Beach trash collected during one walk. Photo by David Mickey
By David Mickey
Ocracoke Island beaches are recognized as among the best in the world.
Ranked fourth in March of this year by an AARP worldwide survey (Ocracoke Observer May 2015 click here), the Lifeguard Beach was first in Dr. Stephen Leatherman’s 2007 ranking of the nation’s best beaches.
Known as “Dr. Beach,” Leatherman is director of The Laboratory for Coastal Research at Florida International University.
His annual ranking of beaches uses “50 Criteria” (click here) to provide a useful scorecard for anyone deciding on a beach destination.
One of Leatherman’s criteria is “Trash and litter (paper, plastics, nets, ropes, planks)” found on the beach during the vacation season. Other obvious and potential detractors include floating waste, oil and tar balls, glass and rubble.
“Cigarette butts are the number one form of litter on beaches,” he said in a story about this year’s winners in the Tallahassee Democrat. “Plastics–in terms of volume, but in terms of numbers it’s cigarette butts. So I’m giving extra credit for no smoking.”
Until now, previous winners have been retired from the competition.
“I’m going to start all over next year,” Leatherman said. “This is the end of a 25-year, quarter-century run and every beach is eligible again next year.”
Trash in the ocean doesn’t stay in the ocean.
Pat Garber’s March 2015 Observer article (click here) noted the estimated 269,000 tons of plastic waste in the world’s oceans. Currents circulate the plastics and other wastes and trap it in one of the five ocean “gyres,” or huge concentrations of floating debris.
Not all of the trash stays offshore.
Some of it washes up on Ocracoke Island and there it stays until someone picks it up or the next tide washes it back out to sea.
A Turkish ice cream lid, “Rhum Bakara” bottle from Haiti, barnacle-covered lids, bottles, and buckets, fishing gear, toothbrushes, plastic dinnerware, toilet seats and anything discarded at sea or washed downstream can find its way onto the beach.
While Hyde County provides recycling at the Ocracoke drop-off site, options are limited in the seashore.
The Visitors’ Center and the campground have a recycling station but parking areas and beach access ramps do not. Recyclable cans and bottles not recycled in the village end up in the park’s trashcans.
Cyndy Holda, a Public Affairs Specialist for the Park Service, emphasized their “pack in/pack out” policy that encourages visitors to remove everything brought to the beach. Ideally visitors would “leave no trace.”
Park Service personnel will remove marine debris and large objects, such as the boat that washed up on the beach in May (Ocracoke Observer, June 2015, click here), that are hazardous to people or wildlife. However, the Park Service does not have the resources to remove all litter from the beach.
“Rangers do not routinely pick up trash on the beach because they’d be doing that all day long,” noted Ed Fuller, the district supervisor on Ocracoke.
The Park Service did celebrate World Oceans Month by hosting a beach clean-up June 24 at the Lifeguard Beach and all along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
With a reputation as a top beach, Ocracoke benefits directly when visitors to the island can enjoy a trash-free shore.
To read more about Julie Howard and the Tale of Blackbeard and listen to the some of the musical score, click here.
After one dress rehearsal last week, the musical, A Tale of Blackbeard, will debut its summer run tonight 8 p.m. at the Ocracoke School Gym Auditorium, (Monday, July 6) on School Rd. These weekly performances will run until August 17.
The change of venue from last summer, where it was performed at the Ocracoke Community Center, is due to the limited seating at the former location and the gym will accommodate a larger audience. All performances last season quickly sold out.
The musical, loosely based on the days prior to Blackbeard’s demise on the island in 1718, was written in the 1970s by Julie Howard. After a more than 20 year hiatus, this popular piece about island life was revived last year.
Howard has revised the show a bit, in particular, adding another song for the sailors.
At least two-thirds of the local actors are returning to the show this year though not all in the same roles, Howard said during a lull in a recent rehearsal.
“There are more sailors, a different Blackbeard and a different energy,” Howard, who is the musical director, said. Rob Touhey will play Blackbeard this season replacing Matt Tolson.
This summer’s show is in partnership with the Ocracoke PTA, which will provide food concessions and receive a portion of the proceeds with remaining funds designated for Ocracoke Alive community programming.
Courtney Conner is the director with Desiree Ricker as choreographer/co-director.
To see more profiles in the Birds of Ocracoke series, click here
Toxostoma rufum
Text and Photos by Peter Vankevich
One of the three mimics on Ocracoke. Northern Mockingbird and Gray Catbird are the other two. This is a large songbird bird with a long slightly curved bill, bright yellow eyes, wing bars, rufous back, long tail and a white breast with dark bold streaks and spots. It is sometimes confused with the shorter Wood Thrush. During breeding season, they eat primarily insects and throughout much of the year feast on berries and fruit.
Their song is a loud, long, continuous series of extremely variable song units. Their calls consist of one to a few repeated notes, the most common of which sounds like a smacking kiss. They also have calls that have been described as harsh, slurred, whistles, soft chirrups, and hissing sounds.
Distribution includes suitable habitat throughout eastern and central United States, southern and central Canada.
Listen:
(audio provided courtesy of OhioLINK Digital Resource Commons)
When to see: Possible year-round, perhaps more common in spring and fall as northern birds migrate and there are more fledglings in post-breeding season.
Where: Campground area, nature trail, Springer’s Point, possible wherever there are dense thickets and shrubs. They can also be seen flying across route 12 between the village and the Hatteras ferry dock.
Notes
Brown Thrasher is the state bird of Georgia since 1935, officially recognized in 1970.
Clearing of forests creating brushy habitats may have increased their numbers in some areas of their breeding range.
It is noted for having about one thousand song units in its repertory. Unlike the precise Northern Mockingbird, Brown Thrashers can only crudely mimics other birds.
Thrashers nest in thick shrubs or in the lower parts of leafy trees. Because of the lower nesting area, snakes are considered to be one of the greatest threats to newly hatched thrashers. Whether there is a cause and effect to this threat, thrashers fledge in one of the shortest times for passerine birds with an average of only nine days.
One of the greatest nature books of all time is the 1841 publication of Birds of America by John James Audubon. This large book consists of 435 hand-colored, life-size prints depicting nearly 500 bird species of North America. Whereas previous artistic depictions of birds were rather stiff and formal, Audubon brought life to them. With the Brown Thrasher (which he also called the Brown Thrush and the Ferruginous Mockingbird), Audubon used high drama in his painting of this bird, depicting a snake attacking a nest and holding the mother in its grasp. Her mate and another thrasher are counter-attacking. Now that is solidarity!
Many people are familiar with Audubon’s artwork, but not his writings where he can be equally dramatic.
Here is one of his more of his colorful observations of the Brown Thrasher’s singing ability:
“Whenever a fair morning occurs, it mounts the topmost twig of a detached tree, and pours forth its loud, richly varied, and highly melodious song. It scarcely possesses the faculty of imitation, but is a steady performer; and, although it sings for hours at a time, seldom, if ever, commits errors while repeating the beautiful lessons set to it by Nature, all of which it studies for months during spring and summer.
Ah! reader, that I could repeat to you its several cadences, all so full of sweetness and melody, that one might imagine each last trill, as it dies on the ear, the careful lullaby of some blessed mother chanting her babe to repose;–that I could imitate its loudest notes, surpassed only by those of that unrivalled vocalist, the Mocking-bird! But, alas! It is impossible for me to convey to you the charms of the full song of the Brown Thrush; you must go to its own woods and there listen to it.”
Lifeguards Patrick O’Keefe and Jeremy Powell at Ocracoke’s Lifeguard Beach. Photo by P. Vankevich
By Peter Vankevich
Andrew Costello, 67, of Wareham, Mass., who was injured Wednesday in a shark attack here, was upgraded today (Friday) to good condition, according Dr. Eric Toschlong, chief of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery at Vidant Medical Center, Greenville.
“Mr. Costello received a major, but non-lethal shark bite to his thigh on July 1,” Toschlong said in a press statement. “While his injuries will require multiple additional operations, as of July 2, he has been upgraded to good condition. As a Level I trauma center, Vidant Medical Center has the expertise and facility to treat severe injuries such as Mr. Costello’s, and we are optimistic that he will make a full recovery.”
Costello, a former editor of the Boston Herald, released the following statement” “I’m recovering after a frightening and painful shark attack that occurred on July 1. I feel very fortunate to have survived thanks to the incredible assistance I received from medical personnel on the beach, both those on duty and vacation. I am receiving the best care at Vidant Medical Center, where I was airlifted. “I want to thank everyone–from the Ocracoke National Park Service lifeguards to the EMTs and hospital medical staff for their professionalism and excellent care. At this time, I’m focused on my recovery and will not be doing media interviews. Thank you for your concern and respecting my privacy during this time.”
On the island, several of the lodging establishments received calls asking if it was safe to go into the water, but there were few cancellations. “People should realize that there are plenty of great activities to do on Ocracoke if one is uncomfortable with going into the water,” said Jack Whitehead, general manager of Ocracoke Island Realty.
Ella Belch at the Pony Island Motel also reiterated to callers that there is a lot to do on Ocracoke this time of the year.
Bill Gilbert, owner of the Anchorage Inn and Marina, said after the shark incident, they had received many calls from visitors asking if they could use the inn’s outdoor swimming pool.
“Unfortunately, for insurance purposes, the pool is restricted to guests-only of the Anchorage Inn,” he said.
Bob Chestnut, owner of Ride the Wind Surf Shop which hosts a surf camp, got several inquiries about whether it was safe. “It’s shark environment,” he said about the ocean.
“We see sharks from time to time. Most of the time it’s not an aggressive kind of event. Sometimes, we just get out of the water for a while or cancel for the day. We just tell our clients they are out there and sometimes someone will be bit.
Choppy waters may contribute to people not going into the water two days after a shark attack. Photo by P. Vankevich
“We’ve had some anxious people call and want to change activates from a surf session to some other activity where they are not directly in the water. “The conditions in the surf this morning were a little rough so we just canceled the surf lesson, rather than have some anxious kids out there. They should want to have fun.”
Chestnut noted that rip currents are a greater danger than sharks. “I’m more concerned with people’s knowledge of rip currents because we will have some fatalities,” he said.
“The beach should be a fun place to be.” Ocracoke beaches remain open, though fewer people ventured very deeply into the water in the last few days.
Harleigh Owsley, 13 of Rittman, Ohio went to the beach several hours after the attack. “It shocked me,” she said about the recent shark attack. “I was kind of nervous about going in and only went in about knee-deep and close to shore.” Her friend, Vivien Starcher, 14, of Creston, Ohio, said, “I was a little skeptic about going into the water, and only went knee-deep. We’re still a little shocked by it.”
Donald Phillips and Carol Thompson. “We’ll cautiously have fun in the water.” Photo by P. Vankevich
Carol Thompson and Donald Phillips from Harrisonburg, PA who have been visiting Ocracoke for years acknowledged the shark attack had an impact on them, but knew that sharks are out there. They intend to go into the water, but not very deep. “We’re going to cautiously have fun,” Carol said.
Patrick O’Keefe, one of the lifeguards on Ocracoke noted that fewer people were venturing into the choppy water since the shark attack.
“People are not going out as deep,” he said and also added that rip currents in his opinion are the biggest threat on the Outer Banks.
Woody Billlings, the co-director and chief judge of the Ocracoke Invitational Fishing Tournament, couldn’t recall so many shark attacks in the region, and noted that this is one of most bizarre things he can remember.
“There are a lot of sharks out there,” he said. “I remember driving down the beach in April and I thought there were some strange-looking dolphins and realized they were three sharks close in. This (recent) attack happened in the middle of the day when it is supposed to be safe. I think it was just a chance encounter.”
There have been several theories as to why there have been so many attacks this season. Dr. Stephen P. Leatherman, professor and director of the Laboratory for Coastal Research at Florida International University and known as “Dr. Beach,” weighed in on the phenomena.
“This is really unprecedented in terms of the number of attacks in NC.,” he said in an email. “It could be that an eddy from the Gulf Stream has moved close to shore as these eddies often contain a lot of bait fish, which would attract sharks from offshore. Of course, the hot weather and warm water means that there are more people in the water.”
He added, “the shark attacks are all about food–fish and turtles; we are not food because we do not taste that good–not enough fat in our body. There must be abundant food close to shore where the people are bathing because the bites are the result of mistaken identity or sometimes feeding frenzy.”
Leatherman has been naming the top ten beaches in America since 1991 and rated the lifeguard section of Ocracoke number 1 in 2006.
NPS Superintendent of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore David Hallac was on vacation camping with his wife Robin and four children at the NPS campground when the incident occurred. Hallac, who has a master’s degree in wildlife and fisheries biology from the University of Vermont, was skeptical of the many theories that have been postulated as to why so many attacks are occurring.
“Let’s do some real research first before we jump to conclusions,” he said.
Haley Willis, a student at Clemson University who is working this summer at the Sweet Tooth and Fig Tree Deli, said several people ventured into the store after the attack and a few who saw Costello on the beach were visibly shaken up. “They were concerned about going back into the water,” she said.
Lifeguard Beach on Ocracoke . Photo by P. Vankevich
Many summer visitors experience frustration with the long lines at the Hatteras ferry terminal to visit Ocracoke. (Hint: to avoid long lines, arrive early or late in the day.)
If you haven’t been reading the Ocracoke Observer and other local news services over the last year, you may not be aware that the NC Ferry Division is doing a feasibility study to see if visitors would be willing to leave their vehicles on Hatteras island and board a passenger ferry that would go directly into Ocracoke village.
A passenger ferry that could accommodate up to 150 people (including bicyclists) was tested in early May and the travel time took just over an hour from Hatteras to the Silver Lake dock.
To make this a go, there would have to be infrastructure adjuncts such as open tram-style buses making stops in the village, at the lighthouse and very possibly to the island’s famous Lifeguard Beach.
Golf carts, bicycles , boats and SUVs for beach driving are already available for daily rentals.
If many visitors opt to take a passenger ferry, it could shorten considerably the wait for those that want or need to take a car ferry.
We are looking forward to reading this report, scheduled to be released in August, and we will keep you informed.
Also related to ferries–well hidden in the recently passed General Assembly Senate budget (page 423 of a 500+ page document)–is a proposal that anyone who wants a pass to be in the priority lane for the Hatteras ferry would have to purchase one for $150.
We know that folks waiting in line for hours have seen islanders and vendors drive right up to the dock and board.
This privilege may seem unfair to those having to wait. So here is our view.
The priority lane at the ferries was established to expedite islanders’ and vendors’ access to and from their homes and businesses. Only island residents and vendors may get into this lane. Ocracoke residents do not have access to anywhere near the level of services that urban America has. They have to go off island for many things–medical specialists, veterinarians, dental care, youth sports and shopping for items not available on the island.
The Ocracoke economy/work cycle is very different from most places. Those living on Ocracoke must put in long hours during the short tourist season, many working two and three jobs. These workers are desperately needed on the island to support the tourist economy.
Off-island trips have to be in the shortest time possible.
Venders delivering goods to the island’s stores and restaurants must also be able to make deliveries as quickly as possible.
We strongly oppose any fee for this important need for Ocracoke.
Potentially worse, the legislation in the Senate budget includes a call for potential business interest to privatize the ferry system.
Our very real fear with a privatized ferry system–in order for a company to make a profit—is that such a scenario would drastically cut back on the number of ferry trips per day, both on and off-season.
We will have more to say on this later.
For those who say running a ferry system is costly and a government handout, consider the yearly state costs for bridge and road maintenance, snow, ice and rock-slide removal throughout the state.
According to DOT figures, spending on snow and ice removal is $64 million so far this year. Last year it was $77 million. By contrast, the ferry system has a budget of $38.2 million, according to the NCDOT website. Ocracoke residents pay taxes like everyone else, and this money helps pay transportation costs for the entire state.
This budget bill was enthusiastically supported by our one of our representatives, Senator Bill Cook (R-District 1).
He issued a press release extolling the many benefits of this legislation, but neglected to mention that Ocracokers might have to pay $150 yearly for a priority pass and that ferry system might be privatized.
We asked him for an explanation and he responded. We are printing only the parts of his lengthy response:
Unfortunately, the priority pass language was included in the proposed budget from the Senate. Again, I am opposed to the priority pass provision. I intend to continue to work to find alternative solutions. However, I supported the budget because (while it) is not perfect, overall it does a great deal of good for the constituents of Senate District 1.
Senator Cook’s press release can be found on the Ocracoke Observer website by clicking here.
The General Assembly House budget bill does not have these two ferry provisions. So, we hope they will be removed as the House and Senate work out an agreement.
Ocracoke’s House representative, Paul Tine (U-District 6), said he will oppose these two measures.
Each spring and summer, female sea turtles–loggerhead, green, and occasional leatherback–make a brief trip to the shores of Cape Hatteras National Seashore to nest. Approximately two months later, under the cover of darkness, up to 150 hatchlings emerge from each sandy nest in a mad dash across the beach to reach the safety of the Atlantic Ocean.
Cape Hatteras National Seashore is offering park visitors an opportunity to observe excavations of recently hatched sea turtle nests during the months of July, August, and September. An “excavation” is the process completed by biologists to document what remains in the nest after a natural hatch has occurred.
During an excavation, the biologists will dig up the nest, count eggshells, and collect un-hatched eggs for research. Live hatchlings are sometimes found during these excavations. While the biologists perform their examination of the nest, a park ranger will present a program on sea turtles and share what the biologists have found.
Nest excavations are an important way for the National Park Service to collect valuable data on sea turtle hatch and emergence success rates. This data is added to the turtle nesting databases for the seashore and the State of North Carolina.
Persons interested in finding out when and where an excavation will take place can call the excavation program hotline at (252) 475-9629. The first excavation of the season will take place in late July. Due to the unpredictability of sea turtle hatchings, notice of these excavations programs will usually occur only one day in advance, so check the hotline often.
For general information on the Outer Banks Group national park sites, visit www.nps.gov/caha, www.nps.gov/wrbr,www.nps.gov/fora; Twitter @CapeHatterasNPS, @WrightBrosNPS, @FortRaleighNPS; or call 252-473-2111.
Since Friday, June 26, 2015, the National Park Service (NPS), in conjunction with neighboring Emergency Management responders have responded to and investigated three incidents involving sharks and swimmers on the beaches of Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
On Friday, June 26 a 47 year old man sustained injuries from a shark while swimming in Avon, NC; on Saturday, June 27 a 17 year old male swimming near Waves, NC was bitten by a shark; on Wednesday, July 1st, a 68 year old man was bitten by a shark in front of the lifeguard beach on Ocracoke Island.
“While the National Park Service does not know why there has been an increase of these incidents, we do want to make sure our visitors are aware of them and have a safe visit to the National Seashore. We can never guarantee anyone’s safety when they enter the water. The only way to be sure you do not encounter sharks or other marine wildlife that may be harmful to humans, is to stay out of the water,” stated Superintendent David Hallac. The National Park Service will be increasing the number of visitor contacts on the beaches and posting information at key locations for visitors.
There are many inherent dangers while swimming in ocean or sound waters. Swimmers are advised to be aware of conditions and their surroundings. Sharks are a normal part of the natural environment. Presence of sharks requires that we take precautions while enjoying the ocean.
Don’t swim too far from shore
Stay in groups
Avoid swimming near fishermen or in the vicinity of other aquatic activity like birds diving for fish or bait fish in the water
Avoid swimming near fishing piers
Avoid being in the water at twilight or during the night time hours
Don’t go into the water if bleeding from a wound
Leave jewelry and shining objects at home
While shark encounters are rare, people should be vigilant of marine wildlife. The above recommendations will further reduce the chances of injury.
For the latest updates, visit the NPS website at nps.gov/caha, follow Twitter and Instagram feeds @CapeHatterasNPS, and on Facebook by clicking here.
