North Carolina Coast Research Articles

Blackbeard's Sunken Prize: The 300-Year Voyage of Queen Anne's Revenge by Mark U. Wilde-Ramsing and Linda F. Carnes-McNaughton

Reviewed by: Blackbeard's Sunken Prize: The 300-Year Voyage of Queen Anne's Revenge by Mark U. Wilde-Ramsing and Linda F. Carnes-McNaughton Julia A. King Blackbeard's Sunken Prize: The 300-Year Voyage of Queen Anne's Revenge. By Mark U. Wilde-Ramsing and Linda F. Carnes-McNaughton. ( Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Pp. xiv, 205. Paper, $28.00, ISBN 978-1-4696-4052-5.) Blackbeard's Sunken Prize: The 300-Year Voyage of Queen Anne's Revenge is a well-illustrated study of the ship that Edward Thache, the pirate better known as Blackbeard, ran aground off the North Carolina coast in 1718. The skeletal remains of the Queen Anne's Revenge (QAR), along with tens of thousands of artifacts, were ultimately recovered and analyzed by a vast interdisciplinary research team, shedding light on the material world of piracy in the late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century Atlantic world. The book is organized into eight chapters, with maps, graphs, tables, and dozens of photographs, many of them of artifacts. The Queen Anne's Revenge, originally a French privateer and slaver captured near Martinique in 1717 by Thache, soon became a heavily armed pirate ship engaging in a "six-month spree" of pillage and plunder along the coast of North America (p. 3). The shipwreck yielded not only the artifacts of Thache's pirate flagship but also artifacts and snippets of Akan gold jewelry from when the ship sailed under the French flag. Mark U. Wilde-Ramsing and Linda F. Carnes-McNaughton use the artifacts to present a compelling teaser of life aboard a pirate ship, finding that "Captain Thache maintained traditional [End Page 663] hierarchal control from his cabin in the stern" (p. 160). The area of the ship that housed the officers, including Thache, yielded fancy dinnerware, coins, gold dust, and tellingly, most of the lead shot recovered from the wreck. Other findings include the extent of wear and repair of the ship's arms and armament, suggesting that the ship's gunsmiths kept busy managing stolen weapons. Preservation of the ship and its contents was extraordinary, with a wide range of materials recovered, including (to name but a few) ship's timbers and hardware, lamps, navigational equipment, weapons of all kinds, medical tools, ceramics, glass, clothing, and even remnants of cloth sails. Still, the authors argue, only with "full recovery" will the "real treasure" of the ship be finally realized by answering unspecified "broader questions" (p. 164). The authors go on to suggest that the QAR's significance lies "first and foremost" in its contributions to the conservation of materials recovered through underwater archaeology (p. 164). Archaeological conservation, especially for materials from submerged contexts, is no small (or inexpensive) undertaking. The lessons conservators can take from the QAR will no doubt be of value to the future work of shipwreck recovery. But what of the so-called broader questions? What can the recovered evidence suggest about the economic, social, and cultural significance of piracy? Answers can be partially found in the book's detailed discussions of the artifacts. Missing from the book, however, is a section or chapter synthesizing the findings of these individual discussions, relating them to the documentary evidence, and contextualizing them in the growing body of scholarship on early Atlantic piracy, such as Marcus Rediker's Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (Boston, 2004). There are two stories at play in this book. The first is about Edward Thache, the pirate known as Blackbeard, and the things found aboard his flagship. This story brings a unique body of evidence to bear on the understanding of early modern piracy. The second story—the epic narrative of the discovery, recovery, and analysis of the three-hundred-year-old shipwreck—nearly swamps the first. No doubt this undertaking was a complex project, but its recounting is overdone. For example, the three-page table in the main body of the text that lists every participant, research topic, institutional affiliation, region, and publication date is information better suited to a bibliography. Nonetheless, the results of the project are published, which is no small achievement, and the material has been...

The Potential Resiliency of a Created Tidal Marsh to Sea Level Rise

Abstract. The purpose of this study was to determine the elevation dynamics of a created tidal marsh on the North Carolina coast. Deep rod surface elevation tables (RSET) and feldspar marker horizons (MH) were installed in plots to measure net surface elevation changes and to quantify contributing processes. Twelve total plots were placed on four elevation gradient transects (three transects within the created marsh and one within a reference marsh), with three plots along each transect. Elevation gradient transects included a low marsh plot dominated by , a middle marsh plot dominated by , and a high marsh plot dominated by . RSET and MH were measured in December 2012, January 2014, April 2017, and March 2018. Elevation change ranged from 1.0 to 4.0 mm year-1 within the created marsh and from -0.4 to 2.0 mm year-1 within the reference marsh. When compared to the long-term linear trend in local relative sea level rise (RSLR) of 3.10 ±0.35 mm year-1, the middle marsh plots within the created marsh trended toward survival, with an observed elevation increase of 3.1 ±0.2 mm year-1. Alternatively, the low and high marsh plots within the created marsh trended toward submergence, with observed elevation increases of 2.1 ±0.2 and 1.3 ±0.2 mm year-1, respectively. These results indicate that a created marsh can display elevation dynamics similar to a natural marsh and can be resilient to current rates of RSLR if constructed with a high elevation capital. Surface elevation changes were observed over a short time period and in a relatively young marsh, so it is uncertain if these trends will continue or how the long-term relation with RSLR will develop. While this study provided initial data on the ability of created tidal marshes to respond to observed sea level rise, subsequent observations are needed to evaluate the long-term elevation dynamics. Keywords: Resiliency, Sea level rise, Surface elevation tables, Tidal marsh, Vertical accretion.

Field Monitoring of Downspout Disconnections to Reduce Runoff Volume and Improve Water Quality along the North Carolina Coast

AbstractVirtually all land development increases stormwater runoff and disrupts the natural hydrologic cycle. This is a particularly important issue for areas developed prior to the widespread appl...

Variability in Coastal Flooding predictions due to forecast errors during Hurricane Arthur

Storm surge prediction models rely on an accurate representation of the wind conditions. In this paper, we examine the sensitivity of surge predictions to forecast uncertainties in the track and strength of a storm (storm strength is quantified by the power dissipation of the associated wind field). This analysis is performed using Hurricane Arthur (2014), a Category 2 hurricane, which made landfall along the North Carolina (NC) coast in early July 2014. Hindcast simulations of a coupled hydrodynamic-wave model are performed on a large unstructured mesh to analyze the surge impact of Arthur along the NC coastline. The effects of Arthur are best represented by a post-storm data assimilated wind product with parametric vortex winds providing a close approximation. Surge predictions driven by forecast advisories issued by the National Hurricane Center (NHC) during Arthur are analyzed. The storm track predictions from the NHC improve over time. However, successive advisories predict an unrealistic increase in the storm's strength. Due to these forecast errors, the global root mean square errors of the predicted wind speeds and water levels increase as the storm approaches landfall. The relative impacts of the track and strength errors on the surge predictions are assessed by replacing forecast storm parameters with the best known post-storm information about Arthur. In a “constant track” analysis, Arthur's post storm determined track is used in place of the track predictions of the different advisories but each advisory retains its size and intensity predictions. In a “constant storm strength” analysis, forecast wind and pressure parameters are replaced by corresponding parameters extracted from the post storm analysis while each advisory retains its forecast storm track. We observe a strong correlation between the forecast errors and the wind speed predictions. However, the correlation between these errors and the forecast water levels is weak signifying a non-linear response of the shallow coastal waters to meteorological forcing.

Letters to a Friend: From the Editor

Letters to a FriendFrom the Editor Anna Lena Phillips Bell It's no secret that I'm a fan of the U. S. Postal Service. Sending and receiving letters is one of the things I love most. Here at Ecotone we're about to have one more reason for writing letters, and for going out with hope to check our mailboxes. This July, after six years on the North Carolina coast, Beth Staples will depart her post as senior editor of the magazine, editor for Lookout Books, and a member of the creative writing faculty at UNC Wilmington. She'll head to Washington and Lee University, where she will become the editor of the venerable Shenandoah. We are thrilled for her, and for Shenandoah, lucky duck of a magazine. But it is nearly impossible to estimate the size of the gap that will be left by her departure. Beth thinks alongside the writers she edits, helping them navigate big structural edits and subtleties of character and dialogue. Working on edits with her has afforded me a rare pleasure—that of thinking things through with a brilliant editor and writer whose sensibility is different enough from mine to offer useful insights, yet similar enough that my intuitions are amplified. We're losing not only a skilled editor but a fine teacher, colleague, and friend. Beth's students, particularly the Publishing Laboratory teaching assistants, will tell you about her humor and empathy, her supportive feedback, her laugh. Her colleagues value her clear-eyed vision about not only editing, publishing, and writing, but the workings of sexism, racism, and other sources of oppression as they affect writers, teachers, and editors. In all these realms, Beth can put a finger on precisely the most difficult thing, the thing you knew needed thinking about. But she doesn't poke meanly at those soft spots. It's more like a kind, funny poke—sardonic, sometimes, but insightful, perceptive, attuned to the other person's intentions. The questions she asks of the writing she edits and the people around her are inflected with a kindness that disarms old defenses, allowing folks to set aside what's scary and do the good work. Her efforts have not gone unnoticed in the literary world. Stories and essays Beth acquired and edited for Ecotone have been reprinted in the Pushcart Prize anthology, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and have received special mention in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Essays. And that's not to mention her work for Lookout Books, including, most recently, as editor of Clare Beams's story collection We Show What We Have Learned, a finalist for the PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the Young Lions Fiction Award. For this issue, she has found us even more stellar stories than [End Page 5] usual: tales of woe and wonder from Bojan Louis, Chaitali Sen, and Renee Simms, and essays on sailing, evangelism, and a family home from Rachel Z. Arndt, Cameron Dezen Hammon, and Rafia Zakaria. All these and more sit alongside the issue's crop of poems, featuring bats, sparrows, hornets, and an elusive coy-wolf, from poets including Andy Young, Jan Verberkmoes, Catherine Carter, and Katie Hartsock. In Poem in a Landscape, Anna Maria Hong brings Yeats's "Leda and the Swan" into the present moment, and Keith Knight's comic imagines what classic board games would be like if they included a more complete version of U. S. history. Stephanie Strickland offers this issue's map, an ordering of texts generated by methods used in bell ringing. In Reclamation, which Beth has curated since joining the Ecotone team, Viet Thanh Nguyen reminds us of the vigor and glory of Edward P. Jones's "The Girl Who Raised Pigeons." And Adrienne Elise Tarver, whose art is featured on our cover, talks about her series Eavesdropping, from which we've reprinted several more images inside. I'm happy to write that Beth will remain on Ecotone's masthead as a contributing editor. I can't wait to read the new issues of Shenandoah she'll edit, and I'm excited by the prospect...

Rising: Perspectives of Change on the North Carolina Coast

RisingPerspectives of Change on the North Carolina Coast Baxter Miller (bio), Ryan Stancil (bio), and Barbara Garrity-Blake (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Five Little Birds, Hatteras Inlet, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Dare County. A shoal off the southernmost point of Hatteras Island. Just as quickly as a sandbar emerges, it can recede, grow, or disappear. Subject to the forces of wind, salt, and sun, the birds are a reminder of the isolation and dynamism of North Carolina's barrier island system and the generations of adaptive and resilient "bankers" who have lived, worked, worshiped, played, grieved, and celebrated on this ribbon of sand they call home. [End Page 101] Over sixty years ago, my grandfather was offered a sizable piece of waterfront property at the northern entrance of Buxton Village on Hatteras Island for $3,000 by his aunt, the famed village postmistress, Maude White. At the time, the parcel—no more than a half-mile wide from sound to sea—was like other parts of what is now the wild and natural National Park. Today, travelers are welcomed to the village, which is home to the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, on either side by several locally owned beach motels and businesses. Now assessed at over a million dollars, the land, like so many other parts of the island, is where tourists jockey for the biggest rental homes closest to the beach, where developers scalp for empty parcels on the edge of the sea, where hundreds of thousands flock to recreate on the very sand in question, and where fishermen maneuver for the best spot to soak their bait. But in the 1950s, as family lore goes, my grandfather gave the land offer no more than a few seconds' thought, making known his sensible wish to stay high and dry in Buxton Woods. Uttering, "No fool would ever build on the beach," he deemed it a poor investment. Last fall, after Hurricane Harvey, a Category 4 storm, battered the Gulf, and with Hurricane Maria, the strongest one on record, barreling toward the United States, I stood on that section of beach, where a handful of shrimp boats often trawl in the distance. In the last year, those boats have been joined by a lonely dredge and hundreds of yards of rusty pipe tasked with channeling millions of cubic yards of sand to the shore—a re-nourishment effort to widen the beach and, in turn, hopefully save the adjacent road, motels, and homes from being washed into the sea. I wondered what my grandfather would have thought. A proud descendant of Hatteras lifesaving surfmen, lighthouse keepers, and commercial fishermen, I've clung tightly to stories of my heritage, passed down to me by my father. Although I wasn't technically raised on Hatteras, these are the stories that help make sense of who I am—my relationship with the environment and my sense of place. ________ Advances in technology, engineering, and construction, along with commercial and economic realizations, have shifted our adaptive ideology on our barrier islands and across coastal North Carolina. Today, we build higher dunes and more jetties. We harden our shorelines with seawalls. We dredge our inlets and re-nourish [End Page 102] Click for larger view View full resolution Impressions of Re-nourishment, Buxton, Dare County. Before 2018, high tide would regularly bring the sea up to the base of the motels at the northern entrance to Buxton Village. Storm events would usher water underneath the structures and across the road. In the summer of 2017, beach nourishment began on a 2.9-mile section of shoreline that, once complete, will stretch from the old lighthouse site to north of the village. At an estimated cost of $22.1 million, the project will relocate approximately 2.6 million cubic yards of sand to the shore. [End Page 103] our eroded beaches. We build our houses higher off the ground and ever closer to the water. We pave over the land underneath us and employ dikes to drain agricultural fields and protect them from saltwater. We attempt to regulate our fisheries in the face of warming water and changing migration patterns that extend...

The economics of electricity generation from Gulf Stream currents

Hydrokinetic turbines harnessing energy from ocean currents represent a potential low carbon electricity source. This study provides a detailed techno-economic assessment of ocean turbines operating in the Gulf Stream off the North Carolina coast. Using hindcast data from a high-resolution ocean circulation model in conjunction with the US Department of Energy's reference model 4 (RM4) for ocean turbines, we examine resource quality and apply portfolio optimization to identify the best candidate sites for ocean turbine deployment. We find that the lowest average levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) from a single site can reach 400 $/MWh. By optimally selecting geographically dispersed sites and taking advantage of economies of scale, the variations in total energy output can be reduced by an order of magnitude while keeping the LCOE below 300 $/MWh. Power take-off and transmission infrastructure are the largest cost drivers, and variation in resource quality can have a significant influence on the project LCOE. While this study focuses on a limited spatial domain, it provides a framework to assess the techno-economic feasibility of ocean current energy in other western boundary currents.

Different abundance and correlational patterns exist between total and presumed pathogenic Vibrio vulnificus and V. parahaemolyticus in shellfish and waters along the North Carolina coast.

Monitoring of Vibrio vulnificus and V. parahaemolyticus abundance is pertinent due to the ability of these species to cause disease in humans through aquatic vectors. Previously, we performed a multiyear investigation tracking Vibrio spp. levels in five sites along the southeastern North Carolina coast. From February 2013 to October 2015, total V. vulnificus and V. parahaemolyticus abundance was measured in water, oysters and clams. In the current study, pathogenic subpopulations were identified in these isolates using molecular markers, revealing that 5.3% of V. vulnificus isolates possessed the virulence-correlated gene (vcgC), and 1.9% of V. parahaemolyticus isolates harbored one or both of the virulence-associated hemolysin genes (tdh and trh). Total V. parahaemolyticus abundance was not sufficient to predict the abundance of pathogenic subpopulations. Specifically, pathogenic V. parahaemolyticus isolates were more often isolated in cooler waters and were sometimes isolated when no other V. parahaemolyticus strains were detectable. Vibrio vulnificus clinical (C-) genotypes correlated with total V. vulnificus; however, salinity, water depth and total suspended solids influenced C- and E-genotypes differently. Lastly, we documented individual oysters harboring significantly higher V. vulnificus levels for which there was no ecological explanation, a phenomenon that deserves closer attention due to the potentially elevated health hazard associated with these 'hot' shellfish.

Different abundance and correlational patterns exist between total and presumed pathogenic Vibrio vulnificus and V. parahaemolyticus in shellfish and waters along the North Carolina coast

Different abundance and correlational patterns exist between total and presumed pathogenic Vibrio vulnificus and V. parahaemolyticus in shellfish and waters along the North Carolina coast

Analysis of Spatiotemporal Genetic Variability in Eastern OysterCrassostrea virginica(Gmelin, 1791) Mtdna 16S Sequences Among North Carolina Populations

ABSTRACT Spatial and temporal genetic structure of the eastern oyster Crassostrea virginica was examined along the coast of North Carolina (NC); utilizing a fragment of the mitochondrial large (16S) ribosomal subunit gene sequence known to distinguish three regional haplotypes in C. virginica—North Atlantic, South Atlantic, and Gulf of Mexico. Significant geographic genetic structure was identified among all populations studied, with little temporal genetic variation observed over the 9-y sampling period. The results are consistent with those of previous studies analyzing geographic variation in mitochondrial DNA16S sequence data, which revealed a genetic discontinuity between North and South Atlantic oyster assemblages along the NC Coast. The increased geographic resolution and duration of sampling in this study revealed a sustained significant shift in genetic composition between Pamlico Sound populations and southern NC populations of C. virginica. These results suggest that a prolonged or persistent b...

Origin of oxidized mercury in the summertime free troposphere over the southeastern US

Abstract. We collected mercury observations as part of the Nitrogen, Oxidants, Mercury, and Aerosol Distributions, Sources, and Sinks (NOMADSS) aircraft campaign over the southeastern US between 1 June and 15 July 2013. We use the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model to interpret these observations and place new constraints on bromine radical initiated mercury oxidation chemistry in the free troposphere. We find that the model reproduces the observed mean concentration of total atmospheric mercury (THg) (observations: 1.49 ± 0.16 ng m−3, model: 1.51 ± 0.08 ng m−3), as well as the vertical profile of THg. The majority (65 %) of observations of oxidized mercury (Hg(II)) were below the instrument's detection limit (detection limit per flight: 58–228 pg m−3), consistent with model-calculated Hg(II) concentrations of 0–196 pg m−3. However, for observations above the detection limit we find that modeled Hg(II) concentrations are a factor of 3 too low (observations: 212 ± 112 pg m−3, model: 67 ± 44 pg m−3). The highest Hg(II) concentrations, 300–680 pg m−3, were observed in dry (RH < 35 %) and clean air masses during two flights over Texas at 5–7 km altitude and off the North Carolina coast at 1–3 km. The GEOS-Chem model, back trajectories and observed chemical tracers for these air masses indicate subsidence and transport from the upper and middle troposphere of the subtropical anticyclones, where fast oxidation of elemental mercury (Hg(0)) to Hg(II) and lack of Hg(II) removal lead to efficient accumulation of Hg(II). We hypothesize that the most likely explanation for the model bias is a systematic underestimate of the Hg(0) + Br reaction rate. We find that sensitivity simulations with tripled bromine radical concentrations or a faster oxidation rate constant for Hg(0) + Br, result in 1.5–2 times higher modeled Hg(II) concentrations and improved agreement with the observations. The modeled tropospheric lifetime of Hg(0) against oxidation to Hg(II) decreases from 5 months in the base simulation to 2.8–1.2 months in our sensitivity simulations. In order to maintain the modeled global burden of THg, we need to increase the in-cloud reduction of Hg(II), thus leading to faster chemical cycling between Hg(0) and Hg(II). Observations and model results for the NOMADSS campaign suggest that the subtropical anticyclones are significant global sources of Hg(II).

Speciation in an Insular Sand Dune Habitat:Atrytonopsis(Hesperiidae: Hesperiinae)—Mainly from the Southwestern United States and Mexico—Off the North Carolina Coast

ABSTRACT. Genus Atrytonopsis of the American Southwest and Mexico includes the distributionally anomalous species Atrytonopsis hianna of the eastern United States, which has given rise to a species that is, in addition, ecologically anomalous (not just for its genus but for US hesperiids generally): Atrytonopsis quinteri new species lives in sand dunes along a 50-km stretch of two North Carolina barrier islands (Bogue Banks and Bear Island) and on nearby man-made Radio Island. The oviposition site and larval foodplant of this skipper is the coastal grass Schizachyrium littorale, which thrives in the rigorous sand dune habitat. Atrytonopsis quinteri is bivoltine and locally abundant. Courtship can be cursory; larvae go through 6 instars; and adults have a notably distinctive facies but variable genitalia like those of A. hianna (except that some A. quinteri females more frequently express an extreme genitalic variant). Genitalia of this pair of species differ somewhat from those of their congeners, most of...

Influence of Drawdown Period on Overflow Volume and Pollutant Treatment for Detention-Based Stormwater Control Measures in Raleigh, North Carolina

AbstractThe drawdown rate of detention-based stormwater control measures (SCMs) influences both the treatment capability of the device and the volume of runoff that becomes untreated overflow. Currently, hydrologic design goals set by the North Carolina Department of Environmental and Natural Resources and other mid-Atlantic U.S. state agencies (e.g., those in Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania) require stormwater practices to treat, e.g., 90% of stormwater runoff (or similar). This equates to a 10% overflow volume, defined as the percentage of inflow volume that bypasses the SCM and therefore receives minimal treatment. For detention-based SCMs, this design goal is met by sizing the outlet to release runoff generated from the water quality event (in North Carolina, either 25 or 38 mm) over a required minimum period of 2 days. Previous studies have not shown whether rainfall patterns in North Carolina and other east coast United States states justify a 2-day drawdown rate of the water quality event to l...

An Eye for Mullet: Charles Farrell’s Photographs of the Brown’s Island Mullet Camp, 1938

In autumn of 1938 a photographer named Charles A. Farrell visited a seasonal mullet fishing camp at Brown's Island, in Onslow County, North Carolina. What he discovered there captured his imagination: a remote hamlet of fishermen's shanties far from civilization and two legendary clans of fishermen in relentless pursuit of one of Atlantic's great schooling fishes, striped mullet, known on those shores as jumping mullets. Neither of two clans, Gillikins or Lawrences, came from mainland nearest island. Instead, they traveled by boat there in fall of year from Otway, a small farming and fishing community forty miles to east, in a section of neighboring county, Carteret, that locals call Down East. Year after year for generations, men left their homes in Otway and returned to Brown's Island and sea. Farrell's photographs provide a unique portrait of mullet camp life and an invaluable historical record of one of largest commercial fisheries in American South. Indeed, for much of nineteenth century, mullet trade on North Carolina coast comprised largest saltwater fishery in South. (1) Even as late as 1930s, large numbers of fishermen still moved to barrier islands every autumn to work out of camps like one at Brown's Island. From Ocracoke Inlet to Cape Fear, their camps lined shores. Centered at Morehead City, N.C., fish dealers loaded so many barrels of salt mullet on outbound freight cars that local people referred to railroad as the Old Mullet Line. During late 1930s, Farrell documented fishermen's lives in a large swath of North Carolina coast, as well as at Brown's Island. The proprietor, along with his wife, of an art supply store and photography studio in Greensboro, in state's piedmont, Farrell had long had a special interest in lives of commercial fishermen. (2) He had been taking photographs in coastal communities for some time when, in 1938, he approached W. T. Couch at University of North Carolina Press about publishing a book of photographs. Couch had previously hired Farrell to take photographs for several other books. They signed a contract for Farrell's coastal book later that year. (3) Farrell completed photographic portion of book, but apparently made little headway with text. (4) Now preserved at North Carolina State Archives in Raleigh, his photographs are one of fullest documentary accounts of southern fisheries at any time in twentieth century. (5) The following is a selection of Farrell's photographs of mullet fishermen at Brown's Island, with extended commentary. (6) This article is part of a larger work-in-progress that examines coastal North Carolinians and their relationship to sea through close analysis of historical photographs taken between Civil War and end of Age of Sail. Our world today is so different than that of only a century ago that few people can recognize even most basic aspects of daily life and labor as seen in historical photographs like ones of Brown's Island. Fewer yet can appreciate craftsmanship that is sometimes evident in them or grasp what they might tell us in any kind of deeper way about changing nature of our relationship to ocean and seashore. With my own insufficiencies in that regard in mind, I have been attempting to develop a more knowing eye when it comes to looking at historical photographs such as ones that Farrell made at Brown's Island. To that end, I have drawn heavily from historical records, from consultations with more specialized scholars of maritime material culture, and, most importantly, from wisdom of some of oldest residents of fishing communities that remain on North Carolina coast, including one where I grew up. (7) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] An early morning view of mullet camp at low tide from a dock on sound side of Brown's Island. …

Airborne Rain-Rate Measurement with a Wide-Swath Radar Altimeter

Abstract The NOAA Wide-Swath Radar Altimeter (WSRA) uses 80 narrow beams spread over ±30° in the cross-track direction to generate raster lines of sea surface topography at a 10-Hz rate from which sea surface directional wave spectra are produced. A ±14° subset of the backscattered power data associated with the topography measurements is used to produce independent measurements of rain rate and sea surface mean square slope at 10-s intervals. Theoretical calculations of rain attenuation at the WSRA 16.15-GHz operating frequency using measured drop size distributions for both mostly convective and mostly stratiform rainfall demonstrate that the WSRA absorption technique for rain determination is relatively insensitive to both ambient temperature and the characteristics of the drop size distribution, in contrast to reflectivity techniques. The variation of the sea surface radar reflectivity in the vicinity of a hurricane is reviewed. Fluctuations in the sea surface scattering characteristics caused by changes in wind speed or the rain impinging on the surface cannot contaminate the rain measurement because they are calibrated out using the WSRA measurement of mean square slope. WSRA rain measurements from a NOAA WP-3D hurricane research aircraft off the North Carolina coast in Hurricane Irene on 26 August 2011 are compared with those from the stepped frequency microwave radiometer (SFMR) on the aircraft and the Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) National Mosaic and Multi-Sensor Quantitative Precipitation Estimation (QPE) system.

Size‐Selective Feeding in Captive and Free‐Ranging Atlantic Bluefin Tuna

AbstractWe examined size‐selective feeding in captive and free‐ranging Atlantic Bluefin Tuna Thunnus thynnus. For the captive study, Bluefin Tuna were maintained in a cylindrical net‐pen enclosure (30.5 m in diameter; 15.2 m deep) located 32.2 km offshore of Virginia. Tests of prey size selectivity by captive Bluefin Tuna were observed using underwater video. In free‐ranging Bluefin Tuna, size selection was examined by comparing the sizes of Atlantic Menhaden Brevoortia tyrannus found in stomach contents with the sizes of those collected during the fall purse‐seine fishery for Atlantic Menhaden off the North Carolina coast. Captive Bluefin Tuna selected larger prey when prey length : predator length ratios (PPRs) were less than 10%; however, size selectivity was not observed when the PPRs exceeded 10%. For free‐ranging Bluefin Tuna, PPRs were mostly greater than 10% (12.98 ± 0.06% [mean ± SE]), and there were no significant differences in length between Atlantic Menhaden from stomach contents and those from purse‐seine collections. The minimum and median sizes of Atlantic Menhaden prey increased with increasing predator size; however, the maximum size of Atlantic Menhaden prey did not change, indicating that the smallest Bluefin Tuna sampled could consume the largest Atlantic Menhaden. We conclude that the relatively small size of forage fishes commonly observed in Bluefin Tuna stomachs was likely due to the high abundance of these fishes in the environment rather than to active selection for small prey.Received August 29, 2013; accepted January 14, 2014

An Estimation of Shark-Attack Risk for the North and South Carolina Coastline

ABSTRACT Amin, R.; Ritter, E., and Wetzel, A., 2015. An estimation of shark-attack risk for the North and South Carolina coastline. A spatiotemporal cluster analysis of shark-attack rates is applied to identify coastal areas with shark-attack rates that are very high or very low along the North and South Carolina coast. Using a cluster analysis makes it possible to not just pinpoint these areas with more accuracy but also identify where incidents are unlikely to happen. In the past, shark attacks have been studied from a viewpoint of encounter number per region and so limited to the areas in which the attacks occurred. A first look is also taken of the potential influences of some anthropogenic, environmental, and meteorological factors for North and South Carolina in comparison with the better-known attack-prone areas along Florida's coast, to quantify potential causes leading to elevated shark-attack rates, or the lack of them.

Long‐term, non‐local coastline responses to local shoreline stabilization

The future of large‐scale coastline evolution will be strongly coupled to human manipulations designed to prevent erosion. We explore the consequences of this coupling using a numerical model for large‐scale coastline evolution to compare the long‐term, non‐local effects of two generalized classes of shoreline stabilization: 1) beach nourishment (the addition of dredged sand to an eroding beach), and 2) hard‐structures (e.g., seawalls, groynes, etc.) which fix the position of the shoreline without adding sand. In centurial model experiments where localized stabilization is maintained in the context of changing climate forcing, both forms of stabilization are found to significantly alter patterns of erosion and accretion at distances up to tens of kilometers. On a cuspate‐cape coastline similar to the North and South Carolina coast, USA, with stabilization applied to the eroding updrift flank of a single cape, perturbations to coastline evolution are qualitatively similar within ∼20 km for each stabilization scenario, though they differ in magnitude both updrift and downdrift of the stabilized shoreline. The “human” signal in coastline change can extend as far as a neighboring cape (approximately 100 km away), but these long‐range effects differ for each scenario. Nourishment resulted in seaward growth of the stabilized cape, increasing the extent that it blocked sediment flux in downdrift regions of the coast through wave shadowing. When stabilized with a hard structure the cape's initial position remain fixed, decreasing wave shadowing.

Killer Whales (Orcinus orca) Off the North Carolina Coast 1709–2011

Abstract Killer whales, Orcinus orca, were first reported off North Carolina by naturalist John Lawson in 1709, and during the 20th century were documented from North Carolina eight times in the scientific and popular literature. The most recent confirmed sighting of killer whales off North Carolina was in the spring of 2011. There have been no reports of killer whale deaths from North Carolina. There has been only one killer whale stranded along the North Carolina coast, with the animal being alive when it was returned to the sea. All sightings have been in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, none on the west side of the Outer Banks in the waters of Pamlico or Currituck sounds. Only three confirmed reports are from nearshore waters, while the rest were spotted more than 20 km offshore. Orcas are most frequently reported from the waters off the Outer Banks from Cape Lookout north to the Virginia border. A 200 yr gap exists in the historical record of killer whales from North Carolina.

The Battle for North Carolina's Coast: Evolutionary History, Present Crisis, and Vision for the Future

The Battle for North Carolina's Coast: Evolutionary History, Present Crisis, and Vision for the Future