The North Carolina Division of Coastal Management is offering competitive grant funds to support projects that will help the public access coastal waters.

Applicants eligible for fiscal year 2027 funding through the North Carolina Boating Infrastructure Grant, or BIG, Program include public and private marina owners and operators, local governments, state agencies, nonprofit organizations, institutions of higher education and other entities that own or operate boating facilities in the state’s 20 Coastal Area Management Act counties.

The BIG Program is funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Sport Fish Restoration and Boating Trust Fund, which provides funding for public access through constructing, renovating and maintaining boating infrastructure that serves transient recreational vessels 26 feet or longer.

Eligible projects may include transient docks, piers, gangways, mooring buoys, breakwaters, wave attenuators, utilities, restrooms, showers, pump-out facilities, dinghy docks, signage and other boating infrastructure. 

Applicants may apply for one of two funding opportunities. Federal funding of up to $300,000 is available through Tier 1 awards that apply to projects within North Carolina. Tier 2 awards are nationally competitive and provide funding up to $1.5 million.

Applicants are encouraged to review eligibility requirements, applications instructions, submission information and additional program information on the North Carolina Boating Infrastructure Grant Program website. Applications must be submitted no later than 5 p.m. Friday, August 28.

Division officials will evaluate and rank eligible applications then submit the highest-ranked proposals to the Fish and Wildlife Service for consideration.

The division, which is under the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality, is scheduled to host an informational webinar from 3-5 p.m. July 15 to review the application process, eligible projects, program requirements, evaluation criteria and answer questions. Those who would like to attend the virtual meeting may register online.

Questions about the BIG Program and the application process may be directed to NCBIG@deq.nc.gov. 

Second in a series

SNEADS FERRY – The easy chatter of shellfish farmers gearing up for another day of work broke through an otherwise quiet morning landside of the lower New River’s sun-gleamed waters.

The air that early June day still hung cool over the small marina a handful of shellfish growers share as their waterfront hub in this storied fishing village in Onslow County.

Though they run independent shellfishing businesses, this tightknit group supports one another, sharing a passion for what they do for a living and the hardships that come with it.

“This just happened naturally,” oysterman Cody Faison of Ghost Fleet Oyster Co. said before firing up the motor of his well-weathered skiff. “Oyster farming, they’re stronger as communities. What you find here is five farmers who help each other out.”

Like Faison, many of the folks working shellfish leases in Onslow and Pender’s coastal waterways are first-generation aquatic farmers, men and women in an industry challenged by seasonal shellfish mortality events, water quality impacts, and, as of late, fewer areas in which they can farm.

“Part of the reason that all these farms are here is because they can’t go north and they can’t go south,” Faison said.

Temporary and permanent shellfish lease moratoriums in coastal counties to the north and south of Topsail Island have pushed growers to the waters of Topsail Island. The steady increase in shellfish leases has amplified concerns among property owners, boaters, and recreational fishers who argue shellfish farms, particularly those with floating cages, restrict access to prime fishing locations, obstruct scenic waterfront views, and create navigational hazards.

This is the second year in which local officials are pushing for a temporary shellfish lease moratorium in the waters behind Topsail Island.

On Tuesday afternoon, the House Rules, Calendar, and Operations Committee passed proposed House Bill 1113 sponsored by Rep. Ted Davis, R-New Hanover. The bill aims to extend New Hanover County’s shellfish lease moratorium by another five years, appropriate a one-time, $10,000 fund for public education activities related to that county’s lease pause, extend a leasing moratorium in Bogue Sound to July 1, 2028, and impose a two-year moratorium on new leases in parts of Onslow and Pender counties until July 1, 2028.

“This will not prohibit people from going out and getting oysters,” Davis said in the committee meeting Tuesday. “What this prohibits is any more of these new things being put into the water. And, I will say that one of the concerns is the fact, you know, people have the right to use the water. It’s a public trust, and when these cages are put up, it can inhibit people’s enjoyment of that public trust. I know where I live, if a boat was to hit one of these cages, it could be bad. If somebody water skiing on a jet ski, or anything else, hits one of these cages, it’s going to be bad.”

Growers argue a moratorium in Stump and Topsail sounds would only put the squeeze on areas that do not have moratoriums, including waters around Newport, Morehead City and Beaufort.

Faison is not alone in worrying that language in the proposed bill, which currently targets the sounds directly behind Topsail Island, might be changed to include all waters in Pender and Onslow counties, a move that would shut down new leases in bays and creeks in the New River.

“What if this moratorium goes from two to 10 years?” Faison asked during a recent tour of shellfish leases in the lower New River, where he farms a 4-acre water column lease in Traps Bay.

Faison worked his way up to this lease, starting out in the business roughly six years ago by subleasing from a fellow farmer in Topsail Sound. He personally believes the state should promote subleasing. He encourages anyone considering entering the business to go that route.

He doesn’t judge which types of gear or leases other growers use. Farmers who use Seapa baskets, which are smaller and weigh less than typical, heavy-duty wire-mesh floating cages, suspend the baskets from lines that they attach to PVC pipes. That’s why some water column shellfish lease farms are so populated with the pipes, Faison explained.

Faison’s lease is dotted primarily with low-profile floating bags, a method he has found that works best for him.

“This is the future,” he said as he coasted his boat next to a line of bags in his lease. “I think this is going to be my success. I’m not saying this is right for every other farmer.”

For North Carolina oyster farmers, floating gear is the only method for producing the much-sought, high-quality oyster that looks just as pretty on the plate as it tastes, he said. Oysters must be symmetrical, their outer shells clean and barnacle-free.

“We’re all growing oysters for the raw bar, and you can’t do that on the bottom,” Faison said. “There’s no other way to do it. We don’t have enough tide swing.”

Floating gear allows farmers to replicate low tide, giving oysters a twice-daily dry spell that helps them build stronger shells, deter barnacles, and extend their shelf life.

Those North Carolina-grown, presentation-perfect oysters served to customers at area raw bars cost a pretty penny to cultivate.

“Oyster farming is a very tough way to make money,” Faison said. “I think people think we’re out here just killing it.”

According to an economic analysis published in 2024, the average startup cost to launch an off-bottom oyster farm ranges from less than $60,000 for a single line of floating bags to more than $200,000 for 24 lines.

“The total annual cost, including depreciation and interest on invested capital, labor, fuel, seed and other expenses, is estimated to range from approximately $50,000 to operate a single line of floating bags to approximately $250,000 to operate twenty-four lines,” the study states.

As boats go, the 19-footer that Faison bought off a local fisherman is about as basic as they come. There’s no console. No seats — just a couple of stacks of colorful baskets placed to one side of the otherwise flat-bottomed, open vessel.

“Is the better way to look at this a lot more moratoriums or more strict on the DMF side?” Faison said, referring to the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries, which permits shellfish leases. “I don’t know the answer. I don’t know that any of us quite yet know how to bridge this gap. Instead of trying to fight for really positive change, we’re just fighting. We’re strong as this big, massive group of people working together for a common goal.”

This story is presented in celebration of Women’s History Month, the theme for which in 2026 is “Leading the Change: Women Shaping a Sustainable Future.”

Heather Rose flashes a knowing smile toward her sister, Becky, across a table at Blackbeard’s Grill, their family’s seafood restaurant in Beaufort. “Honey, we’ve got some gooood memories together.”

“Epic memories,” Becky replies.

Those unforgettable moments were often squeezed into late nights between the grueling days when Heather clocked 12-hour kitchen shifts, and Becky, stepping away from the restaurant and neighboring Rose Seafood Market, worked dawn to dusk, moving dirt, hauling rocks and setting shrubs for her own landscaping company.

Their grind never stood a chance against the tide.

“When darks come and the businesses closed, we go get in the truck, go to the boat ramp,” Heather says.

Pushing off for the banks to fish until the sun touched the horizon, the women were overjoyed to be under the stars, even that night when a mud-clogged motor stranded them, exhausted and ravenous, until their parents arrived like a rescue squad with cheese biscuits.

“We just sat there in the boat eating those biscuits. We could barely hold our eyes open,” Heather chuckles, Becky nodding in rhythm. “But we had a boatload of flounders, and we had spent all night talking to each other.”

The sisters’ bond is as deep as their roots on the Carolina coast. It’s a connection forged in the salt of their shared seafood heritage and tested by the daily demands of the family business.

Despite the relentless labor of running both Blackbeard’s and Rose Seafood Market, and the looming shadow of an uncertain commercial fishing industry, Heather and Becky are unwavering. They’ve made it their mission to keep their landmark corner of Beaufort thriving for the next generation.

A legacy without blueprints

Surrounded by black-and-white snapshots of the commercial fishers and boat builders who came before, the women reflect on the proud way of life handed down to them. Today, the sisters lead that legacy: Heather oversees the seafood market, while Becky serves as the chef and proprietor of Blackbeard’s Grill.

Their ties to the coast reach back to the 1700s, Becky says. Ancestors were boat captains in the Northeast before navigating south to Swan Quarter, where a bay bears the Rose name. Some relatives headed to Cape Lookout, establishing the early Rose Town community.

In 1910, their great-great-grandfather, George Rose, moved his family from the cape to Harkers Island. There, later generations established Rose Brothers Boat Works, which became famous for crafting fine wooden yachts and charter boats built entirely by eye without plans or blueprints.

It was in that boatyard that Heather and Becky’s parents, Rodney and Mary, first met.

Rose Seafood Market was born of necessity. Frustrated by low dockside prices, Rodney and Mary founded the business in 1986 to eliminate the middleman. What started as a backyard mom-and-pop grew into a Marshallberg fish house sourcing from 30 local commercial fishers. By 1993, the couple moved to their current Beaufort location, soon after adding a take-out window. Two years later, they opened Blackbeard’s Grill to highlight “Down East” heritage recipes.

Today, the sisters manage day-to-day operations, with their parents’ constant inspiration and presence. The women draw strength from recollections of their father networking with fishermen, setting the standard for relationship building his daughters rely on today.

Dad, who still fishes, pops in — though not often enough, Heather laments, missing her father — to deliver and help process the catch, as well as share insight with customers about the challenges facing commercial fishers.

Years of watching their mother diplomatically negotiate the sale of thousands of pounds of fish weekly to far-flung markets in Boston, New York and Philadelphia, then turning around to masterfully head shrimp, shuck scallops and pack fish, made anything seem possible.

“Growing up and seeing that, I never felt like a woman was out of place in this industry,” Becky says of the male-dominated seafood sector.

The market still sources catches docked by local commercial fishers, including Heather, and carries beloved Rose family recipes, like their Aunt Dora’s shrimp salad. Locals watch Blackbeard’s specials for regional favorites such as scallop fritters and hard crab stew. Offerings depend on what’s fresh next door.

The scale is staggering. “We’re probably going to feed about 60,000 people here (at Blackbeard’s), and just on five nights that we’re open each week, for the year,” Becky says. Between the restaurant and the market’s grab-and-go section, which Becky stocks with crab pies, lasagnas, shrimp salad and more, the sisters are in a state of constant motion.

“We love the connection,” Becky says. “When you go and catch something yourself, do all the work involved in doing that, and then you prepare it and cook it for somebody, and you hand it to them and they eat it…that’s a feeling that can’t be duplicated in any other way.”

‘Don’t fight it, accept it’

Heather remembers happy childhood days clamming and shrimping with her parents and packing seafood at their then-fledgling business. “I was young, full of energy, you know, and always willing and anxious to help.”

Becky, 11 years younger, was just a toddler at the time, trying to stack boxes in her tiny oilskins. As a youngster, she headed shrimp after school at Rose Seafood in Beaufort and told customers, “My daddy caught these.”

“I still have some older ladies that come here and say, ‘Were you that cute little blonde-headed girl that waited on me in the seafood market?’”

Despite those precious memories, both women envisioned paths away from the water. In college, Becky studied marketing, a talent she skillfully applies to the businesses’ engaging social media feeds. Heather worked for 10 years as an officer with the Morehead City Police Department. Throughout their own careers, both sisters kept a foot in the family seafood business.

“I think both of us felt that was our calling,” Becky reflects.

“There was a time when I was younger, I was always trying to run away from it,” Heather adds.

“Well, I think we both knew how hard it was,” Becky says, finishing her sister’s thought.

The pair’s management era began with the COVID-19 pandemic. When the virus’s spread shuttered dining rooms, the Roses, like many restaurateurs, turned to walking takeout orders to vehicles lined up in the parking lot. By then, the market had closed, but with the public’s limited access to grocers and other seafood outlets, the Roses realized that they needed to reopen the store to sustain the community and their own livelihoods.

Heather had already left police work to help her parents at the restaurant, but she was facing burnout even before the pandemic. That’s when Becky stepped in, leaving an unfulfilling job in the wholesale plant industry to help her family keep up.

“It was really hard on me at first, because I hadn’t really been dealing with seafood for a decade,” she remembers. “It was hard to build up to the strength and endurance that it takes to clean 500 pounds of spots a day, to filet 1,000 pounds of flounder, to head 1,000 pounds of shrimp.”

The sisters stop to compare scars. “You can look at our hands, and you know,” Becky says.

Heather smiles. “Me and Beck, we look at each other when we’re exhausted and we say, ‘Don’t fight it, accept it. This is your calling.’”

‘These are the really special times’

Demanding work and a powerful desire to make their parents proud fuel the sisters’ mission. They also genuinely like their jobs.

Becky, always a foodie, found that working in horticulture deepened her interest in herbs and cooking, setting her up as a chef who understands both local food culture and how to craft contemporary dishes like crispy crab Rangoon with sweet Thai chili sauce or half-shell oysters roasted with bacon jam, a dollop of goat cheese to finish.

“She literally elevates this kitchen to a different level than it’s ever been,” Heather says of her sister. “She has a lot of pride, and she’s, she’s a perfectionist. She wants it to be right and won’t accept it any other way.”

Heather loves nothing more than fishing, but her wide-ranging experience in and outside the business make her indispensable to both operations, Becky says. Heather’s seafood chowder is an enduring menu staple, and she formulated the various breading recipes used to fry different seafoods.

“The tenacity,” Becky says of Heather, “if she makes up her mind that we’re doing something or she’s doing something, she’s doing it…And she can wire things. She’s very mechanical, and I am totally not…So when we come together, we don’t fight or argue like sisters sometimes do. We really work well together.”

Who will take on the business years from now is a constant worry, especially as North Carolina commercial fishers lose docks to new waterfront development. They also face fierce competition from recreational fishing interests with the capital to fund lobbyists and marketing campaigns that, as the sisters see it, demonize fishing families as destroyers of the very resources they depend on.

“We don’t have family to leave it to,” Heather says. “And that makes me very sad,” Becky adds, “and it’s something I think about every night before I go to bed.”

That uncertainty pulls at them, but it hasn’t slowed their pace. Instead of pulling back, the duo doubles down with new ideas, like Heather’s upcoming seafood boils to go and adding beer and wine sales to the market’s offerings. Becky takes on public education, sharing the story of the state’s seafood heritage through speaking engagements and staging fundraising dinners aimed at preserving the commercial fishing way of life.

Both agree they’d like nothing better than to fire up the boat after work more often and head out for an all-nighter. Meantime, they try to live by the advice Becky often gives Heather.

“You’re going to look back on today, and you’re gonna say, ‘Those were good times,’ even if you’re having a bad day here … We got to make the most out of each day, because these are really special times right now for this business and for our family.” 

Editor’s note: The following is from historian David Cecelski’s “Working Lives: Photographs from Eastern North Carolina, 1937 to 1947.” The Carteret County native introduced the nearly 20-part photo-essay series earlier this year on his website, explaining at the time that the images he selected from the N.C. Department of Conservation and Development Collection were taken in the late 1930s into the early 1950s of the state’s farms, industries, and working people.

In this photograph, we see a long line of fishing nets drying in the sun on Harkers Island, N.C., in the fall of 1944.

It is hard to see them, but there are two men talking in the midst of the net reels.

The photographer’s notes only identify one of the men: Stacy W. Davis, a local fisherman, charter boat captain, and fish dealer. That’s his fish house and dock on the far side of the net reels and fishing nets.

Capt. Stacy had built the fish house just before the war. He and his brother Leslie also owned the S.W. Davis & Brother Seafood Co. in Beaufort, on the other side of the North River.

The shoreline is beautiful, but in a way the tranquility of the scene belies the great upheaval that was happening on the island just before and during the Second World War.

When I was younger, old timers from Harkers Island often told me that it all seemed to start with the great hurricane of ’33, which is a story in itself and one that I think I’ll save for another time.

But not all storms come out of the Atlantic, and what happened over the next few years turned island life upside down more than any hurricane or nor’easter ever had.

Just a few years after the ’33 storm, in 1936, Harkers Island’s first road was paved. The age of automobiles and trucks was coming.

Three years later, in 1939, electricity arrived on the island, delivered via a submarine cable that ran beneath North River.

The stars would never be as bright again.

A year later, in the latter part of 1940, the biggest thing of all happened: workers finished building the first bridge from the mainland to Harkers Island. The bridge opened to the public a few weeks later.

That was on New Years Day 1941. Many a time, I have heard old timers say that it was the best and worst day in the island’s history. More than anything, it marked the end of one way of life, the dawn of another.

Then, of course, the war came. Young men and women went away to fight in distant lands and on distant seas. On the island, families crowded around radios to follow the news from places that few of us had known existed until that moment. Soldiers and sailors were everywhere.

An Army camp was built on the island. Soldiers and sailors seemed to be constantly coming and going.

During the war, untold numbers of islanders also crossed the new bridge and went out into the larger world to take jobs at shipyards, military bases, and defense factories. Some commuted every morning to defense jobs as close as the Naval Section Base in Morehead City; others moved as far away as the big shipyards in Wilmington and Newport News.

The Great Depression had worn people down, but suddenly there seemed to be work for any and all.

A hundred things about the war changed the island, but few things more than the War Department building the Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station only 25 miles away in 1942.

Nearly 10,000 men came together at at a remote crossroads on the south side of the Neuse River to build Cherry Point – carpenters, brick masons, ditch diggers, logging crews, railroad builders, and many, many others. Among other things, they laid enough concrete to build what is believed to have been the largest aircraft runway in the world at that time.

Most of those workers were fresh off the farm or right off a fishing boat.

When Cherry Point was finished, people came from all over the country to work there, and most particularly to find jobs at the base’s assembly and repair department, a massive aircraft repair and refitting operation that relied on civilian workers and was usually just called “A&R.”

Those workers included many a Harkers Island fisherman. And when they left their boats and crossed the new bridge, they began a new life in more ways than they possibly could have imagined at the time.

Some of those islanders, my older friends on Harkers Island used to tell me, were saved by that trip to Cherry Point. Others lost.

For the island’s women, the coming of Cherry Point meant, if anything, even more. Because so many men had gone to war, the base employed thousands of women in jobs that would have traditionally fallen to men.

Those jobs ranged from aircraft painters to mechanics, PX and commissary managers to electronics specialists.

My grandmother was one of those women. She lived on a farm in Harlowe, about halfway between Harkers Island and Cherry Point, and she found a job in A&R’s machine shop during the war.

With the opening of Cherry Point, a daughter fresh out of school, perhaps still living with her parents, might suddenly be earning more than her fisherman father and all her brothers put together.

Of course, that changed things. Maybe not right away, but over time.

Likewise, with the coming of the bridge and the war, a lad that had never taken to the water — and there were plenty of young men like that even on Harkers Island — suddenly had a chance for a different kind of life.

I guess what I am saying is that photographs tell some stories, but not others.

Our tranquil scene of fishing nets drying in the sunshine also does not really speak to what had been happening out at sea during the war.

By 1944, things had calmed down out in the Atlantic, but only a couple years earlier, in the first months after Pearl Harbor, the war had seemed much closer to Harkers Island that it did to most of the United States.

Many of the island’s young fishermen had gone into the Navy and Coast Guard, and they were serving all over the world. But the U.S. Navy had also recruited the island’s fishermen for war duty closer to home.

As German submarines torpedoed merchant ships out in the Atlantic, one of the islanders patrolled the beaches out at Shackleford Banks, watching in the surf for the corpses.

Others, when they heard the explosions offshore, had the duty of taking their boats far out into the Atlantic to search for survivors and the dead.

Out in those seas, 15 and 20 miles off Cape Lookout, they often found themselves in a hellish seascape of charred hulls, burning oil slicks and scenes of which few of them would ever speak.

Special thanks as always to my friends at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum & Heritage Center on Harkers Island.

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.

Guest Commentary

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

Note: National Estuaries Week is Sept. 20-27

When most people think about fighting climate change, they think about cutting tailpipe emissions, swapping coal plants for solar panels, or driving electric cars. But there’s another powerful tool right in front of us: coastal habitats like salt marshes and submerged seagrass meadows. These living ecosystems are not just fish nurseries, wildlife havens and storm buffers — they are also massive storehouses for carbon, helping slow the pace of global warming.

Nature’s Carbon Vaults

Every blade of marsh grass and every seagrass frond pulls carbon dioxide out of the air and water through photosynthesis. Some of that carbon goes back into the atmosphere when plants die and decay — but much of it gets buried in the wet, oxygen-poor soils beneath. Think of these habitats as nature’s deep freezers: once carbon is locked in the muck, it can stay there for hundreds or even thousands of years.

This storage is so effective that acre-for-acre, coastal wetland ecosystems can hold several times more carbon than forests on land. That’s why scientists call this “blue carbon.”

Beyond Storage: The New Science of Carbon Flux

For years, we assumed the carbon benefits of these habitats came mostly from how much carbon they locked underground. But new research — including work my colleagues and I have been doing — shows that the story is bigger.

Wetlands and seagrass beds aren’t closed systems. They interact constantly with surrounding waters, exchanging organic matter and nutrients in what scientists call lateral flux. In plain English: tides, currents, and groundwater move carbon in and out of these habitats.

Here’s the exciting part: the more we study this flux, the more we see that coastal habitats are exporting “good carbon”— forms that stimulate carbon storage in seawater or reduce greenhouse gases in the water column. In other words, their climate benefit isn’t just what they store in their soils, but also how they influence the chemistry of surrounding waters.

Early estimates suggest this added benefit may be as large, or even larger, than the carbon stored directly in the soil. That means we’ve been dramatically underestimating how valuable these habitats are for slowing climate change.

Research Coming to North Carolina

This fall, I’ll be bringing this research to North Carolina, where salt marshes play a defining role in both the coastal landscape and economy. With support from the North Carolina Coastal Federation, my team and I will be monitoring marshes in the state to measure their carbon values. These field studies will help determine just how much carbon is being stored and exported — and how that compares with other places along the East Coast and nationwide.

By putting real numbers on the carbon services provided by North Carolina’s salt marshes, we can give policymakers, landowners, and communities the science they need to make smart investments in protecting and restoring them.

More Than Just Carbon

Of course, carbon storage is only one of many economic and ecological gifts coastal wetlands and seagrasses provide. They buffer shorelines from storms, filter pollutants, support fisheries, and provide nurseries for countless species. Protecting and restoring them is not just smart climate policy — it’s smart coastal policy, period.

A Call to Action

We’re still learning just how much carbon benefit these habitats provide, but one thing is clear: Every acre we lose is a lost opportunity to fight climate change and protect coastal communities. Protecting and restoring degraded marshes and seagrass meadows is one of the rare win-win strategies that helps people, wildlife, and the planet’s climate at the same time.

As new science on lateral flux continues to emerge — and as fresh fieldwork in North Carolina fills in key data gaps — we’ll have an even stronger case for investing in these natural climate powerhouses. Protecting coastal habitats isn’t just about saving pretty places — it’s about giving our coastal communities and working lands a fighting chance against rising seas and extreme storms.

Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review or our publisher, the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

Aligning North Carolina’s wetlands definition with that of the federal government’s would put the state’s waterways at risk, erase nature’s pollution filtration systems from the land, and increase flooding, speakers at a public hearing said.

More than a dozen people commented during the Thursday night hearing in Raleigh on the revised wetlands definition the North Carolina General Assembly enacted into law two years ago.

In accordance with the 2023 Farm Act, the state’s definition of wetlands must correspond with the federal government’s, which narrows the description of a wetland to having a continuous surface connection to Waters of the United States, or those protected under the Clean Water Act. The federal definition was changed to be consistent with a May 2023 Supreme Court ruling.

In North Carolina, that alignment equates to the loss of protections for an estimated 2.5 million acres of wetlands, according to the state Department of Environmental Quality.

That agency has been implementing the definition since its approval in June 2023, but the state-appointed Environmental Management Commission, which is responsible for adopting rules that protect, preserve and enhance air and water resources, must go through the rulemaking process to amend the state’s existing wetlands definition.

The law legislators enacted two years ago explicitly directs that the Rules Review Commission cannot challenge the amendment.

Those who spoke at Thursday’s public hearing, a mandated step in the rulemaking process, urged the Environmental Management Commission to work with legislators to rescind the amendment. No one who spoke supported the definition revision.

“I think it’s a shame that the EMC does not have any discretion over what this rule looks like,” said Brooks Rainey, a lobbyist for the Southern Environmental Law Center. “Dictating the text of a rule to a rulemaking body takes away the whole point of having a rulemaking body. The North Carolina General Assembly are not experts on wetlands. The Home Builders Association is not an expert on wetlands. The Chamber of Commerce is not an expert on wetlands. But there are many experts on wetlands at DEQ. When rulemaking works as intended, the experts on the subject matter of the rule are involved in crafting the rule. Otherwise, we have ceded environmental rulemaking to political whims and lobby groups.”

Rainey went on to say that the majority party at the General Assembly make “the majority appointments” on the Environmental Management Commission and that the current commission “has greater sway” with this legislature than any in recent memory.

“I urge this EMC to use that influence and ask the General Assembly to stop sending over rules that have been pre-drafted. Take the politics out of rulemaking. Leave it to the experts. It is insulting to this commission, it is insulting to the agency, and it is insulting to the public who are effectively excluded from having any meaningful input at all,” she said.

That lack of input has frustrated residents, environmental advocates and scientists, who argue that ordering a one-size-fits-all definition will be detrimental to a state where wetlands, particularly on the coastal plain, are critical to reducing flooding, cleaning drinking water and supporting fisheries.

“Tying in wetlands protections to federal definitions that change with every administration leaves our communities vulnerable,” said Kerri Allen, a coastal advocate with the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review. “Why should we hand off our responsibility to protect North Carolina’s natural resources to Washington. Wetlands in North Carolina, like pocosins, Carolina Bays and cypress swamps, deserve to be protected under rules written for our state’s needs, not buried under shifting federal priorities.”

Wetlands provide a host of crucial benefits, said Dr. Adam Gold, coasts and watersheds science manager with the Environmental Defense Fund.

They act as natural flood buffers, provide habitat for recreationally and commercially important wildlife, and filter pollution from waterways.

“Just one acre of wetlands can store up to a million and a half gallons of floodwater,” Gold said.

He cautioned that the federal government may further narrow the definition of wetlands. Earlier this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Lee Zeldin announced plans to revise the definition of Waters of the United States, also known as WOTUS.

“As someone who has worked in the intersection of environmental policy and coastal resilience for over two decades, I’ve seen firsthand how wetland loss leads to increased flooding, degraded water quality and disappearing fisheries habitat,” said Coastal Carolina Riverwatch Executive Director Lisa Rider. “These issues are already being impacted and many rural communities and working waterfront communities are already seeing the impact from what’s going on. Stripping protections further will only accelerate harm to ecosystems and the people here in coastal North Carolina.”

Chris Herndon, director of the North Carolina chapter of the Sierra Club, said rolling back wetlands protections will waste millions of taxpayer dollars in flood recovery and contribute to the loss of the state’s natural resources.

“The revised definition freely gives the decision of which wetlands to protect to the federal government. As a result, our state wetlands protections will be determined by federal officials based on federal priorities without any special consideration of the particular importance of wetlands in our state. North Carolinians should decide which North Carolina wetlands should be protected to the benefit of our local communities and local economies,” he said.

Southern Environmental Law Center senior attorney Julie Youngman said that, though the commission has been mandated to pass the rule, there is no deadline in when the rule must be established.

And, since the state’s leading environmental agency is complying with the law, there is “no harm being done to the will of the legislature by slowing it down and working with the legislature to try to fix the mistake that’s been made,” she said.

“It just defies logic that we are putting our fate in the hands of a federal administration that doesn’t seem to care about the same values that we care about here in North Carolina,” Youngman said. “There is not deadline in the statute. Take your time, work with the legislature, see if you can’t come up with a commonsense way to keep the wetland protections that we have in place, in place.”

DEQ will accept public comments through today via email with the subject line “Wetland Definition Amendment” to Sue.Homewood@deq.nc.gov and by mail to Sue Homewood, Division of Water Resources, 1617 Main Service Center, Raleigh NC 27699-1617.

The EMC is anticipated to hear recommendations on the revised rule during its Sept. 11 meeting. The 2023 Farm Act mandates that the rule cannot become effective until after legislative review, which is anticipated to take place during the General Assembly’s 2026 session.

The Environmental Protection Agency has final approval authority over the rule.

The two Carolina governors are urging the Trump administration to maintain the moratorium on offshore drilling the president set during his first term, citing possible disruptions to the coastal economy from a disaster without the existing protection.

Trump issued in September 2020 memoranda preventing leases for oil and gas drilling off the coast of North Carolina and South Carolina until June 30, 2032.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced plans in April to begin the process of developing a new schedule for offshore oil and gas lease sales for the outer continental shelf. Called the “11th National Outer Continental Shelf Program,” the public comment period opened April 29. The 45-day comment period closes Monday, June 16.

In the letter to BOEM dated June 16, Gov. Josh Stein and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster urge removing North Carolina and South Carolina’s outer continental shelf from consideration for the program. 

“Because of the significant risks associated with offshore oil and gas exploration, development and production off the Carolina coasts, every North Carolina and South Carolina coastal municipality has passed a resolution opposing offshore drilling and seismic testing,” the governors wrote. “This position has been reaffirmed by other municipalities and counties, as well as state legislators and members of our Congressional delegations from both parties. We ask you to respect the wishes of our states and our coastal communities and reaffirm President Trump’s decision to protect our coastlines and the industries they support.” 

North Carolina and South Carolina have a combined 513 miles of ocean beaches and 6,251 miles of coastline that are home to more than 2.7 million people and include numerous national wildlife refuges. The coastal economy for the two states in 2021 contributed $9.6 billion to the gross domestic product, supported more than 125,000 jobs, and provided $3.8 billion in wages, led by tourism and recreation, shipbuilding, fishing, and marine transportation industries.

“These industries would be highly vulnerable to disruption from offshore drilling,” according to the governors’ offices.

BUXTON – Just north of Cape Hatteras, businesses along a small stretch of soundside beach colloquially known as Canadian Hole have become a microcosm and barometer of a newly fraught international relationship.

Windsurfers from Canada have reliably flocked to the Outer Banks since the 1980s, and they were later joined by kiteboarders when that sport took off in the 1990s. But the Trump administration’s recent threats to annex the nation’s northern neighbor, followed by the U.S. imposing tariffs on trade, have triggered a backlash among our otherwise would-be Canadian visitors.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows that visitors crossing the Canadian border into the U.S. dropped 12.5% in February and 18% in March, according to an April 18 NBC News report. In 2023, about 20.7 million visitors from Canada visited the U.S.

Although there have been cancellations, local watersports shops say that plenty of Canadians are still visiting the Outer Banks because of its renowned conditions for windsurfing and kiteboarding.

With spring bringing warmer temperatures and a nice southwest wind, the northern watersport enthusiasts are starting to arrive on the Outer Banks for the season.

“I’ve put up a Canadian and a U.S. flag,” said Brian Klauser, owner of Ocean Air Sports in Avon.

Klauser said he had received “tremendous feedback” from his regulars.

“All of my customers are repeat customers. You can set your watch to it,” he told Coastal Review.

And, as Klauser noted, these visitors are dedicated.

“They’re not just coming for a week,” he said. “They’re coming for two to eight weeks, because they love it here.”

Pamlico Sound’s Canadian Hole, a watersports destination between Avon and Buxton on Hatteras Island, is often referred to as the Haulover Day Use Area. With its shallow, wide-open water, mild weather and windy conditions, the spot has earned a reputation among enthusiasts, along with some other Outer Banks beaches, as the premier windsurfing and kiteboarding destination on the East Coast.

All of Hatteras and Ocracoke islands are within the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

“We get a lot of Canadians in the shop and there’s a lot of return folks we talk to,” Chris Rutledge, a salesman at REAL Watersports in Waves, a Hatteras Island village north of Avon, told Coastal Review. “It’s probably down a little bit, but I’m seeing a lot of people down in Canadian Hole.”

Any kiteboarders and windsurfers from northern climates who may still have snow on the ground appreciate that spring is a great time of the year on Hatteras Island to enjoy their sport, he said. Those conditions remain favorable into fall.

“This area is so special,” Rutledge said. There’s plenty of unobstructed space in the sound to ride, or to catch waves in the ocean, he explained, yet the spot is smaller and less crowded than other destinations.

Despite that difference — and despite the unpredictable tariff-wielding elephant raging in the background — politics is sidestepped by businesses here as much as possible.

“We appreciate our Canadian customers,” said Stacey Saunders, the general manager of Frisco Woods Campground on Hatteras Island. She emphasized in a recent interview with Coastal Review that the business tries to avoid anything political, but she has heard some outspoken opinions from even the campground’s most loyal Canadian customers.

“We believe in your right to free speech,” she said in a comment directed specifically to Canadians and the right to express their political opinions, while she, herself, wanted to avoid politics.

Numerous Canadian customers have blamed politics or a sense of feeling unsafe for deciding not to come back to the Outer Banks, said Saunders. She cited a recent email as an example. 

“I’m sorry to inform you we wish to cancel our May camping reservation due to Mr. Trump,” explained the author of an email that she read aloud. “We will probably return in four years when Mr. Trump is president no longer.”

Saunders said that, so far, there had been only a “moderate” number of cancellations from Canadians, and about 80% have been from repeat customers.

Still, she noted, sites reserved for June and July mostly by windsurfers and kiters are not canceling. The campground, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2025, has a large waterfront launching area that makes it very popular with these visitors.

“They’re very loyal and have been here for years,” she said.

One notable cancellation was a “caravan” of Canadians who had reserved 23 campsites, which equals about 60 people, she said.

“We’ve also lost store revenue,” she added, “because if they’re not here, they’re not purchasing anything.”

But looking on the bright side, Saunders said that the canceled reservations open more sites on the soundside – and potentially for new customers.

An April 10 post on Reddit by ParkingKnowledge6105, said that his group of 25 Canadians, who have traveled to Cape Hatteras for about 30 years for a monthlong vacation, have all canceled.

“It is hard to underplay how deeply offensive the Trump 51st state bs has been. Or the lies about fentanyl or balance of commerce,” according to the post. “You guys have no idea how pissed off Canadians are , and dismayed by how many still support Trump. A lifelong friendship was thrown under the bus.”

Keith Croghan, owner of The Sea Monkey Lodge & Kite School on Ocracoke Island, said the island always has its share of visiting windsurfers and kiteboarders, although not as many at Hatteras Island.

And not yet this year.

“I haven’t seen hide nor hair of Canadians,” he recently told Coastal Review. “So the impact on us is even greater.”

Ocracoke, a small island on the far-south end of the Outer Banks, is — more than most — dependent on tourism revenue.

‘I haven’t seen hide nor hair of Canadians.’

— Keith Croghan, The Sea Monkey Lodge & Kite School, Ocracoke Island

“Yeah, we really feel it when people don’t show up,” said Croghan, who has run the The Sea Monkey Lodge & Kite School for 15 years.

“I would like to consider Ocracoke a sanctuary,” he added. “If any Canadians feel ostracized by all this, tell them they’re welcome to come down and visit our special little island here on the Republic of Ocracoke.”

Lee Nettles, executive director of the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau, also prefers to look beyond the current gloom of uncertain times.

“We, of course, welcome international guests, and we want to continue welcoming international guests,” he told Coastal Review. “But from the last statistics that I saw, Canadian visitors are less than 1% of our overall visitation. So in terms of the real business impact, it remains to be seen, but I don’t expect it to be great.”

Most Outer Banks visitors drive from Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and other northeastern states. And, he added, tourists from Canada represented about 50% of total international visitation.

As the 2020 pandemic showed, Nettles said, the Outer Banks’ reputation for its natural environment and wide-open beaches is sought out as a refuge during stressful periods. That and being an affordable drive-to destination has somewhat sheltered the barrier islands from the same shocks other destinations may experience.

“Everybody’s calling for a soft year,” Nettles said about other tourism areas in the state, “and it seems like we’re in better shape than a lot of folks.”

Over the years, Dare County has proven to possess a remarkable ability to not only recover from various shocks, but also to come back strong.

In 2023, the most recent available data, Dare’s total visitor spending was $2.15 billion, about 9% higher than the previous year. State taxes were $70.4 million and the local taxes were $77.9 million, totaling $148 million for the year. Combined with the visitor spending, the total of $3,891 per capita is the highest of any county in North Carolina.

As far threats of layoffs or funding decreases in the national parks and refuges, Nettles said he doesn’t yet know details and won’t speculate on impacts except to say he has confidence in the management.

“Obviously the national and state parks and our refuges are hugely important tourism assets and are greatly valued by our visitors,” he said.

The Outer Banks tourism-based economy has survived a series of human-made and natural disasters, and not just hurricanes.

“I think the storms come in different forms,” Nettles said.

“We’re no stranger to challenges. We’ve had wildfires, road closures, bridge closures. We’ve had recessions, we’ve had government shutdowns, and COVID,” he said. “All of which to say, tourism has been real resilient despite natural and man-made challenges.”

This is not a story about the relief President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs are anticipated to give America’s shrimpers.

Yes, shrimpers were cheering Trump’s decision to slap double-digit rates on dozens of countries earlier this week in what they hail as a move that will level prices of domestic shrimp squeezed out of a market flooded by imports.

Shortly after the White House on Wednesday afternoon abruptly paused the tariffs that had gone into effect some 12 hours earlier, and lowering them to 10% on goods for 90 days – minus those from China – the Southern Shrimp Alliance released a statement reiterating its support for tariffs.

“It is encouraging that the Trump Administration’s tariffs have prompted countries to show a new willingness to address trade policies disadvantaging American producers,” Southern Shrimp Alliance Executive Director John Williams stated. “We want to compete in a market where competitors cannot use intolerable practices like forced labor and banned antibiotics to undercut us. For shrimpers, tariffs respond to an urgent need to offset unfair trade.”

And while shrimpers say that will be the case, that’s not where they want their message to end.

Their story goes beyond the call for fair trade. It’s one that entails America’s overseas subsidies of foreign shrimp production and buyer beware warnings that domestic shrimpers say should be, but are not, conveyed to consumers of America’s favorite seafood.

“Ultimately, we’ve gotten sold out by our government because they’ve backed or funded these aquaculture programs in Southeast Asia and South American for more than 30 years,” said Craig Reaves, a member of the Southern Shrimp Alliance’s board of directors and owner of CJ Seafood and Sea Eagle Seafood and Good Eats in Beaufort, South Carolina. “For 40, 50 years, they’ve been developing aquaculture overseas and whether it’s through the World Bank or whether it’s direct grants or subsidies from the United States, we created the monster that is the imported shrimp and imported seafood industry.”

Over the past decade, the U.S. Treasury has supported more than 70 shrimp and aquaculture development projects through international financial institutions, according to the Southern Shrimp Alliance. Billions in funding has flowed largely to India and Ecuador, the group said.

As a result, imports have overwhelmed inventories of shrimp in the U.S., driving market prices for domestic-caught shrimp to record lows.

Shrimpers who have survived have done so because they’ve largely turned to local markets to move their product, many selling directly from the dock to customers eager for fresh-caught shrimp.

“Without that we certainly would not be able to shrimp anymore fulltime as a career,” said Monica Smith. “If we did not sell directly to the consumers and build that clientele over the last, you know, 20 years then we wouldn’t be able to do it.”

Smith runs Miss Gina’s Seafood in Beaufort, the waters of which her father-in-law, now in his 90s, and husband, Thomas, have shrimped for decades.

There was a time when the father-son pair sold the shrimp they caught to fish houses, a standard practice through the 1980s and 1990s.

But that began to change some time around the mid-2000s, Smith said. That’s when shrimpers saw what she describes as a “drastic increase” in imported shrimp inundate the market, driving down the price for domestic shrimp and crowding out space at processing facilities.

In 2021, roughly 2 billion pounds of imported shrimp products valuing $8 billion flowed into the United States, according to the Southern Shrimp Alliance.

An estimated 94% of the volume of shrimp consumed in America comes from foreign nations, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission, or USITC.

Southern Shrimp Alliance says that more than 90% of that came in last year from India, Ecuador, Indonesia, and Vietnam, all of which impose tariff and tax rates of between 13% and 45% on shrimp caught and farmed in the U.S.

In October 2023, the American Shrimp Processors Association, or ASPA, filed anti-dumping petitions on frozen warmwater shrimp from Ecuador and Indonesia. Dumping is the import of goods below normal value.

The group also filed countervailing duty petitions, or import taxes created to offset an exporting country’s subsidies, on frozen warmwater shrimp from Ecuador, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam.

A year later, in November 2024, the USITC affirmed that the U.S. shrimp industry was materially injured from frozen warmwater shrimp imports from Indonesia and that the Department of Commerce determined shrimp from Ecuador, India and Vietnam were being sold at less than fair value.

The Commerce Department issued countervailing duty orders on frozen warmwater shrimp imports from those three countries and an antidumping duty order on imports from Indonesia.

Last month, congressional representatives, including North Carolina Republican Rep. Greg Murphy, reintroduced bipartisan legislation that would halt federal funds from going to international financial institutions to finance foreign shrimp farms.

A house bill known as the Save Our Shrimpers Act, was referred March 11 to the House Committee on Financial Services.

During the past decade, the U.S. Treasury has agreed to support more than 70 shrimp and aquaculture development projects through international financial institutions, according to Southern Shrimp Alliance.

“And those imports come in here, they sell them at a lower price because they’re using cheap labor, forced labor, sometimes child labor, and they’re full of antibiotics,” said Nancy Edens, president of B.F. Millis & Sons Seafood in Sneads Ferry. “There is a big difference in what we catch here in the ocean, Pamlico Sound, New River, than what you would get in a restaurant that serves imported shrimp.”

The Department of Labor added the largest supplier of shrimp to the United States, India, to its 2024 List of Goods Produced with Child and Forced Labor.

The Ocean Outlaw Project, as well as an Associated Press investigative report, highlighted those labor practices. The Ocean Outlaw Project also found that shrimp directed to the U.S. market were contaminated with antibiotics the American government has banned for use in shrimp.

“I think we’re going to always have imported seafood so I would like to see our government stop subsidizing these other countries and let them stand, rise, or fall on their own merit,” Reaves said. “We just want a fair shot. Tariffs, to me, it’s an immediate help, but it’s not a long-term fix because you can negotiate. I think you have to seize the moment while everybody’s talking about the things that’s even more important, which is raising awareness of how bad the imported seafood is and how the government knows that it’s bad.”

Guest Commentary

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues. Morty Gaskill is a member of the North Carolina Coastal Federation Board of Directors. The nonprofit advocacy organization publishes Coastal Review, which remains editorially independent.

In 1976, a North Carolina Sea Grant newsletter sounded the alarm: large-scale land drainage was wiping out wetlands that protect our coastal fisheries. Fishermen saw their livelihoods at risk and 3,000 of them pleaded for action.

“We, the undersigned, being commercial and sport fishermen who use the creeks, rivers, and bays adjacent to Pamlico Sound and the waters of Pamlico Sound, petition the Marine Fisheries Commission and state officials as follows: … to investigate the effect of changing salinity in said waters upon the economy of Pamlico Drainage areas and to initiate proper controls to insure the continued health of commercial and sport fishing in this area.”

They saw it coming. But there was hope — state and federal leaders acted. For decades, farming, forestry, development, and fisheries co-existed under federal and state wetland safeguards — rules that carefully balanced economic growth and environmental protection. These safeguards didn’t create unbearable hardships; they provided stability for all.

Yet here we are again, nearly 50 years later, facing the same crisis — not just for our fisheries, but for our homes, businesses, and communities. Given the changing economic and environmental conditions of many coastal communities across North Carolina, it could not come at a worse time.

This time, the rollback of wetland protections isn’t coming from local drainage operations. It’s happening due to recent federal and state government actions. The Supreme Court’s Sackett v. EPA decision has dramatically narrowed the definition of federally protected wetlands. The North Carolina General Assembly followed suit, choosing to adopt the weaker federal standard instead of maintaining the stronger state level protections that had been in place for years. And now, under new leadership, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is further diluting the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule, stripping even more protections from wetlands and streams that feed our coastal estuaries.

The consequences? More wetlands drained. More freshwater rushing unchecked into saltwater nurseries. More flooding. More property damage.

Costly gamble

History has already shown us what happens when we fail to protect our wetlands. In 1976, Rose Bay fisherman Troy W. Mayo spoke out as catches dwindled.

“Twenty-five years ago, I owned a 26-foot shad boat. We used to go out in Rose Bay, two people, for five or six hours and we’d catch 35 to 40 tubs of oysters—that was two men pulling by hand,” said Mayo. “Today you go out in this same area with a power winder and all modern equipment, and I’d be surprised if you catch 10 tubs of oysters.”

Scientists confirmed what fishermen already knew. “Salinity is a major ingredient for survival in the estuaries”; reported the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries. Preston Pate, who studied juvenile shrimp in Rose Bay, found that freshwater intrusion “definitely disrupted the salinity of small creeks in the area. The result was a smaller shrimp harvest by fishermen.”

But wetland loss isn’t just bad for fisheries. Wetlands absorb floodwaters, buffer storm surges, and keep pollution out of our waterways. Every acre lost means more homes and businesses at risk.

In North Carolina, our coastal communities have already been battered by hurricanes, rising insurance costs, rising property taxes, lack of affordable housing, and an aging drainage infrastructure that can’t keep up with heavier rains. Weakening wetland protections only adds fuel to the fire. It shifts costs onto property owners, local governments, and taxpayers — many of whom will be left paying for flood damage that could have been prevented.

Commonsense approach to conservation

Those lessons from the 1970s helped shape policies that kept North Carolina’s wetlands intact for decades. But now, history is repeating itself. The rollback of WOTUS protections and the state’s decision to weaken its own rules mean more wetlands will be drained, increasing flooding, pollution, and economic losses.

This shouldn’t be a divisive political issue. Wetland protections aren’t just about environmental policy — they’re about practical economics, public safety, and community well-being. They help prevent costly flood damage, safeguard private property, and support the resilience of coastal economies that depend on fisheries, tourism, and clean water.

Jim Brown of the Division of Marine Fisheries put it best nearly 50 years ago:

“We love beans and beef, and we have a serious need to extend agricultural operations. At the same time, we dearly love shrimp and oysters. There exists a very serious need for imposing compatibility between the two. Can it be done? That’s the question. Or do we just keep plodding along with our fingers crossed?”

If we ignore history, we aren’t just crossing our fingers — we are guaranteeing a grim future for our coastal communities. The fishermen of Rose Bay warned us decades ago. Will we listen this time? Or will we, once again, pay the price for failing to protect the wetlands that sustain our way of life?

Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review or our publisher, the North Carolina Coastal Federation. See our guidelines for submitting guest columns.

Heat researchers at Duke University will spend the next two years developing an interactive, web-based tool to help policymakers plan for extreme heat, especially in rural and coastal communities.

The U.S. Department of Commerce and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced earlier this month that $500,000 was awarded to the university’s Heat Policy Innovation Hub on the campus in Durham.

“Over the last 30 years, heat exposure has killed more people in the United States than any other weather-related phenomenon. The combined economic impacts of labor loss, hospital visits, and reduced agricultural yield — along with the health impacts of exposure — make heat among the most significant consequences of climate change for humanity,” according to the hub.

Funded through the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act signed in 2022, the hub is partnering on the project with the National Integrated Heat Health Information System, or NIHHIS. Under NOAA’s climate office, the system is a collaboration of 25 federal entities working to reduce heat impacts across the country.

“The economies of rural communities often rely on agriculture and other outdoor industries, while coastal communities exposed to high humidity tend to rely on hospitality, tourism and recreation,” hub Director Ashley Ward said in a release. “Extreme heat poses health and economic hazards in both types of communities, but the risks are different and require targeted solutions.”

Ward said in an interview that while there’s been a lot of research on how heat affects human health, there has been much less work on how it affects the economy.

“We have been so focused, and for good reason, on the health impacts of heat,” but heat’s impact on the economy is “going to have much bigger consequences than we’ve appreciated so far,” she said.

The World Economic Forum for the first time released in December its assessment of what climate change will mean for businesses globally. The report, Business on the Edge, predicts a 70% global loss in fixed assets from heat over the next decade.

That’s hundreds of billions of dollars, Ward said.

“They determined that most of that loss will occur in the communication sector and the utilities, and it will happen because of labor wage loss, labor productivity loss, and damage to hard infrastructure,” she said. “Personally, I think that we have not even begun to understand the catastrophic economic impact that heat will bring in the next 10 to 20 years.”

Ward explained the innovation hub is “very early” in the planning process and that researchers are thinking about what the web-based tool will look like.

The tool’s interactive map is expected to focus on localized heat impacts, offer guidance on developing heat policies, assess heat risks in rural and coastal communities, and facilitate private sector collaboration. The research team plans to work with policymakers to ensure the tool meets their needs.

“A good chunk of this work is going to be quantifying and looking at what the economic impacts of heat will be across six sectors, which are agriculture, transportation, health, energy, housing and labor,” she said.

While researchers won’t be able to cover the entire scope of heat-related impacts in this two-year period, the plan is to establish “the foundation for some really innovative work on pushing people to think about heat differently,” she added.

Ward said the researchers plan to take an in-depth look at extreme heat in rural and coastal communities.

A lot of research has been done on how heat impacts urban places, but “we have growing and greater vulnerability in rural areas, with fewer tools in the toolbox to address it,” she said.

In North Carolina, heat-related illness rates in rural areas are many times greater than in urban areas, and most of the solutions, like cooling centers or tree planting campaigns, don’t really translate into rural environments very well.

The same can be applies to coastal areas that are “plagued by some of the same challenges that rural communities are plagued with — real threats to their livelihoods — but also challenges with solutions,” she said. “We’re seeing a combination of increasing temperatures also destroying some of the economic backbone of coastal communities.”

Oyster farms, for example, are highly vulnerable, with some U.S. shellfish growers reporting 100% crop losses in the last couple of years, Ward added.

Ward’s work on extreme heat can be traced back to her days with NOAA, where she focused on the impacts of climate extremes in the coastal plains of the Carolinas.

In 2015, she was sent into coastal communities to talk to residents about issues of which they were particularly concerned.

“I thought that we would be talking about hurricanes. But when we showed up, a lot of the community partners basically said, we know a lot about hurricanes, we don’t know a lot about heat, and heat is really starting to show up in our communities. It was really the communities that started my interest and work in that topic,” Ward said.

When she arrived at Duke’s Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability in 2019, Ward said she noticed that researchers had done great work in identifying populations that are vulnerable to extreme heat and communities have responded by thinking about ways to mitigate the impacts of rising temperatures.

But, she said, those conversations were not being carried over to policymakers.

The heat hub was launched in 2023, “with the mission of bringing together a real cross-sector collaboration to try and think about ways to address heat and inform better policy, and sometimes that policy is public policy, but sometimes it’s also thinking about industry and the role that they play,” Ward said.

The hub’s researchers have worked with the state to develop a heat alert system and helped with county-level heat action plans. Last June, the hub held the HeatWise Policy Partnership Summit.

The hub is currently working with faith-based leaders in the Carolinas, exploring private sector and community-based solutions for heat and energy affordability. The hub is also working with the United Nations to develop a heat management system and is assessing readiness among UN agencies to deal with heat globally.

The Perquimans River is a narrow, twisting coastal river that never leaves Perquimans County.

It’s rarely more than 50 or 60 feet wide until it suddenly opens up just upriver from Hertford, the county seat. As it passes Durants Neck a little more than a mile south of the town, the river becomes a broad estuarine waterway offering a direct route to the Albemarle Sound.

County Manager Frank Heath stood recently on the edge of a wide, bulkheaded boat basin telling Coastal Review about the Perquimans County Marine Industrial Park that, after more than 10 years of false starts and missed steps, finally completed the first phase of the project last year: The $7 million deep-water boat basin now allows direct water access to the Albemarle sound.

“It’s 350 feet wide, more than a football field in width, and it goes inland 700 feet,” he said. “We do have such spectacular water resources, to me, it makes sense that we start with this.”

For some time, there have been calls to develop the county’s water access. More than 65 years ago in 1958, in celebration of the bicentennial of the founding of Hertford, W.G. Newby compiled “Town of Hertford Bi-Centennial” note, among other historic facts, “One of the very important contributing factors in the growth of a town is transportation. We have here … a great and beautiful river, the Perquimans.”

The author went on to note that by 1958 the river “is only used by a fleet of oil tankers that supply oil of home, U.S. Navy and other uses. However, it could be put to work of industry and we hope some day that this will come to pass.”

The basin, Heath explained, is phase one and it took a while to complete that first step in developing the county’s waterfront for commercial use.

“We spent quite a bit of energy getting the grants for phase one,” he said.

Getting the first phase completed, began Heath said, “12 or 13 years ago” when North Carolina identified Hertford as a secondary marine resource when the Wanchese Marine Industrial Park ran out of space.

It was, Heath explained, a much-needed economic lifeline for the county.

“The textile industry left in the 1980s and ’90s, we had several good-sized factories, those shut down,” he said. “We have an agricultural-based economy, which is very important, and we want that to continue to thrive, but we also want other industries to come in.”

Originally a state project, as plans moved forward, it became apparent that the state was not in position for the grants needed to build the marina project.

“What they found as … a state entity, they weren’t eligible for state grants, like the county would be. So, they transferred the ownership back to the county, and in the past, say, four years, we have been piecing funds together to get this done,” Heath said.

The county’s plan for the marina targets companies that need water access for large scale construction projects as likely tenants for the marina.

“There are builders from this area and outside the region, we’ve talked to companies that are looking to reshore back (return manufacturing) into United States,” Heath said.

At least one company has moved from Hampton Roads to Hertford. East Coast Steel Fabrication, a company providing heavy steel fabrication for barges and marine structures, is located immediately adjacent to the basin, although it is not part of the marina.

Heath mentioned there have been contacts with potential customers for the marina, although any announcement remains months in the future.

“I would think by the beginning of next year, we would have some news, if not sooner,” he said. “I’d love to have something before the end of the year.”

There is still work to be done.

There is not yet a road to the basin. Heath mentions the county is working with the North Carolina Department of Transportation on getting a road built.

“I’ve worked in cooperation with NCDOT. They’ve helped me do cost estimates and preliminary drawings, and I included that in requests that I’ve sent to the General Assembly to try to get funded through a budget process,” Heath said, adding that the budget impasse in the state legislature this session has stalled funding.

As a short-term solution, the county does have the funds to put in a gravel road something Heath said would be done in the next three months.

Phase two of the project will include a substantial extension of the boat basin, although Heath is careful to not get ahead of himself.

“We spent quite a bit of energy getting the grants for phase one. For grants for phase two to open up, getting the current basin leased out, is going to be important, because it proves the case itself. So, my primary goal now is to market to potential companies that need that kind of access,” he said.

Perquimans County is not considered an economically distressed county by North Carolina. The state uses a three-tier rating system, with Tier 1 being the most distressed and counties with a rating of 3 having the healthiest economies.

Perquimans County falls squarely in the Tier 2 category, but at least part of that economic health is created by workers who don’t work in the county.

“Our goal is to create jobs here in Perquimans County,” Heath said. “We have a lot of people that go to Hampton Roads to work, and we’d like to give them a place at home to work.”

That would, he noted, be more convenient for the workers, but there is more to it than that. Workers employed in the county also spend money in the county.

“They could buy gas here, they could buy lunch here. You’re going to stop by the grocery store and stop by the hardware or the auto place where you work,” Heath said. “We want to recapture that leakage.”

The Inner Banks region of North Carolina is home to numerous of the state’s most historic small towns.

Settled early in the 18th century, these communities host famous restaurants, architecturally significant homes, and a wide variety of civic institutions. Some of these places have a reputation that reflects their importance and beauty, with towns such as Edenton and Washington being regionally or even nationally known. On the other hand, there are a number of unsung towns that have not been featured in the New York Times. One of these is Murfreesboro.

This gem on the Meherrin River has attracted civic and educational leaders for the past three centuries and is just as poised for growth today as it was in the colonial period.

Murfreesboro was one of the first areas of North Carolina settled by the British. Its establishment was part of a wave of migration that extended out from the Albemarle Sound region in the early 18th century.

Following the earliest settlements and displacement of Native Americans like the Chowanoac, British settlers continued to seek more land for tobacco. As in Virginia and South Carolina, they moved west, marching across the colony until they reached the falls line in the mid-18th century. In North Carolina, the region closest to the Virginia border was also one of the most prosperous, as its inhabitants could trade with the wealthier Virginians and use their navigable rivers.

One of the rivers that crossed state boundaries was the Meherrin River. Passing through the home of the Meherrin Native Americans, this river provided an outlet to the Chowan River and the Albemarle Sound. Its miles of surrounding fertile farmland gained numerous tobacco plantations throughout the 18th century. By 1707, a small community had formed at a bend on the river.

Murfreesboro was incorporated as a town in 1787 and named for William Murfree, a local landowner and Revolutionary-era politician. The town’s heyday occurred during its first few decades. Architectural historian Catherine Bishir notes that in the early 1800s, the town “enjoyed trade that crowded the streets with wagons bearing produce from as far as the Blue Ridge and brought so many ships to its wharves that ‘one could cross the river on the decks of vessels lying in the stream.’”

The tobacco economy of the Murfreesboro area relied entirely on slavery. The town was a center for plantation agriculture, and enslaved workers constructed its buildings. The proximity of the Virginia border also made Murfreesboro a destination for free African Americans, many of whom were formerly enslaved and had escaped harsher conditions in Virginia. Hertford County, where Murfreesboro is located, had one of the largest populations of free African Americans in the entire state in 1860, according to historian John Hope Franklin.

Murfreesboro still retains a number of buildings from its earliest period as a town. These include nearly a dozen homes built before 1820, as well as at least three homes — Melrose, the Myrick House and the John Wheeler House — built in or around 1805. There is also the William Rea Store, which was built in 1790 and is one of the oldest commercial buildings in the state.

The antebellum period was also the beginning of Murfreesboro’s best-known site. North Carolinians’ zeal for education during the Revolutionary period led to the formation of a number of academies, along with the state university in Chapel Hill.

One of these institutions, Hertford Academy, was established in 1811 in a Murfreesboro home. It was eventually bought by local Baptists and became Chowan Baptist Female Institute, later, in 1910, Chowan College, and in 2006, Chowan University. The institution moved to its present flagship building in 1851. This structure, known as the Columns, is considered an excellent example of Greek Revival architecture and is one of the largest antebellum college buildings in the state.

The Civil War inflicted some damage to Murfreesboro. The town was attacked and looted by Union troops, but it was not burned like Winton, its neighbor to the east. As throughout the South, the war devastated the town’s economy. Tobacco declined in importance for decades. Most importantly, the abolition of slavery erased the forced-labor system upon which the entire region had relied entirely.

Like other towns of the time, Murfreesboro took a middle path as it recovered from the war. It did not embrace — or was not embraced by — industry to the extent that nearby towns such as Ahoskie or Elizabeth City had. Ahoskie, which was formed a century after Murfreesboro, passed the older town in population by the 1910 census. Still, Murfreesboro was eventually able to relax its reliance on cash crops, especially the traditional crop of tobacco. Murfreesboro had become a center for peanut cultivation as well as the home of an iron foundry and manufacturing plant by 1916.

The 20th century in Murfreesboro was defined by the growing importance of both industry and Chowan University. Murfreesboro became the home of Riverside Manufacturing Co., believed to be the world’s largest basket company, in 1927. The plant employed thousands of Murfreesboro residents for the next seven decades.

Outside of baskets, the university is a considerable draw. Chowan College closed for six years in the 1940s, but has prospered since reopening, and it became a four-year institution again in 1992. Chowan graduated a number of its best-known alumni in the late 20th century, including NBA coach Nate McMillan. Chowan counted 1,500 students in 2017, a notable achievement for a town with only about 2,800 full-time residents.

In recent decades, Murfreesboro has remembered its three centuries of history and embraced historic preservation and tourism. The Murfreesboro Historical Association incorporated in 1963 and now owns more than a dozen properties and hosts numerous events and tours each year, most notably a candlelight tour in December.

Murfreesboro is also home to the Brady C. Jefcoat Museum, a nationally known museum dedicated to the sprawling collection of everyday objects, antiques and historic artifacts owned by one man — who happened to have helped build the Memorial Belltower at North Carolina State University and dozens of other Raleigh structures — and displayed in the former high school.

While many small towns in North Carolina have at most one or two historic homes open to the public, Murfreesboro Historical Association James Moore credits the town’s commitment to sharing its history and preserving and promoting the college and the town since 2000. It has become a bedroom community to much larger, more bustling areas nearby. As Moore noted, “You can be in downtown Norfolk in an hour.” And as people continue to move to Murfreesboro, the community bolsters the historical association and provides it with the donations and interest needed to continue its work.

Today, Murfreesboro has carved its niche as a center of both education and tourism in the Inner Banks. It remains the second-largest town in Hertford County and continues to welcome new businesses such as restaurants, tattoo parlors, and recently a “barcade,” Insert Coin Arcade and Bar.

More people visit the town’s museums every year, and the Historical Association says it has the potential to expand its offerings and tours even further. Murfreesboro may not be the size of New Bern or have the prominence of Edenton, but it shows that the past — and historic preservation — can still be the future for North Carolina’s smaller coastal towns.

The University of North Carolina Wilmington said Wednesday that its monthly measure of ocean-related economic activities rose 10.11% in May.

Colin Waltsak, a research assistant in the UNCW Economics and Finance Department, told Coastal Review Friday that the UNC Wilmington Blue Economy Index was originally developed in 2018 but officially launched in February of this year.

The index is published on Bloomberg (Ticker: BLUEECO), which provides daily financial data.

“Our index measures global ocean economic activities. Just as the S&P 500 Index reflects the health of the US capital market, our index offers an estimate of the blue economy,” Waltsak said in an email response.

He said the goal is to get the index picked up by an asset manager to take it public.

The index, which follows the World Bank definition of the “Blue Economy,” a broad swath of sustainable uses of ocean resources. These include the harvest of living and nonliving resources, renewable or inexhaustible natural forces such as wind or wave energy, carbon sequestration, and ocean- and waterways-based commerce, transport and trade.

“The index continues to outperform its closest benchmarks, the MSCI All World Index, the S&P 500, and the S&P 500 Industrials,” UNCW said in the announcement. “While S&P 500 Industrials showed the weakest gains throughout the month, rising only 1.69%, the MSCI All World Index and S&P 500 were neck and neck, achieving 4.10% and 3.93% respectively. Despite these major indices showing modest growth in May, the Blue Economy Index surged past them, delivering gains more than double those of its nearest benchmark (MSCI) and closing the month with a remarkable 10.11% increase.”

The top performer, according to the index, was TPI Composites Inc, a US-based wind blades manufacturer, which saw a 72.33% increase. The gains followed a recent earnings report in which TPI announced revenues that were 0.94% higher than expected.

A Taiwan-based shipping company, Wan Hai Lines Ltd., also performed strongly, posting a return of 57.70% for the month after launching a direct service from Indonesia to West India.

According to the index, the worst performer was Mitsui E&S Holdings, a shipbuilding company in Japan focused on engines and automated gantry cranes. The firm had posted a disappointing earnings report for the first quarter.

The UNC Wilmington Blue Economy Index was developed in collaboration with the UNCW Cameron School of Business, UNCW Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), CIE’s Alliance for the Blue Economy, and FactSet, a data and software firm serving investment professionals worldwide.

The UNCW index places an emphasis on environmental impact and offers investors insights into what its developers describe as a “burgeoning economic landscape surrounding coastal communities.”

WANCHESE — Started as a small business 88 years ago by a native Outer Banks fisherman, the Wanchese Fish Co., now a global behemoth, is closing the doors of its production fish offloading and packing operations here.

The fish operation on Mill Landing Road in this historic fishing village on the south end of Roanoke Island will be shuttered March 29, confirmed Vice President of Public Relations Joel Richardson at Suffolk, Virginia-based Cooke Inc. in an email Tuesday to Coastal Review.

Wanchese Fish Co., located along the wharf in Wanchese Marine Industrial Park, was purchased by Cooke Seafood USA in 2015, part of the Cooke family’s international aquaculture and seafood company. The Wanchese company had maintained its family-owned operation after the sale. 

Wanchese Trawl & Supply Co., a marine and fishing equipment retail store that Wanchese Fish Co. started in 1976, will remain open, Richardson said. Also, Shoreland Transport USA, an associated cargo and freight company based in Suffolk, will continue to operate its Outer Banks route.

“We will be providing support and services to our employees as part of our transition package,” Richardson said in the email.

Further information on the number of employees who will be affected and other details about the closure were unavailable Tuesday, but one employee who declined to be identified said it was about 10.

But the loss of jobs is much smaller than the implications of downsizing one of the most iconic and historically significant businesses on the Outer Banks.

From its start in 1936 as a fish processing plant established by W.R. Etheridge, a Wanchese fisherman from a centuries-old Outer Banks family, Wanchese Fish Co. was considered groundbreaking at the time, according to the company’s website.

In 1946, Etheridge’s new son-in-law, Malcolm Daniels, a member of another old Outer Banks family, was put in charge of the company. Daniels and his wife Maude had 15 children, all of whom contributed in different ways to building the company into an international seafood supply powerhouse.

For generations, the Etheridge and Daniels families were renowned not just for their reputation as innovators in the fish production, packing and shipping business but also for their dominance in the seafood industry culture on the Outer Banks.

The already successful business really took off in the late 1990s, when it developed scallop “medallions” by binding small sea scallops with natural protein into larger scallop shapes, the website said. The new product proved to be extremely popular and profitable.

The company subsequently opened a 300,000-square-foot facility in Suffolk with a processing plant, cold storage and corporate offices. Fishing operations and offices were also opened in Europe and South America.

Describing itself as a “vertically integrated seafood harvester, processor, and distributor,” Wanchese Fish Co. said it has harvested more than “4,000 tons of wild scallops, shrimp, oysters, southern king crab, and other seafood products each year.”

Cooke Inc., headquartered in New Brunswick, Canada, is a “family-owned, vertically integrated sea farming and wild fishery corporation” that ships its products to 65 countries, according to its website. It operates salmon farming operations in Atlantic Canada, Maine, Washington, Chile and Scotland.

COLUMBIA — In a coastal North Carolina county that has more wildlife — by far — than people, as well as vast amounts of public lands, U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s visit to Tyrrell County Thursday afternoon was especially significant. 

“Coming here is important,” Tyrrell County Manager David Clegg told Haaland during a media event with the secretary at the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge visitor center.

Haaland was in Tyrrell County to announce that $1.4 million has been awarded to the refuge from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to replace 1,000 feet of the badly weathered Scuppernong River Boardwalk.

“And we saw how dilapidated it is,” said Haaland, referring to a stroll she had taken earlier on the boardwalk behind the visitor center, which stretches along the river and through woods and marshlands. “Now we’ll really be ready to make it right for future visits by so many people.”

In a later interview, Clegg said he really appreciated the secretary’s openness and willingness to discuss Tyrrell and the value of Pocosin Lakes to the county.   

“She has an on-the-ground understanding of what it is now,” he said. “It’s not some concept to her.”

Although the boardwalk is still safe to use, it has the warped and blackened wood commonly seen in aging decks and docks in the region.

North Carolina Wildlife Federation CEO Tim Gestwicki recalled during his remarks the reaction he had when producers of a documentary about the area asked to take some footage outside the refuge headquarters.

“They said, ‘Let’s go out on the boardwalk,’” he recalled. “I said, ‘Oh, lord, I don’t know about that.’”

Gestwicki said he is “delighted” with the infrastructure work that is being done at Pocosin and other refuges because it will allow more access for people to enjoy being outside in nature.

The project is part of President Biden’s $157 million Investing in America agenda to restore our nation’s lands and waters through locally led, landscape-scale restoration projects, according to a Department of the Interior press release. The funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will support 206 ecosystem restoration projects in 48 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. territories.

Projects will focus on a restoration and resilience framework that builds climate resilience and addresses impacts, restores lands and waters, and enhances the quality of life for communities.

“What I love is the framework serves as a roadmap to where we can make the greatest difference,” Haaland said. “By grounding the framework in landscape-level projects like this here at Pocosin Lakes, it will supercharge our efforts to foster biodiversity and restore the habitats we all depend on.” 

Tyrrell fits the program’s target as a rural, historically underserved community.

With about 43% of its 735 square miles owned by state and federal governments, much of the county’s economy is still based in agriculture and forestry. But the tax base is shrinking, along with the population, which is currently 3,200 people, compared with 3,645 in 2016. The county is also considered one of the most vulnerable per capita to sea level rise impacts.

Clegg, the county manager, emphasized in his remarks that while Tyrrell might be remote and economically disadvantaged, its diverse ecosystems have outsize value to the natural world, replete with estuarine shorelines, pocosin wetlands, and agricultural vistas. For that reason, the county is primed to grow its ecotourism economy. 

“You can find bear, wolves, deer, wildcats, swan, duck, eagles, egret, beaver, otters, alligators, foxes, turtles, crabs, fish, quails, snakes, salamanders and raccoons,” he recited in one long breath, ending to applause.  

But Tyrrell County, despite its riches and challenges, is often lost in the shuffle when it comes to helpful government attention — making an important national official such as Haaland especially welcomed. 

“They say you don’t care about us,” said 1^st District Congressman Don Davis, a Democrat from Snow Hill, when addressing Haaland. “Well guess what? You’re here.”

Davis said his office works closely with the Interior Department and other agencies to assist local communities in meeting criteria so projects such as the Pocosin boardwalk can be completed.

“This is an awesome federal investment,” he said.

The Investing in America project also will partner with states and other recipients to address drought and wildfire resilience, recreational access, legacy pollution from former mines, invasive species management, and restoration of native plants and ecosystems.

More than half of the projects will also benefit historically underserved communities, as part of Biden’s Justice40 Initiative, an environmental justice effort that aims to direct 40% of certain federal benefits to “disadvantaged communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution,” according to the White House.

During a brief Q&A with media before she left, Haaland expressed appreciation for the Pocosin Lakes refuge and its staff, and she made a promise that Tyrrell no doubt hopes come true. 

“I never pass up an opportunity to tell the staff how much they mean to us,” Haaland said. “I couldn’t be prouder to stand here today and I’ll come back again.”

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.

SWAN QUARTER — Nearly a quarter-century after historic Mattamuskeet Lodge shut its doors, an enterprising new plan is underway to reopen a reimagined version of Hyde County’s community gathering spot.

Efforts in the last 16 years to determine a sustainable plan to operate the 109-year-old state-owned lodge have confounded the county, despite assistance from nonprofits, private businesses and model business plans created at two state universities.

“We’ve been trying to crack the code for so long to find how we can open it and how it can be sustainable,” Hyde County Manager Kris Noble told Coastal Review late last week.

As it turns out, the answer to reviving Mattamuskeet Lodge was right under her nose — or more accurately, in the same government center building where she works: the Hyde County Cooperative Extension.

When Noble took a closer look at the University of North Carolina’s and East Carolina University’s respective business plans, it became apparent that what was missing was economies of scale.

“I started realizing that the number one issue of being sustainable was really the staff cost to operate the facility,” she said. “I started brainstorming, and I came up with this idea that we would house Hyde County’s Cooperative Extension agency within the lodge, and they will operate the lodge.”

Not only could the Cooperative Extension readily relocate to the lodge that’s about 10 miles away, Noble said it would be a perfect fit with its model. The extension provides rural community support, services and programming that is focused on the same inherent features as Mattamuskeet Lodge: agriculture, fishing, hunting, history, water and the natural environment.

The North Carolina Cooperative Extension is a state agency, and county cooperative extensions are partnerships with the state. Operating framework and procedures come from the state, but program costs for the counties are split with the state.

Hyde’s Cooperative Extension is enthusiastically onboard with the move to the lodge, Noble said.

With the go-ahead from all stakeholders, the county led development of the proposed restoration plan, and presented it to state lawmakers. In early January, the Council of State agreed to lease the building for 30 years to the county for $1. The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission would continue to oversee the site and partner with the county. A new nonprofit partner, the Mattamuskeet Lodge Society, has been created to support the restoration and develop public awareness of the lodge’s natural and cultural heritage.

Meanwhile, the county is in the process of reviewing a draft lease from the state, Noble said. Once that is finalized, $6.5 million in state funds are in hand for Phase I of the restoration, with the goal of transforming the lodge into an educational and event center, with a museum and gift shop on the ground level.

“And after we complete that design and engineering, we’ll be able to provide a better cost estimate for completion of the entire project and a better timeline,” Noble said.

What is already known, she added, is that the 14 bedrooms available in the past are not going to be part of the building’s future.

“There will not be lodging in the lodge,” Noble said.

According to the plan, “The Mattamuskeet Lodge, proposed restoration initiative,” the project’s final phase is estimated to cost $14.4 million and include installation of electrical, mechanical and wastewater systems, as well as landscaping and parking improvements. Furnishings, fixtures, and equipment are estimated to cost an additional $2.15 million.

While recognizable statewide thanks to an iconic photograph often used in North Carolina tourism brochures, Mattamuskeet Lodge never has been a major visitor attraction. Still, its cultural and historic value makes it a significant asset to the state, and a cherished place in the rural community.

“The Lodge will be the center of Hyde County’s natural heritage celebration, highlighting over 400 years of history as well as the living natural heritage,” the plan said.

“Local farmers, commercial fishermen, wildlife guides, Civil Rights and Native American experts, and artists will keep this natural heritage alive through their use of the Lodge.”

An engineering feat

Located within the 50,000-acre Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge, the lodge was originally built in 1915 as a pumping station to drain Lake Mattamuskeet, the state’s largest natural lake, to use its richly organic bed as farmland. At the time, the facility was acclaimed as an engineering feat and the world’s largest pumping station. Despite its razzle-dazzle, the operation was unsuccessful and eventually abandoned.

Ownership of the 40,000-acre lake and the three-story pumphouse were eventually transferred to the federal government, which in 1934 established the refuge to protect migratory wildfowl and the lake’s environment.

The refuge and the Civil Conservation Corps remodeled the nearly 15,000-square-foot pumphouse into a 38-room hunting lodge and refuge headquarters, according to Mattamuskeet Lodge’s 1980 listing on the National Register of Historic Places. The plant’s tall chimney, the listing said, was transformed into a 120-foot observation tower with a stairway.

Opened in 1937, the hunting lodge operated until 1974. But the building was still used for numerous special community events, local weddings and school proms until it was closed in 2000 because of structural concerns.

By 2006, the lodge was in disrepair, and the federal government handed it and its 6.25-acre footprint over to the state Department of Cultural Resources with the idea that the agency would be able to restore and renovate the lodge.

Between 2008 and 2010, $5.7 million was appropriated for projects that included demolition and removal of hazardous materials, replacement of concrete and waterproofing on the lower level, installation of new steel building columns, replacement of windows, repair and re-coating of the exterior, augmenting floor joists and installation of additional wind-bracing components.

In 2016, the lodge was transferred, as planned, to the Wildlife Resources Commission. Four years later, a $300,000 roof restoration was completed, including removal of all the original clay tiles, partial replacement of the wood decking, installation of a water shield, and replacement of the tiles.

Currently, repair and restoration of the 100-year-old observation tower, originally the smokestack on the coal-fired pumphouse, is being planned, with funding from a $1 million appropriation in 2022.

“That observation cab on top has a lot of corrosion,” said Brad Kleinmaier, capital projects coordinator with the Wildlife Resources Commission. Windows have also been damaged.

“We will reinforce the tower so it’s more wind-resistant,” Kleinmaier said.

While the two university studies and discussions of possible public-private partnerships couldn’t make the operation’s math work, the new plan solved the elusive sustainability equation by tapping existing budgets and resources to cover costs. It also added various new pots of money, including profits from the gift shop.

“The business model incorporates county in-kind contributions supported by revenue generated by county programs and … event rentals, programs, shop sales, and fundraisers to fund operational expenses and program expansion,” ad detailed in the plan. “Additional revenue is anticipated through philanthropy and grants earmarked for the preservation and operation of National Historic Sites.”

Once the renovated lodge is reopened, it’s expected to add $8 million to $24 million annually to the Hyde County, the plan said.

Although Lake Mattamuskeet has suffered from water quality issues in recent years, scientists are in the process of implementing a comprehensive restoration plan at the lake. But the lake and its surrounding landscape have maintained its serene magic and unique natural beauty. The refuge is home to large populations of black bear and deer, thousands of waterfowl and other wildlife.

Proposed cooperative extension programming at the lodge, such as storytelling, art classes, and local displays on farming and history, and potential Wildlife Resources Commission educational programs involving hunting, fishing and conservation, could dovetail with refuge activities such as kayaking, hiking, bicycling and birdwatching.

To Noble, a Hyde County native, restoration of the lodge will not only restore what was the beloved centerpiece of community life, it will also reinvigorate the rural county.

“We want this to enhance and promote all of our local businesses,” she said.

With a population of 4,589, according to the 2020 census, Hyde County is second least populated and one of the poorest of North Carolina’s 100 counties.

“Of course, our number one goal is to restore and reopen the lodge,” Noble said.

“Our very strong secondary goal was the economic stimulus that this will create for our communities.”

Three coastal counties have been ranked as more economically distressed than they were last year, while one – Currituck — is ranked as the least distressed in the state for the third consecutive year. 

The North Carolina Department of Commerce published Nov. 29 the “2024 North Carolina Development Tier Designations,” a ranking of all 100 counties every year based on economic well-being and relative economic distress. 

Currituck County Manager Ike McRee told Coastal Review Thursday that he questions the validity of this ranking system, especially as the county’s population grows. 

David Rhoades, the Commerce’s communications director, explained to Coastal Review the tier system is incorporated into various state programs to encourage economic activity in the less prosperous areas of the state. 

Tier 1 counties are the most distressed and ranked 1 to 40, counties 41 to 80 are considered Tier 2, and the least distressed 20 counties are in Tier 3, ranked 81-100, according to the website. 

On the coast, Beaufort is ranked for 2024 at 34, Gates at 38 and Pasquotank as 31, all moving from Tier 2 to Tier 1 counties, joining Hertford ranked at No. 3, Bertie at No. 7, Chowan at No. 37, Hyde at No. 19, Onslow at No. 38, Tyrrell at No. 16 and Washington at No. 8. Tier two counties include Perquimans ranked at No. 42, Craven at No. 58, Pamlico at No. 68, and Dare at No. 80, which has the highest adjusted property tax base per capita for 2023-24 at $446,844.

Brunswick County had the highest population growth at 14.15%, while Hyde had the lowest, a decline of 6.49%.

Rhoades said that four equally weighted factors are used to calculate the tiers each year. These factors are average unemployment rate for the most recent 12 months, median household income for the most recent 12 months data are available, adjusted property tax base per capita for the most recent taxable year, and population growth for the previous three years.

When asked how second homes, which are many along the coast, affect the criteria, Rhoades explained that one of the economic factors that go into the calculation is the property tax base per capita of the county, and “the tax value of all properties in a county does play a role in the Tiers system.”

Rhoades said a resident may not feel much difference in their daily life from tier designation, but the tiers can impact the economic development strategies that local leaders employ. Tier 1 counties facing more economic distress can take advantage of more favorable terms and conditions from programs that tie their benefits to the tier system.

“Generally speaking, various state programs provide greater benefits to counties facing more economic distress. For example, the One North Carolina Fund, which is an incentive program administered by our department, requires a local funding match. The required terms of that match are more favorable for Tier 1 counties, where the local government only must match $1 for every $3 state dollars provided. In Tier 3 counties, local governments must match one for one each state dollar provided,” he said. 

Currituck County is ranked 100, or least distressed, with an adjusted property tax base per capita for 2023-24 at $266,474, according to the department. The population growth for July 2019 to July 2022 is listed as 12.77% with a median income for 2021 of $82,759, the fourth-highest median household income, behind Wake, Union and Chatham, in that order. Unemployment from October 2022 to September 2023 was 3.2%.

McRee said the county had a 10.4% increase in population from 2020 to 2022, which ranked Currituck the second-fastest-growing county in North Carolina, and from 2010 to 2020, the county experienced a 20.2% increase in population over that decade, ranking it as the seventh-fastest-growing county in the state.

“We continue to question the validity of the criteria used by the Department of Commerce and the result of that criteria use, because it’s kind of befuddling to believe that Currituck County in rural northeastern North Carolina is the least economically distressed county of all counties in the state,” he said. “Less distressed than Wake, Mecklenburg, Guilford, Pitt, I mean, it just doesn’t make any sense to us.”

McRee added that they’re trying to get the North Carolina General Assembly to at least study and determine whether this criteria is “really fair and applicable to what is in essence, a rural county.”

The consequence of being ranked as least distressed is the county is not eligible for multiple state grants, he continued. 

“We’re grateful to be an attractive, viable county, especially in northeastern North Carolina when so many counties are losing population,” McRee said, but the county’s growth increases the demand for services, such as fire, EMS, law enforcement, but particularly schools.

Currituck has been denied school construction grants, though some neighboring counties have received $30 million or more. “What we’re now having to do is construct with 100% Currituck County funds a $60 million elementary school at the north end of our county to keep up with our population growth,” he said.

What else could be an issue for Currituck is being a coastal county with a large number of absentee property owners with extremely high-value homes on the Currituck Outer Banks, and that should be taken into consideration, he said. 

“It appears to us and they need to reevaluate the criteria they’re going to use to determine whether a county is economically distressed or not,” he said. 

For Pasquotank, the county’s economic distress rank is No. 31, moving from No. 43 in 2023. 

Pasquotank County Assistant Manager John Shannon told Coastal Review Thursday that it was not unexpected for the county to return to Tier 1, which it has been ranked since 2014, minus last year.

“Pasquotank County has historically been grouped into Tier 1,” Shannon said, “with 2023 being more of an outlier.”

Pasquotank’s adjusted property tax for 2023-24 is $94,016, population growth July 2019 to July 2022 was 1.35%, median income for 2021 is $51,365, and unemployment is 4.24%.

“This shift was largely driven by a change in the county’s median household income rank, which moved from #73 last year to #45 this year,” according to the department. The median household income numbers used for last year were $56,654.

Shannon said that the county has currently not researched the specifics of the change in the median household income rank from year to year. 

Gates County, which experienced a population decline of 2.4%, is ranked as No. 38 for 2024, moving from No. 41 in 2023. This shift was largely driven by a change in the county’s unemployment rate rank, which moved from No. 73 last year at 3.29% to No. 60 this year, at 3.38%, officials said. The adjusted property tax base per capita for 2023-2024 is $93,952.

Manager Scott Sauer noted that the county’s median household income is $59,762, positioning Gates County near the first quarter of the 100 counties, or 72 out of 100, where 1 is the most distressed.

“One explanation for this higher-than-expected rating (72) is Gates County’s proximity to the Tidewater Virginia, area of Norfolk, Chesapeake, and Virginia Beach where many of our residents are employed,” he said in an email, adding that the county was tier two from 2020 until last year.

Sauer said he has had the opportunity and the honor since 1991 to serve in Caswell, Scotland, Sampson, Harnett, Bertie and Gates counties, and “Statistical rankings do not provide an accurate measure of economic standing.”

Though there is no chain grocery store, no hospital, no community college facility or satellite campus, and only one electric vehicle charging station for the many Tesla owners, “in Gates County, we enjoy a beautiful and pristine environment for fishing, water recreation and hunting — and Merchants Millpond State Park which just celebrated 75 years of operation,” he said.

“Our residents enjoy safe neighborhoods and safe schools, which are a valuable resource by any rational measure. Agriculture and timber production are the economic engines for Gates County and this region, and we continue to innovate and grow stronger each year,” Sauer continued.

Gates County is ninth in cotton production out of North Carolina’s 100 counties, and the opportunities for ecotourism, heritage tourism, agritourism, entrepreneurs, and small businesses are seemingly endless.

“Gates County’s designation as a Tier 1 county is good news from my perspective and can be beneficial as we strive to qualify for grant opportunities to better serve our residents and taxpayers,” Sauer said. “And as a tier one county we remain in good company — with Pitt County (and ECU), with Cumberland County (and Fort Bragg), with Wayne County (and Seymour Johnson Air Station) and Onslow County (with Camp Lejeune) just to name a few.”

Beaufort County’s economic distress rank is No. 34, moving from No. 45 in 2023. The shift was largely driven by a change in the county’s unemployment rate rank, which moved from No. 43 last year at 3.77% to No. 34 this year, at 3.91%, officials said.

Beaufort County Economic Development Director Brad Hufford said that most of the county’s neighbors are Tier 1.

“While not a perfect system for determining economic strength and weakness, it is the system the state uses, and we will take full advantage of the opportunity it presents,” Hufford told Coastal Review in an email. “Our tier ranking opens us up to some opportunities with state funding such as preferential grant treatment and the lowering or waiving of local matching requirements for some grants. The system was designed to help address the needs of Tier 1 communities and help them improve their economic ranking in the future. Because the ranking system is the way it is, there will always be a new batch of Tier 1 counties even if the rising tide lifts all boats generally.”

He said that the county has been historically closer to a Tier 1. 

“During the pandemic, our county performed better on the four factors than many of the other counties, with us holding steady while they had a more drastic cut off due to the pandemic,” Hufford said in an email. “For 2021-2023 we were a Tier 2, since the ranking system is not in a vacuum but is determined by the order of other counties. In order to make a sustained or permanent leap out of Tier 1 status, there has to be some fundamental economic and population growth in the county, like what has happened in the suburban counties around major metros in the state.”

Sadly, he continued, northeastern North Carolina and coastal communities largely have not seen these types of changes like the rest of the state.

Beaufort County’s unemployment rate went from 3.77% in 2023 to 3.91% for 2024, which is not too drastic of a change. 

“It is just that compared to all the other 99 counties in NC, our new unemployment rate grew while the other counties dipped. We did have a small business closure and one of our company’s put staff on a brief furlough, so besides normal attrition, that might have accounted for some of the unemployment rate change,” he said. 

Historically, the region has had most of the Tier 1, economically distressed counties, with only small pockets existing in the Piedmont and mountains. 

“Looking at the map, you see the large swath of contiguous Tier 1 counties. I think the region has been slower to make the change from an agriculture-based economy. There was already more industry in the middle part of the state and population there, so we were at a disadvantage. I think the state needs to have some fundamental push to encourage economic growth in our area,” Hufford said. “I think with all the success and new industry occurring on the 85 corridor and around the metros, it is creating growing pains in communities dealing with people moving to NC. To me our region offers a great opportunity to balance that growth and extend prosperity east. Of course, the coast has a great quality of life and reputation as a vacation destination, but we need more economic diversity and population growth to balance for long term change.”

A team of North Carolina scientists and researchers have less than two years to develop a proposal that will convince the National Science Foundation that eastern North Carolina is ripe to become an engine of innovative ecosystem technology that could advance a new workforce and a resilient and sustainable economy.

If the North Carolina Ecosystem Technology, or NCET, project is chosen, an infusion of $160 million will pour into the region over the next 10 years, potentially igniting a transformative science-based zeitgeist, similar to the launch in 1958 of the acclaimed research institute in the Raleigh area that merged science, academics, government, business and technology.  

“What we want to do is to create something analogous to Research Triangle Park,” said Reide Corbett, executive director of the Coastal Studies Institute and the dean of Integrated Coastal Programs at East Carolina University.

After the National Science Foundation announced an opportunity to compete for funds in a new program, the team submitted a letter of intent. In May, they learned they would be awarded $1 million to write a full proposal.

What’s different about the proposed ecosystem technology, or eco-tech, project is that the work concepts would be generated where people live and work in eastern North Carolina, driving economies from the ground up, Corbett said. 

By providing multiple connections with the community, as well as infrastructure and resources, he continued, the goal would be to build “an innovation hub that allows for use-inspired development … to support individuals who are trying to solve problems for the East, in the East.”

The National Science Foundation program as a whole, he added, is focused on reaching folks in less populated, remote communities, many of which are vulnerable to climate change impacts or economic decline.

“This is really about building opportunity for rural North Carolina, building opportunity for these areas that are outside of these regions that typically have plenty of workforce, plenty of innovation,” Corbett said. “It’s trying to move the capability and the opportunity beyond Raleigh Durham and that area.”

Eco-tech, defined as solutions-based applied science that uses living eco-systems to produce and enhance products, is billed as the next bio-tech, which studies biological attributes of organisms to use in products. If true, that would bode well for the potential growth of eco-tech.

Biological technology evolved over the centuries from modest techniques such as beer-brewing to today’s groundbreaking work on human genomes, proving the value of collective, collaborative and cooperative science research.

Research Triangle Park, as a business incubator and a hub of creative energy and scientific brainpower, is credited with propelling the explosive growth of bio-tech. It also helped revitalize the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area into one of the nation’s most dynamic regions. 

Corbett is one of 11 principal investigators working on the NCET project, in addition to Brian Silliman, a marine conservation biology professor at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, and Kenneth Halanych, executive director of the Center of Marine Science at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and who also serves as the director of the NCET consortium and grant administration.

As Halanych puts it, NCET is “a multi-institutional” project, that is equal parts Duke, Cape Fear Community College, Carteret Community College, ECU, North Carolina State University, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, and the Research Triangle Institute.

According to a brochure about the prospective National Science Foundation engine award, the NCET concept would initially focus on renewable energy, aquaculture and infrastructure as vehicles to translate what people (“users”) see as a need into marketable, planet-friendly products.

The work would network across universities and partner with businesses, nonprofits and other community entities to conduct research and bottom-up innovation. As a result, communities would be more resilient, workforces diversified and engaged and regional economies strengthened.

Halanych explained that the eco-tech grant is a byproduct of the National Science Foundation’s new directive expanding basic science and discovery to applied science, economic and workforce development. Called the NSF Engines Program, he said, its goal is to drive workforce development by “use-inspired” innovations.

“What that means is, instead of scientists sitting in the lab trying to think about what they want to do, it’s really about looking to the community and looking to the context of the community —‘What do you need?’ ‘Are there innovations that we can help develop that will push community needs forward, municipal needs forward, individual needs forward?’” he said.

“And so, it’s sort of bringing science out of the ivory tower a little bit with the hope that it will drive economic development.”

If the prospective NCET team’s plan makes the cut for the $160 million award, he said, it would have 10 years “to jump-start innovation” within the whole region east of the Interstate 95 corridor.

With a mix of coastal and rural areas that depend on land — whether for eco-tourism, farming or forestry — the region is ripe with opportunities for eco-tech, Halanych said. The approach is to use technology to work with, not against, the environment to build in a more sustainable way.

For instance, NCET could help with building jobs to mitigate climate change impacts with innovative technology, such as installation of living shorelines made with 3D printed oyster reefs, he said. 

Markets could be created for new kinds of adaptive wastewater disposal systems, which would require trained engineers, contractors and installers. Or in the case of flooding, whether from water bodies or rain deluges, building more affordable — therefore, more accessible — water sensors could radically improve a community’s ability to respond and react in real time to flooding events. “That’s workforce development,” Halanych said. “That’s new job opportunities.”

In a competitive process that started off with more than 950 proposals before being pared down to 30, the NCET team has about 18 months remaining before the proposal is due for submission to the science foundation, Silliman said. “Maybe five or six teams among 30 proposals will be selected for the $160 million. We’ve made it to the final round.”

Silliman, who expressed optimism about eastern North Carolina’s prospects for the final award, said that NCET would be divided into three place-based hubs where businesses, academics and community leaders congregate, with the potential to expand further into smaller hubs. The National Science Foundation, he said, is encouraging scientists to be nimble and responsive.

“This is an innovation hub that’s doing science, innovative science on topics that the people of eastern North Carolina want to see covered,” he said. “Then, we foster small business development around these hubs that hires people who were born in these areas, so they can stay there.”

The team is already working with existing networks and tapping into existing community surveys, Silliman said. The project would include community meetings, and public input would be coupled with data to provide a picture of risk and vulnerability, as well as what the community’s is worried about in the next decade.  

“And then we would have discussions about how innovative science that fuels business development can help address those issues,” he said, “and whether they are interested in something like that.”

The value of eco-tech is not just inventions of new products to use in the environment, but also in utilizing, enhancing and adapting existing products. Ecosystem technology, like biotechnology, can interact with any sector, he said.

“One of the things we want to help with in eastern North Carolina is the technology is to monitor the performance of really important infrastructure that we have in the coast,” Silliman said. “That would be our hybrid and hardened shorelines as well as as well as our septic systems. So right now, we don’t have a good handle on either one.” 

Eco-tech can be taken from the imagination to the research lab to the market with a collaborative like NCET, Corbett said. It can provide the linkage.

“A lot of what’s missing is that connection between somebody that has an idea, or maybe even has developed a product,” he said.

“It’s how they take it to the next level and a lot of times it’s the understanding of how to do that,” Corbett said. “It’s the capacity of being able to create.”

Writing in his just-completed Frank Stick biography published here, author Gilbert M. Gaul wrote of the genesis of the modern tourist industry on the Outer Banks.

“Like Stick and others, (Congressman Lindsay) Warren saw the future of the isolated barrier islands as tied to tourism,” Gaul noted.

Speakers at a tourism summit sponsored by the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau Nov. 2 in Kill Devil Hills focused on that prescient vision from decades ago.

The summit opened with a reminder of why Stick and others of his era believed that the Outer Banks offered an ideal location for a national park, illustrated in the bureau’s recently produced “Raw OBX” video site highlighting surfing, fishing and birding and urging “Keep OBX OBX,” a plea to “responsible travelers.”

Summit organizers promised an in-depth look at the health of the area’s dominant industry. Presentations showed an economy that has been outperforming numerous state and national trends, but one that’s also showing signs of slowing.

In 2022, Dare County recorded $1.98 billion in tourist spending, according to figures from Visit NC, the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina’s website. It was the fourth-highest level of tourist spending of any county in the state, trailing only Mecklenberg, Wake and Buncombe counties. If the $549 million generated by Currituck County is added to the Dare County’s spending, visitor spending here represented 7.6% of North Carolina’s total visitor spending.

The Outer Banks counties also showed a significant rebound from pandemic lows with occupancy tax collections up well more than 50% as of October.

That increase exceeds national and state trends in tourism, said Erik Evjen of Tourism Economics, a global tourism forecasting and analysis firm.

“Here in North Carolina, travel spending has been elevated above the national average throughout,” Evjen told summit attendees. “I know you have a lot to do with that.”

But 2020 and 2021’s double-digit revenue increases are not sustainable, he added.

“I know in this market, you’re interested in hitting year-over-year (increases), but for context, I think it’s important to remember how far you’ve come,” he said, adding that a slowdown is “more of a correction than anything else.”

Dare County’s 6% occupancy tax and 1% food and beverage tax collections slowed to about 5.7% in 2022, compared to 2021. As of September, revenues were up about 3%.

The past year’s revenue increases were generally lower than the inflation rate, Outer Banks Visitors Bureau Executive Director Lee Nettles told Coastal Review, but he noted that it’s important to look at trends over several years, “because the collection growth exceeded inflation then.”

Evjen, whose company works with a broad spectrum of clients in the tourism industry, noted during the summit that comparing revenues to 2019 was important in evaluating progress.

“We heard from a lot of clients, they wanted to stop comparing to 2019. They wanted to just focus on year-over-year (comparisons) because that’s what their stakeholders and partners want to focus on,” he said. “We said, ‘just hold off for four to six months … It’s going to start coming down and you’re going to want to compare back to ’19 levels just to help put things in context.’”

Evjen said that as a destination, the Outer Banks is different than most markets. Generally, destinations are more dependent on hotel and motel lodging, whereas multi-bedroom rental homes dominate here, lodging he defined as a short-term rentals.

“Short-term rental demand had been performing extremely well throughout the pandemic,” he said. The upward trend is likely to continue, in terms of both demand and revenue, but competition for tourist dollars is growing.

Coastal North Carolina is considered a drive-to destination for many visitors. As the economy continues to show strength, leisure travel is becoming more diverse, with international travel beginning to rebound and urban areas again showing signs of growth.

“You have increased competition now from some of the larger markets again, that people quite frankly avoided for a couple of years,” said Evjen.

Know who’s coming

Understanding where visitors are coming from and why they are making the choice that they have is important information, summit presenters said.

Adam Zappia of Zartico, a data-collection company specializing in travel and tourism, outlined what data can do.

“It’s understanding where people go, and why they go where they go, and when they’re spending their money,” he said.

Realizing that people have concerns about data collection, Zappia clarified the limits of what his company can do. He drew a distinction from surveillance such as the federal National Security Agency.

“We’re not the NSA. We don’t tell you how many people came to a Taco Bell on a Tuesday,” he said.

But knowing what should be considered important data is useful.

“We need to focus on where people are coming from that are spending more money in destination,” Zappia said. “That is more important than understanding how many people came to a destination.”

He said it was especially interesting that visitors from other North Carolina cities or nearby places such as Norfolk, Virginia, visit more during winter months than they do in the summer.

Zappia said the visitor numbers are down from a 2021 peak, but revenues have remained relatively stable because the average daily rate of spending has increased.

“The reason that we’re not seeing a decline in collections is because that ADR is going way up versus occupancy that’s starting to come down a little bit,” Zappia said.

Zappia’s data appeared to confirm Evjen earlier statement about long-term economic trends here. Whenever you’re looking for growth, you’re looking for where to grow, he said.

“Leisure is stable, even though it’s slowing down,” Evjen said. “You can add overseas travel, business travel, and group travel slight increases from those markets year over year and you’ll continue to be in good shape.”

Note: Coastal Review will not publish Friday in observance of Veterans Day.

Foreign shrimp imports are overwhelming the country’s inventories of shrimp and driving market prices for locally sourced shrimp to record lows, prompting widespread calls from elected officials and organizations throughout southern Atlantic and Gulf Coast states for the federal government to declare a fishery resource disaster.

Governors of coastal states from North Carolina to Florida to Texas are being pressed to ask U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to determine a fishery resource disaster for the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico shrimp fishery.

In what one North Carolina coastal county’s board of commissioners refer to as an “unprecedented catastrophic crisis,” shrimpers are struggling to maintain operations because they’re making substantially less for their catch while paying historically high fuel prices and other inflation-driven costs.

Shrimpers are also being forced to dock their freezer boats, or vessels with onboard freezers, because they can’t move their product in a market flooded with frozen shrimp from overseas.

Their recourse is turning largely to selling their catch dockside to local clientele and restaurants and seafood markets that conscientiously serve and sell locally sourced seafood.

Last week, the American Shrimp Processors Association, or ASPA, filed anti-dumping petitions on frozen warmwater shrimp from Ecuador and Indonesia. Dumping is the import of goods below normal value.

The group also filed countervailing duty petitions, or import taxes created to offset an exporting country’s subsidies, on frozen warmwater shrimp from Ecuador, India, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Imports from those countries last year exceeded 1.5 billion pounds — more than 90% of all U.S. shrimp imports — and $6.6 billion, according to the association.

“If successful, the tariffs should help discipline imports and provide a vital lifeline to a domestic industry that is desperately fighting for its survival,” the association said.

In late August, the Southern Shrimp Alliance sent letters to Gov. Roy Cooper and the governors of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas asking them to consider submitting a regionwide request for a fishery resource disaster determination.

Congressman Vicente Gonzalez Jr., D-Texas, took a similar request directly to the Commerce Department Sept. 29, asking Raimondo to initiate a review and fishery resource disaster determination for fisheries on the Gulf.

Under the federally enacted Fishery Resource Disasters Improvement Act of 2022, fishers may be entitled to financial assistance when a disaster is determined, including a change “that results in significant loss of access to the fishery resources … for a substantial period of time and results in significant revenue loss … due to an allowable cause.”

Cooper’s press office did not respond to a request for comment.

The governor is starting to get similar calls to take action from elected officials representing North Carolina’s coastal areas.

The Onslow County Board of Commissioners is among the latest of the state’s coastal counties to join a growing chorus of local elected officials asking the federal government to step in.

A resolution the board unanimously passed during a mid-October meeting states, “The consequences of the inundation of imported shrimp into our markets have caused significant revenue loss and loss of access to the shrimp fishery resource itself, for small family-owned fishing businesses and other supporting businesses.”

Boards of commissioners in Pamlico and Craven counties adopted similar resolutions earlier this fall.

“This is important for the coastal communities in North Carolina to step out and share this because, as the resolution has stated, it is having a major impact on the local shrimpers and fishermen here and the biggest (impact) is by the time they finish loading up the shrimp boats to head out they’re already way behind on what they’re going to make,” Onslow Commissioner Chairman Tim Foster said at the board’s Oct. 16 meeting. “What this is doing is driving down the cost of the shrimp and it is on the verge of eliminating the local businesses in our areas of Sneads Ferry and Swansboro.”

Davis Seafood Inc. in Sneads Ferry has been moving most of its shrimp locally, according to Joseph Davis.

And though the family-owned business has been able to sell what it has brought in locally, Davis Seafood still feels the pinch of low shrimp prices not accounting for high fuel costs.

“It’s a very unlevel playing field that we have to deal with,” he said in a telephone interview. “The overall price does affect us. We did freeze a lot of shrimp this summer when the boats were working in Pamlico Sound. We probably froze more shrimp than usual.”

Davis said he has a brother-in-law who operates a freezer boat, one that probably hasn’t been out to catch shrimp in about two months because of the lack of demand, he said.

NC Catch Board of Directors Chair Dr. Barbara Garrity-Blake said the levels of shrimp imports to the U.S. are “just unprecedented.”

“They’re just off the charts right now,” she said.

“We’ve essentially become a dumping ground for imported shrimp, especially from China. Wholesale prices right now are so low and fuel prices are high so it’s really hard to make the numbers work,” Garrity-Blake continued. “Right now, across the United States, our freezer operations are filled with shrimp because this dumping has been going on so long our local wholesalers can’t even move their shrimp. There are more commercial fishermen that are selling directly to consumers. But, that doesn’t work for everybody. Not everybody’s set up to do that.”

NC Catch works with local Catch programs aimed at educating the public about locally sourced seafood.

The organization promotes the benefits of eating local seafood, touting everything from a difference in taste to the fact that seafood fished from U.S. waters is not pumped full of preservatives needed to survive being shipped from regions thousands of miles away.

“Think about the carbon footprint if nothing else,” Garrity-Blake said. “All that fuel requires getting that seafood from one side of the planet to the other when we have the best product right here, right here in the Pamlico Sound, right here in the Core Sound that was caught last night, fresh, 100% organic, no chemicals.”

Seafood imports do not need to be completely shuttered altogether because, in order to meet national demand, some level of imports is needed, she said.

“What we need to do is strike a balance,” Garrity-Blake said.

She said educating consumers across the country is key to ultimately turning the tide on reducing the amount of shrimp imports coming into the country.

“We believe that the consumers are the sleeping giant and all of those consumers have the power to turn a lot of this around,” Garrity-Blake said. “Our message to consumers is to ask where your seafood comes from and then demand that you get local seafood and eventually restaurants, the markets, are going to have to meet that demand. We like to stress to consumers that their really only access to local seafood is through commercial fishermen, unless they’re fortunate enough to have the means to travel to the coast, to have a boat, to be really good at say, casting a net.”

She said the problem is “of our own making” because the U.S. government has heavily invested in economic projects in developing countries where cheaper labor costs undercut market prices on home soil.

Bradley Styron of Quality Seafood in Cedar Island said fishermen can’t maintain the lifestyle they’re accustomed to “on third-world wages.”

“Around here people are having to do whatever they can to try to make it,” he said. “Fuel is high. Shrimp are cheap. Before the imports came along we didn’t have this problem. It ought to be worth them making some phone calls to their senators and legislators. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out. They want a decent product and the only way to have that is through a strong commercial fishing industry.”

WILMINGTON – More than 127 million people, 40% of the population, live in America’s coastal communities where rising seas and more frequent, intense coastal storms are challenging convention.

Here to take on those challenges is a growing workforce of entrepreneurs tapping into what proponents and practitioners call the blue economy.

The blue economy is collectively defined by the World Bank and U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, as the sustainable use of ocean resources to grow coastal economies while preserving the ocean’s ecosystem.

America’s blue economy in 2019 supported more than 2 million jobs and contributed nearly $400 billion to the nation’s gross domestic product through things like tourism and recreation, commercial and recreational fishing, power generation and research, according to NOAA.

The blue economy that year outpaced the country’s economy “in its entirety,” the administration said.

The University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, or CIE, has taken notice and, since 2020, been ramping up a program to promote blue economic-driven initiatives.

“I think the one way that I would say we are evolving is toward the ocean innovation space, the blue economy,” CIE Director Heather McWhorter said.

CIE was created a decade ago following a request from Wilmington Chamber of Commerce officials to the university’s then-Chancellor Gary Miller.

“At that time in Wilmington there wasn’t a place for entrepreneurs to gather,” McWhorter explained.

The center, located a short distance from the main campus on College Road, is part of the university’s research and innovation, assisting entrepreneurs in the community as well as faculty and student entrepreneurs.

One aspect of CIE that makes it particularly unique is its mentor program, which consists of 140 volunteer mentors who can share personal experiences from starting their own businesses.

Though some of the volunteers actively work, many are retirees who moved from northern cities to New Hanover County for its beaches and warmer climate.

“We have this incredible knowledge and people who have scaled businesses and been leaders of companies to work with people with ideas that are getting started and I would call that one of our signature programs just because we can help so many different types of entrepreneurs along that journey,” McWhorter said.

In 2022, CIE served 236 entrepreneurs, who, in turn, created 50 jobs and raised $25 million.

Roughly 10% of those entrepreneurs were aiming for startups in the blue economy.

“I think it has grown and we want to continue to grow that. That’s really a huge opportunity for us a region, as a state,” McWhorter said.

CIE hosted last month an Ocean Innovation Conference, an on-campus event that sold out to an audience who listened to discussions from entrepreneurs, scientists and researchers about ocean-based innovation and technology, investment opportunities in those innovations, and ventures being undertaken to preserve ocean resources.

Wilmington last year ranked No. 2 worldwide among cities with populations between 100,000 and 300,000 by StartupBlink, a global startup ecosystem mapping and research center.

This region’s entrepreneurs are solving big problems, McWhorter said.

There’s OpiAID, a life science company that creates personalized plans for people in addiction treatment; SeaTox Research Inc., which was founded in 2013 by a UNCW clinical research professor and her husband, uses marine resources to develop natural products into new bio-actives and better methods to test for toxins that can contaminate commercial seafood; and Local Catch, an app that connects people and businesses within the commercial fishing industry to buy and sell local seafood.

“They’re solving the opioid crisis. They are taking on other sustainability issues, but what I would say is that everyone here loves the ocean and that’s why they came here,” McWhorter said.

So, she’s sparking in entrepreneurs the idea of solving problems related to the ocean and the opportunities associated with solving those problems “in a big way.”

“It’s not simply picking up plastic on the beach,” McWhorter said. “These problems are big and complicated and need to be thought of in a big way for big solutions. How can we get entrepreneurs, businesses, citizens, retirees, all of the above interested in this idea of problem solving related to the ocean and coastal resiliency of where we live. I know blue economy can be bigger because there are opportunities and it’s not about taking from the ocean, it’s about helping the ocean. It’s about problems like how we can work with this wonderful resource that we have, but also the business model has to be viable.”

CIE has a startup incubator that helps startups by providing workspace, mentoring and training, and seed money, and offers programs for entrepreneurs pursuing high-tech and science-based companies.

There’s a pitch coach to help entrepreneurs refine what they present their ideas to specific audiences, raise capital, or raise federal grant funding.

Every Wednesday, CIE offers a networking opportunity at 9 a.m. The center offers help with grant applications as well.

The region has what McWhorter said is a “gargantuan opportunity” to expand blue economic opportunities.

Wilmington’s geographic location to the ocean and intricate system of waterways, the strength of the university’s research base — UNCW’s Center for Marine Science has more than 120 researchers alone — and Cape Fear Community College’s workforce development puts it at an advantage to potentially become a leader in ocean innovation.

“There isn’t a blue economy hub between Boston and Miami and so if we could really start thinking about innovative approaches more here in Wilmington, perhaps that could be us,” McWhorter said. “We still have work to do. When you’re building an economy that takes time. We have volunteers that have really helped to guide thought around that, but I think at this point it is about continuing to get the right partners around the table that can help to spark this.”

National parks on North Carolina’s coast benefited the state’s economy with nearly $1 billion last year through visitor spending, finds a recent analysis by National Park Service economists.

The five national parks — Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, Wright Brothers National Memorial, Cape Lookout National Seashore and the Moores Creek National Battlefield — saw a total visitor spending of nearly $724 million. Economic output to the state’s economy from that spending was around $964 million. 

These numbers are from the larger, peer-reviewed visitor spending analysis published Monday of all 424 areas in the National Park System.

In 2022, there were 20.1 million visitors to the state’s national parks who directly spent an estimated $2.5 billion within a 60 mile radius of the National Park Service site. The visitor spending in 2022 resulted in 37,485 jobs and contributed $3.96 billion in economic output to the state’s economy.

In 2021, North Carolina national parks had 21 million visitors who directly spent $1.7 billion, ultimately benefiting the state’s economy by $2.6 billion. 

“Visitors to national parks in North Carolina spent $2.48 billion and supported nearly 40,000 jobs in local communities last year,” National Park Service Regional Director Mark Foust said in a release. “From sacred spaces to wild adventures, every park in the state and across the Southeast region offers a chance to uniquely experience America’s collective heritage.” 

The analysis found that there were 2.9 million visitors last year to Cape Hatteras National Seashore, which protects parts of Bodie, Hatteras and Ocracoke islands, who spent an estimated $645 million, leading to an economic output of $865 million.

Fort Raleigh National Historic Site in Manteo protects and preserves known portions of England’s first New World settlements from 1584 to 1590 and the cultural heritage of the Native Americans, European Americans and African Americans who have lived on Roanoke Island. The site is also home to the Waterside Theatre where “The Lost Colony” drama has been performed 1937. The site had 288,000 park visitors directly spend an estimated $19 million in the region, with an economic output of $25.5 million.

Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, which commemorates the first successful airplane flights on Dec. 17, 1903, by Wilbur and Orville Wright, had 437,000 park visitors spend an estimated $28.9 million. Economic output was $39.1 million.

National Parks of Eastern North Carolina Superintendent David Hallac, who oversees Cape Hatteras, Fort Raleigh and Wright Brothers memorial, told Coastal Review on Wednesday that in his nine years in the role, visitor numbers have been steadily climbing.

He mentioned that with Cape Hatteras, there is a significant difference between 2021 and 2022 numbers — total visitor spending was $226 million in 2021 and in 2022 it was $645 million — because the methodology was updated to demonstrate a more accurate explanation of visitor spending effects. 

Since Cape Hatteras National Seashore is about 75 miles long, these visitor spending effects are being felt not only in Dare County, but also in Hyde County as well, where Ocracoke Island is located, he said. 

Hallac noted that COVID definitely seemed to have an impact on park service visitation.

 “Our numbers had been climbing since really 2014ish, steadily. It was not uncommon around 2014 to have somewhere around 2.1-2.2 million visits. And in 2021, which was sort of the height of COVID, if you will, we had record visitation. Not just record visitation over the last decade, but record visitation since the park was established in 1953. We had more than 3.2 million visits, compare that to 2014. It’s approximately — not exactly — but approximately a million more visits, and that’s a lot for a small park that’s only 25 to 30,000 acres, where we have long-duration, high-intensity visits.”

Hallac explained that the theory as to why is that people felt safe having a rental-based vacation or a camping-based vacation in the Outer Banks and felt very safe on the beach, but they may not have engaged in some of the more traditional visitor experiences in the national parks, such as going into a visitor center or museum, as an example, or the visitor programs where people are closer together. “So that’s a possibility. We don’t know that that’s the case.”

He continued that it appears, “I’m not sure we can say definitively — but it does appear that during COVID there was a real surge in visitation on the Outer Banks and the national parks on the Outer Banks experienced some of that surge, with the exception of places like Fort Raleigh and Wright Brothers, which actually saw very low visitation,” he said. “And that might sound a little bit strange because people had to pass both of those parks to come to the seashore.”

But, for Cape Hatteras, he thinks COVID resulted in a real surge of visitors and the visitor numbers have remained very high. “Not as high as that record year 2021, but certainly extremely high and certainly significantly higher than they were five or 10 years ago.”

Cape Lookout National Seashore, home to Cape Lookout Lighthouse and a herd of more than 110 wild horses that live the park’s southernmost island, Shackleford Banks, has had an increase in visitors as well. 

Based in Carteret County, the seashore in 2022 saw 542,000 visitors spend around $26.8 million in the region. The total economic output was around $29.6 million.

“From 2012 through 2020, Cape Lookout National Seashore received an average of about 437,000 annual visitors. However, in 2021, we had over 560,000 visitors – an increase of about 28% over that previous average,” Cape Lookout’s Chief of Interpretation & Education Nate Toering said in a release. 

“Initially, I thought this increase in visitation may have been a ‘post-COVID’ phenomenon. However, these recently published numbers indicate that this increased visitation and public spending may be here to stay. With over 542,000 visitors, 2022 proved to be well above the previous ten-year average and in line with what we saw in 2021,” Toering continued. 

“This increase has a direct impact on local economies. Over the last two years, we’ve seen about a $7,000,000 increase in annual visitor spending when compared to the previous decade. Our visitors find serenity on the pristine, undeveloped beaches of Cape Lookout National Seashore. These recent studies show that they’re not afraid to open their wallets in the surrounding communities to get there,” he said.

In rural Pender County, Moores Creek National Battlefield, which commemorates the first significant victory for the Patriots in the American Revolution, saw 53,700 visitors spend around $3.9 million directly in the surrounding communities. The total economic output was around $4.8 million.

Superintendent Matthew Woods said in a release that people visit the battlefield “to experience the story of the first decisive Patriot victory of the American Revolution and to experience their national parks. We recognize that tourism is a critical driver to the local economy, bringing 52 jobs and 3.9 million dollars in revenue to communities within 60 miles of the park.”

Other National Park Service sites in the state include Appalachian National Scenic Trail, Blue Ridge Parkway, Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, and Trail of Tears National Historic Trail. 

North Carolina’s 2.5 billion in 2022 is second only to California’s $2.7 billion in direct visitor spending. 

Nationally, the economists found that nearly 312 million park visitors directly spent $23.9 billion in communities within 60 miles of a national park in 2022. This spending supported 378,400 jobs, with 314,600 of those jobs in the cities and towns where visitors stay while visiting national park sites. The cumulative benefit to the U.S. economy was $50.3 billion.  

In 2021, there were 297 million visitors nationwide, with direct spending being $20.5 billion, culminating in an estimated $42.5 billion contributed to the national economy.

National Park Service Director Chuck Sams said that since 1916, the National Park Service has been entrusted with the care of our national parks. 

“With the help of volunteers and partners, we safeguard these special places and share their stories with more than 300 million visitors every year. The impact of tourism to national parks is undeniable: bringing jobs and revenue to communities in every state in the country and making national parks an essential driver to the national economy,” Sams continued in his statement.      

To see more about North Carolina’s parks and other states, the National Park Service and the U.S. Geological Survey have made available an interactive tool, at Visitor Spending Effects – Economic Contributions of National Park Visitor Spending – Social Science, that illustrates visitor spending, jobs, labor income, value added and output effects by sector for national, state and local economies, and year-by-year trend data.

Third in a series on the Albemarle region’s environmental-economic connections.

Persistent algal blooms on the Chowan River are nothing new, but there was a time when the problem, one affecting public health, the environment and the coastal economy, got better. Then the blooms returned, and researchers are still trying to determine why.

Blue-green algal blooms return each summer to rivers in northeastern North Carolina and linger. The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality on July 18 issued a warning to avoid the Chowan River from Tyner on Indian Creek in northern Chowan County to Edenton.

Related: Lingering Chowan River algal bloom prompts state advisory

A 30-month program administered by the Albemarle Resource and Conservation Development Council is more than a year into looking at why the Chowan, Perquimans and Pasquotank rivers are so prone to the blue-green algal blooms that are caused by cyanobacteria feeding frenzies on nutrient-rich waters. These bacteria are potentially toxic to humans and animals and are associated with hypoxia, or deprivation of oxygen, in the water, leading to fish kills.

Albemarle Resource and Conservation Development Council Executive Director Elizabeth Bryant, a longtime resident of the Edenton area, said the problem is significant and real, and affects the area’s most important resources.

“With blue-green algal blooms in Edenton Bay and then farther north on the Chowan River,” Bryant said, “They’ve been severe to the point where warnings had to go out about people not swimming, that if they’re boating, they should steer clear of algal blooms. And not touch the fish in the area. Obviously, that restricts tourism.”

The council serves 10 northeastern North Carolina counties: Camden, Chowan, Currituck, Dare, Gates, Hyde, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Tyrrell and Washington.

Bryant said the algal blooms can be breathtaking and affect towns across the region.

“If you get out of your car, and you can hardly breathe because of the scent of algal blooms, you’re going to get back in your car,” she said. “That will inhibit tourism to Edenton to Elizabeth City.”

Some of the region’s smaller towns’ economies depend on the summer travelers to or from the Outer Banks, Bryant added.

The 30-month-long study, Bryant noted, will yield data for the council’s entire service area. The grant requires gathering samples consistently throughout the year and, importantly, water samples are collected at tributaries and streams, and not necessarily the larger rivers.

The study is funded through the Environmental Enhancement Grant program administered by the state attorney general’s office. The program is part of a 25-year agreement that resulted from the state’s hog waste pollution case settlement with Smithfield Foods.

Attorney General Josh Stein, speaking at an event in May in Bertie County, said that in the 22 years since the agreement was signed, about 210 projects had been funded with awards totaling more than $40 million. Numerous awards have supported different strategies to improve water quality, Stein said.

Colleen Karl is the chairperson of the Chowan Edenton Environmental Group. She and others in the organization are among the numerous amateur, or public, scientists who are gathering samples for analysis as part of the program.

“It’s a very large watershed and we’re sampling on a lot of back roads,” she said.

The Chowan Edenton Environmental Group is sampling the waters of Potecasi Creek, a tributary of the Chowan River that joins the river at almost the same location as the Meherrin River.

“Some of those tributaries that come off Potecasi Creek, were earmarked as pretty high in nitrogen,” she said.

Nitrogen and phosphorous have long been known to contribute to cyanobacteria blooms, but other factors have also been identified, including those related to climate change.

Dr. Hans Paerl and Dr. Nathan Hall of the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences are analyzing the samples. Paerl, who has published papers on climate change and how it affects blue-green algae, explained that the organisms are influenced by changing weather patterns.

“These bloom organisms are particularly sensitive to climate change, including overall warming of the globe’s atmosphere and water, but then also more extreme events, like bigger storms and bigger droughts,” Paerl said. “Those things have come into the equation to more or less complicate factors in terms of coming up with recommending management strategies.”

Paerl has been studying the Chowan River watershed since the 1980s, when herring was still abundant in the river.

“When I first started working there, they had big herring pickling places (where) I used to buy my herring over in Colerain,” he recalled.

He was part of a team that came up with an early management plan for reducing the nutrient load entering the Chowan.

“When I first got hired to look at the blooms on the Chowan River, that was back in 1980, I believe. We did a good job. We identified both nitrogen and phosphorus and came up with some recommendations for how much reductions needed to take place in terms of input of those nutrients, and it proved to be pretty effective,” Paerl said.

It was a temporary reprieve.

“Then 15 or 20 years later, the blooms returned to the Chowan — pretty much the same players. So now we’re trying to figure out what has happened in the interim,” he said. “We’re still really aiming for nutrient reductions. We may need to reduce them even more now than we did before. The additional thing is climate change.”

But climate change does not completely explain why there has been an increase in algal blooms in rivers like the Chowan. As Hall explained, when the Albemarle Resource and Conservation Development Council first approached the researchers, they wanted to know where the nutrients had originated. In reviewing data and literature on nutrients in the rivers, a sudden spike wasn’t apparent.

“We have flow gauges (on the rivers) and the Division of Water Resources measures the concentrations. So, we have flow, we have concentrations, we can calculate loads,” Hall said. “Those major rivers don’t look particularly spectacular as far as how much load. The concentrations in the rivers really aren’t that high.”

What was apparent though was that relatively minor tributaries to the Albemarle Sound where gauges were in place or were otherwise monitored seemed to have significantly higher nutrient loads.

“For the few small streams where we do have concentration data, like the Scuppernong River, the Pasquotank River, the Perquimans River — these are smaller tributaries to the Albemarle Sound area — the concentrations are really high,” Hall said.

Those concentrations are also being found in the tributary streams — concentrations so high that they may be a significant contributing factor to algal blooms.

“A lot of the smaller streams are three times higher concentration than the big rivers. So if they’re carrying a proportional amount of flow and they’re about 15% of the watershed, they’re carrying three times higher concentration, they could be 40% of the load,” Hall said.

The study recently passed the 12-month mark, and there are still a number of unanswered questions. It remains unclear, for example, where or how the nitrogen is entering the river system.

“The organic nitrogen component is something that’s increasing in a lot of the streams in North Carolina. And it’s been kind of a head-scratcher as to where it’s coming from,” Hall said.

He explained that one of the goals of the project is to look across some of the streams that have different watershed and land-use characteristics, that are higher agriculture use, or include urban development, and try to investigate what the dissolved organic components look like.

Land use may be the key to mitigating extreme algal blooms, but to date the role of land use, how it affects nutrient loads, is not completely clear. To North Carolina State University researcher Dr. Chris Osburn, who is analyzing the data, the information is by no means definitive.

“Preliminary evidence points to changes in land use and climate (especially extreme rainfall events) that can mobilize DON (dissolved organic nitrogen) from wetlands and forested landscapes into tributaries, which could be driving some of the increases in DON observed in the Chowan River. Research into the sources of DON to these tributaries is ongoing,” Osburn responded to Coastal Review in an email.

Even if the sources of nutrients that are creating algal blooms in the Albemarle Basin are identified, Paerl said limiting the blooms is about the best that can be accomplished.

“We’re probably never going to be able to get rid of cyanobacteria in these slow-moving systems, and even in Albemarle Sound,” he said. “But we can keep it from getting worse.”

He said that’s essentially the point of mitigation strategies: holding back an issue or a problem from getting worse. “After all, cyanobacteria have been around on Earth for 2 billion years. They’re not going to go away.”

Compared to 2020, visitor spending across the state was up 45% in 2021.

Visitor spending was $79 million a day in 2021 statewide, and $6.4 million in visitor-generated taxes per day, according to a study the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce released Wednesday.

The numbers show a strong recovery seen from 2020, and for many counties from 2019, officials said.

All 100 counties in the state benefited, including those on the coast. For example, Dare County spending increased by 30%, or $1.8 billion, and also had an increase in direct tourism employees of 4%, or 12,295. Top percentage spending increases from 2020 were in Gates County, up 83%, and Beaufort County, up 71%. Gates also had a 25% increase in tourism employment.

“The strong economic results for one of our most vital industries speak to the resilience of our local tourism partners and to the state’s enduring appeal,” said North Carolina Commerce Secretary Machelle Baker Sanders. “We celebrate the qualities that make North Carolina an attractive destination and are inspired by the people who provide visitors to our state an outstanding travel experience.”

The preliminary findings are based on an annual visitor spending study commissioned by Visit North Carolina, a unit of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, and conducted by Tourism Economics in collaboration with the U.S. Travel Association. The annual spending study provides preliminary estimates of domestic and international traveler expenditures as well as employment, payroll income, and state and local tax revenues directly generated by these expenditures.

The statistical model draws on detailed data from VisitNC as well as data derived from federal and state government sources, nationally known private and nonprofit travel organizations, and other travel industry sources.

Domestic travel statewide increased in 2021, as international visitation lagged. The spending total of $28.9 billion fell about 1% below the record set in 2019. The sum represents a 45% increase from pandemic-stricken 2020.

“Just as we’re gratified by the achievement statewide in 2021, the county-level report underscores the value of each destination,” said Wit Tuttell, director of Visit NC. “This is where travelers experience the state, from its natural beauty to the character of our people. It’s also the heart of the economic impact, the sustenance for thousands of businesses and local governments. We look forward to raising the arc even higher as we welcome more people to places they won’t find anywhere else.”

WILMINGTON – North Carolina is in a prime position to become a hub for offshore wind energy manufacturing and a major contributor to renewable power production on the East Coast, according to state officials and offshore wind energy experts.

The state’s potential to grab a big slice of the offshore wind manufacturing pie was highlighted last week during the inaugural meeting of the North Carolina Taskforce for Offshore Wind Economic Resource Strategies, or NC TOWERS.

Offshore wind manufacturing has the potential to bring an estimated $140 billion to the state and tens of thousands of new jobs by 2035, according to officials, who emphasized that, to make that happen, the time to act is now.

“Even if there were no (wind energy) activity off the coast of North Carolina there’s still a significant opportunity for North Carolina because of all the activity in all the other states,” said John Hardin, executive director of the N.C. Department of Commerce’s Office of Science, Technology and Innovation. “North Carolina is really well positioned to seize a lot of this activity and seize in a gentle, friendly sort of way and make sure we take advantage of the opportunity. North Carolina has the strongest manufacturing economy on the East Coast of the United States. It has the largest share of its GPD, gross domestic product, that comes from manufacturing of any other state.”

Hardin was one of several speakers at the meeting Thursday in Wilmington, home to the state’s largest port, which is poised to reap some of the potential economic benefits of offshore wind energy production.

North Carolina is currently the southernmost state on the East Coast for offshore wind development.

There are two federal offshore wind lease areas – the Wilmington East Wind Energy Area, or WEA, and Kitty Hawk WEA.

Development of the Kitty Hawk WEA, which could power upwards of 700,000 homes, is well underway.

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is expected to lease the Wilmington WEA sometime this spring. This area could power more than 500,000 homes.

Both lease areas have the potential to generate upwards of 4 gigawatts of power. That’s the equivalent of four nuclear power plants.

Andy Geissbuehler, an advisory director with BVG Associates, a renewable energy strategic consulting firm based in the United Kingdom, said the state has an edge to managing a piece of future offshore leases.

“We’ve got approximately 20 gigawatts of projects which are active projects with lease areas,” Geissbuehler said, referring to all of the lease areas on the East Coast. “That is relative to a supply chain point of view. Twenty gigawatts, that’s really 20 nuclear power stations, totally clean with free fuel and I think that’s a fantastic opportunity.”

He explained to the task force that operational maintenance is nearly half of the lifetime cost of a typical 1-gigawatt windfarm.

The lifetime of a 1-gagawatt offshore wind farm is about 25 to 30 years, he said. At the end of that lifecycle, a wind farm can be repowered to operate another 25 to 30 years.

“This is a truly local business so I think this is an attractive opportunity,” Geissbuehler said. “Long-term jobs. Local jobs.”

Those jobs cross an array of fields from information technology, control and electrical systems to supplies like secondary steel, wind turbine foundations and the components needed to install those foundations.

Offshore wind manufacturing takes place largely in Europe, limiting currently the supply chain to developers in the U.S.

“Now the developers are saying, if we only had more suppliers, if we only had more ports, if we only had more shipyards,” Geissbuehler said. “It’s never balanced. It’s always a challenge. But I think for North Carolina, now’s really the time to fully engage and I think your task force is the right means to do that.”

NC TOWERS is a group of 30 stakeholders representing state and local governments; sectors of the fisheries, military and tourism industries; and universities that have been directed to advise Gov. Roy Cooper and state policymakers on advancing offshore wind energy projects with a focus on economic development and the creation of jobs.

The task force was established last June under Cooper’s Executive Order 218, which takes aim at addressing climate change through clean energy initiatives.

Cooper emphasized the offshore wind goals set forth in the order, which is to get the state to 70% reduction in carbon over 2005 levels by 2030 and to get to zero carbon emissions from the power sector by 2050.

“Why clean energy?” he said during the meeting. “It is essential to fighting climate change. We know that. It’s also essential because it’s going to put money in people’s pockets.”

He said that more than 100,000 clean energy jobs have been created and billions of dollars of investments have been made in the state.

In December, Toyota Motor North America announced it is locating a new $1.29 billion automotive battery manufacturing plant in Greensboro, where, beginning in 2025, it will be capable of delivering enough lithium-ion batteries for 200,000 vehicles, according to the company’s website.

Greensboro has also been picked as the new site of Boom Supersonic’s first full-scale manufacturing facility. Boom Supersonic, an aviation manufacturer that touts sustainable supersonic travel, is set to break ground at Piedmont Triad International Airport this year, with production beginning in 2024. The company has said it will add more than 2,400 local jobs by 2032.

Cooper noted that North Carolina is in the top five states in solar installed capacity.

“Now we need you in this room today to help us with the next steps, the next ideas, with the next opportunities and with advocacy at the end of the day because time is of the essence when we’re talking about offshore wind,” he said. “The earlier we can get into this the more we can reap the economic benefits from it. It is astounding the amount of clean energy we can produce and the amount of money that can go in the pockets of North Carolinians.”

The task force is to produce an annual report of its recommendations for policies and programs developing offshore wind energy projects; enhancing the state’s supply chain for offshore wind energy; creating and developing the work force to support offshore projects; and ensuring equitable access, particularly for underserved communities, to economic benefits created by offshore wind energy.

Members of the task force were asked to self-appoint themselves to one or more of four subcommittees: economic opportunity and business development; infrastructure and environmental justice and inclusion; outreach and engagement; and workforce, education and training opportunity development.

Department of Commerce Chief of Staff and NC TOWERS Chair Marqueta Welton said that money has not been allocated to the task force, but that the biggest resource of the task force is its members.

“We’re only limited by our imaginations because we can make some things happen,” she said.

The four-hour-long meeting last week ended with a question-and-answer session, one in which some task force members touched on topics that only scratch the surface of concerns raised by residents of coastal counties closest to the offshore wind energy lease areas.

One of those questions was about where energy produced from wind farms off the North Carolina coast will be connected to land.

“It’s a very prudent question,” Geissbuehler said. “We need to look forward and see where are the hurdles ahead of us. Some of these hurdles have a very long lead time to resolve because on the grid we always talk about the interconnection, per say, to be able to connect to a substation. I think that’s a well-known problem I’m sure that will be resolved, but the other challenge is how do we cross the beaches? How do we get under the bridges into the load centers?”

Other members of the taskforce briefly discussed how outreach will be particularly important to the fishing and tourism industries.

North Carolina Fisheries Association Executive Director Glenn Skinner touched on the concerns raised by fishermen about the potential impacts of offshore wind turbines to fish and other marine life.

Mike Blanch, an associate director with BVG Associates, said that concerns about fishery impacts are important to address, but said he is puzzled by such concerns because there is evidence from wind farms off the coast of England that suggest wind farms actually improve the environment.

“They stop dredging. They stop people fishing in unsustainable ways. They’ve actually created sporting areas for certain species,” he said.

Blanch emphasized a need for renewable energy’s impact on climate change.

“It’s important to realize that offshore wind is actually offering something very positive as well,” he said. “There is this wider issue of climate change. If you take one species like the right whale, you might be very concerned about that, but climate change is going to stress all of the species and offshore wind is one way, and there aren’t that many, of tackling the inherit problem of high carbon emissions and so there’s a bigger picture here that I think should help temper worries.”

NC TOWERS’ next meeting is scheduled for May 5.

Submerged aquatic vegetation, or SAV, also referred to as seagrass, provides critical ecosystem services in coastal waters.

SAV protects against shoreline erosion, improves water quality and provides habitat for fish and waterfowl. It is critically important to the wellbeing of both estuarine ecosystems and coastal communities.

North Carolina is home to the highest seagrass acreage on the Atlantic seaboard. But within the state and around the world, SAV is under threat. Some estimates say that since 1980, the world has lost nearly a third of its total seagrass. The decline has accelerated in recent years due to human activity such as habitat destruction and pollution. The loss in SAV not only presents issues within the ecosystem, but comes with hefty economic costs.

A new report from Duke University and North Carolina State University details the economic losses associated with the decline of SAV in the Albemarle-Pamlico estuary. The report was prepared using funding from the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership, or APNEP. A conservative estimate from the study projects that losing 5% of submerged aquatic vegetation over the next 10 years could cost the state $8.6 million.

Poor water quality is one of the primary threats to SAV.

“SAV is critical to maintaining good water quality in the estuary,” said Dr. Timothy Ellis, quantitative ecologist for APNEP. “But it also requires good water quality to grow.”

If water is too polluted, sunlight cannot reach the seagrass on the ocean floor. This makes it harder for seagrass to grow. It becomes a destructive cycle, since one of the primary benefits of SAV is that it helps clean the water.

According to Ellis, this report attempts to translate ecological consequences such as these into economic terms. The hope is that in doing so, more people will be able to understand the significance of SAV declines.

“This is just another piece of the puzzle that we’re trying to put together to help convey the importance of this resource,” Ellis said.

Environmental economist Dr. Sara Sutherland of Duke University was a co-primary investigator for this report. While it is hard to completely monetize ecosystem benefits, she emphasizes the usefulness of economic terms when addressing natural resource issues. It is one of the clearest ways to convey to policymakers and other stakeholders how SAV declines will affect the economy.

“People rely on these ecosystem services without paying directly for them,” Sutherland said. “It’s important that we understand the value of our natural resources.”

Sutherland and the other researchers used transfer benefit methods in order to make their projections. In other words, they didn’t collect their own data, but drew from available studies. From there, they created as comprehensive of a picture as possible regarding the economic cost of SAV loss. They focused on four main categories: commercial fishing, recreational fishing, carbon sequestration and home values.

Using this data, they charted four possible SAV-loss scenarios for the next decade: 5% loss, 15% loss, 25% loss and 50% loss. If SAV in the estuary declines by 5% in the next 10 years, the midpoint estimate for the total cost is $8.6 million in 2019 dollars. If SAV declines by 50%, the cost is projected to be $88.8 million.

Notably, over half of the cost in all scenarios comes from the carbon sequestration category. SAV absorbs carbon dioxide and stores it. The loss of seagrasses would release that carbon back into the world.

But commercial and recreational fishing will also be greatly affected by SAV loss. Blue crabs rely on seagrass as a nursery habitat, and a 5% decadal loss in SAV could result in $700,000 in lost profit for the commercial fishing industry. If there is a 50% loss in SAV, that cost rises to $6.7 million.

The data shows that SAV loss affects many people without them realizing it. Even home values can be affected in the next decade by the loss of seagrass.

“The idea is that when the SAV declines, we lose some of the value that we get from these ecosystem services,” Sutherland said. “And that value is capitalized into the property value for homeowners.”

The researchers focused on a 10-year timeframe because projections for more than 10 years would include too much uncertainty and also because much of North Carolina’s coastal policy is developed using increments of five to 10 years. The actual costs are not limited to the 10-year timeframe of the report — SAV lost today will continue to impact the state’s economy beyond the projected time period.

Both APNEP and Sutherland emphasize that despite the staggering potential costs in each scenario, the projections are extremely conservative. Without more data, it is impossible to get a complete picture of what declines in SAV cost financially.

For example, for the commercial and recreational fishing categories, the researchers only focused on species for which they had data. These were red drum, blue crab and spotted seatrout. But the research team believes that other species for which they don’t have data would also be affected by declines in SAV.

Ellis hopes that this report will encourage other researchers to start filling in those gaps. If the report is to eventually be updated, this initial version serves as a roadmap toward what future research is needed. APNEP hopes to facilitate some of this research in the coming years.

“We have aspirations of updating this economic report down the road, but we want to make sure we put our program and our scientific community partners in a position to be able to produce an updated report that moves the ball forward,” Ellis said.

In addition to inspiring future research, Ellis hopes that this report makes the plight of SAV loss more relatable to a wide audience. It could fuel efforts or legislation to restore and protect SAV.

Seagrass restoration is a costly endeavor, and currently has a two-thirds failure rate. So APNEP is addressing SAV conservation in two ways. First, by focusing on improving water quality so that SAV can thrive. And second, by attempting to preserve the SAV that currently exists in the Albemarle-Pamlico estuary. Because if it is lost, this report shows that the effects will be costly.