North Carolina Sea Grant

January 7, 2015 |

By KATIE MOSHER

Posted Jan. 7, 2015

Heron in marsh

Heron in Masonboro marsh. Photo by Gloria Putnam.

We often think of streams flowing to the sea. In the coastal region, many creeks ebb and flow with the tides, changing salinity and other conditions.

A UNC-TV team visited Hewletts Creek in New Hanover County for a story, Secrets of Tidal Creeks, airing tonight on the North Carolina Science Now segment within North Carolina Now at 7:30 p.m.

Frank Graff shares lessons that William Hurst learned in a lifetime of living along and fishing the tidal waters. Graff also talks with Gloria Putnam, North Carolina Sea Grant’s coastal resources and communities specialist; Troy Alphin, a researcher at University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Benthic Lab and coordinator of the Oyster Spat Monitoring Project; and Byron Toothman of the North Carolina Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Research Reserve.

Putnam, Alphin and Toothman are just some of the partners across the state and region who consider tidal creeks critical habitats. You can learn more about these estuarine ecosystems by checking out presentations and posters at two Southeast Tidal Creeks Summits.

Graff also offers a reporter’s blog: Hard Truth about Impervious Surfaces. And Putnam blogged about working in the field with Graff in an earlier post.

And teachers can find resources compiled by Lucy Laffitte, including curricular correlations.

Through funding by GSK, North Carolina Science Now is in its second year of covering research from across the state.  Last year, we featured Sea Grant’s partnerships in science news reporting with UNC-TV in a story in Coastwatch.

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