North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality staff are in the process of updating the state’s long-term strategy to protect coastal habitat, a necessity for a sustainable seafood industry.

According to the strategy called the Coastal Habitat Protection Plan, or CHPP, the need for a coastwide habitat plan came about in the 1990s because of growing concerns about fish populations, declining coastal habitats, and deteriorating water quality.

The CHPP was mandated by the Fisheries Reform Act of 1997, and the first plan was adopted in 2004 by the Marine Fisheries, Environmental Management and Coastal Resources commissions. The document, which was designed to “achieve the long-term enhancement of coastal fisheries by identifying, protecting, restoring, and enhancing critical fish habitats,” and is updated every five years.

CHPP is to provide “information on the habitats’ distribution and abundance, ecological functions and importance to fish production, status and trends, threats to the habitats, and includes recommendations to address threats,” according to DEQ’s Division of Marine Fisheries.

The Division of Marine Fisheries staff that make up the CHPP team, with guidance from a steering committee, have been working on the 2026 update. Charlie Deaton, habitat protection supervisor with the division, presented an status update to the Environmental Management Commission during the July 9 meeting in Raleigh.

He said the staff are drafting issue papers for the 2026 update that are broadly organized under three different themes: ecosystem-based management for coastal habitats, seagrass protection and restoration, and planning for multi-decadal wetland change, all of which build on previous editions of the CHPP.

The outlines of these papers are to be presented to the steering committee by web conference 1-3 p.m. Wednesday, the division announced July 15. The full agenda and link to the meeting are on the NCDEQ website.

Deaton said that the last full rewrite of the plan was in 2016. New issue papers were added to the 2016 CHPP as the 2021 update, and “we are continuing efforts on these issue papers and introducing a few more with this edition of the CHPP.”

Deaton reminded members that the 2021 CHPP prioritized submerged aquatic vegetation, or SAV, protection and restoration through water quality improvements. The chapter on seagrasses “had 13 different recommended actions, but the big one that this commission has heard the most about is the recommended water clarity standard to ensure that adequate light penetration allows for seagrass growth.”

According to that document, seagrasses are “critical for healthy fisheries, such as shrimp, blue crab, red drum, and flounder and provides valuable ecosystem functions.” The state has one of the largest seagrass habitats on the East Coast, but water quality impairment coupled with climate change stressors can limit their growth, reproduction, and distribution.

The chapter for the 2026 update on seagrasses will use data from the Albemarle Pamlico National Estuary Partnership’s recent findings on seagrass decline. APNEP, a partnership of NCDEQ and the Environmental Protection Agency, has been fundamental in CHPP development in some capacity since its inception.

From 2006 to 2020, the state’s estuaries continue to lose more than 1% per year of its seagrass extent, which “might not sound like a lot, but that’s 15% in the time period. And if you look 30 years into the future, that’s another 35% that we would be losing if we continue at this rate. So, it’s a concerning rate of loss,” Deaton said. “We’ve lost 50% of our continuous seagrass meadows, and the losses have been most notable at the deep edge of the seagrass beds. So that implies a connection to water quality and decreased water clarity, light not penetrating deep enough.”

This new seagrass chapter is to build on the 2021 CHPP’s proposal to develop a water clarity standard, which was referred to the Environmental Management Commission’s water quality committee where it’s on hold. 

Turbidity “remains the biggest threat we see to seagrasses, and so it’s something we really want to get some action on,” Deaton said. Staff are also going to work on a permitting framework for active seagrass restoration projects, which could be planting seeds or transplanting seagrasses in areas that no longer have seagrass but should still have the conditions to support it.

The paper is also to explore habitat protections under the Marine Fisheries Commission authority. The commission considered restrictions for shrimp trawling in 2023 but decided against those. Instead, staff was asked to look into what that rulemaking might look like.

For the ecosystem-based management chapter, Deaton said that staff are reviewing how the Division of Marine Fisheries uses mapping and monitoring data to guide species management work. Staff will determine goals and targets on how to better integrate the research, as well as create indicators with data from the North Carolina Collaboratory’s study on 25 years of the Fisheries Reform Act.

“The other half of the ecosystem-based management chapter is advancing strategic habitat areas,” Deaton said, that were identified in the first edition of the CHPP as a priority. “These are areas that are defined as high quality, connected habitats that were identified to protect biodiversity and ecological function through a nonregulatory approach.”

The “Planning for wetland change” chapter concentrates on laying the groundwork for thin-layer placement. Other states are exploring this method to accent natural sediment accumulation by taking dredged material and placing it directly on the marsh in a layer of 6 to 18 inches.

North Carolina doesn’t have a permit for the process, meaning any applications for thin-layer placement must be approved through the Coastal Resources Commission’s variance process for rule exceptions.

“We have a couple projects in the hopper right now that may reach the variance process in the coming year or two and seeing those as potential pilot projects. If they show promise, this is something we could explore to make a little easier to for restoration practitioners to implement,” Deaton said.

“The other half of the sea level rise and coastal wetlands picture is marsh migration,” he said.

The Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center is rolling out this week a new speaker series that delves into the relationship between people and place.

A similar format to its annual Parlor Talks offered every Thursday afternoon in the summer, the “Water/Ways” speaker series set to launch at 2 p.m. Wednesday at the museum on Harkers Island is an extension of the Smithsonian’s traveling “Water/Ways” exhibit on display until Aug. 9.

The exhibit “explores the centrality of water in our lives including its effect on the environment and climate, it’s practical role in agriculture and economic planning, and its impact on culture and spirituality,” organizers said.

Geoffrey Adair, an area historian from Beaufort, is to give the first talk this week on waterfowling traditions. Other topics for the series include water and the arts with Connie Mason July 8, water and a changing coast with Dr. Reide Corbett July 15, water as recreation with Frank Tursi July 22, and water as a way of life with Wayne Davis and Staci Davis Basden July 29.

The museum began its fifth year of Parlor Talks, which focus on the history, heritage and the research taking place in Carteret County, earlier this month.

Next on the schedule is Dr. Nathan Hall who will focus on “Our Amazing Seagrass.”

Hall is a research assistant professor and director of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Institute for the Environment’s Morehead City Field Site at UNC Institute of Marine Sciences. His primary research focuses on understanding the factors that control microalgal biomass and community composition in lakes, rivers, and estuaries.

His talk Thursday afternoon will highlight why seagrass matters and why it need lots of light, what factors determine how much light reaches the seagrasses, and why scientists are worried about the current state of seagrass. Hall plans to wrap the talk up with what data exists on water quality where there are seagrass beds, and new efforts led by the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership to improve understanding of water quality.

Parlor Talks summer schedule:

• July 9: “The Wit & Wisdom of Ordinary People of Harkers Island” with Joel Hancock.
• July 16: “Opening Season for the Krakens” with Carteret Community College.
• July 23: “Everyone Has a Story” with Wayne and Staci Davis.
• July 30: The Atlantic Hotels of Morehead City with Geoffrey Adair.
• Aug. 6: Cape Lookout Foundation’s restoration of the U.S. Coast Guard Station with Bud Doughton, Mason Williams and Garry Brown.
• Aug. 13: “Coastal Heroes: An Old Newsman Looks Back at Those Who Fought to Make a Difference” with Frank Tursi.
• Aug. 20: “Growing Up in the Promise Land and the Inevitable Changes” with Promise Land friends.
• Aug. 27: “100 Years of Shark Research off Cape Lookout” with Dr. Joel Fodrie, who is moving from his role as UNC-IMS director to director of Duke University Marine Lab.
• Sept. 3: “Songs & Stories We Love the Best” with Connie Mason

There’s still time to register for the annual Ocean Innovation Conference at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

The conference is scheduled to take place in UNCW’s Burney Center from 8:30 a.m. until 4 p.m. Tuesday.

Virtual registration closes Friday. The fee to register to attend the event virtually is $30. Questions will be taken from virtual participants for keynote speakers and panelists and some virtual innovation fair booths will be available to those who register to attend online.

In-person registration runs through to the day of the conference and costs $129. Seats are limited.

All UNCW students may attend in-person or virtually for free. Tenants with the university’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship receive a 50% discount and CIE members and coworkers a 25% discount.

For more information about discounts contact cie@uncw.edu.

Now in its third year, the conference brings together UNCW’s deep research expertise, the entrepreneurial ecosystem of southeastern North Carolina and those passionate about the ocean and coastal communities to spark conversations about topics including marine biotechnology, alternative materials, living shoreline projects, ocean data science, and emerging innovations.

Highlights of the conference include updates on marine and coastal research, trends in blue economy innovation, and showcasing opportunities for investment, collaboration, and action.

This year’s featured keynote speakers are Deborah Westphal, author and executive advisor at The Karen Toffler Charitable Trust, and world surfing champion and author of The CODE Method Shaun Tomson.

Sessions are held throughout the day and will focus on the regional blue ecosystem, cutting-edge ocean technologies, and efforts to preserve and restore ocean resources.

The event is organized by the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the Alliance for the Blue Economy (All Blue).

With eyes roughly the size of softballs, it may stand to reason that one of the largest mammals on Earth should have exceptionally sharp vision.

Humpback whales have some of the biggest eyes of any animal on the planet, or the oceans in which they migrate thousands upon thousands of miles during their lives.

But their journeys through open seas are done with limited vision, according to a newly published study conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and Duke University.

These mammoth creatures have to be very close to an object in order to see it in fine detail, which explains why they are particularly vulnerable to getting tangled up in fishing gear.

“Humans have exceptionally high spatial resolution of vision by comparison to most animals,” said Dr. Lori Schweikert, an assistant professor of biology and marine biology at UNCW. “But what is surprising is the fact that whales have the structure of the eye to support even better vision, but they don’t have that.”

Using a specimen of a humpback whale eye archived more than a decade ago at UNCW’s Marine Mammal Stranding Program, researchers were able to measure a humpback whale’s vision at 3.95 cycles per degree, or CPD.

CPD measures the number of black-and-white line pairs that appear within 1 degree of space.

To grasp this measurement of sight, Schweikert gave this example: hold one arm straight out and put your thumb straight up. The width to your thumb is about 1 degree of your visual space. Human eyes can resolve about up to about 60 cycles per degree.

Most animals have low spatial resolution of vision. In animals, the larger the eye, the greater their spatial vision. But for humpback whales, “they are just way off the line,” Schweikert said. “Way off.”

What researchers found when they cut into the eye is that humpbacks have unusually thickened eye walls. Nearly half of the depth of the whale’s eye was filled with its own wall, shortening the distance from the center of the lens of the eye to the retina.

That distance is called focal length.

“The longer the focal length, the sharper the vision that’s possible,” Schweikert said.

Researchers also found that the cell density in humpback whale eye retina was exceptionally low. These cells send visual information to the brain.

Based on their calculation of 3.95 CPD, researchers then modeled how humpback whales might visually perceive things in their natural environment.

The reality is, their vision, or lack thereof, is suited to their environment.

Humpbacks prey on huge bait balls of fish or krill that silhouette against an open light field, or light that is projected directly into a space without being redirected. They have few predators – mainly orcas, or killer whales, false killer whales, and large sharks, particularly great whites. And, when a humpback whale searches for a mate, it can see a potential love match well enough from a distance.

So, humpbacks did not need to evolve with the ability to see fine-scale things, Schweikert said.

Where a humpback whales’ sight gets it into trouble, she said, is when it comes across a structure in the ocean that has more visual fine-scale information, such as a net or gillnet. One of the leading causes of humpback whale deaths is entanglement in fishing gear.

“In our modeling of how they might be able to resolve this detail in the environment is that, at roughly three to four body lengths away would be where they might be able to start resolving the structure of the net. Based on swimming speed, that only leaves them a few seconds to get out of the way,” Schweikert said.

This helps explain why humpback whales get entangled as frequently as they do.

Humpback whales live in every ocean on the planet. They have one of the longest migrations, with some populations swimming up to 5,000 miles, of any mammal on the planet.

In additional to entanglements, vessel strikes are also a leading cause of humpback whale deaths.

To figure out ways to try and mitigate such human impacts to humpback whale, more studies will need to occur.

“I think that understanding how animals will interact with things in their environment is certainly more complicated that any one study or even a mix of studies that would take in all their sensory abilities to detect what’s in their environment,” Schweikert said. “It’s one thing to know if an animal can see it, but it’s totally another thing to know how they will respond. It’s quite possible that they can see some of the threats in their environment, but behaviorally, they are just not making the decision early enough to move out of the way.”

This study could be considered in the larger puzzle of those types of considerations, she said.

MOREHEAD CITY – There probably are relatively few people who understand the importance that the U.S. military, particularly the Marine Corps, places on understanding and protecting the environment of the land and water it uses.

Hans Paerl, professor of marine and environmental sciences at the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, is one of them. He and colleagues from UNC and other universities are preparing to publish a paper that will outline the results of a multi-year study they conducted in and around the New River, which flows as an estuary through Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, then enters Onslow Bay in the Atlantic Ocean through New River Inlet.

The overall study, funded by the government, looked at the terrestrial portion of the area as well as the aquatic, and Paerl’s portion mostly involved quantifying the carbon and nutrient flows through what’s technically called “the freshwater-marine continuum of a temperate, micro-tidal estuary.”

Carbon, of course, is the building block of life as we know it. But carbon dioxide, or CO₂, the main greenhouse gas that most climate experts believe traps the Earth’s heat and is leading to significant changes in the climate, including sea level rise. And because Camp Lejeune and many other Marine Corps bases are near coastal waters – Marines are the nation’s amphibious fighters, and need to train in and around those waters – sea level rise and coastal habitat changes are important to them.

“They want to know what’s going on, on their properties and around them,” Paerl said. “And they want to know what their role is in what’s going on.”

Part of that is economic, part of it is planning.

“Many of the generals and others at the top are very forward-thinking,” Paerl said. “They can look down the road and see that at some point in the future, there might very well be carbon regulations and taxes. They want to know where they stand.”

In Lejeune’s case, Paerl said, the base is in pretty good standing. The study shows that 85 percent of the “nutrient budget” in the estuary – carbon is a nutrient, as are such things as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and calcium – comes from upstream, not from the base.

The river, which is only about 50 miles long and entirely contained in Onslow County, rises in the northwestern region and flows east-southeast past Jacksonville, where it widens into a tidal estuary about 2 miles wide. But before it gets to Jacksonville, it flows through mostly rural and agricultural land. That agriculture includes not only row crops, but also many hog farms with millions of hogs and their necessary waste lagoons. Nutrients abound.

So, Paerl said, it’s not surprising that the estuary’s nutrient load mostly comes from upstream, and the military officials are surely “delighted” to know that.

“What it means is that if we start getting more nutrient regulations, they’re in a pretty good position to show that they are not primarily responsible” for the problems that cause the need for regulations, Paerl said.

And there are plenty of examples of regulations arising from water quality problems. The state declared the Neuse River “nutrient sensitive” in the 1980s, after numerous algae blooms and fish kills, and developed and implemented rules designed to regulate sources of nutrient pollution in the basin, including wastewater, stormwater and agricultural runoff. The rules also require vegetative buffers along the water.

But beyond that, Paerl said, the Marine Corps and other branches of the military are concerned about climate change. At Camp Lejeune, they want to protect and maintain their ecosystem, because it’s similar to conditions in many areas of the world that Marines might have to fight. So they need to train in that ecosystem. Sea level rise and other ramifications of climate change could threaten those training grounds.

And, Paerl noted, military officials have long been concerned that an increasingly less stable climate with more droughts that disrupt food supplies, more major storms and continually rising sea levels, will create less stability in other countries, possibly leading to more need for U.S. intervention. They’re interested, perhaps more than most politicians these days, in limiting climate change.

What did the study find out specifically about organic, or vegetative, carbon and carbon dioxide, that predominant greenhouse gas, in the New River estuary?

Interestingly, Paerl said, it turns out that the estuary is, in general, pretty balanced between being a carbon sink, or holding carbon so it’s not released as carbon dioxide, and a contributor of CO₂ to the atmosphere.

“But that can change year-to-year,” he said. It turns out that much of that variation is related to weather, which is affected by climate.

“What we’ve found is that when we have major perturbations, chiefly storms, much more CO₂ is released,” Paerl said. “There were five or six major perturbations (during the study period), and we had the opportunity to look at (the effects) of those.”

What they’ve found is that “you can lose almost as much carbon to the atmosphere” from one major storm as had been stored away, or “fixed” by plants, in the estuary during the entire year in which the storm occurred.

“It’s kind like a gigantic ‘burp,’” the scientist said, that can, instantly negate a year of carbon storage by the algae and other plants.

Algae, another area of expertise for Paerl, can be terribly bad for estuaries, as it robs the water of oxygen when it decomposes, sometimes leading to fish kills. But, Paerl quipped, “I don’t think storms are really a good way to clean up our estuaries.”

At any rate, it sets up what Paerl said is a classic feedback loop.

“The more storms we have, then (based on the research) the more emissions we get,” he said. “And the more emissions we get, the more unstable the climate is likely to become, which means more storms. You have to wonder where it ends. Are we eventually to going to end up with 10 times more storms?”

It’s not, of course, “a perfectly linear world,” Paerl acknowledged, as there are other factors, such as El Nino, that influence the number of hurricanes and other storms. But you have to look at it not just from one year to the next, but decade by decade.

The New River work pretty much confirmed what previous work by Joseph Crosswell, also of UNC-IMS, found previously through work in the Neuse River, the largest tributary of the huge Pamlico Sound estuary, Paerl said.

The bottom line, he added, is that estuarine systems are very effective at holding carbon, unless disturbed. Some carbon even comes out and is “stored” by humans, through harvest and consumption of seafood.

But when those storms do hit, the negative atmospheric carbon effects can be quick, as in the windy Hurricane Irene in 2011, or slower and more sustained in the case of other, less windy storms that are mainly rainfall and flooding events.

Paerl said the overall study was funded by the Department of Defense’s Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program, and has been headed by RTI International, an independent, nonprofit research institute based in the Research Triangle Park. Other researchers have come from private companies, as well as from Duke University, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the College of William and Mary and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.

“It’s been a big effort, with a lot of parts,” Paerl said, and he credits the Department of Defense for being interested.

“They are really pretty good stewards of their environment, and it makes sense for them to be,” he said.

Paerl noted that the military also help preserve habitat outside the base gates by sometimes giving money to local governments to protect properties in the flight paths of Marine Corps aircraft that would otherwise be developed.

That’s happening now in Carteret County, where Emerald Isle is working with Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point officials to get money to help pay for the purchase of 30 acres of undeveloped land behind the town hall. That property, mostly maritime forest, has been zoned for years for more than 200 condominiums, and is in the flight path of planes going to and from nearby Bogue Field, an auxiliary landing strip for Cherry Point.

If the town gets the land, it will preserve up to 20 acres of it.

“A lot of people don’t realize how much they do,” Paerl said of the Marines. “It was good to work on this project to try to help them identify what’s going on in the estuary that runs through (Lejeune).”

And, he said, the study aids the cause of science and scientific research, which has recently been under attack in some circles, because the modeling involved should be applicable to not just other coastal military installations, but to similar estuarine systems that aren’t in government hands.

“We’ve learned a lot,” he said.