File:Coast watch (1979) (20666242271).jpg

Title: Coast watch
Identifier: coastwatch00uncs_1 (find matches)
Year: 1979 (1970s)
Authors: UNC Sea Grant College Program
Subjects: Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology
Publisher: (Raleigh, N. C. : UNC Sea Grant College Program)
Contributing Library: State Library of North Carolina
Digitizing Sponsor: North Carolina Digital Heritage Center

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Estuary. It's one of those scientific terms that is gradually creeping into our common language. You hear a news reporter use it on the air. You see it printed in National Geographic. But it's a word just on the verge of becoming common, and there is confusion about what it means. Fishermen don't bother with the word at all. It's a word they say dit-dots (scientists, in down- east lingo) use. To fishermen, the estuary is Rose Bay, South Creek, Bogue Sound, the Neuse River, places where the fishing is good. Well then, what is an estuary? It's a place where the salt water and fresh water mix it up. But there's more to it than that. There are fish, marsh grass, circulation patterns, nursery grounds and more. Things that make the estuary special. We asked six Sea Grant scientists—B.J. Copeland, John Miller, Charles Peterson, Hans Paerl, Stan Riggs and Scott Snyder—to tell us a few things that make the estuary different; to tell us a few things that make the estuary interesting to them. They put together some facts and added up some figures. Here's what we learned: Over 5,874,000 North Carolinians own Rose Bay. You may not be able to have it surveyed, staked off and fenced in, but you do own a small parcel of that sub- merged land. Just as you own part of all the state's estuarine system. We all have a stake in the state's approximately 2.3 million acres of estuaries because they're in the public domain. It's like owning part of your own farm at the sea. And, North Carolinans hold the deed to more estuarine land than people in most other states. We have the largest estuarine system on the East Coast and the third largest system in the United States. Only Louisiana and Alaska have larger estuarine systems. Biologists believe 90 percent of the state's commercially important species spend at least part of their lives in the es- tuary. For example, in 1982 the state's fishermen received $16.4 million for their shrimp catches, $7.4 million for blue crabs and $5.8 million for menhaden. The estuary serves as a nursery for each of those species and many fishermen owe their livelihoods to that estuarine nursery. 'J^he mother croaker lays 100,000 eggs. The mother croaker has just cast 100,000 eggs into the western edge of the warm Gulf stream on a cold December day. Now it's up to the warm waters to incubate the eggs until they hatch the one- to two-millimeter larvae several days later. The ocean isn't a very hospitable home for the newborn croaker. But there is a place that specializes in nursing baby fish, finfish and shellfish—the estuarine nursery. John Miller is intrigued by the life cycle of commercially impor- tant species like croaker. And he believes the months spent in the estuary may be critical to the species' survival and maintenance. After all, the larval croaker wouldn't travel

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