Summer typically ushers in a time of backyard cookouts, sandals and pools — essentially, fun in the sun. This year, add a twist to your warm-weather social calendar: fun with the sun.
This spring, six North Carolina teams took their scientific expertise out of this world. They participated in the third annual Community College High-Altitude Ballooning Team Challenge and Competition.
Members of The Nile Project gave a short performance during lunch on the first day of the conference. As the man behind the music, Mina Girgis acts as a linchpin, pulling together artists to create a unique sound for an important cause: sustaining the Nile River.
There are four survival instincts in the animal kingdom: feeding, fighting, fleeing and … reproducing. Let’s think about the last one: How do animals in marine environments procreate?
Members of the Lenoir-Rhyne University team participating in NASA’s Space Grant Eclipse Ballooning Project have their work cut out for them.
Our beaches and soundside communities indeed have changed over my lifetime. Yet their beauty and bounties persist in so many ways. Similarly, this issue of Coastwatch takes you on a range of explorations.
Today, with all our advances and conveniences, we still love to cook outdoors over a flame. And it’s not just burgers and steaks anymore. A meal of fresh seafood, prepared simply outdoors and eaten in the company of friends, is one of life’s real pleasures.
The North Carolina General Assembly selected North Carolina Sea Grant to administer the Crab Pot Removal Pilot Program. Sea Grant contracted with the N.C. Coastal Federation, which worked with the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries and its Marine Patrol, along with teams of commercial fishermen, for the project during the annual winter “no-potting” period.
The beaches of the Outer Banks are legendary, but its roadways are steering into the spotlight. This summer, the Outer Banks National Scenic Byway is ready to guide visitors on an exploration of the culture and history of the North Carolina coast.
Media stories often cite Sandbar Oyster Company as an unlikely partnership between a scientist and a fisherman — a successful duo not only in the half-shell market, but also in ecological restoration.
The 1997 Fisheries Reform Act significantly changed the fisheries management process in North Carolina. Before the act, there were no comprehensive management plans for important fish and shellfish species. Anyone with $35 could buy a commercial fishing license, opportunities for public participation in management were few, and the board that sets fisheries policy, the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission, was extraordinarily large with 17 members.
Niels Lindquist, an ecologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Institute of Marine Sciences, noticed that many of the oysters served at roasts were difficult to open because of brittle shells. The oysters had small holes in their shells, a telltale sign of an infestation by the boring sponge, a common estuarine organism in the family Clionaidae.
