In a bit of serendipity, the North Carolina Ferry Division celebrated its 75th anniversary Monday morning by christening its modern new vessel, the Ocracoke Express, the first and only passenger ferry in the system. “It’s been a long time coming,” North Carolina Secretary of Transportation Eric Boyette said to a small gathering under the shaded terminal […]
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As a storm-crazed ocean churned furiously around its spindly pilings, a weather-beaten house collapsed Tuesday afternoon into the surf on this Hatteras Island beach. It was the second house that day to fall into the raging sea. The first one fell early in the morning. A number of people at the beach captured the moment […]
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This year is the 50th anniversary of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Sanctuary Systems, an occasion that by definition makes the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary extra special because it was the very first one. The problem is that most Americans may be thinking: “What’s a marine sanctuary system?” And even if the […]
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Even with just a virtual view of the Monday evening meeting of the Dare County Waterways Commission, it was clear from members’ facial expressions that their usual level of frustration at resolving persistent navigational issues in Hatteras Inlet had increased. The entrance to the Connecting Channel, which has recently replaced the South Ferry Channel, is […]
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One day about two years ago, a shoebox wrapped in plastic arrived at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum. Inside, there was a manual, written in German and stained orange by diesel fuel. Chillingly, it included maps of the North Carolina coast, marked with the locations of lighthouses. With $4.2 million provided in this year’s […]
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This is the second in a special reporting series on federal infrastructure spending and North Carolina’s navigation needs. Lacking high-volume marine traffic or large ports, North Carolina’s northeast coast typically qualifies for far less federal funding to help maintain navigational channels and inlets than do the state’s southern coastal communities. But mariners in Dare and […]
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It was a warm and breezy late winter afternoon, a perfect day for a stroll along the ocean. As seabirds dove for dinner just offshore, Hope Lineman and her family were working their way north, weaving between a stretch of large houses on the beach off Ocean Drive. But they weren’t there to watch the […]
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With three nasty winter storms in a row recently, it didn’t take long for the newly dredged area in South Ferry Channel to go from smooth sailing to impassable. “It’s been really frustrating because it seems like this is the third consecutive winter I’ve had to abandon running charters in Hatteras because of shoaling in […]
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Members of the Dare County Waterways Commission have reason to celebrate this holiday season, with reports from fishermen and charter boat captains that the recent dredging of the South Ferry Channel is holding up nicely. “They say the flow going east-west through there — it’s a much better flow than what we had going across […]
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Considering the growing prevalence of drone photography and video footage over miles of natural landscape, a bird’s-eye view has been proven to be more than eye candy in determining climate impacts. But for wildlife managers at Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, a major stopover for migrating waterfowl and shorebirds, the compact low-flying machines are also […]
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