The North Carolina Coastal Federation is set to break ground next month in Carteret County on what officials describe as a first-of-its-kind facility intended to help shellfish growers overcome market barriers.

The Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, says the Shellfish Mariculture Hub in Straits, an unincorporated Down East community with deep commercial seafood heritage, will serve as a shared resource for shellfish growers, marking a significant milestone in sustainable shellfish aquaculture in the state and supporting the local community. The Shellfish Mariculture Hub promises to enhance the production capabilities of shellfish farmers while promoting collaboration and innovation, according to the Coastal Federation, which plans to hold a groundbreaking ceremony at 11 a.m. May 4.

Situated at the Straits Landing Boat Ramp, the facility will provide shared refrigeration, equipment and water access, all of which farmers need to grow a thriving local industry rooted in coastal heritage and vital to the state’s blue economy. 

“From costly water access to long hauls for refrigeration and distribution, oyster growers face logistical barriers at every step,” explained Coastal Federation Oyster Program Director Alyson Flynn. “This facility is the solution towards streamlining operations and strengthening the shellfish mariculture industry.” 

Construction of the 50-foot, square building is expected to begin this summer.

The Shellfish Mariculture Hub is part of a broader, coordinated effort to grow the state’s oyster industry into a $100 million sector by 2030 — creating jobs, strengthening the coastal economy, and advancing resilient working waterfronts. By addressing a critical industry gap, the hub will lower barriers to market entry for new growers while enabling existing growers to expand and scale their operations, supporting the next generation of shellfish farmers. 

“Not only is the hub a centralized support facility for growers, but it is also an innovative model for the future of shellfish mariculture—equipping growers to thrive and serving as a blueprint for industry growth and investment along our coast,” said Flynn. 

SURF CITY – Kerri Allen acknowledged early on what was also obvious to her audience.

“I do not need to tell anyone in here we have a really high density of leases,” the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s coastal management program director said. “In our public trust waters, when you have that many users, there are going to be conflicts.”

Several people sitting inside the Surf City Municipal Complex’s town council chambers that April 14 afternoon nodded in agreement, eager to share their thoughts on the subject.

With either temporary or permanent shellfish leasing moratoriums in North Carolina waters to its north and south, Topsail Island’s waters have become a hot commodity for oyster growers.

There are now nearly 190 shellfish leases in the waters behind the 26-mile-long barrier island from the New River and its adjacent estuarine waters south to Topsail Sound.

That’s a roughly 46% increase from the collective number of leases in 2018 in Onslow and Pender counties.

The squeeze put on the waters around Topsail Island has prompted ongoing calls for a temporary moratorium on new shellfish leases in the area.

The Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission, or TISPC, which is composed of elected officials from each of the island’s three towns – Topsail Beach, Surf City and North Topsail Beach – initiated a request for a temporary pause on leases more than a year ago. Commissioners in Onslow and Pender counties did the same.

Shellfish lease moratoriums in the state may be enacted only by the North Carolina General Assembly.

On April 10, 2025, Rep. Carson Smith, R-Pender, introduced legislation requiring a statewide study on shellfish leasing and the current lease moratorium.

House Bill 841 made it no further than the Senate’s Rules and Operations Committee.

“If there is a temporary moratorium, we don’t feel that’s unreasonable,” Allen said last week.

A pause would give the Coastal Federation and North Carolina Sea Grant more time to talk with those who live along and use the waters around the island and come up with suggestions to help shape future policy that would protect the industry, make it sustainable long term, and ease user conflicts, she said.

Additional focus groups, including one for shellfish growers, will be scheduled this fall.

Meanwhile, a temporary moratorium that has been repeatedly extended since it was first enacted in New Hanover County in 2019 is set to expire in July.

“It’s very reasonable to say if we were able to open up some of these other areas that could help alleviate the pressure that this area is seeing,” Allen said. “A lot of the oyster growers that we work with in this region live in New Hanover County and they would love not to have to drive up here to take care of their farms. We are actively trying to get New Hanover to not extend their moratorium. I do not have a good feel, one way or another, how that’s going to go yet, but we are having those conversations.”

Surf City Mayor Teresa Batts said officials on the island do not intend to wait for a decision before asking for a temporary moratorium.

“I know you’re going to go through the procedural steps, but the TISPC, we’re not going to sit back and wait,” she said. “If we see that New Hanover County is trying to extend their moratorium, then we’re going to try to slide in there on their session and piggyback on their moratorium.”

The Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, and North Carolina Sea Grant teamed up last year to launch a Geographic Information System, or GIS, database pinpointing areas where leases may or may not be suitable in the waterways behind Topsail Island. The GIS database is anticipated to be published next year.

Recommendations shared with the organizations will help shape 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. It’s not meant to be a fixed document, rather one that evolves as the industry evolves and conditions change, Allen explained, adding, “which they very much have changed since 2017.”

In the years since, the state has seen a shift where shellfish farmers are using floating gear to grow oysters in the water column, a method that allows them to maximize the spaces in which they grow their product.

Unlike cages that are placed on the waterbed, those in water column leases poke up from the water’s surface.

And, as more water column leases have been granted, complaints have mounted about their impacts to the viewsheds of waterfront properties, boating and kayaking access, and infringement on popular fishing spots.

Fishing guide Capt. Ray Brittain offered to take Allen and N.C. Sea Grant Extension Director Frank López on his boat, and on his dime, to show them how the leases affect his business.

“There’s so many PVC pipes out there,” Brittain said. “You don’t need a thousand PVC pipes to mark,” a lease area. “We can’t fish in those. I mean, mark your outer edge to show people where it is, but a lot of it is just unnecessary stuff.”

Brittain was among nearly 30 attendees at the April 14 meeting, where participants were asked to break into two groups to discuss concerns and recommendations that will be documented and shared with local elected officials, legislators, and state agency officials.

Those at the meeting in Surf City last week touched on a host of issues, raising concerns related noise associated with shellfish farming activities, nighttime navigation around shellfish leases, the density of leases around Permuda Island Reserve, and linear placement of leases along estuary island shorelines blocking anglers from following fish.

Some asked for shellfish farmers to be required to carry liability insurance, while others suggested the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries create a more robust public notification system announcing lease applications that would include property owners whose land is within and adjacent to the viewshed of a proposed lease.

Other recommendations included an implementation of buffers by moving leases further from shorelines based on specific locations within a waterbody, potentially increasing lease fees, decreasing the length of time a lease is valid, and the possibility of commissioning studies on the impacts of floating cages on the ecosystem.

The Coastal Federation and Sea Grant are accepting comments online through the Stump Sound shellfish mariculture planning – stakeholder input form through Aug. 1.

Share your experiences and learn more about the issues surrounding shellfish aquaculture in Stump Sound and Topsail Sound next week during an informational presentation and listening session.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation and North Carolina Sea Grant are hosting the session from 1 p.m. until 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 14, in the town council’s chambers at the Surf City Municipal Complex, 214 W. Florence Way, Hampstead.

“Your feedback will help shape a balanced, informed path forward,” according to a promotional flier for the event.

The session will cover conflicts and perceived and actual problems regarding shellfish leases, such as those associated with viewshed and property values, navigation and safety, congestion and density.

“We know coastal waters mean different things to different people, and we want to hear from you,” according to the flier.

Coastal Federation Advocate Kerri Allen and Sea Grant Extension Director Frank Lopez are to facilitate the session, which is to be a scripted presentation and listening session, not a public hearing.

In April 2025, Rep. Carson Smith, R-Pender, introduced legislation to require a statewide study on shellfish leasing and current lease moratoriums. That measure, House Bill 841, was cleared by the House but stalled in the Senate, where it passed a first vote but was then referred on May 7, 2025, to the rules committee, where it remains.

Organizers of the listening session noted that space is limited and registration is required.

Those unable to attend but who wish to share their input may submit comments to https://forms.gle/sCJ1uLGCgbhig6Zr8.

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North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Marine Fisheries announced Monday that those interested in leasing public coastal waters to cultivate shellfish may submit applications now through Aug. 1.

The division, which manages the state’s Shellfish Lease and Aquaculture Program, accepts bottom lease and water column applications annually March 1-Aug. 1. Site investigations are conducted April 1-Oct. 1, to align with submerged aquatic vegetation growing seasons.

Applicants must include in their application a comprehensive storm preparation and gear management plan, detailed in Section 5 of the application and Appendix VII. This plan is mandatory.

Application materials and program details are available at deq.nc.gov/shellfish-lease.

The division encourages applicants not to wait until the deadline to apply. Applications that are incomplete, submitted incorrectly or that propose ineligible lease sites will be denied. Applications denied after Aug. 1 cannot be resubmitted until 2027. All application fees are nonrefundable and nontransferable.

The division’s interactive Shellfish Aquaculture Tool, which is updated weekly, allows the public and applicants to track the status of active, pending and terminated shellfish leases.

“Shellfish aquaculture supports North Carolina’s working waterfronts and contributes important economic and environmental benefits to coastal communities,” the division said.

The division said in the release that it provides guidance and technical support to help applicants meet state requirements and plan effective, sustainable operations.

For more information, contact the Shellfish Lease and Aquaculture Program at 252-515-5600.

Registration is open for the 2026 North Carolina Aquaculture Development Conference, a three-day event that focuses on the future of aquaculture in state.

The event, which will be held March 25-27 at they Crystal Coast Civic Center on the Carteret Community College campus in Morehead City, is to include keynote sessions, technical workshops, and interactive discussions on a range of aquaculture species and production systems relevant to the state.

The program is a time for the public, current and aspiring fish farmers, scientists, educators, researchers, students, and agency and regulatory professionals to come together to share ideas, advance best practices, and strengthen connections across the aquaculture community, organizers said.

The Got to Be NC Seafood Expo, which celebrates the state’s seafood industry, will take place during the event, and innovative equipment, technologies, and products will be showcased

There will be a career fair March 25 and attendees may join in at 6 p.m. for trivia night at Tight Lines Pub and Brewing Co. in downtown Morehead City.

Agendas for each day of the conference are available online. To register for the conference and the expo visit https://ncaquaculture.com/registration/.

The sector known as the Blue Economy, which includes companies operating on oceans and waterways that are focused on environmental sustainability, saw a 1.36% decline in November, according to the University of North Carolina Wilmington Blue Economy Index, but still showed relative stability compared with industrial benchmarks.

By comparison, in November, the S&P 500 was down 0.57%, the MSCI All World Index, which measures global equity portfolio performance, dropped 0.66%, and the S&P Industrials Index ended the month with a 2.07% decline.

The Blue Economy Index (Bloomberg Ticker: BLUEECO) slipped from 2,592.91 to 2,557.57, “reflecting broad-based softness across global equity markets,” according to a UNCW news release.

“November’s decline was driven by weakness across industrial, maritime, and consumer-related segments as global risk sentiment softened,” the release continues. “Cooling manufacturing activity, lower freight demand in key trans-Pacific routes, and cautious spending patterns in developed markets contributed to a more defensive posture among investors.”

The November results, while reflecting what UNCW called “a broadly negative month for global markets,” were buoyed by the index’s diverse mix of marine transport, renewable infrastructure, and essential services companies.

Consumer discretionary spending was down 5.71%, reflecting weaker seasonal demand for leisure, travel and discretionary goods. “Slowing economic momentum and reduced spending appetite weighed on retail-linked and service-oriented holdings,” UNCW said.

Consumer staples, however, increased 1.18% in November, the month’s only gain. “Strong demand for essential goods, along with resilient pricing in food and aquaculture producers, supported modest gains despite broader market weakness,” according to the university.

Utilities were down 1.48%, reflecting what UNCW called “softer sentiment toward renewable and grid-focused firms as project timelines and regulatory decisions remained in flux. Nonetheless, core power and distribution operators maintained stable operational fundamentals.”

Industrials declined 1.13%, which UNCW said was due to lower freight volumes, moderating shipbuilding activity and softer machinery demand across Asia and Europe. “Despite the downturn, the sector remained more resilient than the broader industrial benchmark,” UNCW said.

Notable gains that helped cushion overall Blue Economy Index performance included Himalaya Shipping, which rose 20.48%; Vestas Wind Systems, which posted a 16.62% gain as renewable equipment supply chain sentiment improved and turbine orders rebounded in key markets; and Wallenius Wilhelmsen, which posted a 14.95% gain driven by vehicle logistics demand and continued strength in roll-on/roll-off shipping activity.

“Together, these names demonstrated the index’s capacity for selective outperformance even during periods of broader market weakness,” according to the release.

The Blue Economy Index was developed in collaboration among the UNCW Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Alliance for the Blue Economy, or AllBlue, and the Cameron School of Business, and it relies on data from FactSet. UNCW says the index “represents a fusion of academic insight, environmental science, and financial market expertise.”

The index measures the performance of leading global firms that demonstrate both commercial viability and environmental responsibility, aligning with the World Bank’s definition of the Blue Economy: “the sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods, and jobs while preserving the health of the ocean ecosystem.”

It serves to provide investors “a timely and transparent benchmark for evaluating the sustainable growth potential of ocean-based sectors such as shipping, offshore energy, aquaculture, and marine infrastructure,” according to the release.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation, in partnership with the North Carolina Sea Grant, have received a $529,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to “strengthen and expand” the state’s growing shellfish mariculture industry.

The Coastal Federation said Thursday in a release that the money will help build on more than a decade of collaboration among the organization, state agencies, industry leaders, N.C. Sea Grant, and other partners across the “coast to grow a thriving mariculture sector that supports local oyster growers, clean water, and coastal economies.”

The previous work includes the Coastal Federation’s community-supported efforts to restore oysters and the work being done through the North Carolina Oyster Blueprint, which recommended developing a network of shellfish aquaculture hubs. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

“This support from NOAA is a major step forward for North Carolina’s mariculture industry,” Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis said in a statement. “It will provide growers with additional stability, infrastructure, and tools they need to build strong businesses while protecting the clean water and healthy habitats our coastal economy depends on.”

The funding is to be used for a handful of purposes, including the management and operations of the Shellfish Mariculture Hub in Carteret County. The first-of-its-kind hub is designed to provide growers with reliable support for water access, storage, logistics, and distribution, filling what the nonprofit calls a critical gap in the industry.

“Ensuring strong and effective management will be essential for the Hub’s long-term success,” recipients said.

The grant also will go to initiating a stakeholder group made up of growers, researchers, state agencies, and industry partners to establish North Carolina’s first commercial shellfish hatchery. The group will evaluate options and determine the best path forward to secure the reliable seed supply needed to sustain and expand shellfish farming across the state, officials said.

In addition, funds will go to expand outreach for the NC Oyster Trail, which highlights the cultural, economic, and environmental importance of shellfish while strengthening tourism and community ties. There are more than 90 sites on the trail, including shellfish farm tours, seafood restaurants and markets, and educational organizations like aquariums and museums.

“The NC Oyster Trail is a critical marketing tool to ensure high demand for our state’s shellfish as well as continued support for coastal protection and restoration. It’s a gateway to understand the full impact of the oyster on our coast,” said North Carolina coastal economics specialist Jane Harrison.

The grant also will go to support growers near Stump Sound, a community in North Topsail Beach where shellfish farming takes place alongside a variety of other coastal uses.

“By fostering dialogue and cooperation, the effort will help ensure that Stump Sound continues to be a place where diverse coastal traditions and industries can thrive together,” the organization said.

Organizers of an afternoon fundraiser set for later this month invite folks to raise a glass to growing seafood and meet area aquaculture specialists to learn more about “a growing opportunity.”

Nacho Brewery in Morehead City is hosting the event set for 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, July 26, at 2900-6 Arendell St., in the Morehead Plaza shopping center. All proceeds from beer and food sales will go directly to the Carteret Community College Aquaculture Technology Program.

Organizers said the event will support workforce development and promote the future of sustainable seafood in coastal communities.

According to the college’s website, “Aquaculture is defined simply as the farming and husbandry of aquatic organisms. This can be growing seafood or ornamental specimens for commercial sale, environmental enhancement, research, or education.”

The college says its program curriculum is comprehensive, covering hatchery, grow-out, processing and marketing.

“Students learn practical skills that prepare them for future employment in a variety of industries or for continuation at a four-year institution,” according to the college.

The fundraiser will include hands-on experiences with marine life, marine science trivia and delicious craft beer brewed in Carteret County.

It’s also possible to donate online to support the college program, just select “Aquaculture Program” from the options.

The North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries is now accepting applications for the 2025 shellfish lease and aquaculture program.

Individuals, businesses, and partnerships interested in leasing public coastal waters to farm oysters or clams may submit applications through Aug. 1.

Application materials are available at  deq.nc.gov/shellfish-lease#ShellfishLeaseApplications-4100.

Applicants may reach out to the division for guidance and technical support for help in meeting state requirements and developing sound lease operations, according to a release.

Contact the division’s Habitat and Enhancement Section at 252-515-5480 for more information.

The North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores made a splash Friday when it unveiled its newly revamped, comic-style gallery that uses vibrant panels, colorful sculptures and hands-on experiences to illustrate the facility’s coral conservation and aquaculture efforts.

The North Carolina Aquarium Society, which is the nonprofit group that supports the state’s aquariums, welcomed 180 members for a sneak peek of the vibrant “Future Waters” gallery before the facility opened to the public that morning.

The gallery features interactive displays, a 1,500-gallon saltwater coral reef habitat called “Conservation Cove,” and two working labs that highlight the aquarium’s sustainable aquaculture efforts and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Florida Reef Tract Rescue Project.

The Pine Knoll Shores aquarium is one of 20 holding facilities in 14 states taking part in the Florida Reef Tract Rescue Project. The network focuses on the rescue, housing and future propagation of Florida corals affected by stony coral tissue loss disease. The goal is to eventually reintroduce the corals to the reef.

The aquarium’s Coral Aquarist Andrew Feliton told Coastal Review that the aquarium is currently cultivating 10 species of coral, all of which have been in captivity since the rescue project began in 2019. The corals came from SeaWorld Orlando and the Florida Coral Rescue.

“We work closely with the Florida Wildlife Commission because these are technically their animals,” Feliton said.

Husbandry Curator Trent Boyette was standing with Feliton near the entrance of the exhibit as a steady stream of visitors made their way through the exhibit.

To date, Boyette said, “we have successfully aquacultured about 23 different species since we first started in 2016.” Aquacultured means that fish, shellfish and other marine plants and animals were bred and raised in water, similar to farming on land.

The aquarium participates in species survival plans, Boyette continued, such as the lined seahorses on display in the exhibit’s working lab.

As the hum of visitors milling about the gallery filled the space, the aquarium’s Communications Manager Shannon Kemp told Coastal Review that staff have spent the last few years working on the gallery, creating about 90% in house, with an emphasis on making the exhibit interactive.

“This is one of the most tactile exhibits we have in the aquarium,” Kemp said, adding the education curator was interested in using a comic book theme “because it’s a different way of presenting information.”

Boyette noted that building the gallery was a major undertaking, to create almost all of the gallery in-house, from constructing the walls to acquiring the coral and fish.

“We spent probably the better part of two years just constructing all this,” Boyette said.

N.C. Aquarium Society President Liz Baird said the nonprofit support organization managed the $240,808 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and donations to build the gallery.

“Funding from public and private sources fits a real need to help communicate with the public, and aquariums and informal cultural organizations are a way to reach people that’s quite different than going to school,” Baird said. “An investment into an exhibit like this reaches a whole new audience in a whole new way, and has been proven effective. So we’re really grateful for that support to help bring this to life.”

Baird served as director of the Pine Knoll Shores aquarium from 2019 to 2023 before transitioning to the nonprofit, and was part of the planning process when the exhibit was first conceived.

 “We really wanted a way to highlight the work that goes on behind the scenes, particularly in conservation, and to help people understand how they play a role in conservation,” she said as she greeted visitors and staff while enjoying the sunny morning on the front patio.

Baird said that they went with the comic book theme to draw visitors to the exhibit.

“When you think about the way that you want to engage with guests, be them young kids through grown adults, people learn best when they are self-directed, and find things that sort of catch their eye or tweak their imagination,” she said.

Though corals are really important for conservation, corals growing don’t catch the eye like the otters or sharks.

“By having this really fun theme,” Baird explained, people are drawn to the exhibit and want to learn why the corals are growing.

The aquaculture work has been taking place for several years, “and we’ve been highly successful at raising these fish, but that happens upstairs, behind the scenes. And again, it’s one of those things that’s not necessarily engaging unless you know the story behind it,” she said.

“These are organisms are really important to our oceans health, and the aquariums are helping take the lead in protecting them,” Baird said.

The aquarium is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. For more information or to book tickets in advance, visit www.ncaquariums.com/pine-knoll-shores or call 252-247-4003.

Not much has changed in the saga surrounding shellfish farming in coastal waters of Onslow and Pender counties.

That was made clear during a public hearing Tuesday night in the little town of Holly Ridge in Onslow County, where Topsail Island-area residents and aquaculture farmers took turns speaking about the prospect of more shellfish leases in the area.

Perhaps the one consensus among those who oppose additional leases and those who hope to raise shellfish in them is that they are where they are because new leases are not allowed in waters of neighboring coastal counties to their north and south.

Shellfish moratoriums in waters from Cedar Island south to Brunswick County have essentially funneled growers to waters around Topsail Island, prompting what has become an unceasing push to get the state to pump the brakes on new leases in Onslow and Pender counties.

Within the span of one week, the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries held two public hearings – one in Pender, the other in Onslow – on lease applications for shellfish farms that would collectively take up more than 30 acres.

That’s more than double the total acreage of shellfish leases in nearby New Hanover County, Topsail Beach resident Tate Tucker said during the Tuesday night hearing, where he reiterated comments he had made at a public hearing in Pender County the previous week.

“Like I said last week, say this whole Eastern Seaboard of oysters is a boat. We’re the hole in the boat, right? And they’re filling it just as fast as they can with leases, as much as they can. I don’t think we can keep going like this if we don’t have an organized plan. If we don’t fill that hole, the boat’s going to sink,” Tucker said.

The Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission, or TISPC, which is composed of elected officials from each of the island’s three towns — Topsail Beach, Surf City and North Topsail Beach — has since last year called for a temporary moratorium on new shellfish leases. County officials in Onslow and Pender have made the same request.

“As a commission, we have become increasingly concerned about conflicts between shellfish leases and other uses of our natural resource waters that include commercial and recreational fishing, boating, kayaking and other coastal land and water uses, not to mention the potential impacts on property values and esthetics,” TISPC Chair William Snyder said.

On April 10, Rep. Carson Smith, R-Pender, introduced legislation that would require a statewide study on shellfish leasing and the current lease moratoriums.

Under House Bill 841, the North Carolina General Assembly-created North Carolina Policy Collaboratory would evaluate everything from existing leases and the history and reason for current permanent and temporary moratoriums to economic impacts of shellfish aquaculture expansion on coastal economies and tourism, and the different potential environmental impacts of bottom leases and water column leases.

A final report of the study would be due to legislators by May 1, 2026.

Chris Matteo, acting president of the North Carolina Shellfish Growers Association and East Coast Shellfish Growers Association vice president, said Tuesday that the legislation “thankfully” does not call for a moratorium in Onslow and Pender counties.

He also said the measure is unlikely to pass.

“There’s been plenty of impact studies done over the course of time and, quite frankly, this area may be relatively new to intensive aquaculture, but the rest of the East Coast and West Coast of this country, it’s been in play for a very long time and the positive impacts are irrefutable,” Matteo said.

As he had in previous public hearings, Matteo suggested that residents and local leaders ask state elected officials to lift moratoriums on shellfish leases in other coastal counties.

He rebutted comments made by others who spoke at the hearing that shellfish farms negatively affect property values.

Nelson Bullock, who started Gator Bay Oyster Co. with his wife, mirrored sentiments of other shellfish lease applicants who argue shellfish farming is beneficial to the environment.

The Bullocks have applied for a 3.82-acre shellfish bottom and water column lease in Onslow County’s Ellis Cove.

“I’ve been involved in oyster farming for over 14 years now and have witnessed firsthand all the positive impacts of shellfish aquaculture on both the environment and our communities,” Bullock said. “Oysters naturally filter and clean the water. They create habitat and they also help stabilize the shoreline. Shellfish farming is one of the most sustainable forms of aquaculture offering significant ecological and economic benefits.”

Bullock said he was committed “to being a good neighbor in the water.”

John Eynon, owner of Big Cypress Mariculture, said he understands concerns raised by some local fishermen, who argue leases impede access to fishing spots around the island.

“I’m more than happy to talk with people and try to figure out how I can mitigate whatever those impacts might be, whether it’s by using certain gear types, positioning these gear in certain places, orienting in a certain way,” Eynon said.

He has applied for a 2.73-acre bottom and water column lease in Sneads Creek, a location he said he picked because it is “tucked away.”

“It’s not a navigational hazard,” he said. “It’s not impacting anyone’s views, which I know have been issues with other lease proposals.”

TISPC Vice Chair Larry Strother, who also chairs North Topsail Beach’s Beach, Inlet and Sound Advisory Committee, reiterated that the concern raised by the island towns is that more studies need to be done before additional leases are permitted.

“There are some leases that are going to affect the recreational activity, the fishing and everything else that takes place around the island, which is what we provide when we represent the recreation part of our beach,” he said. “We just want to make sure that our recreational activities and our fishing that’s been going on for all these years is going to be able to continue and cohabitate with the leases. We’re not opposed to shellfish leasing. We are opposed to not having it studied.”

A public hearing on a proposed 3-acre shellfish lease in Roanoke Sound has been set for early next month.

The May 6 public hearing on Herring Shoal Shellfish Co.’s application for a bottom and water lease column in the Dare County waterway will be held at 6 p.m. in the Dare County Government Office, 954 Marshall C. Collins Drive, Room 168, Manteo.

The hearing, hosted by the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries, will also be held via Webex.

Public comments on the application will be accepted in person or online. Anyone wishing to speak online must register by 4 p.m. May 5.

In-person speakers may sign up 5-6 p.m. the date of the hearing.

Additional information, including the Webex link, call-in number, presentation slides, and biological report are available at the division’s website.

Written comments on the application will be accepted through 5 p.m. May 7 online and by mail to N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries, Shellfish Lease & Aquaculture Program, P.O. Box 769, 3441 Arendell St., Morehead City, N.C. 28557.

For more information, contact the division’s Marla Chuffo at 252-515-5480 or marla.chuffo@deq.nc.gov.

Topsail Island leaders are unwavering in their pursuit of stopping new leases of shellfish farms in the waters around them.

Months have passed since the island’s three towns — North Topsail Beach, Surf City and Topsail Beach — and their respective counties banded together to ask state legislators for a moratorium on new shellfish leases in Onslow and Pender’s coastal waterways.

“Of course, we all support aquaculture,” North Topsail Beach Alderman Mike Benson said during a recent town board meeting.

But the rising number of leases, fueled because of moratoriums in surrounding coastal counties, has led to what local leaders say amount to mounting conflicts between recreational uses of public waters and shellfish leases that restrict access to those waters.

Prohibiting all new shellfish leases across Onslow and Pender counties could be detrimental to the state’s growing shellfish industry, one that reportedly boasts an economic impact of $30 million annually in North Carolina.

“This industry is a particularly bright spot for North Carolina in that farming clams and oysters is quite sustainable environmentally,” said Dr. Jane Harrison, a coastal economics specialist with North Carolina Sea Grant. “We’ve seen a huge uptick in production numbers from farming oysters, in particular, over the last decade and we don’t want to lose that momentum.”

North Carolina Sea Grant and the North Carolina Coastal Federation have teamed up in hopes of launching a plan that would result in the creation of a Geographic Information System, or GIS, database that pinpoints areas where leases may or may not be suitable in the waterways behind the 26-mile-long island.

That database would be built by a GIS specialist from North Carolina State University using feedback the organizations aim to get from different focus groups made up of users of those waters, be it shellfish farmers, fishing guides, recreational fishers, or island waterfront property owners.

“We want to bring together many different voices to gather their perspectives and then put their information, their interest, into that GIS database,” Harrison said.

Sea Grant and the Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, have applied for a grant through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Sea Grant Office to fund the plan.

If awarded the grant, the plan would kick off around September, when the GIS specialist would gather existing data, including information from the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Shellfish Lease Siting Tool, to work up a baseline of information that will be presented to focus groups. UNCW’s interactive tool assesses coastal conditions in the state to help shellfish growers locate new or expand current operations.

There would be three focus groups: one consisting of shellfish growers in Pender and Onslow counties, one that includes recreational water users and waterfront property owners in Onslow County, and one that includes those groups in Pender County.

Those groups would be initially separated out “because we want folks to feel like they can fully share whatever their concerns or needs are and we don’t want to create an environment of conflict,” Harrison said. “We just want spaces where people can give us every piece of information they have and then we will digest it, compile it, and then have some community conversations.”

Feedback from those conversations would be gathered and used to create a draft resource use agreement and guidelines for equal water access in partnership with the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries.

Once finalized, that resource use agreement and guidelines would be published to the public, where it could be used in other coastal regions in not only North Carolina, but other states.

The proposal has gained traction with local officials. The Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission, or TISPC, and the counties, has signaled its support for the plan, Harrison said. The commission is made up of elected officials and local government appointees from the island’s three towns.

In an April 2 letter to the Division of Marine Fisheries, North Topsail Beach highlighted the plan as “another justification for a pause” on new shellfish leases.

“A temporary pause would allow us to evaluate the current situation, develop comprehensive management strategies, and ensure that future growth in the shellfish industry is balanced with the needs of our community and the environment,” the letter states.

The North Topsail Beach Board of Aldermen unanimously agreed to send the letter to the division ahead of its April 22 public hearing on six new proposed shellfish leases in Onslow County.

The hearing is scheduled to be held in person at 6 p.m. at the Holly Ridge Community Center and virtually via Webex.

That hearing will follow one on two proposed shellfish leases in Pender County scheduled for 6 p.m. April 15 at Topsail Beach Town Hall, 820 S. Anderson Blvd., and virtually via Webex.

During the April 2 meeting of North Topsail’s town board, Alderman Benson said the consensus of the island’s shoreline protection commission is that the towns and counties continue their request for a moratorium.

A proposed draft bill for a moratorium was not introduced in either the state Senate by its March 25 deadline or the House as of publication of this report. The deadline for the House was extended to April 10. 

“There are 111 leases in Onslow County,” Beson said. “We have 647 acres of land in those 111 leases.”

North Topsail Beach and the northernmost portion of Surf City are in Onslow County.

There are opportunities to identify areas within the waterways of the island that are “truly not well served by shellfish aquaculture,” Harrison said.

“There may be special fishing spots that the charter captains want to make sure they have access to,” she said. “There may be viewsheds that are very important to local residents. We have a lot of successful entrepreneurs in shellfish aquaculture in these two counties and shellfish aquaculture produces seafood that many of us like to eat. At the end of the day, it may be that the industry in Pender and Onslow counties can’t grow at the rate it has been. There might be a need for it to be less expansive because of existing leases and farms. But what I want to steer us away from is just a blanket prohibition, as if no new farm could ever take place in a copacetic way.”

Go ahead and call Evan Gadow a Boy Scout.

The shellfish farmer, lifelong North Carolinian, husband and card-carrying Eagle Scout, the Boy Scouts of America’s highest achievement, had a record as pure as the driven snow.

“I pride myself on that,” he said. “I’ve never gotten into trouble before. I’ve never even gotten a parking ticket.”

That changed this past July, when North Carolina Marine Patrol authorities charged Gadow with four misdemeanors, charges he and other shellfish farmers argue are too harsh for what they contend are clerical errors and minor permit violations.

Shellfish farmers, including Gadow, initiated a punishment-doesn’t-fit-the-crime rallying cry last month to members of the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission in what is sure to be a push for changes to laws that pertain to the industry.

“Currently (Division of Marine Fisheries) can levy serious criminal charges for what are minor noncompliance issues that should be handled in the civil fashion,” North Carolina Shellfish Growers Association President Chris Matteo said at the commission’s Nov. 21 meeting in Emerald Isle. “It’s our opinion that shellfish farmers should only face stiff criminal charges for egregious criminal behavior.”

One such example, he said, would be a farmer knowingly selling polluted oysters to unsuspecting consumers.

The charges levied against Gadow over the summer stemmed from what he called “clerical oversights” and for not properly marking his lease in Pamlico County’s Bay River. High winds washed away a pole marking a corner of that lease area.

Gadow said he did not know the severity of the charges he faced until he went to court in October. He pleaded guilty to one charge. The rest were dropped.

“Now I carry a black mark on my record equivalent to a DUI, something that will follow me for the rest of my life,” he said to the commission last month.

Shellfish farmers are required to sign each permit for which they apply. Those permits specify that anyone who does not adhere to the conditions of a permit face its suspension or revocation.

The permits do not, however, explain that state Marine Patrol officers have the power to levy “serious criminal charges” for violating a condition, Matteo said.

These charges include Class A1 misdemeanors, the most serious of misdemeanor offenses in the state. They carry sentences of up to 150 days in jail and fines.

Class A1 misdemeanors include an array of assault charges, including those committed using a deadly weapon, those inflicting serious injury, assault on a female, a child under 12, a state officer employee, or pointing a gun.

Zach Harrison, North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries Habitat and Enhancement Section chief, explained that the commercial sale of any fish is written into law and those laws specifies which charges should be levied against alleged violators.

“Shellfish leases are defined by law and how we can go through that process and grant people leases of public trust water to be able to use for that purpose,” he said. “I think the tough part between being defined in the law, there’s also a lot of trickiness and important pieces that we are looking at to keep the industry going and keep it safe.”

Coastal states must adhere to federal requirements prescribed by the Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference, which manages the National Shellfish Sanitation Program. The regulations established under that program are designed to prevent shellfish-related poisoning among consumers.

“There’s a lot of safety pieces that are public health related or otherwise that we have to be very particular about, both to keep that compliance up and also just to generally keep people safe,” Harrison said.

“For the most part, growers are very in tune to that and don’t want to violate (the regulations) because it runs the risk of hurting their business. It’s our role to guide and make sure that the industry is moving in a safe way for growth that isn’t going to have some disease outbreak,” Harrison continued. “Really a lot of those growers, as they build up their industry, it gets a lot further past the farmers markets and local markets. We’re proud that our oysters are showing up in Michelin star restaurants and states like California and all over the U.S.”

Also challenging, he said, is the fact that the division’s marine patrol has less than 50 officers to cover North Carolina’s coast, which includes more than 300 miles of ocean shoreline and more than 12,000 miles of estuarine shore.

The division has hired an aquaculture inspector, a position funded in the legislative budget passed last year, to not only inspect but educate growers “on what those safe methods look like,” Harrison said.

“We felt like it was a better move for the industry to purpose that position toward making sure people are aware of those and being a resource as opposed to simply trying to go after people,” he continued. “The division in general is not interested in trying to go after people. If there’s a law on the books and someone violates that law, marine patrol has no choice but to pursue that. No one who showed up (at the commission meeting) and spoke to us was someone new to us. We all know them and work with them and continue to work with them.”

Harrison said commercial fishers are given paperwork that explains their legally required commercial licenses have a fiscal expiration of June 30.

In the week or two leading up to that date, commercial fishers line up past the doors of the division’s Morehead City office to renewal their licenses, he said.

Gadow said he had recently moved from Burgaw to New Bern when his shellfish license renewal paperwork was sent in the mail. His mail was not forwarded to his new address by the renewal deadline.

“I’ve had the license for the last six years,” he said in a telephone interview. “It’s just an honest mistake.”

Harrison said the division actively works with shellfish growers on recommendations in how to run efficiently.

“We’ve talked to a lot of growers who are appreciative of that,” he said. “The hard part is, we have a complex set of laws that ultimately result in a contract for water that belongs to the people of the state of North Carolina, that our job is as the state to manage. So it’s tough because there’s a line between following the legal processes and making sure that we are doing so equitably and safely and fair while also making it efficient for the growers.”

Matteo told the commission last month that shellfish growers are not asking to go unregulated.

“We’re asking to be treated fairly as we farm the world’s best sustainable protein, clean our estuaries and repopulate our public trust stock of marine species,” he said in a follow-up telephone interview.

He said charges that have been levied against a few shellfish farmers in the past 16 months have “gotten a little out of hand.”

“They’re just civil issues or minor noncompliance issues that a grower would need to be called out on and asked to remedy, or their permit should be suspended,” Matteo said. “Hopefully they’re done charging shellfish farmers like criminals unless they’re doing something way out of bounds that warrants a criminal charge. I have no doubt we’ll end up changing what needs to be changed. These charges should be civil. It’s more a matter of making sure that current laws aren’t misinterpreted and levied against the people and resources they’re meant to protect.”

North Carolina Division of Coastal Management officials are in the process of determining priority areas and strategies for the 2026-2030 cycle of the Section 309 Assessment and Strategy, and are asking for public input.

The assessment and strategy is a process to evaluate and enhance the effectiveness of a coastal management program using guidelines outlined in Section 309 of the Coastal Zone Management Act, and allows for additional funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The division is asking the public to complete its Section 309 Survey available online until Nov. 22.

The division works to protect, conserve and manage the state’s coastal resources through an integrated program of planning, permitting, education and research.

Every five years, coastal programs, like the division, carry out the self-assessments to identify priority issues and enhancement opportunities within nine topic areas, and assess the effectiveness of existing management efforts to address identified issues.

The nine topic areas are wetlands, coastal hazards, public access, marine debris, cumulative and secondary impacts, special area management planning, ocean resources, energy and government facility siting, and aquaculture.

“Stakeholder feedback is an important part of this process and we are looking for your input,” division officials said. “Your input is a key component of this assessment, and we appreciate your time in providing your responses.”

Division officials said they plan to welcome public comments on the draft assessment and strategy document, once it is complete.

Topsail Island towns and their counties have joined forces in asking state legislators for a moratorium on shellfish leases in their waterways.

The Pender County Board of Commissioners last week adopted a resolution calling for the state to pump the brakes on issuing new shellfish lease permits, particularly water column leases, in Pender and Onslow counties.

Pender commissioners were the last of five elected boards to approve the resolution, an idea of which was first circulated back in August by the Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission, or TISPC.

The commission, which is made up of elected officials and local government appointees from the island’s three beach towns – North Topsail Beach, Surf City, and Topsail Beach — and Onslow and Pender counties, functions as a collaboration to preserve the barrier island’s beaches and surrounding waterways.

Moratoriums in waters north and south of Onslow and Pender counties are driving up demand for aquatic business activities in those counties, affecting recreational fishing, use of small watercraft by tourists, “and is impacting the beauty of a marsh area that did not have the plastic poles and other equipment marking shellfish areas,” according to a letter the commission’s former chair emailed to North Topsail’s town manager.

While the commission is in favor of shellfish farming, limits should be placed on the types and density of leases, the letter states.

North Topsail Beach Mayor Pro Tem and Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission Vice Chair Mike Benson said during an Oct. 2 town board meeting that there are about 30 existing leases in waters behind Topsail Island.

“Density is increasing,” he explained. “There’s conflict now between recreational boaters and tourism and commercial aquaculture. We’re not restricting the number that are already in place. Those will continue on as they have in the past. All we’re asking for is there’s a pause to figure out what the next step is. But, we shouldn’t be the ones that are suffering here in terms of tourism and boater access and recreational activities because of interference of these shellfish leases, particularly column leases.”

Locals spoke out against water column leases proposed for just under a dozen acres in Pender County in a public hearing hosted early this year by the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries.

A majority of those who spoke argued that additional leases in the waters near Topsail Island would infringe upon popular fishing spots, impede boating and kayaking access, affect the viewsheds of waterfront properties near the farms, and may affect water quality from birds roosting on floating equipment.

Unlike bottom leases, where shellfish farming gear must be placed on or within 18 inches of the waterbed, equipment used in a water column lease cannot rest on the bottom or extend more than 18 inches above the bottom. Water column leases are required to be installed over bottom lease areas.

The division, which oversees shellfish lease permits, denied those water column lease applications.

The North Carolina General Assembly in 1989 enacted law that allows shellfish leases in the water column. Today, there are more than 150 water column leases along the North Carolina coast.

The legislature enacts nearly all regulations on shellfish leases and it implements shellfish lease moratoriums.

“Any stipulations on what can and can’t be addressed in a moratorium is up to the legislature,” Marine Fisheries Public Information Officer Patricia Smith said in an email earlier this month.

Brunswick County’s shellfish lease moratorium dates back originally to 1949. A moratorium in Core Sound was established in 1993. In 2019, moratoria were placed in New Hanover County and in Bogue Sound.

During the public hearing on the proposed leases in Pender County, a North Carolina Shellfish Growers Association representative advised residents to talk to their local and state elected officials about getting moratoriums lifted in waters south of Pender County so growers will have more areas in which to farm.

The University of North Carolina Wilmington said Wednesday that its Blue Economy Index rose by 3.07% in August but still slightly underperformed its closest benchmarks.

The UNCW Blue Economy Index measures the economic activities in the oceans and follows the World Bank definition of the Blue Economy. It was originally developed in 2018 but officially launched in this year in February.

“The modest performance from BLUEECO doubles the performance of last month’s return,” UNCW said in a press release.

The UNC Wilmington Blue Economy Index was developed in collaboration with the UNCW Cameron School of Business, UNCW Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, CIE’s Alliance for the Blue Economy, and FactSet, a global data and software firm. The UNCW index measures economic activities in oceans and waterways and places an emphasis on environmental impact, offering investors insights into what its developers describe as a “burgeoning economic landscape surrounding coastal communities.”

While the index underperformed the MSCI All World Index, the S&P 500, and S&P Industrials, according to the UNCW analysis, the benchmarks delivered similarly modest gains during the month.

That’s except for the S&P Industrials, which experienced a 4.58% increase in August. The MSCI and S&P 500 showed gains of 3.77% and 3.70%, respectively.

“Since April 27th, 2018, our index has outperformed MSCI All World Index by 11.91%, making it very appealing to investors,” Colin Waltsak, a research assistant in the UNCW Economics and Finance Department, told Coastal Review Wednesday. “Not only this, but the United Nations believes the Blue Economy will grow over 50% by 2030. Our index is a great tool for investors who are aiming to capture long term growth of the Blue Economy and shines light on the economic importance of coastal communities.”

The sector saw majority positive contributions to the index, according to university index analysts. The materials and real estate sector helped the index performance by posting returns of 4.99% and 4.89%, respectively. The energy sector, however, dipped into the negatives with returns of -6.82% over the month, according to the UNCW analysis.

UNCW noted that the materials sector was dominated by Schouw and Co., a supplier of feed for aquaculture. Schouw also is one of the largest suppliers of hydraulics in Denmark, producing hydraulic systems for industries including offshore wind energy.

The top performer within the index was CS Wind, a South Korea-based company specializing in manufacturing and sales of wind towers for offshore wind energy. CS Wind saw an increase of 29.48%, attributed to an earnings statement showing 99% growth over the year. The company had acquired Vesta Towers America, providing entry to the North American market.

The worst performer in the index was Grieg Seafood, a Norwegian salmon farming company that saw a 17.77% decrease over the month attributed to reduced harvest volumes, down by 7,000 tons. “The company also faced challenges with fish health and environmental issues which led to a higher mortality rate, straining operations, and contributing to economic loss,” UNCW officials said in the analysis.

A public hearing is scheduled for the end of August on six proposed shellfish leases in Onslow County.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Marine Fisheries is hosting the in-person hearing at 6 p.m. Aug. 28 at the Holly Ridge Community Room, 404 Sound Road, Holly Ridge, and by the online program, WebEx.

The following applied for leases:

• Michael J. Linz Jr. has applied for a 2.36-acre shellfish bottom and water column lease in Bogue Inlet.
• Thomas A. Cannon has applied for a 3.78-acre shellfish bottom and water column lease in the mainland areas of Topsail Sound.
• White Oak Oyster Co. has applied for a 0.71-acre shellfish bottom and water column lease in Bogue Inlet.
• Thomas A. Cannon has applied for a 3.95-acre shellfish bottom and water column lease in the Mainland Areas of Topsail Sound.
• Shawn P. Burns has applied for a 3.85-acre shellfish bottom and water column lease in the mainland areas of Topsail Sound.
• James Hammock and Sarah Zajovits have applied for a 3.04-acre shellfish bottom and water column lease in the New River below the N.C. Highway 172 bridge.

Those who wish to comment in-person can sign up an hour before the meeting starts. To provide comments while participating through WebEx register online by 4 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 27.

Public hearing information, including the web conference link, call-in telephone number, presentation slides, and biological investigation reports can be found on the NCD

Written comments can be submitted until 6 p.m. Aug. 29 using the online form or mailed to the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries, Shellfish Leases, P.O. Box 769, Morehead City, NC 28557.

For more information, contact Marla Chuffo, with the division’s Habitat and Enhancement Section, at 252-515-5480 or Marla.Chuffo@deq.nc.gov.

Recommendations for the second round of funding through the Transformational Habitat Restoration and Coastal Resilience grant program include two projects in North Carolina.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday the 32 projects it recommends to receive nearly $220 million under the bipartisan infrastructure law passed in 2021 and the Democratic Party’s anti-inflation measure passed in 2022.

“This is a historic investment in strengthening the climate resilience of our nation’s coastal ecosystems and communities,” NOAA officials said. The projects to restore coastal habitat and strengthen community resilience “will reconnect rivers to their historic floodplains, outplant corals to rebuild reefs, restore salt marshes that protect coasts from erosion and sea level rise, and more.”

Jacksonville has been recommended to receive $8 million in the first year, and up to $16 million total over three years, to restore critical habitat and alleviate flooding within the New River watershed.

The effort, which builds on the success of the New River Estuary Oyster Highway and Wilson Bay restoration project, includes wetland restoration, culvert replacement, living shoreline creation and planting of 3 million oysters. The work is expected to improve water quality, recreational access and community resilience, officials said.

The Nature Conservancy has been recommended to receive $4 million in the first year, and up to $7.9 million total over three years. The conservation organization is to use the funding to lead extensive community engagement to improve fish passage and increase resilience on the Cape Fear River.

The project is expected to identify and garner consensus around a fish passage solution at two dams on the mainstem river. It will also build capacity for local governments by sharing best practices for nature-based solutions to address concerns related to water quality, flooding and other community hazards.

For the first round of grants announced in April 2023, NOAA awarded more than $265 million in funding for 38 projects, including $15 million to the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

The Coastal Federation has been using the funds to partner with the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries to restore nearly 120 acres of oyster habitat in Pamlico Sound to complete the 500-acre goal of the Jean Preston Memorial Oyster Sanctuary. The Coastal Federation has been working with the North Carolina State University Center for Marine Sciences and Technology and North Carolina Central University to provide opportunities for underrepresented graduate and undergraduate students studying marine sciences.

The North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries is holding a public hearing in July on two proposed shellfish leases in Craven County.

The hearing will take place at 6 p.m. July 24 in Craven Community College’s Havelock campus STEM Building, Room 134, 305 Cunningham Blvd., Havelock. It will also be livestreamed at the below link.

Charles C. Allen and James T. Chadwick have applied for a 5.18-acre bottom lease and water column lease in Adams Creek.

Dominic Vetrano and Karen Penchansky have applied for a 2.85-acre bottom lease and water column lease, also in Adams Creek.

The public may comment at the hearing or by WebEx. Those wishing to speak via WebEx are asked to register online by 4 p.m. July 23. Those who wish to comment in-person should sign up on-site between 5 and 6 p.m. on the night of the hearing.

Public hearing information, including the web conference link, call-in telephone number, presentation slides, and biological investigation reports can be found on the division’s website.

The investigation for the Allen and Chadwick lease found the proposed lease site is not in a primary nursery area, nor is it in a polluted area.

The investigation for the Vetrano and Penchansky lease found the proposed lease site is in a primary nursery area, but not in a polluted area.

Neither proposed lease location is in a mechanical harvesting area for clams or in an area where mechanical oyster methods are prohibited.

Written comments can be submitted until 6 p.m. July 25, either through an online form or mailed to the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries, Shellfish Leases, P.O. Box 769, Morehead City, NC 28557.

For more information, contact Marla Chuffo, with the division’s Habitat and Enhancement Section, at 252-515-5480 or Marla.Chuffo@deq.nc.gov.

The public will soon have an opportunity to comment on two proposed shellfish leases in Carteret County.

The hearing is set for 6 p.m. Wednesday, July 17, in the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries’ Central District Office in Morehead City and by WebEx. Visit the division’s website for details on the proposed leases and how to join online.

Cedar Island Oyster Co. LLC has applied for a 6.99-acre water column lease in Cedar Island Bay, as well as a 4.42-acre bottom lease and water column lease in east North Bay.

Those wishing to speak by WebEx are asked to register online by 4 p.m. Tuesday, July 16. Those who wish to comment in-person should sign up on-site between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. the night of the hearing.

The public may also comment on the proposed shellfish leases in writing until 6 p.m. Thursday, July 18, either online or by mail to the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries, Shellfish Leases, P.O. Box 769, Morehead City, NC 28557.

In 2021, a bacterial disease outbreak in Rhode Island was linked to people eating raw oysters grown and harvested in floating cages.

It was that state’s first such outbreak of Campylobacteriosis from shellfish, one that an environmental investigation later traced to birds as the likely source of contamination.

North Carolina hasn’t had any such case, but the possibility is a concern as the numbers of floating shellfish farms, which can be attractive roosting spots for birds, increase in the state’s coastal waters.

Shellfish growers who use floating equipment, including cages and bags, are required to have action plans to deter birds from perching on gear protruding up from the water surface.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Marine Fisheries, which oversees shellfish lease permits, is required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to inspect lease operations at least once a year.

But, as with a number of state agencies, the division is shortchanged on personnel, leaving fewer than 60 officers to cover hundreds of miles of the state’s coastline spanning 20 counties and 2.5 million acres of water.

“We are patrolling the waters every day for all types of violations,” said N.C. Marine Patrol Col. Carter Witten, the division’s top law enforcement officer. “We need people and we need officers.”

The division has been given the green light to create a new aquaculture position, someone who will help inspect leases and make sure lease holders are in compliance.

It’s a step in the right direction, but more leases, paired with the continuing coastal population boom — more residents, more boaters, more recreational fishermen — only further tip a scale where circumstances outweigh staff.

There is the potential to fund additional division enforcement positions through the Commercial Fishing Resources Fund, but such a decision lies solely with the Marine Fisheries Commission and the Funding Committee.

The first water column lease issued in North Carolina was in 1991.

Today, there are more than 150 water column shellfish leases covering a little more than 500 acres along the coast.

The number of existing leases pales in comparison to the number of applications submitted to the state over the past decade – nearly 270 since 2014.

Proposed water column leases spanning a total of just under a dozen acres in Pender County were met early last month with a flurry of local opposition during a public hearing hosted by the division.

The majority of speakers said that while they supported local shellfish farming efforts, the addition of leases in the waters near Topsail Island will infringe upon popular fishing spots, impede boating and kayaking access, affect the viewsheds of waterfront properties near the farms, and may affect water quality from roosting birds.

Those lease applications from two area oyster farming companies are awaiting final determination, according to the division’s website.

Water column leases, where aquaculture equipment is placed in the water body rather than on the water bottom, are appealing to growers for a few reasons, explained the division’s Shellfish Sanitation and Recreational Water Quality Section Chief Shannon Jenkins.

“With floating gear being so prevalent here in North Carolina and other coastal states, it has a lot of advantages as far as air drying and not getting as many barnacles and things like that,” Jenkins said. “It has faster grow rates in many cases that the farmers find beneficial. But along with that, it can attract birds.”

To try and keep birds from perching on rows of cages within a lease, shellfish growers use repellents such as zip ties, their pointy ends jutting upward to deter birds from landing, or spinning whirligigs.

“We don’t say whether their plan will work or won’t work,” Witten said. “All we can do is evaluate it and see whether it’s working or not. If it’s not working we can advise you that you need to come up with something else. Something might work today and next month it doesn’t work and you have to change it. You can have zip ties all over it and I’ve seen birds land on it.”

A lease holder is required to use the bird deterrent method specified in a permit application.

“If we go out there and they haven’t done that then we can do a notice of violation on their permit because they didn’t follow their plan,” Witten said.

But there is a major incentive to growers to try and keep birds from congregating on floating gear and, let’s be blunt, pooping on their cash crop.

“First and foremost, the lease holders, they’re smart business people and they don’t want to get anybody sick. It would not be good for business,” Jenkins said. “Right now, North Carolina shellfish industry has a really great track record and great reputation. It’s obviously rare for this to cause a health issue, but it is certainly a potential. It’s also not a good visual to have bird waste on people’s cages. It’s, again, in their interest perception-wise and health-wise and reputation industry-wise to remain diligent on that.”

He said it is possible that more staff positions like the one the legislature approved during the North Carolina General Assembly’s last session will be needed if shellfish leases continue to grow at the rate they have in recent years.

“We’re supposed to inspect shellfish lease operations at least once per year according to the National Shellfish Sanitation Program, so to remain in compliance with that we would need that ability to do that,” Jenkins said. “It could be problematic if we got to a point where we were not able to do that.”

HAMPSTEAD – Local fishing guides, waterfront property owners, and self-professed avid fishermen joined forces in vocally opposing proposed shellfish leases offshore of Topsail Island, arguing an overabundance of oyster farms are crowding out local waterways and cutting off access to bountiful fishing areas.

Nearly 30 people spoke Wednesday night during a North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries-hosted public hearing on shellfish lease applications of two area oyster farming companies.

The overwhelming consensus from those who packed a room in the Surf City Municipal Complex was, while they support local shellfish farming efforts, more leases will infringe upon popular fishing spots, impede boating and kayaking access, and affect the viewshed of waterfront properties near the farms.

And most said they are specifically against the water column lease applications of N. Sea. Oyster Co. and Pirate Oysters LLC, raising concerns about the floating equipment used for this type of shellfish farming.

Unlike bottom leases, where shellfish farming gear must be placed on or within 18 inches of the waterbed, equipment used in a water column lease cannot rest on the bottom or extend more than 18 inches above the bottom.

N. Sea. Oyster Co. owner and CEO Michael Conor MacNair explained Wednesday night that the 10-acre water column lease he’s applied for in Waters Bay will not expand the shellfish farming footprint in that waterway. Water column leases have to be over bottom lease areas.

“No one, including myself, is increasing the lease area,” he said, clarifying that the bottom lease area over which he wants to farm in the water column is nearly 100 years old.

Pirate Oysters LLC has applied for a 0.88-acre shellfish bottom lease and water column lease in Topsail Marshes.

MacNair said his company leaves large navigation channels fit for flat-bottom boats and kayaks within his lease areas.

“This lease is 1,200 feet from the shoreline. There is a 28-acre large spoil island separating this lease from the Intracoastal Waterway where most commercial fishing and recreational boating use exists. Commercial fishing that does exist in this bay is wild oystering, which oyster farms are proven to have a positive impact on, blue crab fishing, which oyster farming has a positive impact on, as well as we maintain extra buffers and channels around our lease to allow crab boats to get in and we stay 300 feet away from the string of crab pots that is placed in back waters,” he said.

MacNair expressed frustration, saying that no one – neither resident or fishing guide – has gone to him to talk about their concerns regarding his lease application.

“Why?” he asked. “If it’s everybody’s water, why can’t we all work together to figure out why we can use it for everybody. Isn’t that what would make the coastal economy thrive best?”

Lee Parsons, fishing charter captain of gottafly Guide Service in Hampstead, said the state needs to research the possible affects shellfish farming in the water column have on fisheries.

“Until the water column lease study is done I’m opposing all the work on leases in the state because the state needs to get on their act and they need to do this,” he said.

Parsons offered to take a state official out on his boat free of charge and as often as needed to observe the lease areas “to see what the fish are using.”

“I know the bottom leases are good for the fishery and I do not oppose the bottom lease in any way, shape or form. I fish them all the time. But with the water column leases, technically, from what I understand, we’re not allowed to be in there and I know for a fact how it’s affecting it. I’ve seen how it’s affected the grasses up in Traps Bay and what’s happened because of that.”

Hampstead resident and recreational kayak fisherman Lori Stage said she does most of her fishing in Waters Bay.

“I am not opposed to bottom leases per se, but I am vehemently opposed to the water column leases due to the loss of surface area for us kayakers to fish, the potential negative effects to the ecosystem and just the general loss of recreational use for that area,” Stage said. “I support and encourage small business when it makes sense and doesn’t hurt the environment nor if it infringes on others. This lease would potentially negatively affect the ecosystem and absolutely infringes on the rights of recreational fishermen to fish these waters.”

Area crabber Eustace Wood said he opposes MacNair’s lease application, “only because they want a vertical lease.”

“The areas that are taken up with the vertical lease, I can’t use them anymore,” Wood said. “They can say what they want to, you’re not going in there, you’re not going to get too close to them because you just can’t maneuver around (them) and there’s getting to be too many of them.”

Topsail Beach Mayor Steve Smith said that the town is in favor of oysters and agricultural growth. “However, certain restrictions need to be understood and applied to follow the letter of the law,” he said.

Smith said that state laws passed within the past year give the town jurisdiction over agriculture and aquaculture within town limits.

“We ask that you recognize these legal issues and abide by those,” he said.

North Carolina Shellfish Growers Association Vice President Chris Matteo disputed some of the comments made by previous speakers, calling them factually incorrect.

“These are state waters. They’re not local waters,” he said, adding that some legislation might have been slipped in making a change, “but the Farm Bureau will probably have something to say about that.”

Shellfish growers are farmers, he said, and do not fall under the jurisdiction of Coastal Area Management Act rules or those set by the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission.

“One of the biggest things that people have said tonight is they’re not against bottom leases, but they’re against column leases. Well, bottom leases can have gear up to 18 inches tall and in Conor’s case, the 10-acre lease, the water is not that high. So, whether it’s a water column or bottom lease, it’s impacting the same way on navigation and on access. We can’t restrict access to water column leases or bottom leases – something else I heard tonight,” he said.

He implored the crowd to look up research being done along the East and West coasts on floating gear and said that North Carolina was one of the last to allow shellfish farming in the water column.

Matteo advised local residents to talk to their local and state elected officials about getting shellfish lease moratoriums lifted in counties south of Pender, including New Hanover and Brunswick counties, so shellfish growers will have more areas in which to farm.

Shellfish farm lease areas have been allowed in North Carolina’s coastal public trust waters since 1858. The North Carolina General Assembly in 1989 enacted law that allows shellfish leases in the water column.

The public comment period closed Thursday.

Now the decision to approve or deny the leases, or approve them with conditions, rests in the hands of state Division of Marine Fisheries Director Kathy Rawls.

Researchers, business professionals and other potential applicants are encouraged to contact North Carolina Sea Grant to learn more about funding through Sea Grant’s National Aquaculture Initiative: Enhancing Production of Coastal, Marine, and Great Lakes Aquaculture Species.

The National Sea Grant office anticipates up to $6 million in funding for research projects and programs that will develop and refine methods, protocols, techniques, and/or strategies to enhance the production of one or more life stages of aquaculture species to improve the efficiency, output, and profitability of commercial coastal, marine, or Great Lakes region aquaculture businesses, officials said.

The complete notice of funding opportunity, eligibility information and how to apply is at seagrant.noaa.gov/funding. Letters of intent are due Jan. 17. Full proposals are due in April 2024. Applications require the standard 50% nonfederal match for Sea Grant projects.

“Our program has decades of experience in identifying new species for culture, and expanding research success to demonstrations of commercial production,” Eric Herbst, coastal aquaculture specialist, said in a statement.

Projects that focus on the following aquaculture categories and organisms in both marine and freshwater are eligible for this competition and include microalgae and macroalgae, or seaweed, mollusks, crustaceans, ornamentals, baitfish, finfish species for food production, and miscellaneous invertebrates.

The opportunity is open to any individual, public or private corporation, partnership or other association or entity, including any Sea Grant College, Sea Grant Institute or other institution, as well as state, political subdivision of a state, tribal government or agency or officer thereof.

The North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission is accepting public comment until Oct. 2 on more than 100 proposed rules, which include broadening protections for Division of Marine Fisheries staff from harassment while collecting data, shellfish leases and franchises, oyster sanctuaries, and shellfish sanitation procedures.

A public hearing will be held by web conference at 6 p.m. Aug. 16.

There will be a listening station set up at North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries Central District Office at 5285 Highway 70 West, Morehead City, or the public may join the meeting online. Those who wish to comment during the hearing must register to speak by noon on the day of the hearing. Those who wish to speak at the listening station may sign up when they arrive.

People can submit written comments through an online form or by mail to N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission Rules Comments, P.O. Box 769, Morehead City, N.C. 28557. Comments must be posted online or be received by the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries by 5 p.m. Oct. 2.

Links to the public hearing registration form as well as text of the proposed rules and links to join the meeting, can be found on the N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission’s 2023-2024 Proposed Rules Page.

Proposed rule changes will be presented to the Marine Fisheries Commission for final approval in November and have an earliest effective date of April 1, 2024.

Among the rule changes are proposed amendments to broaden and enhance protections for division employees from verbal, physical or sexual harassment by those engaging in fishing activities while the employees are in the process of obtaining data about fishing activity. The proposed amendments also strengthen rule language that requires fishers to cooperate with division data collection programs.

These proposed amendments are needed because the division has had increasing occurrence and severity of harassment incidences and decreasing participation in its data collection initiatives, officials said.

Many of the proposed changes include repealing several rules to reflect that the division’s shellfish relay program, or relaying of shellfish from certain polluted areas, has been discontinued.

Proposed changes to a shellfish lease rule would require that shellfish lease or franchise holders meet the listed production, marking, and permit requirements for current shellfish leases before being eligible for additional shellfish lease acreage.

This rule change is to help ensure more efficient and meaningful use of the public trust bottom by preventing persons not in good standing from precluding potential applicants from applying for a shellfish lease in affected areas, officials said.

Among the proposed amendments for oyster sanctuaries is a new rule that would add the boundaries of the two newest oyster sanctuaries at Cedar Island and Gull Shoal, and correct boundaries for three other oyster sanctuaries, which are Pea Island, Raccoon Island and Swan Island.

These changes were implemented by proclamation while the rulemaking process is undertaken, officials said.

There are several rules up for proposed readoption, amendment or repeal required by a state-mandated periodic review schedule for commercial shellfish sanitation and processing procedures.

This is to ensure that the state remains in compliance with National Shellfish Sanitation Program requirements, officials said. Many of the proposed rules codify existing practices or regulations implemented by proclamation.

For questions about the Marine Fisheries Commission rulemaking process, email Catherine Blum at Catherine.Blum@ncdenr.gov. rules coordinator for the division.

A public hearing on four proposed shellfish leases in Hyde County is scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday, March 29, in-person at the Hyde County Government Center, 30 Oyster Creek Road, Swan Quarter, and by WebEx.

The following leases are proposed:

• Ocracoke Salt Co. LLC has applied for a 1.46-acre bottom lease and water column lease east of Bluff to Long Shore.
• Carraway Oyster Co. LLC has applied for a 5.69-acre bottom lease and water column lease in Abel Bay.
• Ryan Bell has applied for a 0.78-acre bottom lease and water column lease north of Caffee Bay.
• Mary Ellen Allen has applied for a 2.05-acre bottom lease and water column lease in Back Creek.

The public may comment on the above lease applications at the hearing or by WebEx. Register to speak online via WebEx during the meeting by 4 p.m. Tuesday, March 28. To comment in-person, sign up the night of the hearing onsite.

Public hearing information, including the web conference link, call-in telephone number, presentation slides, and biological investigation reports can be found at https://deq.nc.gov/news/events/hyde-county-shellfish-lease-hearing.

Written comments can be submitted until 5 p.m. Thursday, March 30, through an online form at https://deq.nc.gov/hyde-county-shellfish-lease-hearing-comment-form or mailed to the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries, Shellfish Leases, P.O. Box 769, Morehead City, N.C. 28557.

For more information, contact Marla Chuffo, with the division’s Habitat and Enhancement Section, at 252-808-8048 or Marla.Chuffo@ncdenr.gov.

MOREHEAD CITY — Tucked away on the floor near a couple pieces of equipment in the busy aquaculture lab at Carteret Community College is an unassuming round, nearly waist-high, clear tank with a few sections of hard, white plastic pipes roughly the diameter of salad plates placed on the bottom.

Inside one section of T-shaped pipe, a female common octopus, Octopus vulgaris, has been incubating her eggs. Over the last week, her hundreds of thousands of eggs have been hatching, filling the tank with tiny gray wiggly specks, the paralarvae or newly hatched octopuses. 

Aquaculture Operations Manager Bryan Snyder explained Wednesday morning that the female octopus had been hiding in the pipe with her remaining eggs. Aquaculture is the farming and husbandry of aquatic organisms. 

“She probably still has a few unhatched eggs in there. They don’t hatch at exactly the same time,” Snyder said, adding that the mother’s job while the eggs are incubating and hatching is to protect her eggs and keep water moving over the eggs.

Snyder was in the middle of teaching students in his hatchery management II class how to spawn clams. They were standing around a spawning table, a long, narrow tank that can hold about 6 inches of water. The students had carefully placed rows of clams in the water, which was set at a temperature to simulate winter conditions in the wild. Snyder was explaining how to properly increase the temperature to encourage reproduction.

The class focuses on facility needs, hatchery production planning and propagation techniques for species, including clams, shrimp, catfish, hybrid striped bass and rainbow trout. It’s the next step for students after taking the basics of fish and shellfish propagation taught in hatchery management I.

The classes are part of the college’s Aquaculture Technology program that focuses on saltwater species like oysters, clams, softshell crabs, and marine finfish like flounder, drum and bait minnows, according to the website. Program graduates have the option to continue their education at the college, transfer classes to a four-year university, start their own fish or shellfish farm, or work as a technician at any aquaculture operation.

Aquaculture Department Chair David Cerino told Coastal Review Thursday that the program has had several octopuses lay eggs over the years, but they didn’t have all the live feeds needed for successful rearing. “We are hoping to have a better chance this time applying what we have learned in previous attempts,” he said.

Cerino said they collected the female octopus along with a male Nov. 4 at Radio Island. 

“We put both in the tank together and they immediately mated,” he explained. “We then released the male that same day to avoid aggression between the two.”

Snyder said while looking at her tank Wednesday that the octopus she was older and had probably already mated before. “They can hold onto the sperm package from the male for quite a while before they fertilize their eggs, but we actually watched this one mate. We took the male out because they are cannibalistic, they’ll eat each other.”

The female stored sperm until about Jan. 18 when she laid the eggs. The eggs incubated for 21 days before they began hatching and have continued for about a week with peak hatch on days two and three, Cerino said.

Typically, a common octopus will lay between 100,000 and 500,000 eggs at a time. After the eggs hatch, the mother octopus usually dies. 

“That’s the normal lifecycle,” Snyder said. “They’re not very long-lived animals, they normally live a year or two, and then once they reproduce that’s the end of their natural life cycle, generally.”

Snyder continued that having a pregnant octopus while a hatchery class is taking place is “a good trial for not only our students but us as well” because larvae are difficult to raise, and most people are not successful.

Snyder said they’ll release some of the paralarvae back into the wild and they’ll also try and raise the octopuses.

Snyder said that they’ve built a larval system in the lab to raise the paralarvae. This system has four tanks that can house up to 6,000 paralarvae per tank. Snyder said they move the paralarvae by scooping them up with a lab-grade pitcher, then the pitcher is floated inside the tank so the water temperature in the pitcher will acclimate to that of the water of the tank and then they’ll gently release the paralarvae into the tank.

“We don’t know how successful we’ll be once they turn into hatchlings — to juvenile octopus,” he said, adding that’s when they turn cannibalistic. “We have to add a lot of hiding spots to the tanks so they don’t eat each other.” 

Cerino said that the tanks are 100-gallon black tanks with moderate aeration. 

“We add brine shrimp nauplii and two species of copepods daily as food for the paralarvae and add three species of microalgae to nutritionally enrich the feeds and add color to the water, reducing light penetration and improving visual contrast of the prey for feeding,” Cerino said. “We periodically exchange the water in the tanks to maintain water quality. Published reports of rearing attempts suggest that successful rearing for the first 30 days is readily achieved, but survival to juvenile octopus at about 45-50 days is very low.” Nauplii is plural for nauplius, the is the first larval stage for many crustaceans. Copepods are small crustaceans. 

As of Thursday, “we have very high survival and the paralarvae are feeding well,” Cerino said.

In the lab beside the female octopus’ tank, it’s hard not to notice the row of tanks housing pairs of clownfish, another species the class is learning to breed.

The way the tank is set up, a shelf placed inside acts as a reef rock, where the clownfish will stick the eggs, “but sometimes if their water quality isn’t just right or they get stressed out, they’ll actually eat their eggs and try again,” Snyder said Wednesday.

The bigger fish in the tank is the female and the next biggest is the male that she breeds with and there’s a bunch of other males that just kind of hang out, Snyder explained. When the female dies, the biggest male will turn into a female and then the next biggest male will move up the ranks.

Snyder said they’re trying to grow corals, too, and have a touch tank onsite filled with animals collected from Bogue Sound, which is just behind the aquaculture building.

The touch tank has whelks, clams, vegetarian snails and other marine life, he said. The tank is a way to teach students how to care for a bunch of different animals and learn which can live together.

Federal fisheries officials say seafood is good for people, good for the economy and good for the planet and have unveiled a draft plan for supporting the seafood industry.

The public is invited to review and submit comments on the draft National Seafood Strategy released Tuesday.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries said the strategy underscores NOAA’s commitment to seafood sector resilience and aligns with the administration’s goals for economic recovery, environmental sustainability and climate resilience.

Related: Seafood and A Healthy Diet

NOAA Fisheries also noted that the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health points to the need for increased seafood consumption in the United States, which the strategy aims to address.

Officials said the strategy also responds to the unprecedented challenges facing the U.S. seafood industry, including climate change, the coronavirus pandemic, new technologies and other ocean uses, and significant labor shortages and aging infrastructure.

The plan includes four goals: sustain or increase sustainable U.S. wild capture production, increase sustainable U.S. aquaculture production, foster access to domestic and global markets for the U.S. seafood, and strengthen the entire U.S. seafood sector.

Public comments are integral to finalizing the strategy and helping guide the direction of work to support the seafood sector, NOAA Fisheries said.

Written comments may be submitted online until March 16.

NOAA Fisheries is hosting two virtual listening sessions, March 2 and March 9, to present the draft strategy and gather input. The agency said it would schedule additional consultations with Tribal nations on request.

The sessions are scheduled as follows:

• Listening Session 1: 2 p.m. March 2.
• Listening Session 2: 5 p.m. March 9.

The North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission, when it meets Nov. 17, is expected to discuss proposed amendments to rules on floating structures for shellfish farmers.

The quarterly meeting is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. in Beaufort Hotel, 2440 Lennoxville Road, Beaufort. The commission’s advisory committee is to meet at 3 p.m. Nov. 16 in the same location. Agendas for both meetings are on the state Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management website.

Also during the meeting, the commission is to hear proposed amendments to rules on septic tanks seaward of the vegetation line and an inland waters boundary update. Members are also expected to consider approving fiscal analyses for expanded exemption for beach mats and land use plan enforceable policies.

The commission establishes policies for the North Carolina Coastal Management Program and adopts rules for both Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, and the N.C. Dredge and Fill Act. The commission designates areas of environmental concern, adopts rules and policies for coastal development within those areas, and certifies local land use plans. The Division of Coastal Management supports the commission, implements its rules and issues CAMA permits.

This article has been updated.

Efforts are in the works by state and federal agencies to help the aquaculture industry survive the effects of climate change.

“Most of us know that climate change impacts are happening now and that they will continue to get worse in North Carolina. We’re experiencing more intense storms, greater rainfall and rising sea levels,” North Carolina Sea Grant Coastal Resilience Specialist Sarah Spiegler said during a recent webinar.

The webinar on the state of climate resilience in North Carolina aquaculture was held Sept. 28 as part of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office of Aquaculture’s National Aquaculture Week.

As sea levels rise, elevation of the water table continues to increase and other processes are affected such as erosion, inundation, groundwater systems and water quality, she said. Adding that the shellfish aquaculture industry in North Carolina is also impacted by climate change.

“Our coastal ecosystems are vulnerable to more frequent and intense storms, degraded water quality, variable salinity and dissolved oxygen levels, higher water temperatures and increased inundation. This impacts suitability for harvest, mortality rates, public health risk, disruption of shellfish markets and time and money to repair and recover from storms,” she said.

Sea Grant Coastal Aquaculture Specialist Eric Herbst reiterated during the webinar that storm severity is increasing and explained how climate change impacts lease site suitability, temporary closures, mass mortality events and public health risks.

While the state has been experiencing coastal storms since time immemorial, one thing that can’t be denied and one thing that is happening is air and water temperatures are rising, he said. “We’ve had the wettest five-consecutive-year interval on record in the last 10 years. Our sea level is rising. And we also have had extreme precipitation events greater than 3 inches of rainfall occurring in 24 hours within the last decade as well. The severity of the weather, the frequency, the duration, all appear to be increasing here in North Carolina.”

Sea level rise will likely reduce the amount of time a farmer can work their lease, especially without a workboat, and cause variable salinity, higher temperatures and lower dissolved oxygen that can inhibit growth and increase mortalities. Going forward, sea level rise and decreased water quality may cause some existing sites to be unsuitable for shellfish aquaculture.

In terms of adaptation, Herbst continued, shellfish farmers are already experiencing climate change issues, and they have been for a while. One of the state’s longtime shellfish farmers has elevated their land-based operations because of storm-related flooding, for example.

Another option is to either relocate or acquire more leases, allowing farmers to move shellfish to different sites based on water quality and time of year. Researchers in the state are in the process of creating stress-tolerant oysters through selective breeding, as well.

Temporary closures are another big issue and are becoming a bigger issue every year, Herbst said. “Some of our growers are closed 100 to 150 days out of the year, and this is due to rainfall events.” These closures create challenges in terms of inventory and asset management, and cash flow issues for those unable to sell their product.

Mass mortality events are another impact from climate change. One Herbst thinks has the possibility to “stop the industry in its tracks.” There’s been an increased frequency, with at least one mass mortality event every year for the last three years. While they don’t know the cause, it seems to correlate with high temperature and salinity. These mass mortality events seem to affect oysters when they’re close to or are large enough to harvest but not young oysters, oyster seeds, or wild oysters, which suggests the wild oysters have adapted. 

Herbst said possible solutions are to acquire additional lease sites in lower-salinity areas to relocate harvest-sized animals in the summer or sell all harvest-sized oysters by the end of spring and start a new crop throughout the summer.

“And then of course we have our silver bullet,” which is a selective breeding program underway to create tolerant oysters.

With human health risks, he said they’re seeing higher temperatures that could result in an increase in the prevalence of pathogenic Vibrio species in North Carolina shellfish.

“We’ve been very lucky so far. We really don’t have any issues with Vibrio and we manage it very simply with time and temperature regulations,” he said. “But with increased temperatures on the way, that might be something that becomes a challenge.”

Same thing with harmful algal blooms, Herbst continued. With changing water quality parameters, higher temperatures, varying or higher salinities, a new species of harmful algal bloom could become more prevalent, and may have a negative effect on human health.

“In the future, we may be required to put together some specific testing infrastructure and capability for Vibrio and for harmful algal blooms. If it gets really bad, we may just require a policy change across the board where we won’t be allowed to sell farmed oysters anymore in the summer,” he said.

Speigler explained that at the state level, after the September 2018 Hurricane Florence, which caused extensive flooding inland and in low-income communities, the state put in place resilience efforts, including Gov. Roy Cooper’s October 2018 Executive Order 80, committing the state to address climate change and transition to a clean energy economy. The order requires all state agencies to integrate climate change mitigation and adaptation practices and to develop a climate risk assessment and resilience plan, which was published in 2020.

Another state-level effort to support the aquaculture industry is from the Division of Marine Fisheries.

Division Habitat and Enhancement Section Chief Jacob Boyd said during the webinar that the division was working to provide information and products such as storm-preparation resources, disaster funding, coordination on a state, regional and national scale, and innovative solutions that combine ecological and economic benefits.

“The process of building resilience is complex and requires iterative ways of thinking that includes assessing and planning, responding to the disaster and then recovering by assessing resilience and managing adaptively,” he said.

The industry bounced back after Hurricane Florence in 2018 when the North Carolina General Assembly passed two measures allocating $11.6 million for the commercial fishing industry, which included shellfish aquaculture operations. Improving forecasts and computer systems, expediting information to decision-makers, and providing data and tools for analysis are part of the effort to “build beyond,” he explained.

The division has launched online tools to help shellfish farmers like the 2019 interactive shellfish aquaculture mapping tool to provide information about shellfish leases. Boyd said that as more data are made available for climate change impacts, the tool can be modified to include this information to help growers decide on new shellfish leases.

“The shellfish lease term in North Carolina is 10 years and requires a large investment. Therefore, the more information growers can be provided about the potential location of their shellfish lease, the better decision they can make,” he said.

Another tool that growers can use when choosing new shellfish lease locations, or when determining potential closures for existing shellfish leases, is called ShellCast. This online tool helps shellfish growers anticipate temporary harvest area closures due to excess rainfall and make data driven management decisions.

“Forecast information on temporary closures is helpful because closures impact businesses that go shellfish growers cannot harvest shellfish when a temporary closure is in effect,” Boyd said.

Partnerships with organizations and agencies have provided opportunities to support the aquaculture industry as climate change challenges it.

In 2021, Boyd said the division partnered with NOAA, Sea Grant, National Weather Service and the North Carolina Coastal Federation to bring together the aquaculture community for a workshop. There, shellfish farmers and others in the industry received resources to help prevent aquaculture debris and prepare for storm events. 

Sea Grant and Carteret Community College in Morehead City partnered in 2020 to launch the North Carolina Shellfish Farming Academy, which combines the classroom with field training, and provides information on storm preparation and gear maintenance.

Another effort Boyd mentioned is the State Marine Aquaculture Coordination Network formed last year to improve state marine aquaculture governance for leasing programs from Virginia to Texas. The network is expected to expand nationally in hopes of creating a long-term network of all coastal states.

“Climate change is currently and will continue to impact North Carolina and its shellfish aquaculture industry through increasing extreme precipitation events, increasing annual average temperature and extreme heat days, increasing sea level rise and other impacts such as storm frequency and intensity from climate change. These impacts are and will become even more significant with the continual growth of North Carolina shellfish aquaculture industry,” Boyd said.

“While we have made a lot of progress and incorporating climate resilience best practices in North Carolina shellfish aquaculture industry, there continue to be needs to address and bridges to be built and maintained to create long-term resilience in the industry,” he added.

For Debbie Callaway, life is inextricable from the seafood industry. Her grandfather was a clammer on the North River and a cook for a menhaden operation. But throughout her life, she’s watched the environment and landscape be altered by forces such as population changes, development and pollution. It feels as though access to fishable waters has become increasingly encroached upon.

“I’ve lived here in Beaufort my whole life,” Callaway said. “And the changes are just unbelievable.” 

Callaway is on the board of directors for Walking Fish, a wild-caught, community-supported fishery that distributes in Raleigh and Durham. This cooperative model is based on a common concept from land-based farming called “community supported agriculture.” The idea is that consumers buy shares of a seasonal harvest, which they pick up weekly or biweekly from a designated location. 

People who sign up get whatever is seasonally available that the fishermen catch that week — clams, oysters, flounder, shrimp, monkfish and more.

“We’re increasing the availability of seafood to people living in the Triangle, who have limited access to fresh, local seafood — delivering the seafood directly from the fishermen to the consumer,” Callaway said.

The idea behind Walking Fish is the “triple-bottom line” — that in order for something to be sustainable, it must recognize the interconnected nature of sociocultural, economic and ecological systems. The goal is to harvest only what is available seasonally, to protect the environment and use an economic model that makes the business viable for the fishermen and worthwhile for the consumer.

The environmental impact of the seafood industry is a complex issue. Overfishing has been recognized as a problem associated with large-scale commercial fishing. National Geographic reports that it emerged as an issue for the first time in the late 1800s, and through the mid-1900s affected regional fisheries poignantly. But by the end of the 20th century it was clear that the ocean, not the unlimited food resource some had thought, was approaching its breaking point. Many species, such as Atlantic cod and herring had been pushed to the edge of extinction. The pressure on biodiversity and ecosystem function grew and kept growing. 

Aquaculture — the practice of farming seafood in the ocean as an alternative to fishing — has been offered up as a partial solution to the problem. Aquaculture is not new, but has been practiced sustainably in various forms for thousands of years. But if not scaled correctly, aquaculture faces many of the same obstacles as does land-based agriculture — pollution, ecosystem disturbance, and landscape degradation — making it hardly a panacea solution.

Ryan Nebeker is a research and policy analyst at Foodprint. Foodprint is an organization dedicated to helping people learn where their food comes from and how it impacts both social and environmental systems. One of Nebeker’s recent reports for Foodprint was a comprehensive analysis of the environmental impact of aquaculture — particularly the large-scale enterprises that he calls “Big Aquaculture.”

Aquaculture has been around for a long time, Nebeker said, and comes in many forms. But when it comes to the idea that aquaculture is a blanket solution for feeding the world, Nebeker has serious doubts.

“When you peel back the hood on how aquaculture really runs, you really run into this idea that it faces a lot of limits,” Nebeker said. “The idea that the ocean is kind of this magical freebie where you can just grow fish doesn’t really work.”

A lot of this has to do with understanding that aquaculture is not a uniform practice — there are a lot of different ways to farm seafood, and it’s important to differentiate among them. According to Nebeker, many of the species that consumers demand are considered “high input” and therefore “high impact.”

These terms refer to where a fish is in the food web. For example, Atlantic salmon is a highly valued commercial fish. But it’s high up in the food chain, meaning that in order to farm it, you have to feed it other fish. The production of fish food is something that drastically increases the environmental impact of farming Atlantic salmon.

“As a result, you end up feeding them quite a bit more than you get back in terms of usable meat,” Nebeker said.

Consuming wild-caught fish that are lower on the food chain, like sardines and anchovies, can help reduce impact. As can farming other species that have positive environmental impacts, such as seaweed and bivalves. Oysters, with their natural capacity for water filtration, give something back to the environment they grow in.

“Just get friendlier with clams, mussels, oysters — they’re so easy to cook,” Nebeker said. “Most people don’t realize they have that really light impact on the environment. And they are delicious.”

Supporting local fishing operations is another good way to reduce impact, Nebeker said, but he also recognizes that for most of the country, there’s no such thing as “local” seafood. In lieu of this, traceability is of high importance.

“One thing that has become a lot easier in the last few years is direct sales from fishermen and fishing cooperatives. Not everybody can walk down to the fish market, per se, but it’s gotten a lot easier to buy direct from fishermen. There’s a verified supply chain, you know they caught it, you know where they caught it.”

Some, like North Carolina’s Walking Fish, serve inland communities in their state. But others flash-freeze their supply and ship it to other parts of the country.

Thanks to the internet, that option is available to more of the country than it used to be. The downside, said Nebeker, is often the cost. But when the cost is low, he said, it may mean someone is cutting corners. Therefore, that cost may not manifest economically, but environmentally or socially.

In his report, Nebeker underscores the importance of viewing the ocean as a shared resource. 

“This is a resource that everyone should be able to use and access,” Nebeker said. “But they should not be able to use it in a way that damages it for other people.”

For regional fishing operations like Walking Fish, the understanding that environmental health is bound up in economic and social welfare is the basis of their business. After running for about 13 years, Walking Fish has a consistent member base that also shares these values.

“We have persevered, and have maintained a member base that benefits from the availability of fresh seafood in Raleigh-Durham but also provides a market for commercial fishermen,” said Callaway. “And for this, I’m very thankful.”

This is third in a series examining the role and sustainability of seafood in a healthy diet and is published in collaboration with North Carolina Health News.

Next in the series: What’s the economic cost of seafood and who can pay it? 

WILMINGTON – Shellfish growers are not going to easily get government approval to place floating structures on which they can do their work in their lease areas.

State officials earlier this month determined that floating platforms in shellfish lease sites will be the exception, allowable only through a variance approved by the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission.

State Division of Coastal Management Director Braxton Davis explained during the commission’s Sept. 15 quarterly meeting that while the division support’s North Carolina’s growing shellfishing industry, floating platforms need to be regulated to protect all users of public trust waters.

“I myself have signed off on an awful lot of shellfishing leases,” he said.

Allowing floating structures to go unregulated could lead to acres of platforms dotting public trust waters along the coast, he said.

One such structure known as a floating upweller system, or FLUPSY, is becoming popular among oyster growers because it protects growing, juvenile shellfish in open water until they are large enough to survive in an open sanctuary.

At its February meeting, the commission paused further talks on draft regulations for floating structures in order to get input from the N.C. Attorney General’s office on whether the commission has the authority to govern floating structures used by shellfish growers.

Special Deputy Attorney General Mary Lucasse explained to the commission that she determined it had the authority to regulate floating structures under language specific to the state’s Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA.

“The question is what does it mean when we look at our CAMA exception,” Lucasse said.

CAMA defines floating structures as development, which is defined as “Any activity … involving … the construction or enlargement of a structure; … or placement of a floating structure in an area of environmental concern.” Estuarine areas of environmental concern, or AECs, are in sounds where shellfish leases are typically located.

The North Carolina General Assembly defines floating structures as those supported by a means of flotation, without a permanent foundation, and used by humans.

“It doesn’t matter whether or not somebody’s going to drive a boat across this particular lease,” Lucasse said. “What matters are we’re protecting the whole estuarine area for the public.”

The North Carolina Shellfish Growers Association argues that shellfishing is exempt from CAMA’s definition of development because aquaculture is a form of agriculture.

“We, the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, believe that aquaculture is considered to be a form of agriculture,” Joe Hudyncia, an environmental programs specialist with the department, said to commissioners.

Chris Matteo, the association’s president, said during the September meeting that his organization’s lawyers had not had ample time to respond to the attorney general’s legal opinion.

He did not respond to a request for an update following the meeting by press time.

Matteo said that the General Assembly had made clear that it strongly supports the growth of the shellfishing industry in the state. The state leases only submerged farm land in areas where there is no meaningful natural supply of shellfish.

“Oysters are the kidneys of our estuaries and my colleagues and I are planting tens of millions of them in North Carolina waters,” Matteo said.

Limited workspace, affordable waterfront land, ample dock space and boats tailored to an individual shellfish grower’s needs are difficult for small farmers to secure, he said.

“The industry standard equipment shellfish farmers use, a grading machine that separates oysters by size, does not fit on standardized boats or skiffs,” Matteo said. “These are the main reasons growers choose to build their own barge, which the Division of Coastal Management does refer to as a floating structure.”

Intensive aquaculture, though more productive in a smaller footprint of an estuary, requires more gear and more floating workspace.

Farming on a moving surface using heavy gear is inherently dangerous, Matteo said. Floating structures can be wider than skiffs and other boats and are generally more stable work platforms and safer for farmers.

“It can also shield a farmer from the sun, wind, rain, cold, heat and unexpected weather events,” Matteo said. “Having a shelter from the elements is life-changing for a farmer.”

Shore-based floating structures are permitted at marinas and private properties with the approval of a CAMA permit.

A shellfish grower wishing to put a floating structure within an open lease area will have to apply for a CAMA major permit, which would automatically be denied. Once denied, the shellfish grower would then be able to request a variance to the permit, which would either be approved or denied by the commission.

Davis said this process will serve as a test phase and that Division of Coastal Management could eventually come to the commission with a recommendation on whether or not to support floating structures.

The state’s top coastal management official is expected to propose new rules in response to the collapse earlier this year of oceanfront homes on the Outer Banks and other beach houses currently at risk of falling into the ocean.

Proposed rules are expected to be presented to the state Coastal Resources Commission when it meets this month in Wilmington.

The commission and its advisory council meet at 9 a.m. Sept. 14 and 15 at the Holiday Inn, 5032 Market St., in Wilmington. The commission, which is composed of 13 appointed members, sets policy for the Division of Coastal Management.

So far this year, three unoccupied, oceanfront houses in Rodanthe have collapsed onto national seashore property. The destruction required extensive cleanups as debris spread along miles of seashore.

Related: Officials unsurprised as 2 more Rodanthe homes collapse

Presentations by Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac and Division of Coastal Management Director Braxton Davis are on the agenda for the commission meeting, which is open to the public but not expected to be livestreamed.

Davis is expected to present proposals for the potential rule changes that stem from discussions of a recently created interagency workgroup that includes National Parks Service and Division of Coastal Management officials and the Dare County manager and county attorney.

The changes are expected to focus on septic tank siting and repairs in ocean hazard areas of environmental concern. The approach was discussed by the task force as a “high priority/short-term action,” according to a memo from Davis to the commission.

About 750 of roughly 8,777 oceanfront structures were considered to be at risk from oceanfront erosion, with no dunes or vegetation between the structure and ocean, according to the memo, “and this situation is anticipated to worsen with increasing sea level rise and coastal storms.”

Davis states in the memo that when structures are imminently threatened by beach erosion, “a complex web of regulatory, legal, insurance, and financial assistance measures create uncertainty for property owners and coastal managers.” He said that some cases involve new property owners who make speculative investments in imminently threatened structures “due to the potential profits from continuing rental incomes and insurance payouts.”

He states that such structures can pose significant risks to public health and safety, impacts to aquatic species and shorebirds and their habitats and interference with public use of the beach.

“The public harms and costs associated with recent house collapses illustrate the need for a more holistic and proactive approach to addressing erosion-threatened structures,” Davis said in the memo.

Other business

The commission is also expected to receive the attorney general’s advisory opinion regarding the commission’s authority related to shellfish leases. In February, the commission asked for the attorney general’s opinion on whether floating structures for shellfish farmers would fall under a Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, agricultural exemption, whether the structures would infringe on riparian rights and whether local governments had authority to regulate the structures.

An update on Marine Fisheries Commission’s shellfish lease rulemaking is also planned.

The commission is expected to hear a request for variance on an oceanfront setback on Bald Head Island, consider adopting rule amendments on inlet area hazard boundaries, and approving a fiscal analysis to allow electronic payments.

Regarding beach management, the commission is expected to hear about proposed amendments to the minimum growing season for planted vegetation and oceanfront setback determinations, a proposed expanded exemption for beach mats, and an update on the Division of Water Resources Dredged Material Management Plan study.

The Coastal Resources Advisory Council during its meeting at 3 p.m. Sept. 14 is expected to discuss the status of rules for ocean fishing piers and provide an update on that discussion early in the commission’s Sept. 15 meeting. The council is a 20-member panel that advises the commission.

The national Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores a grant to build a conservation and sustainability education exhibit about aquaculture, sustainable fisheries and coral propagation.

Part of the state Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, the aquarium received a $240,808 grant for the exhibit, “Future Waters.” The multimedia exhibit will show behind-the-scenes work of aquarists, feature a 750-gallon habitat with a sustainable fisheries project, and an opportunity to engage with the coral rearing area of the aquarium. Paid interns will provide interpretation to the public while working in the visible labs within the exhibit.

“We’re thrilled to receive funding from the IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services) which will help us create our Future Waters gallery,” said Aquarium Director Liz Baird. “The Aquarium’s mission of inspiring appreciation and conservation of our aquatic environments is directly linked to this new gallery, and we hope it will help our guests connect with the multiple ways we can all help protect and conserve our waters.”

The grants were awarded through the institute’s largest competitive grant program, Museums for America, which supports projects that strengthen the ability of individual museums to benefit the public by providing high-quality, inclusive learning experiences, maximizing resources to address community needs through partnerships and collaborations, and by preserving and providing access to the collections entrusted to their care.

In Montgomery County, the Town Creek Indian Mound received a $147,439 grant to improve its interpretation of the Native American experience by planning, designing and fabricating exhibit kiosks in a pilot phase of a larger project to renovate its exhibitions. Nine tribes from North Carolina and South Carolina, along with community groups, will provide critical insight on the interpretation of Native American history and culture. An American Indian Advisory Council is to approve all final decisions.

The project is to culminate with the unveiling of the kiosks, sharing of the videos online through the site’s website and social media, and the production of a white paper and a half-day symposium sharing best practices that can be applied to other historic sites.

“This effort is a direct result of our commitment to an evergreen goal of True Inclusion at our historic sites – sharing the stories of the often-marginalized communities whose lives intersect with these historic places, through inclusion at every level,” said Michelle Lanier, director of the N.C. Division of State Historic Sites. “We are grateful to IMLS for recognizing the importance and power of amplifying North Carolina’s American Indian history as imperative to understanding the history and future of this land.”

Researchers and shellfish growers say that this season has been rife with mass oyster die-offs.

Exact triggers for these oyster mortality events are highly variable and are the subject of ongoing research.

Bob Rheault, executive director of the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association, told Coastal Review these die-offs have been a longstanding issue in parts of the mid-Atlantic, with “lots of confounding clues” but no clear answers.

“Summer mortality,” the seasonal loss of oysters during the summer months, is a familiar phenomenon, but this year’s mortality events appear to be especially severe and widespread.

Mark Ciesielski, a doctoral candidate in the Noble Lab in the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, is part of a team of researchers from multiple universities investigating the complex factors behind oyster mortality events. He said this season had been brutal for farmed oysters, with big losses across the board at his North Carolina study sites. 

Ciesielski’s oyster mortality research with Dr. Rachel Noble is supported by the state Commercial Fishing Resource Fund and with new state funding effective in July, the North Carolina Policy Collaboratory.

The team is looking for causes, and not just for this year’s problem, but it’s likely a complex confluence of factors. 

Dr. Tal Ben-Horin is an aquatic pathologist and head of the North Carolina State University Center for Marine Sciences and Technology’s Shellfish Pathology Laboratory, one of the partners involved in the project. His lab in Morehead City studies pathogen and disease impacts on shellfish aquaculture and has been working to understand the root causes behind these mortality events, wherein seemingly healthy oysters suddenly die.

“Sometimes the oysters are fine one day and dead the next,” Ben-Horin said.

He has observed that one common characteristic of summer mortality is an effect on the oyster’s ability to regenerate cells in its gastrointestinal tract.

“Typically, oysters regenerate these cells,” Ben-Horin said. “What we see associated with these events is no regeneration.”

The result is that the oysters then starve to death. Not all of them show visible symptoms, but some of them are quite obviously affected.

“There’s just nothing left,” Ben-Horin said. “The animals are withered away.”

Also involved in the project are Ami Wilbur at UNC Wilmington and Jess Small and Corinne Audemard at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.

Widespread, similar timing

What was unique about this year, said Ben-Horin, is the geographic scope — and that across a large area, mortality events within individual estuaries all seemed to happen at the same time.

On May 23, several farm sites reported shellfish mortalities of varying severity, from as far south as Stump Sound in Onslow County to as far north as Nelson Bay in Carteret County, about 115 miles of coastline. Several of these events were extreme, with an industry partner’s site in Stump Sound losing up to 90% of its oysters.

When so many events happen at the same time, it suggests an environmental trigger. Ben-Horin suspects that the combination of hot temperatures and increased salinity might be the driving force behind these mortalities. At the same time, oysters are highly adaptable.

Instead of the environmental factors being a trigger for the oysters, Ben-Horin is investigating whether the environmental factors are actually stressing out microbial communities in the water column, which are in turn infecting oyster hosts. Researchers are cataloging microbial communities before, during and after mortality events — not just accounting for what species are present, but what genes they have.

As far as this year goes, Ben-Horin is optimistic that the worst has passed. While the losses this season were monumental, the oysters that survived tend to be just fine.

“The remaining oysters do really well once you get past the event,” Ben-Horin said. During this past week’s visit to his most heavily impacted study site in Core Sound, he observed no new mortality.

Anecdotally, it seems as though these mortality events affect cultured oysters more than natural reefs. As Ben-Horin continues to investigate the microbial communities associated with these events, it may reveal helpful information for growers in the future.

The ultimate goal is to increase the understanding of why these events happen so that growers can have insight into how to make their oysters more resilient to mass mortality incidents.

“We really want to piece this story together,” Ben-Horin said.

Last year was a banner year for farmed oyster production in North Carolina, with a 111% increase compared to the previous year.

The state’s shellfish industry had $27 million in economic impact and supported 532 jobs in 2019, according to the latest available economic totals, and various groups are working together to double the number of jobs by the end of the decade.

Legislation introduced last week would fund numerous projects to protect coastal water quality to the tune of $8.5 million. Of that, $1 million is to match a federal grant for oyster sanctuary development, which is seen as key to growing oyster populations, improving water quality and supporting the shellfish industry.

On Thursday, Rep. Bobby Hanig, R-Currituck, filed House Bill 1151, which would provide money for living shorelines, oyster sanctuaries, marine debris cleanup and other water quality projects and for promoting the North Carolina Oyster Trail, a collaborative effort to promote oyster-based tourism experiences aimed at culinary travelers. The measure passed a first reading Tuesday and was referred to the House appropriations committee.

Hanig introduced the measure after a meeting Tuesday of the Marine Resources and Aquaculture Committee, which he chairs. The meeting included presentations by various groups seeking to advance the oyster farming industry and wild oyster restoration efforts, including seafood purveyors and the nonprofit North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, North Carolina Sea Grant and the North Carolina Shellfish Growers Association.

“This bill provides policy guidance and more financial resources to enhance water quality and the resiliency of our coastal communities while increasing the productivity of our coast’s fishery habitats,” said Coastal Federation Executive Director Todd Miller.

Demand for NC oysters outpacing supply

Ryan Speckman and Lin Peterson launched Locals Seafood out of the back of a truck in Raleigh in 2010, specializing in North Carolina seafood. They told the House committee that back then, the product was all wild oysters.

Now, Speckman said, they’re probably the largest distributor of different varieties of North Carolina farmed oysters. The seafood company trucks in oysters from all along the state’s coastline to distribute to restaurants, markets and stores in the Triangle. The company also operates two oyster bars, one in downtown Raleigh and the other in downtown Durham. 

Speckman said the oyster industry is “definitely an area that we can see more growth, and there’s a lot more potential.”

Peterson added that even though the company is built on connecting North Carolina consumers with North Carolina products, demand is greater than supply and the company must bring in oysters from out of state.

But, there’s evidence that the state’s oyster industry is growing to meet the demand.

Jane Harrison, North Carolina Sea Grant coastal economics specialist, told the committee that the goal of a $100 million shellfish industry in North Carolina that supports 1,000 jobs by 2030 was possible, “looking at our trajectory over the last few years.”

The goals had been set as part of the 2019 North Carolina Strategic Plan for Shellfish Mariculture that the legislature had mandated two years earlier.

Harrison said that 2019 was the first year that farmed oysters contributed more than wild oysters in total economic value. Although there were over the past decade declining production values for wild oysters and clams, market growth for farmed oysters is “really bringing the value to our shellfish industry these days,” she told the committee.

Evidence of that growth can be seen in the number of shellfish farming leases. From 2020 to 2021, Harrison said there was a 10% increase in the number of leases. She added that North Carolina is seeing mostly water column leases, which allow floating cages, and bottom leases where oysters are grown below the surface. “We see higher productivity, really a better investment,” with water column leases, she said.

During the period, there was a 22% increase in water column lease acreage.

“Why does that matter? Again, because these (water column leases) are more productive. So because we have more productive farms coming online, we’re going to hopefully have much higher production numbers, shellfish landings and economic value,” Harrison said.

Although hurricanes and the coronavirus pandemic had slowed interest somewhat, the trend is improving again.

“We are seeing a pickup just from last year,” Harrison said, “a 16% increase in the number of applications to establish these kinds of farms.”

Along with the growth in oyster farming, Harrison said the decline in wild oyster harvests could be reversed.

“We can bring those back if we improve water quality, if we invest in oyster sanctuaries, in the habitat that supports them. The farmed oysters are making up some of the some of the losses,” she said.

Closed to shellfishing

The North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries has an interactive map on its website that shows where waters are temporarily or permanently closed to shellfishing because of pollution. Other waters are off-limits to shellfishing because of moratoriums on shellfish leasing. 

Sanctuaries not only create oyster habitat, they also lead to improved water quality.

Erin Fleckenstein, coastal specialist with the North Carolina Coastal Federation and a presenter during the committee meeting, told members that much progress had been made in the year since the most recent update on the North Carolina Oyster Blueprint, a plan for restoring and protecting oyster habitat. More than 50 stakeholders across the state worked on the blueprint.

“We’ve made a lot of progress in the last year since that blueprint has come out,” Fleckenstein told the committee, adding that the successes have been because of the state’s investment in the oyster industry and improving water quality.

A program to build oyster sanctuaries is on track to reach the Oyster Blueprint goal of building an additional 100 acres of oyster sanctuary in Pamlico Sound by 2025. Fleckenstein said the sanctuary program had a 25-year track record of success and “we’re poised really well to reach that goal of 500 acres of oyster sanctuary by 2025.”

There are currently 15 oyster sanctuaries in Pamlico Sound as part of the Sen. Jean Preston Oyster Sanctuary Network that together cover about 260 acres. Oyster sanctuaries make up only about 6% of all oyster reefs in Pamlico Sound but contribute nearly 40% of the sound’s oyster population.

Harvesting is prohibited in oyster sanctuaries. They are protected to encourage growth of large, healthy oyster populations. Each year, the oysters produce millions of eggs that are carried by currents and tides to surrounding areas.

Jason Peters, who oversees the sanctuary, artificial reef and cultch planting programs for the North Carolina Division Marine Fisheries, told the committee that oyster sanctuaries are half of a two-prong approach to restoring the oyster population. The other prong is the open-harvest cultch-planting program, which supports the wild-harvest industry. The division builds the open-harvest reefs, and when the oysters reach the right size they can be harvested.

Pamlico Sound is the primary focus of the sanctuary program, Peters said.

Each oyster sanctuary site covers about 80 acres. Work began last year on Cedar Island sanctuary, the current project, which is permitted to be about 75 acres and expected to be complete in 2024.

“Oyster sanctuaries do in fact strengthen and support the oyster population in Pamlico Sound,” Peters said. The sanctuary sites produce lots of oyster larvae, which is dispersed into the water column and then settles on reef sites.

While the sites represent a small fraction of the total oyster habitat in Pamlico Sound, sanctuaries in the sound are producing about 25% of the larvae that are supplied to the ecosystem.

Peters emphasized the sanctuary network’s role in supporting the entire Pamlico Sound oyster population.

“Those larvae spread all throughout the Pamlico Sound and support reefs that are open to harvest. They subsidize commercially harvested reefs with critically important larvae,” he said. “And among other benefits, they are spectacular water filters, filtering dramatic amount of water with a small area so quite a benefit. and they last a long time and then.”

Not only are the oyster sanctuaries providing habitat for fish and oysters, but they’re also creating economic opportunities in coastal communities, said Fleckenstein, who cited Stephens Towing Co. as an example. The company has long worked with the federation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in building reefs in Pamlico Sound.

Will Hollowell, the company’s operations manager, told the committee that the company was equipped to build reefs at the right pace and at the right price. With one barge, more than 1,000 tons of rock or other materials can be placed in a day. And the work also employs others, such as the truck drivers who are moving rock from North Carolina quarries to the barge operators who are coastal residents. 

Along with reefs, demand for living shorelines has continued to grow, Fleckenstein told the committee. She said living shorelines also provide oyster habitat and they gird shorelines from erosion and protect and improve water quality, which is key to supporting the shellfish industry.

“We don’t want to risk the great reputation of North Carolina oysters by having people getting sick (from) eating oysters that are grown in poor water quality,” she said.

Fleckenstein told Coastal Review that Hanig had requested annual updates to the committee on the progress. She said the legislature’s desire to understand the progress being made in North Carolina’s oyster work was encouraging.

Less encouraging, as members of the committee noted, were moratoriums that prevent development of oyster farming operations in certain waters.

One moratorium in Brunswick County dates back to 1967 and another for a portion of Core Sound to 1993. The General Assembly in 2019 enacted shellfish moratoriums in waters from the Wrightsville Beach drawbridge through Masonboro Inlet to the mouth of Snows Cut in New Hanover County and in Bogue Sound in Carteret County that were to expire in 2021 but were extended last year until 2026.

Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, suggested that the committee consider ways to address the moratoriums. Hanig agreed, saying it was imperative.

“This industry impacts traditionally low-wealth counties, and we do everything we can to build them up,” Hanig said.

Chris Matteo, head of North Carolina Shellfish Growers Association, a trade association representing about 70 growers in the state, and owner of Carteret County-based Chadwick Oysters, explained how much the shellfish industry means economically. North Carolina oysters are being sold out of state and that money is coming back into the state’s economy, he said.

“The impact on the state’s rural economic development is also meaningful and expanding every year. A lot of us grow oysters in areas that are not a great place to make a living, and it’s really impacting the local economies in a positive way,” said Matteo.

He told the committee that investments made in the shellfish industry “are really beginning to pay off.” The fact that the industry continues to grow after storms and during the pandemic, he said, “is really a testament to your support and to the tenacity of the group that grows shellfish in the state.”  

Second in a series. Read part 1.

Students in Carteret Community College’s Aquaculture Technology program accumulate hands-on experiences in the wide-ranging industry that is aquaculture. The program’s lab space, which includes countless tanks and an oyster lease, sits on the Bogue Sound in Morehead City. 

The program teaches students how to be part of an industry that is constantly changing. David Cerino is the program chair. Day-to-day, climate change doesn’t factor into their work, he said. But zooming out, it impacts their future.

“You have to look on a larger scale, I think, to see it,” Cerino said.

For example, research shows that ocean acidification may impact shellfish development. Lower pH levels in the ocean could hinder shell growth for larval clams and oysters in some parts of the world. It’s not yet a big problem for East Coast hatcheries, but he believes that someday it could be.

Changing water temperatures are another example, Cerino said. Some of the clams they work with are at the northern edge of their range in North Carolina. Warmer temperatures could eventually change that.

“It certainly can go into some of the planning of what are the next species you should be looking at,” Cerino said. “If we can expect that in the future the water’s going to be warmer, there may be some more southern species that we can grow effectively here in North Carolina.”

Growing the industry

In North Carolina, an important aspect of aquaculture is shellfish farming. In 2018, the state launched a state shellfish plan, modeled after NOAA’s National Shellfish Initiative.

The National Shellfish Initiative aims to grow the shellfish aquaculture industry through restoration activities and sustainable commercial development. North Carolina’s participation specifically prioritizes job creation, sustainable management, water quality and shellfish health. This move acknowledges that shellfish farming is an important part of culture and identity for the region.

It also shows that moving forward, the state’s environmental health and economy are intrinsically linked. Research shows that for every $1 invested in oyster restoration, the state receives benefits equivalent to $4.05. In 2017, shellfish aquaculture in North Carolina had a farmgate value of $2.6 million.

North Carolina wants to be the “Napa Valley of Oysters.” Consistent and intentional action will be necessary to grow an industry like marine aquaculture in a way that is both economically sustainable and climate resilient. 

Mass mortality

Next door to Carteret Community College is the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences. Doctoral candidate Mark Ciesielski’s research project is looking to unveil the causes behind oyster mass mortality events.

Oyster mortality events — when large amounts of oysters die off — present a great risk to the shellfish industry. There has been an increase in the frequency of these events over the last decade. Recent research has highlighted the problem up and down the coast. In North Carolina, the trend is in anecdotal occurrences. The state’s Oyster Blueprint keeps close documentation on the state of the oyster over time. 

“If there’s that significant of an economic loss, it’s not going to inspire a lot of confidence in the industry,” Ciesielski said.

These events have often been attributed to a single pathogen, but the truth is probably a little more complicated than that, says Ciesielski. Evidence suggests there are likely many contributing factors derived from the effects of climate change that might favor a myriad of pathogens working in concert. Ciesielski hopes to identify these drivers.

Four teams of scientists in North Carolina and Virginia are working with local shellfishermen to regularly monitor oysters across multiple sites throughout the coming year, starting in March of 2022. They’ll be monitoring several environmental factors such as salinity, dissolved oxygen and temperature, and using these field observations in conjunction with advanced molecular workflows and histological data. The idea is to address a complex issue holistically.

“We’re not looking at just one thing, we want to hit it from all angles, and just be as smart about it as possible,” Ciesielski said.

The future stability of aquaculture in North Carolina depends on research like this.

For Rebekah Williams of Bekah’s Bay Oysters in Morehead City, being an oyster farmer fits like a glove. The nights when she’s bartending at Southern Salt tend to be the busiest, said one of her coworkers. People come for her, and they come for her oysters on the half shell. Despite the ubiquitous threats to the industry, this is where she belongs.

“I love the water. And I love it here,” Williams said. “People are like, ‘are you ever going to leave?’ Probably not…my roots are definitely going to be here.”

If this project can help unveil the triggers behind oyster mortality, it can increase the environmental and economic resiliency of the oyster industry for the future.

“It has a lot of importance in terms of the local community — people are very interested in making sure that they can make a living off of this,” Ciesielski said.  “And so we’re trying to support them as much as possible, and just give them answers to questions, and what the limitations are. That’s an important thing if we’re going to continue to grow moving forward.”

First in a two-part series.

The sun warms the docks in Morehead City as Rebekah Williams stands on the back deck of Southern Salt, a restaurant on Morehead City’s waterfront that serves fresh seafood.

Before her on a table is a heap of oysters from her farm, Bekah’s Bay Oysters, sorted into two piles. The pile of bigger oysters will go inside and be served to guests that evening on the half shell. The others will go back into a floating oyster bag at her lease in a tidal bay near Cape Lookout.

Oyster farming is one of the United States’ most prominent forms of marine aquaculture, and Williams is one of many shellfish farmers in North Carolina. Aquaculture is an expansive industry that encompasses a lot of things — farming fish and shellfish for food is prominent among them. 

New research out of the University of British Columbia in Canada has indicated that while the marine aquaculture industry has huge potential for feeding a growing world population, a significant amount of that potential will be curbed due to climate change if we stay on our current carbon emissions pathway. 

An economically and culturally important industry in North Carolina, aquaculture has the potential to help us adapt to a changing world. But as things like warmer ocean temperatures, storms and landscape changes become more pressing factors, the industry will have to adapt as well.

Room to grow

Previous research indicates that marine aquaculture has tremendous potential when it comes to feeding the growing world population, which is expected to hit 10.9 billion by the end of the century. But whether that potential ever comes into being is another thing altogether.

Many capture fisheries around the world are either at their maximum yield or are close to overextending their capacities. This means there isn’t much room for that industry to grow in order to feed a higher world population.

Dr. Muhammed Oyinlola, lead author of the study published in Global Change Biology, said that while that food pathway is close to maxed out, the marine aquaculture industry is expanding.

“My recent research looked into marine aquaculture, because marine aquaculture production has been increasing over time,” Oyinlola said. “And most people are seeing it as the panacea for (the) decline of fisheries, particularly from the marine environment — how we’re going to increase food production.”

Oyinlola used modeling techniques to project into the future of marine aquaculture. He modeled two main pathways to see how the industry could be impacted by a suite of environmental and socioeconomic factors.

His results indicated that by the end of this century, climate change will be the driving factor influencing the production potential of the industry.

Under the more pressing of the two scenarios, Oyinlola found that global marine aquaculture production could decrease by up to 16% by the year 2090. This projected decrease was mostly driven by factors like warming ocean temperatures and changes in what areas are suitable for aquaculture.

What he found is that the future of the industry, globally, has vastly different possible trajectories. This study highlights the need for strong carbon emission mitigation measures in order to ensure a climate-resilient and economically sustainable future for marine aquaculture.

Climate extremes

The growing global aquaculture industry includes Williams, who jump-started a career in oyster farming about seven years ago. After a bit of trial and error, she started her own business and never looked back. Now, you can find Bekah’s Bay Oysters on the Southern Salt menu as well as with several regional distributors. It’s also not uncommon to see Williams driving around Morehead City in her truck, making dock to door deliveries herself.

Climate change is not part of Williams’ day-to-day train of thought. Between bar shifts at Southern Salt, tending to her oysters on her lease, and renovating homes for Airbnb on the side, Williams has a full schedule. But that’s not to say climate extremes haven’t affected her.

A few years into her business, Williams, like so many others in North Carolina, had to quickly pivot when Hurricane Florence made landfall in 2018.

“You don’t get a big heads-up on a storm,” Williams said. When she realized Florence was going to impact her oysters, she had to act fast.

She went out to her lease and gathered all of the baby oysters, leaving the more mature ones in place. She used a refrigerated trailer to bring them into the restaurant. It was a risk to bring them in, because reintroducing them to the water later on could cause them to die. 

“You’re taking a chance on bringing them in,” Williams said. But then, she didn’t have a lot of other options. “So we were like, ‘well, we’ll try it.’”

Many of the mature oysters she left at her lease did not survive the storm. But her baby oysters did.

“It’s a lot of work. You’re out there in the sun, no power … and you’re doing all this work to save the oysters, and luckily we did and we didn’t have any huge issues.” 

Others weren’t so lucky. In 2018, Hurricane Florence and Tropical Storm Michael caused nearly $10 million in damage to North Carolina’s shellfish industry.

The storm caused damage to gear, and leases were hit with an onslaught of freshwater, which decreased both salinity and dissolved oxygen. For many oyster farmers, it was a huge loss.

Research has shown that, while hurricanes are not new, climate change results in a heightened risk for more intense and more frequent storms. For Williams and many other small business farmers, these storms threaten catastrophic losses. They are a direct threat to the industry’s stability and security.

“It’s tough if you don’t have the resources,” Williams said. “But luckily, having the restaurant and coolers and refrigerators and stuff, we were able to try it and do it. And it did work. So, at least we know now.”

Next in the series: Seeding a future for North Carolina’s shellfish aquaculture industry

Shellfish growers have access to a free online tool that will help them better predict when their lease will be closed temporarily after a rainstorm.

The North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries issues temporary closures when stormwater pollutes coastal waters, which can contaminate shellfish. Contaminated shellfish can lead to illness when consumed.

The new online application, called ShellCast, gauges the risk — very low, low, moderate, high, very high — of a growing area temporarily closing on that day, the next day or two days later, but does not include official closures currently in effect. Information on closures is available on the Division of Marine Fisheries website or the Shellfish Sanitation Temporary Closure Public Viewer.

The project was funded by North Carolina Sea Grant, which announced the tool last week, as a core research project for its 2020-22 cycle,

“Temporary closures of shellfish harvest areas are a big challenge for many North Carolina shellfish growers and can have a big effect on inventory management, cash flow, and ultimately the bottom line,” said Eric Herbst, North Carolina Sea Grant’s coastal aquaculture specialist, in a news release.

North Carolina State University engineers and computer scientists developed the tool with the following key partners: Kathie Dello and John McGuire with the North Carolina State Climate Office; David Glenn with the National Weather Service Morehead City/Newport office;  Andrew Haines of the Division of Marine Fisheries in Morehead City; A.K. Leigh with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science in Oxford, Maryland; Chris Matteo, North Carolina Shellfish Growers Association president and owner of Chadwick Creek Oyster Co.; and Ken Riley with the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, NOAA in Beaufort.

Once growers create a ShellCast account, they can add their lease sites and view those and nearby growing areas on the ShellCast map page. The forecast provides estimates on the risk that a lease site or growing area will be temporarily closed due to excess rainfall. It is beneficial to add leases because lease rainfall thresholds can vary and lead to different chances of closure even within the same growing area, according to the website. Growers can sign up to receive email or text message notifications if their shellfish lease sites are likely to be temporarily closed.

While growers are always instructed to yield to formal announcements and requirements for closure, ShellCast provides guidance to growers on how best to navigate potential closures. 

“Knowing the likelihood of a closure occurring in the immediate future can help drive decisions regarding resource and time allocation to mitigate or manage the effects of a pending closure on their business,” Herbst said. 

The ShellCast project started in 2020 under Natalie Nelson, who leads the Biosystem Analytics Lab at N.C. State. In addition to Sea Grant, the tool is supported by N.C. State’s biological and agricultural engineering department, and the Southeast Coastal Ocean Observing Regional Association. ShellCast was presented at the Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation Biennial Conference in November 2021.

Sheila Saia, member of the app’s web development team who is now associate director of the North Carolina State Climate Office, is to present updates and future directions for ShellCast at the North Carolina Aquaculture Development Conference March 12. Register for the conference at ncaquaculture.com.

A new initiative to put Wilmington and southeastern North Carolina on the map as a leader in the blue economy – trades and industry dependent on marine resources — makes its public debut during All Blue Week, Nov. 2-6.

The Alliance for the Blue Economy, also called “All Blue,” based its mission on the World Bank’s definition of blue economy, “the sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods and jobs, while preserving the health of the ocean ecosystem.”

The University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship launched Sept. 28 All Blue, which is made up of an advisory board of science and business leaders who focus on attracting, advising and launching businesses in the blue economy, according to the website.

During All Blue Week, more than a dozen sessions, seminars, recreational opportunities and tours are planned around Wilmington and on UNCW’s main and marine science campuses, including the Nov. 6 Hack for a Blue Economy, or Hackathon, co-sponsored with Cape Fear Collective. There’s no charge to attend most events, but organizers recommend registering in advance.

All Blue Advisor Kim Nelson told Coastal Review that the All Blue team has worked for years to identify areas of the blue economy relevant to southeastern North Carolina. Those identified include coastal resilience, hospitality, recreation, tourism, sustainable aquaculture and fisheries, biotechnology, and engineering and robotics.

Related: UNCW Center kicks off ocean-focused economic initiative

 “We are hosting the All Blue Week and All Blue Hackathon to bring people together to learn more and think about how they might get involved,” she said.

Deborah Westphal, author of the new book, “Convergence: Technology, Business and the Human-Centric Future,” kicks off All Blue Week Nov. 2 with an opening address, and the week closes with the all-day Hackathon on Nov. 6. As its name implies, the Hackathon is geared toward techy types of all skillsets and covers how data can inform the sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth while preserving the ocean ecosystem. Register online to attend the Hackathon in Wilmington or join virtually.

Nelson and fellow Hackathon organizer Nick Pylypiw, who is director of data science at Cape Fear Collective, explained in an email response to Coastal Review that the goal for the Hackathon is twofold.

First, they hope to educate the local technology and scientific community on some of the challenges and data sources around the blue economy. “By raising awareness of these local economic challenges, we hope to foster increased focus on data collection and analysis, as well as policy and recommendations,” they wrote.

Second, the output from the Hackathon, such as code, visualizations, recommendations and data can help to build a foundation of community resources for future work within the blue economy.

“This sort of event can be a catalyst for change, sparking the imagination of the community and creating momentum to build sustainable economic outcomes,” they wrote.

Nelson and Pylypiw said they want Hackathon attendees to leave with a better understanding of the blue economy and why it’s crucial for the region. They want it to spark interest for future events and collaborations.

The Hackathon team spent years working on a strategy and a consistent message about the blue economy.

“We have been looking for ways to engage a larger audience and to start to map currently available datasets specific to the blue economy,” Pylypiw and Nelson wrote in the email.

One member of the All Blue team brought up the idea after a hackathon held by the Cape Fear Collective in April that was specific to affordable housing. All Blue then reached out to Cape Fear Collective about collaborating.

“Fortunately for us, they had an interest in coastal resilience and the partnership was born,” Nelson said.

Cape Fear Collective, founded in 2019, brought together corporate, nonprofit and municipal entities in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence and two main themes emerged as gaps in the nonprofit world.

“The first need was data. Organizations needed it to be hyper local, timely, and easier to action to better distribute resources based on its insights. The second need in the nonprofit community was more funding,” they wrote, noting that revenues for the region’s nonprofits had historically lagged peer regions in the state on a per capita basis, “often amid a more dire need and frequent natural disasters.”

The collective created a localized nonprofit investment platform that allows for private capital to drive social causes from affordable housing to workforce development, small business and transportation sectors, they said.

All Blue Week Schedule

Inside Cape Fear Community College’s Marine Technology and Boat Building Programs: 4-5 p.m. Nov. 1, at 407 North Water St. Wilmington or by zoom. During this free event, learn about the college’s 57-year history of training students for employment in industries specific to scientific work on the water, current projects and ways students contribute to the blue economy after graduation. Parking is available at college’s visitor parking lots on Water Street or on the corner of Walnut and Second streets. Register online.

Opening session with keynote by Deborah Westphal: 8-11:30 a.m. Nov. 2, UNCW Lumina Theatre, 615 Hamilton Drive, Wilmington and via Zoom. Rear Adm. Laura M. Dickey, operational commander for U.S. Coast Guard missions from the North Carolina and South Carolina border to New Jersey, will speak before keynote speaker, Westphal. John Waterston with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, an agency of the U.S. Department of Defense also will present. Register online.

Blue Economy Workshop with Deborah Westphal: 2 p.m. Nov. 2, UNCW Marbionic Building, 5598 Marvin K. Moss Lane, Wilmington. This free workshop with Westphal will discuss what the blue economy is and what it means for southeastern North Carolina. The conference table is limited to 32 people, with additional seating for up to 18 observers. Register online.

Blue Tech/New Tech Panel Discussion: 3:45 p.m. Nov. 2, UNCW Marbionic Building, 5598 Marvin K. Moss Lane, Wilmington or online via Zoom. During this free panel discussion, attendees can learn what’s new in Blue technology. Registration is preferred, but not required. Register online.

Planet Ocean Seminar: 6:30 p.m. Nov. 2, via Zoom. The UNCW Center for Marine Science will host the free, virtual seminar with speaker Monica Jain, founder and executive director of Fish 2.0 and Manta Consulting Inc. Registration is required for the virtual event. For further information, please call the UNCW Center for Marine Science at 910-962-2301. Use this link to register for the virtual event: Zoom link. To attend in-person, email helmsc@uncw.edu or call CMS at 910-962-2301.

What’s Brewing in Science?: 6 p.m. Nov. 2, Waterline Brewery, 721 Surry St., Wilmington. Join Cape Fear Museum and All Blue for the interactive session to explore the social, economic, and environmental impacts of building a sustainable future for our ocean and river economy. Registration is optional, but recommended.

Sea Change – Sparking Sustainable Innovation in an Old-School Industry: 9 a.m. Nov. 3,CMS Auditorium, 5600 Marvin K. Moss Lane, Wilmington and via zoom. Monica Jain will speak during this free seminar. In 2013, she founded Fish 2.0 to drive investor interest in new innovations and technologies supporting aquaculture and sustainable seafood. Register online.

Panel Discussion: Follow the Money – Opportunities and Challenges of Investing in Food: 10 a.m. Nov. 3, CMS Auditorium, 5600 Marvin K. Moss Lane, Wilmington and via Zoom. Join Jain and investors in this free panel discussion about investing in food-based businesses facing challenges to find growth capital. Register online.

Living Shorelines 101: 9-11 a.m. Nov. 3, Fort Caswell, 100 Caswell Beach Road, Oak Island. Cost is $5 per person. Learn about the town’s living shoreline restoration project its 170-foot oyster reef. The presentation will begin indoors and then head outdoors for a site visit to the salt marsh and restoration area. Masks required when in close proximity to others and indoors. Contact bpace@fortcaswell.com or call 910-278-9501 to register.

NC Entrepreneurs Pitch Innovative Blue Economy Ventures: 3 p.m. Nov. 3, Blockade Runner Resort, 275 Waynick Blvd., Wrightsville Beach. Cost is $35 per person. Join Jain, Ben Redding and investors from VentureSouth, WALE, and Seahawk Innovation to look at state-based startups representing a broad range of blue economy sectors from marine robotics, marine biotechnology, sustainable seafood, water quality, and more. Register online.

A Blue Tourism Experience Aboard the Blockade Runner’s Carolina Runner: 5 p.m. Nov. 3, Blockade Runner Resort and Marina, 275 Waynick Blvd., Wrightsville Beach. Cost is $50, with a cash bar on board. The Blockade Runner’s sunset cruise on the Carolina Runner will depart from the dock across from the hotel’s property. There will be a presentation on the sustainability practices that has earned the Blockade Runner designations as an Ocean Friendly Establishment and recognition by the North Carolina GreenTravel Initiative. Register online.

The North Carolina Beach, Inlet and Waterway Association’s Annual Conference: 7:30 a.m.-5:45 p.m. Nov. 4 and 7:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Nov. 5, Aloft Wilmington at Coastline Center, 501 Nutt St., Wilmington. Cost is $200 for both days. There will be legislative and policy updates, offshore wind energy panel discussion, mapping the effects of sea level rise on coastal habitats, NC Resilient Coastal Communities Program update, Top 10 restoration plants for coastal and marsh restoration, and Olivine Sand: A Cost-Effective Carbon-Negative Alternative for Beach Renourishment. Register online.

Tracking Great Sharks in NC Waters Using Innovative and Data-Centric Technologies: 10 a.m. to noon Nov. 4, via zoom. Cost is $10.  A SEA and Coffee presentation by Dr. Bob Hueter, chief scientist with OCEARCH, a data-centric organization instituted to help scientists collect previously unobtainable data about great white sharks in their ocean environment. Register online.

UNCW Global Marine Science Mini-Summit — Virtual Symposia and Panel Discussion: 2-4 p.m. Nov. 4, Hybrid of prerecorded presentations and virtual panel discussion via Zoom. International experts from China, Colombia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and others will join UNCW marine science faculty in a panel discussion focused on research, trends and developments in marine biotech/pharmaceuticals, coastal resiliency, tourism and aquaculture. More information and registration details are online.

North Carolina Coastal Federation’s Oyster Blueprint Update with Ted Wilgis: 2-3:30 p.m. Nov. 4, via Zoom. Ted Wilgis, coastal scientist with the federation, will discuss during this free event the link between the economic and ecological benefits of using oysters for farming, wild harvest, ecosystem services and shoreline resiliency. Learn more at nccoast.org and register online.

CMS Saturday: 10:30 a.m. Nov. 6, UNCW Center for Marine Science, 5600 Marvin K. Moss Lane. Free, one-hour tours of UNCW’s College of Marine Science’s shellfish research hatcheries and portions of the CMS and Marbionic facilities. Tours begin at 10:30 a.m. and will be offered every half hour until the final tour at 1 p.m. Tour groups will be limited to 20 and must be 12 years old or older.  Registering online before the event is necessary.

North Carolina is celebrating the mighty oyster.

Oct. 11-15 is North Carolina Oyster Week this year and organizers, North Carolina Sea Grant, the North Carolina Coastal Federation, and the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, say the “shellebration” includes a series of in-person and virtual oyster-related events along the coast and in the Triangle.

The public will have opportunities to engage with oyster growers and harvesters, seafood restaurants and retail markets, recreational outfitters and coastal conservation and education organizations. North Carolina Sea Grant has published a list of events that includes some scheduled outside of the Oct. 11-15 timeframe and are also listed on the websites of the NC Oyster Trail, which was also a partner, and NCDNCR.

“Oysters benefit our state in myriad ways,” said Jane Harrison, North Carolina Sea Grant’s coastal economist. “North Carolina Oyster Week events will highlight the ecology, culture, economy, and history related to this vital resource.”

In addition to being simply delicious, oysters can improve water quality as they filter water for food. Oyster reefs provide habitat for other animals. And they are an important part of North Carolina’s economy, here on the coast and beyond.

October is a key month for N.C. oysters. The wild-caught season begins Oct. 15 and continues through April.

For those who crave oysters all year, cultivated, or farmed, oysters are available.

“The idea that oysters can only be eaten in ‘r’ months — that is, September through April — is a misconception,” Harrison said. “You can eat cultivated oysters any day with a ‘y.’ In other words, Monday through Sunday, all year long.”

Scheduled events include cultivated and wild-caught oysters alike. For example, at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday , a live-streaming event on YouTube will feature oyster farmer Ryan Bethea of Oysters Carolina, who will delve into the variety of oysters available on our coast.

At 5 p.m. Friday, Shuckin’ Shack in Surf City and Wrightsville Beach Brewery near Wilmington will host in-person parties for folks to sample these succulent shellfish. Both establishments are part of the NC Oyster Trail, which offers year-round opportunities to taste, learn about, and protect oysters.

The trail’s mission is to help sustain and grow N.C. oyster supply and demand, resulting in economic, environmental, and social benefits to the state’s seafood industry and coastal communities.

SEA LEVEL — Jimmy Morris was standing in the driving rain Wednesday examining the charred remains of his family’s aquaculture business, the Mill Point Hatchery at Morris Family Shellfish Farms.

Early Sunday morning, fire destroyed the 1,671-square-foot shellfish nursery in the Down East area of Carteret County.

“I lost my first building to Hurricane Isabel in 2003.” Morris told Coastal Review Wednesday. “our next step is to rebuild. We have people that need jobs.”

Down East Fire Department responded to the working structure fire on Nelson Neck Road around 6 a.m. Sunday. While the nursery was a total loss, crews were able to save most of the raceways, or hatchery, and docks, officials said. Nearby fire departments at Cedar Island, Otway, Marshallberg and Harkers Island and Down East Stations 1, 2 and 3 helped contain the fire.

Carteret County Fire Marshal Eddie Lewis said in an interview Thursday that Morris discovered the fire around 5:30 a.m. Sunday when he arrived to check on oyster larvae in the nursery, something Morris does every day. He noticed smoke coming from the roof of the building and called 911. The smoke was coming from the A-frame roof of the structure built out over the water, where the salty air makes corrosion a constant threat.

“He has no insurance because it’s too expensive to insure things right there on the water,” Lewis said.

The wood-frame building with a metal roof was built in 2004. Before being used for aquaculture, the building was a fish house. 

Lewis said that while the cause of the fire is listed as undetermined, the potential exists that the cause of the fire was electrical. He said that his hypothesis can’t be proven.

Based on photos taken when crews first arrived, the body of fire was concentrated in the mid-upper level of the building, which collapsed and was a total loss, the fire report states.

The Morris family has been working North Carolina waters for more than six generations, harvesting crabs, shrimp, oysters, clams, and varieties of fish, according to the business website. The family began in 1984 growing shellfish in Core Sound located in Down East Carteret County and supply clam seed and oyster spat for growers during the growing season. Currently there are three generations working the family farms.

Morris continued his examination of the burned building Wednesday afternoon, slowing down to peer into the office and nursery ravaged by fire.

Though faced with extensive damage to his nursery, Morris carries on with day-to-day operations, including prepping mature clams from the hatchery.

“I’ve got eight men in the bay right now getting oysters and they need to move,” he said, referring to Nelson Bay.

There’s also been constant attention to the remaining water pump in the nursery that wasn’t destroyed by the fire Sunday.

“I still have 8 to 10 million babies that need water,” Morris said. “We are having to refuel our one remaining pump every two hours even through the night.”

Morris explained that he scheduled an electrician to get the other water pumps online.

“We’ve got to clear that platform and get the engineer’s stamp, then rebuild with aluminum to withstand 190-mile-an-hour winds,” he said.

The Morris family has encountered numerous disasters along the way and they’ll come through this as well, said  Karen Willis Amspacher, executive director of the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island.

“Their role in shellfish mariculture is vital to this growing industry for North Carolina and they will continue to lead with determination as they face the rebuilding and recovery – again,” she told Coastal Review Thursday.

Patricia Smith, communications director for the Division of Marine Fisheries, said in an interview that it is always sad to see something like this happen to a marine fisheries stakeholder.

“The shellfish aquaculture industry has grown substantially in North Carolina. Since this was a hatchery that was destroyed, it could impact the operations of some other small farms in the state and create a small ripple effect in the short term,” she said.

Dylan Ray contributed to this report.

MOREHEAD CITY – The N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries is partnering with several agencies and organizations to host the North Carolina Aquaculture Gear Management and Storm Preparedness Workshop.

This free workshop will take place via GoToWebinar on April 8 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and it is open to all commercial N.C. shellfish growers. Registration for the workshop is open.

Workshop participants will learn how to develop a storm preparedness plan for their shellfish aquaculture farm in line with current state initiatives to improve storm readiness. Attendees also will learn how to properly manage, maintain, and deploy their gear to avoid loss. In addition to the negative economic impact that lost gear can have on shellfish growers, derelict gear can pose navigational hazards and harm wildlife.

The workshop provides an opportunity to bring shellfish growers and other stakeholders together to discuss important issues impacting the shellfish aquaculture industry and to help improve aquaculture gear management and storm preparedness statewide. With the number of severe storms impacting the shellfish aquaculture industry increasing every year, the workshop will provide tools for growers to use to prepare themselves and their farms for these storm events.

“We are hoping to bring the success this program has had in other states to North Carolina,” said Jacob Boyd, Division of Marine Fisheries Habitat and Enhancement section chief.

Free aquaculture gear tags will also be provided to interested shellfish farmers who attend the workshop.

Other workshop sponsors include NOAA’s Marine Debris Program, the National Weather Service, and the North Carolina Coastal Federation for the North Carolina Aquaculture Gear Management and Storm Preparedness Workshop, and North Carolina Sea Grant.

MOREHEAD CITY — With the number of severe storms impacting the shellfish aquaculture industry increasing every year, there’s an aquaculture workshop being offered next month that will provide tools for growers to help prepare for these storm events.

The state Division of Marine Fisheries and other agencies and organizations are hosting the North Carolina Aquaculture Gear Management and Storm Preparedness Workshop that will be held online 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. April 8. Registration for the workshop is open.

“We are hoping to bring the success this program has had in other states to North Carolina,” said Jacob Boyd, section chief, Division of Marine Fisheries Habitat and Enhancement, in a statement.

The workshop is an opportunity for shellfish growers and other stakeholders to discuss important issues affecting the shellfish aquaculture industry and help improve gear management and storm preparedness statewide.

Participants will learn how to develop a storm preparedness plan for their shellfish aquaculture farm in line with current state initiatives to improve storm readiness, and how to properly manage, maintain and deploy their gear to avoid loss. In addition to the negative economic impact that lost gear can have on shellfish growers, derelict gear can pose navigational hazards and harm wildlife, according to the division.

Aquaculture gear tags will also be provided free of charge to interested shellfish farmers who attend the workshop.

Other workshop sponsors include National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program, the National Weather Service, and the North Carolina Coastal Federation for the North Carolina Aquaculture Gear Management and Storm Preparedness Workshop, and North Carolina Sea Grant.

“This workshop will be a great opportunity to discuss the importance of environmental stewardship, and provide resources to shellfish farmers in North Carolina,” says Charles Grisafi, Southeast regional preparedness coordinator of the NOAA Disaster Preparedness Program, in a statement. “This is the first time the workshop will be offered in the state of North Carolina.” The organizers hope to offer the opportunity in additional states, he says.

This story has been updated.

RALEIGH – Gov. Roy Cooper late Friday signed a bill making long-sought changes to North Carolina’s shellfish leasing program that was unanimously approved in the General Assembly.

The House passed Senate Bill 648, Support Shellfish Aquaculture, on June 12 in a 116-0 vote. In early May, the Senate approved the bill in a 47-0 vote.

In a recent interview, Steve Murphey, director of the Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Marine Fisheries, said planning had started for implementing the bill, which was drafted at the division’s request.

The division is the lead agency for major initiatives in the bill, including the determination of locations and rules for new shellfish enterprise areas and the establishment of three large-scale shellfish leases in Pamlico Sound.

The enterprise areas proved to be one of the key reasons why this year’s effort on aquaculture was successful. The areas will be established for shellfish leasing ahead of time and are to have a faster, more streamlined permitting process. Murphey said the initiatives are intended to reduce potential conflicts with other users of public trust waters and reduce legal fights over leases.

“We have areas of the state where you can apply for a lease and there’s a public hearing and nobody shows up, but we have other areas of the state, particularly with these intensive and water column methods, where as soon as we receive the application we know we’re going to have a lot of conflict,” Murphey said. “Everybody has due process rights in this and so often times we’re in a situation where, regardless of what we do, we end up in court.”

The program mirrors those in several other states, he said, including Florida, where nearly all the state’s shellfish leases are in enterprise areas.

The new legislation allows the creation of “one or more” enterprise areas. Murphey said the division plans to identify potential areas and then hold meetings with local stakeholders, including property owners, commercial and recreational fishing operations, tourism interests and county and municipal planning departments, to work through concerns. The sites would likely be about 20 to 40 acres and the leases could range between small, 1- or 2-acre parcels and the current maximum lease size of 10 acres.

Bogue Sound, where the division and National Marine Fisheries are developing a spatial planning analysis to identify potential areas, is a likely location for one of the first sites, but don’t expect anything to happen quickly. The new legislation includes a moratorium for both Bogue Sound and much of New Hanover County, areas where there are both a lot of lease requests and the most potential for conflicts with other users.

“We’re not going to rush this,” Murphey said. “We want to take it kind of slow because we want to get it right.”

Once identified, the division would also hold public meetings on the enterprise areas. Once set up, the division would become the leaseholder and would subdivide the area through an application process. Unlike the current lease system, which allows the leases to be traded or passed on to heirs like property, the enterprise area leases would revert to the state once the holder stops operations.

“If you got on the lease and you got a couple of acres and you decided that wasn’t for you or too much work, or you couldn’t make production (goals) or couldn’t pay the rent, then it would revert back to the state,” he said. “Then we would go back to the queue and pull another applicant up, look at a management plan and put them into that.”

One of the main ideas behind the plan is to create a faster, simpler way for people interested in aquaculture to get started, but for the division, the new plan would lead to a more efficient and less contentious process.

Murphey said the change is also needed to keep up with a growing demand for leases. When he first started working with the division as a marine biologist in the late 1980s, it would get requests for 10 to 12 leases a year. Most of those were for growing clams.

“Now they’re all oyster leases and they’re all intensive culture leases and we’re getting between 80 and 100 a year,” he said.

Pamlico Leases and FLUPSY Provisions

While the potential conflicts with other users was part of the objections over last year’s failed aquaculture legislation, the biggest hitch was over the size of the leases.

An early version of the bill, aimed at attracting large producers, envisioned leases of 2,000 acres. In response to objections, that was reduced to 200 acres, but even that size drew strong objections.

This year’s bill includes a scaled-down pilot project in Pamlico Sound with three, 50-acre leases. Murphey calls it a “toe in the water” approach. He said finding the right location for the large leases will take one to two years. They can’t be in places with a lot of wave energy and they can’t be so remote that it takes a lot of time and fuel to get out and monitor them.

The division would carefully review business plans to make sure those interested are willing to make the kind of investment needed for such a large-scale lease.

The bill also gives the division authorization to allow shellfish growers to use waters currently off limits to grow seed oysters through the early part of their life cycle and then transport them to approved shellfish waters.

Murphey said the division asked for the authorization, which would allow for floating upweller systems, a platform known in the trade as a FLUPSY, to be located closer to a grower’s home base.

He said most growers like to use the systems in marinas because they are protected areas with access to electricity for the pumps, but under North Carolina law, marinas are automatically off limits for shellfish cultivation.

The change would allow more growers to use the systems to start their oysters, which is far cheaper than buying them at sizes large enough to survive in the standard beds. He said the division determined that the oysters would spend enough of their life cycle in approved shellfish waters to negate any effect from starting out in prohibited waters that are off limits.

The systems would be reviewed on a case-by-case basis to make sure the waters in the area don’t have toxic substances or heavy metals. If authorized, growers would be required to transplant the oysters before they reach more than 25 millimeters or roughly 1 inch in size.

“This is just for seed,” he said. “That way by the time they grow out, they’re not going to have any deleterious substances.”