Jamie and Paul Lane had expected to spend their week before Christmas fishing for perch in the Albemarle Sound. Instead, restrictions on gillnet use led to them losing an important part of their season. 

A Dec. 17, 2025, proclamation from the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries restricted gillnets across Management Unit A under the state’s federal permit for protecting endangered Atlantic sturgeon and sea turtles. Jamie Lane said four observed sturgeon interactions in a small-mesh fishery were extrapolated to nearly 85 estimated takes, threatening to shut the fishery down.

“Right there, a week before Christmas, there’s not a lot of other options at that time of year,” Jamie Lane said. “That’s very detrimental to your livelihood.”

This closure is part of a broader dispute over whether North Carolina’s Atlantic sturgeon population has recovered enough to call for less restrictive protections. The Lanes are part of a group of commercial fishermen asking the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to reclassify the Carolina population from endangered to threatened, arguing that sturgeon are more abundant, mortality is low and current regulations have reduced the risk from gillnets. Scientists and federal officials, however, say the population is depleted compared to historical levels, and that increases in juvenile fish or sightings by fishermen do not necessarily show that adult sturgeon have recovered.

Paul Lane, who has been commercial fishing for more than 40 years, said that sturgeon catches were once “talked about almost like a Bigfoot sighting,” and now, fishers cannot seem to stop accidentally catching them.

In their petition to NOAA, the fishermen point to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s 2024 stock assessment as evidence of recovery in the Carolina distinct population segment (DPS). They argue the assessment raises questions about how the population can be labeled depleted while its abundance has increased since 1998.

“They themselves, the ASMFC, noted their own self that there was a 100% probability that coastwide abundance has increased since 1998,” Jamie Lane said. “So even while they wrote it was depleted, they admitted the abundance had increased, and of all the different distinct population segments, the Carolina DPS was the number one in the recovery.”

The federal permit allows North Carolina’s gillnet fishery to continue, but it sets limits on interactions with sturgeon and sea turtles. Observers monitor 7-10% of large-mesh trips and 1-2% of small-mesh trips, and fishermen are required to report sturgeon interactions within 24 hours. Those observations are then used to estimate the number of takes across the fishery. If estimated or observed takes approach the permit’s limits, the state can enact additional restrictions or close fisheries.

The regulatory system has developed since the Carolina DPS was listed as endangered in 2012, with the state receiving its first sturgeon-specific permit in 2014 and replacing it with the current combined permit in 2024. Under the new permit, a “take” does not necessarily mean a sturgeon dies. Live, released fish can still count toward estimated takes, which the fishermen say is posing the most significant issue, as most sturgeon they catch are released alive.

The fishermen repeatedly use the 2024 stock assessment as evidence of recovery. But James Boyle, an ASMFC fishery management plan and an author of the assessment, said the figures are being misinterpreted. The assessment found a 77% probability that the Carolina DPS’s abundance index was higher at the end of its survey period than its reference point. That was the highest probability among all DPSs, but Boyle said the figures cannot be used to rank DPSs by recovery.

“It’s really hard to compare those across DPSs to say in that 77%, you’re comparing Carolina to Carolina from 1998,” Boyle said. “So that doesn’t mean that it’s recovered or that there are more fish there than in the Gulf of Maine, which has 45%.”

Coastwide, the assessment found a 100% probability that abundance was higher than in 1998. The assessment finds it likely the coastwide population has increased but is still depleted relative to its much larger historical population.

The fishermen also point to broader signs of improvement in the population, including the range of sturgeon sizes found in the assessment, from 5 to 72 inches, as evidence of smaller, younger fish indicating a healthy and growing population. But Dave Kazyak, a U.S. Geological Survey research biologist who studies Atlantic sturgeon, said the North Carolina surveys used in the assessment focus largely on young-of-year and juvenile fish. An increase in those fish can be encouraging, he said, but it does not necessarily represent the status of the adult population.

Kazyak said that distinction is especially important for species like the Atlantic sturgeon, which live up to 60 years. Most juveniles remain in their natal rivers for several years before moving to the ocean. Changes in the number of young fish may take years to translate into changes in the adult population.  

There is another complication, in that fish found in North Carolina do not always respect state boundaries. Kazyak said sturgeon from different populations can overlap, meaning a survey can capture a mixture of fish whose populations may be changing in different directions.

“If you’re just naively tracking abundance over time, you’re kind of getting a composite signal on how different populations are doing, and they may not all be going in the same direction,” Kazyak said.

Scientists also lack a direct estimate of the total number of sturgeon in the Carolina DPS. Instead, they use surveys to track if the population is changing over time. That makes it difficult to estimate exactly how many adult fish remain in the DPS.

That uncertainty extends beyond what happens after a sturgeon is released. Sturgeon are particularly susceptible to gill nets because their bony scutes can become trapped in the mesh. Kazyak said the amount of time a fish remains entangled can affect whether it survives in the long term or if it is able to continue breeding, meaning a live release does not necessarily tell researchers everything about the impact of the interaction.

“Because they live a long time, have a low rate of natural mortality and they don’t mature until they’re relatively old, it doesn’t take a lot of additional mortality from people to change the population trajectory,” Kazyak said.

Since the petition’s filing in January, the Lanes said their concerns have been met with deaf ears. They said they initially filed a 30-day notice of intent to submit the petition in December, then sent the downlisting petition to NOAA on Jan. 25. After receiving no response, they said they followed up in April, shortly before the 90-day deadline.

In May, Andrew Herndon, a NOAA Fisheries staff member handling the petition, told the Lanes that the agency had received their request and was working on it. By June, Herndon told them the review remained incomplete because of staffing shortages and competing priorities, according to the Lanes.

The Lanes later sent NOAA a 60-day notice of intent to sue over the delayed finding. Under the Endangered Species Act, NOAA is generally required to make a decision within 90 days on whether a petition provides enough scientific or commercial evidence to warrant further action, when practicable.

NOAA’s website currently lists the Carolina Atlantic sturgeon petition, received Jan. 28, as still awaiting its 90-day finding.

In an email, Herndon told Coastal Review that the petition is still under review, and he could not provide a timeline for completion. He said that after his assessment is finished, the petition will undergo internal review, which he has no control over.

The Lanes said, ultimately, their push for a downlisting is not an effort to weaken protections for sturgeon but to recognize what they see as a recovering population.

“We want to work. We don’t want to mess with the sturgeon,” Jamie Lane said. “We want their population to recover.”

This story has been updated to include funeral arrangements.

Dr. Joe Ramus was not the man with whom to debate science willy-nilly.

Ever the consummate critical thinker, Ramus was that person who knew that he knew the science upon which he built a storied career here on the North Carolina coast. Ramus, a professor, prolific researcher, former Duke University Marine Laboratory director, and past president of the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s Board of Directors, died Tuesday, Sept. 22.

As news of his death last week passed through the halls of the higher learning institutions and in the offices of the organizations to which Ramus devoted his time and talents, friends and former colleagues reflected on memories of the man known for his sharp, often dry wit who was passionate about understanding and protecting the coast.

“I considered Joe my older brother and Joe kind of treated me that way too,” Dr. Hans Paerl said with a chuckle during a Sept. 24 telephone interview.

That brotherly bond forged after Paerl, now a retired professor and researcher at the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, landed a job exactly the same year and in exactly the same coastal North Carolina county as Ramus.

By that point in time in 1978, Ramus had been a teacher and researcher at Yale University for some 10 years.

Ramus explained in a 2014 interview with Coastal Review that he enjoyed teaching at the prestigious university, but that Yale lacked a marine lab.

“Yale had a field station on Long Island Sound, and I spent as much time there as I could, but it wasn’t enough,” he said.

Naturally, Ramus did not hesitate when he saw Duke University’s advertisement for an open position at its Beaufort-based marine lab.

“I had 10-year plans: Yale for 10, Duke for 10, then somewhere else,” Ramus said in 2014.

But life and its funny way of upending even the best laid plans spare few, including Ramus, who fell in love with Carteret County and Jackie, a local girl he later married. They were husband and wife until his death.

Paerl who, coincidently enough, lived across the San Francisco Bay from the Ramuses’ Walnut Creek, California, home after his family moved from the Netherlands when he was 10, also applied for the job at the Duke Marine Lab, as well as one at Carolina’s IMS.

“It turned out that it was kind of a preordained marriage because John Costlow, who was the director of the Duke Lab, and Dirk Frankenberg, who was the director of our lab at UNC, they actually got together and decided well, why don’t we just have Joe go to Duke and Hans go to UNC,” Paerl said. “That started our long research careers that complemented each other really well because we needed some plant people at the coast at that time. It was a strong emphasis on fisheries and larger animals and mammals, leaving a big research gap in the role of plants in the coastal environment.”

Ramus’ research focused on larger coastal plants like seagrasses and seaweed. Paerl studied algae.

Together, they mentored graduate students, co-supervised various committees and researched plants in the coastal zone.

They would eventually team up in 2000 to create the FerryMon project, which equips North Carolina Department of Transportation ferryboats with specialized sensors and automated water samplers to collect and monitor environmental data in real time.

“It’s been a very successful merger of scientific expertise and interests, and it’s served the state extremely well because there is nothing out there monitoring water quality in Pamlico Sound on a day-to-day basis,” Paerl said. “FerryMon really filled that void.”

He credits Ramus for securing funding for the project long after money granted through the N.C. Disaster Relief Fund dried up.

“He was a great salesman. He knew how to use the right words with politicians and with the decisionmakers and I just went along with it,” Paerl said.

“Once you got over the fact that he sort of had to pontificate every now and then it was actually a great relationship,” he continued. “He had an interesting way of lecturing where he would not talk down to you but had this kind of air of confidence when he got up there on the stage. And, you know, he had every reason to be confident because he was a very smart guy and 90% of the time, he was right. I let him know about the other 10%.”

Ramus was awarded the Order of the Longleaf Pine, one of the highest civilian honors in the state, in 2019 for his contributions to science and education, and his environmental leadership as president of the Coastal Federation Board of Directors. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

Even into retirement, their careers continued to parallel. Paerl was bestowed the same honor earlier this year.

Duke University marine biology professor and former lab director Dr. Andy Read explained in a telephone interview Ramus’ role in overseeing the integration of the marine lab into what is today the university’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

“Joe liked to say that that was a very critical time for the marine lab because it gave us an intellectual home. Until that time, the lab had been pretty separate, and I think a lot of people at Duke didn’t really know that we had a marine lab,” Read said.

Forming the school, “really gave us a sense of mission to understand environmental issues that affected our coastal waters,” he said. “That was what he was passionate about, particularly about Pamlico Sound, and understanding both the natural and the anthropogenic factors that kind of forced those systems that we rely on so much.”

Read shared how the two would refer to one another by their line in succession as directors of the lab.

“He used to refer to me as Number Seven because I was the seventh director for the Marine Lab, and he was Number Four. So, we referred to each other as Number Four and Number Seven, which is pretty typical of Joe’s dry sense of humor,” he said.

“He did not suffer fools gladly, I will say that,” Read continued. “There are times that Joe would look at you from behind those glasses of his and you got the sense that what you were saying was being very carefully evaluated. You better be right and you better have the facts supporting your argument because Joe would look very critically at things for sure. He had high standards for science. He expected the people around him to have equally high standards and I think he expected people in positions of authority to appreciate the value of the science and what it means in terms of making decisions that could affect the quality of our environment and the quality of people’s lives.”

Coastal Federation founder Todd Miller remembers his first encounters with Ramus in the 1980s when the Coastal Federation was still a fledgling organization.

“He was a well-known scientist, and I would say intimidating in some respects before I got to know him well,” Miller said. “He just didn’t accept what you said. You had to present your case. I think he just didn’t take things on face value, so you had to be beyond your game if you were going to be convincing with him.”

Miller explained Ramus’ involvement with the Coastal Federation grew over time. And though the science was “always there, front and center in terms of his perspective on things,” Ramus was steeped in his community. He enjoyed spending time on his boat, fishing, and cycling.

“Joe’s legacy lives in the work he helped strengthen and in the people he encouraged to ask harder questions, listen more carefully and keep going,” Miller stated. “I will miss his counsel, his humor and his friendship.”

Those who wish to contribute in his memory, and in lieu of flowers, may donate to the capital campaign for North Carolina Coastal Federation’s Coastal Center or to the Ramus Fund at the Duke University Marine Lab.

To contribute to the Coastal Federation, visit the nonprofit’s “Give in Memory of Joe Ramus” page or make checks payable to the North Carolina Coastal Federation, P.O. Box 1360, Newport NC 28570, noting “Joe Ramus” on the memo line.

To contribute to the university fund, checks should be made payable to Duke University Marine Lab, with “Ramus Fund” noted in the memo line. Address: Duke University Marine Lab c/o The Ramus Fund, 135 Duke Marine Lab Rd., Beaufort, NC 28516.

Addressing oceanfront coastal erosion, understanding harmful algal blooms, fostering community engagement and tracking emerging contaminants are just a few of the topics North Carolina Sea Grant will cover during its biennial two-day conference taking place this year in November.

The North Carolina Coastal Conference is scheduled for Nov. 17-18 at the Friday Conference Center at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and brings together agency, business and community representatives, researchers, educators, students and others with an interest in learning about coastal issues.

The keynote speaker this year is Dr. Jamie Vernon, executive director and CEO of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society, and publisher of American Scientist, an illustrated bimonthly publication about science, engineering and technology that has been printed since 1913.

Cost for the conference is $350 or $125 for full-time students. Those interested in attending can register online now. Sea Grant has reserved blocks of rooms at two hotels with discounted rates for those needing accommodations. Details are on the conference logistics page on the website. Hotel reservations must be made by 5 p.m. Oct. 26 to qualify for the discount.

The conference serves as a “platform for engaging with like-minded participants and potential collaborators dedicated to the prosperity of our state’s coastal communities, environments, and economies,” organizers said.

Also scheduled to speak are North Carolina Sea Grant Executive Director Susan White, N.C. Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Reid Wilson, and Amanda McCarty, who is performing the duties of the director of the National Sea Grant College Program and National Sea Grant Office with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The draft agenda includes a range of coastal topics so far, including a discussion on addressing chronic erosion along the state’s ocean shoreline with panelists Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac, Coastal Resources Commission’s Science Panel chair and UNC-Chapel Hill professor Laura Moore, N.C. Coastal Federation’s Coastal Advocate Lela Schlenker, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s Doug Piatkowski, and Jessica Hardee with the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Also planned during the two-day conference are talks on recent coastal laws and policies, the connection between seagrass habitat and fisheries production in estuaries, climate change, sea level rise, algal blooms, nature-based solutions, water quality, public science efforts, resilience education, living shorelines, benefits of salt marshes, oyster reef restoration, stormwater, flood mitigation, wastewater, contamination, and the blue economy.

Vernon has been on the Sigma Xi staff since 2014, serving as director of science communications and editor-in-chief of the magazine. Vernon served as a fellow 2011-2013 with American Association for the Advancement of Science Science & Technology Policy and 2013-2014 with Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, both within the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy of the U.S. Department of Energy in Washington, D.C.

Vernon was co-chair of the digital media team of the Interagency Communication and Education Team of the United States Global Change Research Program in Washington, D.C., in 2012-2013. He worked with the Office of Science and Technology Policy to coordinate communications among all federal agencies conducting climate research.

Vernon earned his bachelor’s in zoology at North Carolina State University, his master’s in molecular biology/biotechnology at East Carolina University, and his doctorate in cell and molecular biology at the University of Texas at Austin. He holds one patent and has seven publications.

Dr. Ford “Bud” Cross said he was “elated” to learn that the nation’s second-oldest federal marine science laboratory is getting a new home to replace its old one on Pivers Island in Beaufort.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced on Aug. 27 that it plans to use $64 million from the 2025 Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act to pay for construction of a new facility for the Beaufort Laboratory.

Cross has a right to be elated.

He was director of the facility from 1986 until his retirement in 2000, the culmination of a career that he began there in 1967 as a fisheries biologist.

“It was great news to all of us who have worked there,” said Cross, who is 86 and lives in Morehead City, where he served for many years on the planning board.

“I didn’t expect it in the current administration.

“I’m tickled pink,” he continued. “It’s a nice sum of money, enough to build something incredibly good, big enough not just for the lab itself but also for the state estuary reserve program.”

Cross said the lab has always done important fisheries research, intended to enhance protection of marine species and preserve economically important commercial and recreational fishing.

“I think we all left a great legacy of service to the community, and I believe that helped in the decision to fund construction,” he said.

The building closed in October 2024 after significant hurricane-related structural damage was discovered during a routine inspection of the building’s foundation.

“Now there’s a great opportunity to have a new facility that can meet today’s needs,” Cross said.

The Beaufort Lab was established in 1899 and predates NOAA by more than 70 years. It has housed what is now known as National Ocean Service and National Marine Fisheries Service’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center, and the North Carolina Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Research Reserve.

“For more than a century, the dedicated experts at NOAA’s Beaufort Laboratory have produced world-class science that supports our economy, advances national priorities, and enhances coastal resilience,” Dr. Neil Jacobs, NOAA administrator, said in a press release on Aug. 27. “This state-of-the-art facility, located within the country’s second-largest estuary and adjacent to the Gulf Stream, will enable NOAA to continue its groundbreaking research while strengthening collaboration with industry and academic partners.”

Cross has lived a life dedicated to preserving and living with nature. For many years, he and his wife spent part of each fall and early on a 200-acre tract they owned in the frigid, wild Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

“It was just us and the owls and wolves,” he said. It was a quiet, serene life. We had an ATV and used it to clear some of the snow. We hated to sell it, but we were getting older.”

Back in Morehead City year-round now, Cross still conducts research and periodically gets together with mates from his time in the lab.

“There’s about 30 of us,” he said. “We get together for lunch twice each year. It’s a pretty tight-knit group.”

Numerous other lab employees have also served local governments in advisory positions.

One member of the lunch group is Dr. Don Hoss, who began at the lab in 1958. He succeeded Cross as lab director and held the post until his retirement in 2002.

“I think it’s just wonderful,” he said of the funding for the new facility.

“It’s a historic place, and a great research place and there is a need to keep it going.

“I had a great career, and we did a lot of good things.”

Dr. Hans Paerl, a retired professor and researcher at the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, welcomed the planned full-scale return of the Beaufort facility.

“We’ve always collaborated,” he said. “In fact, since they closed down, we’ve had some of their researchers in our building.

“There is a lot of overlap with our interests, especially on harmful algal blooms.

“It’s been very good having them here. And this (construction) announcement is great news for the entire marine science community.”

In its Aug. 27 press release, NOAA says the new lab will expand its scope in the following ways:

• Researching, monitoring and forecasting harmful algal blooms.
• Deploying uncrewed systems for underwater habitat mapping and coral restoration.
• Serving as a research hub to support South Atlantic fisheries management and stewardship of marine resources.
• Evaluating the performance of natural infrastructure for coastal protection. Managing the Rachel Carson National Estuarine Research Reserve and providing opportunities for education, research and compatible traditional uses.

Design and preconstruction work on the new facility is to begin in early 2027. The new structure will be above the floodplain and designed to withstand storms and flooding.

Learn more about the lab

• Listen to an interview with Dr. Don Hoss and Dr. Ford “Bud” Cross recorded in 2018 for a NOAA Fisheries oral history project.
• Explore the Beaufort Lab’s history in the context of its 125th year celebration in 2024.

Get a rare glimpse of avian field research in action as the nonprofit Cape Fear Bird Observatory is set to host free public birdbanding demonstrations this month in New Hanover County.

The organization’s monthly painted bunting banding demonstration is from 7-11 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 12, at the flagpole in the park marina at Carolina Beach State Park, 1010 State Park Road. Organizers note that, as with all wildlife research, painted bunting activity is subject to natural variation and cannot be guaranteed.

A free banding demonstration is also slated for 7 to 10 a.m. Sept. 20 at Greenfield Lake in Wilmington.

Attendees are welcome to join at any point during the morning to learn about how the organization studies and processes the birds that call the park home. Painted buntings not included this time, organizers said.

“The public is always welcome to stop by while we are banding, but these advertised events are the best time to visit, with plenty of CFBO folks on hand to answer questions and show you what we do,” the group said in its email newsletter.

Founded in 2020, the Cape Fear Bird Observatory strives to promote conservation of birds and their habitats in North Carolina through research, education, outreach, and community involvement. The organization actively works to better understand the avian communities of the Cape Fear region by monitoring migration, studying regional species, collaborating with environmental groups, and exploring the outdoors with local school children.

This demonstration is organized as a way for people to connect with their city, its parks, and the wildlife that these green spaces support.

A group of more than 80 volunteers recently descended upon locations across Pender County here on the coast, as well as sites in Bladen, Columbus, Cumberland and Robeson counties, to participate in the most recent “Bat Blitz,” a three-night species inventory event across North Carolina’s coastal plain.

This particular Bat Blitz was co-organized by Lisa Gatens, the collection manager in mammalogy at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, and Ed Corey, the inventory biologist for North Carolina State Parks. Like past Bat Blitzes, it is hosted under the umbrella of the Southeastern Bat Diversity Network, a regional consortium dedicated to bat conservation.

“This is the third one that we have organized together, and this particular one that’s housed in Singletary Lake State Park (in Bladen County), that’s our home base,” Gatens said. “We did this 10 years ago, and so in part we are going to be revisiting sites that we surveyed then, and we’ve added lots of new sites too.” 

Most of the participants are biologists from the North Carolina Bat Working Group, an organization focused on bat research and conservation. During the blitz, they gathered a great quantity of information on species diversity, population numbers, age, sex and general health.

They also checked for signs of white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that has caused millions of bat deaths nationwide. The disease itself won’t be present during the warmer months, but Blitz participants examined bats for physical damage indicative of the fungus. White-nose has only ever been recorded in North Carolina’s mountain region, but because all bats are migratory to a certain degree, it’s something that researchers are always looking out for.

The exact nature of bats’ migratory patterns is something of an unknown, however. Some species only travel short distances and will return to the same roosting spots on a seasonal basis. But others, like the silver-haired, eastern red, Seminoles, and hoary bats, are more solitary and prefer to roost in trees, making them more difficult to track. And while these species are far less likely to contact white nose syndrome, they are more susceptible to other environmental hazards. 

“Those bats are actually impacted by poor placement of wind turbines. So if you have ridgetop wind turbines, that can impact migratory bats. It can also impact birds, too. But wind turbines can have severe effects on migratory bat species,” Corey said.

Bats are an incredibly valuable part of their ecosystems. They serve an important role as pollinators, and the economic benefits of healthy bat populations are documented. A single bat can consume its body weight in insects every night, which can be especially beneficial for farmers dealing with agricultural pests.

But Gatens believes that bats’ value lies beyond their monetary benefits. “They’re not doing this for us per se, and their value is inherent. It isn’t in what they do for us, in my humble opinion,” she said.

“A blitz is a way to efficiently cover a lot of area in a short period of time and gather an awful lot of data,” Gatens said. “If we don’t have a before and after, then how can we say what the impact is.” 

Gatens loves the blitzes for many reasons, not least of all because she just loves the work.

“You can walk along a trail during the day, but when you’re out there at night, everything looks and sounds and smells and feels different than it did in the day, and you’re experiencing it in a completely different way,” she said. “You get to work with fantastic people, and it really is just loads of fun.” 

Corey agreed. “I love it. It’s like Christmas every time you get to it. You never know what you’re going to see, and it’s just great to see. You know, great to see how people do things. So you can go out with 10 different people, 10 different leaders, and see 10 different ways of catching bats.”

When the North Carolina Aquariums in Roanoke Island, Pine Knoll Shores and Fort Fisher first began public outreach as marine resources centers in 1976, the facilities were as small as the budget.

Now, five decades and multiple renovations later, the three facilities and Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head, which joined the N.C. Aquariums divisions in 2011, can accommodate more than $1.4 million visitors a year.

With the 50th anniversary of the Roanoke Island location opening on Sept. 9, 1976, and Fort Fisher and Pine Knoll Shores on Sept. 10, 1976, N.C. Aquariums division has been celebrating five decades of “inspiring wonder” with a year of events.

“Honoring the rich 50‑year history of the North Carolina Aquariums with a celebration at the place where it all began — the NC Aquarium on Roanoke Island — fills us with tremendous pride,” Aquarium Division Director Hap Fatzinger told Coastal Review Friday.

“It reaffirms the partnerships we’ve built, the connections we’ve strengthened, and the meaningful impacts we’ve made across the state. As we commemorate this milestone, we’re also looking ahead, expanding our focus toward even greater opportunities that will shape the future of conservation in North Carolina,” he added.

When these three locations first opened, exhibits highlighted habitats, education and research, underwater archaeology, barrier island ecosystems, fossils, regional fish life, touch pools, guided marsh tours, seafood harvesting and insect control, according to information from the aquarium.

The facilities were renamed in 1986 to what they’re known as today, the North Carolina Aquariums at Roanoke Island, Fort Fisher and Pine Knoll Shores, and transitioned from the North Carolina Department of Administration to what is now the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

The nonprofit North Carolina Aquarium Society formed in 1986, as well, and continues to support the aquarium system as its fundraising partner.

“It is an honor to celebrate five decades of inspiring wonder, saving species and enriching the understanding of our aquatic ecosystems alongside our partners, the Aquarium Division,” Society President Liz Baird said Friday. “We are grateful to the donors and members who have helped build this legacy and are supporting us into the future. Fifty years is a remarkable milestone to reach, and we look forward to reaching many more.”

Jay Barnes, a name that has been associated with the state aquariums for decades, began his career at the Pine Knoll Shores aquarium in 1980. He was promoted to director 1989 and retired in 2009, when he transitioned to the nonprofit support partner, the North Carolina Aquarium Society. He became CEO and president, retiring from that role in 2023.

He told Coastal Review in a past interview for an article the 50th anniversary of Pine Knoll Shores aquarium that when he began at the aquarium 40 years ago, all three facilities were modest in size and budget, operating on small staffs who created the few exhibits that began drawing in visitors.

“We became accredited in 1990 with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums,” Barnes said about the international organization that strive to promote excellence and visitor safety and staff safety and animal welfare all across the world. “It’s a very high bar to be an accredited zoo or aquarium.”

In the mid-1990s there was momentum to renovate and expand the three sites to accommodate the growing number of visitors. The three sites were expanded in the early 2000s to roughly three times their original footprint and the exhibits were updated.

Barnes said these renovations in the early 2000s offered a new generation of aquarium visitors a new experience.

“We all recognize that when you have an attraction like the zoo or the aquariums, you have an educational mission,” he said, but these also attract visitors, “which generates support for the coastal community, and, that economic impact is not a small thing. Yes, we always have billed ourselves as conservation and educational facilities, but we recognize that along with that comes the joy that people have of being able to experience a place like the aquarium while they’re on vacation.”

The Roanoke Island aquarium was renovated first. The site was closed for about two years while the 15,000-square-foot facility was expanded to 61,000 square feet on 16 acres on the Croatan Sound. The destination reopened in 2000, with the 285,000-gallon Graveyard of the Atlantic exhibit as the centerpiece.

Fort Fisher was also expanded to around triple its size and reopened in 2002 and Pine Knoll Shores was renovated then reopened in 2006. The state is working on another round of renovations.

The Fort Fisher facility is currently closed and has been since earlier this year while a 30-month renovation. The aquarium has a presence at Independence Mall in Wilmington called Discovery Bay that has ambassador animal encounters, marine life habitats, environmental education programs and a gift shop.

Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head became part of the aquarium system in 2011. The pier built in 1939 was the first on the Outer Banks and has been rebuilt several times since because of storm damage. The now 1,000-foot-long concrete platform offers a place to fish and to learn.

Roanoke Island Aquarium Director Larry Warner joined the aquarium staff in February of 2010 as exhibits curator.

During his almost seven years in that role, he said he worked closely with various departments to accomplish “such impactful additions as the Soundside Pier,” which he said allows “guests access to the waterfront and a bevy of new educational programming opportunities.” The 200-foot pier and gazebo that stretches over the Croatan Sound was build in 2013.

Warner was also involved in getting the 3,000-square-foot Sea Turtle Assistance and Rehabilitation, or STAR, Center opened in 2014, and in 2016 a $6.75 million interior renovation of the entire facility. The STAR Center is the onsite sea turtle rescue and rehabilitation hospital.

“It was a time of tremendous growth for the aquarium,” Warner said.

He left for a few years in 2016 when he was director of exhibits at Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut but returned to Manteo 2019 to serve as the aquarium director, “and I couldn’t have been more delighted to return to a facility I was intimately familiar with and a community that I had come to love and value.”

Warner added that he celebrated seven years as director just last week and he is “as excited today, as we celebrate 50 years of the NC Aquariums, as I was when I began in 2010.”

The aquariums and Jennette’s Pier “have embarked on an exciting new strategic plan that will help lead us in education and conservation for many years to come,” he continued.

The “amazing and dedicated” teams at the Roanoke Island aquarium, as well as those at each of the other facilities and within the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources “makes every day worth pushing our great new mission forward as ‘we inspire care and conservation of nature by connecting people with the aquatic world!’”

Roanoke Island Aquarium Communications Manager Andi DiDario said that it has been “really exciting to look back at 50 years of connecting people with aquatic life and our coastal environments, while also looking ahead to many more years of fulfilling our mission and welcoming people through our doors.”

Weekend celebrations

Pine Knoll Shores aquarium celebrated the golden anniversary with a birthday bash in July and staff at the Roanoke Island location are gearing up for a week of the same, starting with special programming included with general admission Sept. 9 to recognize the anniversary date 50 years ago.

Organizers said the daytime program on Wednesday will feature interactive stations, shipwreck stories featuring divers speaking with guests from inside the 285,000‑gallon shark habitat, creature features with animal ambassadors, and other special experiences throughout the aquarium.

That weekend, the “Sea‑lebration by the Sound” is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. Included with admission, there will be face painting, sandcastle building, craft and creation stations, an inflatable slide, carnival‑style games, a scavenger hunt, prizes, photo opportunities with the giant inflatable crab, and regular programming such as creature features with animal ambassadors. The on-site Shark Bites Snack Bar will have an exclusive menu including special root beer floats and corn dog bites for purchase.

The aquarium is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day. Organizers recommend reserving their general admission ticket in advance online, visit the website.

That evening the “Golden Tides: Celebrating 50 Years of the NC Aquarium on Roanoke Island” will give guests a chance to visit touch pools, encounter aquatic animals, watch the sunset and observe a live painter creating an original work inspired by the aquarium. Tickets are $75 for nonmembers and $65 for members and can be purchased on the website. Must be 21 or older.

“Golden Ties” is the first event of its kind at the aquarium. The 21-and-up celebration “gives adults a chance to experience the Aquarium in a completely different way” and features live music, sustainable seafood, an oyster roast station, a raw bar, drinks, and adult beverages sponsored through the North Carolina Aquarium Society, DiDario said.

Each ticket for the event sponsored by the aquarium society includes two complimentary drink tickets, unlimited seafood and hors d’oeuvres, after‑hours access to the aquarium, exclusive 50th anniversary gifts including a commemorative koozie, pint glass, and specialty photo keepsake, and access to all scheduled entertainment.

“We’re really excited to offer both events and celebrate the Aquarium’s 50th anniversary with our community,” DiDario said.

MANTEO — Over two days last week, the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission and its advisory panel viewed presentations with vivid views of battered oceanfront buildings, severely eroded beaches and remains of various sand barriers and traps designed to hold back ocean forces.

With legislation that would repeal the state’s landmark ban on hardened structures parked in a state Senate committee awaiting further action, the commission had asked its Science Panel and agency staff to provide updated information in a report on the effects of seawalls, jetties and other permanent erosion control structures on the open ocean coastlines.

After months of research and minor tweaking, the final report, “Effects of Hard Structures on Sandy, Open-Ocean Coastlines.” was presented to the commission during its Aug. 27 meeting at the Dare County Government Complex. But through each iteration, the analysis remained consistent: Blocking or trapping sand at one area of beach takes sand from another area of beach.

According to the Division of Coastal Management’s recently updated erosion data, 140 miles of the state’s 320 miles of ocean shoreline are eroding at an average annual rate greater than 2 feet; 135 miles at less than 2 feet yearky; and 100 miles of beach is accreting. Some of the highest erosion rates are on the Outer Banks, where 32 oceanfront houses have collapsed in Rodanthe and Buxton since 2020.

“There is such desire — and it’s completely understandable — to stop long-term, chronic erosion,” Science Panel Chair Laura Moore told commissioners during her presentation about the final report. “Yet in some cases, there’s a desire for a solution, but there really isn’t a solution. What we can do is buy time.

“It’s like getting older, right?” she said. “The inevitable is going to happen, but we can make choices that allow us to do what we want to do for longer …  and long-term chronic erosion that’s been occurring for hundreds of years in these particular places is a little bit like that.”

Boiled down to its essence, not much has changed in the rationale since 1984, when North Carolina was one of the first states in the nation to ban the structures. Except now the state is not alone.

“Every state is moving away from hardened structures, but there’s not a complete ban,” Daniel Govoni, N.C. Division of Coastal Management policy section chief, told the commission, summing up a presentation of 17 coastal states’ current policies.

While Govoni said that it was difficult to compare the complexities of permitting erosion control structures, in general, he concluded, they all preferred beach nourishment and retreat, and the majority discouraged the structural measures.

‘What is the intent?’

For a long moment, members of the panel sat silently, pokerfaced. Soon, Commissioner Jordan Hennessy asserted that some measures may still be worth trying: “I think there are processes in other states we can look at,” he said.

Member Joseph Hollowell followed, asking what would happen “if some miracle comes along” that is a hardened structure that is banned in North Carolina.

“What is the intent of the science committee?” he asked. “Is it to formulate a campaign to keep the law as it currently is? Was it to be innovative … creative?”

Commission Chair Renee Cahoon responded that the CRC was “not trying to rewrite the law.” Instead, she said, the panel is trying to understand the options so it can provide recommendations to the legislature.

The commission decided at this point to interrupt the discussion to allow CRC Assistant General Counsel Christy Goebel to provide her overview of the hardened structures law, which began life as commission policy in January 1985. The ban was upheld in court in 2000, and the policy became state law in 2003. Then, in 2011, a law was passed that allowed four terminal groins, which trap sand near inlets or the end of islands, as pilot projects. The opening has since been expanded to allow seven groins.

Even with the law in place, structures have been allowed to protect infrastructure like roads and bridges as well as historic structures.

Today, she said, there are at least 15 hardened structures on the North Carolina shoreline. Sandbags, which have always been permitted as temporary structures, are currently allowed to stay in place for eight years. At least 12 sites currently have large sandbags as protective measures on the beach.

Hollowell then made a motion to support the proposed legislation to “do away with” the current hardened structures ban. That would open consideration of “all kinds of new technologies that seem to be out there,” he said.

Hennessy seconded the motion.

But Cahoon objected: “That’s asking this commission to take a political stand, which is not something the commission will do,” she said.

As an alternative, she suggested consulting with the North Carolina Collaboratory, which was established in 2016 by the General Assembly to handle research needs and provide expertise on state issues. “If the legislature passes a bill, they will ask us for direction.”

Commissioner Steve Shuttleworth asked for clarification on the motion.

“I would have a hard time supporting or opposing a motion to support something that I don’t understand what they’re asking us to vote on,” he said. “At the end of the day, my two cents, it’s political. It’s been political for 40 years. Sometimes the legislators go one way, and sometimes, now, they want to go a different way.”

Another commissioner, Katherine Skinner, also questioned whether such a motion was premature, considering that the proposed bill was stalled in committee.

“I feel incredibly uncomfortable backing a bill that has not had full debate in the House and the Senate,” she said. “And we are picking a side that we are not being well-informed on.”

The motion failed in a 6-4 vote, with three members abstaining. Then Hennessy followed with a similar motion, which also failed.

‘Life Is Full of Tradeoffs’

In his presentation on Aug. 26 to the Coastal Resources Advisory Committee, titled “Erosion Management Options, Life Is Full of Tradeoffs,” Spencer Rogers, a member of the Science Panel, detailed how waves and currents interact to transport sand to and from the beach. “The beach changes at rates that are far beyond what most people appreciate,” he said.

It is the water depth that controls the height of waves as they head to the beach. With shallower water, friction starts to slow down the wave, Rogers said. When the wave breaks, it forms a smaller wave. Even during a Category 3 storm in North Carolina, he said, the largest wave on land is likely about 6 feet.

Rogers said the wave-breaking phenomenon is critically important in thinking about development on the coast.

“That 30-foot wave is going to break miles offshore, not on your house,” he said.

Even though ocean currents don’t sound very fast — the Gulf Stream, for instance, is considered speedy with its typical 5 mph pace —  but they move tons and tons of sand daily.

On high-energy beaches, such as those on the Outer Banks, the coastal processes that move sand are intensified. That may explain why beach nourishment cannot be assumed to always mitigate the erosion created by hard structures like revetments or offshore reefs.

“The problem with that approach is that almost every place that is likely to come forward with an erosion problem … beach nourishment has already failed,” Rogers said.

Successful beach nourishment requires a moderate erosion rate and regular maintenance, he added. When the erosion rate is too high, which is likely the case in Buxton, “you really can’t afford long-term beach nourishment,” he said.

“And if beach nourishment is successful, you don’t really need a structure,” Rogers said.

The tradeoff between having a beach or protecting a structure works at Fort Fisher, which has an erosion rate of 10 feet and no beach, he said. But the historic structure is protected.

Such a tradeoff, Rogers noted, would no doubt be “more difficult” in locations like Nags Head.

In a letter to the division in support of the Science Panel’s report, the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, said the hardened structures policy was a product of years of research and observation of impacts in other states.

“The report does not suggest that hardened structures are a solution without consequence,” wrote Ana Zivanovic-Nenadovic, the Coastal Federation’s chief program officer. “Rather, it demonstrates that these approaches involve significant tradeoffs that must be carefully weighed against their limited and localized benefits. At a time when sea level rise, stronger storms, and increasing coastal development are creating unprecedented challenges, North Carolina should continue to lead rather than retreat from the principles that have guided coastal management for decades.”

As the CRC wrapped up its hardened structures discussion on Thursday, several members expressed continued optimism that perhaps new technological advances in erosion-control methods, such as reef balls or offshore breakwaters, could offer reasonable mitigation to chronic erosion. But so far, Moore responded, the future offers no easy or ready solution.

“The Science Panel has reviewed all technologies that are available and there is not anything new and flashy on the horizon,” Moore said. “This is a so well-known, challenging problem that’s been addressed in different ways with differing degrees of success and adverse impacts along coastlines throughout the world for a long time. So there’s just not a magic silver bullet.”

After six years of litigation and a nearly six-week trial earlier this year, a Wake County judge has ruled that the state has failed to manage and protect coastal fisheries.

In his nearly 200-page order issued Aug. 17, Superior Court Judge Bryan Collins Jr. explained that the court, “based on the preponderance of the evidence” finds that the state has “breached its obligations under the public-trust doctrine” as directed in the North Carolina Constitution.

Coastal Conservation Association North Carolina and more than 80 others filed the lawsuit Nov. 10, 2020, against the state for what the nonprofit calls “North Carolina’s ‘abject failure’ in meeting its legal duties to properly manage coastal fisheries resources on behalf of North Carolina’s current and future citizens.”

CCA NC Executive Director David Sneed told Coastal Review last week that although this is the outcome the organization wanted, “this is not a moment for celebration. There is no real victory when our fisheries are depleted. The important thing now is that the magnitude of the problem has been recognized.”

During the trial held Jan. 20 to Feb. 25, Collins heard from witnesses representing both sides of the lawsuit, including fisheries scientists, independent researchers, and current and former staff with the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries. The division carries out the rules and regulations that the Marine Fisheries Commission approves and adopts. The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality is the parent agency for the commission and division.

The judge ruled that in the 30 years since the North Carolina General Assembly established the Fisheries Reform Act in 1997, in response to decades of declining abundance, the state has failed to rebuild and maintain healthy fish stocks and protect key habitats.

Sneed said that next steps “are to bring together the general public, scientists, managers, and policymakers to find practical ways to protect and restore North Carolina’s fisheries,” and to fulfill the directive on page 190 of the ruling. “The court ordered both sides to meet and then submit a joint report to the court within 45 days with their views on how the remedy phase of the case should move forward.”

DEQ Secretary Reid Wilson briefed the Marine Fisheries Commission during its Aug. 20 meeting in Raleigh about the judge’s ruling against the state in the case. He explained that staff were reviewing court documents and speaking with their colleagues at the Department of Justice about what happens next.

“There is a next phase, the remedy phase, and I don’t think anyone in this room knows how all this is going to turn out. But obviously, you all on the commission, we at the department, the division, and stakeholders are going to be working together in the coming years, once we have a final answer from the court system about what we’re supposed to do to address what this particular judge found, so that’s going to be a big focus probably for years,” he said.

Based on extensive testimony, the judge ruled that the “State’s failures are not the product of any one decision, but rather, are the product of a systemic, decades-long pattern of risk-prone management dominated by short-term commercial-industry considerations to the detriment of North Carolina’s coastal fisheries and the general public.”

Expert opinions cited in the ruling point to some decisions erring “on the risky side” including the General Assembly amending the Fisheries Reform Act in 2004 to remove the buffer implemented in 1997, which allowed more fish to be harvested. The change put the threshold hovering over the minimum level at which a stock is no longer classified as overfished.

The judge also points to the act’s failing because of gaps in stock mortality data for commercial fishing, bycatch and discards, and a lack of stock assessments for some species, and the interests of the nine-member Marine Fisheries Commission, which votes on the laws for coastal fisheries and fishing.

The appointed board members include two from the commercial fishing industry, one representing the seafood industry, two with the recreational fishing industry, a scientist, and two members at large. “Thus, at least three of the nine seats-a full one-third-are reserved for individuals with a direct financial interest in the private, for-profit harvest of coastal fisheries resources, even though commercial-license holders comprise less than one-tenth of one percent of the State’s citizens,” the judge found.

One witness testified that the way the commission is currently structured, voting is interest based. Another said that commissioners prioritized their sector instead of making informed decisions based on the science and resource-protection materials provided before official meetings.

“The evidence at trial also included numerous examples of instances in which the MFC’s structural defects caused management failures, including where a conservation-oriented measure was recommended by DMF and was defeated at the MFC,” Collins wrote, citing as examples proposed rule changes to commercial fishing gear and harvest reductions.

Collins quoted one witness who said “the MFC has ‘always bowed to the commercial fishing [industry].’”

The North Carolina Fisheries Association attempted to intervene in the lawsuit when it was first filed but was denied. The nonprofit group represents the state’s commercial fishing industry.

Association Executive Director Glenn Skinner told Coastal Review earlier this week that the organization is currently reviewing the ruling and has no comment at this time.

How the state governs coastal fisheries today

Public outcry on the declining stocks in the late 20^th century pushed state lawmakers to restructure how the public-trust resource was managed.

The General Assembly, in recognizing “the need to protect our coastal fishery resources and to balance the commercial and recreational interests through better management of these resources,” enacted the resulting legislation, the 1997 Fisheries Reform Act “to ensure the long-term viability of the State’s commercially and recreationally significant species or fisheries.”

Long-term viability is the legal standard that requires fish stocks to be maintained at healthy, self-sustaining levels and retains a healthy age structure.

Collins writes that the act “was touted as ushering North Carolina into modern fisheries management, and the intended solution for the decline in coastal fisheries abundance observed in the last quarter of the 20th century.” He also notes that the “expectation was that the FRA would be the statutory framework for reversing the long-term trends in declining abundance for multiple managed species or developing precautionary management plans for those fisheries where landings had increased to a point that declines seemed imminent.”

The law authorized the governor-appointed Marine Fisheries Commission to manage and regulate marine and estuarine resources within coastal waters. As part of that framework, the act directed the Division of Marine Fisheries to draft science-based fishery management plans “for all commercially or recreationally significant species or fisheries that comprise State marine or estuarine resources” for the commission to approve and adopt.

The state currently manages stocks through fisheries management plans for bay scallop, blue crab, eastern oyster, hard clam, estuarine striped bass, river herring, southern flounder, spotted seatrout, striped mullet, kingfishes, sheepshead, shrimp and red drum.

“The evidence at trial, however, including from the State’s own witnesses, confirmed that the State is not managing to long-term viability, and instead, is focused on processes, rather than outcomes measured by the long-term viability standard,” according to the ruling. “Given the State’s admissions and the unrebutted expert testimony that not a single one of the 13 state-managed stocks exhibits long-term viability, the State has necessarily failed to meet those affirmative duties.”

The University of North Carolina Collaboratory in January 2026 released its supplemental report on state fisheries management, which the General Assembly had commissioned in 2021, and corroborated the expert testimony, according to the court ruling.

The judge references the study’s findings, notably that the state’s “fisheries are ‘intensely managed,’” and that there are continued challenges in reaching core goals of the Fisheries Reform Act.

Key points in the study, as referred to by the judge, are that the management planning process is slow, the state has failed to manage ecosystems and critical habitats are degrading, the Marine Patrol, the enforcement arm of the division, doesn’t have enough staff to cover the state’s estuarine and coastal waters, and there’s overall dissatisfaction and distrust of state management.

North Carolina Wildlife Federation CEO Tim Gestwicki told Coastal Review in a phone conversation last week that “we have a judge’s ruling that is crystal clear.” In February 2022, the organization filed an amicus brief in support of the CCA NC’s lawsuit.

“The state has failed in its obligation to manage public trust resources, and no gray area, and when the judge says it’s time for drastic changes, that should be a pretty clear signal,” he said, adding that the data has been there a long time.

“When you combine the collaboratory independent study that came out, and you combine this irrefutable judge’s ruling, there is no escape now. Change must occur,” he said. “It’s not the North Carolina Wildlife Federation saying this. It’s not the CCA. It is independent scientists and a long legal journey through which every step the plaintiffs were affirmed. So this is about validation and affirmation that North Carolina has had and continues to have significant deficiencies in managing marine fisheries.”

The nation’s second-oldest federal marine science laboratory is getting a new home on Pivers Island.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced on Thursday plans to fund $64 million from the 2025 Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act to build a new facility for the Beaufort Laboratory.

The longtime home of the Beaufort Lab, as it is more commonly referred, was shuttered in mid-October 2024 after significant hurricane-related structural damage was discovered during a routine inspection in the building’s foundation.

The Beaufort Lab was established in 1899 and predates NOAA by more than 70 years. It houses NOAA’s National Ocean Service and National Marine Fisheries Service’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center, and the North Carolina Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Research Reserve.

“For more than a century, the dedicated experts at NOAA’s Beaufort Laboratory have produced world-class science that supports our economy, advances national priorities, and enhances coastal resilience,” Dr. Neil Jacobs, NOAA administrator, stated in a release. “This state-of-the-art facility, located within the country’s second-largest estuary and adjacent to the Gulf Stream, will enable NOAA to continue its groundbreaking research while strengthening collaboration with industry and academic partners.”

NOAA says the new lab will expand its research and services in the following ways:

• Researching, monitoring and forecasting harmful algal blooms.
• Deploying uncrewed systems for underwater habitat mapping and coral restoration.
• Serving as a research hub to support South Atlantic fisheries management and stewardship of marine resources.
• Evaluating the performance of natural infrastructure for coastal protection.
• Managing the Rachel Carson National Estuarine Research Reserve and providing opportunities for education, research and compatible traditional uses.

Design and preconstruction work on the new facility, which will be built above the floodplain and designed to withstand storm and flooding events, is expected to begin early next year.

Weather forecasts in areas of North Carolina this summer have played like a needle on a scratched vinyl record, bouncing backward in a repeating loop: dry and hot, dry and hot, dry and hot.

Well before high temperatures with heat indexes climbing into triple digits smothered the air hanging over portions of the state, coastal counties being no exception, the land beneath our feet was parched.

The North Carolina Drought Management Advisory Council, or DMAC, announced at the beginning of this year that the state was experiencing widespread dry conditions, the result of a drought the origins of which trace back to August 2025. About a week into the new year, 15 of the state’s 20 coastal counties were classified as abnormally dry.

By June’s end, Brunswick County Public Utilities customers were placed under mandatory water restrictions. As June turned over to July, drought conditions in that county further deteriorated.

Though the western portion of North Carolina’s southernmost coastal county as of Aug. 18 remained under exceptional drought, the highest drought classification, rain since July has relieved dry conditions marginally but enough to prompt the county to ease water, though not completely lift, water use restrictions.

North Carolina has since last month started to see some notable rainfall, particularly in the western part of the state and northern part of the coast, said Klaus Albertin, DMAC chair and water resources engineer with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources.

“Most areas are starting to see improvements, and a lot of the state, lawns, gardens, agriculture is looking good because we’ve been getting regular rains,” he said. “Not everywhere improves at the same rate. That’s kind of the tough part about the summertime in North Carolina. We’ll get some rains that are really spotty, so you’ll have areas that get 2, 3, 3½ inches, but then, not far away, they may only get a quarter of an inch.”

This helped some state reservoirs recover their water levels faster than others.

Rainfall in the watershed above Jordan Lake, for example, helped that reservoir bounce back to its target water level within a couple of weeks, Albertin said.

Falls Lake, which is a little more than 30 miles northeast of Jordan Lake, hasn’t been as lucky.

“It’s going to take some good rains or a lot of smaller, consistent rains to bring all of them back up to where we’d like to see them,” Albertin said.

As for aquifers, he said, “I would say, instead of weeks you probably are looking at months, and some of it just takes a while for the water to percolate down into the aquifers.”

Gabrielle Chianese, DWR’s Groundwater Resource Branch supervisor, explained that there are portions of the state where groundwater, or superficial aquifer wells, are showing decreases.

“However, the deeper aquifers, the only way the drought really impacts those deeper aquifers is due to higher usage,” including lawn irrigation, she said. “That’s when we’ll see impacts to the lower aquifers. But all of these seem to be recovering very well, especially the ones that the deeper aquifers that are being used more, we are seeing recovery in those so that’s good news.”

She encourages private well water owners to have their well water tested, a service typically provided by county health departments for a fee.

Parts of the state continue to face lingering rainfall deficits despite recent summer storms.

As of Aug. 18, Wilmington, for example, was at a 21-inch rain deficit.

“It just goes to show that we haven’t really had a whole lot of rain, especially in some parts of the state, since last August,” of 2025, said North Carolina State Climate Office Director Dr. Jared Bowden.

And the hot weather much of the state has experienced this summer has only aided and abetted drought conditions.

Intense heat paired with dry conditions creates what is called a “hot drought,” which amplifies the loss of moisture in the soil.

“If you basically dry out the soil then all the energy goes into heating up that surface and then it gets just hotter, so it feels hotter, and that’s because all the energy goes directly into heating the surface rather than evaporation,” Bowden said. “There’s this coupling process as the atmosphere continues to warm and it becomes thirstier that you get these hotter and drier droughts.”

This, he explained, is a fingerprint of the changing climate.

According to the State Climate Office, North Carolina over the last 120 years has warmed by about 1 degree Fahrenheit.

“This is less than Earth as a whole, which has warmed by nearly two degrees,” the office states.

But warming has accelerated in recent decades, with the period between 2009 and 2018 becoming the state’s warmest recorded decade.

Wetter weather patterns ahead?

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in early June confirmed that the globe was officially in an El Niño year. El Niño is a recurring weather phenomenon that forms when the sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean are warmer than average.

And, Bowden said, its impacts are already being felt.

“Hurricanes, like them or not, they do contribute to our climatological rainfall into late fall in particular,” he said. “Basically, El Niño is decreasing the likelihood that we’ll have significant rains from a tropical-like system.”

What does that mean for say, Brunswick County? As we move into peak hurricane season, if the probability for a named storm is low, so too is the likelihood of short-term drought relief.

“But, as you go into the fall, when El Niño picks up in strength, the impacts are for a wetter winter,” Bowden explained.

In fact, in the coming months – October, November and into December – North Carolina could experience similar rain events to those of 2015, when there was in a strong El Niño.

“We had our wettest December on record, and the strong El Niño event of 1997 and ’98, we had our wettest winter on record for the state of North Carolina,” Bowden said. “That’s kind of where we’re headed. Ideally, it’s going to be months of needed rain. I mean, of course, you can get the big hurricane — even that would just really put a dent in something like that — but the odds of that type of event are not as likely. It will probably be more steady rainfall over the winter months that would bring places like Wilmington that are currently, over the last year, in 20-inches-plus deficit to get them back to normal. But, the short term is we might stay dry for a little longer across the state.”

Twenty years from now, the Atlantic’s barrier islands will look different. Beaches will have migrated, marshes shifted, and storms will have redrawn the shore. Yet descendants of a 500-year-old bloodline will likely still be grazing a coastline that never stops changing.

Wild horses have survived here for centuries not because this landscape is stable, but because they learned to survive one that is not.

Few wildlife populations allow such a direct comparison. From the Delmarva Peninsula to North Carolina’s Outer Banks, five horse herds share the same Colonial Spanish ancestry, but not the same conservation trajectories. Though other feral horses exist along the Atlantic Coast, these five are distinguished by centuries of adaptation to barrier-island life, coupled with deliberate management efforts to preserve their historic bloodlines.

Whether their ancestors arrived through shipwrecks, early settlements, or expeditions from the Caribbean remains debated. Their genetics do not. A 2022 study that compared a horse tooth from the abandoned colony of Puerto Real in present-day Haiti with modern populations found its closest living relatives among Assateague’s feral horses. The finding complemented decades of analysis by Texas A&M geneticist Gus Cothran, whose research identified Colonial Spanish lineage in several barrier-island herds. While their bloodlines remained a common thread, the challenges facing each herd did not – leading to not one conservation model, but five.

Congressional protection

Of the five herds, the Shackleford Banks is the only herd protected by an act of Congress – after the isolation that had preserved its ancestry became its greatest vulnerability. The Shackleford Banks Wild Horses Protection Act of 1998 requires the National Park Service to maintain a minimum of 110 horses on the island, a threshold genetic research found necessary for the population’s long-term viability. The law requires the agency and the private Foundation for Shackleford Horses jointly manage the herd using PZP, a contraceptive vaccine, and, when necessary, the selective removal or adoption of individual animals.

Today, park service personnel at the Cape Lookout National Seashore say rising seas, marsh loss, overwash, erosion, changing vegetation, and declining freshwater availability are reducing the island’s capacity to support the horses. In 2025, herd mortality reached 17%, compared with a long-term average of 6%, with most deaths linked to poor body condition associated with inadequate forage.

Dr. Sue Stuska, the park service biologist who manages the herd, said limited forage particularly affects the most vulnerable horses, including older animals, youngsters, and lactating mares.

“Our long-term goal is to maintain the herd along with healthy natural resources,” Stuska stated. “We cannot have the first without the second.”

The Corolla model

Corolla follows a different model, relying on local stewardship rather than federal protection. Roughly 100 horses roam about 7,500 acres in Currituck County at the northern end of the Outer Banks, moving across wetlands, maritime forests, beaches, and developed neighborhoods. The Corolla Wild Horse Fund was formed in 1989 in response to vehicle-horse collisions that increased following the paving of N.C. Highway 12 between Duck and Corolla. Today, the nonprofit manages the herd through fertility control, veterinary care, habitat protection, and partnerships with local, state, and federal agencies.

Testing in 1992 revealed the herd had experienced a severe genetic bottleneck, leaving it with extremely low genetic diversity and a single maternal line. In 2014, a Shackleford Banks stallion was introduced to diversify the Corolla population while preserving its historic Iberian lineage.

Director of Herd Management Meg Puckett has watched those changes unfold over the past decade. She told Coastal Review that the most significant shift has come since the pandemic, bringing “more tourists and more year-round residents in the (four-wheel-drive) area.” She added, “We’re fortunate to work for an organization that allows us to respond in near-real time.”

As more visitors unfamiliar with the animals have arrived, public education has become even more vital to the organization’s work, while preserving the habitat that allows the horses to remain wild is equally important. In Corolla, conservation increasingly means protecting the space they have left to move.

Ocracoke’s compromise

Ocracoke Island embodies a different kind of compromise: conservation through confinement. Like Corolla, the arrival of N.C. Highway 12 brought cars and horses closer together. In response to the increased traffic after the final 3-mile stretch was completed in 1958, local Boy Scouts, who ran the nation’s only mounted Scout troop using the island’s ponies, built a pen under a special-use permit the following year. Mike Barber, a National Park Service public affairs specialist, said the move “marked the first formal management of the herd.” At the request of the local community, the park service assumed responsibility for the horses in 1974.

Today, fewer than 20 horses remain at the Ocracoke Pony Pen, where park service staff and volunteers provide daily feeding and coordinate medical care. Barber said the herd is now managed with its “safety and welfare” as the priority. Unlike Corolla, Ocracoke’s solution traded freedom for safety. Both approaches ultimately rely on fencing, but for different purposes. At Corolla, fences define the boundaries of a landscape where the horses can still roam free; on Ocracoke, they form a protective enclosure. More than six decades later, the park service is developing a new management plan as sea level rise continues to reshape Ocracoke. Barber said rising sea levels are expected to “increasingly affect facilities, forage, and freshwater access.”

Assateague Island’s two approaches

Nearly 200 nautical miles north of Ocracoke, on the Delmarva Peninsula, Assateague Island offers a striking contrast. One barrier island, divided by the Maryland-Virginia line, supports two horse herds and two distinct management philosophies.

In 1961, nine ponies were released on the Maryland side of the island. After Assateague Island National Seashore was established in 1965, a fence went up along the state line to keep the two populations separate. On the Maryland side, the National Park Service manages its herd as a wildlife population, relying on PZP contraception to hold numbers within a target range of 80 to 100 horses. Rather than relying on roundups or removals, biologists control the one variable they can: reproduction. Park service officials credit the program with extending lifespans well into the horses’ 20s and 30s.

Aside from fertility control, feeding and veterinary care are kept to a minimum. That freedom carries its own risks, however, and in August 2026, two horses were struck and killed by vehicles within 13 days. In a statement to Coastal Review, the park service said its staff were “looking at possible changes to traffic rules,” but no decisions have been announced. After the most recent collision, the mare’s foal was relocated below the state line “where he will receive veterinary care and become part of the Chincoteague herd. This move is permanent.”

Cross the fence into Virginia, and the conservation model changes completely; from a largely hands-off to a decidedly hands-on approach. Here, the horses are owned by the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Co., which maintains about 150 adult ponies.

Every year on the last Wednesday in July, saltwater cowboys drive the horses across Assateague Channel to Chincoteague Island for the annual Pony Penning. Most of that year’s foals are sold at auction the following Thursday, with proceeds helping fund the fire company’s continued stewardship – a tradition dating to 1925. When the pandemic forced the auction online in 2020, organizers introduced the remote bidding that continues today through simulcast.

From 2010 through 2019, reported sales averaged about $157,000 annually. In 2025, the centennial auction surpassed $1 million for the first time, while the 2026 event generated $635,600. The fire company retains an average of six or seven foals each year as “buybacks,” selecting animals it wants to return to the Virginia herd after the auction.

Public information officer and Saltwater Cowboy Hunter Leonard told Coastal Review the unique program is one of its most important conservation tools – helping maintain the herd’s health and longevity while promoting genetic diversity. Buyback purchasers receive naming rights, giving them a personal stake in the herd’s future even though the foals remain on the island. On Friday, the remaining ponies swim back across the channel to their permanent home on Assateague.

Home, however, looks different on each island. While these five herds share a historic legacy, each population’s geography, local priorities, and individual pressures produced a unique answer to the same question: How do you preserve an equine lineage on islands that refuse to stand still?

The sand shifts, the channels move, and the forage comes and goes with the tide. An act of Congress, nonprofit stewardship, a fenced pasture, fertility control with minimal intervention, an annual roundup and auction; each offers a solution to the same changing landscape.

What varies is what each island demands — of horses and humans alike. And different as those demands may be, each reflects generations of people doing what they could, with what they had, to ensure these wild horses can continue doing the same.

In the last six years the Atlantic Ocean has demolished nearly three dozen privately owned oceanfront homes in Buxton and Rodanthe.

These collapsed houses represent a broader coastal management challenge, even pushing the commission that makes coastal development rules to reconsider a decadeslong ban on hardened structures built for erosion control, Dr. Reide Corbett said during a recent talk at Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island.

A coastal oceanographer and geochemist, Corbett, as of July 16, is the new interim dean of the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences on East Carolina University’s main campus. He spent the last 14 years as head of the Coastal Studies Institute, or CSI, in Wanchese, led by ECU. His talk was one of five in the “Water/Ways” speaker series last month organized to complement the Smithsonian traveling exhibit with the same name that was on display at the time.

“There’s no doubt that we are seeing changes along our shoreline,” and because there’s not just one thing driving coastal change, there’s not one simple solution, Corbett said early in the presentation.

“I’ll go ahead and put quotes around ‘solution’ now because I might not do it throughout the entire talk, because a solution to many of these challenges we face is likely only temporary. It’s not going to solve the problem. The process that is driving many of these changes won’t be solved by one thing.”

The process

North Carolina’s coast is protected by low-lying sand deposits called barrier islands. These mobile landforms that separate the mainland from the ocean are in constant but slow motion toward the mainland. This natural process is how these islands maintain elevation and width.

This is nothing new, “barrier islands have always changed,” Corbett said, but now these mobile landforms are developed. “For better or worse, it is where we are. These coastlines have been changing since there were coastlines. The difference is we have a lot of infrastructure today in the same areas where these coastlines are changing.”

The natural process of erosion on the oceanside and growth on the sound side of the island is being exacerbated by increasing sea levels, development associated with population growth, and storm impacts.

The National Oceanographic Atmospheric Administration reported a few years ago that sea level is expected to rise 1 to 1.5 feet by 2050. “To put that in perspective, it took the last almost 100 years for sea levels to change 1 foot in coastal North Carolina,” Corbett said. “And from roughly 2000 to 2050, we’ll expect at least an additional 1-to 1.5-foot rise.”

That is a significant amount, and “When you look at what sea level is doing based on tide gauges up and down our coast, we are right on track to meet that if not surpass that” projection that he said has a 95% chance of happening.

To illustrate, when a house on the Outer Banks gets taken by the ocean, Corbett said the “narrative is ‘often why did people build here? Why would they put their house right there? It’s so vulnerable,’” but when the houses were built in Buxton, for example, in the 1970s and 1980s, there was 100 to 300 feet of beach, or a few dunes, in front at the time. Now, the ocean is on their doorstep.

It’s because these shorelines have been eroding for decades, some at 5, 10 or 15 feet per year every year. Then put a storm on top of that, or this past fall, three storms “one after another after another without any time for recovery, and what you end up doing is deflating the beach, dropping the elevation of that beach, removing significant amount of sand because of the energy in the system.”

There has been roughly a 1-foot rise in sea level since 1975 at this location, and erosion has continued anywhere from 4 to 8 feet per year there. “You put those two things together and this is what you have,” he said.

As Corbett said early in the program, “there’s not going to be a single simple solution for any community” and what may work for one won’t necessarily work for another.

Community questions

Communities need to ask themselves what they are trying to protect. “Is it an individual home? Is it a way of life? Is it an economy? Where are we acting? Where is it most vulnerable? What are we trying to protect? And where is that? You can ask ‘why are we trying to protect that?’ as well if you like. How far are we looking out into the future? Because I think that’s important to consider when acting on a potential solution.”

What can a community do once it decides on a path forward? There area a handful of options, starting with nothing, which Corbett said isn’t really a response. Some areas can be protected. For example, a living shoreline in an estuary could protect infrastructure. Accommodate the change and that might look like houses being raised or a bridge around a very vulnerable location or leave. “Nobody likes to hear the word ‘retreat’ because it seems like you’re giving up. And I don’t disagree with that,” he said, but the idea is to move out of those most vulnerable locations.

Corbett said that hardened structures are “being pointed to a lot today as a way of protection, a solution to the problem. And I think it’s important to recognize the tradeoffs.”

In North Carolina, hardened structures have not been used to control erosion in decades, because of a policy in the 1980s and then a law in the early 2000s.

Corbett noted on the presentation slide that the state law “prohibits the construction of a permanent erosion control structure in an ocean shoreline, including breakwater, bulkhead, groin, jetty, revetment, seawall or any similar structure. This ban was based on extensive studies and technical data documenting the detrimental impacts of erosion control structures, including 150 years of documented negative impacts of shoreline stabilization on the barrier islands of New Jersey.”

The different kinds of hardened structures come with their own sets of problems. A vertical structure like a seawall might protect what’s behind it but will lead to higher erosion rates on either side of the structure and a total loss of recreation beach in front of it, Corbett said.

The houses actively crumbling have pressed the Coastal Resources Commission to consider potential changes to its laws on hardened structures and charged its science panel, on which he serves, in February to draft a report on the various types of hardened structures for oceanfront and the advantages and disadvantages of each type. The report was first presented during the commission’s June meeting.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management, which carries out the development rules established by the commission, announced that the commission is to hear an update on the report during the Aug. 26-27 meeting in Manteo.

But with all those responses, “I think it’s important to recognize that the processes aren’t changing,” Corbett said.

Buxton has three terminal groins that were built in the 1960s that have deteriorated, and the narrative suggests that the deterioration and large holes in the structure farthest south has led to significant erosion.

“My argument is, it’s not just that. It’s an erosional system. There’s a lot of data to show that even with these groins, there’s a reason we moved the lighthouse,” said Corbett, referring to the Cape Hatteras Light, which was moved in 1999 a distance of 2,900 feet from where it was built in 1870 because of its proximity to the waves. “It wasn’t a stable system. And those groins have been there since the late ’60s. And so, this is an eroding system. And it’s been eroding regardless of whether those groins were there or not. And it will continue to erode whether we rebuild those groins or not.”

Nourishment does protect but is a temporary solution. It’s not changing the process causing the erosion.

Beach nourishment is when sand is taken from a borrow area and pumped onto the beach. The amount of time the new sand lasts on the shoreline is no longer projected to be seven years. Now the project planners are calculating for five years. But that’s not long enough either. The sand from a 2022 beach nourishment in Buxton only lasted two years until more was needed.

Corbett’s hypothesis is that nourishment projects are causing the shoreface to steepen 15 to 20 feet from the shoreline. He said he was considering looking further into this untested theory to see if the nourishment areas are becoming more vulnerable.

Data available on coastsat.space, which uses satellite imagery to map ocean shorelines, shows how the beach is changing and responding to a beach nourishment project.  

For south Nags Head, the first nourishment project was in late 2011 or 2012, and data shows that after nourishment, the erosion rate became significantly faster.

“You place a lot of sand on the beach, it’s unnatural. Yes, it provides a wider beach, but you also increase that erosion rate,” Corbett said. “I’m not saying this isn’t protecting infrastructure” but it doesn’t stop the process.

“Nourishment is a Band-Aid for that real physical process of erosion. It hasn’t slowed the process. It is a temporary solution that has to continue. You don’t do a single nourishment, you develop a nourishment program,” he said. “It’s $20 million today. It’s $20 million in five years.”

Ultimately, Corbett said communities need to decide what they want to protect and if they’re willing to accept the tradeoff.

Marine scientists and others at the University of North Carolina Wilmington are waiting anxiously for the arrival of a new $7.5 million, state-funded research vessel that will greatly enhance research capabilities and learning opportunities for students.

While the school’s marine science students hail from far-flung locations, a substantial number are from the Wilmington area and as many as 400 are from in and around Carteret County.

That’s important to UNCW Director of Marine Operations Jay Styron of Cedar Island and Wilmington.

“I’m excited,” he said Monday afternoon.

“We’ve been pushing for this for 16 years. I can hardly believe we’re finally at this point. We are grateful for the state funding. Delivery is imminent.”

The R/V Osprey was built for the university in Bellingham, Washington. Styron went to the shipyard recently and took the 78-foot-long, 27-foot-wide aluminum catamaran out for sea tests and said Monday it handled the tests beautifully.

“It was great,” he said. “It’s everything we hoped for.”

Size alone will be a difference-maker.

The RV Osprey is 15 feet longer than the vessel it’s replacing and will be the largest marine research vessel in the region, Styron said.

“It’s even bigger than the research vessel at the Duke (University Marine) lab” on Pivers Island in Beaufort, he said.

Duke’s vessel is a 77-foot, hydrofoil-assisted, aluminum catamaran built by All American Marine and delivered in 2019.

The R/V Osprey is en route to Florida, where Styron will pick up and sail the vessel home to a berth on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway off campus.

UNCW’s Center for Marine Science has more than 100 affiliated faculty representing all UNCW colleges. It features offices and laboratories for more than 40 researchers and scientists, 65 students and more than 60 staff members.

Styron said one of the major improvements the Osprey will offer UNCW and the region is enhanced geophysical work, especially in identifying locations of offshore sand.

“Sand is gold now,” he said, because local governments along the coast are constantly looking for sand to nourish beaches that are eroding because of sea level rise and the impacts of hurricanes and nor’easters.

In addition, Styron said, the vessel will enhance research into and monitoring of PFAS.

These compounds, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are manufactured chemicals used since the 1950s to make consumer products resistant to water, grease and heat.

Because of their persistence, they are often called “forever chemicals.”

They don’t break down easily in nature or in humans and are believed to cause high cholesterol levels, liver and immune system damage, low birth weights, some cancers and hormone disruptions.

In Wilmington, problems stem from decades of discharges into the Cape Fear River from the Chemours chemical plant upstream in Fayetteville.

But PFAS also have been found in other locations where water has been tested.

Styron said another use for the vessel will be retrieval of weather buoys associated with the Coastal Ocean Research Monitoring Program, or CORMP.

Styron said the university will seek donors to help cover operational costs for R/V Osprey, with a particular eye on the many wealthy people who have flocked to the North Carolina coast in recent years.

Ultimately, he said, he’d like to see an endowment, such as the one for marine science at Duke University, to cover all costs.

Styron added that the new vessel will enable increased collaboration with the many marine science and fisheries facilities in Carteret County and elsewhere.

Design characteristics

A press release from UNCW states that the vessel design will allow researchers to adapt to a variety of projects, providing dependable access to nearshore environments to make North Carolina an exceptional living laboratory.

“As the state’s coastal university, the (UNCW) Center for Marine Science serves as a hub for research that addresses regional, national and global environmental challenges.

“The R/V Osprey enhances the center’s capacity to support projects focused on coastal resilience, ecosystem health, fisheries, water quality and marine technology”

The custom-designed catamaran hull with hydrofoil allows for increased stability and maneuverability in choppy coastal waters.

The hull design, combined with the energy-rated engines and 6-foot draft, provides fuel- efficient performance on a stable platform.

It has an advanced navigation system to fully integrate with instruments and scientists during a cruise.

It includes radar, single-beam sonar, a multibeam sonar, an automatic identification system, or AIS, VHF radio, an an electronic amplification system, or hailer, and a forward-looking infrared, or FLIR, thermal and low-light camera system.

There are berthing spaces for up to 10 crew and researchers with quiet, comfortable rest areas during multiday sea operations, essential for safety and effective operational and scientific work.

Lab space is a climate-controlled environment for processing freshly collected samples, with running seawater, freshwater refrigeration, deep-freeze storage, chemical storage and microscopes. Dry lab space is used for computing and analyzing data collected during cruises. It allows active monitoring of built-in and overboard systems such as acoustic doppler current profiler, or ADCP, to study the water column, a WASSP multibeam sonar system, analytical processes running on scientific computer servers, Wi-Fi, monitors and connection points for geophysical survey equipment.

The 27-foot-wide aft deck is designed to maximize space.

The hundreds of thousands of visitors who come to Carteret County each year to observe the wild herd roaming free on Shackleford Banks wouldn’t have much to see if the National Park Service’s proposal in the mid-1990s to dramatically reduce the herd had come to pass.

But when talk began in 1995 about removing a large portion of the wild horses to preserve island vegetation on the undeveloped barrier island, a part of Cape Lookout National Seashore, a group created a nonprofit to fight on behalf of the horses and won.

According to the grassroots nonprofit, the Foundation for Shackleford Horses, formed on Aug. 9, 1996, the park service’s plan to reduce the herd was detrimental, “Because you are talking about something that people identify with this place as much as they do the lighthouse or fishing or the beaches. The horses are an intrinsic part of this place, and this place is an intrinsic part of each one of us that loves it and calls it home.”

Foundation President Margaret Poindexter said the nonprofit evolved after a handful of concerned residents first gathered at public meetings, and then at public protests, in 1995. The foundation members consulted with scientists and collected data, research, and historical information, and approached then-Congressman Walter B. Jones Jr. to help protect the herd.

“Together, they stood up to the government’s ill-conceived policy proposal and blatant disregard for local interests, cultivated public, and eventually, bipartisan political support for their issue, which ultimately resulted in the enactment of unprecedented federal legislation in 1998, the ‘Shackleford Banks Wild Horses Protection Act,’ to ensure preservation and protection of a treasured resource, an ideal, a value,” Pondexter wrote in an email.

Since the legislation passed in 1998, the foundation has been cooperating with the National Park Service to make decisions about contraception, remove horses from the herd, veterinary intervention and humane euthanasia to end a horse’s suffering. DNA testing is also conducted to maintain the records documenting their lineage, and to monitor the overall genetic health of the herd, she continued.

The foundation is commemorating is 30 years at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 15, at Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island. Attendees are asked to bring a covered dish to share during the 6 p.m. dinner before the 7 p.m. program with special guest, behavioral ecologist Dr. Dan Rubenstein, who has studied the herd for decades and was one of the scientists consulted back in 1995. RSVP for planning purposes to shackhorsemail@gmail.com.

Poindexter said that Rubenstein’s “study of the horses has been instrumental in their protection and preservation” and the foundation “believes that, without the study and work of Dr. Rubenstein, the wild herd of Shackleford Banks would not exist today.”

The Princeton University professor and his graduate students have been studying and documenting the social behavior of the Shackleford horses for decades. He was named in 2008 Princeton’s Class of 1877 Professor of Zoology, an endowed professorship, and transferred to emeritus status in 2023.

Rubenstein, who had just returned to the United States from Kenya where he studies zebras, told Coastal Review last week that he remembers when the foundation’s founder and former president, Carolyn Mason, called him out of the blue 30 years ago about his decades of research on the herd.

“She said, ‘You don’t know me. I’m a librarian at Cherry Point, and we have a problem,’” Rubenstein said, “and she explained the problem, and we became friends. And the foundation was started. And long story short, the horses are still there.”

The equine ecologist learned about Carteret County’s wild horses almost by accident, he said, because of his interest in animal behavior while a zoology graduate student at Duke University in the early 1970s.

“I was on main campus, and I was at the beginning of this emerging field called behavioral ecology,” which Rubenstein explained as “behaviors related to the ecology, and it can go both ways. The behavior can change the ecology, or the ecology can impact the behavior.”

But, his interest in animal behavior started a few years before this while an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. He read a study on the family structure of the herd in the Pryor Mountains on the Montana-Wyoming border. The scientist who observed wild horse behavior looked at how the horses organize their social lives.

“I read his papers and said, ‘I want to study those horses’ and the one reason I did is that we were learning in our classes that animals live in groups largely because they have relatives in those groups,” even though “there’s no automatic benefits to living in groups, only costs.” This is because of competition for resources. The cost can be minimized through kin selection, the evolutionary theory that animals help their relatives survive so their shared genes are passed to the next generation.

“Virtually all animal societies are based around mothers staying with their daughters or sons staying with their fathers. So there’s a kin relationship. Horses and bats are unique in the sense that they’re like Western humans. Everybody leaves home,” he said. “Horses represented the toughest case to understand why animals live in groups because the genetic connectedness was not there. So I was interested in that.”

He had planned to head west and study the wild horses on Pryor Mountain but while on a visit to Beaufort in 1973 he learned that there were wild horses on Shackleford Banks.

“I decided I’d go out and camp on the island for a week and learn how to study horses because I’d never studied horses. I didn’t have horses when I was growing up. I didn’t ride horses. I worked on crayfish for my undergraduate thesis at Michigan. I was in the river all the time, snorkeling, cold, miserable,” but with the horses, you can study the behavior.

“And that week was miserable. In the spring, it rained every day. The tent I borrowed had holes in the top. Didn’t have a fly,” but he met a local who had a fish camp on the island and told Rubenstein all about the Shackleford horses, including the myths surrounding the wild herd.

Calling the horses beautiful, he said it was fascinating how they were culturally connected to people from Harkers Island, one of the 13 unincorporated communities making up Down East in Carteret County.

“I also learned on my first trip that they were not behaving like horses should be. They were being territorial, and that has to do with the structure of the island. There are all these channels of water that come in, and the horses used those as boundaries that they didn’t have to mark. That would be dividing lines between groups, and so I got fascinated by that and that’s how I got started studying the horses. And one thing led to another, and the numbers that I had before they took the cows, sheep and goats off the island became the basis for the legislation,” he said, referring to when the park service removed the livestock but left the horses in the early 1980s.

Rubenstein said he’s looking forward to his visit to Carteret County and talking about the process of coming up with the management plan. “I’ll talk on the secret lives of horses, but I’m also going to talk about the secret lives of management,” and how the conservation program was built.

The park service is mandated “to open the land up for the public, but it’s to have land that is stable, sustainable, protected,” Rubenstein said Wednesday. “And horses do have an impact. You know they graze; they’re going to change the plant composition. But by having the numbers at a low enough level, their impact is very minimal, and so the process by which we came up with the management plan is what I’ll talk about to the public next Saturday night.”

The North Carolina Coastal Federation’s office in the Wilmington area is holding later this month its quarterly “Ask an Advocate,” a casual coffee chat with Kerri Allen, the nonprofit’s coastal management program director and coastal advocate.

The discussion is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 20, at the Fred & Alice Stanback Coastal Education Center in Wrightsville Beach. Those wishing to attend are asked to reserve a spot using the online form.

The Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, is a member-supported nonprofit that focuses on protecting and restoring the North Carolina coast with offices in Carteret County and the Outer Banks as well.

“People care deeply about our coast, but sometimes they aren’t sure where to start or how they can make a difference,” Allen explained about the opportunity to discuss coastal management strategies and local and state issues.

“Ask an Advocate is about opening that door and helping people better understand the issues, answer questions, and find meaningful ways to get involved. We want folks to know that their voice matters, and that when communities are informed and engaged, they can have a real impact on the decisions that shape our coast,” she added.

Geologist Dr. Stan Riggs quoted the scientist Loren Eiseley, who said, “If there’s magic on this Earth, it’s contained in water,” to the more than 150 gathered Saturday for the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s 23^rd annual Pelican Awards.

“And water, if you think about it, is everywhere,” Riggs continued. “It’s everything. It’s what we’re made out of. It’s what drives our coastal system. Where the water comes in contact with the land, that’s a high, high-energy environment. Not on a pretty, sunny day, but when the storms come in, you know there’s energy there. There’s wind. There’s water. There’s power, and we have to learn to live with that. Doesn’t mean we pack our suitcases and walk away. We have to understand it.”

Riggs, professor emeritus of geology at East Carolina University, was at the podium inside Carteret Community College’s Joslyn Hall accepting his Lifetime Achievement Award “For Distinguished Leadership and Lifetime Excellence in Coastal Research, Science, and Stewardship.”

He was among the 13 individuals and groups recognized this year by the nonprofit organization’s staff in its office in Wanchese, headquarters in Carteret County, and office in Wrightsville Beach.

“Today we honor extraordinary people and partnerships that are making a lasting difference for North Carolina’s coast through collaboration, dedication, and shared commitment. Our honorees are helping to ensure a healthier coast for generations to come,” April Clark, president of the organization’s board of directors, said early in the program.

Riggs, who has been studying the coastal environment for more than 60 years, told the crowd that he had spent his career working with others to take a holistic approach in understanding the planet. About 15 years ago, he and other researchers representing a range of disciplines began pooling their resources to learn about North Carolina’s coastal systems.

“In 2010, there was a big change in North Carolina,” when some laws put in place in the 1970s and 1980s were threatened, and there was a population surge putting pressure on the coastal system and “we understood the science, but the science doesn’t do a darn bit of good for anybody if it’s just in a scientist’s head. And one of the things that became clear was that we weren’t making the science available to the public.”

He and a group of partners decided to start a foundation called North Carolina Land of Water, or NCLOW, that focuses on the education and application of science and its dissemination to the public. Then, in the late 2010s, he realized that there was a lot of information and data that nobody would ever see.

“So, I decided to sit down and start writing a book. One book led to two books, led to  — all of a sudden, I was up to number 10,” books that “I didn’t know what to do with.”

He then approached a bunch of publishers, but with the first book being around 850 pages, and wanting lots of photos, maps and history, a mixture of everything in the book, these companies “finally pointed their finger at me and said, ‘We’re in a business to make money, and you’re talking about a $200, $300 book,’” he said, in describing the rejections.

“I finally realized that ‘OK, if we’re going to make this happen, we got to do it ourselves’ but then it means we need a team of people who know how to do this,” he said, and a team appeared, leading to the recently published volume 1, “Cape Lookout National Seashore: Paradigm for a Coastal System Ethic.”

Riggs closed with words written by photographer and poet, John Riggs: “If water is life; abundant water is abundant life. And abundant life is abundant Spirit. She not only thrives in these wild places, she dances, she sings aloud, and she rages. My how she rages!”

Coastal historian

Historian Glenn Blackburn, professor emeritus of history at University of Virginia’s College at Wise, was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award “For Excellence in Coastal History and Conservation Writing.”

Blackburn, author of “Saving Great Places” and “A Spectacular Coast and Its Guardians” spent the last two decades researching the Coastal Federation’s growth from when it was founded in 1982 to becoming a leader in coastal protection and restoration.

Blackburn told the audience that he first learned about the organization 20 years ago when learned how the organization spent 10 years fighting the development of an undeveloped island that was habitat to birds and turtles. Then he learned about a fight early in the organization’s history to stop peat mining on the Albemarle peninsula, saving thousands of acres of wetlands.

“Shortly after that, the Stump Sound fight,” when the organization teamed with the community to stop a developer from ruining oysters and fishing in the Onslow County waters.

It “began to hit me,” Blackburn continued. “This is an environmental group that wins. That’s unusual. This is a story that needs to be told. That’s what got me started on these two history books.”

During his opening remarks, Executive Director Braxton Davis shared a list of the organization’s milestones, including that later this year the organization plans to have a grand opening for its new headquarters called the Coastal Protection and Restoration Center and event venue, Pelican Landing, located on N.C. Highway 24.

The effort to raise the funds to build the new center began in 2020, construction began in February 2025, and staff have moved in over the last month.

With the grand opening planned for this fall, the organization recognized its Capital Campaign Cabinet with a Coastal Visionary Award “For Extraordinary Leadership and Commitment to Establishing the Coastal Protection and Restoration Center.”

Chief Development Officer Sarah King, when presenting the award, said the “truly inspirational” group’s steadfast work “allowed us to raise over $10 million to establish new coastal protection and restoration center.”

As part of the Coastal Visionary Award, King recognized honorary chair, Hugh Cullman, who “was actually the very first person that we shared this idea with, and he was so encouraging.”

Vic Medlin, speaking for the family members attending, accepted the posthumous award for Cullman.

“He loved the North Carolina coast,” and “completely believed in the federation’s vision of providing a better place to live, work, and visit, and he believed in that vision, and he showed it in his donations,” Medlin said. “And on behalf of the Cullman family, we’d like to say thank you again.”

Cabinet Chair Charles C. Meeker said the campaign was a team effort and reminded him “that the federation has a lot of friends, friends who care about the federation and its work, friends who are willing to give substantial donations to make the campaign a success.”

Northeast coast awards

Joy Cook “For Leadership and Dedication to Coastal Protection, Recreation and Cultural Resources.”

Now retired, Cook dedicated nearly 30 years to North Carolina State Parks, including nine as superintendent of Jockey’s Ridge State Park, thanked the organization and its staff for being “one of the easiest and most wonderful relationships that I’ve had the honor of working with.”

Jayne Young “For Outstanding Volunteer Service Advancing Coastal Environmental Education.”

The retired educator, who was recognized for volunteering her time supporting coastal environmental education and inspiring students, told the audience that it is “an honor to be recognized for something we just have so much fun doing.” Having been an educator, “you never know the one that’s going to come back to you years later and say, ‘Well, remember when we did this, and because of that, we’re doing this now.’”

Sean Ellis “For Exceptional Volunteer Contributions to Coastal Stewardship and Community Service.”

The organization said Ellis is being recognized for his countless hours supporting the oyster shell recycling program and maintenance projects around the Wanchese office.

Ellis, who was unable to attend, said in a recording that the award means a lot to him, and thanked his family for their support, his friends at the Coastal Federation, and “most of all you, the sponsors and people who are here today, who keep this program going. Thank you for your continued support and confidence.”

Central coast awards

North River Laurel Road Ladies Outreach Committee “For Grassroots Leadership Advancing Coastal Resilience and Community Action.”

Based in Carteret County’s North River, Laurel Road, and Merrimon communities, the grassroots group was recognized for being trusted leaders and advocates who have “united neighborhoods, amplified local voices, and built partnerships that are helping these historic coastal communities respond to increasing coastal hazards,” according to the organization.

President Matilda Stewart and Vice President Mary Ann Monroe told the crowd that they were truly honored to receive the award on behalf of their community, adding that the “achievement belongs to us as a whole group. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned, it is that our big goals are only achieved with the help of others.” 

Jason Vanzant “For Inspiring Future Coastal Stewards Through Education and Partnership.”

The schools in parks specialist for Hammocks Beach State Park was previously a classroom teacher who focused on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, that has partnered with the Coastal Federation to connect students with nature-based solutions.

Vanzant said that he is both honored and humbled to receive the award that represents so many others, including the staff, rangers and superintendent of the state park.

Thomas L. Kirmeyer and Nan Bowles “For Dedicated Partnership and Commitment to Advance Watershed Restoration.”

The Coastal Federation recognized the couple for demonstrating “extraordinary conservation leadership” for selling their 8.25-acre waterfront property along Ward Creek in Carteret County at half its market value.

Bowles said that when she is asked what she does, “I respond, I’m a member of the marsh community of Ward’s Creek, along with my husband Tom and our dog Spot. We live on the edge of the forest, on the edge of the marsh, on the edge of Ward’s Creek, which flows in two directions, on the edge of North River, on the edge of Back Sound, on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, with water that flows around.

“In the 37-plus years we have lived here, we have gained interconnections with members of the community. Community members such as the other people who live on our road. Leaping lizards, jumping frogs, the mosquitoes who remind us of the importance of, that we can offer respect and honor, even when someone irritates Us. Dragonflies who are skillful at changing direction. Great blue herons who show us how to see the bigger picture. The marsh grass, black needle rush, and vibrant green spartina grass, both of them having strong, firm roots, and the jumping mullet bringing us healthy humor and laughter. And when we dig beneath these interconnections, we discover stories and lessons that have to point us the way to being the best humans we can be.”

Southeast coast awards

Lindsay Addison “For Dedicated Partnership Advancing Coastal Habitat Conservation and Restoration.”

The coastal biologist for Audubon North Carolina has spent more than a decade protecting coastal birds and their habitats.

Addison told the audience that she is appreciative and honored that the Coastal Federation selected Audubon North Carolina’s Coastal Program for this award and recognition.

“I would be remiss if I didn’t say Audubon North Carolina manages 40% of the state’s nesting coastal waterbirds, and the way I feel about that is I feel to be a very fortunate, very lucky observer of these of these birds, these habitats, and in these landscapes,” Addison said, adding birds are an important part of the overall coastal ecosystems, and important indicators of the health of the coast.

Conserve the Point “For Community Leadership in Protecting and Stewarding the South End of Topsail Island.” 

The nonprofit organization based on Topsail Island formed in 2022 to preserve and protect the south end of Topsail Beach, called The Point, from development. In 2024, the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust purchased the 150-acre property to save the undeveloped property.

The group’s secretary Nancy Pettens, said on behalf of the board, that the award is a “tremendous honor” that belongs to every donor, every volunteer, everyone who thought this place was worth saving. “Most of all, I think it belongs to the Topsail Beach community, near and far, whose passion and generosity made it a reality for us and for future generations.”

Warren Darrell “For Outstanding Volunteer Leadership in Coastal Resilience and Community Engagement.”

The organization called him an “exceptional volunteer whose passion for learning and sharing coastal science inspires communities across southeastern North Carolina.”

“I love this coast,” Darrell said. “The work of the Coastal Federation helps to mitigate the harmful effects of global warming by absorbing atmospheric carbonate our shoreline from erosion and by providing his biological habitat.”

Coastal media partnership

Coastal Review, which is published by the Coastal Federation, this year recognized the Hatteras Island-based online news service, Island Free Press “For Excellence in Collaborative Coastal Community Journalism.”

The two publications have partnered for the last decade to expand coverage of critical coastal issues affecting Hatteras and Ocracoke islands.

Editor Joy Crist said she and owner Donna Barrett were “beyond honored to receive this award” and thanked the Coastal Federation for “allowing us to cover so many stories that are positive or hopeful in a news cycle that’s busy and sometimes discouraging.”

The North Carolina Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board is tentatively set to hear a series of presentations related to PFAS during its meeting scheduled for Wednesday.

The board’s draft agenda includes a presentation by Dr. Virginia Guidry with the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services on a recent methodology for calculating fish consumption PFOS advisories, a review by Dr. Frannie Nilsen with the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality on available PFMOAA toxicity, and an overview of available literature on dermal exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.

The board includes experts in toxicology, public health, ecology, engineering, and other related fields, who assist DHHS and DEQ by recommending reviews and evaluations of contaminants, act as consultants on DEQ’s determinations to regulate contaminants, and help the agencies identify contaminants of concern and determine which contaminants should be further studied.

The online meeting is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. The webinar password is D3fJKEmGd26 or 33355364 when dialing from a phone or video system.

Those who wish to speak during the public comment portion of the meeting must register in advance.

An in-person listening station will be set up those who cannot attend online in the Ground Floor Hearing Room at the Archdale Building, 512 N. Salisbury St. in Raleigh.

To join by telephone, dial 415-655-0003 or 904-900-2303, access code 2427 860 8803.

Technology used to track COVID-19 in municipal wastewater is now being used to track populations’ dietary habits, according to a new paper released last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Rachel Noble, a professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, has a history of sampling wastewater as part of her research. In 2020, she used DNA sequencing technology to test wastewater samples for the coronavirus. Now, Noble and her colleagues, including those from Duke University, are using that same wastewater surveillance system to study what people eat.

Researchers employed a technology that the paper’s authors describe as something that “transforms municipal wastewater into a real-time window on population nutrition” to gather data from wastewater samples collected at 21 different wastewater treatment plants across the state.

Called Food Landscape Observation in Water, abbreviated to FoodSeq-FLOW, the technology was developed from a previous version used to track COVID-19. The new version targets the DNA markers of certain plants and animals found in human feces and identifies them, giving researchers a detailed overview of each population’s diets. FoodSeq can identify these DNA markers down to the specific species of plant or animal that was eaten.

“The first thing that I tell people, the very shortest of it, is that this is an exciting kind of silver-lining outcome that came from our wastewater surveillance that was initiated during COVID-19,” Noble said. “We were responding to obviously a global pandemic, but there’s much more that wastewater surveillance can be useful for in terms of a snapshot of a community.”

Wastewater has never been able to provide this level of dietary information on this scale before, and Noble said it could lead to significant improvements in policies related to health and nutrition.

Traditionally, population-wide dietary information was gathered through questionnaires, which are time-consuming, costly and often inaccurate. It can be challenging for people to remember exactly what they ate, and sometimes they are reluctant to talk about their diets in detail. Noble said that this technology is also helpful when it comes to understanding the diets of children within a population, particularly those who are too young to accurately answer questionnaires.

“To me, this work has even greater value because you’re you’re able to peer into the nutrition of a community, but in a way that actually includes all demographics,” Noble said. “Whoever’s using the sewage system, they’re included.”

In communities struggling with nutritional health, a more accurate picture of dietary habits could lead to the creation of more accurate nutritional guidelines. This is especially relevant for people living in food deserts, where healthy food, particularly fresh produce, isn’t readily available.

“This paper is all about the fact that we can do this. The next effort really is going to be how you use this information to help people make better choices, and maybe provide some education where it’s needed at the community level and resources,” Noble said.

The implementation of FoodSeq technology into current wastewater infrastructure would be simple, Noble said. The issue lies with the funding required to get it started. FoodSeq-FLOW itself is cost-efficient. In this most recent study, researchers gathered data from wastewater samples that serve more than 2 million people, all at a rate of less than a cent per person. But actually gathering that data on a regular basis and putting it into action is another story.

“FoodSeq, from a practical perspective, could start being done in North Carolina tomorrow if someone came in and had resources to do it. A better question, I think, is what are the ways that we could use the data to actually benefit the nutrition — and maybe education on nutrition — at the community level,” Noble said.

The accuracy of data for a specific community is subject to a number of confounding variables, however. Sewage water is regularly contaminated with environmental and industrial runoff. The DNA samples can suffer degradation due to the varying temperatures, salinity and acidity levels in sewage pipes.

Noble also mentioned that people like herself, who use a septic tank system for their sewage, are not connected to wastewater infrastructure, and therefore will not be regularly measured in studies such as these. This is especially problematic because septic tanks are commonly used in more rural areas, and these are populations that are traditionally underrepresented in nutritional and dietary studies.

“It is a disadvantage of the study that we’re missing out on a portion of the population that is in the most rural areas, and that would persist across the whole United States if you designed the study the whole way,” Noble said. “So another great study would be to actually figure out a way to study septic systems.”

“To me, the next thing to do would be to do it like for a year or two years across the entire state of North Carolina, and see what the seasonal patterns are,” Noble said. “The patterns that we observe should just literally be thought of as snapshots. They’re not necessarily the patterns that you would observe over the course of a year, and then over the course of all communities in North Carolina at all times.”

Even disregarding all of these other confounding factors, data gathered with FoodSeq is not always a perfect snapshot of a single population. Wastewater samples from small coastal towns that experience a large boom in tourism during the summer will naturally include waste from the tourist population as well as the locals. But as a resident of Beaufort, Noble was able to recognize specific species of fish that are popular among local fishers. The study documented 60 species of fish.

“I do a lot of fishing, and I work with a lot of local people in both the shellfish and fishing community, and it was really interesting to me to see some of the fish that are locally found represented in our sewage here, but not represented anywhere else in the state,” Noble said. She mentioned seeing drum, triggerfish and Spanish mackerel, all of which are species usually caught and eaten locally.

Noble said that data gathered from wastewater samples can be used as a snapshot of many different things. Before the development of FoodSeq, she had considered using DNA sequencing in wastewater testing to measure the correlation of meat consumption and cardiac diseases.

“I had thought in the past about community patterns of all kinds of things. When we started our wastewater surveillance work in 2020, you know, I often thought to myself, ‘wow, these wastewater samples would be exciting to work on from a variety of different standpoints’,” Noble said.

Overall, Noble simply hopes to find ways that this information can be used to improve the nutritional health of the average person in North Carolina.

“We have food scarcity issues well across all of eastern or across North Carolina, and the interesting thing is that those food scarcity issues are irrespective of race, background, demographics,” she said. “Yes, we could do this in the state of North Carolina or in any state tomorrow if someone came in with unlimited resources and wanted to do it. You know, what’s the path forward for actually making strides in nutrition and wellness? That, to me, is the next open door that we’re walking into.”

Water has carried Tatiana the Trash roughly 70 miles downstream from where it and dozens of other reusable bottles were released into a Northeast Raleigh creek more than a year ago.

Dan the Debris doesn’t appear to have made it far from where it was placed into Marsh Creek in the spring of 2025.

Today, there are 60 cheekily named bottles that can be tracked as they journey, or not, from the freshwaters of the creek and the Neuse River and into the brackish waters of the Pamlico Sound.

They’re part of an ongoing study examining how stormwater flushes litter into local creeks, how far that litter travels downstream, and the direct link between urban trash and plastic pollution in our waterways.

“Even though we’re up here in Wake County, the Neuse River carries a lot of our pollutants down to the coast, where our coastal neighbors, unfortunately, have a cumulative impact of our river in the watersheds upstream,” said Christy Perrin, sustainable waters and communities coordinator with Waters Resources Research Institute and North Carolina Sea Grant, and co-principal investigator of the study.

To get an understanding of how litter gets into our waterways and travels downstream, researchers are digging deep to pinpoint litter hotspots and identify correlations between storms and how much trash enters individual streams during those storms.

Researchers will use their findings to guide location-specific interventions to help prevent litter from reaching waterways.

The study was funded in 2024 through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Sea Grant Office.

As part of the study, researchers installed three litter traps in Marsh Creek, a small watershed that flows into Crabtree Creek near Interstate 440 and into the Neuse River. After each rainfall, the team removes trash captured in the traps, counts each piece of litter, and documents the different types of litter collected.

“Every time it rains, stormwater will wash trash and pollutants from sidewalks and roads and streets into our local streams,” said Madison Haley, a doctoral student in North Carolina State University’s Biological and Agricultural Engineering Department. “Here, we’re able to understand from specific storms how much trash is entering and then moving through watersheds. What we’re finding is that the higher the peak of that flow, the more trash we see.”

Researchers have found a clear link between the amount of trash captured by litter traps and the size of the nearby human population.

“The less populated a watershed is, the less trash we see typically. And the more urbanized a watershed is, the more trash we see typically,” Haley said.

Researchers teamed up with volunteers of The Great Raleigh Cleanup, a nonprofit founded in 2020 that has removed more than 45,000 pounds of litter from the city’s landscapes, to take stock of the amounts of litter along roads within the Marsh Creek watershed and identify litter hotspots.

“We do notice that roads that see higher traffic have more litter,” Haley said. “Roads that see lower traffic have less litter. Roads that are more industrialized tend to have more litter. Roads that are residential tend to have less litter.”

There is no perfect formula for pinpointing exactly what creates a litter hotspot, she said, but researchers have uncovered a definite pattern.

And they’re trying to find patterns in how litter is carried by waters downstream – how long it takes litter to get from headwaters into the river and all the way down into the Pamlico Sound.

That’s where the bottles, with a little help from citizen scientists, particularly those recreating in waters closer to the coast, come in.

Each 1-liter Nalgene bottle holds a GPS tracker and a bright-colored note with a QR code that links to the project website.

Eventually GPS tracker batteries run out of juice.

“If you ever see a bottle, there’s a chance it could be one of ours” with a tracker that has lost power, Haley said.

She asks anyone who spots a bottle while recreating on the Neuse River or Pamlico Sound to check to see if it is one of theirs. If you find one of their research bottles, simply scan the QR code, log its location, and then place it back in the water.

“It’s a good time for folks to be out there paying more attention and recreating and seeing if they can find our bottles, but also picking up trash in the process,” Haley said, noting that this month is Plastic Free July. “The point is that folks can connect more than what we do here in Raleigh, and what we do in these urban areas can impact our neighbors downstream, and everything that we do here doesn’t necessarily stay in our own community. The plastic persists for a very long time, and it moves through our waterways and our environments.”

Researchers initially released 40 bottles into Marsh Creek in April and May 2025.

Haley explained that the bottles traveled slower than researchers anticipated and they wanted to understand how bottles moved in different areas of the Neuse River. So, last February, they placed 10 more bottles into the Neuse River just upstream of Goldsboro. In April, they released another 10 bottles into the river in Kinston.

“We’re finding that the Neuse River is not just a conduit of water from Raleigh to the ocean but also is turned into this place where we’re storing lots of our trash,” Haley said. “Trash is just sitting there in the Neuse River for potentially long amounts of time, and so this study, we can see those bottles if they are sitting and staying in certain places for a long amount of time. We can see where trash is being stored within the river itself.”

She said she understands how it might be easy to get disheartened about the issue of litter.

“We all see it everywhere,” she said. “But to know how many people are interested in our work and how many people are interested in helping us is incredibly – it’s exciting and hopeful. There’s a lot of work to be done.”

The Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership has found that the amount of seagrass the state has lost over a 14-year period totals about 25 square miles.

The federal-state program that manages the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine System located in northeastern North Carolina and southeastern Virginia recently published these findings, an update to its 2021 report on the extent of high-salinity underwater grass in the Albemarle-Pamlico estuary.

APNEP Quantitative Ecologist Dr. Tim Ellis, an author of the study, explained that, although the study confirms that North Carolina has the largest amount of seagrass habitat along the U.S. Atlantic Coast, the critical coastal resource is declining, with an estimated loss of approximately 16,000 acres, or 16%, from 2006 until 2020.

Using data from three aerial surveys of soundside, high-salinity estuarine waters, or where seagrasses would most likely be expected to grow, between Manteo and Bogue Inlet, researchers found that the real extent of seagrass in 2006-07 was 109,607 acres, in 2013 was 95,157 acres, and in 2020 was 88,531 acres. That is a decline of about 1% a year, “despite suitable habitat available for expansion.”

These flowering plants that are fully submerged and are completely dependent on sunlight to flourish are often called subaquatic vegetation, SAV, seagrasses or underwater grasses. In addition to keeping “waters healthy by providing habitat, food, and shelter for aquatic life, sequestering carbon, protecting shorelines, absorbing and recycling nutrients, filtering sediment, and acting as a barometer of water quality,” seagrasses “enrich shallow aquatic environments around the world, providing sanctuaries for mollusks, crustaceans, and finfish as well as sustenance for waterfowl and other herbivores,” according to the report.

The declining trend is seen worldwide, “primarily due to water quality degradation, coastal development, dredging, fishing, boating, and other related aquatic activities, sea level rise, warming water temperatures, and tropical cyclones.”

North Carolina is experiencing annual rates of seagrass loss at or below the global average, but that’s cold comfort. “Because seagrass is sensitive to water quality, including nutrient and sediment pollution, a continued decline in the acreage of these underwater meadows indicates that the overall health of North Carolina’s estuaries may be declining,” APNEP states.

Ellis said that seagrass is a sensitive indicator of estuarine health because of its direct and complex associations with its surrounding environment. Seagrasses are also ecosystem engineers, meaning these plants modify the areas they inhabit by trapping sediments and absorbing nutrients to improve water clarity and by creating habitat to support biodiversity and biological productivity.

The study notes that the decline in North Carolina is not evenly distributed. “In the central portion of the study area, from Hatteras Inlet to Barden Inlet near Cape Lookout, seagrass acreage decreased 2.0% per year compared with a decline of 0.8% and 1.4% per year in the northern and southern portions of the study area, respectively.”

Over the 14 years there were three notable changes in the estuarine system’s seagrass meadows that were identified in the study, including that the total area of seagrass meadows is declining, the rates of change in extent vary, and coverage is shifting away from continuous toward more patchy and fragmented meadows.

Related: Work begins for periodic update of state coastal habitat plan

These “seagrass meadows are becoming more fragmented, meaning large, continuous beds are transitioning to more isolated and disconnected patches,” Ellis said. “This affects how well seagrass can provide critical habitat for fisheries and wildlife, stabilize sediments and protect shorelines, contribute to good water quality, and endure and respond to environmental changes, including major storm events.”

Over the period that the three surveys were conducted there were 10 tropical cyclones that directly impacted the Albemarle-Pamlico estuary, physically disturbing meadows, water quality and the stability of the barrier island inlets and flood deltas, APNEP notes.

Impact on marine life

Study co-author Jud Kenworthy, who researched seagrass for his more than 30-year career before retiring from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, said in an interview that “what we’re seeing in the patchiness is that we’re losing the cover of grass. Not only are we losing the total amount (of seagrass) in the entire coastal system, the increase in patchiness is also a decrease in cover where the seagrasses are actually occurring in those patches.”

The implications of seagrass patchiness and reducing cover cascade through everything, especially all the fisheries that depend on this habitat at some point in their life stage. “They’re exposed to less vegetation and a tendency for less cover due to the increase of patchiness,” he said.

Although some species will be affected by that process more than others, it could result in changes in food availability for different commercial and recreational fisheries cherished in North Carolina as part of the social and economic fabric, Kenworthy said.

When asked what species will see the biggest hit, Kenworthy said there’s probably a list of at least a dozen, including the keystone commercial and recreational fisheries like red drum, spotted sea trout and flounder, any species of shrimp, plus any marine life that use the estuary as a nursery and depend on the resources in seagrass beds.

Kenworthy added that many species totally dependent on the seagrass beds are not harvested but are food for larger predators.

“The one that comes to mind is the pinfish,” which consume seagrass. “Nobody that I know of eats pinfish, but a lot of people use pinfish for bait, and of course, pinfish are a major source of food for a lot of the larger species,” Kenworthy said. If there’s no seagrass for pinfish or other prey for larger species, the foundation of the food chain is going to be affected.

Kenworthy explained that if estuaries lose SAV, all the important ecosystem services like capturing, trapping and recycling nutrients, stabilizing sediments, storing carbon in the soil and providing habitat places for plants and animals, especially their food, are going to be affected.

“How dramatically these services are affected is going to depend on whether we find some sort of balance where the seagrasses reach an equilibrium or whether they tend to continue to decline,” he added.

Continued monitoring

Ellis said continued monitoring of seagrass allows APNEP and partners to closely track changes in the estuary to evaluate the effectiveness of existing conservation and management strategies and to adapt those strategies quickly as needed to meet desired protection and restoration goals.

“Based on the experience gained during these three surveys and our better understanding of the ecology of the seagrass ecosystem in North Carolina, APNEP and partners have intensified and expanded seagrass monitoring efforts, completing new subregional surveys of the Albemarle-Pamlico estuary in 2021-2025,” Ellis said.

In addition to aerial surveys, he continued, which are now conducted during both spring and fall each year to better capture the different peak abundances of the state’s temperate and subtropical seagrass species, monitoring also includes in-water sampling to collect information on species composition and abundance, depth, and water quality.

“Analysis of these additional survey data are underway and will enable APNEP to provide a more complete picture of seagrass status and trends in the Albemarle-Pamlico estuary,” Ellis said.

Ellis said It takes a lot of funding and coordinated effort to monitor seagrass in North Carolina, especially given its widespread distribution across the coast. APNEP relies on regional partnerships with state and federal agencies, universities, and others to build and maintain the collaborative network and leveraging of resources needed to address the many financial and logistical challenges of conducting a long-term seagrass monitoring and assessment program.

What’s causing the decline?

Why it’s happening though, that “is the $64,000 question,” Kenworthy said. “I don’t think you can pin any one thing on seagrass decline.”

Ellis agreed that understanding the causes of the changes they’re seeing is complicated “because seagrass in North Carolina faces many challenges, including rising and warmer waters, more frequent and intense storms, varying and marginal water clarity that limits the amount of sunlight that reaches the plants, and physical damage from human activities.”

Regardless, “the situation warrants the attention of managers to both better protect the resource where it remains and to evaluate restoration opportunities in areas where it no longer exists but could potentially thrive again.”

Kenworthy points to water quality, especially water clarity, as the biggest issue right now that can be managed immediately and reasonably. The plants in this warmer environment​ have high light requirements​,​ and when there’s turbidity and phytoplankton in the water from nutrients or sediments ​released from the land, the actual clarity of the water declines,​ and the plants get less light​.

​”Our biggest manageable challenge is to at least sustain or improve the clarity of the water.”

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.

Driving to the coast in the hopes of witnessing freshly hatched sea turtles crawl their way to the ocean? Looking forward to sitting on the water-view porch of your beach rental to watch the birds?

If so, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission is requesting five minutes of your time to complete a survey about your experience viewing birds and sea turtles on your visit to the southern coast.

The online survey is part of an ongoing study in which state wildlife officials hope to learn how wildlife viewing contributes to coastal communities and the state economies.

About three-quarters of roughly 3 million in North Carolina who identify as “wildlife viewers” take trips to experience the state’s wide array of animal species, according to the agency.

“We want to determine economic contributions from visiting bird watchers, folks who visit our coast during sea turtle nesting season, and other wildlife enthusiasts,” Wildlife Resources Commission Social Scientist Elizabeth Pratt stated in a release. “Results could shed light on the importance of wildlife-related tourism to coastal communities and the need to continue to conserve these species.”

Information gathered from the survey will be used in a study that will aid the agency in developing stronger wildlife conservation policies on the coast. The agency is also collecting resident feedback and collaborating with partners to gain a better understanding of coastal wildlife issues to act as a guide for future protection initiatives.

The agency has posted signage and placed postcards with QR codes at different wildlife viewing locations and visitor centers. The survey will be available through the fall.

“Whether visiting a waterbird colony, witnessing a sea turtle nest excavation, or seeing less common birds that only visit the state during migration, we know that the public values the wildlife viewing experiences available along the coast,” Eastern Wildlife Diversity Supervisor Hope Sutton said in the release. “This study will help us understand the importance of wildlife viewing and ensure future visitors continue to benefit from our wildlife conservation efforts.”

Fibonacci!

Say what?

Sounds like the correct response to that would be, “Bless you!”

Leonardo Fibonacci was a mathematician who lived in Italy hundreds of years ago. Although the sequence was known to non-Westerners long before, during the 13th century it’s thought that Fibonacci introduced the golden spiral to Western mathematics.

The basis of the Fibonacci sequence is what creates spiral patterns. The mathematical pattern is thus: each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers. For example, 1+1=2, 1+2=3, 2+3=5 and so on. The rest of the math part is way above my paygrade, something about dividing numbers and seeing how close they come to 1.618, or the golden ratio.

Like most other people who are numerically challenged, I’ve always just looked at spirals and patterns and thought, “that’s really beautiful,”never mind the science behind it.

Other than creating beauty, the Fibonacci spiral allows plants to cram the maximum amount of seeds and leaves into a space without overcrowding. Algorithms use it to see how to handle scaling. Investors use it to analyze price trends in stocks. The spiral is what allows artists and architects to create visually balanced compositions and spatial layouts. It also frequently appears in things like unfurling fern fronds and the branching of trees, in the spiral curves of storms.

The so-called golden spiral is especially noticeable in sunflowers. In pinecones. In seashells. In the way the outside of pineapples swirl amid their helixes. In galaxies.

Sunflowers (Helianthus annus) are beloved North American natives, now naturalized throughout the world. Growing anywhere from 1 foot tall to 12 feet or more (the record as of 2025, courtesy of Alex Babich in Fort Wayne, Indiana, is 35 feet 9 inches) these radiant summer annuals always make a splash. Whether growing in fields or flowerbeds, nestled in a bouquet or tucked in a vase, they brighten our lives. While the most well-known color is the distinct yellow they’re famous for, sunflowers also come in a range of colors, including reds, burgundies, oranges, whites and bicolors.

While each sunflower looks like a single flower, it is instead a conglomeration of hundreds or even thousands of tubular florets arranged in … you guessed it, a Fibonacci (gesundheit!) spiral. What we call the flower is more precisely the flower head (pseudanthium). What we call petals are, aptly enough, called ray flowers.

Beyond their amazing beauty, sunflowers serve countless other purposes. Sunflowers are a pollinator magnet, particularly for bees. Many species of birds feast on the mature seeds, not to mention squirrels and other small mammals.

The seeds themselves are quite beneficial for humans as well. Many people enjoy snacking on them like peanuts, salted and roasted. High in nutrients such as vitamin E, magnesium, and healthy fats, sunflower seeds can be pressed into oils or made into sun butter.

There are two types of sunflower seeds. Oilseed sunflowers are used for, well, oils. Sunflower seed oil is the fourth most widely used vegetable oil in the world. Confectionary sunflower seeds are used for snacking and baking. Sunflower seeds can also be used as birdseed or livestock feed.

Besides being good for your tummy, sunflowers are good for your soul. Their cheery yellow faces are sure to make the grumpiest grump smile. Their heart-shaped leaves add another layer to the feel-good vibes.

While some immature sunflowers might track the sun in a process known as heliotropism, despite popular belief, once the bloom is fully open, mature sunflower heads no longer follow the sun. Instead, most of them consistently face east in order to catch the early sun and entice the most pollinators.

Depending on the variety, sunflowers can be a single flower atop a solitary plant, or they can look like a sunflower bush with multiple smaller heads flowering from top to bottom.

Because they are hyperaccumulators, in a process known as phytoremediation, sunflowers can be planted and used to pull radiation and heavy metals out of soil. Obviously, these plants then need to be destroyed after growing.

Are there any downsides to growing sunflowers? Their fast growth rates can deplete soil nutrients, and sunflowers are allelopathic. They release chemical toxins that can stunt nearby plants, so don’t plant them close to your potatoes and beans. Taller varieties are especially susceptible to wind damage, although sunflower tepees make super cool hideouts for the kids.

Also, the blooms don’t last all summer. For continuous blooms, plant successively about every two weeks.

Don’t have room for giant sunflowers? Try some black-eyed Susans. Some varieties are perennial, and small birds love the seeds. Rudbeckia hirta is a native and can be a biennial or short-lived perennial. Rudbeckia fulgida Goldstrum is a long-lived perennial that spreads via rhizomes.

Want something that grows a larger plant with multiple smaller flowers?  Try swamp sunflower (Helianthus angustifolius). A native perennial found from New York to Florida to Texas, it can get up to 8 feet tall. Be prepared, these plants look like the weeds they are all summer. Then come fall … wowsa! A group planting of these will light up the neighborhood. They require a lot of water, thus the “swamp” part of their name. These spread by rhizomes, so plant them in the back of your flowerbed and give them lots of room. And a firehose.

Whether you enjoy eating hulled sunflower seeds on your salad or in baked goods or just snacking on them, shelled or unshelled, or whether you just plain love sunflowers … enjoy!

Even though he wasn’t the first to paint sunflowers, Van Gogh turned what appears to be a simple summer pleasure into works of art, and other painters followed. What could possibly shout “summer” louder than bright yellows and bold blues mimicking the sun in the sky?

Such an exotic word for simple spirals, but our world would be a much duller place without the Fibonacci sequence and its attendant loops and whorls. And the true beauty of it is, you don’t have to be able to do higher math to appreciate the beauty.

Oceanographer Dr. Reide Corbett is pausing this week during his transition from East Carolina University’s Outer Banks campus to the main campus in Greenville to give a talk on how the state’s coast is changing and why those changes matter for low-lying communities like Down East Carteret County.

Corbett, who is leaving his leadership roles on East Carolina University’s Outer Banks campus to act as interim dean of the Thomas Harriot College of Arts & Sciences, is scheduled to speak at 2 p.m. Wednesday at Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island, one of the 13 unincorporated communities making up Down East.

Core Sound Executive Director Karen Willis Amspacher said that his talk is “an important conversation for all of us who live with a rapidly changing coastline.”

The talk is part of the organization’s five-part Water/Ways speaker series, an extension of the Smithsonian’s traveling “Water/Ways” exhibit on display until Aug. 9.

Related: Two speaker series to look at relationships of people, place

A coastal oceanographer and geochemist whose work focuses on coastal change, Corbett has most recently served as dean of East Carolina University’s Integrated Coastal Programs and executive director of the Coastal Studies Institute on the ECU Outer Banks Campus in Wanchese.

“Barrier islands, sounds, inlets, wetlands, and shorelines have always been dynamic, but rising sea level, storms, erosion, flooding, and expanding development are changing the risks we face and the choices available to us,” Corbett said in an email. “The talk will focus on the science behind coastal change, what we are seeing along the North Carolina coast, and the tradeoffs involved in how communities respond. The goal is not to offer a single solution, but to help frame the decisions ahead with a clearer understanding of the processes, risks, and long-term consequences.”

Corbett announced his departure in the Outer Banks campus spring 2026 newsletter and the Outer Banks Voice confirmed his plan in mid-June.

Dr. Mike Muglia will serve as interim director at Coastal Studies Institute while plans are formed to search for the next permanent executive director, expected to be in late summer or early fall, a CSI representative told Coastal Review.  

Muglia’s research focuses on Gulf Stream variability and its effect on the complex confluence of different water masses that occur off of the state’s coast. He leads the Coastal Studies Institute’s Gulf Stream resource assessment for the Renewable Ocean Energy Program, and has managed field research project design across disciplines in the marine environment of the Outer Banks, according to CSI.

Elizabeth City State University announced Tuesday plans to create “new pathways for students seeking flexible, career-focused educational opportunities” by expanding its academic programs this fall.

The university is adding a Bachelor of Science degree in data science and entirely online bachelor’s degree options in history and social work.

ECSU’s announcement framed the new Bachelor of Science in Data Science program as setting students up for success in a booming industry.

“Data science is one of the fastest-growing fields in the world. It is the practice of collecting, analyzing and interpreting data to help organizations make data-driven decisions for real-world problems,” stated Dr. Mohamed Elbakary, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and coordinator of the university’s Engineering Technology Program.

The new degree will cover programming, statistics, machine learning and data visualization tools to uncover trends and findings from large amounts of information, according to the announcement. “Graduates will be prepared for careers as data scientists, data analysts, data engineers, artificial intelligence specialists, quantitative analysts, healthcare analytics specialists and business intelligence analysts. Those career opportunities span industries including technology, healthcare, finance, government, education and nonprofit organizations.”

Elbakary touted the new program’s affordability, location, mission and strengths in coding, statistics and machine learning.

“Data Science could position ECSU as a leading institution for solving challenges facing rural, coastal and underserved communities,” he said.

In addition, ECSU said it is expanding access to two existing programs through fully online learning options.

The university’s history program will now offer students the opportunity to earn a bachelor’s degree completely online. “The program combines the strengths of a liberal arts education with modern teaching methods and digital skills, encouraging students to apply historical inquiry to contemporary challenges and opportunities. Students can pursue concentrations in digital and public history and race, gender and ethnicity studies. The online option provides greater flexibility for students balancing education with professional and personal responsibilities,” according to the announcement.

ECSU’s Bachelor of Social Work program will also be available as a fully online degree option beginning this fall. Officials said the program emphasizes addressing the needs of rural and developing communities.

As one of four North Carolina Promise institutions, ECSU provides affordable access to higher education. In-state tuition is $500 per semester, while out-of-state tuition is $3,500 per semester.

Students interested in the history program may learn more online at https://ecsu.edu/academics/programs/history/ or contact Dr. Charles Reed, chair and associate professor of history, at cvreed@ecsu.edu for additional information.

Questions about the social work program may be directed to Dr. Kim Downing, professor and program director, at ksdowning@ecsu.edu, or visit the Social Work website.

Information about the new data science degree is available online. Students interested in the program should contact Mohamed Elbakary at melbakary@ecsu.edu.

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 been a lot of talk and writing about how ocean levels have been rising and will continue to rise. The current projections are that the ocean will rise an estimated 12-14 inches by 2050 and ever higher in the ensuing decades.

With all of the very technical and well-researched and documented writing published about this topic, let’s take a look at what that means for us as anglers and other people who enjoy the coastal waters.

Fourteen inches of rise may not seem like a big deal when accounting for the vastness of the entire ocean, but there will be definite changes. They won’t be great.

Dr. Shintaro Bunya, an avid angler, is also a research scientist at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Center for Natural Hazards Resilience. His work involves hydrodynamic and coastal modeling, specializing in developing and applying numerical models to simulate and forecast storm surges, compound flooding and the general physics of coastal water movement.

His goal is to provide the data and tools that government agencies and local communities need to better understand and prepare for coastal flood risks. This all means that he is right in the middle of what is going on concerning coastal flooding.

First, let’s talk about tides. It will happen gradually but the number of times the tide will rise over the streets in coastal towns will increase.

“The data confirms that sea levels are not just rising; the rate of that rise is accelerating,” Bunya recently said to me.

Obviously, this will make it more difficult for smaller beach towns than bigger cities due to limited resources, but even the biggest coastal cities like Miami and New York will have problems with saltwater in the sewage treatment plants. South Florida towns already see high tides coming into lawns almost every day. Some days the low tide will be what the high tide used to be.

Higher tides will disperse fish over wider areas. With more places to access, fish will be more difficult to locate. It’s likely that they will be less abundant, also because of increased pressure on fish populations from humans and water quality issues. What this means is that fishing will become increasingly difficult and individual anglers will have less and less success.

Access to the water will become increasingly difficult as well. Many of the places we use now may become inaccessible as water rises, as documented by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“According to NOAA’s tide gauge measurements, we have observed about 11 inches of rise since 1950 along the North Carolina coast and we face a unique challenge here because our land is also slowly subsiding (sinking),” said Bunya.

Let’s take boat ramps for example. These are already built upon the lowest ground available in order to accommodate parking next to the water. During high tide conditions, parking lots may become flooded, ironically making the ramp unusable due to there being too much water.

Some communities may become unlivable. In certain areas, high tides will make it impossible to access places. At this time, only the very highest tides cause this flooding. The popular term that has been coined by the TV weather stations is “King Tides.” These are the very highest water level periods, which coincide with the periods of full moon, especially during September and October.

People who live in Down East Carteret County are familiar with having to drive alternate routes or even plan their trips to the grocery store around the tides.

“What was once considered a ‘100-year flood’ is happening much more frequently,” Bunya said. “We are seeing a marked increase in high-tide flooding (often called ‘sunny day flooding’), where coastal streets and yards flood even without a storm, simply because the tide is higher than it used to be.”

Higher tides such as these will occur more frequently. Anglers will find the fish so spread out they will be extremely difficult to locate. In many places, as has been already mentioned, the tides will get so high that locals will find themselves stranded for hours and possibly days at a time. Military-style vehicles with super-high ground clearance will be needed in order to drive around numerous coastal communities. Going fishing will not be a great concern.

Personally, I have been stuck with no recourse a time or two already and have had to either take long detours or find a place to hang out as the water receded. The increased sea levels will make it harder for commercial fishers to make a living in seaside communities because access points will become inaccessible and because the fish will be more difficult to locate. Also just driving from one place to another will be difficult in these places.

According to a 2024 NOAA report, Beaufort will face 60 high-tide flooding days by 2050 and 338 by 2100. Wilmington will experience 30 high-tide flooding days by 2050 and 323 by 2100. This will make it extremely difficult to travel and work in those communities. From there on, the situation only gets worse.

Again, according to Bunya, “By the end of the century, we are looking at a likely range of 2 to 4 feet of rise, though scenarios up to 7 feet are possible.”

So the next several decades will provide challenges to already existing infrastructure such as bridges and culverts that were not built to withstand such saltwater intrusion. The groundwater will be inundated and the tillable soil in areas such as Open Grounds Farm, a roughly 45,000-acre farm in Down East Carteret County operated by a corporation based in Italy, will be threatened. Work and school will be disrupted due to the inability to travel. Tropical storms will be more of a problem in the future because storm surge will be on top of higher water levels than measured historically.

There is a lot to ponder here. Hiding our heads in the disappearing sand will not make the problem go away.

Few things infuriate fishermen more than reeling in a hard-fought saltwater fish only to find it half eaten by a shark.

The phenomenon known as shark depredation has for decades vexed recreational anglers and commercial fishermen.

More than three-quarters of a century have passed since Ernest Hemingway masterfully captured the heartbreak of shark depredation in his Pulitzer Prize-winning novella “The Old Man and the Sea,” a tale about an aging Cuban fisherman’s dayslong battle to reel in a giant marlin only to have it devoured by sharks.

Yet, in recent years, this conflict has seized the spotlight as a modern-day challenge.

A team of researchers took a deep dive into the history of shark depredation, pooling their knowledge and data spanning the course of the last 100 years. Their recently published study in the ICES Journal of Marine Science examined shark depredation across Atlantic recreational fisheries from the waters in Maine to Texas and the U.S. Caribbean.

Researchers focused on three groups: recreational anglers, target fisheries and sharks.

What they found is that, while there is a perception that getting sharked is an emerging issue, the reality is that anglers, the fish they target, and the sharks that target those fish are crossing paths more than ever.

“It appears to be more of an urgent and more of an immediate problem now, not necessarily because shark populations have exploded, but because of this combination of all sorts of factors,” said Dr. Marcus Drymon, a lead author of the study.

Drymon, an associate extension professor at Mississippi State University and marine fisheries specialist with Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant, explained that, yes, shark populations have increased over the past quarter-century, “but it’s just much more complicated than that.”

To understand just how complicated, researchers traced back to some of the earliest instances of documented shark depredation chronicled by none other than Hemingway himself.

Hemingway had already proved himself a literary powerhouse when, in the early 1930s, he sought to become the first angler to reel in an intact bluefin tuna from the vibrant turquoise and electric blue Caribbean waters off the Bimini coast in the Bahamas.

“And, consistently, when he would hook up to one of these big fish, they would get torn apart by sharks before he could land the fish,” Drymon said. “That happened for a few years and then those experiences led him to develop different techniques.”

Hemingway modified his fishing gear to make it stronger, and he switched up his angling tactics.

“When Hemingway did that around 1935, it led him to becoming the first person in recorded history to land an intact bluefin tuna in the Bahamas, and it just shows that this conflict has been around for a long time. It’s just that back in Hemingway’s day, there were very, very few other boats on the water trying to do what he was doing and shark populations, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, were in a relatively pristine state,” Drymon said.

That changed in the 1940s with the onset of World War II. The United States, cut off from shipments of cod liver oil from Norway and Iceland, was in desperate need for a cod liver oil substitute.

The high demand for vitamins contained in cod liver oil, including vitamins A and D, led to the nation’s first shark processing plant in Port Salerno, Florida. The plant closed in July 1950. By that time, synthetically produced vitamins had swept the market, rendering the commercial shark fishery in the country obsolete.

At the same time, recreational fishing was on the rise. Post-war Americans had more leisure time, and a new generation of boatbuilders were turning a product that was lighter and powered by smarter engines.

The surge in recreational shark fishing drove the creation of the National Marine Fisheries Service Cooperative Shark Tagging Program in 1962.

Shark landings by recreational anglers remained low through the 1960s and into the early 1970s.

That would all change in the mid-1970s when (cue the theme music) “Jaws” was released in theaters across the country. The runaway blockbuster captured the imaginations of audiences the world over.

“It would be difficult to overstate the impact of ‘Jaws’ on the public’s perception of sharks, a concept coined ‘the Jaws Effect,’” the study states.

By the early 1990s, heavy exploitation of Atlantic shark populations led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Marine Fisheries Service to introduce its first shark fisheries management plan.

By the early 1990s, shark populations in the Atlantic had been heavily exploited, prompting NOAA to implement the first fisheries management plan for sharks, he said. Shark populations that are overfished take a long time to recover because they are inherently slow growers, late to mature, and have relatively low reproductive output.

“We’ve now had 30 years of really successful efforts on the part of NOAA fisheries to rebuild and recover these shark populations and I would say that what we’re seeing today is a result of those management efforts,” he said. “But, there are downstream effects, because today there are so many more anglers on the water. The way they see it, there’s more sharks than they’ve ever seen. Sure, if they’ve only been fishing for the past 20 years, that is absolutely the case. But I would make the argument there’s nowhere near as many sharks now as there were in the 50s and 60s.”

The study notes that shark depredation is a widespread issue. There are at least 51 target species, notably red snappers and some groupers, vulnerable to predation by 22 species of sharks, according to the study.

Two of those species, the sandbar shark, which is federally protected, and the bull shark, are the worst offenders.

To lessen the impacts of those and other depredators, researchers suggest anglers take a page from Hemingway’s book, figuratively, or course.

“Our specific recommendations in terms of behavior change are relatively simple,” Drymon said. “The first one is, if and when you get depredated by a shark, move spots. I don’t say that lightly. I realize that’s a frustrating thing to have to do, especially if your spot’s a long way out in the middle of nowhere. But that is a good practice to follow.”

Second, try to avoid highly fished areas where there’s constant pressure on target species.

“Sharks are much more likely to habituate and hang out there and learn that depredation provides an easy meal for them,” Drymon said.

Third, be open to using deterrents Drymon and other researchers are currently testing.

“Our objective, our heart, is to give these deterrents to as many anglers as we possibly can, have them help us in the testing process with the hopes that those deterrents can let people fish at their favorite spots without being depredated as much as they normally would have,” he said. “As these deterrents continue to be developed, we’ll continue to try to test those and make our best recommendations to anglers and fishermen as to which ones are effective and which ones are not.”

Drymon said he’s also not opposed to the sustainable harvest of species of sharks that, like the bull shark, are not federally protected.

“If populations are not overfished and are not experiencing overfishing and there’s fishery management plans that allow for quota and harvest of those individuals, I think that’s a great, great option,” he said. “Just like any other fish in the ocean, I think that there is a time and a place for harvest of these animals provided that it can be done sustainably and provided that markets are in place for fishermen to profit from that harvest. I would be happy to help the establishment and the development of sustainable markets for shark products, particularly in the United States.”

A controversial provision that would allow state tax dollars to fund coastal terminal groins has been stripped from legislation moving through the North Carolina Senate.

The Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday passed an amended Senate Bill 1001, omitting a section that would permit Coastal Storm Damage Mitigation Funds to be used for terminal groin permitting, construction, or repairs.

A terminal groin is a type of hardened erosion control structure that is built perpendicular to a shore at an inlet to trap sand. North Carolina law prohibits the allocation of state funds for these structures, which were banned for decades until 2011 when legislators repealed the law to allow a handful of beach towns the option to explore building them.

“We’ve worked with our partners, and we resolved any concerns to date,” Sen. Michael Lazzara, R-Onslow, said Tuesday morning.

The amended bill will now go before the Senate Rules and Operations Committee.

Lazzara indicated last week in a meeting of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Energy, and Environment that the language in the bill might be revised.

Lazzara is one of the primary sponsors of that bill and Senate Bill 1009, which aims to overturn the state’s 40-year prohibition on hardened coastal erosion control structures, including breakwaters, bulkheads, seawalls, jetties, revetments, and terminal groins.

Hardened erosion-control structures have long been controversial because they capture sand that travels down the beach nearshore, depleting the sand supply to the beach immediately downdrift of the structure, stripping land that is natural habitat for, among others, sea turtles and shorebirds.

Senate Bill 1009 advanced last week to the Senate Appropriations Committee one day before the Coastal Resources Commission Science Panel released its draft report examining the effects of hardened erosion control structures on ocean coastlines.

The 47-page report, which was presented to the CRC last Thursday, was created to provide scientific and technical information for policymakers, regulators and legislators.

Science Panel Chair Dr. Laura Moore, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor in the Department of Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences, explained to commission members that the report covers the physical and adverse effects, and ecological impacts, of hardened structures.

The North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries has made each of 15 anglers $100 richer with the latest winners of its annual drawing of Multi-Species Tagging Program tag numbers announced Thursday.

The randomly selected tag numbers were from 496 fish tags that were turned in by participants in 2025. Three tag numbers were selected from each of the five species that are tagged by the program.

The $100 winners who turned in tags found on cobia were Joshua Bourne of Virginia Beach, Virginia; Mike Lintzenich of Williamsburg, Virginia; and Katie Daniel of Toano, Virginia.

The $100 winners who turned in tags found on red drum were Brad Smith of Maysville, Nicholas Stanley of Four Oaks, and Josh Whibley of Charleston, South Carolina.

The $100 winners who turned in tags on striped bass were Robert Tipton of New Bern, Scott Pope of New Bern and Anthony Richards of Wilmington.

The $100 winners who turned in tags on southern flounder were Jaxon Row of Wilmington, James Cone of Wilmington and Tyler Barnes of Hubert.

The $100 winners who turned in tags on spotted seatrout were Jamie Bright of Jacksonville, Chris Cobb of Hampstead and David Bishop of Belhaven.

The Multi-Species Tagging Program began in October 2014 and is funded by a Coastal Recreational Fishing License grant. Each year, staff and volunteers attach a yellow or red tag marked with “NCDMF” on thousands of fish in North Carolina’s coastal waters.

When a tagged fish is reported, along with the required information, participants receive a letter and personalized certificate with information about their fish, including days at large and distance traveled, as well as a reward. Those who return a yellow tag receive either a tagging program hat, fish towel or fish pin. Those who return a red tag marked “$100 REWARD” receive a $100. Those who return a tag are automatically entered into an annual drawing for $100.

Bourne, Lintzenich, Daniel, Pope, Richards, Rowe, Barnes and Cobb all received $100 when they turned in red tags for their respective fish and another $100 from the drawing, making their total rewards $200 each.

Information required when reporting a tagged fish includes the species, tag number, date, location captured, total length of the fish, fate of the fish (released or harvested) and the type of gear used to capture the fish. Tags may be reported by phone at 1-800-682-2632 or through an online form. Red tags must be cut off the fish and returned to the division for the participant to receive the $100 reward.

Information gathered from tag returns helps researchers determine species migration patterns, mortality, population structure and habitat use, which can be used to better manage the fisheries. Click for more information about the Multi-Species Tagging Program or contact John Mohan at 252-948-3913 or john.mohan@deq.nc.gov.

Dr. Joel Fodrie has been named the new director of Duke University Marine Lab in Beaufort.

Most recently director of University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, Fodrie will succeed outgoing director Andy Read, who was in the leadership role for 10 years and will remain on the faculty once Fodrie comes aboard, Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment said Wednesday.

“The Duke Marine Lab is a gold standard among centers of coastal and marine research, both in the social sciences and the natural sciences. Its coastal setting is ideal for exploring how humans and natural systems affect one another. I’m very excited about working with the faculty, staff and students to support, and even enhance, place-based research and teaching that has local and far-reaching impacts,” Fodrie said in a statement.

Fodrie will join later this summer the lab that “has centered on field-based discovery, immersive learning and close mentorship” for nearly nine decades, the university said.

“As director, Joel will build on Andy’s legacy and further strengthen strategic connections between Beaufort and Durham while guiding the Marine Lab’s next chapter as a world-class leader in marine science and research,” said Lori Bennear, Stanback Dean of the Nicholas School.

Fodrie earned his bachelor’s degree in biology and history from UNC Chapel Hill, and his doctorate in biological oceanography from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California, San Diego.

His research focuses on coastal and estuarine ecosystems, fisheries ecology and the resilience of marine communities and his scholarship includes more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and extensive external grant support.

“Joel has the research, academic and leadership expertise we were looking for in a director. But beyond that, he brings a reputation as a trusted community partner deeply appreciative of and knowledgeable about North Carolina coastal ecosystems,” said Erika Weinthal, the Nicholas School’s John O. Blackburn Distinguished Professor, who chaired the Marine Lab director search committee

Among various honors, Fodrie received recognition as an Early-Career Research Fellow with the Gulf Research Program, part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. In 2024, he was named one of five recipients of the Thomas Willis Lambeth Distinguished Chair in Public Policy, a five-year term professorship to recognize and honor outstanding teachers and scholars.

“On a personal level, I grew up in Beaufort, North Carolina, and have known about the significance of the Marine Lab essentially my whole life,” Fodrie said. “I certainly view this as a one-of-a-kind opportunity to help shape the direction and impact of the Lab to ensure wise and sustainable use of our coastal and marine ecosystems.”

While state lawmakers consider two bills that would eliminate the state’s longstanding ban on hardened structures along the ocean shoreline, a report providing details about the effects and effectiveness of coastal erosion-control structures is expected to be presented this week during the regular meeting of the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission.

The commission, which meets at 10 a.m. Thursday at the DoubleTree in New Bern, had assigned to its science advisory panel in February the task of creating the document that is intended as a guide for coastal managers and policymakers to address increasingly destructive erosion along the state’s 320 miles of coastline — dramatically illustrated in recent years by more than 30 houses on the Outer Banks falling into the ocean.

Two measures in the North Carolina General Assembly, Senate Bill 1008 and Senate Bill 1009, had not advanced as of the time this story was published, with some legislators expressing caution about taking action prematurely.

“I guess I’m a little concerned about putting the provisions of these two bills in place before that study comes out,” said Sen. Julie Mayfield, D-Buncombe, Wednesday during a meeting of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Energy, and Environment. “My instinct is, ‘Let’s just see what happens there, see what they say, see what that leads us to do that’s different than what’s here.’”

Impacts of climate change on long-term erosion rates are also a factor to consider, said Wake County Democrat Sen. Lisa Grafstein, noting that the topic may be covered in the CRC Science Panel report.

Sen. Bob Brinson, R-Beaufort and also representing Craven and Lenoir counties, told the committee while introducing the bills that while coastal communities suffer direct economic and personal losses from severe erosion, the general public is also affected. Alluding to safety concerns from fallen house debris spreading along public lands and waters, he said that there are also losses to the local tax base and tourism revenue as well as to visitor access to the seashore.

The two bills are different sides of the same coin, that is, the stated goal of allowing the option to build hardened structures that are now banned, if deemed appropriate.

The primary sponsor of the bills is Sen. Bobby Hanig, a Currituck County Republican who also represents Dare County in Senate District 1, which includes the Outer Banks’ beaches in both counties. Hanig did not respond to messages left on his cellphone seeking comment.

Senate Bill 1008 would establish a pilot program that authorizes construction of shoreline-stabilization projects at locations where oceanfront houses are at imminent risk of collapse. A limited number of projects would be evaluated and recommended by the North Carolina Collaboratory, which the General Assembly authorized in 2016 to apply scientific scrutiny to projects in the state that may serve the public good.

Senate Bill 1009 would eliminate the prohibition of temporary or permanent erosion-control structures and create regulations to ensure the structures “will not result in significant adverse impacts to private property or to the public recreational beach.”  In addition, the bill would require funding the Collaboratory to update the state’s 1,000-plus-page Beach and Inlet Management Plan, which was last fully updated in 2016.

Brinson told committee members that whatever pilot projects are approved would include strict limitations and monitoring requirements and would not be funded by the state. Still, in defending the need to eliminate the ban to allow the erosion-control structures, he cited the hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars spent in maintaining and repairing N.C. Highway 12 on Hatteras and Ocracoke islands. But Brinson was referring to areas where virtually none of the typical hardened structures would work for long — if at all. Even if seawalls or other structures were affordable at those locations, the intensity of the coastal conditions would either soon undermine or pummel the structures, or create worse situations at the site or downstream.

Sandbags, which are considered temporary structures under coastal law, have been widely used for decades on the Outer Banks and coastwide. In a sign of the increasingly difficult challenges created by rising seas, shifting channels, and steeply and rapidly eroding beaches, today’s larger and tougher sandbags also often fail to hold back destructive surging surf for long. Protective coastal management measures have been evolving toward more nature-based solutions such as living shorelines, as well as combined measures, such as beach nourishment and one or more of various types of structures, according to an April 2025 study, “Challenges and lessons learned from global coastal erosion protection strategies,” published in the journal iScience.

And while erosion-control structures may buy time, coastal scientists warn that consequences are not always quickly evident. For instance, in one of the few success stories Brinson noted among the handful of existing hardened structures on the North Carolina coast, the terminal groin at Oregon Inlet also has had a significant, albeit slower moving, negative impact.

While providing the intended protection of the Bonner Bridge, now the Marc Basnight Bridge, and the tie-in to N.C. Highway 12, the groin has also caused a hazardous shoal to grow into the navigational channel, which is at risk of becoming much narrower and deeper as it is pushed closer to the groin. That could present a huge issue to Dare County and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which share responsibility and costs of maintaining channels in the inlet, the only sound-to-sea passage between Virginia and Hatteras.

North Carolina’s ban on hardened structures first went into effect in 1985, when the Coastal Resources Commission put rules in place restricting their use to very few instances, such as protection of historic structures. After a court ruling upheld the ban, it was put into law in 2003.

In a recent social media post, Rob Young, the director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University, wrote that the both political parties in the General Assembly voted in favor of the law because they recognized the harm the structures had done in other states, as well as in North Carolina.

“It was, and still is, good science and good policy,” Young wrote. “Seawalls destroy beaches and increase erosion on neighbors’ properties. Seawalls on individual parcels create a nightmare for coastal managers.”

But Young pointed to the provision in Senate Bill 1009 that would “ensure” no adverse impacts to public and private property, creating “an impossible standard to meet,” he noted.

“The bill would open the door to a coastal management free-for-all,” he wrote.

Fittingly, it was a Carolina blue sky that greeted University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Chancellor Lee H. Roberts as he joined Institute of Marine Sciences researchers for a boat ride Tuesday morning to Cape Lookout National Seashore’s undeveloped barrier islands, a stark contrast to the celebratory gridlock on Franklin Street that the Orange County city can expect after a big win.

Roberts was in Carteret County to meet with faculty and students and learn more about their research at the lab in Morehead City, one of the handful of stops for the chancellor’s second summer tour this year in eastern North Carolina.

The first summer tour in 2025 covered the western part of the state. The 2026 tour began May 29 with two days at Fort Bragg. After Carteret County, he stopped in New Bern, UNC Pembroke, UNC Wilmington and the USS Battleship North Carolina.

Roberts told Coastal Review Tuesday afternoon from inside the institute that these tours are the university’s connection to the state, and its people are “the source of our strength at Carolina.”

Because most of the state’s people do not live in Chapel Hill, Roberts explained that “it’s important to get out around the state and see people where they live and work and see as many communities across the state as we can.”

Roberts continued that most communities don’t have a facility like this one, “where we’ve made a large investment for a for a long time, and so this has been a particularly important part of Carolina’s history, having the physical outpost here, but the work Carolina scientists and researchers are doing is in every nook and cranny of the state, trying to help move the state forward.”

His visit Tuesday included a tour of the lab with a small group, including area media, led by Institute of Marine Sciences Director Dr. Joel Fodrie, a professor in the Earth, marine and environmental sciences department.

Fodrie said that the institute is approaching its 80th year, and the existing building was built about 25 years ago to house research for environmental processes, like water quality, biogeochemistry and geology.

Throughout the tour, Roberts was able to observe research as it was happening and speak to the scientists as they analyzed microbiomes on the coast’s shark species, collected data on how much sediment flows downstream from inland waterbodies, and harvested seagrass seeds for large-scale seagrass restoration. Fodrie also made a point of introducing Roberts to the facilities and administration staff as well, highlighting their important role in keeping the the lab running smoothly.

During a pause by the office of Dr. Rick Luettich, former institute director, the alumni distinguished professor out of his office to talk about an ongoing flood data collection initiative called the Sunny Day Flooding Project.

Luettich said they’ve been working with people on campus, in city and regional planning, and with N.C. State University on the project that uses sensors installed in storm drains and ditches to record water levels.

Luettich pointed to the neighboring office where research specialist in physical oceanography Tony Whipple was building the sensors that measure in real time how “frequently flooding is occurring now, not when a big storm comes, but just when it’s a King Tide, or with sea level rise.”

Luettich said there are sensors in New Bern, Beaufort, Carolina Beach and Down East Carteret County, and there’s a website that shows in real time what the water levels are in these understudied areas.

“We haven’t been really paying attention to whether they flood, but we’re seeing that they flood very frequently, and more and more often as sea level’s rising. So really interesting collaborative project that we’re kind of right at ground zero for,” Luettich said.

On the second floor, UNC Institute for the Environment Director Dr. Michael Piehler paused working on what he called a “really cool experiment” looking at salinity intrusion in farms to chat with Roberts.

Piehler said the “experiment is working on a farm where salinity is coming in and seeing how that affects both the way that the farmers experience the soil and the way we see it as a processor of nutrients, so it’s just another great case of IMS being a beautiful thing.”

When Fodrie directed the group outside of the facility, he gestured to what looked like abstract sculptures with concrete-saturated rope as the medium.

He said these were different types of structures used to build living shorelines, and the university is collaborating with the companies that make these alternatives for hardened bulkheads and seawalls for shoreline restoration.

“We get to play a valuable role,” Fodrie said. “We’re engaging a lot of companies that are doing that to help them refine their projects and protect shorelines better, and in more environmentally friendly ways” he said about what he called the bourgeoning industry.

Fodrie also used the tour to show the chancellor existing needs at the research lab.

The outdoor experimental tanks are high on Fodrie’s list to be modernized and be more accessible to all students for experiments and research, and they’re looking to expand the 2,100-square-foot dormitory that sleeps about 20.

“We would love to have students here,” for the semester, Fodrie said from inside the cramped living space beside the lab, and want to expand the dorm to accommodate about 32 beds. “We have the footprint. We have the space” and plans have been drawn.

“Our grad students have had an increasingly hard time finding a place to live,” Fodrie said. They used to rent beachfront homes and “that game is over. So, we have a real housing crunch.”

In the past, students could pool their resources and together rent the larger beach houses for a reasonable amount, but the by-owner vacation business has priced the students out.  

In the shorter term, Fodrie said IMS is going to invest in turning the existing dorm into four apartments that sleep four each.

“We’re going to actually reduce capacity to 16,” and the apartments will be small, but they’ll be perhaps livable for a whole semester. That only gets us to 16 and we’re trying to get to 32. It’s a good short-term fix, but not a long-term solution,” Fodrie said.

Roberts told Coastal Review after his tour of the lab that the university has had a presence on the coast for 80 years, and “when you spend time here, you realize why. How important it is to undertake the kind of research that our scientists and faculty are pursuing.”

The coast is crucial to the state and to its future, from standpoint of fisheries and the environment, the research into sustainability, oyster farms, and dozens of other areas of research everywhere you look.

“We have 75 people here year-round. It’s a remarkable effort supported by the people of North Carolina, and, and for a good reason, because what’s happening here is integral to North Carolina’s future,” he said.

In a follow-up interview, Fodrie told Coastal Review that the facility serves as UNC’s vanguard for meeting challenges facing the coast, as well as for discovering solutions in focal areas that include coastal resilience, water quality, human health, and fisheries.

“Knowing how broad and diverse the chancellor’s responsibilities are, we are very gratified and appreciative that he would choose to visit the Institute to learn more about our ongoing efforts to serve North Carolina and also explore with us ways to expand our capacity in research and teaching/mentoring,” Fodrie said.

Roberts’ choice to visit the institute also highlights the unique and high-impact role that it has played in UNC’s mission over the last 80 years, since the institute was created, Fodrie continued.

“In this regard, one telling statistic we discussed related to the Impact Awards that UNC uses to recognize graduate students that conduct research focused on serving the needs of North Carolina,” Fodrie said, explaining that IMS-based graduate students represent less than 0.2% of all UNC graduate students during the last decade but represent about 14% of all award recipients over that same period.

“In turn, we also appreciated the chance to learn more about the chancellor’s broader goals and priorities for UNC during his team’s visit, and therefore how IMS might continue to grow our impact within and beyond the university.”  

The North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission, during its meeting June 18 in New Bern, is expected to hear from its science panel their findings on the effects of hard structures on sandy, open-ocean coastlines.

That’s according to the agenda that is posted along with briefing materials on the commission’s website. The agenda and order of individual items on it are subject to change. 

The meeting is to start at 10 a.m. in the DoubleTree New Bern Riverfront at 100 Middle St. The public is welcome to attend in person or streamed on North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s YouTube channel.

The commission, during its November 2025 meeting, directed the science panel to evaluate alternatives for managing oceanfront erosion. They are to present their report during the meeting this month.

Related: Special series on permanent beach erosion control structures study

The commission designates areas of environmental concern, adopts rules and policies for coastal development within those areas and certifies local land use plans. The Division of Coastal Management carries out the commission’s rules and regulations.

The science panel, made up of researchers and government agency representatives, provides the commission with scientific data and recommendations pertaining to coastal topics.

Elizabeth City State University biology students have become the first researchers from a historically Black college or university to participate in the American Campus Tree Genome Project and have their work accepted into a worldwide genetic database.

The research on one of the oldest oak trees on campus is now publicly available through the National Center for Biotechnology Information, or NCBI, one of the world’s largest repositories of genetic information.  

HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, a nonprofit research lab in Alabama, began the American Campus Tree Genomes initiative to provide students a way to interact with the latest genome sequencing technologies.

The project involved biological research students Nicole Villardi, Camdyn Peck, Laneya Evans, Zakiya Sledge, Nyaziah Sears, Justin Franklin, Juelle St. Clair and Angelina Sanchez, and Dr. Alex Harkess, Lauren Whitt and Sarah Carey, all with HudsonAlpha.

Margaret Young, professor of biology and faculty expert in plant tissue culture at Elizabeth City State, said Friday in the release that the project marked a significant milestone for both the university and the HBCU community.   

“We are the first HBCU to be part of the American Campus Tree Genome Project, part of Dr. Harkess’ National Science Foundation CAREER grant. This is the first time that we are sequencing/annotating a tree on this campus and having the data readily available on NCBI,” Young said.   

Students collected leaves from an oak tree near the G.R. Little Library on campus and extracted high-quality DNA that was sent to HudsonAlpha for sequencing. Researchers returned the data to the university for the students to analyze before submitting the completed work to NCBI. The research is now available on the international database.

Young said each step of the process required a level of precision and expertise that is uncommon for undergraduate researchers.   

“We were praised by Dr. Harkess. Plant DNA can be difficult to extract due to the tough cell walls and the fact that plants store their waste and have secondary compounds in their cells,” she said.   

Unlike traditional laboratory courses, where experiments are often completed within a few hours, this project took an investment of several days.

“Extracting the DNA took several tries, about 8 hours each from start to finish. This would not work in a traditional lab setting, which is two to three hours,” Young said. “Annotating also took several hours. Luckily, the students had done Computer Programming and could figure out the coding when there were hiccups. Dr. Harkess’s staff also helped polish the data. In a course such as Biological Research, there is a lot of latitude—defined meeting times, plus meeting times each week the students decide upon, which makes it ideal for such a project.”   

Dr. Jared Bowden wanted to be the man you tuned your television to each day for a weather update.

His sole aspiration when he stepped onto the campus of North Carolina State University as a freshman in the mid-1990s was to become a broadcast meteorologist.

Today, that dream is but a fading memory for the Rocky Mount native who was recently named director of the North Carolina State Climate Office. Bowden’s new post became effective May 1.

That title, and the responsibilities that come with it, bring full-circle his passion for climate research, his love for his home state, and his desire to educate and serve his fellow North Carolinians.

“I take it very seriously that I want to do things to benefit our state,” Bowden, 47, said in a recent telephone interview. “What I love about this job is that it’s a public service center, so I’m serving the public and I’m trying to help the public with their problems related to climate.”

The State Climate Office is North Carolina’s leading scientific partner for understanding weather, climate, and atmospheric data. Its mission is to deliver climate-related services to local governments, state and federal agencies and businesses and residents.

The office was established in 1976 and originally housed at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. In 1980, the office was relocated roughly 25 miles east from the Tarheels’ campus to the home of the Wolfpack, Bowden’s three-time alma mater.

Bowden was about 2 years old at the time, toddling around in his parents’ house where his father, Donald Bowden, was presumably already kindling his oldest son’s desire to pursue a career in weather meteorology.

Up until his dad’s death in November, “everyone considered him the weatherman of the family despite me having the degree,” Bowden later wrote of his father in an email.

Bowden earned bachelor’s degrees in meteorology and marine sciences at the end of an academic year that, about a month into its beginning, exposed him and thousands of fellow eastern North Carolinians to one of the most destructive hurricanes in the state’s history.

After making landfall near Wilmington in September 1999, Hurricane Floyd dumped rain for more than 60 consecutive hours in some areas of eastern North Carolina, where just 10 days earlier rain from Tropical Storm Dennis had inundated waterways and saturated soil.

Bowden vividly recalls seeing rescue crews — swift water rescue teams and helicopters — temporarily stage in an area that was a short two-minute walk from his parent’s home near Stony Creek, a picturesque stream that converges with the Tar River.

His childhood home was ultimately spared from flooding, but his hometown would be changed forever.

The Tar River crested at more than 31 feet in Rocky Mount, where flooding claimed lives, wiped out local businesses and homes, and damaged Tarrytown Mall, eastern North Carolina’s first enclosed shopping mall, beyond repair.

“It was really an eye-opening experience to be honest with you,” Bowden said. “People that have experienced this type of flooding know firsthand of how devastating it is and it’s not just you, but also the broader community that’s impacted.”

That experience instilled in Bowden a drive to better understand extreme weather.

His senior year at State would be one where, as he put it, he got “sucked into the research world.” There, he discovered he was particularly good at atmospheric modeling.

Bowden went on to earn a master’s and doctorate in atmospheric science, landing a job as a postdoctoral researcher at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Research Triangle Park office, where he worked with “some of the best atmospheric modelers in the world.”

From there, he settled into a world of research related to atmospheric modeling, eventually accepting a job as a research assistant professor at UNC Chapel Hill.

“But that kind of took me away a little bit from my passion of climate,” Bowden said.

When the position of associate director opened up at the State Climate Office in 2024, he applied for the job, one that would get him back to not only his love of climate research, but climate research specific to his home state.

Bowden was named interim director of the State Climate Office in August 2025 following former director Kathie Dello’s departure to become the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s assistant secretary for resilience.

The North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resilinecy was established in the fall of 2018 in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, a storm that dumped more than 35 inches of rain in parts of eastern North Carolina and racked up an estimated $22 billion in damages in the state.

“We’ve seen quite a number of events over the years, and even in Rocky Mount there’s been events that haven’t been related to tropical systems that have created some really big flood problems,” Bowden said. “I didn’t see those types of things growing up. It is what I would say is a new normal that eastern North Carolinians are facing. But, as you know now, no place is safe within our state. From the mountains to the coast, everybody’s experienced something.”

Portions of western North Carolina continue to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Helene, a Category 4 storm that made landfall at Florida’s Big Bend and swept north. Wind and rain generated from the storm claimed the lives of more than 100 North Carolinians and caused an estimated $78.7 billion worth of damage.

Within just the last decade, the state experienced its hottest year on record in 2019. Last year, more than 5,000 heat-related emergency room visits were reported in North Carolina.

As of May 19, more than half of the state’s 100 counties are experiencing extreme drought. Most of the 20 coastal counties are under severe drought.

“The pendulum is swinging much more aggressively both ways and that’s what our state has to be prepared for,” Bowden said. “We have to work closely with our partners, we have to reach out to various groups to understand what those challenges are so that we’re able to serve them better.”

The office, which is comprised of 10 staff, is in the process of creating HANC, or Heat Atlas for North Carolina.

“It looks at, if you were to think about a hundred-year, three-day heatwave, what would that temperature be for your locations,” Bowden said. “That’s something I’m really excited about and we’re thinking about how to extend it to a broader footprint into South Carolina and possibly Georgia.”

The Division of Marine Fisheries wants to bring the public into the blue crab stock assessment development process.

The division’s stock assessment scientists plan to review what a stock assessment is and how this data set is developed during a WebEx meeting from 6-8 p.m. Thursday, May 28. Register online to attend the webinar or attend the listening location at the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries Central District Office in Morehead City.

The Marine Fisheries Commission, which puts in place rules, policies, and management measures for fisheries, adopted the original North Carolina Blue Crab Fishery Management Plan in late 1998, Amendment 1 in 2004, and Amendment 2 in 2013, according to the division’s website. The division, under the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, acts as staff to the commission.

A review of the management plan was scheduled for July 2018, but the commission decided in August 2016 to begin a formal review, assess the status of the blue crab stock and identify more comprehensive management strategies, and began developing amendment 3.

As part of that amendment, the division used data from 1995 to 2016 for a benchmark stock assessment, which is a comprehensive assessment conducted every five years by reevaluating data and modeling methods. Results indicate that the state’s blue crab stock was classified as overfished in 2016, according to the division.

The 2018 benchmark stock assessment shows the state’s blue crab stock is overfished, which means that the population size is too small, and overfishing is occurring, or the removal rate is too high.

Amendment 3 was adopted in February 2020 to rebuild the blue crab stock. All Amendment 3 management measures have been fully in place since January 2021.

The division attempted to update the stock assessment in 2023, but staff and external peer reviewers had concerns with model specifications and the results and decided not to use the update to manage the species.

Existing data from division sampling and monitoring programs indicate a continued decline of blue crab stock.

The division’s stock assessment team is going through data now to develop a new benchmark stock assessment and gave an update to the Marine Fisheries Commission during its business meeting May 14 in New Bern.

Stock Assessment Program Manager Matt Damiano explained that part of his motivation to hold the webinar at this stage in developing the assessment is because a member of the fishing community brought to his attention that historically, the only public-facing part of the division’s process has been the peer-review workshop, when the stock assessment is essentially done.

“This webinar is something of a halfway point to where I would like to go with our stock assessment process, which is to make it more public facing,” he said, adding that he has been planning the webinar for several months.

Damiano said that he and Stock Assessment Scientist Matt Zink, the other member of the program’s team, have made progress on the stock assessment update.

“We have been able to analyze all the sources of data that we’re interested in including in the stock assessment, that essentially involves Matt and I digging through the data and determining whether it is usable and what it is telling us,” he said, adding that they’re using data collected through different programs.

The estimated pattern for 1974 through 2024 has fluctuated quite a bit, as marine populations tend to, and saw the highest abundance during the 1990s followed by a marked decline in blue crab abundance after around 2010.

“There have been some modest increases toward the end of that time series, but overall, there is a negative trend for the last 14 years,” Damiano said.

During the same time, the size of blue crabs in the Pamlico Sound have gotten smaller in general, while blue crab size in Albemarle Sound has been stable.

The fishery-dependent data from fish houses points to the size structure being stable, “which is likely more a function of people bringing a really stable set of sizes of crab to market than it is having to do necessarily what’s going on in the population,” Damiano said.

“Another interesting feature is when we looked at abundance over space, it has declined most in the Pamlico Sound, but the Albemarle Sound is still essentially the one big hot spot for blue crab,” he added.

“If you are fishing in Albemarle Sound, things may seem better than they actually are for the population,” but Damiano stressed that “two things can be true at the same time. You can be doing very well if you’re fishing in a particular area, but the population throughout the whole state can still be moving in a different direction.”

Damiano told the commission that for the webinar May 28 he plans to give a brief review of what a stock assessment is and spend some time on what happened with the peer review of the 2023 updated stock assessment.

“I get a lot of comments on why that did not pass peer review and wasn’t recommended for use and management,” Damiano explained, but those who reviewed the assessment left a “clear roadmap for how to improve it,” he said. “It’s those exact steps that they recommended that Matt and I have been taking with this stock assessment and that’s going to give a lot of context to why we did the analyzes we did, and why we’re considering the methods we are for the stock assessment.”

Damiano added that while the peer reviewers did not recommend the model for use in management, and the division decided to heed that advice, “I think the peer review was actually a success in that sense, because they identified really clear problems that we need addressing in the next model.”

The peer reviewers were Dr. Jie Cao, assistant professor at N.C. State’s Center for Marine Sciences and Technology, or CMAST, and Dr. Yan Li, at Duke Cancer Institute Biostatistics Shared Resource at Duke University.

In an interview before the commission meeting, Damiano, who has been with the division about a year, pointed out that the only opportunity for the public to really engage with a stock assessment during the peer review, which is at the end of the process.

“That’s the only workshop that’s technically open to the public, and so I am trying to change that kind of incrementally as I learn what the communication needs are related to stock assessment. And it starts with this webinar,” he said.  

“We’re trying to create a space where we can be transparent about the work that we’ve done so far on the blue crab stock assessment, which is still ongoing, and solicit some feedback from the people,” such as their concerns about population, other sources of data to consider and give the public background for “some of the choices that we’re making while we’re doing the analysis. Really, it’s more just me trying to show my work and begin the dialog where we previously really haven’t had.”

He added that he hopes the webinar opens a line of communication that wasn’t there before.

The North Carolina Coastal Habitat Protection Plan steering committee plans to discuss the 2026 update for the interagency effort to protect state waters during a web conference at 10 a.m. Wednesday, May 27.

Meeting details, including the link to register, and a full agenda can be found on the plan’s webpage.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality initiative focuses on “long-term enhancement of coastal fisheries through habitat protection and enhancement efforts.”

The plan was first adopted in 2004 by the state’s Marine Fisheries, Environmental Management, and Coastal Resources commissions and has been updated in the time since. The steering committee includes two commissioners from each of the commissions.

If the tide’s ebb and flow have appeared more extreme than usual over the last few days, it’s because of the king tide event that began Friday, the everyday term for exceptionally high and low water levels that happen when the moon is either full or new and orbiting at its closest to the Earth.

The Sunny Day Flooding Project, a group of researchers who studies chronic flooding in Eastern North Carolina, has a particular interest in these natural and predictable tides because they illustrate what average tidal cycles may look like as sea levels change.

While sunny day flooding sounds counterintuitive, it is a chronic issue coastal communities are facing more often, especially during king tides.

“As local sea-level rise, land subsidence, and development continue to increase in coastal areas, so does the frequency of flooding,” the project website explains. “The tidal cycle now takes place on higher average sea levels, resulting in ‘sunny day’ flooding of roadways during high tides. Sea water also infiltrates stormwater drainage systems at normal tidal levels, such that ordinary rainstorms lead to flooding. While these minor floods draw less attention than catastrophic storms, their high frequency imposes a chronic stress on coastal communities and economies by disrupting critical infrastructure services.”

Two of the project’s leaders, scientists Katherine Anarde and Miyuki Hino, told Coastal Review in an email response that sunny day flooding is inundation that happens without any rain or storm taking place.

Anarde is an assistant professor in North Carolina State University’s Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, and Hino is an associate professor in University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s City and Regional Planning and an adjunct assistant professor in the Environment, Ecology, and Energy Program.

“It can be a perfectly sunny day, but due to tides or wind, water levels in the ocean are high enough to cause flooding,” they explained. “King tides occur during the coincidence of perigee and spring tides – when the moon is closest to Earth in its orbit and in alignment with the Sun, which exerts the largest tide generating force on the world’s oceans.”

The Sunny Day Flooding Project launched in 2021 “to understand and address the incidence and impacts of chronic coastal flooding, which includes sunny day floods but also ‘flash floods’ from routine rain events coinciding with high tides” and is currently funded by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, the National Science Foundation and NASA, or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

“We partner with communities to monitor how often floods are occurring, measure their impacts, and evaluate potential adaptation responses,” Anarde and Hino explained.

The team collects measurements, holds interviews and conduct surveys to better understand the effect of floods on residents, economies and human health. They communicate the flood risks through its flood alert system and king tides program.

While king tides “are not a new phenomenon,” the higher sea levels combined with sinking land, called subsidence, allows tides to rise relatively higher and higher, inundating low-lying infrastructure that was built decades ago, they said.

“The most visible impact is flooding on roads, often due to water backing up through stormwater drainage networks. However, the high water levels can also affect other aspects of infrastructure, such as septic tanks and underground sewage pipes,” the two continued.

A now-retired researcher at UNC Institute of Marine Sciences based in Morehead City started about a decade ago the North Carolina King Tides Project to study the floods that historically occurred during king tides, in association with the international King Tides Project. The global initiative began in Australia in 2009 and asked the public to document and share their photos showing how these higher tides affect shorelines.

North Carolina’s project began releasing a calendar with predicted high tides and encouraged the community to photograph and submit their observations of shoreline water levels.

The Sunny Day Flooding Project absorbed the N.C. King Tides Project after the researcher retired a few years ago and now publishes the calendar of when to expect king tides each year. The project also encourages the public to upload photos and details through the free Coastal Observer app.

The first king tide of this year was April 17-19, the current king tide is supposed to end Thursday, and more are expected June 13-16, July 12-15, Aug. 10-13, Oct. 25-31, Nov. 23-27, and Dec. 24-25, according to the calendar.

The calendar notes king tides as well as amplified tides, which they define as a nonscientific term for when higher and lower water level events are expected that “result when perigee and spring tides almost co-occur, yet are offset by a day or more.”

On the project website, the team offers the caveat that the calendar “does not predict coastal flooding.” Floods are often caused by wind and pressure, seasonal changes in sea level, and land-based factors like high groundwater, rainfall, and existing infrastructure.

“With sea-level rise, flooding during the perigean spring tides has become more and more common, but flooding is also occurring during moderate tidal cycles in some communities,” the website states.

Researchers recommend checking the NOAA Monthly High Tide Outlook for flooding probabilities.

The team also communicates flood risks through its flood alert system available for Beaufort, Carolina Beach, Down East and New Bern, where there are water level sensors. Those interested can sign up to receive an email whenever water levels overtop the roadway at the chosen sensor location.

On the project website, researchers explain that the chronic flooding affects people differently than extreme events like hurricanes because it is not as deep and widespread as storm surges from hurricanes, but it is more frequent. The high rate of constant flooding interrupts travel and could also increase infrastructure maintenance costs for coastal communities.

Anarde and Hino said that there are ways to address the impacts of chronic coastal floods, and the right response is going to differ from place to place.

“Elevating infrastructure can help keep it dry and reduce damage from saltwater. Scheduling trips to avoid the highest tides can help avoid flooded roads and keep travelers safe. Given that this type of flooding is projected to become more frequent in the future, it’s important to consider both immediate, short-term responses and longer-term strategies,” they said.

There’s something almost poetic in how Thomas Marcinowski describes his plans for his final farewell.

Whenever that time comes, the U.S. military veteran wants to be cremated and put to sea.

“That way my ashes touch every continent my boots walked on,” Marcinowski said.

That long-carried thought surfaced when Marcinowski, on a commercial flight returning to Wilmington from an organizational event in 2019, read an article about people taking the ashes of their loved ones to be interred in an artificial reef off the Miami coast.

By that time, several years had passed since he’d retired from service, rounding out a military career spanning more than 20 years that began when he enlisted in the Air Force as a teenager and ended after becoming an officer in the Army National Guard.

Marcinowski, a physician assistant at Wilmington Veterans Administration Health Care Center, wasted no time after reading the article. He began bouncing an idea to friends and colleagues about a nonprofit organization that would build a living legacy beneath the waves where those who’ve honorably served would be memorialized, their stories preserved and their mission of service continued.

“The motto that I like to use is, ‘Those who served continue to serve,’” Marcinowski said. “They’ve passed away, but yet they’re still giving back to the nation and to the world by being out there to create something even greater and protect for future generations.”

Just two years after he first pitched his idea around, Veterans Memorial Reef held its first ceremony honoring veterans whose cremains were interred in eco-positive reef modules that were placed on the seafloor about 5 miles off the coast of Carolina Beach.

The nonprofit hosted its sixth annual three-day event this past weekend at the Fort Johnston Museum and Visitor Center in Southport, interring the ashes of nine people – six veterans and three spouses of veterans – in memorial markers to be lowered into the sea on Monday.

Those memorialized Saturday joined 30 others whose cremated remains are preserved in aquatic urns that are sealed into the square-shaped markers, each of which has a plaque engraved with the name, branch of service, and birth and death dates.

Veterans whose cremations are interred in the reef represent every branch of service – Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard. Some served decades. Others, like Marine Corps Pfc. Ethan Eldrige, who died at age 21, served only a matter of months.

Several served in combat, veterans of World War II, Korea, Vietnam and Desert Storm.

Then there’s Felix Bigalke, a Coast Guard service K-9, also memorialized at the reef.

This is Marcinowski’s passion project, one that goes beyond recognizing veterans to educate the general public about the military, rehabilitate and protect natural ocean reef ecosystems, and provide researchers opportunities to study how the environment and the organisms that live within it respond to an artificial reef.

“Working at the VA, just hearing the stories and having served in battle, having lost me of my own in battle, brings it home for me because I see the internal scars that they bear. It’s moving to me because I understand those scars,” Marcinowski said. “So, to be able to give them honor and share their stories that they may never have told their families, it is very rewarding.”

And, for the veterans memorialized at the reef who either have no family or are estranged from family, “It becomes really important that they not be forgotten,” he said.

The Veterans Memorial Reef website includes a Fallen Heroes tab where viewers can read veterans’ biographies, along with any medals awarded to them. Users can simply scroll over a ribbon bar or medal and click to learn more about that award.

“Those are things people don’t understand the meaning behind what they do, the risks they take to earn something like that or to be recognized for that,” Marcinowski explained.

Today, fewer than 1% of the country’s population serve as active-duty military.

“It’s dwindling,” said University of North Carolina Wilmington Director of Military Affairs Bill Kawczynski. “As our population grows and less and less folk either consider going in the military or even qualify for the military, it’s getting worse each year. And so, as director of the office of military affairs it gives me great satisfaction when I can connect students and others to things such as VMR or other military and veteran resources.”

On Saturday, Armed Forces Day, the nonprofit hosted in Southport a “Fallen Heroes Ceremony” for those whose remains will be placed in the sea. The honors-packed military tribute typically includes honor guards, the presentation of a 13-fold American flag to one member of each veteran’s family, taps, and a bagpipe rendition of “Amazing Grace.”

In a final sendoff, usually two days after the ceremony, families are invited to board the Vonda Kay, a 72-foot head boat based in Carolina Beach, to watch their loved one’s memorial marker get submerged and placed onto the Veterans Memorial Reef.

To honor and to serve (research)

The North Carolina Division Marine Fisheries determines where the memorial markers will be placed on a large, open sandy bottom anywhere below 30 to 50 feet of water.

Veterans Memorial Reef has partnered with Raleigh-based Natrx that creates artificial reef structures called ExoForms, which are designed to promote habitat growth and ecological benefits and produced using 3-D printers.

The memorial reef is in what Troy Alphin, a senior research associate with the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Center for Marine Science, describes as a dynamic environment with strong currents. Alphin was one of the people Marcinowski initially contacted for validation of his memorial reef idea. The two have known each other for several years and Marcinowski knew Alphin had studied the effects of underwater structures on the environment off other coasts.

Alphin thought an offshore monument for veterans a novel, innovative idea, one that not only honors veterans, but also offers a host of research opportunities.

“This is a passion project to meet the needs of veterans that’s providing us with an opportunity to address some questions that are really relevant for local marine science and in our coastal area,” he said. “This provides an interesting palette for researchers to come in and propose different questions. Are fish going to be attracted to it? Are other organisms going to be attracted to it? What’s that development through time? The Center for Marine Science and UNCW are well positioned to address a lot of those questions.”

This year, students in the university’s coastal engineering program launched a capstone research project to try and answer the question of what the wave energy is like around the Veterans Memorial Reef.

Students used the university’s wave flume, 9,500-gallon-capacity glass and steel tank that can be programmed to imitate varying degrees of wave energy, to collect data that will help in future studies of the artificial reef site.

“We’re going to put some sensors on some of these monuments that are being deployed and start gathering data on what that looks like in the real word,” said Alphin, who sits on the Veterans Memorial Reef board of directors. “We want to know what that flow environment around these structures is really going to be.

“We’re really at the very beginning,” he continued. “There’s a lot of potential right now. I’m hoping that we’ll get a lot of students in the future and a lot of researchers that will be able to go out there and do some work around these structures.”

Matthew Godfrey, a sea turtle conservationist with extensive experience in several regions, is the the featured guest this month for the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s “Green Drinks” speaker series in Morehead City.

This month’s session is set for 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 28, on the third floor of Jack’s on the Waterfront at 513 Evans St.

The casual monthly gathering for people who care about the North Carolina coast is hosted by the Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review.

“Whether you enjoy boating, beach days, or simply want to keep our waters clean and our communities strong, this is a relaxed space to connect with others, hear from local voices, and stay up to date on important coastal topics,” according to organizers.

Godfrey began working in North Carolina in 2002, after being hired by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission to coordinate the North Carolina Sea Turtle Project. Since then, he has played a key role in monitoring and protecting sea turtle populations along the state’s coast.

Godfrey will give an overview of sea turtle nesting and nest protection in the state, highlighting some of the joys and challenges associated with sea turtle conservation along North Carolina’s coast.

Grab a drink from the bar and join the conversation. These events are free and open to the public, however registration is strongly encouraged.

Dr. Reide Corbett, executive director of the Coastal Studies Institute on the East Carolina University Outer Banks Campus in Wanchese, is the featured lecturer this month at the institute’s “Science on the Sound” lecture series.

The public is encouraged to attend Corbett’s lecture, “Holding the Line? Coastal Change and Barrier-Island Dynamics on the Outer Banks.” The program is set for 6 p.m. May 28 at the institute and there’s no charge to attend.

From collapsing oceanfront homes to repeated beach nourishment projects, coastal change is becoming increasingly visible across the Outer Banks. But what do these changes reveal about how barrier islands function — and how different management approaches interact with these naturally dynamic systems?

Corbett will discuss the science behind erosion, storms, overwash, sediment transport, and sea level rise, while exploring how shoreline management strategies influence beaches, infrastructure, and long-term resilience.

“Rather than focusing on simple solutions, the discussion will examine the tradeoffs, time horizons, and challenges associated with managing development on a constantly changing coast,” organizers said in their announcement.

Whether you work in coastal science, policy, planning, or simply care deeply about the Outer Banks, this presentation offers an opportunity to better understand the processes shaping one of the most dynamic shorelines on the East Coast.

The program will also be livestreamed on YouTube.

Corbett is a coastal oceanographer and geochemist whose work focuses on coastal change, sediment dynamics, shoreline processes, and the geomorphic evolution of barrier island systems.

Born and reared on the North Carolina coast, he earned his bachelor’s in chemistry and his master’s and doctorate in chemical oceanography from Florida State University before beginning his academic career at Tulane University in New Orleans. He later returned to North Carolina to join ECU, where he serves as dean of Integrated Coastal Programs, executive director of the Coastal Studies Institute, and professor in the Department of Coastal Studies.

Corbett’s research examines the dynamic interface between land and sea, from estuaries and continental shelves to barrier islands and polar coastlines. His work has taken him from North Carolina and Puerto Rico to New Zealand and Antarctica, with a particular focus on how storms, sea level rise, sediment movement, human activity, and long-term geologic processes shape coastal environments. Through the lens of North Carolina’s coast, he helps communities better understand shoreline change, barrier island evolution, and the choices needed to adapt to a changing coastal future, organizers said.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation announced this week that Dr. Lela Schlenker has the nonprofit organization as its new coastal advocate for northeastern part of the state.

Schlenker comes to the Coastal Federation, publisher of Coastal Review, most recently from Avangrid Renewables, where she led the fisheries team across the company’s U.S. offshore wind projects and focused on communicating with fishing communities, identifying research needs, and coordinating marine policy.

Schlenker is a fisheries ecologist with a research career spanning topics such as the effect of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on mahi-mahi, how climate and weather affect North Carolina shrimp populations, and the impact of catch-and-release fishing practices on white marlin. Throughout her career, she has worked closely with fishing communities along the U.S. coastline, building strong and collaborative partnerships. 

“We’re excited to have Lela join our team. She brings a wealth of knowledge and experience on coastal issues,” explained Coastal Management Program Director Kerri Allen. “Lela is joining us at a time when there are several major issues facing the Outer Banks region, including threatened oceanfront structures, ongoing water quality concerns, increased pressure to lift hardened shoreline restrictions, and the growing need for long-term coastal resilience planning. Her scientific background, policy experience, and collaborative approach will be a tremendous asset for both the Federation and the coastal communities we serve.” 

Schlenker has an undergraduate degree from Smith College, a master’s from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, and a doctorate in marine biology and ecology from the University of Miami.

Schlenker says that her career path was inspired by both a strong conservation ethic and an undergraduate research project in which she sampled fish aboard a commercial trawling vessel. 

“I am really looking forward to connecting with the community as well as working with managers, scientists, and policy makers to continue the great work the Coastal Federation has done and find new ways to protect beautiful coastal North Carolina,” said Schlenker. 

Schlenker started with the Coastal Federation on May 5 and will be based out of the office in Wanchese.

She has been delighted to call the Outer Banks home since 2020. In her spare time, she enjoys finding ways to be on, in, or near the water and growing as much butternut squash as possible in her garden.  

Gardeners, nature enthusiasts, educators, community organizers and others with a drive to help pollinators can join in the Great Southeast Pollinator Census in August.

North Carolina Cooperative Extension is launching the state’s census effort with a webinar at 3 p.m. Wednesday, April 15. Register for “Getting Started with the Great Southeast Pollinator Census in NC” through the online form.

The community science effort to track pollinator visitations across the Southeast is designed so that anyone, regardless of scientific background, can contribute.

Amanda Bratcher, the state’s census coordinator based at the extension office in Lee County, will lead the 90-minute webinar, which will review the 15-minute method for counting pollinators, and how to identify the insect.

A University of Georgia Project, the Great Southeast Pollinator Census was launched in 2022. In that time, more than 1.2 million insects across 66,000 individual counts have been documented in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Alabama.

A seven-week online course is also being offered Tuesday afternoons from June 16 to July 28. The cost of the course is $50 and the commitment to lead, assist or participate in a Great Southeast Pollinator Census event this year. Registration is open for the few remaining seats for the course.

“Help us capture a snapshot of pollinator activity in communities across North Carolina, including the types of pollinators and which flowers they visit, and help build a southeast-wide data set with other states,” organizers said.

There are resources for those who want to participate as well as for groups interested in hosting a counting event on the extension’s webpage for the census.

Being able to watch a mother sperm whale give birth to her calf in the eastern Caribbean Sea a couple of summers ago “felt like an encounter with something both impossibly rare and profoundly ancient,” marine biologist David Gruber told Coastal Review.

Gruber, a National Geographic Explorer and City University of New York distinguished professor of biology, is president of Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative). He founded the nonprofit based in the U.S. and Dominica in 2020. It’s made up of artificial intelligence and natural language processing specialists, cryptographers, linguists, marine biologists, roboticists and underwater acousticians from a network of universities and other partners, per the website.

He was aboard the organization’s sailing research vessel on July 8, 2023, off the coast of Dominica, where scientists have been observing whales for decades, when the team noticed that all 11 members of a known sperm whale unit had gathered at the water’s surface.

The team soon realized that they were witnessing the exceedingly rare 34-minutelong birth of a sperm whale in the wild and the coordinated care efforts for the newborn by the other adult females.

Project CETI published two reports detailing what the team observed, calling the work in a March 26 press release “the most comprehensive documentation of a sperm whale birth ever recorded and the first quantitative evidence of cooperative birth assistance among non-primates.”

The two studies analyze more than six hours of underwater audio and aerial drone footage recorded during the birth event.

Gruber, in the March 26 release, stated that these findings fundamentally reshape how we understand whale society. “What we’re seeing is deeply coordinated social care during one of the most vulnerable moments of life.”

Researchers said that understanding of labor, birth, postnatal and neonatal behavior is lacking for most cetaceans, with observations of these births in the wild recorded for less than 10% of species. Cetaceans are marine mammals such as whales, dolphins and porpoises.

“Of the described 93 species of cetaceans only nine species have reported birth observations collected in the wild,” the study states. “And reports of birth events of pelagic, deep-diving cetacean species, such as sperm whales, are exceptionally rare.”

Published in Nature’s Scientific Reports, “Description of a collaborative sperm whale birth and shifts in coda vocal styles during key events,” gives a chronological timeline of the birth framed within the context of known whale behavior, communication and evolution.

“Audio data revealed distinct shifts in vocal styles during key moments of the birth, including the presence of vowel-like structures, adding a new dimension to Project CETI’s ongoing work decoding sperm whale communication,” according to the nonprofit.

The journal Science published “Cooperation by non-kin during birth underpins sperm whale social complexity.” The organization explained that the study quantified the behavior of the 11-member unit by using high-resolution drone footage, computer vision, and multiscale network analysis using software developed for the work, combined with previously made scientific observations, including reports of whale births.

“The findings show that female sperm whales from two unrelated matrilines come together during a birth to assist the labouring mother, and both kin and non-kin taking turns assisting the newborn. This provides the first quantitative evidence of birth attendance outside of humans and a few other primates,” researchers state in the press release, adding that the birth attracted the attention of short-finned pilot whales and Fraser’s dolphins.

Gruber told Coastal Review what it was like to witness the live birth.

“To be on CETI’s sailing research vessel, in that moment, felt like an encounter with something both impossibly rare and profoundly ancient,” he noted.

“In marine biology, so much of a career is impacted by luck — being present when ocean life decides to reveal itself,” Gruber continued. “I’ve been fortunate enough to witness things like the first biofluorescent turtle seen to humans, but nothing compares to witnessing a sperm whale come into the world.”

Gruber went on to say that very few such births have been seen by humans, and the last scientifically recorded observation after the birth was decades ago.

“It makes you wonder what Herman Melville would have written had he glimpsed this: not the violence of whaling, but the circle of care and a society revealing itself through cooperation,” he explained about the author of the 1851 American novel, “Moby Dick,” that tells the tale of a whaling vessel’s captain and his quest for vengeance against the whale that took his leg.

“We witnessed culture in action,” when the 11 whales, across family lines, “coordinated to keep a newborn alive, communicating in ways we’re only beginning to understand.”

Gruber said it took more than 50 scientists 2.5 years “to begin to interpret even a fraction of that moment, because Project CETI sits at the intersection of marine biology, artificial intelligence, and network science — fields that must come together if we are to decode these lives,” he said. ”And, in some sense, this is why Project CETI exists: We are one of the few teams in the world continuously embedded with these whales, with the tools, the longitudinal data, and the interdisciplinary lens to not only witness something this rare, but to begin to understand it.” 

Shane Gero, National Geographic Explorer, Project CETI biology lead, and founder of The Dominica Sperm Whale Project, leads the research.

Researchers, who have been tracking since 2005, the mother that gave birth, observed her that day with both her mother and her daughter.

“This is the most detailed window we’ve ever had into one of the most important moments in a whale’s life,” Gero said in the release. “Because this family unit has been studied for decades, we could see what the grandmother was doing, how the new big sister acted, and how each helped mom and newborn, placing this rare birth within a deep social and behavioral context.”

The two studies point to cooperative caregiving during birth being ancient evolutionary behavior.

The behaviors documented in the research “suggest that cooperation during births functions to reinforce social bonds between sperm whales, which underpin their large-scale society. Helping unrelated companions drives them to help in return later. In this way, a foundation of trust and collective success builds their social world,” researchers said.

North Carolina’s Flood Resiliency Blueprint Tool now includes enhanced flood mapping and risk information for five river basins in Eastern North Carolina.

The online tool designed to help local governments, agencies and nongovernmental partners develop, evaluate and prioritize resilience actions has been updated with new nonregulatory or “advisory” flood maps for the Cape Fear, Lumber, Neuse, Tar-Pamlico, and White Oak river basins.

The need for new maps and modeling efforts were identified in the draft blueprint, which was created by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality at the direction of the General Assembly.

The updates were made through extensive coordination with local leaders, other state agencies, nongovernmental organizations, university researchers and evaluating programs in other states like Texas and Louisiana for guidance, according to an NCDEQ release.

NCDEQ Secretary Reid Wilson, in the release, stated that research from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill found that more than 90,000 buildings in Eastern North Carolina flooded at least once from 1996 until 2020, and 43% of those buildings were outside the mapped Federal Emergency Management Agency floodplain. “The General Assembly’s investment in updated modeling and mapping means that North Carolinians in five river basins now have a more accurate picture of their actual flooding risk, Wilson said.”   

The improved mapping was done in partnership with the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program, one overseen by the North Carolina Emergency Management.

“NC Emergency Management is proud to provide flood mapping support to DEQ which will produce additional flood mapping products to build resilient communities across the state,” N.C. Emergency Management Director Will Ray stated. “As part of a multi-year advisory flood data web application development project, which began in 2022, the NCEM Floodplain Management Program was able to provide data and resources to assist in this project, once again showing the whole-of-community approach to disaster preparedness In North Carolina.” 

The mapping includes numerical models that simulate surface runoff and routing on a landscape, and are available for previously unmapped or undermapped basins too small to be included on regulatory maps and extend beyond what is normally included in traditional regulatory floodplain mapping.

The maps also include areas that flood despite being many miles from the nearest stream and allow communities to explore their future risk associated with projected growth patterns and the changing climate fueling more frequent and severe storms and sea level rise.

“These new maps, available through our Flood Resiliency Blueprint Tool, mean that Eastern North Carolinians can make more informed decisions and better investments to build their resilience in the face of more frequent and severe flooding,” Flood Resiliency Blueprint Manager Stuart Brown said in a release.

River Basin Action Strategies for the five river basins are expected to be available this summer, and new maps for the French Broad River Basin available this fall, according to DEQ.

Ocean Conservancy has launched an online calculator that lets users see how many seabirds, sea turtles and marine mammals they’ve helped by picking up plastics from the environment.

Whether you’re a party of one scooping up plastic trash as you stroll on an ocean beach, or part of an organized group cleanup effort along a roadside, the conservancy’s new wildlife impact calculator lets you plug in different types and amounts of plastics you’ve kept from reaching our oceans and seas.

“Then the calculator uses our science to output the amount of animals that you helped protect had they eaten this plastic,” said Ocean Conservancy Ocean Plastics Research Manager Dr. Erin Murphy.

The science to which Murphy refers is a study conducted by researchers with the nonprofit environmental advocacy group who reviewed the results of more than 10,000 necropsies of animals recorded to have died by ingesting plastics.

The peer-reviewed study published last November focused on dozens of species of seabirds, all seven species of sea turtles, and 31 species of marine mammals from across the globe.

“From these 10,000 animals from around the world, we found that nearly half of sea turtles had plastic in their gut, a third of seabirds, and 12% of marine mammals,” Murphy said. “And then we found that these actual lethal thresholds for these animals were much smaller than we expected.”

For example, seabirds like Atlantic puffins that consumed less than three sugar cubes’ worth of plastics were found to have a 90% mortality rate.

Loggerhead sea turtles experience, on average, that same rate of death if they ingest just over two baseballs’ worth of plastics. For every one in two harbor porpoises, the threshold is about a soccer ball’s worth, or 60 inches, of plastics.

Scientists found that soft plastics like grocery bags and fishing debris are especially hazardous for marine mammals. In fact, 28 pieces of plastic smaller than the size of a tennis ball is enough to kill a sperm whale.

Rubber and hard plastics were found to be the largest threat for seabirds. Both soft and hard plastics are of particular harm to sea turtles.

Some of the animals autopsied and included in the study were found to have entire garbage bags in their digestive systems. These bags block food from being able to move through an animal’s intestinal tract, leading to starvation and death.

An albatross was found to have died from eating an entire disposable water bottle.

Larger animals, like sperm whales and manatees, had died from eating numerous fishing lures, ice cream wrappers and, in one case, a fully intact three-gallon bucket, Murphy said, adding, “all sorts of things that we frequently find in our beach cleanup.”

Since 1986, more than 400 million pounds of trash has been picked up from beaches and waterways across the world through Ocean Conservancy’s annual International Coastal Cleanup.

The wildlife impact calculator aligns with the organization’s Clean Swell mobile app, which allows users to record each item of trash collected off a beach, in a park or neighborhood.

Information recorded through Clean Swell is plugged into an international database shared with scientists and policymakers around the world. The app allows the user to track the amount of trash that person has collected and share cleanup results with friends on social media.

Murphy said the organization hopes to eventually streamline its wildlife impact calculator with the Clean Swell app.

“We do encourage people to use (the calculator) as a learning tool so even if they’re not able to go out and participate in a cleanup that day, they can absolutely put in numbers and try to understand the relationship between what’s on the beach and how that could affect marine wildlife,” she said.

More than 11 million metric tons (8 million tons) of plastics enter the ocean each year, according to the conservancy.

“Ocean Conservancy does a lot of advocacy work to reduce the amount of plastic we produce and to improve waste management,” Murphy said. “But the third prong in this global effort to address plastic pollution is really cleanups, and every single person going out on the beach and picking up what they see does make a difference in help protecting our ocean animals.”

The inaugural Wilmington Community Science Fest this Saturday aims to bring together the wide array of community science activities offered in the region for people to explore.

Festivalgoers can pop into lectures explaining the concept and importance of citizen science and hear about some of the more popular area projects, such as iNaturalist and eBird, and make the rounds between exhibitors who will explain how to connect with local community science efforts.

The first presentation, from 10:15 until 11:15 a.m., will cover the importance of community science, featuring Katie Kingston, Science Across North Carolina, and Sammy Calderon, who will provide an introduction to using iNaturalist.

The next presentation, held from 11:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m., will include Kristen Holloman-Noe, who will present on FrogWatch USA, and Mason Randolph, who will provide an introduction to using eBird.

The final presentation, Journey Through Participatory Sciences, will be held from 12:45 until 1:45 p.m. and feature presenter Dr. Caren Cooper, who will share her firsthand experience in participatory sciences as a researcher and an instructor.

“Knowing that researching opportunities requires time and patience, we hatched the idea of creating one event where interested parties could browse projects and instantly move from wanting to participate straight into registering to participate,” Holloman-Noe, Fort Fisher Aquarium outreach coordinator and FrogWatch USA regional coordinator, stated in a release. “The support and enthusiasm we’ve witnessed in planning this event has truly warmed my heart.”

The festival is scheduled for 10 a.m.-2 p.m. at the Davis Center in Wilmington Maides Park, 1101 Manly Ave.

The event will include a number other headliners, such as Science Across NC, EcoExplore and Project Explore, Terrapin Talley of the N.C. Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Research Reserve and N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, N.C. Audubon shorebird surveys, Cape Fear Audubon and the University of North Carolina Wilmington Marine Mammal Stranding Program.

Volunteers will be there to help direct participants to the projects that interest them most.

Wilmington Community Science Fest is being hosted by the Fort Fisher Aquarium, Valerie Robertson, publisher of Cape Fear’s Going Green, and Savannah Lytle, North Carolina Environmental Education Certification candidate.

First in a series

Something potentially and significantly consequential is underway now in North Carolina that could alter management of the state’s increasingly battered Atlantic coastline.

The state Coastal Resources Commission’s Science Panel is in the process of finalizing an analysis of beach erosion-control structures, a report that is expected to be submitted to the commission in June. Although the 10-member advisory panel’s study is meant to inform policymakers of their options, some fear – or hope – that it’s the first step toward repealing the state’s longstanding ban on hardened shoreline structures.

“Alarms are sounding in nearly all of our oceanfront counties,” state Division of Coastal Management Director Tancred Miller said at the commission’s meeting in November at Atlantic Beach, referring to threats from accelerating beach erosion. “Nourishment costs continue to rise and the lifespan of many of these projects is painfully short. Infrastructure is increasingly vulnerable, and some communities are very concerned.”

Since September 2025, the Hatteras Island village of Buxton, home of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and the massive corner of wild beach known as Cape Point, has seen 19 unoccupied oceanfront homes collapse into the surf. In addition to a beach nourishment project, Dare County this summer is planning to restore the only salvageable groin of a 57-year-old groin field in an attempt to prolong the project’s lifespan.

In response to calls from Dare and Hyde counties, among others, to allow more options to address erosion, the division last winter asked the Coastal Resources Commission to review the structures.

“We must approach these challenges with open minds, innovation, and balanced pragmatism,” Miller urged. “We must take a critical view of our past and current practices, embrace what continues to succeed, and replace practices that are no longer working.”

But even the draft outline that the Science Panel submitted at the commission’s February meeting,  titled “Report on The Effects of Hard Structures on Sandy, Open-ocean Coastlines,” revealed the complexity involved in redirecting, blocking, deflecting, buffering, or absorbing the power of an open ocean energized by high winds, with forceful longshore and cross-shore currents feeding beaches with sand here, starving them of sand there.

“We’ve broken this into two categories according to how these erosion-management measures function; essentially all erosion-management approaches fall into two categories,” CRC Science Panel Chair Laura Moore told the commission. “One is structures or approaches that trap sand, and the second is structures that that really harden the shoreline.”

While the report will provide details about protective barriers and techniques, she said, it is less about offering remedies than providing information about effects of each option. It will also include comparisons to beach-restoration methods such as nourishment and living shorelines.

Erosion has been a fact of life along North Carolina’s 320-mile-long ocean shoreline for centuries, but before coastal development and tourism went into overdrive, the Coastal Resources Commission, the 13-member body that sets coastal policy in the state, took steps to preserve beaches.

In 1985, after studying the down-shore erosive effects of seawalls, bulkheads, groins, jetties and sandbags, the commission established a policy banning permanent hardened structures on the ocean coast. Sandbags were permitted as temporary structures.

Upheld in court in 2000, the ban was codified as law three years later by the North Carolina General Assembly. Then in 2011, a law was passed that permitted a limited number of terminal groins — sand-trapping barriers built near inlets or at the end of an island. Much of the ban, however, remains the law of the land. Environmentalists and countless coastal scientists have credited the limits on hard structures for preserving the state’s coastal wildlife and beautiful natural beaches, which attract millions of tourists every year. But critics blame the ban for limiting the ability to protect shorelines, as well as private and public property and infrastructure.

No magic, one-size-fits-all formula exists to address erosion, Moore said, and many factors will need to be weighed.

“There are approaches and strategies that can either shift the erosion problem to another adjacent location, or in some cases, we can slow the problem down,” said Moore, who is professor of coastal geomorphology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. “We can create more time to make perhaps bigger adjustments that are likely to be needed going forward.”

With seas rising and Atlantic storms intensifying over recent decades as a result of climate change, erosion on the state’s barrier island beaches has been happening faster and more dramatically, especially along the high-energy Outer Banks coastline, where erosion rates at some locations – as severe as an annual average of 14 feet – are among the highest on the East Coast. Dozens of oceanfront houses on eroded beaches, pounded and undermined by surging surf, have fallen into the sea. At the same time, more Outer Banks inlets and waterways are filling with sand, clogging channels that until the recent past had always been navigable.

But the entire coast has been experiencing its own degree of changing and increasingly destructive conditions, and the pressure has been building to find ways to prevent or mitigate damages at different locations, each with different conditions.

“I would say most of the North Carolina coastline is either barrier or behaves like barrier,” Moore told Coastal Review. “Certainly, subsidence in the north is a factor that’s going to make the relative rate of sea level rise a little higher. But there’s also the shape and the orientation of the shoreline and the wave approach angles and the wave energy and how those drive longshore sediment transport gradients, and how much sand is coming into a stretch of coast versus how much is leaving. Also, a really big factor is how frequently in the past the coast has been nourished.”

The final report is to be centered on sand-trapping and shoreline-hardening structures, Moore said. But it will also look at other widely used erosion management tactics, ranging from avoidance with setbacks or relocation, sand trapping with fences or beach plants, and building the beach with sand nourishment and dunes.

The two-category design of the document is focused on function of the structures, she said, “because there are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of coastal erosion management approaches out there, and they all essentially fall into two buckets.” What the panel of volunteer scientists cannot do, she added, is analyze each approach.

“What we are trying to do is provide a better, clearer explanation of how structures function and what their effects are,” Moore said.

Moore emphasized that the science panel’s task is to provide an assessment of structures on the coastline. But she understands the urgency people feel for finding a “solution” rather than a range of options.

“And although we’re not providing recommendations, I do want to highlight that we will be discussing tradeoffs, and I think that’s really important, because whether an approach has benefits or negative effects depends on the perspective and goals of the beholder,” she said. “We certainly know that there are efforts afoot to repeal the ban. And again, it’s not our job to say whether that should or should not happen. It’s our job to lay out in a clear way what the tradeoffs are, given how these different approaches to mitigating erosion function.”

Next in the series: How have hardened structures currently installed on North Carolina beaches performed?

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission is seeking volunteers for its annual spring count of diamondback terrapins.

The 2026 Terrapin Tally occurs in areas of the state’s southern coast, where the small, aquatic turtles call marshes, estuaries and tidal creeks home.

Diamondback terrapins are listed as a species of special concern in North Carolina and federally as a species of greatest conservation need.

“Diamondback terrapins are a keystone species, critical to the health of the saltmarsh ecosystem,” Sarah Finn, a Wildlife Resources Commission biologist said in a release. “Studying their populations is difficult due to their habitat characteristics and North Carolina’s expansive estuarine systems. Understanding the population status and trends of terrapins in North Carolina is important to the long-term management of this species, and we can work toward this goal with the help of volunteer community scientists.”

Volunteers must supply their own kayaks, mobile phones and take part in a mandatory training session. There will be two training sessions, the first of which is scheduled for 10 a.m. – noon on April 11 at Carolina Beach State Park visitor center. Another training session has been set for 10 a.m. – noon on April 18 at Hammocks Beach State Park visitor center.

Registration is required.

“It’s a wonderful way to get out to explore and learn about our local waterways, while also contributing to a long-term citizen science project,” Amy Long, who will be volunteering in the tally for an 11th year, said in the release. “Really, who doesn’t want to spot adorable terrapins?!? It’s like an easter egg hunt, and when you have friends doing other days or trails, it’s fun to see who had better luck out on the water.”

The Terrapin tally is headed by the Wildlife Resources Commission and supported by partner organizations including the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management, N.C. State Parks, Bald Head Island Conservancy, N.C. Audubon, N.C. Aquarium and National Park Service.

Data collected in the tallies has contributed to fisheries management to protect terrapins from drowning in blue-crab pots, according to the Wildlife Resources Commission.

Additional information is available at 2026 Terrapin Tally.

The North Carolina Marine & Estuary Foundation and North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries plan this year to expand a red drum tagging program that offers insight into the movement patterns of North Carolina’s official state saltwater fish.

The foundation announced Tuesday plans to tag 25 more red drum, adding to the 33 tagged last year during expeditions led by the foundation and the division in conjunction with local fishing guides along the North Carolina coast.

The tags allow the public to track the movements of red drum, including through coastal inlets and spawning locations, through an interactive tracking platform funded by the foundation and developed in collaboration with technology company Mapotic.

The interactive tracking platform for red drum brings cutting-edge marine science directly to the public.

Since its launch, the platform has recorded more than 28,000 views.

“Red drum are an iconic symbol of North Carolina’s coastal communities, and the public interest in our groundbreaking red drum tracker demonstrates North Carolinians’ strong affinity for the species,” Marine & Estuary Foundation Executive Director Chad Thomas stated in a release. “This year, we are excited to continue developing our platform and aim to tag 25 additional red drum in partnership with the Division. Our work enables researchers, anglers, and the public to better understand the migratory habits of one of North Carolina’s most economically and culturally significant species.”

A pilot study launched in 2024 in which 10 adult red drum were tagged in Pamlico Sound allowed researchers to determine which tag attachment methods work best and optimal satellite transmission settings.

The tagging project was expanded last year and is being conducted with assistance from recreational fishing guides and as part of the division’s annual longline survey.

Tags are programmed in intervals ranging from 30 days to 12 months to detach from a fish and “pop up” at the surface, transmitting daily location data to the Argos satellite network, creating a detailed map of a fish’s movements.

“Because red drum often travel near the surface, some tags may send data before their programmed release, providing early insights into fish locations,” according to the release.

Cape Fear River Watch’s seminar series on Saturday will feature the principal investigator of the GenX exposure study.

Dr. Jane Hoppin, a professor at North Carolina State University, will provide a summary of the study’s findings to-date and discuss future plans for the project.

The study began in 2017 after residents in Wilmington were informed through a newspaper report that an upstream chemical manufacturing plant had, for decades, been discharging per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, including GenX, into their drinking water source, the Cape Fear River.

The study, which measures the blood levels of PFAS in Wilmington residents, has evolved into a long-term health project with more than 1,000 participants throughout the Cape Fear River Basin.

Cape Fear River Watch hosts its seminar series the first Saturday of each month.

The free event is being held at Cape Fear River Watch’s headquarters at 617 Surry St., Wilmington.

Those interested in attending are encouraged to arrive early to secure a seat. Complimentary pancakes and coffee will be served.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Young learners with an interest in science, technology, engineering, art, and math can get hands-on experience at the Coastal Studies Institute at the East Carolina University Outer Banks Campus in Wanchese this summer.

Online registration opens March 2 for the camps that explore the Outer Banks. The fee is $425 a week for each camper.

Camps are 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, and held every week from June 6 to Aug. 7. No camp is scheduled for the week of Fourth of July.

Themes for campers ages 10 to 13 include the following:

• “Coastal Kingdoms: Coastal Marine Biology + Ecology Camp” June 8-12 and June 15-19.
• “Shapes in Science: Art + Science Camp” June 22-26 and July 6-10.
• “Blue Horizons: Coastal Engineering Camp” July 13-17 and July 20-24.
• “Legends of the Atlantic: Maritime Archeology + Ocean Exploration Camp” July 27-31 and Aug. 3-7.

Organizers have planed a one-week camp for ages 13-17 themed “Coastal Explorers: Marine Science Technology & Remote Sensing Camp” for Aug. 10-14.

Contact Parker Murphy at 252-475-5452 for general camp questions. Contact ECU Continuing and Professional Education at 252-328-9198 about the registration process.

Led by East Carolina University, Coastal Studies Institute is a multi-institutional research and educational partnership of the UNC System, in partnership with North Carolina State University, UNC Chapel Hill, UNC Wilmington and Elizabeth City State University.

Sturgeon City Environmental Education Center in Jacksonville is inviting women of all ages for an evening of inspiration, connection and empowerment to help shape the future of science.

“She Innovates: A Women in STEM Event” will be held from 6-8 p.m. on Feb. 11 at Sturgeon City, 50 Court St. in downtown Jacksonville. Attendance is free.

Sturgeon City educators will lead hand-on activities focused on the work of women including Rachel Carson, Katherine Johnson, Rosalind Franklin and Dr. Mae Jemison.

Women professionals in various STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields will be there to share their career journeys and offer insights into their educational paths.

This will be an open-flow event where participants may arrive and depart at their convenience.

Annie Harshbarger had been interested in animal behavior ever since she was young. Now, as a doctoral candidate at Duke University’s Marine Lab, she is currently building her thesis on decision-making in pilot whale social groups.

“I sort of knew when I started college that I wanted to study the behavior of whales and dolphins,” Harshbarger said. “The way that they navigate this really challenging environment that they’ve evolved to live in is very interesting.”

Harshbarger spoke about the way we can see this in the behaviors of whales off the coast of Cape Hatteras. She said in a talk at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences that the behavior of pilot whales in that area demonstrates this flexibility. “They’re generalist foragers, so they can eat a lot of different things, so that means they can live in a lot of different habitats, and their behavior varies with what they live and what they’re eating.”

Pilot whales’ flexibility is tempered by the needs of their social groups, however. Unlike other whale species, they stay with the same group of whales for their entire lives (with occasional exceptions of males who join other groups to mate). When pilot whales dive for food, they do so together. Harshbarger is studying how those groups make decisions at different points throughout this process — a question without a lot of known answers, as of now.

New technology brings new information

One of the tools Harshbarger is using for her thesis is data gathered from digital acoustic recording tags, or DTAGs. These tracking tags can capture whale movement in three dimensions, painting a much more holistic picture of their behavior, and as the name implies, they record sound as well as movement. The technology was initially developed in 2003 by Mark Johnson and Peter Tyack in order to better understand the ways in which human-made noise pollution potentially affects the behavior of whales and dolphins.

“They were designed to study the effects of anthropogenic noise. We didn’t have the tools to understand the ways that noise pollution affects marine life. Peter and Mark came up with the tags to tackle that,” said Dr. Andy Read, director of the Duke Marine Lab and Harshbarger’s academic adviser.

Now this technology is being used to paint a fuller picture of what pilot whales are doing beneath the ocean’s surface. Harshbarger explained that the acoustic tags not only captured sound, but depth and movement in three dimensions. This allows researchers to study specific details about the whales’ diving behavior. Harshbarger is particularly interested in this data because of her focus on how pilot whales decide as a group when and where to look for food.

The information shows that pilot whales usually stick together throughout the entirety of their dives. It was originally hypothesized that while hunting, pilot whales would stay far enough apart from one another so as to avoid competition while also staying close enough that they could still hear each other.

To test this, researchers used information gathered from the acoustic tags. Because the tags have special hydrophones attached, they are able to record the sounds in such a way that they can gain an approximation of each whale’s position relative to the others.

“We can really understand how the group is foraging separately and together like we never have before,” Harshbarger said.

Tackling the big questions

One of the great unknowns with pilot whale behavior has to do with their decision-making processes. They are flexible animals who eat a wide variety of food found in many different environments. So how do they decide when and where to eat? Because pilot whale populations around the world are so large and varied, it can be difficult to track any one group consistently enough to determine the specifics of their behavior.

This is the question that Harshbarger is trying to help answer. “I found that decision-making process really interesting. So I’m studying how groups of pilot whales make decisions at different points in the dive cycle,” she said. Harshbarger compared it to a large family or group of friends trying to decide where to go for dinner. There are a number of options, and it can be difficult to make a decision for a big group of people. The same rule applies to pilot whales.

Harshbarger hopes that her research will begin to tackle these questions. Data gathered from the tagging of the Gibraltar whales has already answered some of them. By examining the audio and movement information gathered from the acoustic tags, researchers have learned that pilot whales not only dive together, but they usually forage for food at the same depths as well, even though there isn’t currently any evidence of them sharing prey.

The question of how pilot whales make decisions as a group remains mostly unanswered. Large populations and limited technology makes tracking them difficult in the long term. Acoustic tags stay on the whales’ bodies for around 24 hours maximum, so information is still limited.

“I think Annie’s work is probably going to leave us with a lot more questions. The potential conflicts between animals in groups is a really interesting idea. But Annie’s going to address the first, fundamental questions,” Read said.

Harshbarger said she believes in the value of studying and understanding these whales’ habits and behaviors, even if they are not currently endangered. There have been instances where local populations have suffered declines due to disease, and those populations’ behaviors changed as a result. Researchers were only able to notice that change because they had been observing the population beforehand.

“I think that’s kind of why I’m really interested in this, even for pilot whales, which are not necessarily something that people think of as the species with the most pressing conservation needs,” Harshbarger said. “That’s why I think it’s valuable to understand social behavior in any species, because you know that could change for them at any time.”

Nature-based coastal shoreline erosion control structures that successfully attract and grow oysters can better defend shores from waves, according to a study led by East Carolina University researchers.

The study, published late last year in the journal Scientific Reports, found that the more oyster-dense a breakwater designed to recruit and grow those shellfish is, the better that structure is at dissipating waves.

“We actually found that wave attenuation increased or improved as the structures recruited oysters,” said Georgette Tso, a doctoral candidate in ECU’s Integrated Coastal Sciences Program and co-author of the study.

As more and more oysters grow on a surface, their shells building layer by layer, those shells alter that structure’s surface, making that surface rougher and less permeable.

After documenting two seasons of oyster recruitment, researchers found that living shorelines constructed with living oyster breakwaters absorbed wave activity by an increase of 10-15%.

Their findings are based on observations of living shorelines at two private properties along Bogue Sound in Newport in Carteret County.

The structures were installed between May and June 2022 by Native Shorelines, the coastal resiliency division of Davey Resources Group, using concrete-based breakwater systems called QuickReef.

QuickReef is built from materials primarily of natural calcium carbonate formed into concrete slabs. Those slabs are installed to allow water flow and attract oyster larval, which attach to and grow on the structures.

Living shorelines are becoming increasingly attractive for coastal waterfront property owners seeking ways to curb erosion of their land.

“I think there’s been a lot more awareness within coastal North Carolina about living shoreline options as an alternative to a hardened shoreline, like bulkheads or some other vertical structure, which oftentimes actually costs more over time to repair. And, they’re not as resistant to hurricane damage because of that vertical profile,” Tso said.

The benefits of living shorelines, including their resiliency against the effects of rising sea levels, have been documented through research spanning back more than a decade.

But Tso said that there is little data how smaller-scale living shoreline projects like the ones she and her fellow scientists observed for this study actually change the way waves interact with shorelines.

Their observations proved to be “an exciting finding,” Tso said, because they prove what researchers have suspected for some time.

“Oysters grow vertically and they increase the roughness on the surfaces that they grow on. They also can grow within interstitial spaces and reduce porosity in that way. So, we hypothesized that the amount of wave attenuation a structure could provide would increase with the recruitment of live and healthy oyster populations,” she said. “This additional factor that’s not been explored, of it actually improving the wave attenuation potential and reducing the wave energy that hits the back of your shoreline over time, is something that we should communicate more to homeowners because they’ve actually bought into a solution that has increased benefits over time that they may not have anticipated when they first put in the structure.”

And while it’s fair to say the longer these structures recruit oysters the more protection they may offer to a shoreline, Tso said there is one important caveat.

“This is just a two-year study so we’re not capturing the point in time where the oyster population will eventually plateau. The size of the structure and the amount of food available to the oysters in the water is limited, obviously, so the oyster population will eventually plateau. So, though we’ve observed increases in wave attenuation potential, probably it’s going to cap off at some point,” she said.

It is also important to note that oyster recruitment and growth will not be the same at every shoreline.

Shorelines bend and curve, leaving pockets where water does not circulate to deliver oyster larvae.

“What we found is only relevant if your structure can actually recruit oysters, and that’s not true on all North Carolina shorelines,” Tso said. “If you don’t have baby oysters being delivered to your shoreline, you’re not going to be able to recruit oysters. If you’re in a site where that’s not possible then the wave attenuation potential that you have at construction is what you’re going to have. It’s not going to improve because you’re not recruiting oysters.”

Successful oyster larval recruitment and growth also depends on things like water temperature, salinity, and tidal variation.

Tso is in the process of analyzing data researchers collected last summer at more than a dozen QuickReef living shoreline sites. Scientists during that time also revisited their two original study sites, which continued to recruit oysters, Tso said.

The other researchers on this study include Dr. Siddharth Narayan, assistant professor in ECU’s Integrated Coastal Programs, Megan Geesin, a doctoral candidate at ECU, Dr. Matthew Reidenbach, professor and chair of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, Dr. Jens Figlus with Texas A&M’s Ocean Engineering Department, and Dr. Rachel Gittman, assistant professor with ECU’s Department of Biology.

A group of North Carolina State University researchers has created a model that simulates wind, waves, tides and currents to help pinpoint areas that are likely best to install offshore energy facilities.

The model, called a portfolio optimization framework, also identifies what combination of wind and marine hydrokinetic technologies, which capture energy through water flow, may work together in an area to produce the greatest amount of power.

“It’s not about only one type, but multiple sources of generation that can somehow work together to generate a more stable output of your portfolio,” explained Dr. Anderson de Queiroz, co-author of the study and associate professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering. “For example, if you think about the single source, let’s say offshore wind or wave energy, they have lots of variability with respect to their supply because it depends on natural conditions. It depends on wind speed or the ocean heights and in periods, so it’s variable.”

By locating areas where different offshore energy technologies can work together, a phenomenon researchers refer to as “complementary behavior,” power companies can get the most bang for their buck.

For context, picture an offshore field of 50 wind turbines. Within that field are marine hydrokinetic devices such as wave energy converters or underwater kite turbines that generate electricity from ocean currents and tidal streams.

“When you’re collecting the electricity, instead of collecting only from wind with transmission lines, you can also collect electricity from this other source. So, the electricity that you’re bringing to shore in that situation will be more stable because of the complementary behavior between the sources,” de Querioz said.

For the developer trying to explore and analyze where they can get the most power output possible, this model could help reduce their financial risk.

“For government analysts and planners, they can also see strategically where there are regions that would be beneficial in terms of most electricity that they are able to get to at a reasonable cost and that’s away from, for example, protected habitat areas or away from strategic areas” used by military forces, de Querioz said.

The team of researchers, with support from the North Carolina Renewable Ocean Energy Program, conducted an analysis for the North Carolina coast, focused on wind turbines and marine hydrokinetic kites.

But de Querioz points out that the model they have developed can be used globally and with any combination of technologies. And, he said, it may be applied onshore.

The research team is in the process of expanding its analysis to other regions, including the coasts of New Jersey and Virginia.

The project, which is through the Atlantic Marine Energy Center and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, will use the portfolio optimization model to support bringing electricity to the East Coast through the Eastern Interconnection.

The Eastern Interconnection spans from central Canada east to the Atlantic Coast, south to Florida and west to the foot of the Rockies. It is one of two major power grids.

Researchers will pair the portfolio optimization framework with another model known as Tools for Energy Model Optimization and Analysis, commonly referred to as Temoa, which produces long-term analyses of energy systems.

“We are going to combine analysis from this offshore portfolio with the long-term energy planning for the Eastern Interconnection,” de Querioz said. “Basically, we’re looking at the entirety of the Eastern Interconnection, and then deploying not only offshore energy, but also looking at natural gas potential, new nuclear or the potential to have energy storage, onshore solar, and things like that.”

The team is also working with the North Carolina Renewable Energy Program this year to develop an adapted design for a wave power buoy called Reference Model 3, or RM3, that converts wave energy into electrical power.

“On these, we’re going to do more specific and detailed analysis for the North Carolina coast with this new design of wave energy converters,” de Queiroz said.

He is extending an invitation to collaborate with industry, government and other scientists with an interest in the model. The model is expected to be released sometime this year. Anyone interested may contact de Queiroz by email at ardequei@ncsu.edu.

“Fused Portfolio Optimization for Harnessing Marine Renewable Energy Resources” was published in the journal Energy earlier this month.

N.C. State doctoral student Mary Maceda is a corresponding author of the study. Co-authors of the paper include Rob Miller, a doctoral student, Victor de Faria, a recent doctoral graduate, Dr. Matthew Bryant, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the university, and Dr. Chris Vermillion with the University of Michigan.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation, publisher of Coastal Review, is launching a leadership and professional development program focused on coastal issues.

The cohort-based Coastal Leadership Institute is designed for individuals who play leadership roles in coastal North Carolina communities, as well as leaders from across the state whose work influences the coast.

The institute is designed as a six-month program with two full-day sessions per month beginning in March. The cohort size is limited to about 20–25 participants. Registration is now open for the inaugural class.

“The Coastal Federation has established a strong reputation as a convener of people and organizations interested in protecting and restoring the coast,” said Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis, “so the launch of this new Institute is a natural fit for us and will be important to advancing our mission.”

Through facilitated discussions, expert-led sessions, and site-based learning, participants will gain a deeper understanding of the forces shaping coastal communities, examined through economic, environmental, natural, and cultural history lenses, while building strong professional relationships that support effective leadership in complex coastal settings, institute organizers said.

“Coastal issues rarely have simple solutions,” said Coastal Federation Chief Community Engagement Officer Amanda Lyle. “By bringing together leaders from different communities and sectors, the Institute creates space for shared learning and helps build the capacity for informed decision-making.”

The tuition of $1,000 per participant covers program materials, meals, transportation for site visits, lodging, and alumni programming access. Scholarships are available.

The six sessions will convene in March, April, May, September, October, and November, with a summer break.

An orientation is set for March 9-10 in Beaufort. This session will also explore how the cultural, historical, and ecological context of coastal North Carolina factor into the region’s identity, challenges, and leadership needs.

Subsequent sessions will cover coastal and marine sciences, growth and economic development, coastal policy and management issues, and natural resource conservation and restoration. This year, sessions will primarily take place in Carteret County and the Wilmington area.

The program is intended to become an annual offering that brings together emerging and established leaders from a wide range of professional backgrounds, including business, local and regional government, military, education, nonprofit, and industry.

The Institute is geared to create a space for thoughtful dialogue, practical learning, and a trusted peer network that continues well beyond the program.

 “We really couldn’t do this without our partners and supporters – the many individuals and organizations who have committed to sharing their expertise, insights, resources and time with the participants and to helping create new professional connections for the betterment of our coast,” Davis added.

The inaugural Coastal Leadership Institute cohort is partially subsidized through the support of the Duke Energy Foundation, the Carlyle Adams Foundation, and the RBC Foundation.

More details and the application are online.

Thinking about what to do with that state tax return you’re expecting this year?

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission has a suggestion for you.

Anyone filing a 2025 North Carolina state tax return may donate all or a portion of their refund to the N.C. Nongame and Endangered Wildlife Fund, which supports research and conservation management project’s for the state’s most vulnerable wildlife populations.

“Funds donated using the tax-checkoff program amplify those provided by a federal grant for species of greatest conservation need, including listed species in North Carolina,” Dr. Sara Schweitzer, assistant chief of NCWRC’s Wildlife Management Division, stated in a release. “A $100 donation is matched by $186 of grant funding—truly boosting wildlife conservation in North Carolina. Our dedicated and passionate biologists, agency partners and volunteers work tirelessly to ensure wildlife and their habitats will persist into the future for North Carolinians to enjoy. In western North Carolina especially, donations will help us address the immense impacts of Hurricane Helene on species such as the Eastern hellbender, bog turtle, gray bat, Carolina Northern flying squirrel and several high-elevation migratory birds.”

Funds support surveys and monitoring of rare species, including bog turtle, Hickory Nut Gorge green salamander, eastern hellbender, river frog, diamondback terrapin and northern gray treefrog.

Information collected on these species is used to target habitat restoration projects, including those especially needed in areas in the west affected by Hurricane Helene and areas impacted by drought in the state’s sandhills.

To participate, simply check Line 30 on your North Carolina state income tax form, or, if filing through an online tax preparation software, enter the contribution amount when prompted to N.C. Nongame and Endangered Wildlife Fund.”

Anyone that does not expect a state tax refund who would like to donate to the fund may make a direct donation online.

Additional information on projects supported by the tax check-off program may be found the Wildlife Resource Commission Wildlife Diversity Program’s quarterly reports.

A preliminary study conducted by the North Carolina Division of Water Resources found PFAS in soil, wastewater and biosolid samples collected at sites across the state.

The study assessing concentrations of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in biosolids concludes that a majority of those substances entering wastewater treatment plants are discharged into waterways, “as compared with the amount entering the environment through land application biosolids,” according to a Department of Environmental Quality release.

Biosolids are the nutrient-rich organic material that remains after wastewater has been treated. The material is typically used as a fertilizer.

The study is the first that the division has conducted assessing PFAS concentrations in biosolids across the state.

Division staff began gathering samples in 2023 to evaluate PFAS concentrations in wastewater and biosolids from 37 municipal, industrial and domestic wastewater treatment facilities. Soil samples were also collected from 19 fields regulated under non-discharge permits.

Wastewater treatment facilities can receive PFAS, which are a group of man-made chemicals used to make a host of commercial, industrial and consumer products, from residential, commercial and industrial sources.

“The study represents a first step for DEQ to begin to understand PFAS concentrations in wastewater and biosolids in our state,” Julie Grzyb, the division’s deputy director, stated in a release. “The study was based on a small sample size and was limited in scope, but it underscores the importance of characterizing and controlling PFAS contamination at the source.”

The study did not assess how these chemicals in biosolids move in the environment.

DEQ estimates that 3.5 million North Carolinians drink tap water that contains PFAS levels above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency health-based standard scheduled that was to initially go into effect in 2029.

The Trump administration’s EPA announced last year that it would extend the deadline for public water treatment plants to come into compliance with the federally established limits for two legacy PFAS – PFOA and PFOS to 2031. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin also announced plans to rescind regulations and reconsider regulatory determination for other PFAS, including GenX.

North Carolina does not have state regulatory requirements for PFAS in biosolids.

“The study will inform future study design and identify opportunities for further data collection and analysis,” the release states.

Why do sheepshead have a mouthful of human-like teeth? Fisheries ecologist Dr. Jim Morley will explain that and more during this month’s “Science on the Sound” Lecture Series.

Morley, an assistant professor in the biology department at East Carolina University, will present, “Investigating the Life History of Sheepshead, North Carolina’s Toothiest Fish,” starting at 6 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 15, at the Coastal Studies Institute on the ECU Outer Banks Campus in Wanchese.

The public is encouraged to attend the program being offered at no charge. The talk will be livestreamed on the CSI YouTube Channel and archived for later viewing.

Though sheepshead are a popular species among anglers throughout the state, their life history is one of the most poorly understood, according to the university. “Recently, researchers have uncovered important aspects of sheepshead biology relating to reproduction, movement patterns, and habitat use. However, as with all good science, new questions emerge.”

Morley has been investigating the life history of marine and estuarine species in North Carolina for more than 20 years. He is interested in how human-caused disturbances and climate change interact with the life cycles of aquatic species.

Science on the Sound is a monthly, in-person lecture series with the Coastal Studies Institute that brings perspectives from all over the state and highlights coastal topics in northeastern North Carolina.

Coastal oceanographer Dr. Reide Corbett will speak later this week on how the Outer Banks are changing during the first OBX Green Drinks of the year.

He is to give his talk, “Science, Shorelines, and Tradeoffs: Understanding What’s Happening Along the Outer Banks Coast,” at 6 p.m. Thursday at Waverider’s in Nags Head. The program is offered at no charge, food and drinks are available for purchase.

Corbett is the executive director of the Coastal Studies Institute and dean of Integrated Coastal Programs, both at East Carolina University Outer Banks campus in Wanchese, and professor in the Department of Coastal Studies at East Carolina University.

Corbett will explain what the science is showing about shoreline change, coastal dynamics, and the tradeoffs that come with decisions about managing and protecting the coast.

OBX Green Drinks is a monthly speaker series held October through March at Waverider’s in Nags Head. Organized by the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, the program brings together the Outer Banks community for an evening of networking, presentations on local environmental topics, and enjoying good food and drink.

Post has been updated.

WANCHESE — Genetic testing of purportedly wild-caught shrimp served earlier this month at dozens of Outer Banks restaurants found that 64% of the shrimp was actually imported.

On behalf of the Southern Shrimp Alliance, SeaD Consulting collected and analyzed shrimp samples from randomly selected seafood restaurants in Duck, Southern Shores, Kitty Hawk, Kill Devil Hills, Manteo, Rodanthe, Salvo, Avon, Buxton, Frisco, Nags Head and Hatteras, according to a Dec. 17 press release from SeaD.

Of the 44 restaurants tested, 43 had verbally claimed to serve local American wild-caught shrimp, but only 16 — 36% — were found to be serving local shrimp in the tested dishes. The remaining 28 restaurants had served imported farm-raised shrimp, but only one of them admitted it. All 44 of the eateries had used imagery to imply that they served local shrimp. 

“The findings raise concerns about seafood transparency in an iconic coastal region known for its local fishing heritage,” the release said.

Despite the Outer Banks’ poor showing, it was noted that Wilmington did even worse, with an “inauthenticity rate” of 77% in previous testing. 

SeaD (Seafood Development) Consulting, in partnership with Florida State University, holds the patent for the Rapid ID Genetic High-Accuracy Test, or RIGHTTest, that was used in the survey conducted Dec. 2-6. The Southern Shrimp Alliance, an advocacy trade group, has funded the genetic testing of shrimp throughout the region.

Shrimp, the most popular seafood in the U.S., was an $8 billion market in 2025, with Americans consuming 5 pounds per capita of shrimp a year. But it’s not local shrimpers who are raking in big profits.

According to the U.S. International Trade Commission, 93% of the shrimp consumed in the United States comes from overseas, with 1.7 billion pounds of shrimp products imported in 2024, valued at $6 billion. Meanwhile, commercial shrimp harvests in the Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic declined from $522 million in 2021 to $269 million in 2023; $25 million to $14 million, respectively, in North Carolina. 

The demand for shrimp is only increasing, along with the creativity in how to serve it.

“We don’t need to undersell our industry and our product,” David Williams, a commercial fishery scientist and co-founder of SeaD, told Coastal Review in a recent interview. A generation ago, shrimp cocktail was the extent of its use in most American cuisine; now there’s a dozen different shrimp dishes on menus, he said. “It should be a proud part of our industry”

As the Alliance detailed, imports, depending on the country, can be “dumped” at lower prices because they use cheap labor, and sometimes even forced, trafficked or child labor. Some countries use a lot of antibiotics, or grow shrimp in polluted ponds. A few countries impose tariffs ranging from 13% to 45% on U.S. wild-caught and farmed shrimp.

While most restaurant prices for shrimp dinners are on the higher end of the menu, they’re not reflecting the dock prices, which have remained low. But more recognition for the quality of wild shrimp as a food source would increase its value.

“The only real way of doing that is that people in restaurants appreciate wild caught shrimp,” Williams said. And diners who choose to eat wild seafood should be able to trust that they’re getting what they’re paying for, otherwise, it’s misrepresentation.

“You charge a premium for a product that’s not a premium,” he said.

North Carolina does not have a law that requires restaurants to disclose the origin of shrimp on menus. Certain retail seafood products fall under federal country-of-origin requirements, but they do not apply to restaurants. North Carolina U.S. Rep. David Rouzer, R-7th District, has recently met with the Alliance and others in the industry and is looking into the legislative remedies and other shrimp industry issues.

“Tackling mislabeling is crucial to ensure that consumers receive the shrimp they are sold,” Blake Price, deputy director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance said in the release. “This testing shows American fishermen are regularly losing sales of their own product to shrimp farmed in countries with safety, labor, and environmental abuses.”

Mark Vrablic, general manager of Willie R. Etheridge Seafood in Wanchese, said that he’s not directly aware of Outer Banks restaurants misrepresenting imported shrimp as local. Still, he has had people tell him that they were told the seafood they were served had come from Etheridge’s, when he knew it didn’t.

“I would love for it not to be this way, but I wouldn’t dare sell a farm-raised shrimp and call it domestic,” he told Coastal Review in an interview. People have a right to know what they’re eating, he added. “I’m not going to sell something marked one thing and it’s something else.”

Vrablic, 66, agrees that the biggest problem with imported shrimp is that the dock price shrimpers are paid is almost too low to make it worth the costs and work involved. 

Probably 25 countries send shrimp here, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico and Venezuela, he said.

“When fuels went up real high two years back, (local shrimpers) were going to have to either raise prices or just get out of it, because they were going to go broke,” Vrablic said. Even with gas lower now, he said, the “homeboys” should still be getting prices 30% to 40% higher.

“But because of the millions of pounds of farm-raised that’s available daily, it’s just overwhelming,” he said. “The market is staying down because of the supply.”

Vrablic, who is a member of the Etheridge family, once one of the most powerful fishing clans on the Outer Banks, began fishing when he was 14 years old, and later joined the family restaurant business for a few years before taking over commercial management and sales.

Until about 20 years ago, shrimping was a short summer fishery in North Carolina, he said. But as the climate changed, the waters warmed to the shrimp’s liking. Now the season stretches from July Fourth until December or later.

“I don’t like imports, Vrablic said. “They’ve crushed us like cockroaches. They’ve taken our markets away, and our fishermen can’t get the fair share what they should be getting. When I fished, I made a lot of money. We didn’t have imports.”

But the fact is, he said, the increased demand for shrimp on the Outer Banks, and elsewhere, exceeds what local shrimpers can catch. And almost all farm-raised shrimp is from overseas.

“We produce shrimp in this country, but we do not produce enough,” Vrablic said, and referred to the 1.7 billion pounds that were imported last year. “Where would we find something like that?”

To his point, he explained, Etheridge Seafood doesn’t have the capacity or bargaining power to meet the volume of the demand.

“We keep a heavy inventory of shrimp, and it’s just the whole world dumps on us,” Vrablic said.

Bottom line, Vrablic says that something has to be done about the unfair competition from imported shrimp. Ideally, restaurants and fish markets should prioritize serving local catch, but when they can’t, they need to be honest about the origin of the shrimp they’re selling. And it would help if consumers remember that wild-caught shrimp also is a seasonal product.

“When restaurants say ’Mark, what will we do if we went three or four months without shrimp?’ I said, ‘If I got no shrimp … we could treat it like we do soft crabs or scallops or oysters when it comes in season.’ People come buy them just like they do watermelons. When it comes out of season, guess what? You come up short.

“Then they’ll just buy more fish from me,” he said, “because they can’t compete with me with fresh fish.”

The following eateries on the Outer Banks found to be serving authentic, American, wild-caught shrimp in the random sample of 44 restaurants:

1. 1587 Restaurant & Lounge, 405 Queen Elizabeth Ave, Manteo.
2. Barefoot Bernie’s Tropical Grill & Bar, 3730 N. Croatan Highway, Kitty Hawk.
3. Basnight’s Lone Cedar Café, 7623 S Virginia Dare Trail, Nags Head.
4. Coastal Cravings, 1209 Duck Road, Duck.
5. Goombays Grille & Raw Bar, 1608 N. Virginia Dare Trail, Kill Devil Hills.
6. Greentail’s Seafood Market and Kitchen, 3022 S. Croatan Highway Unit 34, Nags Head.
7. I Got Your Crabs Shellfish Market and Oyster Bar, 3809 N. Croatan Highway, Kitty Hawk.
8. Lucky 12 Tavern, 3308 S. Virginia Dare Trail, Nags Head.
9. O’Neal’s Sea Harvest, 618 Harbor Road, Wanchese.
10. Outer Banks Brewing Station, 600 S. Croatan Highway, Kill Devil Hills.
11. Red Sky Casual Dining & Cocktails,1197 Duck Road, Duck.
12. Roadside Bar & Grill, 1193 Duck Road, Duck,.
13. Sea Chef Dockside Kitchen, 8770 Oregon Inlet Road, Nags Head.
14. The Paper Canoe, 1564 Duck Road, Duck.
15. Village Table & Tavern, 1314 Duck Road, Duck.
16. Vicki B’s Restaurant & Market, 301 Budleigh St., Manteo.

The Cape Fear Museum of History and Science will be temporarily closing later this month in preparation for opening its new facility in downtown Wilmington.

The museum’s Market Street location will close to the public beginning at 5 p.m. on Dec. 31 to allow staff to safely prepare and relocate more than 400 artifacts to be displayed at the new building at 230 Grace St.

“This process, including the move of items and installation of new exhibits, will take approximately seven months to complete, with an anticipated opening in July 2026,” according to a release. “Once open, this downtown block will be anchored by the Museum and Public Library, creating a cultural hub for residents and visitors.”

The new facility will accommodate permanent exhibitions, classrooms, an outdoor terrace, 60-seat planetarium, play spaces, hands-on exhibits and gallery, outdoor learning gallery, traveling exhibition gallery, and more.

The museum’s current home at 814 Market St. will function as a dedicated research facility, exhibition design and fabrication workshop, and collections and management complex once the new building opens.

“The museum team has spent years developing exhibition content to bring a modern, state-of-the-art cultural amenity to New Hanover County,” museum Director Kate Baillon said in a release. “Cape Fear Museum’s facility in the Grace District will offer a dynamic and immersive educational experience that celebrates our region’s history, science, and cultures. We look forward to welcoming visitors in summer 2026.”

The museum is open 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1-5 p.m. on Sunday. It will be closed Dec. 24-26 for the Christmas holiday.

The state Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board is scheduled to meet at 10 a.m. Wednesday in Raleigh.

Per a draft meeting agenda, the board, which advises secretaries of state regulatory agencies, will review and consider providing a formal response to the human health risk assessment for 1,4-Dioxane in Drinking Water Legislative Report released in May 2024.

The draft agenda also includes informational items for the board, including a presentation by state Division of Waste Management staff on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances data submitted by landfill facilities across the state and on the utilization of the Bernard Allen Drinking Water Fund for PFAS compounds.

The meeting will be held in the ground floor hearing room of the Archdale Building, 512 N. Salisbury St. in Raleigh.

The public may attend the meeting in person, virtually (webinar number: 2434 343 5955), or by telephone at 1-415-655-0003 US Toll, access code 243 626 85243.

An in-person public comment period will be held at the meeting. Anyone who wishes to speak may sign up upon arriving at the meeting.

The Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board includes experts in toxicology, public health, ecology, engineering, and other related fields. It’s members assist the state departments of Environmental Quality and Health and Human Services by recommending reviews and evaluations of contaminants, acting as consultants on DEQ’s determinations to regulate contaminants, and helping the agencies identify contaminants of concern and determine which contaminants should be studied further.

Student researchers will present their findings on Nags Head Woods during the next installment of the “Science on the Sound” lecture series presented by the Coastal Studies Institute on the East Carolina University Outer Banks Campus.

The lecture, “Patterns of protection: Natural and Social Values of the Nags Head Woods Maritime Forest,” is set for 3 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 11, at the Coastal Studies Institute, 850 N.C. Highway 345, Wanchese.

The program is free and the public is encouraged to attend. The program will also be livestreamed on YouTube.

The monthly, in-person, lecture series at the Coastal Studies Institute brings perspectives from all over the state and highlights coastal topics in northeastern North Carolina.

During this month’s program, students of the Outer Banks Field Site will present the findings of their capstone research project.

The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Institute for the Environment’s Outer Banks Field Site is a semester-long, interdisciplinary residential learning experience for undergraduate students hosted by the Coastal Studies Institute. Each fall since 2001, these students have spent the semester taking classes, engaging in internships with local organizations, and completing a capstone research project as a group.

This year’s research examines the maritime forest within the Nags Head Woods Preserve. The students interviewed stakeholders about the values that they ascribe to the woods and collected data about the salt spray, vegetation, and wildlife within the woods. The program will last about 90 minutes, including presentation, questions and discussion.

The University of North Carolina’s Center for Marine Science has been awarded a $500,000 grant to help enhance flood safety and resilience efforts in New Hanover County.

With the two-year planning grant, CMS will convene a Flood Resilience Consortium “that unites agencies and organizations focused on community preparedness, facilitating outreach, workshops, research, and implementation planning to guide long-term flood resilience efforts,” according to a release from The Endowment, which awarded the grant.

“This consortium will connect the many agencies and experts already working on flood issues, allowing them to move forward with shared priorities and clear roles,” The Endowment’s Director of Community Safety Mary Vail Ware stated in the release.

The Endowment was established with proceeds from the sale of New Hanover Regional Medical Center from the county to Novant Health five years ago. Since that time, millions in grant funds have been awarded to projects and endeavors in the community.

The grant “will help align ongoing resilience efforts, pinpoint high-risk areas, and guide cost-effective solutions that reduce future impacts and support faster recovery,” the release states.

The consortium will produce an inventory of existing resources and tools, including maps, models, and data, a plan detailing vulnerabilities, priority projects, timelines and responsibilities, and a funding strategy that aligns public, private and philanthropic investments with the most critical initiatives.

“This is about building a community that can withstand, adapt, and bounce back,” Ware said. “By investing in early planning and bringing partners together, we’re laying the foundation for solutions that safeguard our environment, infrastructure, and future.”

“Preparing for the future means learning from the past,” Sophie Dagenais, The Endowment’s interim president and chief executive officer, said in the release. “We remember the storms that have shaped this community, and we are committed to supporting efforts strengthening New Hanover County’s infrastructure, so residents, businesses, and ecosystems are better protected. This investment supports a coordinated, data-driven approach to flood resilience.”

East Carolina University associate professor of coastal studies Dr. David Lagomasino will be the featured lecturer Thursday for the Coastal Studies Institute’s Science on the Sound Lecture Series.

Lagomasino will present, “Watching the Tides Roll: How Satellites Inform the Future of Coastal Communities” starting at 6 p.m. as part of the monthly, in-person lecture series at the ECU Outer Banks Campus.

Organizers say the series brings perspectives from all over the state and highlights coastal topics in northeastern North Carolina. The public is encouraged to attend and there’s no admission charge. The program will also be livestreamed on YouTube.

“From space, satellites capture the shifting shorelines, retreating beaches, and changing wetlands that define our coasts,” according to organizers. “In this talk, Dr. David Lagomasino will share stories of coastal change from around the world, from tropical mangroves to marshes and barrier islands, and connect those lessons to the challenges and opportunities facing communities on the Outer Banks. By connecting global perspectives with local insights, the seminar will explore how science can guide resilience planning and help coastal communities prepare for the future.”

Lagomasino’s passion for beaches and mangrove forests began in South Florida and has taken him around the world. He earned his Master of Science in geology from ECU and his doctorate in geological sciences from Florida International University, where he used satellite imagery and water chemistry to study coastal water flow.

Before returning to CSI and ECU’s Department of Coastal Studies, Lagomasino conducted research at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, developing models to understand global shoreline change.

Lagomasino combines satellite, drone, and field data to assess coastal resilience and vulnerability, linking his findings directly with stakeholders to guide coastal management and ecosystem valuation, organizers said. “His work, supported by NASA and USDA programs, focuses on coastal blue carbon and has taken him to shorelines worldwide. Dedicated to mentoring students, he emphasizes hands-on research and community engagement to promote informed coastal stewardship.”

Editor’s note: Second in a series on the newest work by coastal geologist Stan Riggs, the following is an excerpt from “Cape Lookout National Seashore: Paradigm For A Coastal System Ethic.”

The book, with a foreword by conservationist Tom Earnhardt, a North Carolina Coastal Federation board member, is the first in the “North Carolina Land of Water” book series and focuses on the Cape Lookout National Seashore.

The nearly 300 photographs, maps and illustrations of shifting dunes, barrier islands and coastal wildlife are interwoven with carefully crafted maps and drawings, “tracing our coast from its ancient past through the centuries to our modern present,” according to NCLOW, the nonprofit founded by Riggs and fellow coastal geologist Dr. Dorothea V. Ames.

NCLOW’s stated mission “is to sustain NC’s dynamic water, land and air systems for generations to come.”

Land-Water-Air Interface: Nature’s Coastal Systems

I like to think that actively evolving coastal systems are like the human body with its totally interdependent array of subsystems: skeletal, muscular, circulatory, pulmonary, nervous, and endocrine systems driven by the incredible brain, heart, and lungs. It is difficult to live a healthy life without all these bodily components working intimately together. Likewise, our coastal system is dominated by an interdependent array of complex subsystems: landscapes, waterscapes, and airscapes all interacting at the land-water-air interface. The geographic conditions, geologic dynamics, meteorologic forces, and chemical-biological characteristics are critical variables that interact to produce a living, breathing, and evolving coastal system. Major coastal system drivers are the Earth’s physical landscape dynamics (uplifting of mountains and opening of ocean basins), its space partners (creating climatic zones and setting the waterscape and airscape into motion), and the life-giving energy from the almighty Sun (driving the hydrologic cycle and atmospheric circulation that dictates the resulting biosphere).

Throughout the world, wherever a water body (ocean, sea, lake, or river) meets the surrounding land, a coastal system occurs. Because all water bodies and land masses are uniquely different, no two coastal systems are alike. Rather, they each display the influence of multiple variables producing continuums of coastal system types. The landscape may be mountainous or low flatlands dominated by hard rock, sand and mud sediment, or rich and black organic matter; located in the polar, temperate, or tropical regions; or it may occur in a stable tectonic zone, an active earthquake zone, or an area dominated by volcanic activity. Likewise, the size, location, and physical-chemical-biological characteristics of the water body are also determining characteristics. A critical third component also occurs at every land-water intersection; this is the overlying atmosphere and its climatic characteristics that help determine the ultimate character and are the drivers of change for each coastal system.

Like the human body, coastal systems tend to be extremely dynamic, changing in response to energy input at several different time scales. Volcanic activity (Hawaiian Island coasts) and earthquakes (US Pacific coasts), the dominant sources of energy, occur over decades, centuries, and millennia. However, the energy input from atmospheric storm dynamics affects all coastal systems and is the dominant energy source along the US Atlantic and Gulf coasts, occurring at irregular but frequent short-term time scales. An extremely active atmosphere with rapidly changing climatic conditions is the overwhelming cumulative force that routinely produces short-term changes and long-term evolution associated with most southeastern US coastal systems. The ultimate driver of these climate systems and associated storms is our space partner, the Sun.

Natural Function of Barrier Islands: Limits to Growth, Development

Barrier islands and their associated water bodies have a set of dynamics that are established by the natural functions of Earth’s systems. The word “function” relative to the interactions between the land-water-air interface means assigned actions, activities, duties, or role. The function of interstate highways is to get vehicles from point A to point B very fast. Yes, I can ride my bike or have a picnic on an interstate, but it is guaranteed suicide for me to do so. I might instead ride a bike on a dead-end backcountry road or on a former railroad bed that has been disconnected from the grid, as these now have totally different functions. Rest areas with picnic tables and dog parks are already major components of most interstate highways and they might have separately constructed bike lanes in the future, but not today.

Absolute limits exist as to the number, size, and speed of vehicles that can use a one-lane dirt road. Absolute but different limits occur when it becomes a paved two-lane road. Soon the two-lane road becomes overwhelmed, and it is expanded to a four-lane highway, and with continued growth and development in expanding urban areas, it will evolve into six- and eight-lane segments. At some point in the situation of unlimited growth and development the function of each system will break down. Then society is generally forced to come up with new rules or zoning conditions essential for developing an upgraded or new roadway system that requires new land and higher-grade building materials for new types of vehicles that need higher speed limits, and so on.

Similar rules, or zoning, what I call geo-zoning or eco-zoning, must now be considered for natural landscapes, waterscapes, and airscapes confronted with the pressures of unlimited growth and development. The problem is that society generally sets economic rules concerning natural dynamics that maximize profits and minimize the cost of living. For example, many laws require state and federal contracts to go to the lowest bidder or require projects to have a certain cost-benefit ratio.

Often this requires that new roadways go straight through natural areas or over waterways. These laws also often eliminate or divide impoverished and minority urban areas, as well as promote minimum water drainage structures and shorter project life expectancies. Rarely do they take into consideration the cumulative impact or unintended consequences on complex, interdependent systems. In addition, a general lack of understanding of the scientific dynamics of many Earth systems leads directly to minimizing the use of scientific data relative to the economic impact of a project. Good societal and natural reasons exist for limits and constraints on our riding bikes on interstate highways; the same is true for living in active riverine floodplains, discharging waste into waterways, or building houses on ocean shorelines.

Barrier islands and their beaches are only mobile piles of sand at the intersection of land, water, and air. Yes, this is real estate that can be subdivided into house lots and developed from shore to shore. However, shoreline lots are not equal to those in the middle of an island since they are direct products of regular storm dynamics on the adjacent water body. A waterfront house for living is like camping on the interstate. The only good news is that your eventual demise will be a bit slower on the beach. With unlimited growth and development, all possible island lots are plotted, sold, and built on. This increased growth soon pressures us to replace our ferry boats with two-lane bridges that quickly become overloaded. Then new four-lane bridges are justified on the premise of the need to get more people safely off the islands during storms. Family beach cottages are rapidly replaced by big businesses that rise vertically as rental McMansions, condominiums, hotels, and full urbanization sets in.

Because sea level is rising and storms continue to impact the barrier islands with more people and larger shoreline structures attempting to prevent the shorelines from moving, beach sand begins to disappear. Pumping new sand onto the islands becomes essential, but it is soon gone even as the islands continue to be developed. The natural coastal system is now destabilized, requiring construction of groins, jetties, and bulkheads to desperately hold a beach and stop shoreline recession. Ultimately, the islands will be encased in steel, concrete, and rock walls with little to no sandy beach along an increasingly steeper shoreface.

When economic development wins the battle, with permanently fixed commercial islands in the ocean covered with urban accoutrements ranging from shopping malls to freshwater parks, the islands will have new economic functions. What happened to the barrier island with its unique natural functions and ecosystems associated with high energy sand beaches, dune fields, tide flats, and marshes that harbored the ghost crabs, sea turtles, and shorebirds? Natural barrier island limits have been violated by unlimited growth and development, and once again the stage is set for the perfect conflict between humans and their natural environment.

Similar to barrier islands, other geographic basins on Earth’s surface and in wet climatic zones (swamps, ponds, lakes, or ocean) have a function of holding water. If the geographic basin is linear and open-ended, its function might be to carry a moving flow of water, generally known as a river. Each type of water system has its own specific functions, each dictating different limits to contiguous growth and development.

Absolute limits to growth and types of development exist for high energy and mobile barrier island sand piles, riverine floodplains, swamp-forest pocosins, and estuarine marshes. Similarly, limits pertain to other landscapes, including the savage clear-cuts of the northwest US rain forests, excavations of Appalachian Mountain tops for coal, the vast deforestation of the Amazon jungle—these are all tracts of insatiable consumption driven by the indigenous American spirit monster of self-destruction. “Unlimited” human consumption has consequences; infinite growth on a finite planet is generally not compatible with natural law. We must embrace the radical notion that all of Earth’s natural resources and crucial ecosystem services are essential if we are to maintain a sustainable and high quality of life in society’s future.

Fortunately, some barrier islands, estuarine water bodies, riverine floodplains, and pocosin swamp forests have been protected from the perils of total modification and urbanization by establishing different forms of protected status such as national seashores, wildlife refuges, coastal preserves, state parks, and conservancy lands. The preservation of Cape Lookout National Seashore, or CALO in 1976 clearly demonstrates the critical interdependence between storm dynamics and the barrier island buffer zone. For these intermediary habitats to continue functioning as nature’s speed bumps, storms must unleash tremendous energy across the coastal wetlands—flooding marshes, reshaping shorelines, and maintaining the shifting sands of healthy barrier islands that buffer the uplands from the sea.

Developing a New Coastal System Ethic

In 1949, Aldo Leopold presented to the world his critical concept of a land ethic. This ethic was primarily focused on Earth’s land-based environments in general; it did not directly address either water or air as discreet components with equal voices to that of uplands. However, in the real world of our planet, land-water-air all form a crucial and highly interwoven trinity, a complex and totally integrated system of subsystems not unlike the human body or every other living organism whose component systems are interactive and interdependent parts of the whole. Society needs to apply Leopold’s land ethic to the total tripartite system of the whole Earth and its multitude of land-water-air based environments. One of the most dynamic parts of that system is the coastal component where the planet’s water world meets land, and wherever this occurs, the resultant climatic conditions tend to drive the energetic forces. This new variant of a coastal system ethic places boundaries around those regions where land and water meet and operates in response to atmospheric dynamics. In these uniquely high energy regions where forces collide, change is dominant and will always prevail.

First of two parts.

It was a nasty January day about 14 years ago, not long after publication of his book, “The Battle for North Carolina’s Coast: Evolutionary History, Present Crisis, and Vision for the Future,” when veteran East Carolina University coastal scientist Dr. Stan Riggs, the book’s lead author, had an unexpected and impactful visit. Not only did it prolong the sunset of his then-50-yearlong career, it cemented the reach of his legacy beyond academia to the lives of everyday people.

And it inspired Riggs to write 10 reader-friendly books focused on a blend of science, culture and history of North Carolina’s northeast and central coastal region.

Related: Riggs to launch first book in series Sunday on Harkers Island

“I’ve done a lot of work here, but science builds on itself,” he said. “And so, I just decided in 2018 that they could just put me in the ground, and who would care? Who would know what I’ve learned?”

In October, the first volume in the series, “Cape Lookout National Seashore, Paradigm for a Coastal System Ethic,” was released. Subsequent volumes, several of which are already written, will cover North Carolinas Inner Banks, or inland coastal region, Outer Banks and the continental shelf.

The books, all planned for release over the next three years, present Riggs’ coastal science research in accessible and understandable language, accompanied by striking photographs and graphics that seek to educate, enrich and engage readers.

Also, the ecotourism-centered program called North Carolina Land of Water that was first proposed in the book, “The Battle for North Carolina’s Coast,” has been transformed from a dim concept into its current sunbeam of possibilities. All because of the support offered to him on that blustery day.

“A nor’easter was blowing Billy out there — it was cold!,” Riggs, 87, recalled in a recent interview with Coastal Review. “I got a knock on the door, and two people were standing there. They introduced themselves and asked if we would take them out on a field trip. And I said, ‘You don’t want to go out there today.’”

But they insisted on a tour of the region he and his co-authors had written about in the book. They wanted to see it for themselves, and chat with some of the folks who lived there. Intrigued, and convinced his visitors were serious, Riggs made some quick phone calls, and soon they were all piling into a vehicle and hitting the road.

“We had one hell of a good trip,” Riggs recalled about the four-day adventure. Starting in Greenville, the group wound their way through the Albemarle Penisula and Inner Banks counties, along rivers, through the wildlife refuges, and down the Outer Banks to Ocracoke Island, then on to a ferry to the Core Banks. Some year-round residents shared “incredible” meals, he said, and invited them to stay.

“We covered the whole system,” Riggs said, a tinge of amazement still in his voice. Finally, as everyone said their goodbyes, one man got out of the car and walked over to Riggs.

“He put his arm around my shoulder, and he said, ‘The real reason we’re here is we’re going to give you some money.’

Surprised, Riggs responded: “‘I don’t need money.’ He said, ‘Yes, you do.’ I said, ‘Why?’”

“‘We want you to implement the vision that you set out in your book,’” Riggs recalled. “And that was the beginning of NCLOW.”

After the visit, representatives from the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology and Science at North Carolina State University provided funding for Riggs to create the North Carolina Land of Water, or NCLOW. The nonprofit is “dedicated to advancing coastal science, education, and community stewardship through research, outreach, and partnerships,” while working to ensure that the state’s coastal systems are “understood and safeguarded,” according to a press release.

In October, NCLOW announced the appointment of Stanton Blakeslee to its board of directors to guide the nonprofit’s future projects and fundraising. As noted in the release, the appointment “comes at a critical inflection point for the organization,” and his leadership will encourage “strategic investment and cross-sector innovation.”

Blakeslee, 55, who had attended ECU and worked for the N.C. Literary Review, is currently the president and CEO of Instigator Inc., a Greenville-based life science marketing firm. His experience includes investment in real estate development and consumer goods industries, and he serves as a member of the East Carolina Angels, an angel investment network.

So far, he has helped Riggs divide his approach to NCLOW in two phases, Blakeslee said. 

“Phase one culminated with the development of the books,” he said. “It was a way for Stan to formalize not only his life’s work, but what he sees as a sustainable future for the coast.” 

Blakeslee’s background as an entrepreneur who understands private equity and venture capital as well as conservation work provides insight into the goals of NCLOW, he explained.

“So the more I started to hear about what he was envisioning, I was like, ‘Oh, wow. So there’s like an economic concept behind everything that you’re trying to do here.’ We’re not trying to stay off the coast. What we’re saying is let’s look at where the opportunities are and invest …  so we can sustain this resource for everyone.”

Riggs’ earlier work with the Bertie County and Scuppernong River projects are two big success stories that drive NCLOW’s future initiatives, Blakeslee added. By harnessing creative ideas to manage and maintain the natural resources, a community’s economy and sustainability can benefit. For example, Windsor, Bertie’s county seat, mitigated flooding risk by requesting the water in a river dam be released slowly about a week before a predicted storm. And the community constructed tree houses above the river’s edge to rent, which quickly became a popular ecotourism attraction.

“The geographic setting of Bertie County provides a prime basis to capitalize on the incredible water system it has been blessed with,” Riggs wrote in his 2018 report, “From Rivers to Sounds in the Bertie Water Crescent” that proposed an approach to ecotourism and environmental education. “Consequently, NCLOW recommends developing a series of five educational and recreational ‘water hubs’ for ecotourism development.”

NCLOW can serve as a catalyst for other communities to take active steps towards sustainability, Blakeslee said. It’s a matter of determining the challenges, how to address them, and how to transform them into economic opportunities.

“I think Stan proved a lot of that in its first 10 years,” he said. “And now we’re looking at what the next 10 years, and possibly 20 years, looks like.”

Over his long career, Riggs, professor emeritus at ECU, has authored or co-authored 16 books and more than 100 journal articles.  But data-heavy research terminology and scientific jargon is a heavy lift for nonscientist readers, Riggs noted, and he believes that educating people about the science in their lives is a critical responsibility so people can understand the processes and relevant public policies that affect their lives.

“You know, when I was at the university, I got all my salary and everything was public funds, and all my research came from public organizations,” he said. “And so I see this as a give-back. It’s one thing to go out there and do a project and raise money and write your technical papers. But nobody in the public domain will ever, ever, read a technical paper.”

Riggs said he decided to write the Cape Lookout book because it is a success story. The undeveloped barrier island showcases how natural beaches recover, adapt and rebuilt after storms because over wash and other coastal processes are not blocked by infrastructure.

With an affable, every-man persona and an uncanny ability to recite minutia about ancient and ongoing geologic processes at seemingly every location he encounters, Riggs has spent considerable time traveling throughout the coastal region talking to residents and politicians in small communities, many of which are stressed by poverty, job losses and frequent flooding. 

As described in “The Battle for the North Carolina Coast,” the “Land of Water” coastal system in northeastern North Carolina includes a huge “drowned-river” estuarine system that encompasses vast shorelines, marsh, swamp forest wetlands, pocosin swamps, Carolina bays and blackwater streams.

“The natural resources that constitute this “Land of Water” can play an increasingly important role in the tourist economy, a role that would revitalize the region … build on the natural and human history and the dynamic coastal resources of northeastern North Carolina within an overarching and integrated umbrella program for sustainable, water-based ecotourism,” the book said.

And indeed, much of the land in northeastern North Carolina, from ocean beaches to river shorelines, from farmlands to forests, is surrounded by a body, or several bodies, of water. The Albemarle-Pamlico estuary is the second largest in the country, behind Chesapeake.

Although still rich with wildlife and natural resources, the low-lying region, some just inches above sea level, is becoming more threatened by impacts of climate change and rising seas: increased flooding, saltwater intrusion, stormwater inundation, shoreline erosion, ocean overwash and storm surge.

“The way I think about this is, you better understand the dynamics of our planet,” Riggs said. “That doesn’t mean that you have to be a scientist. It means you have to know something about water. You have to know something about land. And that comes down to the problem of education.”

That is, people, as a society, need to understand that how and where there is growth and development cannot be unlimited or driven by profit. 

Riggs says he’s had the benefit of learning over the decades from numerous other “incredible” scientists with whom he has worked together in teams, sharing spaces in classrooms and research ships. He has spent years warning about the futility of trying to control destructive natural forces, whether or not people believe they’re created by man-made causes such as burning fossil fuels. On the coast, sea walls, sandbags, and jetties ultimately make things worse by increasing erosion and will ultimately fail anyway, he has preached.

But as nightmare damages from storms, such as the recent deadly flooding in the mountains from Hurricane Helene, have increased, he said he’s noticed that people are starting to listen; they’ve realized that climate conditions are not the same as they were in the old days.

“There’s nothing wrong with the history and and yes, we can respect the history, but the history includes change,” he said.  “We better understand how rivers (and oceans) work, and if we don’t understand that, there will be human disasters. The more we politically ignore the science, the bigger the human disasters.”

Next in the series: “Cape Lookout National Seashore, Paradigm for a Coastal System Ethic”: An excerpt.

Plastic may be cheap to make and convenient to use, but it comes with a staggering economic cost to the United States — possibly more than $1 trillion a year — according to a new report.

The study, released Thursday, estimates that the economic cost of the life cycle of plastic – from how it’s made, to its conversion into products, to its use and disposal – ranges anywhere from $436 billion to $1.1 trillion annually.

That figure is likely a significant underestimate, according to Duke University researchers who authored the report.

“We, from the beginning, wanted to focus on the harms and costs of the entire plastic life cycle, not just focus on plastic pollution,” said Dr. Nancy Lauer, a co-author of the report and staff scientist and lecturing fellow with the Duke Environmental Law and Policy Clinic. “That was because there really is this entire life of plastic product that has now-well-documented harms at every single stage that we are paying for. It was important for us to make those harms and those costs more transparent to consumers so that they understand this is not just a problem when plastic escapes into the environment and becomes litter or marine debris.”

The team of researchers was able to explore this concept after the university in 2023 awarded it a small grant. That grant led the researchers to host a workshop in early 2024 that brought together experts from across different fields with experience in analyzing the social costs of plastic from its production to its disposal.

Those experts were given a list of studies examining economic costs associated with plastic’s life cycle compiled and initially reviewed by a team of graduate students. The experts then advised researchers on what categories of studies were missing from that list and whether there was additional research that could be examined.

In the end, researchers reviewed 13 existing studies focusing on plastic’s harms and costs on the environment, human health, and the economy.

The report breaks down the economic impacts of plastics by several categories, from greenhouse gas emissions associated with plastic production to human health effects.

The largest cost, by far, is human exposure to toxic chemicals in plastics.

Researchers estimate that increased disease and mortality from plastics use is between $410 billion and $930 billion each year.

“These high costs are driven largely by the value of IQ loss and reduced productivity associated with exposure to plastic activities,” the report states.

Exposure to chemicals such as phthalates, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, bisphenol A, or BPA, and those found in flame retardants are linked to a host of adverse health outcomes, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, reproductive disorders and neurological damage.

Lauer explained that only within the last couple of years studies on the economic impacts of human health-associated harms from plastics use have “really taken off.”

“So that was certainly a category that we, in those initial searches and before the workshop, did not have as great of a handle on, but that research has just really continued to take off in these last two years or so,” she said.

And while studies of the economic effect on human health have come a long way, Lauer said there’s still a long way to go.

“The studies that we found document the harms and costs from exposure to just a tiny fraction of the chemicals that are in plastic. There’s thousands of chemicals in plastic, several of which have known health effects, and several of which we don’t know enough about to know if they have health effects,” she said.

There is also lack of research on the cumulative effects on human health from chemical mixtures in plastics.

“If we take in a plastic particle, we’re not just taking in one or two chemicals, we’re taking in that mixture of chemicals,” Lauer said. “How those chemicals interact together to spur health impacts, we don’t have a good sense of that at this time.”

The report highlights other research gaps, including economic costs associated with plastic recycling and incineration, the effect of plastic on property values, and the cost associated with loss of terrestrial environment.

“When plastics get into the environment, often our first thought is when it ends up as marine debris and the harms that it causes in the ocean, entangling animals and creating these great garbage patches that need to be cleaned up,” Laure said. “Plastics also impact the terrestrial environment. They get into streams and lakes, along our roadsides, and studies have documented that plastics also cause harm to terrestrial animals like invertebrates and freshwater fish. But, there’s not estimates in the literature for that loss of terrestrial ecosystem services in the same way that the literature has begun to document the cost of the loss of marine ecosystem services.”

According to the report, the estimated cost of the loss of marine ecosystem services ranges from $1.4 billion to $112 billion a year.

Other categories and estimated annual costs detailed in the report include the following:

• Greenhouse gas emissions produced from fossil fuel extraction and manufacturing: $6.4 billion to $15.9 billion.
• Increased disease and mortality from oil and gas extraction: $2.9 billion to $31.9 billion.
• Landfill disposal: $2.9 billion.
• Plastic litter cleanup: $9.8 billion to $13.3 billion.
• Loss of tourism: $2 billion.
• Damage to fisheries and aquaculture industry: $88 million.
• Damage to marine shipping: $909 million.

Lauer said that a motivation to make these costs more transparent to the consumer is to highlight that, though products we buy that are made of plastic tend to be relatively cheap, “that’s just the price we’re paying right there on the spot.”

“There’s so many other costs that we may not necessarily realize we’re paying when we use that plastic,” she said.

And while plastics are important for certain industries, including the medical industry, “we’re still using a lot of plastic in places that we don’t necessarily need to be,” Lauer said. “The patchwork of state and local laws on the books are important to reduce plastics on that local and state level, and they’re important to have proof of concept and build momentum towards something that is more comprehensive. But I think what that more comprehensive strategy needs to look like is really focusing on reducing plastics at the source, and that can be through phasing out needless plastics.”

The North Atlantic right whale population increased slightly in 2024 from the previous year, but marine scientists warn that federal protections are crucial to the recovery of the critically endangered species.

The 2024 population is estimated at 384 individual whales, a 2.1% increase over the 2023 estimate, and a continued slow, upward trend in growth over the last four years, according to the latest numbers released by the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium earlier this week.

The modest increase follows a year in which researchers documented five right whale deaths, 16 entanglements, and eight vessel strikes, according to the consortium.

So far this year, no deaths have been logged. Scientists have documented one whale that has been injured in 2025 from being entangled in fishing gear, and one whale injured in a vessel strike.

“The slight increase in the population estimate, coupled with no detected mortalities and fewer detected injuries than in the last several years, leaves us cautiously optimistic about the future of North Atlantic right whales,” North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium Chair Heather Pettis said in a release Tuesday announcing the latest population estimate. “With small population increases year to year, we still need strong protective measures for continued growth. We don’t want to take our foot off the gas when it comes to management and conservation efforts.”

Though this year has thus far proved to be a better year for right whales, researchers were hoping for more than the 11 calves born in 2025.

Scientists note that of those, four were born to first-time mothers.

“In recent years, right whales have been delaying giving birth to their first calf until they are older,” Philip Hamilton, a senior scientist with the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, said in the release. “It is encouraging to see four of these older females join the reproductive pool this year. The future of the species rests on their broad backs.”

Scientists from the aquarium’s center and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, work together to calculate annual population estimates.

Vessel strikes and entanglements in fishing gear remain the leading causes of death and serious injury to North Atlantic right whales.

Last December, a 3-year-old male spotted about 40 miles off the North Carolina coast was among at least three right whales observed to be entangled in fishing gear that month.

The juvenile male (Catalog No. 5132) was “observed with rope wrapped around its head and mouth, with lines attached to two marked buoys and a single line was trailing the animal by a distance of about three body lengths,” according to information provided by the Canadian government.

That whale, still entangled, migrated to waters hundreds of miles north of Canada’s East Coast, according to an update shared at the consortium meeting.

The yearly updated population estimate is revealed in coordination with the consortium’s annual meeting, which was held through Thursday in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The consortium was started in 1986 and includes research and conservation organizations, shipping and fishing industries, technical experts, U.S. and Canadian government agencies, and state and provincial authorities.

Nora Ives, a marine scientist with Oceana, took a quick break from the meeting Thursday to speak with Coastal Review by telephone.

“These protected species have huge ecosystem benefits to all of us on the planet,” she said. “Large coastal whales like the North Atlantic right whale fertilize our oceans. They kick off the oxygen cycle of the planet. We can all benefit from their recovery.”

Right whales migrate seasonally, spending their spring, summers in waters off New England and further north into Canadian waters to feed and mate.

In the fall, the whales travel south, sometimes more than 1,000 miles, to their calving grounds off shore from the Carolinas to northeastern Florida.

The modest increase in the 2024 population estimate, “proves how resilient these whales are and that they can recover if we let them,” Ives said.

“But we cannot do that without a fully staffed and funded NOAA and a strong Marine Mammal Protection Act, which is the underpinning of all this important work to recover our large coastal whale, the North Atlantic right whale.”

The Marine Mammal Protection Act, enacted in 1972, requires the federal government to safeguard the life and well-being of all marine mammals within U.S. jurisdiction.

President Donald Trump’s proposed 2026 budget includes massive layoffs at NOAA, slashing the administration’s Fisheries division by up to a third of the workforce that oversee the protections of marine mammals, and reduces funding for conservation of marine mammals and endangered species.

“That would be devastating for these programs,” Ives said.

Notably missing from this year’s meeting, Ives said, are NOAA employees, absent because of what is now the second-longest government shutdown in United States history.

“We have colleagues from the federal government who are not able to join us at this annual meeting to discuss the latest research and work toward solutions for the recovery of the North Atlantic right whale,” she said. “Our federal colleagues are doing their best to share their research remotely with prerecorded talks.”

Scientists are calling for the implementation of additional measures that would aid in the recovery of the right whale population, including the use of ropeless or on-demand fishing gear in crab fishing to reduce whale entanglements.

“That would be implemented only in places where whales are detected or expected, so really allowing for this dynamic and adaptive management that can both protect American livelihoods and our American fisheries while also protecting our coastal large whale as they migrate up and down the East Coast,” Ives said.

Scientists support existing federal rules that mandate vessels 65 feet or longer travel at 10 knots or less through designated North Atlantic right whale seasonal management areas in the northeast, mid-Atlantic, and southeast.

Earlier this year, NOAA announced its withdrawal of proposed similar speed limits for vessels under 65 feet in length those management areas, though it “encourages” those vessels to slow to 10 knots or less.

“Another year of modest population growth is certainly better than a year of sharp decline, and we should celebrate that while also keeping our eyes on the work ahead,” Jane Davenport, a senior attorney for Defenders of Wildlife, said in a statement. “We need new initiatives to reduce vessel strike and entanglement risk in the U.S. and Canada, and the current legislative attacks on the Marine Mammal Protect Act must end, or this iconic species’ extinction is all but guaranteed.”

As you near Wilmington for your beach vacation, you take in the classic coastal Carolina scenery — tall longleaf pines, grassy marshes, and the wide Cape Fear River. But then something strange catches your eye: a forest of bare white tree trunks rising from the swamp like a field of bones. The eeriness of this ghost forest — a place where living woods have turned to watery graveyards — leaves you wondering, “What killed all the trees?”

The answer researchers with the University of North Carolina Wilmington found in the boneyard may surprise you.

For centuries, bald cypress trees thrived on the banks of the Cape Fear River and its tributaries. Bald cypress trees — ancient survivors — are not fragile. These giants can live for thousands of years, stretching to 120 feet tall and standing strong through hurricanes thanks to buttressed roots that prevent the tree from toppling in high winds. An hour away, cypress trees on the Black River are some of the oldest trees in the world with some in Three Sisters Swamp found to be aged at over 2,600 years using tree-ring dating in a 2019 study. But here along the Cape Fear River — like much of the East Coast — many of them are dying and leaving behind ghost forests.

The cost of ghosts

Ghost forests aren’t just spooky. They’re a warning sign. Remote sensing photos from a 2020 paper by Jessica Lynn Magolan and Joanne Nancie Halls show Smith Creek’s freshwater wetlands giving way to salt marsh. Old-growth freshwater swamps are engines of life. They shelter birds, fish and reptiles. They store vast amounts of carbon. Their roots absorb floodwaters, buffering nearby communities when hurricanes roar ashore.

Ghost forests, by contrast, provide little protection. They are markers of loss — loss of biodiversity, of resilience, of time.

And they’re spreading.

Digging into the past

On a warm morning standing in the mud near Smith Creek, graduate student researcher Kendra Devereux of the University of North Carolina Wilmington holds a cylinder of tree core to the light. Each ring tells a story of a year in the tree’s life: how much it grew, whether it was stressed, whether conditions were good or bad.

Devereux and her team are piecing together a mystery. Along with her research advisers, Dr. Monica Rother and Dr. Andrea Hawkes, and a team of other collaborators and students, she’s collected tree cores and sediment samples from two sites on Smith Creek, looking for clues hidden in growth rings and in the microscopic remains of creatures. Tiny, fossilized organisms buried in the layers of river mud act like timekeepers, revealing how salty the water was at different points in history. By studying them, the team can reconstruct how salty the water was when they lived.

And the evidence revealed in their report points to what may be a surprising culprit.

A river made deeper

The cypress deaths weren’t just caused by globally rising seas or regular tides. It appears that the trees were undone, in large part, by ongoing dredging.

Over the last century, the Cape Fear River was repeatedly deepened to allow bigger ships to reach Wilmington’s port. Each time the channel grew, for example, in 1912, 1930, 1946, 1950, 1970, and from 2000 until 2005, more ocean water pushed upstream, according to a 2011 UNCW study for the Army Corps of Engineers that monitored how deepening the Wilmington Harbor would affect tidal range. Combined with rising sea levels, that extra saltwater slowly crept farther upriver and into tributaries like Smith Creek. Even tiny increases in salt can stress or kill bald cypress trees. For people, it was invisible. For trees, it was deadly.

And the problem may only be exacerbated if the Wilmington Harbor channel is deepened from a depth of 42 feet to 47 feet.

Earlier this month, the Corps released a draft environmental study on the proposed multimillion project, which would permit larger ships to cruise from the mouth of the Cape Fear more than 20 miles up river to the North Carolina Port of Wilmington.

Salt: silent killer

Freshwater has almost no salt. Ocean water is about 3% salt, or about 35 parts per thousand. Bald cypress trees start struggling when there’s just a trace more salt than they’re used to. To put it in kitchen terms, just over a pinch per gallon is enough to start killing them. Older trees, despite their size, seem more vulnerable. Along the saltier stretch of Smith Creek, untold numbers of older trees have died, leaving only snags — the standing skeletons of once-living giants.

Upstream, where the water is fresher, cypresses are still thriving, with at least one more than 800 years old. But closer to the Cape Fear, trees that have managed to survive amidst the ghost forests show signs of years of stress, with observable ring patterns that coincide with the dates of major dredging projects. In the 1970s, cypress growth was suppressed in the area with high salt. By 2000, whole stretches of trees had died, leaving behind today’s ghost forest.

A warning rising with the tide

As Wilmington faces sea level rise and continued dredging, Rother, Devereux and the other authors found, the salty tide will keep pushing inland. That means more ghost forests, fewer living cypress trees, and greater risk of flooding for the people who call this coast home.

The white skeletons along Smith Creek are more than strange landmarks. They are warnings etched into the landscape, reminders of how human choices and a changing climate can reshape even the hardiest of forests. As Rother explains, “Climate change and sea-level rise will form more ghost forests across the Atlantic and Gulf coasts,” leaving communities with less natural protection from flooding. And with continuing dredging of the Cape Fear River bottom, hurricane-prone Wilmington could face even greater risks.

Next time you cross that bridge, look again. The ghost forest isn’t just haunting the swamp, it’s a warning carved into bone-white silence.

Love fossils? Then there’s a day just for you.

Join in a celebration of National Fossil Day Saturday for games, prizes and music at the Aurora Fossil Museum and Fossil Park.

The free event is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the museum at 400 Main St.

The Aurora Fossil Museum is open 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday until Nov. 30. The museum will be closed on Nov. 27, Thanksgiving Day.

Days and hours of operation are the same for the museum’s fossil park and fossil pits.

​It was well into what we now call hurricane season in 1879 when the Atlantic Hotel on the Beaufort waterfront began filling with hundreds of guests ahead of the North Carolina Press Association’s annual meeting taking place there in late August.

Visitors from across the state, including the then-governor and his wife, made the lengthy trek to the hotel, most arriving around Aug. 15, of that year, about the same time as rumors began to circulate that a hurricane was causing damage in the Caribbean.

“But nobody in Beaufort was too bothered by that. In fact, the hotel manager was told about it, and he said, ‘we haven’t had a bad storm here in over 20 years. Everyone’s going to be fine,’” Assistant State Climatologist Corey Davis explained when he began his talk on “Lessons Learned from Recent Statewide Storms” at the Down East Resilience Network’s fall gathering.

Davis is with the State Climate Office of North Carolina based at N.C. State University in Raleigh, and was one of the speakers at the get-together held Sept. 23-24 in the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island.

A project of the museum, the network meets there a few times a year to share and discuss with scientists, decision-makers and residents the latest research on the threats to Carteret County’s coastal communities such as nuisance flooding and hurricanes, and opportunities to address the aftermath.

Davis continued, fast-forward to a few days later, and warning signs began to appear that a storm was coming. “It’s the fishermen, the locals, that are the first ones to take notice.”

Then a Coast Guardsman stationed at Fort Macon on Bogue Banks began to receive telegraph transmissions from Florida and Georgia about the storm making its way up the coast.

The Coast Guardsman rushes to Beaufort to tell the hotel manager that a hurricane is on its way, Davis narrated, “and this hotel manager just scoffs. He said, ‘Nobody from the U.S. government is going to tell me how to run my hotel. Now you go back and do your job. Everybody here is going to be fine for the night. Well, as you can guess from the foreshadowing, they were not fine,” Davis said. “By 3 a.m. the rain had picked up. The wind was blowing even harder. The floodwaters along the ocean from the storm surge had risen to waist high by that point.”

A local then sounded the alarm to alert everyone that they needed to seek safety. The bottom floors of the hotel were already flooding, but not many people took notice.

“Now, I wish I could tell you that this story had a happy ending, but it doesn’t. This is a tragedy in our state. This is the story of the great Beaufort hurricane of 1879. It was a Category 3 storm at landfall right here in Carteret County. And in total, 46 people in North Carolina and Virginia lost their lives during the storm,” Davis said.

The hotel was rebuilt the next year on the Morehead City waterfront, only to burn to the ground in 1933.

He opened his talk with ​that history to give “a perspective of how these storms were perceived 100 and some years ago. Largely, that’s that hurricanes were primarily coastal events.”

Prompting him to ask what has changed when it comes to learning about hurricane behavior and forecasting, as well as why tropical storms and their hazards getting worse, and putting more folks at risk.

One change, for the good, is that forecasting has improved since the early 1970s. “What we saw back in the late ’70s, early ’80s is that the average track error at 72 hours was something like 400 nautical miles. That’s basically the distance between right here on Harkers Island and Knoxville, Tennessee,” Davis said.

Track error is the difference between where a hurricane is expected to go and the path it actually travels.

As science, modeling and forecasting have improved in the decades since, track error has decreased. “Over the last five to 10 years, that 72-hour error is under 100 nautical miles,” he said.

Another area of improvement, which he thinks should continue to improve, is communicating to the public the storm forecast and associated hazards.

Past messaging has focused on winds being the primary hazard, especially for coastal areas, but in recent years forecasters have emphasized rain amounts, flooding and storm surge, as well as hazards people in inland areas should expect.

One of the changes “that we don’t have a whole lot of control over” is background climate, which includes increasing global ocean heat content, or the total amount of heat the ocean has absorbed and stored.

“We know by now that the oceans have really absorbed the brunt of the warming that’s happening, especially over the last 50 to 60 years,” he said, and there’s been a steady increase since the late 1960s or the early 1970s.

This increase has had a few different impacts on tropical storm and hurricane events.

“No. 1, when you’re seeing that much warm water present, it means more seasons will be favorable for tropical activity. Even though there can be some other environmental oceanic factors that you have to worry about, if the ocean is warm enough, you can pretty much always get storms to form,” Davis said.

Another big impact is rapid intensification, like when a storm goes from a Category 1 to a Category 4 in 18 hours, as did Hurricane Erin earlier this summer.

“Obviously, that does add to the punch that those storms bring when they get to land,” Davis said.

As for atmospheric factors, a warmer atmosphere is similar to a bigger sponge and is “able to soak up more moisture, and it tends to wring out that moisture all at once, and it is able to do that even farther inland as well. So storms are getting wetter overall,” Davis said.

Hurricane Florence in September 2018 dumped “36 inches of rain in parts of southeastern North Carolina, just unheard-of amounts.”

Researchers looking at hurricane trends have found that, especially since the early 1970s, the storms are slowing down and even stalling when reaching land, and that’s primarily for the coastal Carolinas.

“That means we see storms like Florence. They get to our coast and just slow to a crawl; they sit over us for days and drop even more rainfall than we’ve ever seen,” he said.

Another consequence of these changes is that more people are in harm’s way from these storms. Davis cited a study from a few years ago that found for every house in North Carolina that was removed due to floodplain buyouts, another 10 had been built in those floodplain areas.

Another study determined that from 1996 to 2020, 43% of the flooded buildings in the state were outside of the Federal Emergency Management Agency-designated floodplains, and of all the buildings that have flooded in the state during this 25-year window, 23% flooded multiple times.

Storms look different now than they did in 2010, Davis continued, referencing a map showing the major storms most people consider the worst they experienced.

From the mountains, east, the storms were: Frances in 1916, Ivan in 1940, Hugo in 1989, Hazel in 1954, Fran in 1996, Floyd in 1999 and Isabel in 2003.

Davis then moved to a new map his office created showing the state’s worst tropical events as of September, which looks drastically different from the 2010 map.

“Carteret County is a really good example,” Davis said. “You’ve got one of those classic coastal monster storms. Hazel in 1954, a big event, storm surge in Morehead City and other parts of the coastline.”

But for the North Core Banks and Ocracoke Island, 2019’s Dorian caused soundside storm surge like those areas had never seen before. “Most of the rest of Carteret County and most of southeastern North Carolina would now show Florence as the worst.”

Fifty other counties have seen their worst storm come during the last 10 years.

Looking at the scale of some of these events, Florence can now be considered the worst storm from Cape Lookout to the suburbs of Charlotte. “That is a massive footprint that we just didn’t see historically for those sorts of storms,” Davis said.

Davis said there are things to be learned from these storms.  

“The first is what I’ll call action at a distance,” which essentially means that an area can experience big impacts even if the eye of the storm remains far away.

“I know this area saw that with Erin earlier in the summer, 200 to 300 miles offshore, but you still saw the rip currents and the overwash as if it was literally right in your backyard,” Davis said.

Another takeaway, he continued, is that you can’t just look at the strength of the winds or the category to understand what a storm will do.

Tropical Storm Chantal in early July was a weak tropical depression when it moved over central North Carolina, but the 8 to 10 inches of rain over a 12-hour period was far beyond what those areas had seen before.

Davis said he’s “firmly in the camp” of if we don’t learn from history, we’re doomed to repeat it, and one of the big tragedies in eastern North Carolina was after Hurricane Floyd came through in 1999. Residents were told that it was a thousand-year event, leading people to believe a storm of that magnitude wouldn’t happen again in their lifetime, their children’s lifetime, or their children’s children’s lifetime, so they rebuilt the same as before.

“It wasn’t until we got the next storm with Matthew and the next storm with Florence, that they realized it’s probably not a great idea to have a house here, because this is not a once-in-a-lifetime event,” he said, adding that has to be emphasized to people. “If it happens once, it’ll happen again.”

During this month’s Science on the Sound lecture series learn how surf forecasters bring real-time ocean and wave conditions and surf reports to a beach near you.

The Coastal Studies Institute is scheduled to host “Predicting Surf on the Outer Banks with the Surfline Forecast Team” at 6 p.m. Thursday at East Carolina University’s Outer Banks campus.

Join Surfline’s forecasting Vice President Kurt Korte, Rob Mitstifer, forecast data lead, and Tim Kent, lead forecaster, as they discuss surf forecasting basics and why the Outer Banks is a unique surf destination.

Surfline provides surf conditions and forecasts for beaches and surf spots around the globe.

Presenters will delve into the tools and technology they use to observe and predict the surf.

Science of the Sound brings perspectives from all over the state to highlight coastal topics in northeastern North Carolina. The program is free.

To join the event via live-stream visit the CSI YouTube channel.

The blue crab population in the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine System is taking a hit sometime between when juveniles leave their nursery habitats and before reaching sexual maturity, a recent study finds.

Published last month in Fisheries Oceanography, “Long-Term Trends in Juvenile Blue Crab Recruitment Patterns in a Wind-Driven Estuary” examined the density of blue crabs in three different types of nursery habitats during the instar stage of the species’ complex life cycle. That’s when the tiny juvenile crab is about the size of a pea.

The North Carolina blue crab population began declining in the early 2000s, and despite state-mandated measures implemented in the years since to protect the lucrative fishery, the population hasn’t recovered. “With fishing accounting for approximately 80% of total annual blue crab mortality, these measures were expected to allow the stock numbers to recover, which has not occurred,” the study explains, referencing a 2018 N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries report. “This absence of recovery has often been attributed to recruitment overfishing.”

But, that’s not what the authors found.

The research shows that the juvenile blue crab population numbers from the late 1990s and the late 2010s are similar, and point to a “potential population bottleneck occurring in later life stages.” But the bottleneck is not the result of recruitment overfishing, which “occurs when the spawning stock of a population has been depleted to the extent that there are insufficient adults to produce the required number of recruits to replenish the population.”

Lead author of the study, Erin Voigt, is a doctoral candidate in David Eggleston’s lab in the North Carolina State University’s Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Also listed as authors are Eggleston, a professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences, and previous N.C. State doctoral student Lisa Etherington.

Voigt told Coastal Review that one of the biggest takeaways from her research, at least in looking at the instar stage, is that “there is no evidence of recruitment overfishing.”

And if it’s not recruitment overfishing, “then that means that there’s something going on after the instar stage but before the adult stage that’s resulting in the blue crab population not rebounding,” Voigt said.

Another component of the study, which also relates to Etherington’s work, was to determine which habitats the blue crabs use.

Voigt sampled at Ruppia seagrass beds and shallow detrital habitats found along the mainland shores and the mixed species seagrass beds on the sound side of the Outer Banks.

Early in the life cycle, when the megalopae return to the inlets, the seagrass bed structure is the first nursery habitat they encounter on the sound side of the Outer Banks if there are no storms to interfere with the pattern.

“However, the surprising thing that we found was that if you look at the density of blue crabs,” which she said is the amount of blue crabs per meter squared, “you find almost four times as many blue crabs in these super patchy, very hard to see, kind of scruffy seagrass beds on the western shore.”

The researcher, the research 

Originally from Maryland, Voigt earned her bachelor’s in biology from St Mary’s College, spent a few years researching at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, and then earned her master’s in ecology at San Diego State University.

She began her doctorate in 2016 but took an extended leave of absence when she began working in 2023 as program coordinator of the Duke University Marine Lab Scholars and Climate Scholars Program. Voigt resumed her research earlier this year and plans to defend her thesis later this semester.

Voigt began explaining her research by reviewing the “complex life cycle” of a blue crab.

In early summer, the male and female typically mate upriver in low-salinity environments. The female, or sponge crab, carries the eggs on her stomach. When it’s time to hatch, the planktonic larvae, or zoeae, which Voigt said look like space aliens, drift into the inlets or ocean and undergo several molts, with the last transition in the ocean being to the megalopa or megalopae phase.

“The megalopae have a little bit more swimming ability. They look less like aliens and slightly more like something that you might consider a crab or a shrimp,” Voigt said.

Starting in late summer and early fall, the winds shift from primarily southerly to northeasterly, and with that shift, the megalopae are pushed back into inlets, usually the Oregon and Hatteras inlets. They will use their sensory capabilities to find a nursery habitat and then transform to instar, or a small crab.

The instar stage in the life cycle is the focus of her study, she said, and builds on the research of previous graduate students in the Eggleston lab, including Etherington, who had sampled areas within the Pamlico Sound between 1996 and 1999 to learn where juvenile blue crabs were settling.

“In about 1999 — unrelated to her experiment — there was a massive overfishing event, and this occurred due to three hurricanes,” which were Floyd, Dennis and Irene. Overfishing means that a species is being removed at a rate too high for the population to maintain.

The inundation from these storms decreased the salinity upriver, forcing blue crabs to migrate to smaller, higher-salinity areas. This concentration led to a 300% increase in catch-per-unit effort, which is a way to measure how abundant a species is by dividing the total weight of the catch by total amount of work it took, such as hours fished and with what equipment.

“There was just a ton of blue crabs caught that year. We had a really high take. The blue crabs have never rebounded from that,” Voigt said. “There has been a decrease in fishing pressure during that time — a 50% decrease in fishing pressure — and we still have not seen it rebound.”

Then in 2016, when Voigt began as a doctoral student, Eggleston told her he found it interesting that the blue crab population wasn’t rebounding and it wasn’t clear why, though the going theory was recruitment overfishing.

For her research, she sampled from 2017 until 2019 the same exact locations Etherington had sampled 1996-99 for her study.

Voigt said she expected to find a strong reduction in the number of crabs in these key nursery habitats, “because if we’re running into recruitment overfishing, then you’re assuming that not enough juveniles are recruiting back into Albemarle-Pamlico Sound, and therefore you will not see as many instars in these habitats,” Voigt explained.

“However, what’s really interesting about this study was that we did not find that. In fact, the numbers of blue crabs we found when I studied were statistically no different from the number of blue crabs” that Etherington had found when she sampled the same areas before the fisheries collapse, Voigt continued.

An overwhelming majority of litter captured over the course of three years by in-stream traps set up in watersheds throughout the state was plastic waste, according to a recently published study.

About 96% of litter North Carolina waterkeeper organizations and their volunteers removed from trash traps between June 2021 and November 2024 consisted of plastics, said Dr. Nancy Lauer, lead author of the paper published in the journal Community Science.

“Plastic is lightweight, it’s buoyant, it floats easily,” Lauer, a staff scientist and lecturing fellow with the Duke Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, said in a recent telephone interview. “The plastic items, they can very well make their way through the stormwater system, through the stream and end up in the trash trap before they are ever going to biodegrade.”

During the course of the three-year study, 150,750 pieces of litter were removed from 21 traps.

The litter traps were funded through a 2020 North Carolina Environmental Enhancement Grant as part of a statewide microplastics research and pollution-prevention infrastructure project sponsored by Waterkeepers Carolina, a group of 15 licensed waterkeepers in the state.

By removing and documenting the litter that gets caught in the traps, waterkeeper organizations are able to get an understanding of the most prevalent types of litter entering North Carolina rivers. They are also able to look at correlations between litter accumulation and characteristics such as development, impervious surface, road density and human populations within different watersheds.

Using the data collected by those waterkeeper organizations, researchers can provide a big picture of riverine litter in the state and use that to shape policy.

For this study, seven waterkeeper organizations and their volunteers were tasked with separating and organizing the trash they removed from traps into categories.

Those categories included plastic film, hard plastic, polystyrene foam, metal, glass; and paper covering items, such as drink containers made of plastic, glass and metal, plastic straws and stirrers, cup lids, bottle caps and food wrappers.

Fragments of polystyrene foam from consumer products like Styrofoam cups, food takeout containers and packing materials were removed from all 21 traps in “very high” loads, Lauer said.

Those fragments and single-use plastic bottles made up about 83% of the litter that was collected and documented.

“If you do a cleanup of a roadside, you’re going to find a lot more plastic bags, a lot more food wrappers and we would find those occasionally,” Lauer said. “But I think that those just tend to snag on branches or get weighted down in the stream banks before they would ever be able to reach the trap. It was sort of eye opening to realize which of these plastic items, when they get into the environment, are extremely mobile. It seems like the trash traps are telling us that Styrofoam fragments and plastic bottles can really effectively be transported by surface waters downstream just because they made up such a large fraction of what we were finding in the traps.”

The paper is the latest to highlight single-use plastic pollution in the state.

A 14-page report published last March and created through a collaboration of nonprofits and the policy clinic concluded that state agencies, local governments and nonprofits spent more than $56 million in 2023 cleaning up more than 7,000 tons of litter.

Related: State’s fix for costly litter problem ‘not efficient or sufficient’

That same year, legislators injected language into the state budget prohibiting counties and cities from adopting rules, regulations, ordinances, or resolutions that restrict, tax, or charge fees on auxiliary containers.

The provision stopped locally elected officials in Asheville from voting on a proposed ban of single-use plastic bags and Styrofoam food containers. The law also barred local elected officials in Durham from deciding whether to require retailers tack on a 10-cent fee for each plastic bag given to customers in restaurants, grocery stores and shops.

That law “dealt a huge blow” to North Carolina, Lauer said.

The volume of single-use plastics removed from riverine traps clearly indicates that type of pollution is a huge issue in the state, she said

“I think what this data really highlights is that there’s still work that needs to be done and that work now, because of that preemption law, can’t necessarily be done on the local level in the same way that it could before,” Lauer said. “But there are state-level actions like banning Styrofoam, or a bottle bill that would incentivize people to return their bottles to receive a small deposit. Those could be really effective at reducing stream litter.”

She said it is important to keep in mind that there are types of litter that aren’t being captured in trash traps.

“These traps have a lot of positive aspects, but ideally we want to live in a world where we don’t need them because that trash is never ending up in our streams,” Lauer said. “I feel really strongly that there needs to be action by the corporations and the businesses and the government to stop these items from being provided in the first place. We go through life and you can make choices as an individual, but single-use plastics are still so prevalent that it can feel impossible to avoid them, no matter how hard you try.”

EAST LAKE — Red wolf populations in northeastern North Carolina are still far from recovered, but there are optimistic signs that the highly endangered species now has a solid chance.

More wolves are breeding, more pups are surviving, coyote hybridization has been cut, and there are fewer mortalities from vehicle strikes and gunshots.

While still modest, those successes reflect increased community engagement and renewed commitment from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and its numerous partners.

“It’s kind of a small crew, but we’re really dedicated to what we’re doing here,” wildlife biologist Joe Madison, North Carolina program manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Wolf Recovery Program, said during a virtual meeting held Sept. 23 to provide updates on the program. “We want to make this work. We want to work with landowners to make this work. We don’t want to impose it.”

Madison said that only about half of the red wolves roam within Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge land. The population, as of August, according to Fish and Wildlife data, totals about 30 red wolves, including 18 collared adults as well as uncollared juvenile wolves and a few other adults. This population roams the designated recovery area, 1.7 million acres of public and private land in Hyde, Dare, Tyrrell, Washington and Beaufort counties. Red wolves have been seen in all five counties

It is the only known wild population in the world.

Red wolves had once ranged over wide swaths of the U.S. mainland, including much of the Gulf Coast and Southeast regions, but after years of overhunting and habitat loss, the animals were declared extinct in the wild and added to the Endangered Species List in 1967. Twenty years later, four pairs of captive wolves, offspring of wild stragglers captured earlier in Louisiana, were transferred to Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, headquartered in Dare County. Innovative management tactics led to steady population growth, reaching a height of about 120 red wolves by 2007.

In 2020, there were only about seven collared wolves.

But poor communication with landowners led to angry confrontations over wolves coming onto private lands, while coyote hunting regulations led to mistaken identities.  Political support and funding for the recovery program dropped precipitously, and more wolves were being shot, whether intentionally or by mistake. By 2015, proposals were introduced to drastically reduce or potentially eliminate the program. After a series of lawsuits by environmental groups, the recovery program was eventually restored.

As Red Wolf Recovery Program Coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Emily Weller has acknowledged, the agency had to change the way it operated.

“Reintroducing a large carnivore into the wild had never been done before, and the focus of this program in the beginning was almost entirely biological,” Weller said, according to minutes of a management update meeting in September 2024. “But the social aspects, the community engagement, and human dimension — those were the cracks in our program’s foundation.”

Now the concept of “collaborative conservation” is viewed as critical to the survival of the red wolf, she said recently. 

“We cannot recover this species on our own,” Weller said during this week’s virtual update. “Our work depends on a pretty complex network of organizations, agencies, communities and individuals.”

That network includes veterinarian care at North Carolina State University and local veterinarians, staff with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, and assistance from numerous nonprofit and nongovernment groups.

“The science tells us what’s possible,” Weller said. “But it’s the relationships, the trust, the collaboration, that really determine what’s achievable.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service also now works with “Prey for the Pack,” a habitat-improvement program that engages with private landowners in eastern North Carolina wolf recovery areas in mutually beneficial habitat programming.

The Red Wolf Recovery Program also works closely with 52 zoo and wildlife centers across the country as part of the Saving Animals From Extinction, or SAFE, program, an initiative of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which currently cares for 280 captive red wolves. Part of the program’s goal is to increase the SAFE population to 400.

“They are a critical piece of this program in that they support the establishment of wild populations in maintaining genetic diversity,” Weller said.

Much care goes into choosing captive wolves to transfer to the recovery program in hopes of future pairing, as well as deciding which pups to place into dens with similarly aged pups for wild mothers to adopt, Weller noted.

“We rely on universities and academia for research and data to guide and base our decisions, and we’re using it constantly to adapt our management,” she said. “And then we need close coordination and communication with local landowners and community members to understand and incorporate their concerns and hopes for their community, as they have the most direct bearing on conservation and recovery, since they are the ones that live with the red wolves.”

Weller said that, other than a period of time when spending was frozen or restricted, the current funding for the Red Wolf Recovery Program had not been reduced.

Ultimately, she said, success will be when red wolves can be delisted — when they don’t need human help to survive — which is expected to take about 50 years, if all goes as planned.

Criteria that meets that goal include measurable thresholds: three viable populations, distributed to maximize redundancy and protect from catastrophic loss; one population of at least 180 and two with a minimum of 280 wolves, each with high gene diversity. Populations must be stable or growing for a decade with minimal human help and have a 95% probability of persisting for 100 years.

And finally, there must be long-term commitment that the sustainable populations can be maintained into the foreseeable future without Endangered Species Act protections.

“Red wolf recovery is about far more than just saving the species,” Weller added. “It’s about restoring ecosystems or landscapes to their natural balanced state and creating healthier environments that benefit plants and wildlife, including game species, and people.”

Every December, the red wolf program issues a release strategy for the coming year, that sets out a plan of how many captive wolves to release into the wild population that will best enable genetic diversity and sustainable growth. Changing conditions will be considered in any necessary revisions.

“It is also important to recognize that the ability to execute many of the releases is highly dependent on numerous on-the-ground factors,” according to the 2024-25 plan. “These factors include, but are not limited to, the ability to successfully capture specific wild Red Wolves, the correct timing of birth, and size of wild ad captive litters, to allow for pup fostering, and the survival of individual wild Red Wolves included in the scenarios.

“Given the myriad of factors that influence the different scenarios, the Service’s actions described in this strategy require real-time flexibility and the ability to adapt to changing factors on the ground and situations; thus, they require management discretion in the field to maximize the chances of success.”

Madison said that the team depends on having that flexibility to make judgment calls and adjust management tactics. During the update meeting, he elaborated on numerous and highly complex strategies that go into pup fostering, proper wolf-human interactions and handling — as little as possible — and wolf feeding – frozen, wild, small mammals like rabbits, raccoons, nutria and fresh frozen roadkill, like deer — and matchmaking (wolves are picky and fickle, too).

But Madison seemed quite pleased with the improvements in pup population survival, an obviously critical component of species recovery.

The pup survival rate to one year is typically about 50%, he said, but after two complete litters didn’t make it in recent years,  the recovery team determined that the likely cause was canine distemper.

“So this year when these pups were in an acclimation pen, and they were five weeks old, we went in the pen, recaptured them, and we gave them their first round of vaccines,” Madison explained. “Also, we implanted them with abdominal transmitters so we would be able to track them after they were released.”

So far, so good, he said. A family group that was released into the wild in May seems to be thriving.

“We may go into the season with a great plan, but then, you know, stuff happens out there,” Madison said. “And we have to adjust and make do with the best we possibly can.”

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).

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.

The N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission is seeking commercial and recreational fishermen, scientists and other interested parties to fill seats on fisheries advisory committees.

Members are appointed to these committees by the Marine Fisheries Commission chair for three-year terms. Several terms will expire in January, according to a release.

Committee advisers are expected to attend meetings at least once every two months and actively participate in a process that includes reviewing scientific documents and issuing papers to make recommendations on management strategies.

Qualified applicants must not have had a significant fisheries violation within the past three years.

The committees include the commission’s Northern and Southern regional advisory committees and the finfish, habitat and water quality, and shellfish/crustacean advisory committees. These committees are charged with, among other duties, reviewing draft fishery management plans and Coastal Habitat Protection Plans and may bring fisheries issues pertaining to their region or subject matter to the commission’s attention.

Committee members will be reimbursed for travel and other expenses related to their official duties if they complete the necessary paperwork.

Applicants may complete the online form. Printable applications are also available online or by calling 252-515-5500.

The deadline to submit an application is Oct. 24. Applications may be submitted through the online webform, by email to MFC@deq.nc.gov with the subject line: AC Application, or by mail to N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries, P.O. Box 769, Morehead City, NC 28557 made to Attention: MFC Office.

The North Carolina Coastal Habitat Protection Plan Steering Committee is scheduled to meet this month to discuss the recommendations in a recent study summary on the status of state fisheries.

The committee is set to meet from 1-3 p.m. by web conference Sept. 25.

Included on the meeting agenda is a presentation about the initial recommendations from the Collaboratory Study on the Coastal and Marine Fisheries of the State.

Related: Report: State needs more fisheries scientists to meet goals

The committee will discuss the proposed framework for the 2026 Coastal Habitat Protection Plan amendment as well as the timeline for the 2026 revision of the plan.

The plan is revised every five years to reflect changes in the status of habitat protection in the state. It was initially adopted in December 2004 by the North Carolina Marine Fisheries, Environmental Management, and Coastal Resources commissions.

The plan includes information on coastal habitat distribution and abundance, ecological functions and importance to fish production, status and trends, habitat threats, and recommendations to address those threats.

There will be a listening location at the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries Central District Office on Arendell Street in Morehead City.

For more information, contact Zach.Harrison@deq.nc.gov with the Division of Marine Fisheries.

Those slabs of meat labeled “shark” on display in grocery stores and seafood markets might be from a critically endangered species and contain significant levels of mercury, according to a new study.

The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill paper, “Sale of critically endangered sharks in the United States” was published Tuesday in Frontiers in Marine Science journal. The study was funded by the university and the National Science Foundation.

Students in the university’s undergraduate-level seafood forensic course analyzed the DNA of 29 shark meat samples collected from 19 filets purchased in grocery stores, seafood markets and Asian specialty markets, mostly in North Carolina, and from 10 products called “jerky” that was ordered online.

Out of the samples, 27 “were ambiguously labeled as shark or mako shark but not as a specific species.” Of the two samples that were labeled, one was shortfin shark mislabeled as blacktip shark, and the other was correctly labeled.

The students identified 11 different species, three of which the Union for Conservation of Nature has designated as critically endangered: great hammerhead, scalloped hammerhead and tope.

“Previous studies have found that the first two species contain very high levels of mercury, illustrating the implications of seafood mislabeling for human health. The availability of shark meat in U.S. grocery stores is surprising given the dramatic decline of shark populations globally,” the authors wrote. “Moreover, the fact that nearly all shark meat is labeled ambiguously or incorrectly amplifies the problem. Accurate, verified product labels for shark meat would benefit consumers and shark conservation efforts, and should be a priority for the seafood industry.”

Savannah Ryburn, the lead author of the study, is a marine ecologist who recently earned her doctorate from UNC Chapel Hill. She and distinguished professor John Bruno are co-instructors for the class.

Ryburn told Coastal Review Tuesday that the main goal of the study was to figure out what species are being sold and if there’s any cause for concern, to which, “we would say ‘yes.’”

Just in the 29 samples analyzed, three were the meat of critically endangered species that are extremely high in mercury, which can be very dangerous for human consumption, Ryburn highlighted.

Finding the highly endangered shark species among the samples is a big conservation concern, “but even more perversely,” Bruno explained, these are long-lived, high-trophic level species with high mercury concentrations.

“Nobody should be eating hammerhead sharks,” Bruno said, because they’re loaded with mercury and the consumer has no idea, since the meat is sold as shark.

“We don’t know if it’s a spiny dogfish that’s low in the food chain, not very long lived, not very big, probably not super concerning in terms of tissue content, but there’s just no way to know,” Bruno added.

With this ambiguous labeling, Ryburn continued, sellers are taking away the consumer’s choice. “It’s very concerning when it comes to the general labeling,” particularly considering their findings are from such a small sample size. “It just raises more concerns for the actual shark meat market in the United States.”

Bruno explained that the shark populations are being decimated by fishing, and mostly for its fin. There are regulations in place that require the fisher to land the entire shark, not just cut off the fin, which is one reason the meat is being sold in stores.

Bruno explained that the fin is shipped to Asia, where it is in demand, and then the rest of the meat goes into either the pet food supply or the human food supply, but it’s not lucrative. The average price in the Raleigh area was around $5 a pound.

The United States Food and Drug Administration only requires sellers to have the meat labeled as shark, Ryburn continued.

The results of the study led the authors to emphasize “that sellers need to be required to label their product to the species name, rather than just shark, so that it can be more regulated and consumers have more of a choice,” she said. “In Europe, their regulations are a bit more specific when it comes to labeling sharks to the species level, so we definitely recommend following suit with that European regulation.”

Seafood Forensics

Bruno is a marine ecologist who, about a decade ago, designed the Seafood Forensics class for students to do the actual research testing and certifying seafood.

“We purchase seafood in grocery stores and restaurants, and we sequence it to identify what it really is, and we quantify mislabeling,” Bruno said. “We teach the undergraduate students about seafood mislabeling,” and use DNA barcoding to figure out what stores are actually selling.

Students are taught basic lab skills such as how to extract and sequence DNA, how to read the sequences and compare them to online databases, or DNA barcoding. Previous classes have studied red snapper and shrimp, for example.

Ryburn explained that the students design the research project they work on throughout the semester.

The idea to study shark meat evolved from a student telling the class that she noticed a grocery store was selling meat under the generic label of “shark,” though there’s hundreds of species of sharks, and they vary, she said.

The students collected the samples, most of which were labeled “shark,” and then began going through the process to identify the species.

About sharks

Ryburn, who studied sharks for her doctorate, said the animal is vital to the overall function and health of the marine ecosystem but “they’re currently being fished at extremely high rates throughout the whole world.”

Many of the species are long lived and, as a result, the populations don’t replenish quickly. If a large number is removed by fishing, it is hard for the population to recover at a sustainable rate.

She called sharks the “cleanup crew” for marine ecosystems, because they prey on injured or sick animals, making the populations of other species stronger.

If there are no sharks to help manage the population of other species, this will cause a cascading effect on the overall health within the ecosystem.

As for the threats to human health, shark meat is similar to tuna, in that there’s a very high level of mercury in its tissue, and that is due to something called bioaccumulation, which is the buildup of chemicals in an organism over time.

“Predators that are higher up in the food chain tend to accumulate more mercury in their tissue from the prey that they’re eating, because everything has mercury in its tissue,” Ryburn said. But with larger predators that live longer and eat bigger prey, the animal tends to accumulate more mercury, and that mercury never leaves the tissue.

Some shark species even eat tuna, like the mako shark, and they’re accumulating all of that mercury when they eat.

“If we go and eat something that’s super high in mercury, we’re also absorbing that mercury into our bodies, and mercury can cause major health issues and even cause people to die,” she said.

Researchers found in a recent study that, over the long term, bulkhead structures have a “significant negative effect” on marsh habitat size.

Using high-resolution imagery from 1981 of Carteret County’s Bogue and Back sounds and Newport and North rivers, the team measured the marsh extent, or total marsh area, at 45 sites with bulkheads and 45 natural sites, or those without the type of hardened structure. The 1981 measurements were then compared to the data from images collected in 1992, 2006 and 2013 of the same 90 sites.

The study found that all 45 bulkhead sites experienced marsh shoreline erosion during the 32-year study period, with complete marsh loss at 11% of the sites with bulkheads. More than 80% of the 45 natural marsh control sites experienced shoreline erosion, but at seven sites, around 15%, the marsh shoreline accreted waterward. None of the control sites experienced complete marsh loss.

“Our study found bulkheads nearly tripled the rate of marsh loss over a 32-year period. All of the 45 marshes we studied in front of a bulkhead got smaller or disappeared entirely,” Principal investigator Brandon Puckett explained to Coastal Review.

Puckett is a research marine biologist for the Coastal Resilience, Restoration and Assessment Branch in National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, which partnered with Duke University and North Carolina Division of Coastal Management on the study.

“At the 45 natural marsh sites without bulkheads, the story was different. While many of them also eroded, more than a third actually held their ground or even grew by migrating inland into upland habitat. Bulkheads prevent marsh migration leading to a process known as ‘coastal squeeze’ whereby the marshes are not only eroding at the front edge, but are also blocked from migrating upland,” the Beaufort-based scientist said.

The study, “Bulkheads Reduce Salt Marsh Extent: A Multidecadal Assessment Using Remote Sensing,” was published this summer in the nonprofit Coastal Education and Research Foundation’s Journal of Coastal Research.

“Think of it this way,” Puckett continued. “Over the 32 years of our study — close to the length of a mortgage — the average marsh in front of a bulkhead lost about 15 feet of width. A natural marsh, on the other hand, lost only about 5 feet of width on average, because it could often make up for erosion by migrating upland.”

Of Carteret County’s 1,530 miles of estuarine shoreline, salt marsh accounts for about 1,270 miles, roughly 87 miles is hardened with bulkheads, and the remaining 11% is a different shoreline type or hardened structure other than bulkheads, like riprap.

The Division of Coastal Management, which is under the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, calls bulkheads the “most commonly used estuarine shoreline stabilization method” in the state “but could have deleterious impacts on the marsh habitats where they are being constructed.”

Factors contributing to the deterioration of salt marsh habitats include sea level rise and coastal development, which often result in hardened shoreline stabilization structures like bulkheads or seawalls constructed to protect against coastal hazards such as erosion, flooding and subsequent property damage, according to the study. “Concurrently, the many ecosystem services salt marshes provide, such as storm surge protection, carbon sequestration, improved water quality, and nursery habitat, are also diminishing.”

Authors state that the study is intended to offer a better understanding of how hardened shorelines like bulkheads “can have a significant negative effect on marsh extent through increased erosion of the waterward edge and prevention of landward migration with” sea level rise.

Why look at bulkheads and marsh loss?

Puckett told Coastal Review that the team decided to pursue the study after they realized they were “watching two powerful trends collide: the decline of essential marsh habitats and the increase in shoreline armoring,” provoking the question “’Is the solution to one shoreline erosion (bulkheads) actually making the other problem — marsh loss — worse?’”

He noted that scientists have long suspected that the hardened structures harm marshes but there wasn’t a lot of long-term data demonstrating these impacts. “We wanted to look back in time to objectively compare the long-term rates of change in marsh loss in locations with and without shoreline armoring.”

To get what Puckett called a “fair, apples-to-apples comparison,” the team “essentially became historical detectives” using the old aerial photographs, which were taken around low tide, when marsh shorelines were most visible. The study area was chosen because the historic aerial imagery was available.

They pored over the 1981 photos to find 45 locations where a fringe of salt marsh already existed with a bulkhead behind it. Then, for each of those 45 bulkhead sites, they located a nearby natural marsh without a bulkhead.

“We were careful to select control sites that were exposed to similar wave and wind conditions so that we were comparing like with like,” Puckett continued. “We meticulously traced the waterward and landward edges of the marsh at each site for each of the four imagery sets. By comparing these digital outlines over time, we could precisely measure both the erosion at the front of the marsh and its migration (or lack thereof) at the back.”

One of the more striking surprises from the study, Puckett said, is that the negative effects of bulkheads are almost invisible over shorter time spans.

“When we analyzed the data in smaller chunks — say, over a seven- to 14-year period — the difference in erosion rates between the bulkhead and natural sites wasn’t statistically significant. It was only by looking across the entire 32-year period that the dramatic, long-term impact became undeniable,” he said. It’s a true ‘death by a thousand cuts,’ and it tells us that short-term assessments can easily miss the entire story.”

The discovery also raises a new question about what’s driving erosion.

“We found that the fastest erosion rates occurred between 2006 and 2013, the period during our study with the highest rate of relative sea-level rise,” he said, “but not the stormiest from a tropical storm and hurricane perspective. This suggests that the constant, daily pressure of higher water levels might be a more powerful force in eating away at marsh edges than the occasional big storm, which challenges some common assumptions.”

‘Study is unique’

Authors state that this study is “the first to investigate the long-term impacts of structures on loss of marsh extent and provide useful information for better understanding the effects of shoreline hardening on salt marsh ecosystems,” which Puckett expounded on for Coastal Review.

“This study is unique for a few key reasons,” Puckett said. “Conceptually, we’ve known that bulkheads can expedite loss of marsh through reflecting wave energy and preventing migration, but this is one of the first studies to provide empirical evidence to support our conceptual understanding.”

The study analyzes more than 30 years of data, enabling the team to illustrate the slow, cumulative impacts that shorter studies could miss. “Environmental changes often don’t happen overnight, and this long-term view is critical,” he continued.

The research specifically focuses on what happens to the existing marsh that is left in front of a bulkhead, as well.

“Many people might think that as long as you leave some marsh, you’re preserving its function. Our work shows that while this may be true in the short-term, this leftover fringe marsh is often living on borrowed time because it can’t easily adapt to rising seas,” Puckett said.

And lastly, the team didn’t just measure erosion at the water’s edge, but also measured the movement of the landward boundary.

“This allowed us to calculate the net change in marsh area and definitively show that preventing landward migration is a critical factor that turns a shoreline erosion problem into a catastrophic loss of habitat. It’s this comprehensive look at both sides of the marsh over such a long period that is a unique component of this research,” he said.

Though disheartening, Puckett said it’s crucial to know that “this isn’t just a story about loss. It’s also a story about resilience and hope. The ‘good news’ from our study is that where marshes had space to move, they did.”

In the 45 natural sites studied, more than a third of the marshes were stable or even grew by migrating into upland habitats, both proving that marshes are naturally resilient and can adapt if given the room and pointing to a path forward to help address marsh erosion and migration.

“First, to combat erosion at the water’s edge, we can use living shorelines. Instead of hard walls, these solutions use natural materials like oyster reefs and native plants to slow wave energy while maintaining the vital intertidal connection between land and water. This helps preserve the marsh’s front edge. However, a marsh still may need room to move inland to adapt to sea-level rise,” Puckett said.

And a “second, equally critical part of the solution is to protect marsh migration corridors through land-use planning and conservation,” he added.

The corridors are undeveloped land set aside to allow marshes to move upland to survive rather than drowning in place.

“It is the combination of using living shorelines to reduce erosion and allowing for landward migration that can reduce the effects of coastal squeeze. We have a chance now to help protect our salt marshes that are the nurseries for our fisheries, our buffer from storm surge, and our natural water cleansers,” Puckett said.

Donate your flounder carcass and you could win a prize.

The N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries will collect flounder carcasses from recreational anglers during the season, which runs Sept. 1-14 this year, for research purposes.

Anyone who donates their flounder carcass and fully completes the required catch-card will be entered to win one of two rod and reel combinations.

Cards and donation supplies are available at year-round donation sites in the following locations:

• Frisco Rod & Gun, Frisco.
• Jennette’s Pier, Nags Head.
• Eastside Bait & Tackle, Washington.
• Cape Pointe Marina, Harkers Island.
• N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries Headquarters, Morehead City.
• Tex’s Tackle, Wilmington.
• Clem’s Seafood, Southport.

Additional temporary donation locations have been established at the following:

• Quarter Deck, 503 Carteret St., Bath.
• Chasin Tails Outdoors Bait & Tackle, 709 Atlantic Beach Causeway, Atlantic Beach.
• Pelagic Hunter, 104 James St., Sneads Ferry.
• Intracoastal Angler, 6332 Oleander Drive, Wilmington.
• Carolina Beach Municipal Docks, Carl Winner Drive, Carolina Beach.
• Ocean Isle Fishing Center, 65 Causeway Drive, Ocean Isle Beach.

Anglers are asked to leave the fish head and tail intact when cleaning and, if possible, the guts/reproductive organs. Fishers on charter or head boats should let the fish cleaner know the carcass will be donated.

The division’s biologist measure each fish, determine the sex of each when possible, and remove the otoliths, or ear bones, to determine the age of each fish. This information will used in future flounder stock assessments.

Recreational flounder season opens this year at 12:01 a.m. Sept. 1 and closes at 11:59 p.m. Sept. 14. There is a one fish per one person per day limit through the season and the size limit is 15 inches total length.

Biologists will gather data from commercially caught flounder at fish houses. Carcasses caught by commercial fishers should not be left in the Carcass Collection Program freezers.

For more information, visit the Carcass Collection Program website or contact Amanda Macek, division sportfishing specialist, at 252 515-5537 or amanda.macek@deq.nc.gov.

Plants on land are increasingly absorbing more carbon, while Earth’s oceans are taking in and storing less, according to a study released earlier this month.

The study published Aug. 1 in Nature Climate Change found a strong upward trend of global photosynthesis on land between 2003 and 2021.

That trend, however, is partially offset by a decline in photosynthesis occurring in oceans.

“At the global scale, if we put land and ocean together, it shows an enhanced photosynthesis, so that means, currently, our nature ecosystem is still showing an ability to absorb more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” said Yulong Zhang, a research scientist at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and primary author of the study. “Overall, this is encouraging news.”

That’s because, as the climate is warming, the system of plants, animals and microorganisms that referred to as the land ecosystem, still functions as a potential carbon sink to offset the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, he said.

Plants on land and algae in oceans absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, a crucial process that uses sunlight to create the base of the food chain.

But, it should be noted, Zhang said, that photosynthesis is a driver of carbon cycles because the ecosystem, like humans, can breathe out CO2.

Scientists have largely studied the net primary production, or the rate at which plants and phytoplankton store energy and make it available to animals, by focusing their research on either the land or sea.

Zhang primarily focused his research on the land until this study, one that treats both the land and ocean as two components of one global system and how those parts, together, are responding to climate warming through photosynthesis.

To conduct their study, the team of researchers used sets of data collected from satellites and large-scale climate information to create models to try and simulate various environmental factors, such as air and water-surface temperature, light and precipitation.

Scientists then compared year-to-year fluctuations in photosynthesis with the long-term trends on land and, separately, in oceans. The research team included scientists with the University of Iowa, Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, University of New Hampshire, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and U.S. Forest Service.

“We found that, globally, the photosynthesis on land showing a strong increasing trend in the past 18 years from 2003 to 2021,” Zhang said. “But, by contrast, the ocean just shows a weak, declining trend.”

The rate at which plants on land store energy and make it available to animals during that 18-year span increased 0.2 billion metric tons of carbon per year, except in the tropics of South America.

During that same time, marine net primary production declined by about 0.1 billion metric tons of carbon per year, with strong declines occurring largely in tropical and subtropical seas, especially in the Pacific Ocean.

The trends show that during those 18 years global net primary production increased at an overall rate of 0.1 billion metric tons of carbon per year.

The changing trend of the land and the ocean are not uniform at the regional scale.

In tropical seas, scientists have found a large-scale decline in photosynthesis.

That’s a worrying pattern, Zhang said, because that decline equates to a decrease in energy that is provided to fish.

“So, the fishery in the tropical ocean may show a decline and it may particularly have influence on the local fisheries and also the economics for the tropical countries,” he said.

What remains unanswered is the question of what happens if this trend continues. Will the decline our oceans’ ability to absorb carbon continue and, if so, how long can the land ecosystem potentially make up for the declines?

To get answers, that will require “us to do long-term, coordinated monitoring of both land and ocean ecosystems as integrated components of our Earth,” Zhang said.

Guest Commentary

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

From the inlets of Texas to the marsh creeks of North Carolina, the Southern flounder has been a coastal mainstay — a master of camouflage, a favorite of anglers, and a staple in commercial docks. But the fishery is in trouble, and the root cause is proving more stubborn than nets and lines: the water where these fish grow up is getting too warm for their biology to function as it should.

The Biology Behind the Problem

Southern flounder have a quirk that makes them unusually sensitive to climate change: their sex is not fixed at birth. Instead, juvenile flounder spend their first few months in shallow estuarine nursery creeks, and the water temperature during that period determines whether they develop as male or female.

In a balanced system, roughly half would be female — the egg-layers that drive reproduction. But warmer nursery waters skew this ratio heavily toward males. The difference isn’t subtle:

• North Carolina surveys (2014–2017) found that in cooler northern nurseries like the Pamlico River, about 60–67% of juveniles were male.
• In warmer southern creeks, like those in the New River, male proportions reached 81–94%, leaving only a sliver of females in the mix.

Lab experiments confirm the link: water temperatures of 80 °F or higher during early growth push most juveniles to become male, regardless of their genetic sex.

The implications are stark: fewer females, fewer eggs, fewer young fish entering the population. Without enough females, the stock’s recovery potential collapses.

Another aspect of Southern flounder biology that many fishermen don’t know is that females reach much larger adult sizes than males. The vast majority (80-90%) of males stop growing before reaching the minimum harvestable size (currently 15 inches in NC waters). That means that nearly all of the harvest (both recreational and commercial) targets females.

Fishing Pressure vs. Warming Water

Historical overfishing has contributed to the Southern flounder decline. The adult fish migrate offshore in the fall to spawn, making them easy targets as they leave the estuaries. In North Carolina, harvests were high for decades until a 2019 assessment confirmed the stock was overfished with overfishing occurring.

Since then, NC managers have imposed some of the strictest rules in state history, and throughout the species range — including a 72% cut in removals and, in 2024, the complete closure of the recreational season. These cuts have reduced fishing mortality, but the size of the population remains far below levels needed for a sustainable fishery.

What’s vexing managers is that even with drastically reduced catch, the warming-driven skewed sex ratios limit reproductive capacity and the total number of females available to harvest. In other words, fishing limits can protect adult females, but if the nurseries keep producing mostly males, there will never be enough females to rebuild the stock.

Habitat and Other Stressors

Habitat degradation — from shoreline hardening, dredging, and water pollution — has also reduced the quality of juvenile flounder habitat. Loss of vegetated marsh edges and shallow feeding flats means fewer places for young flounder to shelter and feed. But while habitat restoration can help in specific locations, it cannot offset the coastwide effects of rising water temperatures.

Not Just a North Carolina Story

From Texas to the Carolinas, Southern flounder numbers have declined in a synchronized pattern. That’s telling: historical fishing pressure as well as harvest rules vary widely, but the declines align closely with regional warming trends, pointing to climate as a coastwide driver.

Texas has invested heavily in hatchery enhancement, producing and releasing over 378,000 juvenile flounder so far, with plans to scale up. South Carolina began stocking trials in 2021. Past experiences with other coastal fisheries indicate that supplementing wild populations with hatchery fish may not solve the problem. So far, North Carolina has opted not to use hatcheries as part of Southern flounder management, focusing instead on catch reductions to rebuild the stock.

Hatcheries may provide some help in the short term, especially during years of poor natural reproduction, but they cannot solve the fundamental temperature problem that exists in wild nurseries.

The Overlooked Winter Challenge

Southern flounder spawn offshore in winter. Climate data show that ocean waters      throughout the species range are warmer now than in past decades. Key reproductive events      — egg fertilization, embryo development, and early larval growth — may be more sensitive to even modest winter warming than previously thought.

The poor recruitment in Southern flounder mirrors declining patterns observed. In other winter-spawning species, including members of the snapper-grouper complex, leading scientists to question whether we are witnessing a broader ecological regime shift toward lower productivity.

If Warming Continues

If summer and early fall estuarine temperatures keep rising:

• Sex ratios will remain heavily skewed toward males in many North Carolina nurseries.
• Even with strict fishing limits, the spawning stock will rebuild only slowly — or not at all.
• Commercial and recreational opportunities could remain severely restricted for several years.
• The fishery’s cultural and economic role in coastal NC could shrink dramatically.

Local habitat strategies — like protecting shaded, groundwater-fed creeks that stay cooler — could help maintain “female refuges” in certain areas. But these are stopgaps. Without broader climate action, the male-heavy trend will persist, limiting egg production and, ultimately, the number of flounder available to catch.

The Road Ahead

North Carolina’s current management plan aims to rebuild the stock to sustainable levels by 2028, but that target assumes average environmental conditions. If water temperatures continue to trend upward, managers may need to combine stricter harvest controls, targeted hatchery releases, and climate-resilient habitat protection just to stabilize the fishery.

For now, the Southern flounder is sending a clear signal: it’s not just about how many fish we take — it’s also about what’s happening in the water itself.

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

It was the massive scale of destruction in the North Carolina mountains after Hurricane Helene last year that spotlighted how advantageous microgrids — small independent power grids — can be to communities that have suffered disasters.

After horrific flash floods from the storm that hit Sept. 27 inundated many of Asheville’s roads and buildings — and nearly all of its vital utility infrastructure — critical help soon arrived from the New Orleans-based nonprofit disaster service Footprint Project in the form of mobile renewable power.

An estimated 1 million western North Carolinians lost power in the storm. Many were also left without running water, food and shelter.

“We saw the value in what they were doing, in deploying small-scale solar and battery storage to help communities that lacked access to power, water and telecommunications,” North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association Executive Director Matt Abele told Coastal Review. “And so we jumped in right away and helped to fundraise for them to be able to expand the amount of work that they were doing in that part of the state.”

Apparently, the practicality and flexibility of the technology also impressed officials with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality State Energy Office, which on Aug. 12 announced a $5 million investment to provide accessible post-disaster emergency power with permanent and mobile microgrids.

“Hurricane Helene showed us that we need to be prepared to withstand severe weather emergencies,” Gov. Josh Stein said in a press release announcing the plan. “That means rebuilding our energy infrastructure with resilience in mind.”

Along with NCSEA and the Footprint Project, the state energy office will collaborate in the project with Land of Sky Regional Council, as well as a network of regional partners.

With as many as 24 stationary microgrids that would be installed across six western counties affected by Helene and two mobile Beehive microgrid hubs, one on the coast, the other in the mountains, the project is intended to fill critical needs in communities statewide.

Essentially four large shipping containers with solar panels on top of the outside and battery storage systems inside, each Beehive — the “Hive” — operates independent of the stationary power grid. Smaller mobile solar-equipped trailers — the “Bees” — are dispatched to affected areas to provide power for essential services such as water filtration stations, charging stations for phones and other devices and hotspots for internet through cellular or satellite connections.

Abele said that NCSEA became familiar with Footprint through its relationship with Green Tech Renewables, a nationwide distributor of solar and battery storage that had partnered with the Hawaii Solar Energy Association and Footprint in responding to Maui wildfires.

Abele said his organization reached out via email to Footprint as Helene was approaching the mountains. As it turned out, the large scale of the damage and the randomness of impacts from the storm really highlighted the value of the Beehives being able to go where needed.

“I think that’s the beauty of having a setup like these Beehive microgrids, where you can charge mobile equipment,” Abele said. “Because only investing in permanent infrastructure, it’s like trying to essentially find a needle in a haystack and predict exactly where the next storm is going to hit, versus having the equipment on hand and ready to go, to be deployed to where that next storm is.”

Green Tech’s Raleigh location had solicited donations of solar panels and other supplies, as well as raised funds to purchase products such as photovoltaic wire and batteries, and trucked it to western North Carolina to support Footprint Project’s work, as described in an article published by Elizabeth Ouzts for the nonprofit news site Energy News Network in October 2024.

According to the article, by late December the group had built about 50 microgrids throughout mountain communities. That was the most ever since it started in 2018 in response to founder Will Heegaard’s experience two years earlier working as a paramedic in New Guinea and struggling to find power to refrigerate blood supplies.

Heegaard, today operations director for the Footprint Project, which he founded with partners Jamie Swezey and Nate Heegaard, said the group is working toward replacing the fossil-fuel-powered generators that have long been serving communities after disasters with battery-charged solar panels. Not only are Beehives and Bees not dependent on fuel supplies, they’re quiet and clean.

“Responders use what they know works, and our job is to get them stuff that works better than single-use fossil fuels do,” he told Energy News Network. “And then, they can start asking for that. It trickles up to a systems change.”

Even if the microgrids don’t outright replace those generators, Heegaard added, they can supplement them, helping fuel supplies last longer.

The state’s grant will provide about two beehives with mobile equipment and permanent installations with fixed solar and battery storage that would be attached to either local government buildings or nonprofit center or other location where people congregate after a storm, Abele said. 

“And so those are all really important decisions in terms of where that investment is being made, to ensure that it is being made in a place that people will go and serve the community appropriately,” he said.

“Because the worst-case scenario is, you walk down a path of investing, and then deploying infrastructure, and then that infrastructure sits unutilized during a natural disaster because it’s inaccessible,” he said.

According to the state, the Land of Sky Regional Council, part of the Appalachian Regional Commission, will soon begin purchasing the Beehive microgrids, and site selection for the microgrids is to begin this fall. The stakeholder engagement for the installation will take place in September, and project completion is anticipated in June 2027.

One of the most significant reasons that solar-powered microgrids like the Beehive hadn’t  found much traction in the U.S. is because of the high cost of batteries, Abele explained.  But now, he said, the price of batteries — similar to what happened earlier to solar panels — has decreased about 92% in the last 15 years, making the much-improved technology affordable.

“We’ve seen sort of a smattering of these projects on an ad hoc basis, but not a comprehensive strategy around deploying this equipment,” he said.

In addition to the proposed Beehives, there have been other smaller microgrid projects in the state, including on Ocracoke and plans in Charlotte.  

“But aside from that, there aren’t a ton of examples that you can point to in other states,” Abele said. “And so I think North Carolina really is going to be a leader in setting the example for recovery after a natural disaster.”

With massive canines that could gore and then gnash its prey, prehistoric hell pigs were fierce predators before they went extinct 20 million years ago.

The four-hooved entelodonts, the scientific name for the land mammal that looked like a giant hippo-pig hybrid, had a skull half the size of its body with a jaw that could open more than 90 degrees to chomp its game.

“We’re talking, maybe 6 feet at the shoulder, closing in on 2,000 pounds, a massive head with these weird projections that made the skull look even more crazy,” Raleigh-based paleontologist Sean Moran told Coastal Review.

The hell pig, which isn’t a pig at all but is related to the hippo, is one of a dozen “exceedingly rare” early Miocene land mammal fossils recovered over the last several decades from a commercially owned rock quarry just outside Maysville, where Jones and Onslow counties meet.

These fossils help fill in the gaps of early Miocene biogeography, or how the animals were distributed across the Earth roughly 23 to 16 million years ago, according to a recent Cambridge University Press study.

“The Early Miocene is of great importance to understand the macroevolution and distribution of land mammals in North America. It marks the origins and major adaptive radiations of many modern families of mammals, and considerable faunal dispersal coinciding with global sea-level changes,” explains the paper titled, “Early Miocene land mammals and chronology of the Belgrade Formation, eastern North Carolina.”

Moran is an author of the paper and has been the paleontology and geology collections manager for the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh since 2021.

The study looks at around 25 years’ worth of fossils collected from the Belgrade Formation, “where we only have a few dozen fossils of land mammals,” Moran said. He described the Belgrade Formation as a single, fairly thin stratigraphic, or rock, layer in Jones County and the vicinity.

The land mammal fossils found in Maysville “of this age are rare in eastern North America, north of Florida,” but similar fossils are found in abundance in Texas, Florida and Nebraska, the study says. “As such, the recovery of a small but biochronologically diagnostic assemblage of land mammals from (the Maysville quarry) makes it an important contribution to understand Early Miocene biogeography.” 

 A biochronologically diagnostic assemblage means that the group of fossils found together in the same rock layer indicate a specific geological time period. In this case, the late Oligocene or early Miocene, about 17 to 21 million years ago.

The fossils recovered from the Belgrade Formation are of “added importance” because land and marine animals are embedded in the same rock layer “which are likewise rare during this time in North America.”

Though there’s only been around three decades of collecting on and off in the Belgrade Formation, that “gets our hopes up that when we start looking more closely and collecting more diligently, that we might be able to build out a much greater fauna list of what might be there,” Moran said.

The discovery of the hell pig molar is surprising because hell pigs are “pretty rare in most places,” Moran explained in an interview.

The museum collection that Moran oversees includes a cast of that hell pig molar found around 15 years ago, which was donated to the Smithsonian, “but that’s representative of the whole group being here at that period of time when the sediments were deposited,” Moran said.

The first hell pig​s appeared in southern Asia about 40 million years ago, and ​are in a family called Entelodontidae. Their population spread across the rest of Asia and into Europe before eventually migrating into North America about 36 million years ago, Moran explained.

When he’s out doing field work in Nebraska, where he’s been since early last week, Moran said he expects to see fossils of much earlier versions of the hell pigs that are considerably smaller, a little more diverse, and consisted of a few more species. Whereas, the hell pigs that were in coastal North Carolina were “sort of the end of the lineage. It’s only a couple million years before we know it goes extinct.”

Moran said researchers are “pretty sure” hell pigs are omnivorous, given the shape of their teeth, and may have been predators within their ecosystem. The bulbous teeth indicate that they may be eating nuts and fruit and occasionally meat.

“Their teeth are large enough and are robust enough that they certainly could have,” Moran said. “They’re pretty wild animals. We’re still trying to figure out where they fit in the evolutionary tree.”

Other mammals noted in the paper are rhinos, which Moran said are fairly common in the North American fossil record, until they went extinct somewhere between 3.5 to 5 million years ago, and two different species of horse.

He explained that while the Spanish did bring horses to North America, the very first species of horse was on the continent millions of years ago.

“So, around 55 million years ago, we see the first species of horse in what is now Wyoming, and we have a great fossil record of horses all the way from 55 million years ago to 10,000 years ago, give or take, at the end of the ice ages,” Moran said. “Of course, only 500 years ago or so, they were brought back by the Spanish. But we have a really diverse fossil record of horses here in North Carolina.”

There’s a small weasel-like animal, and an animal called the protoceratid, which is deer-like, but not a true deer.

“I think one of the most interesting things that we have is a red panda, which is pretty unusual for North America. There are only a few places where they’ve been documented, especially this far back in time,” he said. “So they are diagnostic of the period of time we’re looking at when they were first found in Nebraska; that’s about the same age as what we’re seeing in Belgrade.”

Moran said it’s the nature of the climate on the East Coast that makes it rare to find these land mammal fossils.

“The eastern part of the U.S. is just much more humid and wet, so we can’t rely on the elements,” like in the western part of the country where there’s not enough rain to sustain heavy plant growth, and rock is exposed, Moran said.

In North Carolina, “you have to rely on rivers to cut through rocks of the right age that you’re interested in,” Moran said, or rely on development projects to cut into the rock and hope that you get access during development.

“One of the ways that we are reliably able to see these units is through quarries,” where the paleontologists do much of their work because the work to mine rock requires “cutting through stratigraphic records of sedimentary rock in the eastern part of the state.”

And, “Beaches are a great place for people to find fossils all throughout North Carolina, but the reality is, if we lived in a place where rock was exposed like in Nebraska, this likely would have been a fauna that was already well-known,” he explained. But, the fairly recent mining activities “allows us to see this as a new frontier for understanding the land mammals and land mammal evolution in the state,” he said.

Moran has been in Nebraska the past few weeks conducting field work with the museum’s paleontology crew, which travels each summer to search for new fossils.

Each week, one of the paleontologists hosts a “Dino Dig Live” talk, where the scientists call in to answer questions. Moran is scheduled to call in from the field site at noon Thursday. The talk will be streamed on YouTube.

The last talk for the summer is Saturday, Aug. 16, with SECU DinoLab Manager Eric Lund calling in from a field site in Montana, also available on YouTube.

The North Carolina Maritime Museums‘ three locations on the coast house maritime history, coastal heritage and marine environments.

The Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras, the North Carolina Maritime Museum at Beaufort and the North Carolina Maritime Museum at Southport each offer unique exhibits and programs designed for all ages.

The museums highlight maritime and coastal culture including fishermen, boatbuilders and decoy carvers, as well as presents exhibits tell the tales of painters and pirates, shipwrecks and sailboats and marine life and maritime habitat protection. 

“See relics pulled from the deep, build a boat, follow Civil War battles fought along the coast, cast a line and learn about the state’s seafood industry, sail or paddle along waterways, and retrace Blackbeard’s voyages and ultimate demise,” according to the website.

Graveyard of the Atlantic August programs

The Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras is named in honor of the thousands of shipwrecks that rest in the waters off North Carolina’s coast and is dedicated to the preservation and presentation of the state’s coastal and shipwreck history.

Located at at 59200 Museum Drive in Hatteras, the museum is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. Admission is free, though donations are appreciated. For more information, visit graveyardoftheatlantic.com or call 252-986-0720.

The programs are being offered at no charge and registration is not required.

Kids Crafts 10:30 a.m. to noon Aug. 4, Aug. 11, Aug. 18 and Aug. 25. Join staff and volunteers from the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum for free crafts on Mondays in the museum library/education space located off the lobby.

Salty Dawgs Lecture Series are held at 11 a.m. every Tuesday and feature presentations on North Carolina maritime history and culture.

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse Aug. 5. Join National Park Service Ranger Ann-Marie to learn about the 1870 Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, which “protects one of the most hazardous sections of the Atlantic Coast,” according to the National Park Service.

Jockeys Ridge State Park Aug. 12. Join North Carolina Park Ranger Austin Paul to learn about the tallest living sand dune system on the Atlantic coast and is located in Dare County.

“Shipwreck Rescues of the Outer Banks” Aug. 19. Join historian James Charlet for the final program in a three-part presentation on his new book, “Shipwreck Rescues of the Outer Banks,” which chronicles the United States Life-Saving Service’s missions and rescues off the North Carolina coast.

“Changing Sands and Rising Seas: The Future of Maritime Heritage” Aug. 26. Maddie Roth, a doctoral candidate in East Carolina University’s Integrated Coastal Sciences Program will discuss opportunities to better understand and preserve shipwreck sites, aids to navigation, and the maritime traditions of the state’s coast.

Beaufort’s August programs

During summer break, the museum offers Summer Science School courses designed to give children hands-on experiences with North Carolina’s environment, history, and culture. Some courses take place outside the main museum building and may involve travel. Advance registration is required, which can be done online.

Summer Science School: Seashore Life II is set for 9 a.m. to noon Aug. 5-7. For fifth and sixth graders, students will investigate estuarine habitats, plants and animals through field and lab studies. The course includes a field trip to the Rachel Carson Reserve, water quality testing, plankton identification and other activities. Class fee is $120, or $108 for Friends of the Museum

Summer Science School: Pirates! 9 a.m. to noon Aug. 7-8. Youngsters entering first and second grades will be able to learn about life at sea and how pirates lived. The crew will build their own boats, set the rules of the ship, and go on a treasure hunt to find the hidden treasure. Class fee is $90, or $81 for Friends of the Museum.

Limited scholarships are available. Email courtney.felton@dncr.nc.gov or call 252-504-7758 for more information.

Though the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort is currently closed for construction, the Carteret County-based facility will continue to offer programs in the Harvey W. Smith Watercraft Center across the street in the downtown area and other nearby locations.

Build a Boat in a Day 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Aug. 2, Aug. 16 and Aug. 22 in the watercraft center. Teams will assemble a 12-foot-long, flat-bottomed plywood boat from a prepared kit suitable for paddling. Minimum age is 8 and the teams of no more than four people must include at least one adult. Course fee is $650, or $585 for Friends of the Museum members, which sponsors the program. Course size is limited, and registration is required and can be done online or by calling 252-504-7758.

Introduction to Wooden Boat Building 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Aug. 9-10. Participants will learn about planking methods, both carvel and lapstrake, and use of appropriate fasteners. After two days, you will have the knowledge, skill, and confidence to choose a design and style of boat to build on your own.  Class fee is $200, or $180 for Friends of the Museum. Minimum age is 16. Course size is limited, and registration is required.

Kids’ Cove: Whales 9 to 11 a.m. Aug. 13. The drop-in program for ages 5 and younger and their caregivers takes place in the Beaufort Train Depot at 614 Broad St. Participation is free but registration is preferred.

Hiking and History on Shackleford Banks 9 a.m. to noon Aug. 19. The guided hike on Shackleford Banks, a part of Cape Lookout National Seashore in Carteret County, is for ages 12 and older. Participants will take a ferry to an undeveloped barrier island where they will hike about 1.5 miles along sandy terrain. All those under 18 must be accompanied by an adult. Cost is $35 and $31.50 for Friends of the Museum. Register online by noon the day before the program.

“By Hook or By Crook, Women Pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read” 11 a.m. Aug. 21. Associate Education Curator Christine Brin will share what is known about the lives of these women, how they came to be pirates, and their fates. This program is part of the museum’s Maritime Heritage Lecture Series that features talks about the rich maritime history, coastal environment and culture. The in-person only talk will take place in the Fort Macon Coastal Education Center in Atlantic Beach. Admission is free. Registration is not required. 

Kayak the Salt Marsh 9 a.m. to noon Aug. 26. Basic kayak instruction and safety lessons on shore are followed by a 1.5-mile paddle through the salt marsh in sit-in cockpit touring kayaks, or bring your own. The program is for ages 12 and older. Participants under 18 must be accompanied by an adult. All must know how to swim and some kayak experience is recommended. Cost is $35 or $30 if you bring your own kayak and $27-31.50 for Friends of the Museum. Register online by noon the day prior to the program.

Southport August programs

The North Carolina Maritime Museum at Southport, which collects, preserves and interprets material culture pertinent to the maritime history of the Lower Cape Fear region.

The location has two public programs scheduled for this month.

Go Fish! is set for 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Aug. 2. part of the Skipper’s Crew series at the Southport facility, which features hands-on activities and take-home crafts focusing on combining arts and history. Participants can fish for a wooden fish swimming in a sea of blue tissue paper, then decorate your fish and take it home. The program is for all ages, but specifically geared toward younger visitors.

Lights will be dimmed and interactive displays muted during the first two hours to provide a calmer environment for those with sensory sensitivities.

Maritime Weapons of the 18^th Century 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Aug. 16. Join a costumed interpreter at the North Carolina Maritime Museum at Southport to learn about weapons used at sea during the 1700s. The program is part of the museum’s Deep Dive into History series. The free drop-in program is designed to give visitors a deeper understanding of our shared past. Visitors can interact one-on-one with the presenter at any time during the program.

For more information on either program being offered at no charge, visit ncmaritimemuseumsouthport.com or call 910-477-5151.

More than 20% of the world’s wetlands have vanished since 1970, according to a report by the Convention on Wetlands.

The loss of wetlands, including freshwater and coastal marine systems, may equate to a $39 trillion loss in economic benefits by 2050, according to the intergovernmental report released last week.

The Global Wetland Outlook 2025 is based on current publications and information of inland, coastal and marine wetlands and global databases. Wetlands evaluated in the report include seagrass, estuarine waters, salt marshes, mangroves, tidal flats, kelp forests, coral reefs, peatlands, inland marshes and swamps, and lakes, rivers and streams.

“Wetlands are vital to water and food security, and human well-being, so recognising the links between global biodiversity, climate, and water targets and wetland conservation and restoration is critical,” the report states.

The report measures the globe’s wetlands in hectares, a metric unit that is the equivalent to about 2½ acres, where one acre is defined as 100 square meters.

Since 1970, an estimated 177 million hectares of inland marshes and swamps have disappeared, according to the report. And, indications are that the ecological character of wetlands in most regions, including North America, continue to deteriorate.

Declines in wetlands in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa are “notable,” according to the report, “however, the extent of degradation also increased in Europe, North America, and Oceania,” which is the cluster of Pacific islands that includes Australia and New Zealand.

Agriculture and urbanization are the lead contributors to the disappearance and degradation of wetlands on a global scale.

“Agricultural activities remain the largest driver of global wetland loss through conversion to cropland along with other industrial activities, and have resulted in stressed global water resources,” according to the report.

Pollution, invasive species, and climate change-related extreme weather events, including floods, fires, drought, and sea level rise, are also negatively impacting wetlands.

“Wetlands are a high-value resource and an asset to society. When we degrade or destroy wetlands, we reduce the ecosystem services and benefits they provide to people,” the report states.

Annually, the 1,425 million hectares of remaining wetlands across the world give an estimated $7.98 trillion to $39.01 trillion to people, according to the report.

If the world’s remaining wetlands are effectively managed through the next 25 years, they will provide a net present value greater than $205.25 trillion over that time.

The report calls for annual investments of between $275 billion and $550 billion to reverse threats to the remaining wetlands.

The Convention on Wetlands is also known as the Ramsar Convention and is an international treaty focused on wetlands conservation.

A noted wildlife biologist and zoologist involved in researching North Atlantic right whales and credited for his work to conserve manatees, sea turtles and other endangered species has died.

The Clearwater Marine Aquarium announced Tuesday that Dr. James “Buddy” Powell, chief zoological officer at the aquarium and executive director of the Clearwater Marine Aquarium Research Institute, or CMARI, died Saturday, July 19, after a brief illness.

Powell, along with other CMARI scientists, collected more than 20 years of aerial survey data on North Atlantic right whales, an endangered species with only 360 individuals remaining, according to the announcement. Working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, CMARI’s data from wintertime, daily flights from North Carolina to Florida, the only known calving areas for this species, led to ship speed reduction, expanded habitat protection and halted whale mortality in the Southeast, the organization said.

For more than 50 years, Powell approached conservation issues using science and education and resulted in coastal protected areas in Florida, West Africa, Belize and Cuba.

“Buddy’s passion for marine research and his unwavering dedication made a lasting impact — not only on our mission, but on all of us who had the privilege of knowing him,” said Clearwater Marine Aquarium CEO Joe Handy. “Buddy was an integral part of our CMA and CMARI family. His intelligence, warmth and leadership will be deeply missed.”

For 20 years, CMARI researchers and staff were involved in rescuing and releasing manatees, along with other organizations in the Manatee Rescue and Rehabilitation Partnership. Powell long dreamed of making the Clearwater Marine Aquarium a home for manatees and spent years chasing that dream, navigating government funding and rallying private donors.

The CMA in August opened its Manatee Rehabilitation Center and welcomes manatees in need of care.

A native of Crystal River, Florida, Powell’s work began in the 1970s with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service as a biologist and manatee specialist. In 1986, he moved to West Africa where he studied manatees and forest elephants for the Wildlife Conservation Society. He moved to Belize in the 1990s to manage WCS’s Glover’s Reef Marine Research Station.

Upon his return to Florida, Powell administered the state’s research program on marine mammals and sea turtles for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. In 2001, he became a vice president at Wildlife Trust where he oversaw the aquatic and national divisions. Powell also conducted research with North Atlantic right whales and the recently discovered Rice’s whales.

In 2008, Powell co-founded the Sea to Shore Alliance, a research, education and conservation organization, to improve the health and productivity of coastal environments for the endangered species and human livelihoods that depend on them. In 2019, Powell joined CMA as vice president of research and conservation when Sea to Shore Alliance merged with Clearwater Marine Aquarium. Powell remained executive director of Sea to Shore Alliance doing business as CMARI after the merger.

Powell was pivotal in creating the Right Whale Festival in Fernandina Beach, Florida, during the past 17 years. Co-hosted by Clearwater Marine Aquarium and NOAA Fisheries, the festival is held each November to celebrate the arrival of North Atlantic right whales as they migrate to the waters around Amelia Island from November through April. Each year, the event educates more than 25,000 people about these critically endangered whales and the efforts to protect them.

He was recently involved in research on Rice’s whales, a new species found in the Gulf of Mexico. He also helped begin the CMA Speaker Series in 2023, bringing Dr. Sylvia Earle, world-renowned oceanographer, to CMA in May.

Powell is survived by his wife, Maureen, and daughter, Morgan “Catherine.”

Powell received his bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from the University of Florida, his Master’s in marine affairs from the University of Washington, and his doctorate in zoology from the University of Cambridge in England.

He was the recipient of the prestigious Pew Award in Marine Conservation in 2000, has been featured on “Champions of the Wild” and National Geographic’s “Wild Chronicles” documentaries, and has been honored with multiple awards and certificates. Powell has authored two books, numerous scientific publications and popular articles.

The state has the protocols in place for successful fisheries management, but North Carolina is missing the mark, recently released state-mandated research concludes.

A top recommendation: Hire more fisheries scientists.

And the head of the state body formed to coordinate scientific research for the legislature, in a letter accompanying the report, states that lawmakers’ recent failed shrimp trawling ban measure had no basis in the report’s findings and clarifies that the recommendations did not address trawling.

Legislators in 2021 directed the North Carolina Collaboratory to evaluate the overall health of fisheries and habitats and make recommendations for better management ahead of the 25th anniversary of the state’s Fisheries Reform Act of 1997 and the Coastal Area Management Act’s 50th anniversary in 2024.

University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Institute of Marine Sciences Director Dr. Joel Fodrie and a team of nine researchers presented a summary of their findings to the North Carolina General Assembly late last month, as the legislature had mandated.

Fodrie told Coastal Review that the state requested a broad analysis as part of its 2021 budget bill, so the research team, over the course of three years, collected and used data to assess the state’s fisheries and make the state-mandated recommendations based on those findings that could improve “both marine fisheries and our coastal habitats, with a specific link between those habitats and the way they support fish.”

The 46-page summary highlights the seven findings and the five recommendations to “achieve the vision of the Fisheries Reform Act.” The state Fisheries Reform Act requires fishery management plans to ensure long-term viability of the fisheries, according to the state.

The final, comprehensive report with full analyses and data is still being fine-tuned and is to be sent to the legislature later this year, Fodrie added.

In addition to Chapel Hill, researchers who study fish biology and ecology, estuarine ecology, fisheries management and environmental governance from N.C. State University, East Carolina University and UNC-Wilmington participated in the research.

Fodrie explained that if you were to gather data across states to quantitatively evaluate each state’s attempt to manage fisheries, North Carolina scores pretty high based on the management components put in place as a result of the Fisheries Reform Act, or FRA.

The state seems to have adopted many of the practices that should produce better outcomes and have strengthened these practices for most species over time. Despite those gears being in place, the results are only so-so, he said.

The findings point to at least three significant hurdles for optimizing management outcomes, including a significant time lag in the implementation of new data or information for up-to-date decision-making, a breakdown of trust and communication among managers and key stakeholder groups, and long-term shifts in estuarine habitat quality and coverage.

“What the FRA did for North Carolina is it put us in a position to have many of the building blocks that are helpful and can remain part of the solutions, while the analyses also show that we’re still falling short of the FRA’s core objectives and thus some changes in management structures ought to be seriously considered,” Fodrie said.

About the findings

Researchers found that management intensity in North Carolina had increased over time and is equal to or exceeds the levels of other states throughout the Mid-Atlantic, Southeast and Gulf of Mexico, but despite the presence of a rigorous management structure, the state continues to “exhibit challenges in achieving the core goals of the FRA, which is ‘to protect and enhance … coastal fisheries in NC.’”

A benchmark for informed fishery management, according to the summary, are quantitative stock assessments. These produce estimates of stock biomass and the harvest rate, which define overfished, related to how much fish biomass is in the system, and overfishing, related to how high the catch rate is, for the population.

The most recent stock assessments estimate that blue crab, southern flounder, spotted seatrout, striped bass and striped mullet are experiencing overfishing, meaning that the harvest rate is too high.

Blue crab, southern flounder, striped bass and striped mullet are overfished, or the stock is too low, and sheepshead and red drum are neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing.

The summary notes that developing and updating the fishery management plans process “is relatively slow, which potentially limits the efficacy of science- and process-based public trust resource management,” what researchers call in the summary “hallmark goals” of the Fisheries Reform Act.

Across the 12 stocks the state manages that have an initial fisheries management plan, the average time between the first plan and amendments is seven years. The average time between management plan actions is a little more than five years.

“In the context of these timelines, there is little evidence that adaptive management is being achieved by increased activity within” the North Carolina General Assembly, “by the breadth of motions adopted” by the Marine Fisheries Commission or by proclamation authority from the Division of Marine Fisheries, according to the summary.

The remaining findings relate to the pressures coastal habitats are facing from fishing, development, climate variability and other human activities. Data suggests that the entire ecosystem has changed since the Fisheries Reform Act was passed, particularly for water quality and coastal and estuarine habitats.

Researchers offered five recommendations.

Fodrie said that a primary recommendation is to increase the Division of Marine Fisheries staff, especially the number of stock-assessment scientists, so the stock assessments and fisheries management plans are regularly updated.

An independent science and statistical committee to improve fishery management outcomes in the state, as well as new approaches for enhancing the division’s outreach with stakeholder participation, trust, and management transparency, are also recommendations.

Fodrie said that the role of this type of committee and a redesigned Marine Fisheries Commission would be to target current weaknesses related to implementation of the Fisheries Reform Act, such as the mode and tempo by which catch limits are set, when and how stakeholders can be engaged, and resolving disputes between key resource users.

The final three recommendations relate to fisheries and habitat health, including adopting an ecosystem-based management approach to assess the health of the state fisheries as a whole and the drivers that affect them; stopping or reversing patterns of habitat loss and degradation, along with requiring improved monitoring of habitat extent and water quality; and re-evaluating the nursery designation system and creating an adaptive framework for protecting critical nursery areas.

“The state also has some real challenges related to what’s happening with its coastal habitats,” Fodrie said, adding that it’s a big ask to take the major steps needed to halt or reverse those trends. “This involves balancing fishing practices, coastal population growth, climate variability, and development; which would require buy-in at the whole-state level to manage at the coastal ecosystem scale.”

Note from the Collaboratory

The North Carolina Collaboratory’s “Study of Coastal and Marine Fisheries of the State” hadn’t gotten much attention since it was first mandated — that is, until the Senate added in mid-June to a House bill about recreational flounder and red snapper seasons a proposed law to ban shrimp trawling in inshore waters and within a half-mile of the shoreline.

The report was mentioned more than once during discussions between supporters and opponents. The House declined to advance the bill with the Senate’s amendment on June 25.

Looking back: House Republicans decline to take up shrimp trawling bill

Collaboratory Executive Director Jeff Warren, in a letter dated June 30, the deadline and date when the summary was released, wrote that “recent legislative actions – specifically, those related to shrimp trawling language in the current version of House Bill (H) 442 – have brought into question the contents of this report. Because this specific issue was out of the scope of this study, this report neither advocates for nor opposes a ban on shrimp trawling.”

Warren stated in the report’s cover letter that there had been multiple comments made by legislators in both chambers as well as statements circulating in the media, that “suggested the Senate was aware of the contents of this report and this advance knowledge drove actions to amend the legislation to include a shrimp trawling ban prior to the report’s release.”

Those statements were untrue, Warren stated, “and undermine the credibility of this multi-year research study carried out by nine researchers across four UNC System campuses.”

Warren added that the recommendations in the summary, and ultimately the full report, do not address, nor respond to, the shrimp trawling language contained in the shrimp trawl ban “nor were they ever designed to. Further, no legislative influence or pressure impacted the legislative recommendations or the scope of work, which has remained consistent over the three-year arc of the broader study.”

He closed the letter by adding the full report will be available later this year after it’s refined, “to ensure a broad variety of users can access the data and information. To be clear, this clarifying work will not substantively change the recommendations provided herein.”

The U.S. Forest Service estimates that the cone crop for longleaf pines in the Southeast will be “poor for 2025,” according to the “Longleaf Pine Cone Prospects for 2025” report released in June.

Because of the anticipated seed shortage that comes with a low estimate of seed-producing cones for the third year in a row, The Longleaf Alliance is scouting for potential locations to harvest in the fall.

Based on observations collected earlier this year from low-density stands of mature longleaf pines in 10 study sites, researchers estimate the average for seed-producing cones is 12.4 per tree this fall.

The study, which looked at state-managed parks in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Louisiana, defines a good crop as 50 to 99 green cones per tree, a fair crop as 25 to 49, poor as 10 to 24, and a failed crop as less than 10 seed-bearing cones per tree.

Once plentiful, the longleaf pine could be found on an estimated 90 million acres in the coastal plains between southeast Virginia to eastern Texas. During the Colonial era, the trees were felled for timber and naval stores. Demand grew exponentially when the turpentine industry took off at the turn of the 20^th century, nearly stripping the ecosystem of the native pine. Today, its estimated that there’s around 5 million acres remaining.  

The alliance is a nonprofit organization that was established in 1995 and is devoted entirely to longleaf pine ecosystems.

“With a fraction of longleaf pine acres remaining in the Southeast, much of this work is focused on reestablishing longleaf pine. We are planting trees that can outlast us, and it is essential that landowners are up for success from the beginning,” The Longleaf Alliance Vice President for Operations Ad Platt explained to Coastal Review.

The Longleaf Alliance is a founding member and leader within America’s Longleaf, a landscape collaborative effort of public and private partners that supports range-wide efforts to restore and conserve longleaf pine ecosystems.

The study site for North Carolina, Bladen Lakes State Forest, is expected to have an average of 27 cones per tree this fall. The more than 33,000-acre state-owned land is in Bladen County, roughly between Wilmington and Fayetteville near Elizabethtown.

Platt said that with Bladen Lakes State Forest being one of only three locations in the report predicted to have a fair cone crop this fall, it is optimistic news for the longleaf cone in North Carolina. The other fair cone crop areas are in Georgia and Florida.

The South Carolina site is estimated to have a poor crop this year, and the remaining six sites are expected to have less than 10 cones per tree, and are in the failed category.

By estimating the number of green, or productive, cones per tree, the seed volume can be approximated. The minimum cone crop needed for successful natural regeneration is 750 green cones per acre, or around 30 cones per tree with 25 seed-bearing trees per acre, the study states.

The 60-year regional cone production average for longleaf pine is about 27 green cones per tree, but the year-to-year average varies widely. For example, 1996 had the single best cone crop at an average of 115 cones per tree, but 1995 had a 41-cone average, and 1997 had a 17-cone average.

This year’s numbers are better than 2024, which “failed” with an estimate of almost seven cones per tree, and for 2023, the estimate was 10.3, according to the report.

Platt explained that the longleaf pine is a masting species, which means that instead of producing seeds consistently each year, there are some years with an exceptionally large number of pine cones and seeds, followed by years with relatively few. So, this pattern of low cone production is somewhat expected.

“For that reason, longleaf pine growers collect as much seed as they can when cone crops are good. The problem is that the seed supplies needed for longleaf pine seedling production are now limited after subsequent years of poor cone production,” he explained, adding that the last good crops documented in the annual Longleaf Pine Cone Prospects Report occurred in 2022.

“Complicating this issue are recent patterns of large, strong storms when pine cones are maturing in the summer and fall. While future cone production is strongly correlated with hurricanes, with positive trends two years after a storm event, strong winds damage that year’s cone crops and mature longleaf forests, as was observed in 2024 with Hurricane Helene in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina,” he said.

Platt continued that the natural variation of longleaf pine cone production means that even when crops are forecast to be low, there is likely a good longleaf cone crop somewhere.

“The challenge is finding it,” he continued. “If you are lucky enough to have mature longleaf, please assess what kind of cone production you may have this summer.”

Platt said that’s best done on a clear morning with the sun at your back and using binoculars to count the large, developing green cones. Fair or better cone crops include 25 or more cones per tree, with 25 trees per acre.

Landowners with fair or better cone crops may have a potential income opportunity if their longleaf stands are large enough and easily operable, meaning they’re low density with machine access for collection. Pine cone harvesting crews need a decent cone crop on a large enough acreage in the area to maximize their efforts during the short four-week collection window.

“Longleaf pine seedlings grown in tree nurseries support 100 to 150,000 acres planted in longleaf pine each year. To reach the range-wide acreage restoration goal of America’s Longleaf Restoration Initiative, longleaf pine seedling production must meet the growing demand from landowners interested in supporting this imperiled landscape,” Platt said.

Observations of mature longleaf pine trees can be submitted to The Longleaf Alliance through an online survey.

There was a time when the distinctive “kiki-do” call of eastern black rails were a common sound rising up from North Carolina marshes.

Masters of secrecy, these little birds are rarely, if ever, seen.

They prefer to skirt through the marsh using tunnels dug by rabbits and other small mammals rather than take to the sky. Their nests are typically well concealed close to the ground in the highest part of brackish, saltwater and inland freshwater marshes.

But the habitat that eastern black rails so skillfully use to maintain their privacy is under growing threat from rising ocean waters, more powerful storms, and development and, if their numbers continue to decline, projections are they’ll disappear altogether within 35 years.

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission aims to help these birds, putting forth a management plan to improve the black rails’ habitat by permanently protecting coastal marshes and assisting private landowners with potential habitat creation.

That’s going to take hundreds of acres of additional inland, shallow marsh and high-elevation coastal marsh.

“We think there’s probably less than 40 breeding pairs in North Carolina right now,” said Kacy Cook, a coastal waterbird biologist with the Wildlife Resources Commission.

The commission is accepting public comment on the Black Rail Management Plan through July 11.

The eastern black rail was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2020. The commission lists it as a species of greatest conservation need.

Long gone are the days when eastern black rails were documented in freshwater marshes in the North Carolina mountains and Piedmont. No one has heard their “kiki-do” in the interior part of the state since 2005, Cook said.

Once abundant black rail habitat along the North Carolina has been crowded out by houses, roads and farmed land.

The last remaining pockets of coastal areas where the birds are heard in some places in the Outer Banks (exact locations are kept under wraps to prevent human disturbance) and Cedar Island, an unincorporated area of Carteret County. Even there, surveys reveal a dramatic population decline.

Surveys are conducted throughout the black rails’ breeding cycle by using something called a targeted call-response where biologists play a recording of the “kiki-do” sound and wait for a response from black rails in the survey area.

“You used to be able to hear 70 black rail calling from the causeway,” at Cedar Island, Cook said.

Now, fewer than 10 respond at any given time, she said.

And while that’s not good for the eastern black rail, it’s also indicative of a wider coastal problem.

“Black rails are our signal that our coastal marshes and freshwater wetlands are in trouble, and that makes a difference for a lot of species, and our own wellbeing,” Cook said.

Eastern black rails rely on very shallow water levels in marshes. They have legs that are typically just over one inch long. Their fledglings, roughly the size of cotton balls, are out of the nest within 24 hours of hatching, but they’re not able to fly until about 40 days later.

This is why coastal storm flooding, exacerbated by sea level rise, is a particular threat, because flood waters can wash away the nests, eggs and chicks. One big storm could wipe out the remaining population in North Carolina.

“Those are happening at a rate that is too high for their population to grow,” Cook said.

Lack of fire, which is crucial to maintaining that type of habitat, and agricultural practices that include cutting field borders where black rails like to settle among wet, tall, grassy habitat, are further degrading the birds’ habitat.

“I’m only finding black rails where we have high herbaceous plant diversity. They only use habitats that are very dense herbaceous cover, grasses and flowers with few shrubs and no trees,” Cook said.

The commission’s management plan for black rails includes the creation and restoration of 600 acres of freshwater marsh and 600 acres of additional high-elevation coastal march by 2056.

“What we do for black rails will benefit all of the marsh birds that we have now, including the egrets and the herons and the wood storks. So, working on restoring black rail habitat is going to benefit all of our coastal birds in some way and our seafood. Seventy-five percent of our seafood comes from coastal marshes,” Cook said.

Guest Commentary

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

It was a losing battle from the start, watching the inevitable rising and receding of the waves simultaneously fill up the hole I had been digging, and swiftly erode the accompanying pile of sand I had dug.

Perhaps it is an intrinsic childhood need to move sand from one location to another. As Sisyphean as the task may seem to an adult, sand is an all-encompassing playground; a place to dig in, sink into, and even to create your own tide pool/hot tub as the waves accentuate your enjoyment.

My first exposure to the sand with every beach trip was the arduous trek (for a young child) up the stairs of the public beach access point down Heverly Drive in Emerald Isle.

I would pause in equal measure to catch my breath and take in just how cool it was to be atop the dunes, peering down on the crashing Atlantic Ocean below. But my expeditions into the dunes as a child were limited to exactly this: brief crossings on established wooden traverses. The landscape of the dunes was dotted with sign after sign stating, in no ambiguous terms, to keep off of their sea oat-covered crests. 

Folks from all over North Carolina and beyond flock to the Crystal Coast to experience the sensation of warm sand on their toes, the waves crashing on top of them, and perhaps a shrimp burger (or 10). Whether or not they realize it, visitors and residents pass through several distinct ecosystems as they stroll toward the beckoning ocean. The first ecosystem is the maritime forest, where hardy Live oaks and Wax myrtles make their living despite the sandy soil.

Then you reach the dunes, where crystal skippers eke out a living amongst the stalwart grasses that stitch the Bogue Banks in place against the ravages of the wind and waves. Afterwards comes the open beach, which might seem like a domain reserved exclusively for beachgoers but is also one that provides critical habitat for nesting least terns and loggerhead sea turtles.

Lastly before the ocean, the area where the waves first crash on the beach is known as the swash zone, where sanderlings, a small wading bird, can be frequently observed searching for bivalves. All of these ecosystems are within sight of each other, and yet their differences can be felt the moment one no longer has a delicious sea breeze standing behind the dunes. 

Flash forward to the present day, and I am a member of a team of scientists tasked with flaunting each and every one of these signs, looking straight at passersby as we rock our highlighter yellow vests and our sweat and sunscreen-streaked faces. We catch our breath and explain to these folks the nature of what we are doing.

“We are researchers with NC State and the North Carolina Aquarium, studying a butterfly endemic to this area called the crystal skipper,” we repeat to various folks taking an interest in our work.

One of the most underappreciated skills required of us is the ability to clarify what terms like “endemic” mean or to satiate people’s curiosity about the subject while being fully conscious of just how bad we smell after a day of traversing the hot and humid dunes.

What is it like to walk through the dunes? In a word, or several, hot, breezeless, and saturated with ankle-seizing smilax. One step takes the energy of three normal steps as the sand inevitably gives way on your ascent. The dunes blocking the sea breeze is likely important ecologically for our skippers, but that perspective is hard to maintain as the stifling air quickly dishevels and frustrates us. For nature nerds like myself, the presence of snakes and wheel bugs as well as the opportunity to study a rare species are well worth the effort. 

To answer that aforementioned question about what “endemic” means, it’s a term used in biology to refer to an organism whose range is restricted to a very specific place. Marine iguanas are endemic to the Galapagos Archipelago, lemurs are endemic to Madagascar, and the crystal skipper is endemic to our own coastal North Carolina.

North Carolina’s barrier islands are famous for how thin they are, and the crystal skipper’s range spans a mere 30 miles of said barrier islands. We as researchers are fairly fortunate in that this range encompasses not one, but two state parks: Hammocks Beach and Fort Macon. This means that we have a considerable amount of public land to study this species on.

True to the moniker of the Bogue Banks, the species can be identified by the distinctive white “crystals” speckling its brown wings. If you are fortunate enough to see a skipper, however, in some cases you might see black markings on their wings. Those are the codes that we have written onto their wings as a part of our mark-recapture study, where we endeavor to estimate the population of skippers in a given area based on the percentage, we are able to recapture.

But our research isn’t limited only to the adults, we spend substantial time looking through the seaside little bluestem, which is the grass the skippers are dependent on, to find and track the development of eggs and caterpillars as they stitch the grass around them into tents that would make the Spanish architect Gaudí proud.

This is all in addition to studying the habitat itself, which encapsulates everything from collecting nectar samples to taking seaside little bluestem samples back to the lab to assess desiccation. 

One of my favorite things about our work is that we find ourselves with equal frequency in the backcountry of the Crystal Coast in remote areas such as Bear Island, part of Hammocks Beach, as often as we find ourselves in the backyards of, at times, residents and unsuspecting tourists. This seems to encapsulate the essence of both conservation and preservation in our project.

One of the most fortuitous happenstances in the preservation of the crystal skipper is that roughly half of its range is already protected within Hammocks Beach State Park in the Swansboro area, which encompasses some of the undeveloped dune habitat in the state outside of its two national seashores. This land offers researchers a chance to observe the crystal skipper in an area of land that is wild and remote.

While we hope that our work will help ensure the population remains robust, the lives of individual adult crystal skippers are not very long. All skippers emerge during two time periods: April through early May and July through mid-August. Insects as a rule are very short-lived, and the crystal skipper is no exception with a lifespan of only one to two weeks.

The nature of our line of work means that multiple cycles of technicians such as myself will study the crystal skipper over summers as ephemeral as the butterfly itself. And while the crystal skipper is immortalized through passing on its genes, we hope that our legacy in the dunes is immortalized in others taking up this work after we have gone. And yet, at the same time, the crystal skipper is always here in the dunes with us, even when passers-by cannot see it.

The caterpillars are going about their business eating, making tents, and growing as they wage an often-unseen struggle for survival against the ravages of hurricanes and the myriad predators of the insect world. This is a struggle unseen by most passers-by in the dunes, and yet forms of the crystal skipper are always present in and around these select islands. It was here before our study of it began, and hopefully it will be here long after, both ever-present and ever-ephemeral. 

The Crystal Coast is many things. From the least terns laying their eggs on the beach to the deft slithering of eastern glass lizards to the skips and flutters of our beloved crystal skippers, nature permeates the man-made structures of the Crystal Coast. It’s an area where the natural world and the human history of the islands are both preserved and lived-in.

The islands of the Bogue Banks are narrow and yet flanking both sides of the narrow dividing roads are natural wonders and all the facets of human life. We, the human race, are locked in an existential struggle trying to figure out how to balance our own needs with those of the natural world.

Existential crises are often easier to face when we can break them into bite-sized pieces, and I believe that by learning to harmonize human life with the natural world here in the living laboratory of the Bogue Banks, we can help create a template for how to do so in the world at large. All of that is reflected in the rare and humble crystal skipper, a butterfly that is uniquely our own.

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

North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island released last month seven sea turtles that have been under long-term care, and plans to recognize the endangered reptiles June 16 during World Sea Turtle Day.

The aquarium’s Sea Turtle Assistance and Rehabilitation Center, or STAR Center, spent the last five months treating the sea turtles that suffered from conditions related to cold-stunning, including kidney failure, frostbite, an eye injury, low weight, barnacles and swelling.

Aquarium staff released the rehabilitated patients May 7 offshore into the warmer waters of the Gulf Stream and May 23 into the Croatan Sound. One sea turtle remains under the center’s care.

The aquarium announced Friday that releasing the turtles concluded the “record-breaking cold-stun season” and the special activities scheduled for both World Sea Turtle Day and the STAR Center’s 11th anniversary. Sea turtle-themed programming, crafts, and talks with sea turtle experts and rescuers are planned for June 16. For more information or to reserve an admission ticket, visit the aquarium’s website.

From December 2024 through March, the aquarium took in nearly 800 cold-stunned sea turtles. Cold-stunning happens when the reptiles are exposed to low water temperatures and become stranded in a hypothermia-like state.

The six species of sea turtles found in U.S. waters are green, kemp’s ridley, loggerhead, hawksbill and olive ridleys, all protected under the Endangered Species Act, per the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

This winter the facility cared for greens, Kemp’s ridleys and loggerheads, which cannot be housed together, the aquarium states in a release. While the sea turtles were slowly warmed upas part of the rehabilitation process, the animals were housed in public areas, multiple exhibits and outdoor bathrooms. A few sea turtles exceeded 200 pounds.

After transferring some sea turtles to other facilities, the aquarium said it has rehabilitated and released more than 600 cold-stunned sea turtles since December 2024.

The stranded, cold-stunned sea turtles were rescued and brought to the aquarium to for care by multiple teams across the Outer Banks, including volunteers from the Network for Endangered Sea Turtles, or NEST.

“Thanks to the incredible teamwork of every organization and agency involved, turtles were rescued, healed, and returned to the wild. We’re fortunate to be supported by N.E.S.T., Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the Wildlife Resources Commission, the U.S. Coast Guard, and local charter captains, so we can share these amazing conservation stories,” said Christian Legner, aquarium associate director and husbandry and operations director, in a statement.
 
Leslie Vegas, the aquarium’s husbandry curator said she couldn’t emphasize enough how proud she is to work with everyone at Roanoke Island aquarium.

“I want to give a special acknowledgement to the animal care staff that came together beautifully to assist. I am so grateful to all staff, volunteers, and partners for helping us with this event. We couldn’t have made such a broad impact on conservation, education, and rehabilitation without all these pieces coming together,” she added in a statement.