Exploring Rachel Carson’s Changing
North Carolina Coast

Click to enlarge

“Coastal Change: An Introduction to Beach and Island Geological Processes” was the class I was most looking forward to yet simultaneously dreading this past semester. The first week we dove right into the horizontal and vertical stretching, acceleration, and velocity involved in wave propagation. I found it both fascinating and challenging to understand the physics that underlies mesmerizing natural phenomena like sets breaking on the shore. Luckily, this course had a field component where we traveled out to the North Carolina coast to see the processes our professor lectured about come alive. In addition to being a marine biology geek, I love photography. The cherry-red point-and-shoot camera I received for my birthday in the 5^th grade is somehow still kicking and I bring it with me wherever I go. Even in just a few of the photos I captured on it, you can get a sense of the changing North Carolina coast I explored while walking in the footsteps of Rachel Carson – whose first book, Under the Sea-Wind, was inspired here.

Bright and early on a February morning, my class boarded a bus and rode three and half hours from Duke’s main campus in Durham out to Beaufort, home of the Duke Marine Lab, where we stayed for the weekend. The marine lab is a cozy cluster of wooden cabins, classrooms, and labs where Duke students and staff have been studying marine environments and organisms since 1938. Beaufort is perfectly situated to house a marine lab because it’s surrounded by a myriad of marine ecosystems. It’s in coastal North Carolina, level with the southernmost point of the Outer Banks at Cape Lookout. Beaufort sits on the tip of a peninsula of land, bordered by the Neuse River to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and Back Sound to the East.

In addition to these unique ecological features, the town has a historic waterfront area which attracts visitors from all over. My classmates and I marveled over the impressive collection of sailboats and yachts moored in front of the waterfront district (pictured here at dusk). What’s even more striking is that across the channel is the Rachel Carson Reserve – 2,315 acres of barrier islands and salt marshes. I have never been anywhere with such a stark contrast of an uninhabited nature preserve directly across from a bustling (by Beaufort standards) stretch of beach town.

Our first excursion started with a frigid ferry ride out to Cape Lookout. Our group was dropped off right by the old lighthouse — an impressive structure, stretching 163 feet into the air and adorned with a bold pattern of black and white diamonds. The pattern is so distinctive that back in the mid 1800s the permanent settlement on the island named itself Diamond City. Diamond City was a thriving fishing and whaling town until major hurricanes in 1896 and 1899 drove the residents to relocate to the mainland.

Hiking along the beach, the scenery was stunning. But I was impressed even by the sand itself. Instead of homogenous yellow ochre grains I typically associate with Atlantic beaches, here the sand was a blend of colors ranging from pale tans to dark greys and purple, dotted with shell and sea glass fragments.

The unusual dark purple shade of the sand is actually caused by high amounts of garnet in sediment while the deep grey is from heavy minerals like magnetite.

After hiking down the beach for a while, our professor started walking up and onto the sand dunes and motioned for us to follow. I was shocked. My entire life I have been told to stay off the sand dunes. In Virginia Beach there are signs posted across the public beaches warning of fines for anyone caught on the dunes.

I felt deeply uncomfortable walking over and across the dunes, until Professor Murray explained that the policy of not walking on or disrupting dunes exists not for the sake of the dunes themselves, but to protect the beachfront properties behind them. Dunes are naturally in a state of constant change. Their entire existence is a cycle of being reshaped, destroyed, and regenerated during storms. Overwash is the term used to describe the way that intense storms (with stronger winds that cause more powerful waves) push water and suspended sediment up higher onto beaches than usual. Some of that sediment is then deposited or left behind on the beach, creating dunes. Over time plants can grow on the dunes helping anchor them in place by preventing erosion from wind and waves.

The Virginia Beach oceanfront, where I grew up, is heavily developed. So, I am awestruck seeing such expansive stretches of undeveloped shorelines. Out on Cape Lookout, the only things in sight are dunes, grasses, seabirds and the ocean.

Towards the end of our hike we came upon a beautiful, but eerie scene – a ghost forest. The name is fitting as the gnarled, dark fragments of wood resemble the ghost ship from Pirates of the Caribbean. Walking through the remains of trees that have died from saltwater intrusion made me think about how different our coastlines have looked over time and how they might have appeared in the late 1930’s when Rachel Carson was standing here. And, of course, I imagine how our coastlines will continue to shift in the future.

The next day, we ventured over to an eight mile stretch of barrier island, Shackelford Banks, to survey the variety of vegetation able to grow and survive the tough conditions of a barrier island. Out on the banks, species must endure stronger wind and wave disruptions and have no source of fresh water other than rain. On barrier islands like Shackelford Banks, the limited fresh water is stored in something called a lens. It is remarkable that so many varied forms of life are able to persist in such austere conditions.

In addition to native vegetation we saw various seabirds and then came upon wild horses! Made famous in books like Misty of Chincoteague, wild horses can be found in a few places along the Eastern seaboard including Shackelford Banks and the Rachel Carson Reserve. They are the descendants of horses that escaped the colonies or were abandoned by European settlers in the 1700s. As you may be able to tell from the photograph, they are small because of the scarce fresh water and nutrition on the island.

It is interesting to think about these coastal shifts separated from human emotions, since changes from coastal erosion and sea-level rise aren’t inherently bad. But recognizing that they are being accelerated at an unprecedented rate by human activity and our reliance on fossil fuels is a burdensome truth. I wonder what will happen to the wild horses in the future. As temperatures rise, freshwater will evaporate faster and put additional stress on the vegetation that they eat. Where will they go if they are no longer able to survive on these outer banks? Or what will happen if the barrier islands themselves are submerged by sea-level rise? How will the historic town of Beaufort fare if it no longer has protective barrier islands to mitigate storm surge and winds? Observing all of this first-hand has transformed these questions from academic abstractions to tangible, pressing ones. And they are relevant not just for North Carolina, but all along the Southeastern US and Gulf Coast.

Yet, as I left the North Carolina coast, I felt optimistic. I am hopeful due to the very existence of classes like mine and the fact that my classmates share my concern for coastal issues. And we are not alone. There are research centers across many other universities and branches of the federal government like NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management that are actively studying and working on the shifts and dangers to our coasts as a result of global climate change. Not long ago, climate change was not formally recognized nor studied. Now with growing knowledge of its effects on our coasts and coastal populations, we can not only hope for, but also work toward solutions.

RCC Stanback Presidential Fellow – Chloe Wetzler

Chloe Wetzler is the co-lead of the RCC Coasts and Ocean program. She is a dual Master of Environmental Management and Juris Doctor student at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment and Law School. At Duke, she is the symposium coordinator for the Ocean Policy Working Group and a student researcher for the Nicholas Institute of Environment, Energy, and Sustainability.