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Cover photo: Ben Young Landis. Design: Linda Noble
Permit me to raise a glass to NOAA’s North Carolina Sea Grant and my editor there, Katie Mosher, as well as Kathleen Angione and Linda Noble.
The training and experience I gained with Sea Grant allowed me to move forward in my career and helped me develop as a writer, interviewer and graphic artist. Not to mention exposing me to fascinating stories of people dedicated to coastal sciences and industries.
Here is a look back at some of those stories (with lede):
Community Supported Ingenuity
Coastwatch Winter 2010 issue
Up and down the East Coast, something fishy is happening in local communities. People gathering at Harvard University to pick up freshly caught cod and pollock. A truck pulling up to an inland Maine church to deliver shrimp from nearby Port Clyde.
Dreams of Black Pearls
Coastwatch Spring 2010 issue
John Thomas Osborne has some unfinished business. It’s a project he’s been working on since he was four.
Rebuilding the Economy, One Oyster at a Time
Coastwatch Summer 2010 issue
Pamlico Sound’s economy and ecosystems are getting a much-needed boost this year, courtesy of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. More than 130 jobs are being created for contractors, barge workers, commercial fishermen, truck drivers and many other coastal residents — all from a $5 million Recovery Act grant to restore 49 acres of oyster reefs in local waters.
Listening to the Sea
Coastwatch Summer 2010 issue
To many of us, “spiny dogfish” are meaningless words. Some of you might know it’s a small species of shark, while others know that the species is found worldwide and eaten by Europeans as “rock salmon” or used in fish and chips.
On Currituck Pond
Coastwatch Holiday 2010 issue
Mainland Currituck County is experiencing a gentle reawakening. The sleepy, humid coastal air that bathes this serene lowland of hardworking farmers and fishermen and buoys many an easygoing Sunday afternoon is now joined by a steady breeze of innovation and inspiration.
Cheers.
A darner is born from its nymphal skin on a breezy April day. In the background, the lonely fountain and the barren stormwater pond of the Currituck County Cooperative Extension Center awaits its own rebirth.
Story and Photos by Benjamin Young Landis
Edited by Katie Mosher
Mainland Currituck County is experiencing a gentle reawakening. The sleepy, humid coastal air that bathes this serene lowland of hardworking farmers and fishermen and buoys many an easygoing Sunday afternoon is now joined by a steady breeze of innovation and inspiration.
A site for this reawakening is the Currituck County Cooperative Extension center. Staff members there are working with residents, county partners and local businesses to better utilize and preserve the land and waters they depend on, while balancing the demands of economic growth and historic livelihoods.
A hub of education and collaboration, the center is within a mostly undeveloped 95-acre tract. Central Elementary School sits next door, and the county plans for the campus include a senior center, a YMCA and athletic fields — the foundation for a vibrant community center for all of Currituck County.
Previously, a barren stormwater collection pond with unflattering algae welcomed visitors driving into the campus. But in recent months, a rebirth has been taking place. With the help of North Carolina Sea Grant specialists, many partners are transforming this pond by adding a demonstration wetland to educate visitors on the intricate connections between coastal land use and inshore water health.
Like the campus and the county, this pond is finding new life.
MUDDY WATERS
When Gloria Putnam first drove up to the then-new Currituck Cooperative Extension center for a meeting in July 2008, she saw a huge, unshaded, denuded pond smack dab next to the main driveway. The lonely spout of an aeration fountain looked stark against the watery field. It gave her pause.
A childhood quest comes true with the help of a N.C. Fishery Resource Grant, bringing black pearls to the waters of North Carolina.
Story and Photos by Benjamin Young Landis
JOHN THOMAS OSBORNE has some unfinished business. It’s a project he’s been working on since he was four.
Osborne, a shellfish aquaculture researcher, is opening new doors for North Carolina’s coastal economy. He and business partner Nelson Bullock are trying to grow jewel-quality, saltwater black pearls in state waters.
But these pearls aren’t from oysters. They are from pen shells, an enormous clam-like mollusk found in North Carolina.
From boyhood curiosity to lustrous reality, it’s a winding journey that’s taken Osborne across the world to Queensland, Australia and back to the Wilmington coast. A journey inspired by an innocent bout of mischief over two decades ago.
“Do Clams Produce Pearls?”
You could probably pick Tom Osborne out of any crowd. A frienzied mane of sandy-brown dreadlocks streaming from his head. Inquisitive eyes peering from a scraggly landscape of facial hair. Part Gorton’s fisherman, part Bob Marley.
But in 1984 up in Syracuse, N.Y., Osborne was just another little kid excited to get a card from grandma. He knew it probably had comics or trivia clippings from the papers, which his grandmother in Wilmington, N.C. would send to him every so often.
But this particular clipping planted a seed of inspiration in Osborne that would last for a lifetime.
“[There] was this little tiny thing that said ‘Do clams produce pearls?’” Osborne vividly recalls. “And the answer was ‘No, pearls come from oysters.’”
Osborne nagged his mother with more questions. She briefly explained to him that pearls come from seashells — like the ones they collected when the family lived in Florida and South Carolina — and that shellfish are living things that need water to be alive.
“I had all these shells in my playroom and I was like, alright!” Osborne says. He piled his shells in an old ice cream bucket and got a little Dixie cup to fill it up with water, one cup at a time from the bathroom sink.
Durham residents brave cold winter rain to get their Walking Fish delivery. Image credit: Ben Young Landis
Up and down the East Coast, something fishy is happening in local communities. People gathering at Harvard University to pick up freshly caught cod and pollock. A truck pulling up to an inland Maine church to deliver shrimp from nearby Port Clyde.
It’s all part of a movement called “community supported fisheries,” or CSF for short. Riding on the wave of the local food movement, CSFs are being billed as a solution to bring more income to struggling fishing communities while educating their urban customers on the quality and diversity of affordable, local seafood. With media coverage from the Wall Street Journal to the Washington Post, CSF is now a new buzzword in town.
Community supported fisheries have a surprisingly young history, one that shows how whole communities — commercial anglers, neighborhood organizers, academics, students — have found themselves working on common ground.
Reading the Journal and the Post, you might think the story begins far away in the cold waters of Massachusetts and Maine. But surprisingly, it all started with a North Carolina Fishery Resource Grant project…
