October 2013

by Pat Garber

Ocracoke Island is sur­rounded by historic, shallow-water oyster beds, which have provided the island with protection from wave action in storms and deli­cious seafood for islanders and visitors. They filter and clean the water as they feed, and provide important habitat for many marine species. Com­mon oysters, a species of ma­rine mollusk known to scien­tists as Crassostrea virginica, are free-floating in their larval stage, but once they attach to a bottom they develop into spat and stay put. They often attach to one another forming huge congregates known as oyster reefs. In recent years, however, the reefs have suffered a dra­matic decline, reducing them to a fraction of their former territory. This decline has been occurring across the whole of eastern North Carolina, but Ocracoke’s losses in the last few years have been especially alarming. “The oysters thrive for a short while” says James Barrie Gaskill, a fisherman and a board member with the North Carolina Coastal Fed­eration, “but they are dead before their fourth year.” As a result, there has been a collab­orative effort by state officials, environmental groups, and lo­cal fishermen to understand and reverse the losses, with several exciting projects in the works.

Last January North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries biologist Clay Caroon met with fishermen from the Ocracoke Working Watermen’s Associa­tion to discuss ways to work to­gether in creating oyster reefs located in productive and work­able areas near Ocracoke. NCD­MF has ten long-term oyster sanctuaries in Pamlico Sound, where no harvesting is allowed. They created the reefs by using barges to lay down cultch (oys­ter shells or marl), which attract oyster larvae to attach and then develop as oysters. According to Caroon, the sanctuaries that are in high salinity areas like Ocracoke do well for the first three or four years. Then they begin to fail, and the oysters die. It is believed that predation by crabs, boring sponges, oys­ter drills, and fish, particularly sheepshead, which thrive in highly saline waters, are mainly responsible. This is believed to be the cause of the recent failure of their sanctuary near the Le- High shipwreck. The Division also seeds oysters for public use, including near Ocracoke. These cultch sites can be harvested in 18 to 24 months. “This program,” said Caroon, “is funded spe­cifically for public harvest. The ecosystem enhancement is an added benefit.” To make it suc­cessful, “we rely on fishermen and the public.”

The approach discussed in January was a plan to seed the cultch in many small ar­eas of sand, and to scatter the cultch material very thinly, in hopes of reducing infestation by boring sponges and oyster drills. With multiple sites the watermen can then have more places to work. The sites they were looking for were sandy bottoms with grass growing around them. Using a shallow-draft barge the sites could be planted, harvested, and re-planted. During the spring and summer the sites were identified and planted with oyster shells, with hopes that by next summer there will be young oysters growing there.

Another project, conduct­ed by the NC Land Trust and North Carolina Coastal Fed­eration (NCCR), involved set­ting out approximately 5,000 bags of oyster shells near the shoreline at Springer’s Point. The goal was to reduce ero­sion. It was completed in July. Also funded by a NCCF grant, a third project was to set bags of shells in the waters near Beacon Island, which has been eroding at an alarming rate. The island, owned by the Audubon Society, is a vital nesting site for pelicans and other birds, as well as an im­portant historic site.

Ocracoke waterman Gene Ballance, who has been map­ping old oyster beds in Pam­lico Sound for ten years has, with the help of James Barrie Gaskill, completed this effort, and is now setting out loose oyster shells in the waters off­shore of Beacon Island, in what they call patch reefs. There are nine reefs, 20’X100’ in size and composed of 7,200 bush­els of shell, which are trucked in and then transported to the sites by barge. The oyster reefs should reduce wave action which causes erosion and will be open for harvest to water­men in about three years.

Ocracoke watermen and their affiliates are hopeful that their efforts will succeed, and that Ocracoke’s historic shallow-water oyster beds will once again provide winter-time jobs for local fishermen, as well as erosion control, cleaner water, and more a pro­ductive

September 2013

By Connie Leinbach

Ocracoke Islander Valerie Mason was one of three North Carolinians who won $10,000 in the Aug. 8 Power­ball drawing. It was her biggest win in the years that she has been playing the game. She was happy for the win, she said, noting that didn’t watch the drawing that night but learned of her winning ticket while in the Hatteras ferry line the next day.

“I was taking my mom to an appointment and said I should check my ticket numbers,” she relates. “ ‘Oh my God, Mom,’ I said,” she continued about learning she had four of the winning numbers plus the Powerball. “ ‘I don’t know what it is.’ ”

But then she quickly looked it up on line and saw that she had won $10,000. While she was elated, she didn’t even call her husband, Kenny about it right away.

“If I would have won the $448 million, you would have heard me at the south ferry docks,” she said with a laugh.

While Mason purchased her ticket at the Beach­comber Camp Ground Gas Station, she said she usu­ally only plays the scratch-off games. When the Pow­erball jackpot gets big, she purchases those tickets, too. This time, she purchased the 10 for $20 option and had the machine pick the numbers.

“It’s pretty cool that someone here won some­thing big,” said Sean Death, manager of the camp­ground and gas station, who said Mason had called to relate the good news. “It was the buzz around the counter for a few days.”

He said he hasn’t noticed an uptick in lottery ticket sales, though.

“People say, ‘It’s only $30,000’ when it’s the lower numbers,” he said, “but they seem to come out of the woodwork when the jack­pot gets to $300 million and higher.”

Mason, who owns Village Print, the island print shop, said the prize winnings have already been desig­nated to pay for new equip­ment for her business.

As for the odds, Mason said that four tickets sold in North Carolina beat odds of one-to-648,976 to match four white balls and the red Powerball to win big priz­es. A $3 Power Play ticket worth $40,000 was sold in Davie County and other two tickets worth $10,000 each were sold in Greens­boro and Charlotte.

Mason said that after tax­es were taken out by the vari­ous states who do the Pow­erball, her actual take-home amount was around $5,900. Nevertheless, she is happy to represent Coastal North Carolina with her win.

“You don’t see many people on the coast win­ning these things,” she said. “It just seems seems like it’s good karma.”

September 2013

by Connie Leinbach

You can’t really go wrong with helping build oyster habitat, said Gene Bal­lance about his and James Barrie Gaskill’s work building oyster shell reefs along Springer’s Point and on Beacon Island in the Oc­racoke Inlet.

“Oysters are good for several things,” Ballance continued. They create fish and crab habitat, they filter the water, and–the biggest plus of all–they’re tasty eating.

Local fishermen Ballance and Gaskill were among 13 people, groups and businesses across North Carolina who recently re­ceived Pelican Awards from the North Carolina Coastal Federa­tion, a nonprofit environmental organization, for “extraordi­nary commitment to protecting and preserving our coast.”

That commitment is shown in the pair’s work obtaining tons of oyster shells from all over the East Coast where they are dumped at Gaskill’s home along a canal in (aptly named) Oys­ter Creek. There, the two have put the shells into thousands of mesh bags for placement along Springer’s Point and Beacon Is­land, in the Pamlico Sound near Portsmouth.

Now the pair is concentrat­ing on creating what are called “patch reefs” at Beacon Island, which is one of only nine remain­ing nesting sites in North Caro­lina for brown pelicans. These reefs are rows of loose shells off this island that does not have any beach.

“The shells give it a buffer from the waves,” Ballance said. “A reef takes the energy out of the waves coming in so that the water doesn’t beat against the shoreline and destroy it.”

Tractor trailers bring the shells to Ocracoke, and every other day, the two fill up 100 plastic bins and transport the shells to the island on a barge.

“We’re on our third tractor trailer load,” Gaskill said.

What’s great about oyster shells vs. cement blocks is that their uneven surface is better for creating more habitat. Ballance pointed this out as he guided his Carolina Skiff close to the edge of Springer’s Point Nature Pre­serve where they two installed 5,000 mesh bags of shells. From the sound side, one can get an up-close look at the jetty-like construction.

“These make a habitat for crabs and little fish,” Ballance said, “but they also protect the grass behind them.” This reef will also protect the trees along Springer’s by preventing the waves from carving out a cliff and the shoreline from collaps­ing into the sound.

The tip of Springer’s Point already has a small jetty from some large hunks of cement (what locals call “rip rap”) having been placed there years ago. But the oyster shells create an undu­lating surface—more like a natu­ral reef, Ballance said. The beach on the other side of the rip rap— a popular spot for both visitors and locals–has some evidence of erosion, he said.

“The oyster shell reef might help retain that beach,” he said as his skiff pushed away from the Point.

In about three years, Ballance said there should be new growth of oysters. “If nothing destroys (the oyster bags), the oysters build on the last generation,” he said. Not all oysters around the world do that. Only Eastern Oys­ters—the kind found all over the East Coast and the Gulf of Mex­ico. “These are the native ones,” he said.

Ballance knows whereof he speaks since he has been working with oysters since 1998 when he got a North Carolina Sea Grant to map the crab sanctuaries from Oregon Inlet to Ocracoke. He also re-mapped the historic oyster beds originally done in 1886 by Francis Winslow II.

“Those maps are our Bible,” said Erin Fleckenstein, a coast­al scientist in the Federation’s Northeast office. “Gene’s map­ping of those historic oyster beds in the Pamlico Sound has been hugely helpful in guiding our planning process for these proj­ects.” Fleckenstein said scientists believe that oyster shells emit a cue to oyster larvae floating in the water to settle on them thus producing more oysters.

Shoring up Springer’s Point be­gan in March 2012, which started with Ballance and Gaskill plac­ing the shell bags followed by the planting of several hundred grass plants on the shore side of the oyster-bag reef. This work helped prevent further erosion of the shoreline from recent hurricanes, Fleckenstein said, and Gaskill and Ballance took extra time to keep the bags in place.

“They went above and be­yond the project they’re working on,” she said.