Students Earn N.C. Coastal Conference Honors

North Carolina Sea Grant presented four students with awards for their research posters at the 2019 North Carolina Coastal Conference. Olivia Caretti received first place, Erin Voigt received second place, Tara Clancy received third place and Tenesha Washington received an honorable mention.

Olivia Caretti’s poster project (above) is titled “Using Passive and Active Acoustics to Assess Oyster Reef Restoration Success.” She is working on her doctorate at NC State University. She is a member of Dave Eggleston’s research team on the “Evaluating Cultch Oyster Reefs as Essential Fish Habitat” project, which North Carolina Sea Grant’s Core Research Funding supports. Read her blog post about her research here.

Erin Voigt’s poster project (above) is titled “Effects of Invasive Marsh Grass and Wave Energy on Marsh Shoreline Change.” She is pursuing her doctorate at NC State University. She is the 2019 recipient of the joint North Carolina Sea Grant and Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership (APNEP) fellowship. Read more about her fellowship here.

Tara Clancy’s poster project (above) is titled “Uncloaking the Clocal Microbiome of Wild Sea Turtles Off the North Carolina Coast: Comparing Healthy and Debilitated Turtles.” She is an undergraduate research assistant in the Danner Research and Teaching lab at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

Tenesha Washington’s poster project (above) is titled “The Place We Call Home: The Risk Perceptions and Place Attachments of Coastal Communities at Risk for Sea Level Rise in North Carolina.” She is a senior at Florida A&M University and is pursuing her bachelor’s in Criminal Justice. She was part of a team that worked with North Carolina Sea Grant in summer 2019, through funding from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

To learn more about their research, check out the abstracts in the program booklet on the conference webpage: ncseagrant.ncsu.edu/nc-coastal-conference-2/

Congratulations to all of the winners!