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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Third in a series

Another year brought another wave of arguments over shellfish leases in North Carolina coastal waters.

Before summer officially began, legislators added language to a bill that would temporarily ban new leases in the waters behind Topsail Island. This provision was tacked onto legislation originally written to extend New Hanover County’s shellfish lease moratorium another five years, through to 2031.

This was the second consecutive year that representatives from Topsail Island’s three towns attempted to pause new leases in Stump and Topsail sounds.

House Bill 1113, sponsored by Rep. Ted Davis, R-New Hanover, also included a provision to extend a moratorium on new shellfish leases in Carteret County’s Bogue Sound until July 1, 2028. The bill was withdrawn from the legislative calendar and sent to the House rules committee on June 18. It hasn’t moved since.

New Hanover County’s request to continue blocking new leases from its waters was tucked into the state budget Gov. Josh Stein signed July 7. The law grants the county a two-year extension, not the five years originally sought.

That’s two more years that prospective shellfish farmers or those looking to expand their business will remain shut out of the waters in North Carolina’s two southernmost coastal counties. Brunswick County has had a shellfish lease moratorium in place since Harry S. Truman was in the White House.

Lease moratoria and poor water quality have resulted in areas closed to shellfish harvesting farther north, effectively bottlenecking growers into waterways that are still open, including those around Topsail Island in Onslow and Pender counties.

Clashes over shared public waters are not likely to ebb with the tide as North Carolina’s aquaculture or mariculture industry expands.

The North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries received by its Aug. 1 deadline 49 shellfish lease applications for six counties: Carteret, Dare, Hyde, Onslow, Pamlico and Pender, according to information provided by the division.

New lease applications cover a combined 55 acres of bottom and water columns. That includes 15.75 acres in Bogue Sound, where what turned out to be a seven-year moratorium expired on July 1.

In total, six lease applications were submitted for Onslow and Pender counties – four for Onslow and two for Pender.

“We have heard from some private residents and also some fishing guides and some commercial interests about their concerns about, in particular, column leases,” said William Snyder, chair of the Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission. “We know that those concerns are still out there. I think that you could say that there’s some disappointment that we were not able to get the moratorium first and then get a study to confirm or deny the concerns that we have.”

Balancing act

On a positive note, he said, two studies on shellfish leasing — one commissioned by the General Assembly and one lead by North Carolina Sea Grant in partnership with the Coastal Federation — are examining how to balance future shellfish lease site selections, help shape future policy to protect the industry, and ease user conflicts.

“We’ve got to hang our hats on how these studies play out and listen to see what that tells us in terms of conflicting uses of our public trust waters,” Snyder said.

The North Carolina Collaboratory is expected to present an interim report on its study at year’s end.

Last week, Sea Grant and the Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, launched an online survey asking oysters growers in Pender and Onslow counties to share their experiences and perspectives on the use of public trust waters.

The organizations are hosting a meeting next month for shellfish growers.

Back in April, local elected officials, private property owners and recreational water users were invited a public meeting with Sea Grant and Coastal Federation representatives to discuss their concerns about leases in Stump and Topsail sounds.

People at that meeting overwhelmingly expressed worries about water column leases, or those where shellfish growers use floating gear to grow oysters at the water’s surface. Floating cages, they argued, impede boating and kayaking access, infringe on popular fishing spots, and impact waterfront viewsheds.

Recommendations shared with Sea Grant and Coastal Federation staff will help shape updates to the North Carolina Strategic Plan for Shellfish Mariculture, a plan commissioned by the General Assembly in 2017. This document is effectively the state’s roadmap for a sustainable shellfish industry.

The organizations also anticipate publishing next year a Geographic Information System, or GIS, database pinpointing areas where leases may or may not be suitable in the waterways behind Topsail Island.

“It’s important to acknowledge that many residents have some concerns about navigation and access and those are important to take into consideration as part of the conversation, just as the benefits of shellfish aquaculture,” Coastal Federation Chief Program Officer Ana Živanović-Nenadović told Coastal Review last month. “But ideally, those conversations should happen without having to close water bodies to new leases.”

Days after Bogue Sound’s shellfish lease moratorium expired, Carteret County Commissioner Marianne Waldroup and Rep. Celeste Cairns, R-Carteret, held a meeting with state fisheries officials, aquaculture specialists, marine scientists, the N.C. Fisheries Association and other stakeholders to discuss ways to minimize potential user conflicts in the sound.

Carteret Community College Aquaculture Department Chair David Cerino attended that meeting.

Cerino, who also grows shellfish, explained that there aren’t that many sites ideal for shellfish aquaculture in Bogue Sound. Areas dense with submerged aquatic vegetation, or plants that grow under water, portions of the waterway permanently closed around the Morehead City port, and areas closed to unexploded military ordnance, cut down lease space, he said.

“I think once it was shared that there wouldn’t be leases everywhere because they can’t site them there, most of the town representatives were less opposed to it being open for leases,” Cerino said.

The group agreed to hold future talks about identifying low-conflict spots in Bogue Sound and potential buffer zones from the land.

A history of public opposition

About 34% of the state’s coastal waters are permanently closed to shellfish harvest because of pollution and lack of monitoring capacity, according to the 2021-25 Oyster Restoration and Protection Plan for North Carolina.

Today, 6% of coastal waters remain closed to new shellfish leases, according to the Division of Marine Fisheries.

New shellfish enterprises have been blocked from waters in Brunswick County since 1949. Farther north, new leases have not been permitted in Core Sound since the mid-1990s. In 1996, legislators approved a permanent ban on new leases in the sound.

Those moratoria were implemented because of public backlash that leases violate the public trust, according to an April 2020 division report.

“Historically, public opposition to shellfish leases resulting from user conflicts has been a major concern,” states the report. “Shellfish moratorium have been imposed in recent years in areas where user conflict issues have been especially acute.”

Cerino called moratoria a “knee-jerk reaction” and a “nuclear option of just eliminating something because you’re maybe worried about a specific circumstance.”

“What that does is it funnels people to the areas that are still open because a lot of people are wanting to get into this business,” he continued. “I would like to see a moratorium on moratoriums, but I’m biased. They basically take away the opportunity to establish sustainable businesses that have positive environmental impacts and employment opportunities and increase our seafood production and improve local economies and water quality. There are definitely areas where we shouldn’t have shellfish leases, but they are not entire sounds, entire waterbodies that should be closed off.”

The rise in user conflicts has driven up the numbers of legal challenges against the Division of Marine Fisheries, according to the report.

But no growth goes without challenge, Živanović-Nenadović said.

“I think our waterfronts are consistently changing with our human activity. When you build a marina, you change the waterfront,” she said. “When the Coastal Federation builds a living shoreline, we change the waterfront. It’s important to always remember that those are valid and compatible uses of our public trust water bodies and have been deemed to have benefit to society, and that’s why they’re allowed and why we have a public permitting system in place for those uses.”

The challenge, she said, has been and continues to be bringing people together “to get to a point of shared values and understanding and accepting that these water bodies are for everybody to use.”

In 2019, the General Assembly charged the fisheries division with identifying potential shellfish aquaculture enterprise areas, or SEAs, in waters closed to new leases. SEAs are designed to speed up shellfish lease permitting and help reduce user conflicts by grouping leases in large pre-permitted areas.

The state had not established one of these areas at the time this story was published.

North Carolina Sea Grant and the North Carolina Coastal Federation are inviting oyster growers in Pender and Onslow counties to share their experiences and perspectives on the use of public trust waters.

The information gathered through a survey and focus groups will help ensure that future recommendations for shellfish mariculture development are grounded in the practical experiences of North Carolina’s shellfish growers while supporting a balanced approach to coastal resource management.

North Carolina Sea Grant is leading this National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-funded project in partnership with the Coastal Federation to improve future shellfish lease siting in North Carolina. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

Through surveys, focus groups, and participatory mapping exercises with oyster growers and other coastal stakeholders, the project will examine potential use conflicts with commercial and recreational fishing, boating, waterfront property owners, and other coastal water users. The goal is to identify practical solutions to help inform future shellfish lease siting. Additionally, findings will support policy recommendations ensuring future siting decisions are informed by both stakeholder input and real-world experience on the water. 

In addition to the survey, North Carolina Sea Grant and the Federation will host two focus groups for oyster growers from Pender and Onslow counties in September. The discussions will provide an opportunity for growers to expand on their survey responses, participate in mapping exercises, share local knowledge, and discuss opportunities and challenges related to shellfish lease siting with project partners. 

Oyster growers in Pender and Onslow counties interested in participating are encouraged to complete the survey and indicate their interest in attending a focus group at the end of the questionnaire. Meeting details and location information will be sent to those who register. 

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

This report has been updated.

MOREHEAD CITY – A hunting and fishing club is challenging a Morehead City applicant’s recently approved shellfish lease in South River in Carteret County.

The North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission’s Shellfish Cultivation Lease Review Committee is set to meet at 10 a.m. Tuesday, July 18, at the Division of Marine Fisheries’ office at 5285 U.S. Highway 70 West, Morehead City.

The meeting is to decide on a third-party hearing request Morehead City attorney Robert Pike submitted May 4 on behalf of Lukens Island Timber Enterprises, LLC, challenging the potential lease to Changing Tide Renovations, LLC, a home improvement company registered to Charles Chris Allen of Morehead City.

The meeting will be held in-person only, and there will not be an opportunity for public comment.

Division of Marine Fisheries Director Kathy B. Rawls approved the 3.72-acre bottom lease and water-column lease April 5, after a public hearing was held Feb. 15.

Lukens Island Timber Enterprises, among other objections, contends that its riparian rights are infringed upon by the lease. The hunting and fishing club said that it has owned the adjoining property since 1991 and has built ramps, piers, docks, paths, duck blinds and has a clubhouse that accommodates as many as 40 people.

The club’s request also notes that the lease would affect its waterfront development plans.

Doug Brady, a Carteret County developer and member of Lukens Island Hunting Club, spoke at the hearing, saying that while he was supportive of the mariculture and shellfish industry, “I do think that in granting these leases though, it is paramount that siting of them minimizes user conflicts,” according to the minutes from the meeting.

Chris Matteo, head of the North Carolina Shellfish Grower’s Association, also spoke during the hearing but in support of the lease. Matteo said he operates a farm in Pamlico County that’s surrounded by a 6,400-acre hunt club. “They’re primarily duck hunters, we coexist nicely,” he’s quoted as saying in the minutes. He also noted that Lukens was abandoned about 110 years ago, and there’s been no development there since.

Allen notes in his application that he has experience in harvesting wild oysters and plans to enroll in the mariculture program at Carteret Community College in Morehead City in the fall.

Division Shellfish Lease and Aquaculture Program Coordinator Owen Mulvey-McFerron told Coastal Review that Allen had since completed the course. 

During the meeting, Division of Marine Fisheries staff will provide a brief, preliminary overview and orientation regarding the lease. Afterward, the committee will hear oral arguments from the petitioner, division staff, and the lessee, and will deliberate and vote on an outcome.

The record of decision and other documents pertaining to the meeting can be found online.

The Coastal Resources Commission recently approved rule changes that allow for a floating upweller system to be permitted as a platform at a private docking facility or permitted marina.

Floating upweller systems, or FLUPSYs, are structures used in mariculture to grow shellfish until they reach a specific size to survive in a shellfish lease.

The commission also approved during its Nov. 17 meeting in Beaufort the required fiscal analysis for the rule change and language clarifying that floating upweller systems are part of the allowance of shading impacts considered in the permitting process.

The commission had been working on floating upweller systems policy for the last few years, having paused to consider floating processing facilities or platforms sited within a shellfish lease, according to Division of Coastal Management documents.

At the September meeting, the commission decided not to amend the floating structure policies to allow for structures within a shellfish lease. The commission instead opted for those requests to be made through the variance process.

The commission first approved in November 2020 the proposed rule amendments for FLUPSYs and the corresponding fiscal analysis. A public hearing took place May 2021.

Though the amendments were approved by the commission, the rules never went before the Rules Review Commission for final approval because of the continued discussion on floating structures, documents state.

The decision in September allowed for division staff to move forward with the proposed FLUPSY rules presented at the November meeting.

Co-published with the Carteret County News-Times

Carteret County commissioners Monday night agreed to support the concept – but not yet the details – of a Carteret County Mariculture Hub at the county-owned and operated boat ramp at Straits in North River off Harkers Island Road.

Todd Miller, founder and executive director of the North Carolina Coastal Federation, pitched the idea to commissioners during their monthly meeting in their chambers in the administration building on Courthouse Square.

Basically, Miller told the board, the idea is to use an unused acre at the boat ramp to build a dock and a 50-by-50-foot building with refrigerated storage so shellfish farmers, mostly oyster growers, can bring their products to shore and store them until they can be picked up for distribution elsewhere.

The Coastal Federation is seeking grants to build the facilities. Miller said it would not be a retail operation and agreed that his organization would try to site the facility in such a way as to help county commissioners find a way to still put in two additional boat ramps at the facility.

Commissioner Chris Chadwick, who represents the Down East communities, said that was an important consideration, as the existing ramp is overcrowded and chaotic at peak usage times.

The Coastal Federation for many years has been engaged in a long-term effort to increase oyster production in coastal North Carolina, in part to buoy the economy but also to protect and improve water quality.

Oysters filter pollutants as they feed.

Miller told commissioners the North Carolina General Assembly is strongly supportive of growing the oyster farming industry and believes growth would be a public benefit. The legislature has set a goal of increasing production from an economic benefit to the state of $6 million in 2018 to $100 million by 2030.

Carteret County, he said, leads the state in oysters grown in leases approved by the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries, and many of those are in North River, making the Straits site a good choice for a hub. The Division of Marine Fisheries is also supportive, he said.

In 2010, statewide, there were 10,000 bushels of farm-raised oysters, and by 2021, there were 60,000 bushels, so the industry is already growing. After a dip following Hurricane Florence in 2018 and during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of applications for leases is also growing.

A recent study, Miller said, identified training, water access and refrigerated storage as hurdles to growth of the industry.

But, he said, the aquaculture program at Carteret Community College is already doing a great job with training, so with improvements in those other two areas, there is a lot of room for expansion of the industry.

He said he believes there is room on the Straits site, with re-permitting from the state, for the proposed facility and additional boat ramps.

Commissioner Jimmy Farrington of Emerald Isle, who represents a portion of western Carteret County, noted that the county, through its Shore Protection Office, had worked successfully with the Coastal Federation on several projects, including dredging and a living shoreline with a rock sill and planting of wetlands vegetation, at Atlantic Harbor in Down East.

The main thing, he said to Miller, is for the growers to work together with the federation and the county to make the idea feasible and successful.

Chris Matteo, president of the North Carolina Shellfish Growers Association, also spoke at the meeting Monday and said he believes that will happen.

“I’m committed,” he said.

As a result of the discussion, Carteret County Manager Tommy Burns is to write a letter in support of the concept, at the direction of the commissioners.

Miller is to return to the commission at some point with more details. He noted that there is a long way to go, as permits must be obtained for the building and for the dock.

Reprinted from the Carteret County News-Times

MOREHEAD CITY — Construction has begun on a $200,000 shellfish mariculture demonstration center at Carteret Community College that will expand research and training opportunities.

CCC aquaculture department chairman David Cerino said Tuesday the N.C. Shellfish Mariculture Demonstration Center will “provide shore-side support for the adjacent lease in Bogue Sound where we will conduct training and applied research for the shellfish aquaculture industry in collaboration with North Carolina Sea Grant.”

The approximate 2,500-square-foot structure is being built behind the Howard Aquaculture Building at CCC.

Funding for the project comes from a $50,000 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Sea Grant Aquaculture Extension and Technology Transfer grant, as well as a $150,000 appropriation from the North Carolina General Assembly. Funds provide for construction and equipping of the center.

Cerino said he’s excited to see construction well underway and expects the facility to open this spring. LA Downey & Son of Morehead City is in charge of construction.

The original completion date was October 2018, but Hurricane Florence caused the project to be moved back, according to Cerino.

The N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries approved a 2.57-acre research demonstration lease last summer as part of the process to create the center for Carteret Community College and North Carolina State University students and researchers.

Mariculture, a specialized branch of aquaculture, involves the cultivation of marine organisms for food and other products in the open ocean or sound, an enclosed section of the ocean or in tanks, ponds or waterways filled with seawater.

The site will provide hands-on training and research activities to advance sustainable shellfish mariculture, according to Cerino.

He said it will not only benefit students, but help develop businesses for those interested in the industry.

The area starts just east of the Howard Aquaculture Building and extends to the west side of the N.C. State University Center for Marine Sciences and Technology building.

Cerino and North Carolina Sea Grant marine aquaculture specialist Chuck Weirich worked with University of North Carolina Wilmington to secure a $300,000 grant in 2015 from NOAA, with $50,000 of the money earmarked for the Bogue Sound shellfish lease expansion project.

The NOAA grant provides funds to establish shellfish mariculture demonstration centers at UNCW and the site shared by N.C. State University CMAST and CCC.

The grant also funds work that involves comparison of oyster gear types and different native oyster strains at industry partner sites around the state and evaluation of sunray Venus clams as a means to diversify the industry.

Cerino said the area would also be used to do research on other types of clams and bay scallops.

The lease allows for non-commercial production of shellfish within the proposed area.

The three main goals of the site are:

• To enhance the opportunities for the aquaculture curriculum courses currently offered at Carteret Community College.
• To provide a site for the development of the N.C. Shellfish Farming Academy, which will provide training for new and existing shellfish growers through the CCC Corporate and Community Education Division.
• To serve as a site to conduct experiments to develop best management practices for sustainable industry development.

As for the new structure, it’s “basically a covered pavilion with two main areas. One will be for the filtered seawater systems and the other is a work area for shellfish nursery systems and for sorting and processing shellfish,” he said, adding there’s also a storage area for equipment.

This story is provided courtesy of the Carteret County News-Times, a tri-weekly newspaper published in Morehead City. Coastal Review Online partners with the News-Times to provide our readers with news of the North Carolina coast.