Memorial Day marks the rush of tourists to the North Carolina coast. Statistics and profiles of the average North Carolina coastal tourist are provided.
Native Americans introduced many of the crops that are staples in the American diet, and supplied many words that are commonly used in American society today.
Due to a new North Carolina Fisheries regulation, fishery agents and fishermen are working to reduce bycatch -- the amount of non-targeted catch -- fishermen net along with their intended catch. Various bycatch reduction devices (BRDs) are being tested.
The Black River was a commercial highway from the colonial period until the late 19th-century. Truck and rail transportation ended this activity, which may have saved the river from environmental degradation.
North Carolina boasts the third largest estuarine system in the United States. The state has 2.3 million acres of estuaries, from which come ninety percent of commercial and recreational species of fish and shellfish.
N.C. Sea Grant fish pathologists have discovered a microscopic animal that paralyzes fish with toxins and sucks away their flesh. The creature, dinoflagellate, is known to scientists, but its heretofore unknown predatory behavior shocked the researchers
The North Carolina estuarine system, third largest in the U.S., produces 90% of the state's commercial and recreational species of fish and shellfish. Hart briefly describes the variety of life that inhabits the sounds, marshes, and open waters.
Nutrients from industry and farms are deluging the coastal ecosystem, producing problems like algal blooms and fish kills. N.C. Sea Grant researchers are using tools like hydrocorals and satellites to chart a course of treatment.
Because there are too many fishermen for too few fish, state legislators are studying ways to help the industry. One is a limited entry system that would limit fishermen or vessels, amount of gear used, and size of the catch.
Migrating and wintering birds can find a good food supply from such berry-producing trees and shrubs as red cedar, red bay, wax myrtle, and Carolina laurelberry.
Initiated by Lundie Spence in 1987, N.C. Big Sweep is a linkage of individuals and public and private groups united to clear the state's waterways of aquatic debris. With 12,500 volunteers, it is the country's largest statewide waterway cleanup program.