This past week marked our first real week of classes. After a hardly deserved but much appreciated three day weekend of lazy beach days and thankfully not contracting norovirus, we met Tuesday morning at CSI for Econ, Coastal Management, and to decide on topics for our capstone research project.
Posing for a group selfie before the presentation at the CAB meeting. George looking extra dapper as always.
Tuesday night was our first community advisory board meeting. We met at the NC Coastal Federation building for dinner and a brief presentation on our experience on the outer banks thus far. Paris, Brett, Emily P., and Bianca all bravely took one for the team and gave the presentation. As Kurt would say, it was electric. After the presentation we mingled with the advisory board members over a dinner of stuffed portabellas and asparagus, kindly arranged by Lindsay to meet as many of our group’s varying dietary restrictions as possible.
Sunset over the sound behind CSI. On the Kurt scale of “toof” to “dopamine”, this sunset was a solid “big for the program”.
After dinner we left the Coastal Federation and went back into Manteo to enjoy the rest of our Tuesday evening. Here at the OBXFS we have taken a liking to several evening and night time activities. Sunsets at CSI, beach fires, and as Kurt would say just boolin’ at the
Amelia, Brett, Danielle, and Emily P. practice poor fire safety as they leave a most certainly flammable cardboard box of graham crackers way too close to the fire.
guest house have been the staple of many a night. Overall I think our first day of classes was a success.
It’s no secret that I love gardening. I really enjoy being able to grow good food right out of the ground and then sharing that love with other people.
This lovely sign welcomes you to the garden
Thanks to Robert Perry, former director of the field site and a member of the community advisory board, we got our own look into local agriculture systems this semester with a plot in the Roanoke Island Community Garden.
In the beginning of the semester, Robert showed us the community garden — a conglomeration of garden plots and communal fruit trees (and a bee hive!) near a wooded area in Manteo — and a plot that we could call our very own. The plot was covered in grass, so we had a lot of work ahead of us. The first few work days involved clearing out the grass, putting down compost and (hand) tilling up the land. Then, we got to plant our first seeds.
Tamara, Alex and Jack helping clear the plot
We planted a lot of things, including beans, spinach, broccoli, kale, collards, bok choy, herbs and mustard spinach, and a few of us made the short trip to the garden (it’s practically next door!) a couple times a week to water and tend to our baby plants. Unfortunately, a few tropical storms and Hurricane Matthew (maybe you heard about it) wiped out a lot of the young plants we had growing and made way for a host of weeds to take root among our garden. The result was a whole lot of mustard spinach and kale, as well as some surviving bok choy, collards and cilantro.
What was left of the garden after Hurricane Matthew
While I don’t have very many pictures of the garden before the storm, what did survive ended up really thriving. Our mustard spinach plants grew huge, enough to harvest and get a few dinners out of for the group, and our kale grew to be tasty, too. A few weeks ago, we made white bean and mustard spinach soup (it was great!), and the other night, Jack, Alex and I cooked down some more mustard spinach and kale to eat with rice.
Yours truly with a big box of mustard spinach and kale
Right now, our collard greens are still growing, and we’re going to go check on them soon (finals season has sadly kept us away). Although we have to pack up and leave the field site in a week, I’m hoping we can harvest some collards for one last home-grown meal before we all leave. It’s been a great semester and a great time tending to this garden, and I’m definitely a little sad to have to leave it behind.
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.
When I arrived in the Outer Banks in August I had no idea what to expect. I am from Swansboro, North Carolina, so living in a coastal town isn’t a foreign concept to me. However, Manteo was still a very new place that I had never been to before. I had just returned home from Germany a week before I arrived in Manteo, so my research on the area was lacking as well. So, what should you expect during your first few weeks in the Outer Banks? Well, this was my experience:
The Friends of Elizabeth Guest House
When I arrived, I knew I would be living in the Friends of Elizabeth Guest House, but I figured that would be in a literal house as you might have in Chapel Hill. This house is not quite like that. The Friends of Elizabeth Two Guest House is pretty much a small dorm that is hall way style. You share a bathroom with one other person, and there are two living rooms and one big kitchen. There is a really awesome house director who makes sure everything runs smoothly. The house is always kept clean, and the tenants are reminded that the cleanliness of living spaces is important. The other students in the program live there as well as governmental employees of different ages. The house is roughly a ten-minute drive from the Coastal Studies Institute (CSI).
The first walk I took on the beach, I was with a classmate, Julia. After walking for a while, we noticed a huge black figure up closer to the dunes. Continuing to walk closer, it was clearly a huge sea turtle, that we originally thought was a large statute. However, the closer we got to this huge statute, the more it began to smell. This was no statute at all, it was an enormous dead sea turtle. I had never seen this in my life, even on the beach where I grew up. Why was this here? Was no one going to do anything about it? I later came to find out that dead sea turtles often washed up on the beach here. Different organizations would mark the sea turtles depending on the area of the beach they washed up on, and later the town would decide if they wanted to bury the turtle or not.
I have had many adventures while in Manteo that I would have never expected. However, these are the two things that I found might be helpful for a future student. Time goes by quickly, so make the most of it while you can!
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.
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.
At first thought, local government is a boring, paperwork-filled nightmare highlighted by dull office phone ringtones and the incessant lull caused by a distant whirring copier.
Working at the Town of Nags Head has proved the exact opposite to be true.
Interning during my boss’s birthday means getting a slice of the cake, too
Armed with my laptop, clip-on phone case, pair of dark sunglasses, and a can-do attitude, I’ve taken to tackling the problems that most coastal communities shudder at the thought of: sea level rise, climate change, and future-proofing development. My task is relatively simple: ground-truth, analyze, and interpret any and all information that can help the town with these issues. My boss: an extremely dedicated, outgoing, knowledgeable principal planner by the name of Holly White. My partner in crime: Erika Munshi, always thinking of new approaches to the somewhat challenging obstacles we encounter in our office-going line of work. The semester has really flown by in Nags Head while we’ve aspired to be the best interns in the world, and bring a sense of “The Office” or “Parks and Rec” to the lively office of planning and development that literally sits on top of the protective shoulder of the Nags Head police department 1st floor of the town hall.
Our day officially starts with an 8:30 AM briefing with Holly in the planning nerve center for the town: her office. We discuss any weekend work-related developments and proceed to outline the goals for the day. Then we break off and spend the midday hours conferencing with various municipalities, binging on office coffee, speaking with citizens, and visiting local landmarks as part of our ground-truthing duties.
◀ An intern’s eye view of ground-truthing flood zone discrepancies
▶ Our analysis and ground-truthing incorporated into an official town presentation on flood zone changes
While Nags Head lacks the hustle and bustle of a large city like Charlotte or Raleigh, its charm and unique coastal demeanor make it a prime experience for a coastal planning intern. This past semester has allowed me to delve into local government as I never had before, and somewhat incited a passion of seeing positive change in citizens’ lives. From the heights of Jockey’s Ridge to the swamps of Nags Head Woods, a more diverse and gem-like multiplicity to publicly serve simply doesn’t exist on the NC coast.
Some seas may rise, and others may fall. The Nags Head Planning and Development department will do its best to prevent this.
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.
On what was probably the last nice day of the year, we took a trip down the road into Wanchese and saw the Wanchese Seafood Company’s oyster aquaculture dock facility.
Oyster aquaculture is basically just growing oysters to harvest in captivity. The Company grows the native Crassostrea virginica oyster. This type of aquaculture is especially neat because the oysters filter water while feeding on plankton, which greatly improves water clarity. No other food or nutrients have to be added to the system, which makes it efficient and not very costly.
Joey Daniels manages and owns the Company and was kind enough to show and explain to us how the process works. We met him at the dock where we first saw the flupsy, which is an oyster aquaculture nursery. It was a cool set up especially since it didn’t take up all that much space, yet yielded a very large number of little baby oysters. Once the oysters get to a decent enough size in the flupsy, they are put in cages and taken out into the Sound to the “farm.” Joey leases one of his plots of about 10 acres of underwater land from the State to grow his oysters. When we get out there, we see ropes that let Joey and his employees know where they have the different sized oysters and what used to be a 90-foot house boat, which is the platform on which they can do some of their work.
Just on those 10 acres, and not accounting for the large amount of dead ones from the storms and other things, Joey estimated he currently had about 3.8 million oysters. And the ones he raises, Bodie Island oysters as they’re fittingly called, are specifically for the half-shell market (which is pretty upscale, if you know anything about eating oysters).
Oyster roast
It was great that we got to get out on the water and learn a little bit about the water life, since we’ve been focused more on the land life with our work. It was also pretty fitting that we concluded this past week with a trip to an oyster aquaculture facility, as on Tuesday we got to experience eating oysters first-hand at Beth’s annual oyster roast. They weren’t the Bodie Island oysters but they still got happily got eaten up. I even tried one for the second time in my life. And as I told Corey, “it was good.” Being so close to fresh seafood definitely gives you a new perspective on it and the work that people do to get that food. Buy it as local and as close to home as you can, people!
The National Park Service is usually not the first thing that comes to mind when one hears the word “government.” This is most likely because the NPS and its 413 “areas” (including 58 National Parks) represents a retreat from modern, hectic entities such as our ruling law making and enforcing body. NPS sites provide the public with access to unique natural and historical places across the United States. The northern Outer Banks is a hotspot for these sites, having three: the Wright Brother’s Memorial, Fort Raleigh, and my internship home, Cape Hatteras National Seashore (CHNS).
Every monday and every other wednesday morning, I travel over the Roanoke Sound via the Washington Baum Bridge before the sun rises and head to the CHNS headquarters on Bodie Island. Upon arrival, I meet up with my mentors and wait for the sky to start showing color. Once it is light enough to walk outside without tripping and running into things, we head for one of our trusty Chevy trucks. While they only stall during the first few seconds of driving, and usually start, the loud, sputtering sound is eternal. Trucks are not meant for driving on the beach. Yet beach driving is a daily routine for the CHNS park service crew. We patrol stretches of beach ranging from the northern tip of Bodie Island down to Buxton; always on the lookout for sea turtles (and nests), threatened shorebirds, stranded animals, and misbehaving beach-goers. One thing I have learned in my few months on the job is that there is no typical day. The day’s work is many times solely influenced by what we see. There really is no telling what will happen each time I shut off my 5 am alarm and head over to the beach. One day, we may excavate a turtle nest, the next save a cormorant flapping around helplessly on the highway, another may be spent nicely explaining to the nice locals how we would appreciate if they nicely move off the section of this nice beach that they are not supposed to be on. My internship is always varying and changing, however there is one rather constant component, my mentors.
Paul Doshkov is the head honcho of the Bodie Island division. His laid back personality and dry humor do little to mask his immense knowledge of and respect for wildlife. The ability to slice open a dolphin and assess its innards in mere minutes and ID little shorebirds from hundreds of feet away are just two of the many seasoned skills I have been lucky to witness. Almost all the questions I think to ask on the job are thoroughly answered. If it involves the CHNS, Paul knows about it.
Amber Rhodes is the other permanent worker at the division. Amber loves sea turtles. Amber knows sea turtles. Amber may in fact be a sea turtle. How else could a person know so much about a species while simultaneously caring about its young as if they were their own children? In all seriousness, her passion is contagious. She works with a doggedness that is quite rare and it’s obvious the job is not work to her, but a fun game that she enjoys playing over and over again. The NPS is to Amber as the NFL is to a meathead.
Additionally, I had the pleasure of working with three seasonal employees (Rob, John, and Katie). Meeting and working with these people was a grand (Canyon National Park) experience. All came from different places, with different backgrounds, and brought different personalities. But each and every person carried out their job in a professional and efficient manner. It was extremely valuable to be a part of such a cohesive and efficient working environment. My internship was a beneficial balance of knowledge on wildlife and a successful work environment with perspective-changing relationships thrown in for good measure. I will be able to use what I have learned at CHNS for the rest of my days whether those are spent chasing down sea turtles and gutting dolphins, or not.
