2007

Drifting Along: Sea Grant Scientists Study Oyster Larvae

Two U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary members prepare to retrieve a drifter with a ball and drogue, or neutrally buoyant float suspended below the water surface. One man drops a net into the water and then scoops up a drift buoy, known as a drifter. Then both men lift the 40-pound drifter onto the deck.

Bounty of Birds: Guide, Trail Help Consumers Take Flight

The birding trail on Bear Island is featured in the new North Carolina Birding Trail — Coastal Plain Trail Guide. Filled with colorful photos, the guide includes 102 birding sites in 16 groupings across the North Carolina coastal plain — all areas east of interstate 95.

COMMUNITY CHARM: Wanchese Implements Innovative Zoning

In the heart of the tiny fishing village of Wanchese, Lorraine Tillett strolls over to a fence surrounding the small backyard of a blue house. Tillett leans over the fence to pet a reddish-brown horse not far from a haystack. "See how friendly the horses are," says Tillett, a long-time Wanchese resident. "This is a perfect example of a traditional village business. The new zoning allows for boarded horses and equestrian-related uses."

Oral History: Documenting Down East Fishing Traditions

Fulcher's fond memories of the seafood business are being recorded for an oral history project at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Markers Island.

The Bat Barometer

When it comes to environmental change, Mother Nature's creatures are often the best bellwethers. The bald eagle opened our eyes to the dangers of pesticides. Giant pandas show us the cost of habitat loss and deforestation. The plight of the polar bears heralds rising temperatures for the earth. Usually, it is these bioindicators — the rare, the exotic and the remote — that make headlines.

image: person fishing in the ocean during sunset.

Waterfront Access: Meetings Highlight Spectrum of Needs

People seeking access — for commercial and recreational fishing, seafood handling, paddling, boating, operating marine-related businesses or simply wading in sound and river waters — shared their recent public comment sessions held along the coast.

Members of Thompson family with fishing net

Wild Caught: The Life and Struggles of An American Fishing Town

For centuries, small-scale commercial fishers have ventured forth into the Atlantic to hunt for shrimp and finfish. Recently, they forces of modernity — from ever-tightening regulations to a rise im imported seafood to explosive coastal growth — have threatened their proud way of life.

image: The view from Hatteras Lighthouse with the sky and landscape in background to show the stretch off Hatteras.

Coastal Legacy: Science Meets History, Culture

In a sandy area behind an old Chicamacomico lifesaving building in Rodanthe, Terri Kirby Hathaway and several teachers stand behind a short-barreled cannon. They demonstrate how to fire the rope…

Curbing the Import Appetite: Selling American Shrimp in the U.S. Market

Pink shrimp. Brown shrimp. White shrimp. Ecuadorian shrimp. Vietnamese shrimp. Can you tell the difference? Most Americans can't. But who cares? Shrimp is shrimp, right?

Fish House Study Quantifies Decline

When Clayton Fulcher Seafood Company closes, Luther L. Smith & Son Fish House will be the last seafood packing house in Atlantic, a community in Carteret County's Down East area.

Marine Trades Training Boosts Coastal Economy

It’s almost dark as several men gather around an unfinished wooden boat in a Nags Head garage. As one man bends over the boat to measure the hull’s centerline, the…

SEA BASS POTS: Bigger Mesh May Yield Larger Fish

Burgess is working on an N.C. Fishery Resource Grant (FRG) to study the efficiency and effectiveness of different configurations of black sea bass pots. FRG is funded by the N.C. General Assembly and administered by North Carolina Sea Grant. Rudershausen and Scott Baker, a Sea Grant fisheries extension specialist, are helping with the study.

COASTAL STEWARD: Clark’s Influence Felt Statewide

After more than two decades as North Carolina Sea Grant’s coastal law, planning and policy specialist Walter Clark has left for greener pastures. Or at least more mountainous ones. Clark…

Cracking the Culvert: Urban Stream Restoration in North Carolina

At different points in their histories, Little Sugar Creek and Rocky Branch represent the best and worst of North Carolina streams. Both creeks run through bustling cities. Both have been listed among the state's most polluted urban streams. And both waterways were forced into pipes and buried underground to pave the way for progress. Few people even knew they existed.

Finding Flounder: Testing Low-Profile Gill Nets

Well before sunrise, the Engelhard resident is already at work in the sound's choppy waters. He removes an orange and black buoy attached to the end of one of his gill nets and reels it in with the white winch on his boat.

ONE-STOP SERVICE: Marine Parks Cater to Boaters

When True World Marine president Takeru Kamiyama began looking for a new location for a manufacturing facility, intuition told him that a North Carolina site would meet his needs.

SEA SCIENCE: Getting to Know North Carolina’s Natural Reefs

Recent studies on reef fish communities off North Carolina and along the southeastern United States could help determine final boundaries and improve management plans for eight proposed deepwater Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and four deep-sea coral Habitat Areas of Particular Concern (HAPCs).

A building in Washington, North Carolina

Small City, Big Plans

"Little Washington," as locals say, is a small city with big plans for its future. City leaders want to keep the historic downtown hopping by luring more businesses, tourists and residents with innovative land-use and development plans, tax credits and grant programs.

Dogs Days: Estimating Spiny Dogfish Populations

For 10 years, Roger Rulifson, an East Carolina University (ECU) researcher, has studied spiny dogfish through funds from five N.C. Fishery Resource Grants (FRG). FRG is funded by the N.C. General Assembly and administered by North Carolina Sea Grant.

LOCAL CATCH: Watermen Save Ocracoke Fish House

Local captains, who work the Pamlico Sound and surrounding waters, supply all the catch at Ocracoke Seafood. Recently, the group of 35 full and parttime commercial fishermen — who joined together to form the Ocracoke Working Watermen's Association — netted $325,000 from a grant to save the last fish house on the island.

Crystal skippers sip nectar from native N.C. plants such as coastal plain dewberry.

NATURALIST’S NOTEBOOK: Bogue’s New Butterfly

The strategic location of Fort Macon on the eastern end of Bogue Banks may have protected Confederate troops from the Union during the civil war, but today its status as a state park protects what may be a new species of butterfly.

Biologist Abigail Poray collects the algae from within a study site.

SEA SCIENCE: Network Connects Students to Algae Research

"I have learned what plankton do," Nelson says. "It is exciting to find harmful algal blooms and something that can have such an effect on our lives. I didn't realize the toxicity of harmful algal blooms."

SEA SCIENCE: No One Ring: Testing The Effects Of Cull Rings On Crab Landings

Under a blue September sky, Phil Smith is hard at work, harvesting blue crabs under the Cape Fear River. "They are fantastic creatures," he says, predicting: "If we all dropped off the face of the Earth and all there was was nice and clean water, crabs would be so abundant" their shells would fill coastal waters.

LOCAL CATCH: North Carolina Seafood Availability Cards Debut

Local Catch: North Carolina Seafood AvailabilitySM cards, developed by North Carolina Sea Grant and the North Carolina Aquariums, debuted at the N.C. Seafood Festival in Morehead City in October. The cards were featured at the opening ceremonies and scooped up by visitors to the education tent.

SEA SCIENCE: Aquatic Robotics: Teens Plunge into Technology

The Cape Hatteras Secondary students are practicing for a ROV contest organized by the Marine Advanced Technology Center (MATE). Manteo High School students also are participating in the practice session.

PEOPLE & PLACES: Queen’s Quest: Human Dimensions in Coastal Science

Under Queen's leadership, East Carolina University's Institute for Coastal & Marine Resources (ICMR) researchers put social science issues on the table.