Top 10 Stories of the Year

Here's what people have been looking at the most in 2025.

1. Killer Whales Swim NC Waters

How Our Orcas Are Different

Sightings of orcas are extremely rare, and most occur in two seasons of the year...

image: A North Atlantic right whale generated by A.I.

2. Deepfake Whales Could Be Key Conservation Tool

AI-Generated Images of Rare Species

Hyper-realistic deepfake images are notorious for celebrity pranking, but the technology has serious scientific applications, too…

3. New Sea Level Rise Projections for North Carolina

The NC Coastal Resources Commission Science Panel’s Report

A new report predicts sea level rise in three North Carolina cities over the next century…

Image: Oysters and silverware scattered on a table with lemon slices, bread, and cocktail sauce.

4. A Booming Industry – And a New Threat

North Carolina Oysters Face Unexplained “Mass Mortality Events”

A cutting-edge project is addressing “the biggest hindrance to sustainable oyster aquaculture development in the Southeast.”

5. Teachers on the Tower (video)

Frying Pan Tower: A Platform for Educators

What better way to give educators more tools to teach about the ocean than to take them out into the Graveyard of the Atlantic?

6. Off the North Carolina Coast

Shipwrecks, Turbidities, and Other Wonders

You never know what you’ll find if you take a ride in a submersible and explore the unique creatures and geological features along the ocean floor...

image: Satellite view. Hurricane Florence over the Atlantic close to the US coast . Elements of this image furnished by NASA.

7. The Art & Science of Weather

Accounting for Extremes — And More

Constant fluctuation is part of coastal life. To work and recreate safely, we need to be able to predict the weather…

image: Post-Helene Buncombe County, North Carolina. Credit: NCDOT/CC-A-2.0-Generic-license.

8. Accounting for the Unaccounted
Thousands Hoped for Any Word of Family and Friends After Hurricane Helene

Volunteer operators for a Community Emergency Response Team updated a database that provided local and state responders with GPS coordinates to check as they searched mountains, valleys, and riversides…

9. Will North Carolina’s Blue Crabs Go Extinct?

The Future of the State’s Most Valuable Commercial Fishery

Environmental stressors may push blue crabs to their breaking point…

10. The NC Coastal Conference in Review

A Look Back at the Biggest NC Sea Grant Gathering to Date

The 2024 North Carolina Coastal Conference brought together over 330 coastal enthusiasts…

1. Sharks of North Carolina

A Quick Look

The sounds, estuaries, and ocean waters in and around North Carolina provide a variety of habitats for water-dwelling species, including an abundance of sharks…

image: broken road in Silas, NC, post-Helene.

2. The Catastrophic Power of Hurricane Helene

North Carolina’s New History of Record-Breaking Storms

Only six years separate Florence and Helene, but these “once-in-a-thousand-year” hurricanes have much in common. Along with other storms that have hit our state, Helene offers lessons — and a warning…

3. Wingina, Wanchese and Manteo

A Lumbee Perspective on the Lost Colony

When an Indian emissary met the English ships in July 1584, things went so well that Wingina decided to try to adopt the strangers…

4. River of Time

The Stunning Old-Growth Forest in the Three Sisters Swamp

North Carolina’s famous Black River holds living bald cypresses that were saplings before Rome was an empire. After finding trees over 2,000 years old, researchers say the river might even nourish bald cypresses that sprouted three millennia ago…

5. You Say Starfish, I Say Sea Star

Even though they live in water, they don’t have scales, don’t swim, and aren’t “fish.”

6. Naturalist’s Notebook: How Many Oceans?

What’s the answer to that question? One? Five? Seven? How many oceans are there on the planet?

7. A Brief History of Sea Level Rise in North Carolina

It Begins with the Birth of the Atlantic

The story of accelerating sea level rise and its human impact unfolds on the most recent edge of a 200-million-year-old timeline…

8. Seashells of North Carolina

Excerpts from the Updated and Expanded New Edition

Beachcombers and researchers alike have revered the original publication for decades. North Carolina Sea Grant and UNC Press have just released the latest edition…

9. 50-year Trend in Atlantic Hurricane Escalation

Warming Waters

“More than 90 percent of the warming we’re seeing from human-caused greenhouse gases goes into our oceans.”

10. Blue Crab Lab: A Recipe for Survival

from the High Season 2003 issue

Before it lives up to its scientific name — Callinectes sapidus or tasty, beautiful swimmer — the blue crab goes through a couple of ugly larval stages…

Close-up of a chicken's face inside a barn.

11. Mapping the Impacts of North Carolina’s Poultry Industry

A Novel Solution to a Lack of Public Data

I had only lived in North Carolina for a year and was on my new daily commute down I-95 from Fayetteville to Lumberton when the smell assaulted me…

12. Hazel: A Benchmark Hurricane Event

Most North Carolinians who lived through Hurricane Hazel — the only recorded Category 4 hurricane to make landfall in North Carolina — vividly recall the destructive force of the 1954 event as a major benchmark in their lives…

image: plastic particles under microscope.

13. A River of Plastics

Plastics Make Up an Overwhelming Majority of Marine Debris

New research reveals the Neuse River Basin annually delivers an estimated 230 billion particles of plastic to the Pamlico Sound…

image: four photos of a S. gigantea (30 ft. jellyfish).

14. Naturalist’s Notebook: The Rise of the Jellies

Suspecting that jellyfish are increasing in waters off North Carolina, researchers are asking for the public’s help in spotting these slimy creatures around our shores…

15. Coastal Wild Edibles: Stalking the Wild Sea Lettuce

Increasing temperatures could mean losing seagrass, vegetation that NC fisheries require…

16. Why Do Waves Come in Groups?

Ask a Scientist

Where do ocean waves come from? What determines the speed and size of a wave?

Skeleton of a carp fish isolated against a black background

17. Can Fish Bones Protect Us from the Sun?

Researchers Investigate a Sustainable Alternative to Harmful UV Filters in Sunscreens

Sunscreen shields us from harmful UV radiation, but some ingredients in traditional sunscreens are harmful to the environment and people…

18. Knowing Beans About the Beach

“Always, then, in this flotsam and jetsam of the tide lines, we are reminded that a strange and different world lies offshore.”

19. The Mystery Ship Off Pappy Lane

How Science and Sleuthing Uncovered the History of a 58-Year-Old Shipwreck

Weeks of diving and mapping revealed a ship that had found it way from the turbulence of the Pacific Ocean to its final resting place at the bottom of the shallow, murky Pamlico Sound…

20. Are Young Great Whites Swimming Coastal North Carolina Waters?

New research shows these sharks might not be spending their winters where we expected...

Trees along Taylor's Creek in Beaufort, NC.

21. Don’t Cut Down That Tree!

Preserving a Protective Buffer Against High-Speed Winds

Keeping and maintaining certain strategic trees on your property can save money…

Aerial views of Hurricane Katrina damage.

22. STORM SURGE: Lessons from Katrina

Weeks after Hurricane Katrina, miles and miles of remains from homes and buildings were scattered along Mississippi’s Gulf Coast...

23. Natural Solutions and a Clean Water Future for the Cape Fear

With more people living in the Cape Fear River Basin and climate change bringing heavier rains, a new project is forecasting the effects of stormwater runoff as well as how strategic buffers can lessen pollution…

24. North Carolina’s Blue Economy: Rural Economic Development in the Coastal Region

Rural communities near North Carolina’s coasts are neither consistently prospering nor uniformly in decline…

25. The Undersea Vision of Fabien Cousteau

Building the “ISS of the Ocean”

PROTEUS™ — the undersea equivalent of the International Space Station — will speed scientific discovery and may even spur medical breakthroughs…

26. Conserving a Culture: Land Development, Climate Change, and the Gullah/Geechee Nation

“We teach our children the same traditional ways to go out in the water, and the same traditional ways to live from the land: only when things are in season.”

27. Coastal Landscapes: North Carolina Native Plant Picks

The Coastal Landscapes Initiative has released 12 award-winning videos about environmentally beneficial, cost efficient, and beautiful plants for home gardeners and professional landscapers…

28. Catching up with John Mallette

The Untold Stories of African Americans in North Carolina’s Seafood Industry

“As long as I was around a boat and I was on the water, I really didn’t care about anything else.”

29. Hard-Working Hodson Retires June 30: “What You See is What You Get”

Ron Hodson arrived in North Carolina in April 1973, with a fresh doctorate and a reputation…

Richard Neal and volunteer David Wood attach solar panels to Frying Pan Tower.

30. Frying Pan Shoals: Light Tower Evokes Bygone Era

While standing on a charter boat far out in the Atlantic, Mike Allen points to the 125-foot Frying Pan Shoals Light Tower that was once his home away from home...

31. Vital Signs: Seven More Feet?

Excerpts from NOAA’s Sea Level Rise Technical Report

Projections show that U.S. sea levels will increase the most along the East Coast and Gulf Coast — and that a failure to curb emissions could raise waters up to seven feet by the end of the century…

Diamond Shoals Light Tower in the ocean.

32. PEOPLE AND PLACES: Diamond Shoals and Frying Pan: Offshore Light Towers Beckon New Missions

For 35 years, Diamond Shoals Light Tower performed its duty admirably, beaming a flashing light across the waved-toss Atlantic…

33. Return of the Dunes

The Science of Post-Florence Recovery

image: flooded residential street at sunset.

34. Sunny with a Chance of Floods

Researchers and the Carolina Beach community work together to address chronic flooding…

35. Was Hazel North Carolina’s Worst-Case Hurricane?

Remembering the Only Cat-4 Storm to Make Landfall in Coastal NC

In terms of intensity, Hazel was in a league of its own…

36. Tar Heel Blue Crabs: Still the State’s Most Valuable Seafood

What happens to blue crabs when they are landed by North Carolina crabbers? Where are they processed? Where do they go? Jerry Allegood traces the flow of this crustacean — hard, soft and picked...

37. Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex in the Sea

Illustrations By CHARLOTTE INGRAM from North Carolina’s Amazing Coast: Natural Wonders from Alligators to Zoes

How do animals in marine environments procreate?

38. Ice to Ocean

From the Sources of Sea Level Rise to the Coast of NC

New findings about ground elevations at the coast confirm that the battle between land and sea has become increasingly one-sided…

39. Soul of the Soil

The Contamination of Indigenous Lands

Health issues are becoming more frequent for the Waccamaw Siouan Tribe. The answers may lie at their feet…

40. Safeguarding Water

Legislative Gaps and Innovative Solutions

On a Sunday morning in June 1969, in Cleveland, Ohio, the Cuyahoga River was burning — again…

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No matter what you’re looking for, there’s a good chance we’ve covered it over the last 45 years.

image: Alligator in the grass. — An alligator rests in a yard off of Hwy 133. Credit: Ken Blevins/Star News.