Science

  • EPA Offers Criteria for Swimming Advisories

    The Environmental Protection Agency recently published draft standards for water quality and swimming advisories related to harmful algae blooms caused by nutrient-rich stormwater and agricultural runoff.

  • Letting It Soak In: Stormwater Retention Pays

    A recent federal study estimates the monetary value of reducing stormwater runoff from development, suggesting that over time hundreds of millions of dollars in groundwater resources can be saved.

  • Sea Turtle Doctor Pioneers New Science

    Dr. Craig Harms of N.C. State’s Center for Marine Sciences and Technology in Morehead City not only treats sick and injured sea turtles and other marine life, he and others here advance the science.

  • Study: How Much Tourism Is Too Much?

    New research from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill may provides a way to know how much human presence sensitive coastal areas may be able to withstand.

  • NC Aquarium Staff Releases 33 Sea Turtles

    Specialists at the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores invited paying guests for a boat ride to the Gulf Stream Wednesday to release 33 rehabilitated juvenile sea turtles rescued from area beaches.

  • Humpback Whales Recover; Threats Remain

    NOAA recently determined that most populations of humpback whales have rebounded and are no longer threatened or endangered, but some conservation groups say the status change is premature.

  • Exploring a Piece of Battle of the Atlantic

    Researchers are using advanced technology to more fully explore recently discovered wreckage of a German U- boat and an Allied merchant ship that were sunk off Cape Hatteras in 1942.

  • The Ocean: Calming a Stormy Mind

    Whether it’s the smell of the sea or the rhythmic lapping of waves upon the shore, science has long known the calming effect the ocean has on the human mind, the “blue mind” as one scientist calls it.

  • Coastal Plain Is One of World’s “Bio” Hotspots

    Those of us who live on or visit the N.C. coast know how special it is, but we’re also part of a larger region now recognized by an international environmental group as one of the most biologically diverse places on Earth.

  • Partners: The Fisherman and the Scientists

    In a rare partnership David “Clammerhead” Cessna, a Carteret County fisherman, and UNC researchers Niels Lindquist and Joel Fodrie are working together on a new way to bring back North Carolina’s oyster populations.

  • Center Offers New Model for Hog Farming

    Work going on at the Center for Environmental Farming Systems is focused on sustainable agriculture, including a project to show how hogs can be raised without antibiotics and without storing their waste in troublesome open-air lagoons.