.

“This addition represents a meaningful evolution for the Wrightsville Beach franchise, which has operated under the ownership of Chris Willis since 1993,” according to a Sea Tow Wrightsville Beach release. “Willis’ team, led by General Manager Captain Ryan Saporito, consists of a dozen Coast Guard-licensed captains with over 100 combined years of experience, who are ready to respond day or night.”

Sea Tow Wrightsville Beach strategically positions its fleet of purpose-built Sea Tow boats at marinas in Wrightsville Beach, Wilmington, and Carolina Beach in New Hanover County, and Hampstead in Pender County, and on trailers to help minimize response times.

“We are proud to work with Port City Marina to further enhance the boating experience near downtown Wilmington,” Saporito stated in the release. “The addition of this new vessel improves our on-water capabilities by cutting response times which allows for even better assistance to our members and boaters in the community.”

Boat captains patrol high-traffic waterways like Carolina Beach, Masonboro, Mason, Rich, New Topsail and New River inlets daily throughout the summer season.

Boat owners who join Sea Tow pay an annual rate of $249 for Gold Card membership, the benefits of which include unlimited boat towing in the member’s home area, jump starts, fuel delivery, scheduled dock-to-dock tows, and more.

Sea Tow earlier this year released a fully redesigned mobile app that offers a faster, more accurate way to request assistance, and includes intuitive navigation, real-time wind, tides and weather. The app may be downloaded on iOS via the Apple Store and on Android via Google Play.

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission has opened the public comment period for proposed changes for 2027-28 hunting, fishing and game land regulations.

The agency reviews and adjusts seasons, bag limits and land management rules, as needed, annually to comply with changes in the law, achieve conservation management goals, and respond to constituent requests and suggestions.

The proposed changes are broken down by category, including wildlife management, inland fisheries, land and water access, wildlife education (shooting ranges), and endangered, threatened, and special concern species.

Comments will be accepted through Sept. 14 online, by email to regulations@wildlife.gov, include name, county and state of residence, or by mail to Rulemaking Coordinator, 1701 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-1701.

The commission has also scheduled virtual public hearings on the proposed changes.

The first hearing is set for noon on Aug. 20. Participants must preregister, after which time they will receive a calendar invitation and link to the webinar. To join by phone, dial (833) 568-8864 and use Webinar ID:165 897 7256.

A second hearing is scheduled for 6 p.m. on Aug. 25. Preregistration is also required to attend this hearing. Participants who wish to join by phone may call (833) 568-8864 and use Webinar ID:165 787 2139.

The proposed changes will be discussed and considered at the Wildlife Resource Commission Commissioners’ October meeting.

Most of the rules, if adopted, will take effect Aug. 1, 2027 in time for the 2027-28 inland fishing, hunting, and trapping seasons.

“A few approved rules would have a January 1, 2027 effective date,” according to officials.

Current state hunting and fishing regulations are available in the commission’s Regulations Digest.

Geologist Dr. Stan Riggs quoted the scientist Loren Eiseley, who said, “If there’s magic on this Earth, it’s contained in water,” to the more than 150 gathered Saturday for the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s 23^rd annual Pelican Awards.

“And water, if you think about it, is everywhere,” Riggs continued. “It’s everything. It’s what we’re made out of. It’s what drives our coastal system. Where the water comes in contact with the land, that’s a high, high-energy environment. Not on a pretty, sunny day, but when the storms come in, you know there’s energy there. There’s wind. There’s water. There’s power, and we have to learn to live with that. Doesn’t mean we pack our suitcases and walk away. We have to understand it.”

Riggs, professor emeritus of geology at East Carolina University, was at the podium inside Carteret Community College’s Joslyn Hall accepting his Lifetime Achievement Award “For Distinguished Leadership and Lifetime Excellence in Coastal Research, Science, and Stewardship.”

He was among the 13 individuals and groups recognized this year by the nonprofit organization’s staff in its office in Wanchese, headquarters in Carteret County, and office in Wrightsville Beach.

“Today we honor extraordinary people and partnerships that are making a lasting difference for North Carolina’s coast through collaboration, dedication, and shared commitment. Our honorees are helping to ensure a healthier coast for generations to come,” April Clark, president of the organization’s board of directors, said early in the program.

Riggs, who has been studying the coastal environment for more than 60 years, told the crowd that he had spent his career working with others to take a holistic approach in understanding the planet. About 15 years ago, he and other researchers representing a range of disciplines began pooling their resources to learn about North Carolina’s coastal systems.

“In 2010, there was a big change in North Carolina,” when some laws put in place in the 1970s and 1980s were threatened, and there was a population surge putting pressure on the coastal system and “we understood the science, but the science doesn’t do a darn bit of good for anybody if it’s just in a scientist’s head. And one of the things that became clear was that we weren’t making the science available to the public.”

He and a group of partners decided to start a foundation called North Carolina Land of Water, or NCLOW, that focuses on the education and application of science and its dissemination to the public. Then, in the late 2010s, he realized that there was a lot of information and data that nobody would ever see.

“So, I decided to sit down and start writing a book. One book led to two books, led to  — all of a sudden, I was up to number 10,” books that “I didn’t know what to do with.”

He then approached a bunch of publishers, but with the first book being around 850 pages, and wanting lots of photos, maps and history, a mixture of everything in the book, these companies “finally pointed their finger at me and said, ‘We’re in a business to make money, and you’re talking about a $200, $300 book,’” he said, in describing the rejections.

“I finally realized that ‘OK, if we’re going to make this happen, we got to do it ourselves’ but then it means we need a team of people who know how to do this,” he said, and a team appeared, leading to the recently published volume 1, “Cape Lookout National Seashore: Paradigm for a Coastal System Ethic.”

Riggs closed with words written by photographer and poet, John Riggs: “If water is life; abundant water is abundant life. And abundant life is abundant Spirit. She not only thrives in these wild places, she dances, she sings aloud, and she rages. My how she rages!”

Coastal historian

Historian Glenn Blackburn, professor emeritus of history at University of Virginia’s College at Wise, was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award “For Excellence in Coastal History and Conservation Writing.”

Blackburn, author of “Saving Great Places” and “A Spectacular Coast and Its Guardians” spent the last two decades researching the Coastal Federation’s growth from when it was founded in 1982 to becoming a leader in coastal protection and restoration.

Blackburn told the audience that he first learned about the organization 20 years ago when learned how the organization spent 10 years fighting the development of an undeveloped island that was habitat to birds and turtles. Then he learned about a fight early in the organization’s history to stop peat mining on the Albemarle peninsula, saving thousands of acres of wetlands.

“Shortly after that, the Stump Sound fight,” when the organization teamed with the community to stop a developer from ruining oysters and fishing in the Onslow County waters.

It “began to hit me,” Blackburn continued. “This is an environmental group that wins. That’s unusual. This is a story that needs to be told. That’s what got me started on these two history books.”

During his opening remarks, Executive Director Braxton Davis shared a list of the organization’s milestones, including that later this year the organization plans to have a grand opening for its new headquarters called the Coastal Protection and Restoration Center and event venue, Pelican Landing, located on N.C. Highway 24.

The effort to raise the funds to build the new center began in 2020, construction began in February 2025, and staff have moved in over the last month.

With the grand opening planned for this fall, the organization recognized its Capital Campaign Cabinet with a Coastal Visionary Award “For Extraordinary Leadership and Commitment to Establishing the Coastal Protection and Restoration Center.”

Chief Development Officer Sarah King, when presenting the award, said the “truly inspirational” group’s steadfast work “allowed us to raise over $10 million to establish new coastal protection and restoration center.”

As part of the Coastal Visionary Award, King recognized honorary chair, Hugh Cullman, who “was actually the very first person that we shared this idea with, and he was so encouraging.”

Vic Medlin, speaking for the family members attending, accepted the posthumous award for Cullman.

“He loved the North Carolina coast,” and “completely believed in the federation’s vision of providing a better place to live, work, and visit, and he believed in that vision, and he showed it in his donations,” Medlin said. “And on behalf of the Cullman family, we’d like to say thank you again.”

Cabinet Chair Charles C. Meeker said the campaign was a team effort and reminded him “that the federation has a lot of friends, friends who care about the federation and its work, friends who are willing to give substantial donations to make the campaign a success.”

Northeast coast awards

Joy Cook “For Leadership and Dedication to Coastal Protection, Recreation and Cultural Resources.”

Now retired, Cook dedicated nearly 30 years to North Carolina State Parks, including nine as superintendent of Jockey’s Ridge State Park, thanked the organization and its staff for being “one of the easiest and most wonderful relationships that I’ve had the honor of working with.”

Jayne Young “For Outstanding Volunteer Service Advancing Coastal Environmental Education.”

The retired educator, who was recognized for volunteering her time supporting coastal environmental education and inspiring students, told the audience that it is “an honor to be recognized for something we just have so much fun doing.” Having been an educator, “you never know the one that’s going to come back to you years later and say, ‘Well, remember when we did this, and because of that, we’re doing this now.’”

Sean Ellis “For Exceptional Volunteer Contributions to Coastal Stewardship and Community Service.”

The organization said Ellis is being recognized for his countless hours supporting the oyster shell recycling program and maintenance projects around the Wanchese office.

Ellis, who was unable to attend, said in a recording that the award means a lot to him, and thanked his family for their support, his friends at the Coastal Federation, and “most of all you, the sponsors and people who are here today, who keep this program going. Thank you for your continued support and confidence.”

Central coast awards

North River Laurel Road Ladies Outreach Committee “For Grassroots Leadership Advancing Coastal Resilience and Community Action.”

Based in Carteret County’s North River, Laurel Road, and Merrimon communities, the grassroots group was recognized for being trusted leaders and advocates who have “united neighborhoods, amplified local voices, and built partnerships that are helping these historic coastal communities respond to increasing coastal hazards,” according to the organization.

President Matilda Stewart and Vice President Mary Ann Monroe told the crowd that they were truly honored to receive the award on behalf of their community, adding that the “achievement belongs to us as a whole group. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned, it is that our big goals are only achieved with the help of others.” 

Jason Vanzant “For Inspiring Future Coastal Stewards Through Education and Partnership.”

The schools in parks specialist for Hammocks Beach State Park was previously a classroom teacher who focused on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, that has partnered with the Coastal Federation to connect students with nature-based solutions.

Vanzant said that he is both honored and humbled to receive the award that represents so many others, including the staff, rangers and superintendent of the state park.

Thomas L. Kirmeyer and Nan Bowles “For Dedicated Partnership and Commitment to Advance Watershed Restoration.”

The Coastal Federation recognized the couple for demonstrating “extraordinary conservation leadership” for selling their 8.25-acre waterfront property along Ward Creek in Carteret County at half its market value.

Bowles said that when she is asked what she does, “I respond, I’m a member of the marsh community of Ward’s Creek, along with my husband Tom and our dog Spot. We live on the edge of the forest, on the edge of the marsh, on the edge of Ward’s Creek, which flows in two directions, on the edge of North River, on the edge of Back Sound, on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, with water that flows around.

“In the 37-plus years we have lived here, we have gained interconnections with members of the community. Community members such as the other people who live on our road. Leaping lizards, jumping frogs, the mosquitoes who remind us of the importance of, that we can offer respect and honor, even when someone irritates Us. Dragonflies who are skillful at changing direction. Great blue herons who show us how to see the bigger picture. The marsh grass, black needle rush, and vibrant green spartina grass, both of them having strong, firm roots, and the jumping mullet bringing us healthy humor and laughter. And when we dig beneath these interconnections, we discover stories and lessons that have to point us the way to being the best humans we can be.”

Southeast coast awards

Lindsay Addison “For Dedicated Partnership Advancing Coastal Habitat Conservation and Restoration.”

The coastal biologist for Audubon North Carolina has spent more than a decade protecting coastal birds and their habitats.

Addison told the audience that she is appreciative and honored that the Coastal Federation selected Audubon North Carolina’s Coastal Program for this award and recognition.

“I would be remiss if I didn’t say Audubon North Carolina manages 40% of the state’s nesting coastal waterbirds, and the way I feel about that is I feel to be a very fortunate, very lucky observer of these of these birds, these habitats, and in these landscapes,” Addison said, adding birds are an important part of the overall coastal ecosystems, and important indicators of the health of the coast.

Conserve the Point “For Community Leadership in Protecting and Stewarding the South End of Topsail Island.” 

The nonprofit organization based on Topsail Island formed in 2022 to preserve and protect the south end of Topsail Beach, called The Point, from development. In 2024, the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust purchased the 150-acre property to save the undeveloped property.

The group’s secretary Nancy Pettens, said on behalf of the board, that the award is a “tremendous honor” that belongs to every donor, every volunteer, everyone who thought this place was worth saving. “Most of all, I think it belongs to the Topsail Beach community, near and far, whose passion and generosity made it a reality for us and for future generations.”

Warren Darrell “For Outstanding Volunteer Leadership in Coastal Resilience and Community Engagement.”

The organization called him an “exceptional volunteer whose passion for learning and sharing coastal science inspires communities across southeastern North Carolina.”

“I love this coast,” Darrell said. “The work of the Coastal Federation helps to mitigate the harmful effects of global warming by absorbing atmospheric carbonate our shoreline from erosion and by providing his biological habitat.”

Coastal media partnership

Coastal Review, which is published by the Coastal Federation, this year recognized the Hatteras Island-based online news service, Island Free Press “For Excellence in Collaborative Coastal Community Journalism.”

The two publications have partnered for the last decade to expand coverage of critical coastal issues affecting Hatteras and Ocracoke islands.

Editor Joy Crist said she and owner Donna Barrett were “beyond honored to receive this award” and thanked the Coastal Federation for “allowing us to cover so many stories that are positive or hopeful in a news cycle that’s busy and sometimes discouraging.”

The North Carolina Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board is tentatively set to hear a series of presentations related to PFAS during its meeting scheduled for Wednesday.

The board’s draft agenda includes a presentation by Dr. Virginia Guidry with the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services on a recent methodology for calculating fish consumption PFOS advisories, a review by Dr. Frannie Nilsen with the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality on available PFMOAA toxicity, and an overview of available literature on dermal exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.

The board includes experts in toxicology, public health, ecology, engineering, and other related fields, who assist DHHS and DEQ by recommending reviews and evaluations of contaminants, act as consultants on DEQ’s determinations to regulate contaminants, and help the agencies identify contaminants of concern and determine which contaminants should be further studied.

The online meeting is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. The webinar password is D3fJKEmGd26 or 33355364 when dialing from a phone or video system.

Those who wish to speak during the public comment portion of the meeting must register in advance.

An in-person listening station will be set up those who cannot attend online in the Ground Floor Hearing Room at the Archdale Building, 512 N. Salisbury St. in Raleigh.

To join by telephone, dial 415-655-0003 or 904-900-2303, access code 2427 860 8803.

The N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission will begin accepting public comment on Monday for a proposed Atlantic bonito recreational bag limit.

The proposed rule would establish a bag limit of five fish and also authorize the Division of Marine Fisheries director to implement by proclamation additional management measures with the commission’s prior consent.

Written comments may be submitted through an online form or by mail to N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission Rules Comments, P.O. Box 769, Morehead City, NC 28577.

Written comments must be posted online or received by 5 p.m. Oct. 2.

Comments will also be accepted during a virtual public hearing scheduled for 6 p.m. Aug. 26.

Anyone who wishes to comment during the hearing must register to speak by noon on the hearing day. Registration opens Monday.

The division will set up a listening location at its central district office at 5285 Highway 70 West in Morehead City. Those who wish to speak from the listening location may sign up upon arrival.

The proposed rule will be presented to the Marine Fisheries Commission for final approval in November. If approved, the earliest the rule would become effective would be in 2027, pending legislative review.

Questions about the commission’s rulemaking process may be emailed to Catherine Blum, division rules coordinator, at Catherine.Blum@deq.nc.gov.