Internships – Page 8 – Outer Banks Field Site

To Preserve, To Prosper, To Pet Cats!

Do not worry I will totally explain the cat thing, but my internship for the OBXFS 2016 was with the Town of Manteo. Located conveniently down the street from the Elizabeth Friends II house, I was able to walk to my internship every Monday and Wednesday (so do not worry if you have a car or not!).

My mentor was the wonderful Erin Burke who taught me all things related to being a town planner in a small town. The first day of my internship, Erin took me along to learn the history of the town and to meet people who have lived in Manteo for years! It is a very close-knit community and I was so happy that I was able to be apart of it.

My main task was to develop a unified recycling program for the Town of Manteo. This required me to draft a proposal bid to submit to the Board of Commissioners for approval to place the bid in the local paper. The bid is to advertise to contractors that the Town of Manteo is in need of supplies and labor for a recycling program.

However, when I was not working on the new recycling program, I was helping to refurbish an old playground. A lot of the equipment was rusted and out of date, so children could no longer safely play. When the project was completed, it was heartwarming to see the kids rush to play after school.

I also attended meetings hosted by DOT, Government Education TV, and FEMA to get a first-hand look into the inner workings of local and regional government.

Now the moment you have all been waiting for!

Along with my internship, I made a new friend: TOM the town cat. His name stands for the Town of Manteo (GET IT??). He came to the town hall to live several years ago and never left. He lives in my office and demands belly rubs throughout the day. He was definitely an added plus to my time working for the Town of Manteo.

The staff in Manteo is amazing and helpful. The knowledge I gained here definitely helped me pick a career path after I graduate. I look forward to trying my hand at being a town planner just like my mentor!

Into the (Nags Head) Woods

While “Into the Woods” is a creepy Disney movie about a witch, Nags Head Woods isn’t anything like that. There have been reports of a pack of coyotes stalking trail-goers. But that’s largely uncorroborated.

My name is Julia Maron, I’m a sophomore Environmental Studies major and Public Policy minor, and I got to spend this fall interning with Aaron McCall at The Nature Conservancy’s Nags Head Woods ecological preserve. Aaron is the Northeast Regional Steward and oversees basically the entire eastern area of the state.

I had heard of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) before coming down here but I didn’t know that on the Outer Banks, which you think of as all beach (tell me you don’t only think of it as all beach), there would be 1,400 acres of maritime forest and swamps. And by the looks of the visitor’s log, a lot of other people didn’t know the Woods existed as either.

Unlike almost all of the other internships, my time spent at the Woods wasn’t focused on one overarching project, which was fine by me. I got to learn about stewardship, which is “the recognition of our collective responsibility to retain the quality and abundance of our land, air, water and biodiversity, and to manage this natural capital in a way that conserved all of its values, be they environmental, economic, social or cultural.” Basically, it’s important to know that we have certain environmental spaces and resources that we can and should use, but we have to use them in a responsible way.

With woods comes pine straw and leaves and with the Outer Banks comes storms and hurricanes. So naturally, sometimes the trails get covered with such debris and it is my dutiful task to make sure the trails are clear and walkable. As much as I loved doing this, I realized that it’s important especially to the people who visit the Woods. If you can’t walk easily, then it won’t be as enjoyable and people won’t visit as often. So yes, trail maintenance is important. Can I put “handy with a rake” on my resume? All I can say is that I got to explore all of the trails pretty thoroughly and spending time outside can be better than sitting in an office all day (no offense to those who work in offices, specifically the planning department of the Town of Nags Head).

*Disclaimer: One would STRONGLY advise visiting the Woods sometime after November, when mosquitoes the size of a quarter have gone to wherever they go. If not, coat yourself in bug spray, wear long sleeves and pants, and bring mosquito net hats. I can give you my personal one, if you’d like. Very handy.

Walking trails sometimes leads to running in to critters, some of which scare you half to death. Especially when you take Fergie, Aaron’s dog, with you and she doesn’t see the black rat snake in front of her. And you’re too scared to get close to it to see if it’s venomous, so you don’t know it’s only a black rat snake until you take a picture and show it to Aaron when you get back.

As I mentioned before, when I wasn’t raking, I did some Excel work, mainly inputting the Woods’ visitor’s log into a format where the total number of visitors could be gathered for each month. These numbers are useful because they get sent to The Nature Conservancy’s main office and can help the Woods get grants and different things, since TNC is a nonprofit. Additionally, bow hunting season for deer started September 10th in the Woods, and Aaron is in charge of collecting hunting licenses and information, so that too was put into Excel.

Nags Head Woods sits between Jockey’s Ridge and Run Hill sand dunes, which causes it to be shielded from harsh ocean winds. It has forested dunes, interdune ponds, marshes, wetlands and a whole lot of diverse plant and animal life. The most interesting part of my internship has definitely been capturing creatures that use the woods on wildlife cameras. At the beginning of the semester, I asked Aaron if there had been coyote sightings in the Woods, since that would relate to our Capstone project. As you may or may not know, coyotes are now officially found in all 100 counties of North Carolina, and have been increasingly seen up and down the Outer Banks. A lot of residents have been complaining about them as well, so I thought I’d see if I could find any. TNC had some wildlife cameras that they’d used before and I thought it would be super neat if I could put some out to try and catch some sneaky canids on camera.

When I went out to check the cameras, I took my laptop and popped the SD card out from the camera to see if there were new pictures. Honestly, it was kind of exciting when you saw any amount of pictures, even when you realized that there were 174 just of a squirrel (I think he just wanted to have a photo shoot). I had 2 cameras out for 3 weeks that never had any pictures on them, which was a little frustrating. But hey, it was even better when you got some clear shots of does, bucks, raccoons and even a possum. And sometimes you got a super cool picture of a young buck only 3 hours before you went out and pulled the camera.

All in all, interning at The Nags Head Woods was a great experience that has made me realize what I enjoy doing and what I only kind of enjoy doing. I’m appreciative that I’ve had this great opportunity and hopefully I can build on this experience in the future.

Oh, and this internship has also reaffirmed that I absolutely hate mosquitoes.

Sandspur Island

My name is Jack, and I am a sophomore Environmental Science major from Wilmington, North Carolina. My internship is with the one and only Lindsay Dubbs, doing research here at CSI. I am working on the Salinity Gradient Energy Project, which attempts to assess the environmental impacts of potential Reverse Electrodialysis (RED) power plants on surrounding ecosystems.

You might be asking yourself, what the heck is reverse electrodialysis? Well, put simply, its a new form of renewable energy that generates power by taking advantage of the natural movement of water molecules from low to high salinity.

RED power plants would have to be placed in areas where there is really fresh water right next to really salty water. They would have to take in water from both sources, and also let water out somewhere. Unfortunately, that would impact the surrounding environment, and the Salinity Gradient Energy Project is an attempt to assess how large that impact is.

My part in the whole project is attempting to characterize the phytoplankton community in the locations that have been proposed as eligible sites by graduate student Hannah Palko. To do this, I used High Performance Liquid Chromatography, which allowed me to identify and quantify the pigments in water samples, which can then be used to make inferences about the species of plankton present in the sample.

But I am not writing this post to talk to you about chemistry. I understand that not everyone finds that as interesting as I do. I am writing to tell you about my experience in the field collecting samples for analysis.

We woke up on Sunday morning at roughly 5 o’clock. The Outer Banks Marathon was taking place, so all the roads were going to be closed by 6:30. We had to get an early start if we were going to make it out of Wanchese.

The long drive down to our sample sites consisted of breakfast at Bojangles, music, and conversation. We stopped at our first sample location and could not have been more thankful for how beautiful the day was.

After gathering our data and samples, we headed off to Beaufort for lunch at Plaza Mexico. It was amazing. Endless chips and salsa, cheap, affordable vegetarian options. Needless to say, I was in heaven.

Our next sampling location was right up the street, just north of downtown Beaufort, at a public dock. After collecting our samples, we decided to kayak across the channel to the Rachel Carson Reserve, or as I like to call it, “sandspur island.”

Growing up in Wilmington, I was accustomed to getting sandspurs on my shoes, on my socks, on everything really. But since it was mid November, I figured sandspur season was over. Boy was I wrong. I decided to go barefoot to the island because I didn’t want my shoes to get wet. Looking back, that was a terrible decision.

Claire, Ted and Hannah were calmly exploring around the island, looking for wild horses, while I was busy standing in one place trying to get sandspurs out of my bare feet. In some spots there were no sandspurs, and I could freely move around. In others, they literally covered the ground.

On the way back to the kayaks, I couldn’t take it anymore. I asked Ted and Hannah to carry me back. I felt so bad for being so dumb and not wearing shoes, but it ended up being a good team building exercise.

All in all, it was a great day in the field, and going out and seeing the sample sites that I had been analyzing in the lab was a wonderful learning experience.

Swamped in the Swamp

Well not really a swamp, more of a coastal salt marsh, but I digress. If you had told me at the beginning of August that within a month I would be stuck up to my knees in muck, constantly pricked by omnipresent black needle rush, and have spent more time laying out Home Depot tiles then ever before while loving every moment of it, I would say you definitely don’t know me. As it turns out though, early-August-Alex apparently didn’t know me that well either because I’ve been doing just that for the last

semester while having an amazing time. My name is Alexander Smith, I am a Junior Environmental Science major, and my internship is conducting research under the guidance of Dr. Reide Corbett in the costal marsh right outside CSI.

My internship is rather equally divided between spending a lot of time in the field and analyzing the data I collected in the field, but, seeing as images of graphs and excel sheets can only be so exciting for so long, I’m going to focus a tad bit more on my fieldwork. The coastal marsh is really an indescribable environment to find yourself in (I say right before I attempt to describe it). The combination of an ever-present sulfurous smell, hidden canals that could dunk you in water up to your waste, and seemingly vengeful vegetation make the habitat truly unique to be and work in.

My research out in the marsh focuses on accretion and erosion rates and how these rates are affected by variables such as weather patterns, elevation, and distance from shore. Thankfully, a researcher at CSI about a year ago conducted a similar study so I am able to compare my results and use their methods as a starting point. When I do field work, I get to use a myriad of different tools, from something as high-tech as a RTK Trimble unit (which costs more than my rent) to bathroom tiles, to gather my data. The RTK unit is used so that I can get an accurate measure of the location of the shoreline, which I can then compare with previous measurements, as well as the overall elevation of the coastal marsh. The comparison of shoreline data is extremely significant to my research because that comparison can be used to determine the mean erosion and erosion rate along the shore of the coastal marsh.

The bathroom tiles are used so that I can measure sediment accretion at specific sites within the marsh. To do this, I’ve laid approximately three tiles at each site (there are a total of 13 sites within the study area) flush with the ground. This way any organic or inorganic material that would normally fall onto these areas is now on the tile. About every 2 to 3 weeks, I go out into the field and collect all the material that has collected on the tiles using such sophisticated instruments as water and a somewhat knife shaped piece of metal. In the lab I dehydrate and then combust the soil to get measure of the organic and inorganic makeup of the collected samples. From here, I can use time, size of the tile, and soil composition to determine the accretion rates at those specific sites.

This data collection culminates into a huge pool of data that I then get to analyze and visualize. Currently, I am about knee deep in this process, which is turning out to be more frustrating, but also more gratifying, than I imagined it would be. Being able to both collect and analyze data under loose supervision is something that I never thought I’d be doing at this point in my life. I can not thank CSI, Dr. Corbett, and the OBXFS program enough for letting me do this internship. Not only am I doing something fun and interesting, but I am doing something that I hope to do throughout my future.

Holly White is the Leslie Knope of Nags Head

If you read the title of this blog post and didn’t get the reference – I highly recommend you check out the show Parks and Recreation immediately. It’s a about a lovable group of local government employees who work in the Parks and Recreation department in their town hall and make dreams come true. Not only is it prime entertainment, but you might end up learning a little bit about the workings of local government while you watch!

While we’re on the subject of lovable government employees, it seems fitting to introduce some of Nags Head’s newest interns: Erika Munshi (me!) and Viktor Agabekov! But we’re not just any interns, we’re working in the world-renowned Nags Head Planning Department! And just like in Parks and Rec, the department wouldn’t run without the oversight of a brilliant leader like Leslie Knope. In our case, this fearless leader is Holly White – Principal Town Planner and our mentor for the semester!

Holly’s ongoing projects include creating a comprehensive town plan called FOCUS Nags Head and putting together a Coastal Resiliency Plan called VCAPS (Vulnerability, Consequences, and Adaptation Planning Scenarios) <- feel free to click on either project to learn more!

Over the past few months, we’ve been able to dive in to both the FOCUS Nags Head project and VCAPS by doing research, consulting experts, and talking to residents. We’ve also been analyzing the proposed FEMA flood maps and groundtruthing flood damage from past storms in order to see which neighborhoods and properties may be affected by a change in flood zones.

In addition to our work with FOCUS and VCAPS, we are also working with Andrea Hitt from the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island to put together some messaging to send out to both permanent and temporary residents to inform them on how they can make their home more resilient.

Overall, my internship experience at the Town of Nags Head has been incredibly informative. Not only have I been able to better understand how local government works, but I’ve been able to work on a project that will help communities all over North Carolina’s coast better prepare for sea level rise and increased storm events. I’m incredibly grateful for this opportunity and I’m looking forward to the rest of the semester!

Nest or N.E.S.T. ?

When I first came to the Outer Banks in August, I was not sure what to expect. I have grown up surrounded by water, both in Long Island, New York, and in Swansboro, North Carolina, but I had never been on the coast solely for education. So much has changed since I arrived in August, and chasing degraded sea turtle corpses stuck in the surf now seems completely normal.

As a part of my internship, which I’ll talk more about in a future blog post, I work with an organization called the Network of Endangered Sea Turtles (N.E.S.T.). The non-profit group is devoted to the protection of sea turtles as well as other marine animal’s habitats. My first experience with N.E.S.T. was supposed to be a nest excavation since the turtles had hatched days before; however, I received a call on my way to Southern Shores that there was a report of a live stranded dolphin in Nags Head. I decided I would stop off in Nags Head since it was on my way, and when I arrived on the beach I walked for about half a mile until I reached a group of people. They were all surrounding this distressed spotted dolphin, who was up on the sand. Two girls were trying to calm the animal and keep him comfortable, and I quickly joined in and followed instructions. The plan was to keep the animal calm and comfortable until the biologist, my internship mentor, arrived. Onlookers would ask questions about what was going on, and we made sure they were informed of the situation. A N.E.S.T. volunteer explained that, when a dolphin comes onto shore, there is a chance that their organs were ruptured from the waves, meaning the animal would need to be euthanized. When my mentor arrived, she had the N.E.S.T. volunteers bring the dolphin further up the beach. The dolphin at hand was convulsing and curling its tail, which let my mentor know that the dolphin was sick and needed to be euthanized. She administered a vile into the animal, and I took notes on the reaction of the animal and its movements during the final moments of its life. We later took the deceased dolphin to a separate location where it would be measured and put in a freezer so that it could be transported to UNC Wilmington for educational and research purposes.

The next big move for me with N.E.S.T. involved the degraded leatherback sea turtle corpse that I mentioned earlier. My internship mentor asked me if I wanted to see something stinky, and naturally I was up for the challenge. I had to retrieve a muscle sample from this degraded mess of sea turtle and put it in a vile of alcohol. My mentor sent me alone to meet up with some lifeguards to retrieve the muscle sample. We struggled at first to bring the turtle onto shore since the corpse kept breaking apart. However, the afternoon ended successfully, and we were able to finally retrieve a muscle sample.

I’ve done other things with N.E.S.T. since being here, and I finally got to do a turtle excavation, but these two activities were my favorite and really made an impression on me. I am really excited to graduate in December, but I would not want to be doing anything different for my last semester at UNC Chapel Hill.

You are What You Eat: Food in Dare County

Hello! My name is Emma Boyd, and I am a senior Environmental Studies/English major from Boone, NC. Before this semester, the longest amount of time that I had spent on the coast at one time had not exceeded a week. Now I can say that I have lived at the beach, and have been a part of a wonderful and welcoming community on Roanoke Island. A big part of that community has been my internship at the Dare County Cooperative Extension. Let me tell you a little more about it.

When I first got accepted to the Outer Banks Field Site, I was asked about my interests and experiences so that they could find me an internship that I would enjoy. I’m afraid I was less than helpful, however. I was (and still am, to be honest) so unsure about my future, and what I want to do after college that all I could tell them was that I was interested in food. Which is 100% true, not only do I love to cook it and eat it, but I am also interested in the way that it reaches our stomachs. Who grows it, who ships it, who buys it. This answer (or lack of an answer) led me to my internship with the Dare County Cooperative Extension.

Before I go into specifics, I am going to tell a little about the NC Cooperative Extension because if you are anything like I was 3 months ago, you have heard of it but aren’t quite sure what it does.

Every county in the country has a Cooperative Extension, and every Cooperative Extension is affiliated with a state university. In North Carolina, the Cooperative Extension is affiliated with NC State. Cooperative Extension is a partnership between county and university that focuses on making information generated by public universities accessible to the public. Since it started in 1914 it has accordingly had to adapt to the times, but it is still a valuable resource for the community, with a general focus on agriculture, families, and responsible youth.

That brings me to my specific role with the Dare County Cooperative Extension. My main focus is working with the Outer Banks Local Food Council on their community food assessment. The Outer Banks Local Food Council is a council affiliated with Dare Cooperative Extension that focuses on advocating for local products and educating the community about local food movements. The community food assessment is an evaluation of the food situation in a localized area. I am responsible for the capital resource assessment portion of the assessment. I look into seven different areas of food resource and try to summarize their impacts in the community. The seven areas are: cultural, human, social, political, financial, natural, and built. I have two wonderful mentors: Shannon Brooks, the County Extension Director, and Jennifer Thompson, the Family and Consumer Sciences Agent. Both have helped and guided me through my project, and I couldn’t have done it without them.

The Outer Banks Field Site took my less-than-helpful request to work with food and found me the perfect internship. I have learned more about a single community’s food network than I even knew there was to learn. I have enjoyed working in the office with Shannon and Jennifer, and it has been a great learning experience to see the Outer Banks Local Food Council’s meetings and process. Thanks to everyone who made this internship possible!

Connecting the Dots through Storytelling

As I have made my way through my college career, the question has not been what do I want to do–it’s been what don’t I want to do. It hasn’t been easy to narrow that down into a clear path that leads to job at the end, but from what I’ve been hearing here at the Outer Banks Field Site, it probably shouldn’t be.

As were my peers at the field site, I was matched with an organization or member of the community whose work matched up with my interests. I was given the wonderful opportunity to work with Beth Storie on a project that is able to encompass many of my passions: writing, agriculture, sustainability, and talking with people. Beth is the creative mind behind Outer Banks This Week, a website and magazine that brings all the great things about the Outer Banks from the locals to the visitors. Seriously, you won’t miss a beat if you let Beth and her team plan your vacation out on the coast!

I’ve been wanting to make sustainable living more visible and accessible to the public, in some capacity. I know that education is the key to making this happen, and if I’ve learned anything, facts and figures aren’t always the best way to provoke change. My internship is allowing me to explore storytelling as a means of communicating with the public. My mission has been to find organic farmers in eastern North Carolina and interview them about their careers. If there was a group of people to gain inspiration from, it would be the organic farmers. Though I’ve began asking the different farmers questions from the same script, each interview goes in a very unique direction.

My first interview was with Hazel Inglis, one of the most lively people I’ve ever met. Her family owns Somerset Farm near Edenton, NC, which looks like a snapshot out of the early 1900’s when they use horses to plow the land. Hazel worked on a farm for a couple years after graduating college. She loved the work but never glamorized it: ““I like going to bed with my muscles aching. I like that. I like when you plant a crop…you watch them grow. You weed. You chop. You hoe. You pick it, and then you sell it. It’s really amazing to see the whole process.” Hazel stressed the importance of this connection to food that’s good for us and the environment.

My second interview was with Robert Perry, a very wise person I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know here at the field site. Robert used to be the director of the program and continues to be on the Community Advisory Board for the field site while he focuses on other ventures. Robert is a conservationist through and through and brings that attitude into everything he does. Robert and his siblings inherited a large amount of land that their father farmed and are renting it to a family of organic farmers. Robert maintains a relationship with these folks and visits when he can. “We feel that we provide an oasis for the animals inhabiting the area to breathe and to grow without the impact of pesticides.”

The third person I interviewed was Uli Bennewitz, owner of Weeping Radish Farm Brewery. Uli is a genius in my book, but he would never label himself as such. In fact, Uli hates labels and even goes without calling his food “organic.” Uli grew up in Germany and went to school for agriculture in England, then brought his knowledge to North Carolina after graduating. He is a pioneer in the farm to fork movement, bring his brute honesty and creativity to an industry that’s losing both of those. “You either pay now or pay later, that’s what this is all about. The whole local food movement is all about spending more money upfront on your food and that’s the only way in the long-term that we are going to reduce healthcare costs.” Uli has a knack for making academics and politicians scratch their heads after hitting them with a truth bomb.

If you haven’t already gotten this from what I’ve written: I love what I’ve been doing! I’m gaining valuable perspective and meeting some amazing people along the way. I’m finding that writing allows me to connect with people in both the process and the product. Also, how can I complain while I’m living and learning on the coast?

I like long walks on the beach, but sometimes I get crabby

As the date approached to move to Manteo for the fall semester, I was unsure about one thing: my internship placement. Like some of my classmates, I had no idea what I wanted for an internship. I knew that past students had been placed with environmental organizations, but that there was also a possibility I could complete a research project. My interests were broad: human ecology, management, and being outside a lot… so I was worried I might be placed in an internship I wasn’t interested in or be asked to develop my own research project from scratch because my interests weren’t specific enough.

Of course, I never should have worried. Thanks to our amazing internship coordinator, Corey Adams, we were all placed in great internships. Even though I probably made his job tough, he put in a lot of time to make sure that I had cool opportunities and options for my placement. I was able to score a research project with Dr. Lindsay Dubbs (the best; our assistant director for the OBXFS; coolest teacher at the field site) as my mentor and with the help of Dr. Reide Corbett, a geologist who teaches at ECU and is head of the Coastal Processes department at the Coastal Studies Institute.

My project is on ghost crabs- nocturnal creatures that live on the beach in burrows up to a meter deep. Ghost crabs are used as an indicator for the beach ecosystem because they are top predators and their populations fluctuate predictably with certain human influences. I really have enjoyed my project because it involves different types of research. I get to collect, decipher, and analyze historical data collected by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (over 20 years of data!), which involves making great connections with people who have been working in environmental monitoring and management since before I was born. I also get to sample ghost crab populations on the beach, which makes for some beautiful mornings. I spend most of my time at CSI, putting together the different pieces of my project and figuring out my next steps.

For the most part, I was responsible for determining my research questions and doing the work on my own. However, the basic concept for the project was developed by my mentors and they constantly provide me with feedback and advice. So, for anyone who is thinking about diving into a research experience, whether here at the field site or elsewhere, focus on finding great mentors who will help you develop a project and advise you along the way. The research community and process were daunting to me because I didn’t understand how projects and partnerships were created, but once you start gaining experience and getting ideas for what you want to do and like to do, it isn’t as scary.

A lot of work here at the field site is self-motivated- you get out what you put in. It’s working well for me because even though I’ve taken on a lot with my project, I’ve already gained so much experience and developed a project that I will continue after I leave the field site. I can’t thank my mentors and the staff here at the field site enough. They are invested in making our time here valuable and meaningful. Because of their work, I get to carry what I’ve started here with me to whatever I decide to do next.

-Caitlin Seyfried, Junior Environmental Science major from Greenville, NC

the end. seriously this dino got us all — the end. seriously, this dino got us all.

My Venture into Foiling Big Oil

Just a few short months ago I knew next to nothing about the proposed offshore oil development off the Atlantic coast. While it would’ve sounded like a step in the wrong direction for energy development, I had little proximity to the reality of the situation and reasons that you, hey there, reading this blog should also be opposed. Now though I could talk your ear off on all the different layers and complexities to the situation and frequently corral my fellow classmates into hearing my two cents.

The organization to thank for this change is the North Carolina Coastal Federation, a non-profit organization here in Manteo that I have been fortunate enough to intern with this semester. NCCF has three offices along the coast and three main focuses: preservation and restoration, education, and advocacy. My mentor, Ladd Bayliss, is the Coastal Federation’s lead on their goal of stopping offshore oil. A native of Manns Harbor and knowledgeable of seemingly all things about the area, Ladd’s cheerful and determined personality has allowed us to work well together on a sometimes hopeless seeming fight.

My work on the issue has ranged from compiling important information for a fact sheet to planning a movie screening on the BP oil spill.

Just recently I assisted Ladd in developing the offshore oil work plan for the next year. In January the federal government will release their Proposed Program for 2017-2022 and this will determine the next steps for NCCF depending on if the Atlantic Ocean is still included as a lease area. The big question we are figuring out together is the best way to engage people in the issue and sway public opinion. If drilling is allowed off the coast of North Carolina then everyone here in the Outer Banks will be affected, but not everyone realizes their personal stake in the matter.

Another aspect of the offshore oil issue that I have learned about is the seismic surveying that would occur before actual drilling. Seismic surveys send loud blasts of sound miles deep into the ocean to map the ocean floor and determine the location of oil and gas reserves. If seismic surveying occurred in the Atlantic it would have detrimental affects on marine mammals’ ability to communicate and could harm fish populations in an area dependent on the fishing industry.

Currently, Ladd and I are working especially on ways to foster opposition within the commercial fishing community by comparing fishing regulations to the proposed regulations on the seismic surveyors.

Interning with the Coastal Federation has helped me tremendously in determining where I’d like to go from here and how I’d like to work on environmental issues. Going into this semester all I knew was that I wanted to gain an insight into the non-profit perspective and gain experience working with the public on issues. Now I have a deep appreciation for community-involved environmental advocacy. To progress to better environmental management I have learned it is essential to understand the area where you are and the people who make it what it is in order to find a common ground and a common voice.