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.