If you travel sandy coast lines anywhere in this country you will see piers. They are popular places to visit the beach without getting sandy, to enjoy the sea, and, of course, to go fishing.

Unfortunately, too many people who try to fish at our piers won’t really have any success and will be disappointed. Here are a couple of tips to help you find some good action at any of our piers.

For starters, we need to determine what is meant by a pier. I’m talking about a structure built on pilings that is above the surface of a body of water. Specifically, we will be directly referring to those that are on ocean beaches.

Along the North Carolina coast, we have them almost everywhere, from Avalon in the north at Kill Devil Hills, as far south as Sunset Beach.

Each of them will have local technical expertise that will separate the rookies from what we used to call “The Sharpies,” however there are things that we’re here to talk about to get us all started.

On all piers, there are fish to possibly be caught from the front, to the very end. As Maria from “The Sound of Music” always says, “Let’s start at the beginning. A very good place to start.”

When you first venture across the sand, there will be fish right in the surf zone. From there on, pan-sized fish that are very popular to pursue, both for their willingness to get involved and the pleasure they bring when we get them home, will be present. There’s a very simple way to get them, but as with all things to do with fishing, it’s the details that make the day.

Use with a light rod. Something that can handle a 15-pound test braided line and a 1-ounce pyramid sinker without flexing all the way down, but with a responsive tip. There will be a myriad of options for bait fishing rigs for sale in the shops and at the pier itself. If you are able, forgo those choices and make your own.

Start with a monofilament line that is no more than 30-pound test. Do not, repeat NOT, use anything with wire. Tie in two dropper loops (diagrams available wherever diagrams are sold), attach a small orange bead and a size 1/0 circle hook to one, then a pink bead and the same kind of hook to the other.  If you don’t want to tie your own, purchase the one that is the closest to this description. This is THE main difference between people catching, and those watching.

There are lots of options for bait, depending on your industriousness and abilities. The top would be sand fleas that you just dug from the surf yourself. There are those who will par boil them quickly and freeze. Next choice would be pieces of fresh shrimp. (You’ll notice I don’t mention frozen shrimp). Regardless, most savvy anglers also use a very small piece of Fishbites brand in the shrimp flavor, which is a scent infused natural product that adds appeal. It’s available everywhere. 

Bites will come as fast taps. With the circle hooks you will not miss as many strikes as you will otherwise if you happen to leave your rod unattended.

A note about that: I once lost a rod while fishing a live minnow from the pier untended. Guy standing there said, “Shot out there about 10-, 15-foot.”

This method will work for pompano, sea mullet, or pretty much anything that frequents the surf zone. If spots are running, substitute with sea worms for bait and try a size 2 hook. That usually happens in fall. Let me add that being observant to successful people is a good idea and most are glad to help.

Most piers have a rule limiting anglers to two rods. Not everyone follows. But if you do, your other rod should be set up with a Gotcha/Jerk Jigger plug. This is a lure that when it’s retrieved with a twitch-pause retrieve, won’t pop out of the water while being high up in the air like on a pier.

Attach it to your line with a 30-pound monofilament leader. They are so effective that some people use them all the time wherever bluefish, Spanish mackerel, or false albacore are surface feeding. But on the deck of the pier is where they shine. Not just for blues, macs, and albies either.

If you look down at the base of the pilings you will see a depressed area around each. By simply yo-yoing your plug around each piling, there is a good chance of hooking a flounder.

With a simple variation you can have a productive lure to catch anything that swims. To the end of your line, tie a three-way swivel. Tie two lengths of 20-pound line. Leave the first piece 3 feet long and the second piece 2 feet long. To the longer length attach a Gotcha plug. Any color is good as long as it’s red and white. To the shorter length tie on a D.O.A. shrimp lure in literally any color.

If fish are visible feeding on the surface, retrieve as always. If not, use a lift fall retrieve as if you’re jig fishing. Strikes will come on the drop and will be on either lure, with some large speckled trout falling to the plastic shrimp.

I’m pretty confident that with those two rods rigged and ready you will have a good chance of having success on any pier anywhere. Having said that, make sure to have a few extra of everything. Also, a fish finder rig with a piece of mullet has a chance to do SOMETHING on a day when not much else seems to be happening. Of course be ready if someone is getting and you are not, and switch it up if necessary.

Finally, fishing is supposed to be relaxing. If you’re on the pier on a busy fall day when the spots are thick, be prepared to get tangled up with someone. Just part of the way it goes. You can make your day better, or worse, by the way you handle it.

 Preparing pompano for the table

Start by completely removing the head and all entrails (ew). Now hold what’s left by the tail and scrape your knife from the back to front to remove the small scales. When you get it all it will not sound so … scrapey(?) Clean your knife blade and run it along a steel to tighten up your blade edge. Cut through the skin just to the backbone several times on each side. This is called scoring. Dust very lightly with flour and season liberally with whatever spices you like. Old Bay goes nicely.

Heat a nonstick sauté pan over medium heat with butter until it gets foamy.

Lay the fish in the pan and leave it alone. Don’t touch it, slide around, or otherwise touch it, if you mess with it, you will ruin it. After a few minutes the edges will change color slightly and will begin to come off the pan. When it’s done it will come loose and then you will see a beautiful crust has formed. Turn it over now.

Drop in a couple knots of butter and let it melt. Spoon the melted butter over the top. It won’t take long. Have a plate ready. Serve with fresh vegetables and some good bread. This is a solid date night recipe. Good luck.

OCEAN ISLE BEACH — When the Army Corps of Engineers issued its final decision on the terminal groin project here more than eight years ago, the document conveyed a prescient warning.

A terminal groin “may increase erosion along the easternmost point of Ocean Isle Beach, down-drift of the structure.”

Today, the shoreline east of terminal groin is being gnawed away, vanishing beach in front of a neighborhood of grand, multimillion-dollar homes built shortly after the $11 million erosion-control structure was completed in spring 2022.

A wall of sandbags fends off waves from reaching some of the waterfront homes on the ocean side of the gated community that’s advertised as “luxurious coastal living.”

Several lots remain vacant because the properties no longer have enough beachfront necessary to meet the state’s ocean setback requirements.

“I would have never developed the property if I had known this was going to happen,” said Doc Dunlap, a developer with Pointe OIB, LLC. “It’s just devastating to tell you the truth. I even had plans myself to build there, have a summer home.”

The caveat written in the federal record of decision all those years ago, one that was a central argument in a lawsuit to try and stop the terminal groin from being built, was not explicitly pointed out to the developers of The Pointe, they say.

In an email responding to Coastal Review’s questions, the Division of Coastal Management said it, “is not aware of any specific notification to those property owners other than the standard (area of environmental concern) hazard notice.”

“We were just under the impression that all of this was going to be extremely positive and help protect this part of the beach,” said Jimmy Bell, who contributed to the planning and implementation of the community. “And then, once we started experiencing this massive erosion, I started researching groins more. We had engineers and other people that were helping, and we were informed and under the impression that it was going to all be good, and now it’s turning out to not be quite as good.”

Ocean Isle Beach Mayor Debbie Smith pushed back on those claims.

“My heart breaks for them, but the developers knew that that groin was going in,” she said. “They knew it was not designed to protect that area. It was not designed to harm it, but they also know that adjacent 2,000 feet west of them was a line of sandbags and most of them had been there for years.”

The developers are now seeking legal representation as they continue to try to figure out how to protect the oceanfront properties within the 44-lot neighborhood.

“Mr. Dunlap is extremely disappointed in the decisions made that resulted in the placement and construction of the terminal groin and the erosion damages it has caused,” John Hilton III, corporate counsel to Pointe OIB, stated in an email. “He is committed to holding those who made these decisions legally accountable and also seeking a remedy to correct the ongoing erosion.  We are working to obtain local legal counsel to explore and pursue all available options.”

Erosion-battered shore

The east end of the island at Shallotte Inlet historically accreted and eroded naturally as the inlet wagged back and forth between Ocean Isle Beach and Holden Beach up until Hurricane Hazel hit in 1954.

When the powerful hurricane – likely a Category 4 storm using the Saffir-Simpson scale developed in 1971 – made landfall in October 1954 near the South Carolina border, it caused the inlet channel to move in a more easterly direction, accelerating erosion at the east end of the barrier island.

Erosion has remained persistent in that area since the 1970s, according to N.C. Division of Coastal Management records.

The worst of the erosion occurred along about a mile of oceanfront shore beginning near the inlet. An encroaching ocean claimed homes, damaged and destroyed public utilities, and prompted the N.C. Department of Transportation to abandon state-maintained streets.

In 2005, the town was permitted to install at the east a wall of sandbags to barricade private properties and infrastructure from ocean waves.

Sandbags revetments are, under state rules, to be used as a temporary measure to hold erosion at bay.

In 2011, the North Carolina General Assembly repealed a decades-old state law that prohibited permanent, hardened erosion-control structures from being built on North Carolina beaches.

Under the revised law, a handful of beach communities, including Ocean Isle Beach, get the option to pursue installing a terminal groin at an inlet area.

Terminal groins are wall-like structures built perpendicular to the shore at inlets to contain sand in areas of high erosion like the east end of Ocean Isle Beach.

These structures are controversial because they capture sand that travels down the beach near shore, 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.

Ocean Isle Beach Sea Turtle Protection Organization Island Coordinator Deb Allen said that beach conditions east of the terminal groin have hindered turtles from nesting there this season. Escarpment, sandbags and debris that Allen believes is coming from the development have impeded turtles from accessing the sandy areas they seek to lay their eggs.

As of early September, the organization had recorded four false crawls, which is when a female turtle crawls onto a beach only to return to the ocean without laying eggs, and three nests east of the terminal groin, Allen said.

The potential for that type of impact to wildlife was argued in a lawsuit the Southern Environmental Law Center filed on behalf of the National Audubon Society in August 2017 challenging the Corps’ approval of Ocean Isle Beach’s project.

The lawsuit claimed that the Corps failed to objectively evaluate alternatives to the terminal groin, including those that would be less costly to Ocean Isle residents and less destructive to the coast, particularly to what was then the undeveloped area on the island’s east end.

The lawsuit, which later included the town, came to an end in March 2021 after a panel of appellate court judges affirmed a lower court’s decision that the Corps fairly considered the alternatives included in an environmental impact statement, or EIS, examining the proposed project.

“As we went through and talked about the impacts of terminal groins in the EIS, this was the central argument – will the land east of the groin erode at a more rapid pace? And, everything we could point to, all of the science, said yes,” said Geoff Gisler, program director of SELC’s Chapel Hill office. “There’s only so much sand and the way that these structures operate is they keep more of it in one place and necessarily take it from somewhere else. That’s why we have seen over and over again that when you build a groin towards the end of an island, what happens is the island erodes at the end. That there is less sand going to the east end is not an accident.”

‘Righting this wrong’

Gisler said the SELC will be following how the town and the Corps respond to the erosion that is occurring east of the terminal groin.

“The town committed and the Corps committed to righting this wrong if it occurred and that’s what we’ll be looking at,” he said.

Under conditions in the town’s federal permit, the town is required to monitor the sand spit east of The Pointe as well as the town’s shoreline and that of neighboring Holden Beach to the west.

Should those shorelines erode past boundaries identified in 1999, “consideration will be given to modifying the structure to allow more sediment to move from west to east past the structure,” according to final EIS.

The town also has the option to nourish an eroded shoreline.

“In the event the negative impacts of the terminal groin cannot be mitigated with beach nourishment or possible modifications to the design of the terminal groin, the terminal groin would be removed,” the EIS states.

The Corps and the Division of Coastal Management are reviewing the monitoring report submitted by the engineering firm hired by the town, Coastal Protection Engineering of North Carolina.

That report indicates that erosion “has exceeded the 1999 shoreline threshold for the area immediately east of the groin.”

“However, the applicant is working on a modification request to alter this threshold as the shoreline had eroded landward of part of that threshold prior to construction of the groin,” according to the division.

A beach maintenance project scheduled for fall 2026 to inject sand west of the terminal groin is anticipated to increase the rate of sand that bypasses the terminal groin and “would serve to ‘feed’ the shoreline immediately east of the groin with additional material,” according to the town’s engineer.

But The Pointe’s developers and property owners say they can’t wait another year.

“There’s got to be an exception to the standard application restrictions (i.e., sandbag placement and height) the (Coastal Area Management Act/Coastal Resources Commission) process has today to protect near term east of the groin due to emergency status and a path longer term that can get us to a point of evaluating what we can do for the groin from a redesign standpoint that would protect all both west and east of the groin,” property owner Brendan Flynn said. “What we’re dealing with now in my view is we need to have another review of what could be done to enhance the groin’s performance to benefit and protect the other part of this island.”

Smith said that the terminal groin is doing what it was designed to do.

“It is building up right adjacent to the groin,” she said. “It just has not built anything far enough down to protect this new development. I wish Mother Nature would reserve herself and build it up right now instead of taking it away. I wish I had some magic bullet for them too, but I don’t today. It’s really up to them to take some action.”

Kerri Allen, director of the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s southeast office in Wrightsville Beach, called the situation “heartbreaking,” but not surprising. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

“When you alter the natural movement of sand with a hardened structure like the terminal groin, you might protect one stretch of beach, but you inevitably put other areas at greater risk,” she said. “And, unfortunately, the erosion we’re seeing east of the groin is exactly what experts warn could happen.  That being said, the purpose of this groin was to protect existing infrastructure that was already at risk. Instead, new homes were built in an area that’s incredibly vulnerable and these homeowners are now facing devastating losses. Moving forward, we need to focus on solutions that don’t just shift the problem from one place to another and ensure that public resources aren’t used to subsidize these risky, short-term development decisions.”

“I think this is a pivotal moment for Ocean Isle and for other coastal towns,” she continued. “We have an opportunity to step back, look at the science, and commit to managing our coast in a way that protects both our communities and the natural systems that sustain them. That means resisting the temptation to build our way out of these challenges because, ultimately, the ocean always wins.”

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.”

Precariously perched as a narrow strand protruding into the stormy Atlantic Ocean, Ocracoke Island and its vulnerable highway have been a longtime headache for coastal scientists and road engineers.

Worsening erosion, flooding and storm damage exacerbated by climate change have heightened the urgency for the year-round community: What can be done to save their beloved island?

Researchers met with islanders Sept. 10 at the Ocracoke Community Center to present a study that modeled what the island’s future may hold under different scenarios, from the status quo to new efforts at beach nourishment and bridging.

The bottom line is that the very road itself, along with ongoing attempts to block the ocean’s advance with dunes and stabilize the roadbed with sandbags, has instead resulted in the narrow, low landscape that is currently so under threat by natural forces.

“The heart of the challenge is that the storm events we need to protect roads and buildings from would actually otherwise provide a lifeline for barrier islands in the face of rising sea levels,” Laura Moore, professor and associate chair of research with University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, said in an interview before the meeting. “It’s an extremely difficult reality, but unfortunately, the more successful we are in preventing storm impacts, the more quickly we’re managing the barrier islands out from under us.”

Accessible only by ferries, private boats and small planes, Ocracoke Island, most of which is part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, depends on a single, highly vulnerable highway stretching about 13 miles from the ferry dock on the north end of the island to the village.

The road, N.C. Highway 12,  has been protected by oceanside sandbags for years along one section about 5 miles from the northern ferry terminal known as the South Dock because of the link to Hatteras Island. But not only are the sand barriers unable to withstand the overwash during storms — the road was impassible and closed for several days after Hurricane Erin in August — the stacking lanes by the ferry dock have also suffered severe erosion.

“It’s very threatened,” Moore told Coastal Review. “I mean, we spend so much time thinking about the road, and yet (potential loss) at that terminal is a storm away, maybe two.”

The multiyear study, led by the UNC Chapel Hill researchers as part of a team that also included scientists from N.C. State University, Duke University and East Carolina University, as well as representatives from the N.C. Department of Transportation, the National Park Service, Hyde County and Tideland Electric Member Corp., is intended to provide information based on scientific modeling, and does not make recommendations or propose solutions.

“What we were charged with was to consider how different management strategies might influence the future landscape,” Moore said. “So, we have looked at different management strategies under different sea level rise scenarios, and we are able to say something about how the different strategies will likely influence Island width and island elevation and the persistence of the island in the future.”

In other words, as Moore explained, the study did not set out to design and test strategies; it instead modeled, which is essentially, “if you do ‘X’, this is what is likely to happen.”

“We’re really looking at relative differences between the management strategies in terms of their effects on the island,” she said.

Moore said that researchers studied current coastal conditions and processes and worked off data and prior research provided in the N.C. 12 Task Force report and NCDOT feasibility studies for guidance as the team developed the strategies to be reviewed: the status quo, i.e., dune road and/or sandbag rebuilding and maintenance; beach nourishment, i.e., widen or nourish the eroding shoreline with sand pumped from stored dredged material or offshore deposits; or road alternatives, i.e., relocate the ferry dock(s), which would eliminate the need to maintain hot spots on N.C. 12,  or build a bridge or causeway to Hatteras Island.

What the modeling revealed is that under the status quo, the island would continue to narrow until, within years or decades, it would become impossible to maintain the transportation corridor. With use of beach nourishment, there would be short-term improvement for 10 to 20 years. But elevating or bridging the road would help to rebuild the landscape.

It’s the first time that the coastal scientists have been able to customize a barrier island model that includes all these processes for a particular location, Moore said, as well as conduct hindcast to calibrate that model.

“Not only are we supporting the local community and the stakeholders … we’re also supporting the scientific community and barrier island communities more broadly because what we’re learning also advances the science so that we can do even better next time,” she said.” It’s really been a beautiful next step to both be coproducing the science in a way that contributes to the local conversation and also contributes to the scientific advancements so that other communities throughout the world on barrier islands can also learn from one another.”

The Ocracoke erosion and road problem has been the target of much study by several iterations of an N.C. Task Force, a multiagency panel of coastal scientists and engineers and government officials that focused on seven vulnerable areas — the “hot spots” — all but one on Hatteras Island. The most recent group was established by the Dare County Board of Commissioners in 2021, with a report released in 2023.

Back in 1972, renowned University of Virginia coastal scientist Robert Dolan, who died in 2016 at age 87, warned in a study published in the journal Science about the consequences of development on the Outer Banks.

“Barrier dune development has been encouraged by man along the Outer Banks of North Carolina to stabilize the barrier islands,” according to the study abstract. “This modification of a delicately balanced natural system is leading to severe adjustments in both geological and ecological processes.”

Dolan, who was credited with being the first scientist to determine that the Outer Banks, rather than being anchored to coral reefs, was instead a 30-foot-deep shifting “ribbon of sand,” later elaborated, saying that the islands’ dune system “may be detrimental to the long-range stability of the barriers and may become more difficult and costly to manage than the original natural system.”

While other coastal scientists have built on Dolan’s research, including Moore, it is undeniable that the complex tension between natural forces and humanity’s need to control them where they live is becoming more difficult in places like Ocracoke.

“And so, the only reason the barrier islands exist in the first place is because of these processes that move sand from the front to the island interior,” Moore said. “That’s what formed these islands, right? And so now that things are changing more rapidly, we’re just really getting pinched in a way that we haven’t seen before.”

In simple terms, barrier islands are built higher and broader by overwash and wind carrying sand over the land. Where the ocean is battering away at the shoreline, the swath of land from the ocean to the sound side collects the sand, unless it’s blocked.

“We are understandably wanting to protect road and roads and infrastructure,” she said. “It makes perfect sense from that perspective, to build a dune to protect the road.”

As sea levels are getting higher, and storms intensify, the battering is more powerful. “And if we don’t allow the island elevation to build up, it will eventually become fragmented and drown in these areas,” Moore said. “So we’re kind of fighting a losing battle, unfortunately.”

Sea levels have been rising ever since the islands formed, she added. But it’s now rising much faster. Between the year 2000 and 2050, seas have been expected to rise 12 inches, a rate Moore called “very significant.”

“It’s so unfortunate, but if we can’t quickly slow the rate of sea level rise, we’re definitely going to have to find different ways to live at the coast,” she said. “In the case of barrier islands, if we want them to persist, we need to find a way to allow them to shift underneath us or accept that we may lose the ability to live on them at all.”

Still, with adjustments, there is hope, Moore said. Citing the 2.4-mile Rodanthe “jug handle” Bridge” and, farther north, the 2,350-foot-long Richard Etheridge Bridge as examples, she said sand will rebuild the island and the shoreline when the natural processes are allowed to happen.

The main goal of the research is to provide the scientific models of several scenarios so the community can work with partners in planning their island’s future.

“It’s really an opportunity to be an incredible example and posterchild leading the way for coastal communities broadly, because they are at the forefront,” Moore said.

Naturally, islanders can see that conditions are changing, and something has to be done, said Randal Mathews, chair of the Hyde County Board of Commissioners and an Ocracoke resident. For the time being, he said, the consensus seems to be to do beach nourishment.

“Well, it’s going to buy some time, because there’s no long-term plan, and there’s no real good short-term plan.”

What could be a reasonable solution, he said, is to “harden” the area with a jetty by the South Dock Ferry Terminal.

What the island folks don’t want to do is move the ferry terminal toward the Pony Pens in the middle of the island, as has been proposed in the recent past.

“They did a survey, and it was 90% of the people don’t want to move south and don’t want to lose access from Hatteras, because they know, like after Dorian, that’s what it was like here, logistically,” he said. “We were dying.”

Mathews said he is truly grateful for Moore’s and her research team’s work, and islanders are listening. But meanwhile, Ocracoke can’t withstand repeated hits to its economy, and the ferry system and road access are major concerns. And he knows that they need political support and funding.

“You know, in the big picture, there’s a lot of moving parts that we have to address, we have to come up with these short-term solutions,” he said. “And we’ve got to  go to Raleigh, and we’ve got to go begging, you know, and that that’s how it works.”

Recently I was relaxing on the pier. It was a gorgeous day and many folks were enjoying it. The only sounds were waves washing on shore, gulls having their usual conversations, and occasionally one could hear voices and snippets of people chatting.

I was just zoning in and seeing some blues and Spanish mackerel feeding.

Peaceful.

It all changed when this “person” turned on a huge speaker and cranked the knob off. It was akin to the sound of ice breaking underfoot and about as welcome.

It’s a personal preference but I found, through extensive research (I asked a bunch of people I know), that there are definitely commonalities to be found.

Michael Howlett of Newport used to run big boat charters in Oahu. They would always have music playing when fishing offshore for mahi mahi, tuna, marlin. Sometimes it was a while between bites but usually it added to the fun of the day for the tourists who would come out for the day.

I used to fish quite a bit with a friend, Bryan Pahmeier of Titusville, Florida, who is gone now and who had a really nice sound system wired up in his flats boat. He’d use it when running to new spots but not early in the morning.

Justin Manners of Jacksonville says it depends which fish and at what depth. “Ocean, I say go for it. Deeper water bottom fishing for bull drum, catfish, etcetera, go for it. Fishing flats, I’m not going to take a chance.”

This seems to be the theme, as we continue to see.

Ryan Furtak, a fly-fishing guru from Scranton, Pennsylvania, who is the master of the Upper Delaware River system, has an interesting take: “Loud music is completely fine. Under these conditions: Smallmouth bass fishing. I never found they cared. Definitely not while trout fishing or saltwater flats fishing. Spook large trout 100% of the time. Spook flats fish and won’t be able to properly communicate with the guy poling the boat. Otherwise, as long as nobody is around to be disturbed, crank it up.”

Chris Medlin of Surf City offers a measured response, appropriate for the mayor’s son: “Hmmm, I’d say we should just tolerate it because I just don’t want rule after rule on our outdoor activities.”

Those are the people who have mixed feelings or are more open to loud music. I have a lot of friends who are adamant about their opposition, to say the least.

Tim Still of Havelock enters Focus Mode where music is unwelcome. “Well, I’m against it for the same reason I turn off my radio completely when I’m parallel parking. I don’t like the distraction, but I’m not sure if it affects the fish.”

I feel the same way about parallel parking, for sure.

If you talk to Capt. Harry from Kitty Hawk, he’ll tell you, “That’s a hard no while fishing except when traveling, but then it depends on what’s playing.”

Rob Snowhite of Washington, D.C., “despises” having to listen to others’ music on the water. “Never play mine while out for same reason. Maybe going from Point A to Point B”, but even then he says, be considerate.

Now we start to get into the real meat of the conversation. People who are passionate and experienced at fishing for the big ones in the shallows like Rick Patterson of Cape Carteret, “I personally wouldn’t. I believe having loud music playing would definitely spook reds in shallow water.” 

As we’ll see, the more technical the fish you are target, the more likely you will find that anglers don’t want any extra sound. Dave Bernstein of Morehead City gets right to the point, “Never have music on while fishing.”

David Edens of Hilton Head fly fishes 98% of the time. He says that redfish on the low tides are super spooky but, “It’s Ok when I am fishing bait in deep waters. Just not too loud.”

Rip Woodin of Rocky Mount, a confirmed fly fisherman who was taught to fish in the mountains, is unequivocal, “No.” (He may have added a colorful word for emphasis.)

Kristi Irvin, who now lives in Italy, came up with a response that matched her lovely personality, “Good Morning, my friend!  How are you?  Thanks for asking my opinion. First, I love music. It’s a huge part of my life. I never listen to music while fishing however.  I love the sounds of what’s going on around me.   When I first head out, the sounds of nature are exhilarating and relaxing at the same time. Then, most times, I’m so absorbed that even the most beautiful sounds fade away and I’m in my own world. The only time I’ve ever enjoyed playing music while fishing is when I’m on a charter boat at sea and we are making our run in or out.”

See what I mean? So nice.

Personally, I never have music on while on the water. I’m too into the sounds in my own head. As Norman Mclean tells us in “A River Runs Through It,” “The best part of fishing is that soon the whole world is full of thoughts of nothing but fishing.”

It would seem that the general consensus is that playing music while fishing is fine but in moderation. Not so loudly that it bothers the fish and definitely be considerate of others while out there. Just because it’s not illegal, doesn’t mean it’s always the right thing to do.

The historic Whalehead Club in Corolla, a Currituck Banks landmark, will turn 100 years old next month and ticketed events commemorating the centennial are on sale.

Completed in 1925, the Whalehead Club, the majestic 21,000-square-foot art nouveau mansion and centerpiece of Historic Corolla Park, was completed after three years of construction. Its $383,000 price tag at the time is about $7.1 million in 2025 dollars.

The 33 years that Currituck County has owned the property is the longest period it has gone without changing hands.

After more than three years of negotiations, the county purchased Whalehead in November 1992 from Howco Residential Development Inc., which had foreclosed on the property in 1989. That was after the failure of two savings and loan institutions, which had previously owned the property, according to a 1992 report in the Coastland Times.

Although Whalehead is now again a symbol of wealth and opulence on Currituck Banks, at the time of the county’s purchase, it was dilapidated and a shell of what it had been when construction finished 67 years earlier. Its 1992 price tag of $2.8 million included the building and 28.5 acres, and the purchase was extraordinarily unpopular with county voters. Every commissioner on the 1992 board that bought the property lost their reelection bid after the purchase.

“Most people didn’t understand what we were doing,” Jarvisburg resident Jerry Wright, who was a county commissioner at the time, recently told Coastal Review.

Whalehead was like nothing the Outer Banks had ever seen.

Multimillionaire industrialist Edward Collings Knight built the mansion as a vacation getaway and hunting refuge for himself and his wife Marie-Louise LeBel.

It had an elevator and a basement. Elevators were unheard of here, and the basement was an engineering feat for a building so close to sea level. Two Delco-brand generators provided electricity at all times.

The Knights named their Currituck Banks getaway cottage Corolla Island, a reference to the artificial island that was created by dredge and fill so the ground could support the massive building.

“The main house was erected on a hill formed by the earth dredged to create the moat. The hill made it possible for Whalehead to have a full basement that rests on sunken wood pilings, a feature that is considered extraordinary for a coastline structure,” notes the 1978 Register of Historic Places documentation.

Until 1922, the 2000-acre property had been owned by the Lighthouse Club, one of Currituck Sound’s most exclusive hunting clubs of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Although there are legends that Knight bought the Lighthouse Club after his wife, who was an avid hunter, was not permitted to hunt because of her gender, there is no evidence to support the claim.

According to a 1986 letter provided by the Whalehead Club and written by John B. Litchfield, Corolla Island was built by a local contractor and the plans for the building were somewhat vague.

“Mr. Knight, who had had training in art, drew the plans for the house,” Litchfield wrote. “He did not, however, include any specifications. I do not know who recommended my father as a builder, or how they got together. At any rate, Mr. Knight contracted with my father, J. A. Litchfield of Poplar Branch, N.C. to build the house.”

Litchfield’s observation that Knight’s plans did not “include any specifications” is consistent with the belief that Knight did not use an architect to design the house, in spite of the project’s complexity.

The Knights stayed at Corolla Island for extended periods over the next nine years, entertaining a number of guests. The last entry Edward Knight recorded was Nov. 24, 1934. Edward Knight died on July 23, 1936, and his wife Marie Louise died three months later.

This was during the Great Depression and Knights’ heirs had no interest in maintaining a vacation getaway and hunting lodge on the Outer Banks. They auctioned off many of the one-of-a-kind Tiffany designs in the houses and other art nouveau objects and started looking for a buyer.

Rep. Lindsey Warren, who represented northeastern North Carolina at the time, told his congressional colleagues about the property, and New York Rep. William Sirovich agreed to purchase it for $175,000. The closing date was to be Dec. 17, 1939, the same day Sirovich died suddenly.

Ray Adams, a Washington, D.C., meat packer with considerable political connections, instead bought the property for $25,000 in early 1940.

It was Adams who gave the property its name.

“According to tradition, in the process of clearing land for the air strip that would facilitate transportation of guests, a whale bone was found which prompted Adams to rename his estate Whalehead Club,” the National Register of Historic Places notes in their documentation.

Although a whale bone may have been found when an airstrip was being built, there is reason to believe the area was already sometimes referred to as “Whalehead.”

An August 1926 article in the Elizabeth City Daily Advance headlined “Currituck Girls Enjoyed Camping Trip” reported that the young women had “just returned from their summer camping trip at Corolla, that part of the beach known as Whalehead.”

Adams had big plans for his newly purchased property. Although interested in hunting, “his major motivation for acquiring the 2000-acre estate was to use it for entertaining the government officials who controlled the contracts that provided the bulk of his business,” according to Historic Register documents.

Adams on Nov. 1, 1940, formed Whalehead Club Inc. with 10 shares mostly held by Adams and his wife.

Knight’s plans for an entertainment center, though, were put on hold when the United States entered World War II and the Coast Guard needed a training and patrol site.

In 1942, Knight agreed to rent the Whalehead Club to the Coast Guard. Barracks were built, which no longer exist. At one time, up to 300 Coast Guardsmen were stationed at Corolla.

Adams, concerned about protecting his property, included a provision that his club superintendent, Dexter Snow, be made a chief bosun’s mate and be stationed at Corolla to look after his interests.

After the war, Adams threw himself into his plans to create a luxury resort on Currituck Banks.

“He was kind of promised a toll road that would go … like a Route 12, but all the way up to Virginia along the beach,” said Whalehead Club Curator Jill Landon. “He wanted it to be like a Myrtle Beach or kind of like an Ocean City, Maryland. We’ve got the plans drawn up with like a Ferris wheel and all sorts of infrastructure up here.”

Using his government contacts, Adams began lobbying for a beach toll road.

Adams’ plans relied on the toll road to make the project feasible, but the concept he had in mind was extensive.

The plans are on file with the Olmsted Archives at Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site. Listed as Job No. 10031, Whalehead, the documents drawn for Adams by Olmstead Brothers Landscape Architects clearly show a planned toll road with a 100-foot right-of-way, a yacht basin, shopping center and fishing pier, among other amenities.

The Carolina Virginia Turnpike Authority, or CVTA, was formed, but problems soon emerged.

Dare County Rep. Bruce Etheridge introduced a bill in the House for the “five-year-old beach toll-road project,” reported the April 17, 1953, edition of the Coastland Times.

The bill was doomed. The authority had been given powers of eminent domain, but the state Supreme Court, the article noted, had “opined that the Legislature could not give a company municipal powers nor the right to condemn private land.”

The authority also found there was little appetite in the bond market for a toll road that would cross state lines and require approvals from two states. In December 1954, the Coastland Times reported that “The sponsors of the Nags Head-Virginia Beach toll road still have not sold their bonds.”

The problem, CVTA authorities explained, was “the fact that two separate authorities and two states are involved has created legal problems which must be clarified before the bonds are sold.”

Two years later, in August 1956, it had become clear that the toll road was not going to happen. Adams’ dream of creating a sprawling resort community along the Currituck Banks was never realized.

The last entry in the Whalehead Club log recorded “that Adams died there suddenly at 6:10 p.m.,” according to the Historic Places documentation. That was Dec. 31, 1957.

The heirs to the Adams estate were able to quickly find a buyer. Portsmouth, Virginia, contractors MacLean and Wipp paid $375,000 for the estate and in turn leased the building and immediate grounds to the Corolla Academy.

The Corolla Academy had a clear vision of how the education of young men should proceed.

The Historic Places document quotes from a brochure to parents: “Corolla Academy is the result of the firm conviction that summer study for boys of secondary level is a rewarding and enjoyable experience. The time has passed when American boys can afford to waste the three months’ interval between the end of school in June and the resumption of classes in September.”

It’s not clear if it was location, philosophy or some other reason, but the Corolla Academy closed after three years.

What followed may be one of the more intriguing uses of the Whalehead Club.

The United States was in a frantic race in 1961 with the Soviet Union to be the first nation to land on the moon, and Atlantic Research Corp. was in the thick of it, designing rocket engines for NASA. The Soviet Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR, existed from 1922 until 1991 in eastern Europe and northern Asia.

The corporation, or ARC, leased the estate from Wipp and MacLean with a $1.25 million option to buy that was exercised in 1964. For ARC, the Whalehead Club was ideal for its purposes.

ARC was experimenting with beryllium as a fuel for the Poseidon rocket engines. As a fuel, beryllium has some real advantages. It’s very powerful and it’s relatively stable, although it is extremely toxic.

It became apparent that beryllium was not going to be a practical fuel, and in 1972, ARC sold the property to local Norfolk real estate developers Kabler & Riggs for more than $3 million. That firm subdivided the property but left the 35 acres around the Whalehead Club building intact.

The building was left vacant for 20 years, but as noted in the Historic Places 1978 report, the building, with its I-beam construction and 18-inch-thick walls, had been “successfully constructed to withstand the most severe coastal storms.”

Obligated to pay off the loan for the 1992 purchase of the property, Currituck County was not able to begin a full restoration of the building until 1999, when 25% of occupancy tax collections could be used.

In 2002, 10 years after the property had been purchased, the Whalehead Club opened to the public.

The original custom Steinway piano was inside and some of the original Tiffany sconces were still intact. Careful research of auction records had enabled the team working on restoration to track down a surprising number of original furniture pieces. By the time it opened to the public, the county had spent more than $1 million in restoring the building.

The Whalehead Club is available for tours. Reservations are recommended and can be made by calling 252-453-9040 ext. 226, at the site or online.

EAST LAKE — In the sadder, more gruesome labor of wildlife conservation, a new count of dead wildlife on the asphalt of two strips of highway within Alligator River Wildlife Refuge continues to reflect the merciless decimation of living creatures by vehicular traffic.

A new report, “US 64 Roadkill Monitoring Survey Year One Interim Report,” released Aug. 13 by the nonprofit Wildlands Network, counted more than 5,000 vertebrates representing 144 species, as well as 1,050 snakes, 1,186 turtles, and 1,529 frogs dead alongside the highway or flattened on the pavement. The first year of the two-year study covered Aug. 1, 2024, to July 31, 2025.

“It’s pretty remarkable carnage, and we’re sure that’s an underestimate, because some things get removed by vultures,” Ron Sutherland, the conservation group’s chief scientist, told Coastal Review.

The updated information will be valuable to planning for proposed wildlife crossings under sections of U.S. Highway 64 and nearby U.S. 264, a need highlighted over the years by numerous vehicle strikes of critically endangered red wolves. Huge bear and deer that run into the road are also increasing hazards to human life, especially at night. 

Although the red wolf had once roamed much of the Southeast, the only wild population of about 30 red wolves, including about a dozen pups, is currently managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Alligator River and Pocosin Lakes refuges within a five-county recovery area in northeastern North Carolina, a good portion of which is intersected by the two highways. 

“One happy surprise is we didn’t see any red wolves,” Sutherland told Coastal Review. “One of the reasons we set out to do the project, one of our goals, was to keep the road clean of roadkill.”

Vehicle strikes, in addition to gunshots, have threatened recovery of the species.  Wolves have been known to be drawn to the highway to eat the dead animals, and tragically suffer the same fate as their would-be meal.

“Research is an important step in the construction of wildlife crossing structures,” the report states. “In order to be cost effective, it is imperative to know where hotspots of wildlife road-crossing activity occur so the sites can be chosen that are most effective both in mitigating wildlife road collisions and maintaining habitat connectivity.”

The study route was chosen to inform planning efforts by North Carolina Department of Transportation, Fish and Wildlife, and the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission to develop proposals for wildlife crossings and fencing installations on U.S. 64, the report stated, “with the immediate goal” of reducing wolf strikes.

“We also realized that providing more recent roadkill data would be essential as a fresh baseline for evaluating any future wildlife crossings that were installed on the highway,” according to the report.

Earlier roadkill surveys along U.S. 64 were completed between 2008 and 2011 as part of the North Carolina Department of Transportation planning for a proposed 27.3-mile-long widening and bridge replacement project. The road-widening plans, which had included numerous wildlife crossings, have since been dropped, but construction of a replacement bridge connecting Dare and Tyrrell counties over Alligator River is underway. Construction plans include wildlife crossings and under-road tie-ins at both ends of the bridge.

Sutherland said that the survey team chose to drive at a less pokey pace, about 35 mph or so, and skipped weekend surveying, due to the increased amount of traffic now on the highway. Wildlife officers were informed about large carcasses such as bear so they could be promptly removed, and smaller creatures were scooped up and tossed into the woods. Not pleasant, but unfortunately dead animals along the road are not unusual.

“Overall, you know, I’ve had a lot of years of experience working down there and seeing the wildlife before we started the survey,” Sutherland said. 

While he wasn’t shocked by the continued high numbers of roadkill, he said he didn’t expect to see so many birds. In one period of time, after a rare snowstorm, the technicians found hundreds of deceased yellow-rumped warblers alongside the road, many of which were apparently struck while seeking patches of grass without snow cover. It may not prove Darwin’s theory of natural selection, but intelligence matters even for birdbrains.  As Sutherland noted, of the 68 different types of dead birds — totaling about 800 — there were only three crows, the geniuses of the bird world.

“We know how to keep all these other wildlife species from getting hit on the road, because you can build crossings under or over the road, with fencing to steer them to the right places,” he said. “And it works for basically everything, but the birds. That’s going to take some work to figure out.”

Last December, U.S. Federal Highways’ Wildlife Crossing Pilot Program awarded a $25 million grant to build crossings on U.S. 64 by Buffalo City Road, a red wolf “hot spot” in East Lake on the Dare County mainland where the animals often cross into the refuge. Wildlands Network teamed up with the Center for Biological Diversity, another conservation nonprofit, to raise an additional $4 million in private donations for matching funds, Sutherland said.

If all goes as hoped, Sutherland expects that construction of the crossings could start in late 2026

“It’s expensive because they’re having to raise the road up to be able to put underpasses underneath,” he said, adding that design details are still being worked out.

With the project construction including what he described as a kind of “big ramp,” there will be opportunities to also put small crossings and tunnels on each side for the little crawling, slithering and hopping species, hopefully allowing a total of six to 10 crossings.

“But that’s going to be kind of a win-win situation, because that way that at least part of Highway 64 is going to be elevated,” Sutherland said. “And with sea level rise and storms and hurricanes and so forth, it’s going to be a good for climate resiliency, too, to have the road elevated.”

Clarification Aug. 29: Coastal recreational anglers will have a higher flounder quota this season, but that does not change the season length or bag and size limits.

Original post Aug. 22:

Coastal recreational anglers are now allowed to catch more southern flounder.

The North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission earlier this week adopted an amendment to the southern flounder fishery management plan that evenly splits landings of the popular fish between commercial and recreational fishers.

Amendment 4 shifts total allowable landings to an additional 53,000 pounds from the commercial sector to the recreational sector this upcoming season, which is scheduled for Sept. 1-14.

The additional quota, however, does not equate to an extension of the 2025 recreational season, according to the state Division of Marine Fisheries.

“Rather, it will reduce the risk of recreational catch overages in the fishery this year, which would be subtracted from the next year’s quota,” according to a division release.

The division is exploring “more comprehensive management measures” through developing Amendment 5 to the plan.

Measures fisheries commissioners said they would like to be considered in that proposed amendment include decoupling southern flounder management from Gulf flounder and summer flounder management, and allocating quota equitably between commercial gears and management areas.

During the commission’s two-day meeting in Raleigh earlier this week, division staff presented an analysis of the striped bass harvest closure and gill net closure above the ferry lines in the Neuse and Tar/Pamlico rivers. Data shows those closures have not resulted in an increase abundance of striped bass in those rivers, despite continued stocking efforts.

Based on current management plans in the striped bass fishery, the division “will develop harvest management measures that allow access to, and protection for, the resource,” according to the release.

“The harvest management strategy will focus harvest on stocked fish in the Neuse and Tar/Pamlico rivers but limit harvest of Albemarle-Roanoke Striped Bass that occasionally occur in these rivers,” it states.

Restrictions on gill nets will revert to those in place before the prohibition, including tie-down and distance-from-shore requirements.

A harvest management plan is expected to be presented to the commission in November.

Prior to the November meeting, the division will host a public meeting on the striped bass harvest management plan. Details of that meeting will be announced at a later date.

The commission also directed the division to draft proposed rule language for a 5-fish per person recreational bag limit for Atlantic bonito, which the commission is expected to consider at its November quarterly business meeting.

Commissioners also voted to set the annual cap on the number of commercial fishing licenses available in the eligibility pool at 500, draft a letter to the North Carolina General Assembly highlighting the importance of finance resources to the Department of Environmental Quality and Division of Marine Fisheries, and elected Commissioner Sarah Gardner as vice chair.

A video recording of the meeting is available on the Marine Fisheries Commission Meetings webpage.

The Currituck County Sheriff’s Office has identified the driver of the vehicle that struck and killed a young stallion earlier this week.

Trevor Odell Belcher of Greenville, Tennessee, was driving a 2010 Chevrolet, traveling south on Sandfiddler Road, which is not paved, when he struck the horse that was crossing in the path of his vehicle, according to the sheriff’s office.

Belcher stopped his vehicle and called 911 for assistance. His vehicle was not drivable.

Related: Driver strikes, kills 10-year-old stallion in Currituck County

No drugs or alcohol were involved and the driver was not charged, according to a sheriff’s office report.

The incident occurred at about 5 a.m. Monday.

The horse was a 10-year-old stallion named Francisco.

Staff with the Corolla Wild Horse Fund ask that motorists drive carefully and be aware of surroundings at all times, and obey traffic regulations on the four-wheel-drive beach area

This story has been updated.

WILMINGTON – Beams of sunlight broke through dark gray storm clouds suspended in the sky above this historic city on a recent August morning.

The local forecast was calling for rain, the kind of weather that drives tourists from area beaches to explore other experiences the area has to offer. The kind of weather that makes for a busy day at the Battleship North Carolina, the iconic floating World War II memorial moored on the Cape Fear River across from downtown Wilmington.

“This parking lot will be full in another hour,” said Terry DeMeo, the battleship’s director of development.

A year ago, DeMeo might not have made that prediction with as much certainty.

Back then, floodwaters overspilling from the Cape Fear River might have swallowed dozens of parking spaces in the western portion of the parking lot and forced visitors to make a decision: wade through water to get to the museum’s visitor center or head for higher ground.

That’s not much of a worry these days.

A wetland has been built in place of the chronically flooded section of parking lot to help absorb high-tide driven water. A tidal creek now meanders through this area of the property to direct water from the wetland back to the Cape Fear River.

A 500-foot-long and 50-foot-wide bioretention area extends through a paved, raised parking lot that has, since its completion Memorial Day weekend, gone untouched by floodwaters.

A bioswale runs the length of the parking lot next to Battleship Road. Living shorelines blend in with the rest of the natural, wild landscape around the ship’s mooring.

These features are all part of the battleship’s “Living with Water” project, one that accommodates the water rather than try and fight it back.

Construction on the project, some seven years in the making, is mostly complete.

Land next to the battleship has become a well-known and well-documented case in point on the impacts of sea level rise.

Since the memorial opened to the public in 1961, flood events on the property have climbed on a near-steady incline. Over the past six decades, a more than 7,000% increase in tidal flooding frequency has been documented at the site.

Flood events spurred by the rising sea created a sense of urgency for the museum’s leaders. The memorial does not receive regular government funding.

Persistent flooding of the property threatened one of the primary sources of the battleship’s funding – admission fees and gift shop sales.

“We actually lost parking, but that’s how committed we are to this project,” DeMeo said as she looked across the parking lot.

The lot sits at an elevation 6 feet above the old gravel one it replaced earlier this year.

The parking lot slopes to a bioretention area that looks as much like a pleasing water feature as it does a functional holding area for stormwater that allows water to percolate down into the soil.

A total of 450 spaces were at the memorial before the project was built. Today, there are 150 fewer parking spaces on the property.

Of those parking spaces, 100 were unusable due to flooding of the western portion of the old parking lot, DeMeo said. Plans are in the works to finish an overflow lot that may add roughly another 55 spaces.

“So, discounting the unusable old spaces, we expect to come out about even,” DeMeo said later in an email.

The loss of spaces has been a small price to pay for the multimillion-dollar project, one funded through federal and state grants, including the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the North Carolina Land and Water Fund, as well as the USS North Carolina Battleship Commission, Atlantic Coastal Fish Habitat Partnership, and numerous individual donors.

Within days of the wetland and tidal creek’s completion, birds moved in on the area, DeMeo said.

“That’s been pretty amazing to see the avian community step in right away, which means fish were in there,” she said. “That’s also when we saw the diminution of walking through knee-high flooding.”

The land, she explained, has been able to recreate itself.

The site now hosts researchers from NOAA as well as the University of North Carolina Wilmington, who are monitoring everything from the physical and vegetative parameters of the area to water quality.

The museum’s leaders are now in the early stages of exploring the creation of a living lab partnership with the university and NOAA.

A living lab is a natural fit, “and it’s a way to keep an eye on the project itself,” DeMeo said.

“This is a long-term project,” she said. “We don’t know where it’s ending. We consider ourselves a model for how this can be done and how it can’t be done. We really see ourselves as an opportunity to use as a case study. We had the opportunity and we had the need. That’s why we feel so strongly about serving as a model.”

RALEIGH – Nearly 40 years after the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service launched an innovative program to save the eastern red wolf from extinction, a nonprofit conservation group is challenging the agency’s prior decision to not upgrade to a more protective management designation, despite its outsized importance to the species’ survival.

Arguments were heard Wednesday by U.S. District Court Judge Terrence Boyle for the Eastern District of North Carolina in a federal court case filed by the Center for Biological Diversity that contends the Wildlife Service acted unlawfully when it decided to continue classifying the critically endangered population of red wolves as “nonessential.”

“Judge Boyle is so engaged on this issue … that he’s really able to dig in at this extremely deep, detail-oriented level,” said Perrin de Jong, a senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, during an interview Thursday about the 90-minute hearing. 

Following listing the wolves in 1966 as “threatened with extinction” on what later became the Endangered Species Act, the Fish and Wildlife Service about 20 years later established an experimental “non-essential” population of wild red wolves. and released four pairs into Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern North Carolina.

It is the only known wild population of red wolves in the world.

The intensively managed recovery program had promising success until about 2010, when management was scaled back. That was before court actions restored much of the program.

The Center for Biological Diversity had petitioned the agency in 2016 to reclassify the red wolf population as essential. The petition was denied in January 2023.

“The service is violating its duty to consider the best available science and the facts that have taken place since 1986 that affect the survival of the red wolf in the wild,” de Jong told Coastal Review.

In a request for comment on the case, a spokesperson for the U.S. Interior Department responded in an email Thursday that the agency does not “provide comment on active litigation.”

Mortality by vehicle strikes and gunshots have been an increasing challenge to the wolves’ survival, de Jong said.

Changing the classification to “essential” would extend more protective measures for the animals, he said, including allowing another layer of protection with a critical habitat designation.

The conservation group also is asking the agency to change their enforcement code to match a 2018 court ruling by Boyle that banned property owners from shooting red wolves unless they were threatening animals or people.

“The science indicates that the greater protections will result in greater conservation success, and inversely, lower protections result in higher poaching pressure,” he said.

The Wildlife Service is not disputing the conservation group’s argument that the agency has the authority to change the essentiality determination, the legal term for the classification, he added. 

“You could describe it as, ‘We’re not going to revisit the essentiality determination, because we don’t have to.’”

Today, there are believed to be 18 known red wolves surviving in the program’s five-county recovery area, in addition to unconfirmed numbers of wolves and wolf pups that do not have collars and have been born or fostered in the wild this year.

Updated data on the Red Wolf Recovery Program was not available on the Fish and Wildlife Service website, but a spokesperson said the new data is expected to be posted in early August.

OAK ISLAND – When Gigi Donovan looks at the dune fronting a row of largely undeveloped oceanfront lots across the street from her home, she sees a false sense of security.

“We’ve seen this dune go away three times in 12 years,” she said.

The sandy mound that separates the public beach from private lots along a stretch of East Beach Drive wasn’t here just a few years ago. It has been built up and planted with dune-stabilizing sea oats through the town of Oak Island’s efforts to restore its oceanfront shore. 

Now there is enough of it to render at least one of the thin slices of long-vacant beachfront lots suitable for building.

That has Donovan and several of her neighbors worried.

Amber and Dean Russell live a few doors down from the Donovans. When the Russells bought their bungalow in 2022, they went ahead and purchased the beachfront lot directly across the street.

“We bought that just to keep our view,” Amber Russell said. “It’s not safe to build on.”

That’s a sentiment a group of homeowners and residents who live in the area of SE 58^th Street and East Beach Drive have expressed to town officials in the days and months since they received notice that a developer had applied for a Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, permit to build a house on one of the oceanfront lots.

They’ve made countless telephone calls and sent emails to North Carolina Division of Coastal Management and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers staff.

They’ve posted handmade signs that read “SAVE OUR BEACHFRONT — No Building on Narrow, At-risk Lots!” along their block of East Beach Drive.

They started an online petition that, as of June 13, had more than 600 signatures.

They’ve dug in their heels and pushed back, calling “for the return to responsible, sustainable environmental development on fragile oceanfront properties” in a plea to Oak Island’s mayor.

But even they acknowledge this fight is an uphill battle, one that is likely to rage on as low-lying coastal areas deal with the effects of sea level rise, more frequent, intense coastal storms and shoreline erosion.

Regulatory flexibility

Last month, a CAMA minor permit was issued for 5515 East Beach Drive. Proposed building plans on the 0.17-acre lot include a 2,856 square-foot house.

Town officials in an email responding to questions said they do not have on file when a home last stood on that lot. Aerial satellite images from Brunswick County show that this particular block of East Beach Drive had more homes along the oceanfront in 1989 than today.

The homes captured by satellite imagery in 1989 were gone in 2003, destroyed by nature or demolition.

Today, houses stand on only two of the oceanfront lots along this block of East Beach Drive.

Oak Island officials said the town does not have an overarching designation determining whether a lot is buildable based on oceanfront construction setbacks.

“For building on an oceanfront lot, the developer would submit information to show compliance with CAMA regulations and receive a permit if they meet said requirements,” an official said in an email.

Back in 2023, the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission rubber-stamped Oak Island’s beach management plan, which gives beachfront builders more regulatory flexibility regarding how far back they must build from the sea.

The year before, the commission repealed regulations that allowed coastal communities to use the less restrictive setback measurement line for oceanfront construction, instead requiring builders to measure back from what is referred to as the preproject vegetation line.

The preproject vegetation line is the first line of stable, natural vegetation that is on an oceanfront before a large-scale beach nourishment project begins, one where more than 300,000 cubic yards of sand is placed on the beach.

But coastal communities that create and follow beach management plans approved by the commission may measure setbacks from the vegetation line rather than the preproject line as long as they meet the obligations detailed in their plans. Setbacks are 60 feet from the measurement line.

Coastal Resources Commission approved beach management plans for five coastal towns: Carolina Beach, Kure Beach and Wrightsville Beach in New Hanover County, and Oak Island and Ocean Isle Beach in Brunswick County. Once approved, plans must be reauthorized every five years.

Oak Island’s authorized plan calls for placing a total estimated 16.2 million cubic yards of sand on the beach over the next three decades. Under the plan, the beach will be nourished every six years.

Oak Island’s most recent sand nourishment projects were carried out in 2021 and 2022.

A nourishment project originally planned for winter 2024-25 was postponed after the town was informed contractor bids for the project “had far exceeded the amounts expected or budgeted,” according to the town’s website.

The project is again out for bids, and town officials anticipate a contract will be awarded and work will begin later this year.

Risky building

“They’re looking to the renourishment as the permanent solution,” Donovan said.

Dr. Gavin Smith, a North Carolina State University professor who researches hazard mitigation, disaster recovery and climate change adaptation, is not a big fan of beach nourishment.

“I think that overrelying on beach nourishment as a way to protect coastal development is fraught with problems,” he said in a telephone interview earlier this month. “It’s extremely expensive. It can take several seasons or it can take one bad storm and it’s gone.”

Smith pointed out that coastal zones, in particular barrier island, are highly dynamic and subject to significant change.

“Thinking about the construction of a house in a highly dynamic area, I think we need to be really careful,” he said. “Builders and homebuyers need to think about the life of that structure. The conditions that that site might face in 40 or 50 years is worthy of consideration. Individuals need to think about and actually ask a question: While you might be able to legally build in a given place, should you build there? I think that’s something that we all need to perhaps be more aware of.”

It’s time governments at all levels, local, state and federal, “do better,” he said.

“How can we recognize or applaud local governments that have the political will to adopt more stringent standards than the minimums? That’s what many governments adhere to is the minimum standards” Smith said. “Our codes are inadequate in the state, yet that’s what we adhere to in many cases. The National Flood Insurance Program should be viewed as a minimum, not the maximum. In an era of climate change we’re moving toward this idea of nonstationary, which we don’t know what the future holds. So, therefore our codes and standards ought to be that much more rigorous to account for the uncertainty. But instead, we’re relying on old data. We’re relying on old codes and that’s a significant problem.”

Sitting at the kitchen table in her home on a late May afternoon, Donovan mulled the many concerns she, her husband Mark, and their neighbors have raised to government officials.

They worry about whether more lights from new construction will hinder sea turtles from nesting on the shore. They worry about how stormwater runoff from new rooftops, driveways and other impervious surfaces may exacerbate flooding on their second-row lots.

They worry what one unwelcome coastal storm, be it a hurricane of any category or a potential tropical cyclone that packs a punch like the unnamed storm that pummeled Brunswick County last year, might do to the dune and any homes standing on the small land plots just behind it.

“We don’t know. That’s the thing. We don’t know what’s going to happen,” Gigi Donovan said.

In a statement to the town’s mayor last month, the Donovans and their neighbors wrote: “While we cannot control the weather, we can mitigate the damage it causes by responsibly managing the development of oceanfront properties.”

Oceanfront lot development “should be based on comprehensive land-use plans that take into consideration beach erosion, turtle nesting habitat, climate change, protection of private and town property, and preserving the legacy of (Oak Island) as a quaint, family-focused beach community.”

They are appealing to Coastal Resources Commission Chair Renee Cahoon, who determines whether or not property owners can make their case in a hearing before the full commission.

“We are very motivated and stubborn,” Gigi Donovan said in a text message. “If we allow them to plow ahead, steam-rolling any local opposition, our entire island beachfront will be irreparably destroyed.”

HATTERAS — Long famous for its bountiful fishing, Hatteras Island now has a new state-of-the-art processing and packing facility that keeps Outer Banks fish local from sea to plate, while also enabling local fresh catch to be shipped directly to customers.

And it’s owned by a local fishing family, to boot.

“The thing was, all this fish used to go to Virginia to get processed,” owner Jeff Aiken said during a recent tour of Jeffrey’s Seafood, situated along Back Creek in Hatteras Village.

The business officially opened May 21 during a ribbon-cutting celebration.

At a time when commercial and charter fishing enterprises face multiple challenges, the new facility is especially good news, Lynne Foster wrote in a message to Coastal Review.

“Jeffrey’s brings vitality to our Working Waterfront,” said Foster who along with her husband Ernie Foster run the Hatteras-based Albatross Fleet. “It also offers hope to the fishing community as well as the island community, which include many supporting businesses that rely on a vibrant fishing fleet and the sale of their catches.”

Working nearby in the chilly, 55-degree fish-cutting room, with heavy metal music seeming to set the pace, Aiken’s son Kelsey, 35, skillfully sliced through fish, one after another, cleaning and filleting. Along with another four or so people, they work their knives swiftly on large tables from early morning hours until about noon.

“As soon as we cut it, it gets bagged, we vacuum seal it and then it’s placed in a box to be shipped,” Kelsey Aiken said. Delivery drivers transport fish to local restaurants and markets from Hatteras to Avon, and sometimes to Rodanthe and Ocracoke. Fish awaiting processing are packed in ice, or stored in large freezers.

In addition to a temperature-controlled fish cleaning and cutting area, and rooms for packing, freezers and storage, the 11,000-square-foot facility also includes Hatteras Seafoods, the new retail market on the ground floor. Additional space remains for a small restaurant that is being planned, with the idea of serving local seafood favorites as well as beer and wine.

Proper cooling is provided by on-site freezers as large as walk-in closets, and the flash freezer — 30 degrees below zero — includes three gigantic fans to keep the air moving. There is also a chute from an ice machine on the upper floor to an “ice room” below.

“This is the brand-new vacuum sealer,” Jeff Aiken said, pointing to a long, steel machine with a pressing device on top. “That’s a $35,000 piece of equipment,” he added, as Kelsey Aiken demonstrated on a rockfish, using a 4-milliliter bag.

Nearby, there is the shrimp grader, another huge machine that not only pinches off the shrimps’ little heads, but also sorts them by four different sizes.

Jeff Aiken said that the business buys most of its shrimp from Native Seafood in Ocracoke, which has a deepwater inlet.

Although the warmer water from climate change has created boom years for shrimpers from Florida to Virginia, Jeff Aiken said, most of the local catch has to be processed in Engelhard and Swan Quarter because of depth limitations for the 60-foot shrimp trawlers. But he said that he hopes they’ll be able to get smaller shrimp boats into Hatteras for processing in the near future.

The retail store displays whole fish on ice in the glass cabinet, as well as filleted fish. A large window offers the customers in the retail store a view into the remarkably shiny and clean cutting room, showing the men, all wearing gloves and waterproof overalls, as they worked.

“I wanted them to see what’s going on,” Jeff Aiken said.

Fish scraps are returned to the water, to be happily “recycled” by other sea creatures, he added.

The facility also has an upstairs area for offices, meetings and storage, with an outside deck that boasts a wide view of the creek, the Pamlico Sound and lovely sunsets. Once the new website is up and running this winter, fresh-frozen filleted fish and shellfish will be able to be ordered online and shipped next-day air directly to consumers.

Jeff Aiken, along with his then-partners, founded the original fish house at the Hatteras docks in the 1980s, soon expanding to a wholesale business that involved driving a refrigerated truck packed with fresh Outer Banks catch to Hampton, Virginia.

Over the years, Jeff Aiken’s business adapted and evolved along with the fishing industry, as numerous local fish retailers and processors downsized or closed entirely.

But it was the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when supply chain disruptions left local chefs without fish to serve, that led to the dramatic expansion of Aiken’s business.

“They said, ‘Hey, you got the fish. Can you cut the fish?’” Jeff Aiken recalled. “So from that point, it spread by word of mouth and they kept coming.”

By then, Kelsey Aiken and his wife, Kelly, had joined Jeff Aiken in the business.

Jeff Aiken said he had purchased the fish house from Lee Peele, who had owned it when it was called Quality Seafood. It is also where he worked for $5 an hour when he first came to the Outer Banks in 1981.

“We were finally out of that little space out of Hatteras Harbor and we were cleaning all the fish for the charter vessels,” he recalled.

Jeff Aiken, who is from Hampton, Virginia, where he still has a home, credits his daughter-in-law Kelly, the company’s retail manager, with securing grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2021 to renovate and enlarge the facility with the goal of improving efficiency and capacity. The business had to pony up about a third of the matching funds.

“We’re in it for a million and they’re in it for two,” Jeff Aiken said. “And they got what they paid for.”

Now local chefs at local restaurants can ask for the fish they want to be filleted to order, Kelly Aiken said. Whenever possible, she said, the fin fish as well as seasonal oysters, shrimp and crab are local catch, and Jeffrey’s continues to partner with Ocracoke and Wanchese fish operations. The business also works with a distributer to bring its fresh fish — frozen and labeled — to North Carolina farmers markets to sell.

But Jeff Aiken said while their business sells almost all North Carolina product, and would never buy foreign shrimp, it’s impossible to guarantee that all their fish is strictly from the Outer Banks since fishers work within the realities of fisheries ecosystems and seasons.

“Fish have fins and tails and they swim,” he said. “They go where ever they want.”

And some fish they sell aren’t local at all, such as salmon from Norway or Scotland.

Jeff Aiken said that they buy most of their shrimp from Native Seafood in Ocracoke, which has a deepwater inlet. Although the warmer water from climate change has created boom years for shrimpers from Florida to Virginia, he continued, most of the local catch has to be processed in Engelhard and Swan Quarter because of water depth limitations for the 60-foot trawlers. But he added that he hopes they’ll be able to get smaller shrimp boats into Hatteras for processing in the near future.

Any customers looking for a brief history of Hatteras fishing can walk to the hallway behind the retail store to view a collection of historic to contemporary photographs of fishermen, including Jeff Aiken, with their boats, their family, their friends and the fish they caught.

“We call it the Hall of Fame,” he said, adding with a laugh: “Or, the Hall of Shame.”

One prominent picture is of the Ada Mae, a skipjack built in 1915 by Ralph Hodges and named after his then 13-year-old sister, who was Jeff Aiken’s grandmother.

The vessel, a former oyster dredge boat that is believed to be the last surviving skipjack in the state, has been restored. Today the boat is moored in New Bern and has participated in the reenactment of Blackbeard’s battle on Ocracoke Island, with Jeff Aiken onboard.

“All of those guys are local fishermen,” Jeff Aiken said, in between telling numerous fish tales about the various scenes lining the walls. “These pictures kind of bring the life to commercial fishing.”

Recreational harvest of spotted seatrout in North Carolina coastal waters is closed through June 30.

The closure, which includes inland and joint fishing waters, became effective Friday, a little more than two weeks after the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, or WRC, voted to adopt the temporary closure rule during its business meeting April 17.

The purpose of the temporary is to “avoid public confusion” after the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries’ recent proclamation to close commercial and recreational spotted seatrout harvest in coastal and joint waters because of widespread cold stun events last January, according to a WRC release.

“The Wildlife Resources Commission implemented temporary rulemaking as quickly as possible to provide regulatory consistency following the Marine Fisheries’ proclamation,” WRC Chief Deputy Director Christian Waters said in a release. “Temporarily closing the spotted seatrout harvest season follows recommendations set out by the N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission’s Spotted Seatrout Management Plan to allow the population to recover from cold stun events.”

The season by hook-and-line in inland and joint fishing waters will reopen July 1.

An invasive species of bass to North Carolina is now being found in coastal areas of the state, prompting wildlife officials to ask anglers to help stop the spread to protect native species of bass.

North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission biologists say Alabama bass populations infiltrate more rivers and lakes in the state than ever before, competing with native fish and aquatic organisms.

The species, which anglers often mistaken for spotted bass or largemouth bass, were initially discovered in western North Carolina waters in the 1980s, first in Lake Chatuge, a manmade reservoir in Clay County, and then in Lake Norman.

Over the last 20 years, state wildlife biologists have documented through routine fisheries surveys the rapid spread of Alabama bass to other reservoirs and rivers, including coastal area waters such as the Roanoke and Tar rivers.

Anglers are believed to have introduced the species to state waters.

“They’re being stocked and moved to new locations by anglers who need to understand the impact it’s having to our native black bass family of largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass,” state wildlife district biologist Kin Hodges said in a release. “Populations of largemouth bass are being dramatically reduced, while North Carolina could potentially lose smallmouth and spotted bass.” 

Wildlife officials say Alabama bass can be difficult to distinguish from native bass. The Wildlife Resources Commission has posted illustrations to help anglers identify the different bass species and installed signs to help with identification and education about Alabama bass at popular fishing and boating access areas.

Anglers who catch Alabama bass should not release them back into a waterbody.

Alabama bass or, on average, smaller than largemouth bass and they interbreed with smallmouth and spotted bass, which, with time, could eliminate small and spotted bass from the fish community, according to WRC biologists.

“When we heard Alabama bass were being caught in reservoirs upstream of our coastal rivers in 2020, we anticipated we would start seeing them downstream,” WRC Coastal Region Fisheries Research Coordinator Kevin Dockendorf said in a release. “In October 2024, our fisheries biologists collected Alabama bass in the Roanoke and Tar rivers with boat electrofishing. This expansion of Alabama bass is of concern given the similarities of North Carolina’s coastal rivers to the habitats found in Alabama bass’s natural range.”

Moving or stocking fish in public waters without a state stocking permit is illegal in North Carolina. Releases of fish from live wells into waters different from where the fish were caught are also illegal.

“They are being illegally spread across the state by misguided anglers who think that they will make the fishing better,” Hodges said. “The only tools we have to minimize the damage being caused by Alabama bass are to encourage anglers not to spread them to new waters, and to harvest as many as possible in waters where they have already been introduced to minimize their damage.” 

Anglers who catch an Alabama bass in a waterbody not previously documented are asked to take photographs and report it through the N.C. Wildlife Aquatic Nuisance Species Reporting Tool or by emailing PublicInquiry-FishWildlife@ncwildlife.gov.

Illegal Alabama bass stocking may be reported by calling 800-662-7137.

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission is considering closing the recreational harvest of spotted seatrout in inland and joint fishing waters May 1 – June 15.

The commission last week agreed that a temporary rule closing harvest of spotted seatrout by hook-and-line fishing, “will help avoid public confusion” after the state Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Marine Fisheries decided to close commercial and recreational spotted seatrout harvest in coastal and joint waters because of widespread cold stun events, according to a release.

“Because the Wildlife Commission does not have proclamation authority and we have to work through the rulemaking process, the earliest this would be effective is May 1, 2025,” Christian Waters, commission chief deputy director, said in the release. “Anglers concerned about spotted seatrout mortality may want to target other species.”

Related: Division closes spotted seatrout season because of cold

The commission will hold a virtual public hearing at 2 p.m. Feb. 27 about the proposed temporary rule. Pre-registration is required.

A public comment period on the proposed rule will close March 14. Comments may be submitted online through the commissions Proposed Regulations webpage; emailed to  regulations@ncwildlife.org; or mailed to: Rule-making Coordinator, 1701 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-1701.