Internships – Page 7 – Outer Banks Field Site

A Wild Semester at the Center for Wildlife Education!

Hey, everyone! It’s Cassandra, here to tell you all about

An injured sanderling that was brought in to the Center

the best internship anyone’s every had here at the OBXFS, also known as an internship at the Outer Banks Center for Wildlife Education. By best, I mean that everyone I’ve worked with has been amazing, I’ve learned so much, and I’ve really never felt like what I’m doing is work. As well, just to point out how much I’ve enjoyed it, it’s generally an hour and fifteen minute drive from Manteo to the Center, and I can’t even complain about that!

Let me take a moment to talk about my internship mentor, Karen Clark. My first day interning, she invited me to sit in on a NEST sea turtle nest dig the next evening. Just like that. She always has great stories and great ideas, and is the most understanding, knowledgeable, and competent person I’ve ever met. She’s the Coordinator for the entire Center program, and also works with NEST and MMSN, the Marine Mammal Stranding Network, on top of who knows what else. Long story short, I’ve been incredibly lucky to have worked with her and to have been able to learn from her amazing experiences.

One of the storage shed’s resident tree frogs

Woody the woodchuck takes a beating during archery class

I’ve done a ton during my time here. At the start of my internship, we were still in summer programs, so I helped teach beginning archery for children and adults, an educational story time and crafts for young children and an interactive cart teaching people about seashells and other beach finds. I was also lucky enough to be able to participate in a lot of NEST activities, like checking turtle nests with volunteers and sitting in on nest digs. As the tourism season started winding down, some of our classes were rotated out, and I began helping run a kayaking trip, an educational maritime forest walk, and a “Sampling the Sound” class, where kids and their parents can use nets to catch fish, water insects, and other organisms living in the water here and learn more about them. I’ve also been able to help set up and collect wildlife cameras in the nearby maritime forest preserve, and then go through the photos to identify what sorts of critters have been living their lives in the area! Among the best photos I’ve seen are pictures of feral horses, coyotes, raccoons, and several resident white-tailed deer.

An injured box turtle I rushed to the vet

On top of helping out with classes and activities, I also was put in charge of designing a new educational board as my own personal project. I chose to focus on the habitat value of both ocean and sound shorelines, with an interactive and multi-media approach, using flip-up cards, fabrics, and 3-D animal cutouts to create the final product. Hopefully people will see it as a fun and interesting approach to learning more about the animals that call the marshes, dunes, and waters of the Outer Banks home!

A beautiful cottonmouth spotted on one of our kayaking trips!

Although I’ve really enjoyed and learned from all of the educational activities I’ve helped run and participate in, my favorite part of my internship here has been the wildlife. Anyone in my field site group will tell you I adore snakes, and there have been so many here! From cottonmouths on the lawn to black rats sunning themselves on the steps, I’ve been able to get a ton of great photos and just appreciate having them here. There are also resident tree frogs in the shed, and a gray fox that I’ve been lucky enough to glimpse on occasion. The grounds here are home to a great many raccoons, and you can see their tracks running across the mud by the boat ramp every morning. Being able to see and be a part of nature here while helping teach other people, especially children, more about the world we live in has been an eye-opening experience, and has definitely made me consider environmental education as a career path more strongly than I might have before.

PARCS and Checks: The Manteo Way

Hi, I’m Tara (actual, real-life April Ludgate for all you Parks and Rec fans), and this semester I interned with the Town of Manteo, which could practically double for Pawnee, Indiana, give or take a Sound. All jokes aside, the Town does really great work, and I’ve had a great time there this semester. Here’s a quick look into my Mondays:

I took this picture one afternoon, and it was included in the Facebook post I wrote advertising the Land Use Plan Survey, which was published on the Town’s Facebook page.

The short bike ride between the guest house and Town Hall is one of my favorite parts of the day. As I navigate the quaint houses snuggled together on the skirts of downtown, I can hear the laughter as I bike behind the school, and feel the sun on my face. The day is young, and promises to be filled with the friendly faces I have grown accustomed to in my two months interning with Melissa Dickerson of the planning department, nestled into a back room of Town Hall. Tom the orange tabby is the first to greet me after I emerge from the bathroom, my first stop after locking up my bike (I’m still not convinced this is necessary, but I always do it anyways). After a quick scratch behind the ears, it’s go time. As I make my way back towards my computer, a stop along the way is mandatory—Kasey, the Town accountant, always has a bowl full of dum-dum suckers perched on her desk, and every day, I check to see if she has my favorite kind. Which, of course, she never does. “Try the peach tea! It’s good!” Starting the day with a little sweetness can’t hurt, so I take a peach tea sucker and a lemonade too, wish both Kasey and Kim a good morning, and continue on my way. My mentor, Melissa Dickerson, Town Planner, and real-life Leslie Knope, is already seated at her computer, juggling the many responsibilities her appointed position brings her. Between dealing with the public, chasing after vice principals, answering to the commissioners, humoring the mayor, and taking care of her one-year-old son, her plate is always full.

Included in the Land Use Plan Survey was a question investigating public opinion regarding potential uses for several vacant properties around Town. This graph represents the variety of answers we received, and the bars are colored according to category.

Unless anything unusually exciting or pertinent is happening that day (PARC meetings, department-head meetings, project biddings, construction project check-ins, drive-arounds…never a dull moment!) that requires a field trip, a majority of my time has been spent working on the Town’s Land Use Plan Survey, which will collect and analyze public input in preparation for an updated Land Use Plan, something that will hopefully take the Town of Manteo into the future. My current mission is data analysis—it’s been my job to analyze data collected from Survey Monkey and arrange it in an easily-digestible manner to be presented to the Commissioners later this month. Not only have I been recording public suggestion, and how popular those prepositions are, I have also been coding and categorizing the data to be presented in a variety of charts, over which I have complete jurisdiction. During a semester that has been quite stressful dealing with the uncertainties of the Capstone, it’s been nice being assigned a project composed of easily accomplished, albeit intensely time-consuming tasks. In a few short weeks, my time in Town Hall will be over, and I can honestly say I’ll miss all the friendly faces I have come to admire during my short tenure with the Town of Manteo. To Melissa, Kermit, Steve, Kasey, Kim, Becky, and James, I thank you for all your time and attention–Pawnee has nothing on Manteo.

Finding my Porpoise

Hey there! I’m Emily I, here with an update about my internship this semester.

Seeing dolphins at the beach has long been one of my favorite parts of visiting the Outer Banks. I have a distinct memory of my first time swimming in the ocean at Pea Island and watching in awe as a pod of dolphins splashed through the water near shore. My excitement was understandably off the charts when Corey called me at the end of the summer to tell me that I’d be interning with the Outer Banks Center For Dolphin Research (OBXCDR).

The hype only grew when on the first day of internships, some of my classmates were dressing up in their office-wear while I donned a Carolina T-shirt and headed for the docks. My first meeting with my mentor, Jess Taylor, the founder of the OBX Center for Dolphin Research, was on our opportunistic sighting vessel, a 19 foot pontoon boat belonging to the Nags Head Dolphin Watch. I would soon log hours on this boat, assisting Jess and Captain John of the Nags Head Dolphin Watch in educating tourists of all ages on the Outer Banks dolphins! We set sail, weather permitting, in search of the countless dolphins inhabiting Roanoke Sound. When we spotted a group, we would approach them carefully as to not disturb their behavior and watch them splash and play and feed in the shallow water. Along with educating visitors on dolphin behavior and conservation, I assisted Jess with the research component of the trips. Upon sighting dolphins, we use a technique called photo-identification to record which dolphins were spotted. Photos are taken of each dolphins dorsal fin, which usually contains small cuts and markings that are used to identify the dolphin. I began to recognize some dolphins that showed up consistently, like Double Scoop, named for the two “scoops” visible on her dorsal fin. Double Scoop also had a calf a few summers ago that has shown up consistently this season, adorably named Little Scoop.

I also assisted in filling out data sheets for each dolphin sighting, which contained environmental variables like air and water temperature and salinity. This helps the OBXCDR keep track of dolphin behavior and how it related to certain environmental characteristics. In addition to dolphin watch trips, Jess has invited me on dedicated survey days, where we head out in a small boat with just a few researches, scanning the sound for dolphins in a more methodical way. As is the nature of the OBX, many of these surveys have been cancelled due to wind and storms, but the surveys that have proceeded have been very successful. I have yet to board a boat out here and NOT see at least a few dolphins!

While not out on the boat soaking up the sun (and sometimes storms) and watching dolphins, another component of my internship is focused on research. Jess has noticed, in her experience with dolphins in Roanoke Sound, that certain dolphins appear with barnacles attached to their dorsal fins. These barnacles, called xenobalanus globicipitus, are picked up by dolphins while they are in the ocean and carried into the sound. Not much is known about these barnacles and when or why they attach to dolphins, though they do not seem to cause any discomfort or harm to their carriers. I am examining past photos from dolphin surveys for the presence of this barnacle, hoping that we will be able to gain some knowledge about dolphin behavior and use of the sound from the seasonality of barnacle presence. Dolphins tend to show up in the sound throughout the summer and head to the ocean in the fall. As dolphin watch season comes to a close, I am focusing more on my research project and paper and learning all there is to know about the bottlenose dolphins of the Outer Banks!

As a shameless plug and sidenote; This weekend I will be manning a dolphin outreach booth at the 8th annual Outer Banks Shrimp Cookoff, where local chefs will compete to create the best shrimp dish. The best part (aside from my duty of taste-testing all of the shrimp) is that all proceeds from this super fun event will benefit the Center for Dolphin Research! Check out the event website for more info!

https://obshrimp.com/

Creating a Shoreline Protection Feature- Fall 2017 Internship Post

Hi! I’m Emily Pierce and I’ve been interning at the Coastal Studies Institute with Dr. Lindsay Dubbs this semester. I had a lot of freedom when deciding the focus of my internship and eventually deciding to take on a project with the Pine Island Audubon Sanctuary here on the Outer Banks with the help of the director there Robert Fearn.

My goal was to use natural vegetation from the Pine Island shoreline and create some sort of experimental shoreline protection feature to help prevent erosion at a lower cost than most popular shoreline protection strategies. Because the Pine Island Shoreline is on the

Albermarle Sound with shallow waters and changing wind patterns, the main cause of erosion is the frequently changing water level; in order to target this problem, the first step was to plan and research protection measures that can move with the changing water level.

After a lot of literature review and consultation with Lindsay, I decided to model my project after a floating breakwater structure, but mine would be made out of bundles of natural vegetation like cordgrass. Because there was such little precedent on using bundled vegetation for erosion protection, I also wanted to conduct floatation and decomposition experiments to get an idea of how feasible and long lasting a protection measure like this would be.

A test bundle off the dock at the Coastal Studies Institue

With some help from Lindsay, Lab technicians Claire and Ted, and my peers I was able tocollect cordgrass from Pine Island on several occasions to be used for creating bundles and testing floatation and decomposition over time. The Vegetation was bundled into rolls about 30 centimeters in diameter and 3 meters long using natural twine. Test bundles

Machetes were used to cut large cordgrass stems from Pine Island
Photo by Brett Wells

were placed into the water off the dock at the Coastal Studies to start the floatation study. It became clear that the bundles wouldn’t be able to float for extended periods once being waterlogged, so we decided to add two pool noodles as core for each bundle.

Bundles were placed at two locations on Pine Island, one receiving north eastern winds and the other receiving south western winds, on October 23rd. Bundles were placed using steel stakes and secured with rope so they were able to float. In order to measure the success of the protection measure PVC pipe was also placed in front of and behind the bundles to be used a reference point for measuring sediment accretion. The distance between the bundles and the shoreline was also measured to help provide a reference for determining success of the bundles in preventing erosion.

Samples for the decomposition study placed in a shaker bath simulating water movement of the natural sound system

When the bundles were placed at Pine Island, water was also collected from the sound to be used in the decomposition study. In order to determine how long the grass can function and what it produces as it decomposes, subsamples of cordgrass in sound water, just sound water, and distilled water were placed in separate glass containers and subjected to environmental conditions using an incubator. Small amounts from each sample are being filtered periodically to get data on total organic carbon and chlorophyll A.

While its likely that I won’t be able to make far reaching conclusion on the success of using vegetation bundles as a shoreline protection measure before the semester ends, my project does represent a unique approach that could provide some interesting information for the future of shoreline protection.

I’d like to extend a big thanks to Lindsay for not only hoping to guide me through this project, but also for introducing me to joys of field research and the beauty of an imperfect process from start to finish. While it of course comes with frustration, working on something that has little prior research or application is absolutely an exciting experience that I’m ever grateful for.

A Busy Week in Paradise

With fall break behind us; our internships, the capstone project, and classes are ramping up and we are buckling down for the ride!

Starting off the week with my internship with the Town of Nags Head, I sat in on the Shoreline Management Committee meeting where staff and citizens addressed possible options for the town’s estuarine shoreline. They discussed the impacts that rising sea levels could have on the soundside and even mentioned the construction of living shorelines. Seeing the relevance of our capstone project to the local community made me excited to invite them to our presentation in December. After the fascinating meeting, I spent the rest of the day with the town’s water quality coordinator Todd to investigate an alleged violation. We also we talked about the town’s stormwater management and other issues facing the town.

Our classes this week consisted mostly of presentations. For coastal ecology, we split up into groups to research the impacts that climate change will have on various ecosystems found in the Outer Banks and construct a concept map. My group presented on the impacts tidal marshes will experience. For coastal economics, we all presented on academic articles and mine was on ecosystem-based management and how to measure changes in the ecosystem’s wealth. The highlight of the presentations was definitely Bianca who presented on the economic impacts of biological invasions but assumed the persona of Shontelle, the group’s beloved plush toy shark, and detailed how she was going to wreak havoc on PeopleLandia.

Wednesday was our collection day for capstone so we split off into small groups and traveled throughout the Outer Banks. Emily P., Tara, and I went down to Hatteras to collect methane flux samples. Of course, we made some detours to the lighthouse and spent some time on the beach. We made significant progress towards the capstone this week by processing all of the gas samples gathered so far and starting to combust the core samples.

Besides presentations on Tuesday and Thursday, we finally met Bryan Giemza, director of the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, in person and discussed the value of community archiving in regards to inclusiveness and telling the untold sides of history. He then treated us with an excerpt from a novel he is currently writing!

This view makes waking up at 6am worth it.

Measuring the diameter of ghost crab burrows.

We woke up early on Friday to head over to Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head to begin our lab on ghost crabs. We made transects along the beach and counted the number of ghost crab burrows because they’re a proxy for the determining the crab’s population. Altogether, we observed three sites along Nags Head’s beach with differing conditions. Some of the sites were a part of the town’s beach nourishment project back in 2012 and all the sites had differing levels of human activity such as beach driving or foot traffic. With the data we collected, we’re going to see if there are any trends with the degree of human influence and the abundance of ghost crab burrows.

On Saturday morning, some of us headed over to Cape Hatteras National Seashore to take part in Make a Difference Day! Along with other volunteers of all ages, we planted over 3,000 sea oats! A few hours later, a few of us assisted the Dare County Arts Council in their silent auction benefit gala. The theme was a masquerade and we quickly took the opportunity to go all out and dress up.

This week was definitely the busiest so far in the program but we can’t complain when we are in the most gorgeous part of North Carolina!

Sea Turtles and Sunrises? Count Me In

Hey y’all it’s Danielle here ready to share a little peak into my internship this semester!

When Corey called me in August to discuss my internship he gave me the choice between two different opportunities. The first one sounded interesting, but once he said the words “National Park Service” and “baby sea turtles” I was sold on option number two. A fun fact about me is that I am obsessed with national parks (just got back from Shenandoah two days ago) so the idea of working for the Park Service sounded perfect.

When I got my first email from my mentor, Paul Doshkov, explaining that I had to report to work at 6am this internship suddenly seemed slightly less perfect. 6am!!! WHAT!!!! Little did I know that I would soon be reporting at 5:30am. Good thing sleep is for the weak.

Sea turtle patrol was the reason I had to report so early for the first few weeks of work. Turtle patrol consists of driving along the beach between the Bodie Island Lighthouse (ramp 1), and the beach just south of Rodanthe (ramp 30), excluding Pea Island. We were looking for turtle tracks leading from the ocean to the dunes, thus indicating that a nest had been laid. Unfortunately, despite the fact that many nests were still incubating when I started my internship, only one additional nest was laid between early September and late October, so I never actually got to see the turtle tracks myself. I did get to see, however, many amazing sunrises while driving along the beach so early.

Despite the lack of new nests, there has been plenty of work to do with the pre-existing nests. On my first day of work I was lucky enough to take part in an excavation. Approximately three to five days after a turtle nest hatches, the Park Service excavates the nest. This means that we dig out the nest and take inventory of hatched eggs, unhatched eggs, and live hatchlings still buried in the sand. On my first day we excavated a nest with 30 live hatchlings! Even cooler than the live hatchlings are the unhatched eggs, hear me out. We need to record what stage of development the eggs are in, therefore we have to rip open all of the unhatched eggs and examine the contents. It is so. cool. Turtle embryo goo shooting into your face is slightly less cool, but seeing a partially formed animal still in its early stages of development is fascinating. Also, just as a disclaimer, if the eggs have not hatched by this point they are not going to hatch, so we aren’t causing them any harm by opening them up.

When hurricanes Jose and Maria were off the coast things started to get a little rough. For one, the tide was too high to drive on the beach so we had to hike over the dunes. You never really notice just how far it is from the road to the beach until you have to walk through thorns and cacti while wearing jeans in 80 degree weather. Good times. While the dune hiking was a slight inconvenience, it wasn’t the end of the world. The bigger issue was the sand accretion caused by the storm surge. One of the nests was buried 124cm below the beach surface! To put this in perspective, a transponder ball is buried next to all of the nests so that we can use a GPS device to locate them. The amount of sand accretion was so extreme that the tracking device couldn’t even register the transponder ball. Our nest excavation that day may have resembled the set of the movie “Holes” just a little bit. Even more upsetting is the fact that the storms caused the level of the water table to rise to such a degree that multiple nests were entirely dead due to the eggs drowning. Luckily, since the storms have passed we have had two successful nest hatchings in the past week. Heck yeah.

I could probably write for a really long time about my internship but I suppose I’ll cut it off here. Overall, I really value the time I have spent working with the Park Service. I get to be in the field every single day. I get to watch the sun rise over the Atlantic. I get to work with amazing baby sea turtles, and the humans aren’t so bad either. I love it.

An Internship in Science Journalism

This semester, I’ve been taken a closer look at how the public stays informed about research and environment-related issues. My internship was different than everyone else’s in that it was largely independent — Andy Keeler, the director of the field site, was my mentor, and together we looked at examples of “science journalism” and tried to unpack that phrase.

I came to this field site with a strong background in journalism. When it came time for interviews to help select our internships, I had the idea of pursuing science journalism, which was what I always thought I wanted to do. Although that has since changed (I changed my major right before the semester started), this internship was still a helpful and interesting experience.

On internship days, which were every Monday and every other Wednesday, I headed to the Coastal Studies Institute to meet with Andy about what I was working on and where I was going. Normally, this meant talking about articles I read or about an assignment. Then, I either stayed at CSI or headed to the public library (such a quiet place to work!) to get through my to-do list.

The first articles I looked at spanned a large timeframe. Invention Factory by Malcolm Ross is a New Yorker article that is a good example of writing that has stood the test of time — the article is from 1931 and is exciting to read! For something a little more recent, The Social Life of Genes by David Dobbs was my favorite article I read for this internship.

(Not to load this post with links, but if you want to read my favorite remotely-science-y piece ever, head to National Geographic for To Walk the World by Paul Salopek)

I’ve also been looking at some longer works, too, like Silent Spring by Rachel Carson and John McPhee’s Annals of the Former World. I spent part of the semester working on writing some pieces, myself. I tried my hand at a press release about the Outer Banks Field Site, as well as a researcher spotlight about my mentor, Andy. I’m still working on an article about beach combing and laws relating to that, which I hope to have done soon.

All in all, I’m glad that my internship was low-stress and largely self-paced. When I applied, I was a journalism major, and having an opportunity to pursue that field while also studying the environment really drew me in. It’s just another example of how the Outer Banks Field Site really is open to students who come from all disciplines and backgrounds.

The Outer Banks Center for Wildlife Education

My internship for the semester is with the Outer Banks Center for Wildlife Education and my mentor is the center director, Karen Clark. Not to start off this post bragging about how incredible of an experience my internship has been, but it literally could not have been better. Karen Clark has been really fun to work with and is simply a fascinating woman in many aspects. As a biologist for N.E.S.T., she has allowed me to become very involved with a wonderful program, which I discussed in my last blog post “Nest or N.E.S.T.?”. At the Outer Banks Center for Wildlife Education, there is also a curator, Sharon Meade, who lightens up my day every time I intern. She is incredibly knowledgeable about the surrounding area’s ecology and history. I have learned so much from her while also having fun at the same time. At the front desk is Elaine Goodwin, who can identify all the local species and is also incredibly knowledgeable. Finally, there is Jane Brown and Sam Stolkes who are seasonal environmental educators. I have worked with the public and schools most frequently with Jane and Sam. Jane has been an absolute blessing to work with and was the person to really show me the ropes around the center. Sam graduated from UNC a few years ago, and he is extremely knowledgeable about many aspects of the environment.

When I started my internship in September, the center still had quite a few people visiting it on a daily basis. This allowed for many educational classes and carts so I often interacted with the public. Discovery carts are quick educational classes that we present on carts for anyone interested in stopping by. On Mondays, I spent the day with Jane

feeding the fish, doing discovery carts, and giving educational classes. We often had classes or carts on Gyotaku, which is Japanese fish printing. All of the fake fish we would use for Gyotaku are fish that you can find in the sound beside the education center. On Wednesdays, I would assist the kayaking class with Sam or Jane. While on this tour, we would talk about the historical background of the area as well as the ecological aspects.

Recently, I have been working more with my canine discovery cart, school outreach programs, and N.E.S.T. volunteer trainings. As a part of my internship goals, I needed to create a discovery cart for the center. Since red wolves and coyotes have recently become a prominent topic in this area, I thought that is was appropriate to create a cart to educate individuals more about them. The cart includes fact sheets on the animals, readings that people can look at, a craft and game for children, and a coyote pelt. I have used this cart a few times since finalizing it and the outcome has been very good. I have done two school outreach programs at elementary schools in Currituck County with Sam. One was presenting Sea Turtles in Jeopardy and the other was an interactive Velcro Fishing program. Moreover, there are often N.E.S.T. trainings at the education center that I help Karen with. I still continue to work with N.E.S.T. as explained in my earlier N.E.S.T. blogpost and will throughout the rest of my time in the Outer Banks. Finally, I continue to feed the fish every time I intern, but now I work more with the chemistry of the aquarium. Sam has taught me how to find the salinity and dissolved oxygen concentrations of the aquariums.

If you are an upcoming student reading this and you have any interest in environmental education, this internship is the way to go. I have gained experience and knowledge that has broadened my education in ways that sitting in a classroom cannot.

Dare County Soil and Water Conservation District Internship

The Dare County Soil and Water Conservation District has been a great place to work for my internship this semester, despite not being sure who I am working for. The district is a county agency that is not even funded by the county but by the NC Coastal Federation and the State of North Carolina. Therefore I spent every Monday at the Coastal Federation offices in Wanchese and every other Wednesday at the Dare County satellite offices in Kitty Hawk. However the strange circumstances the that I operated under actually gave me a unique opportunity to get much more out of my time there than otherwise possible.

Each morning of my internship I headed in to my office for the day and settled in to work on my main project. Ann Daisey, my intrepid mentor for the semester and the only employee of the district, had me working on watershed restoration plan for the sound side beach at Jockey’s Ridge State Park. The only problem was that the plan itself, which she would submit the to EPA after I am long gone, was far to large a task for one intern a couple times a week. I therefore contributed what I could for the project, which was collecting and analyzing data for the watershed and getting the historical context for the area. This included collecting the bacterial data for the beach over the past 20 years, and then looking at the trends that cause the levels to rise so much as to cause a no swim advisory. In addition I collected historical aerial photographs to establish a baseline, created a stakeholder list for the whole watershed, and found zoning maps for the whole area.

The watershed restoration project wasn’t the only thing I did in my time with Ann. Spending much of my time at the Coastal Federation unexpectedly gave me look into the world of non-profits which I greatly appreciated. I even helped make the list of invitees to their economic development submit next year. In addition I helped out with another watershed project in southern shores, albeit in a much more reduced capacity. Some of the most interesting moments of my internship came from just being around the Coastal Federation and joining in on normal operations of the day. I helped educate some Manteo middle schoolers on water quality, and also helped bag oyster shells to be used in living shorelines projects. Little things like that, stuff that broke up the normal process of my main project, were some of the best parts of my time this semester.

One fish, two fish, no red fish, just blue fish

Well there are a lot more than two, but how many people would have guessed there were any blue catfish at all? Who even really thinks about what kind of catfish they’re dealing with when they find one in a river? I definitely didn’t, but thanks to my experiences this semester at the OBX field site, I definitely will in the future. My name is Thomas Hennessey, and for my semester-long internship, I’ve been able to work with Sara Mirabilio of North Carolina Sea Grant and Ladd Bayliss of North Carolina Coastal Federation to learn something about the invasive blue catfish crowding our waters, and do some pretty cool things along the way.

When I first heard about this internship opportunity, I knew it would be interesting since the topic hadn’t gotten much attention in this area before, but I wasn’t sure how we’d go about actually studying it. The best way, after some initial lit review on how blue catfish have impacted other areas, turned out to be the clunky and messy way, looking at Division of Marine Fisheries datasets that hadn’t been looked at in this way before. I had worked on projects similar to this one before, but never with the same level of interdisciplinary focus or data retrieval/analysis complexity. Luckily though, my mentors had, and were able to break down a long and complicated project into interesting and very unique workdays, with time split between the Sea Grant offices at CSI and the nice new Coastal Federation building down the road.

The main focus of the internship was on creating a Situation Assessment for the blue catfish population in the area. This basically came down to organizing DMF records for numbers of catfish (both young and old) and their lengths in a way that gave us a timeline for how the population changed since their arrival. One of the coolest parts of this was when I got to take a trip north to Edenton to see firsthand how this data is during one of the DMF Chowan River surveys. We stopped at a number of set locations and tossed a huge net behind our tiny boat, then trawled around for about 10 minutes before hauling the net back up to count/measure its contents. It was a long and sometimes painful process, but was a lot of fun and helped us feel a lot better about the data we were using.

The biggest highlight, though, was the opportunity to present what we had found during all those long data and policy analysis days to the public at a “Fish and Flights” dinner event last week. A good number of people were there for some really well prepared plates of blue catfish. (And I got some as well. Another great thing about this internship was knowing every day that I might be getting some really good food.) This presentation gave me some great experience in interpreting science for a general audience, which could certainly be in my future as I consider careers in environmental policy and ecosystem management. Thanks again to Corey Adams, my fantastic mentors, and the OBX field site for making this possible!

And as I’ve said in multiple presentations now: If you do a lot of fishing and catch a lot of these catfish, don’t hesitate to keep them! Our beautiful coastal ecosystem will be better for it.