THE nmi mail 



"The Back Page" is an update on Sea 

 Grant activities — on research, marine 

 education and advisory services. It's 

 also a good place to find out about 

 meetings, workshops and new publi- 

 cations. For more information on any 

 of the projects described, contact the 

 Sea Grant offices in Raleigh (919/737- 

 2454). For copies of publications, 

 write UNC Sea Grant, NCSU, Box 

 8605, Raleigh, N.C. 27695-8605. 



©Rip currents are for 

 real. Ask Roberta Nai- 

 mark of Charlotte. In 

 August, she and her hus- 

 band were riding the 

 waves during their vaca- 

 tion in Duck. 

 A woman swimming nearby began 

 screaming that she was caught in a 

 current. 

 Roberta swam to help her. 

 But it was useless. "All of a sudden 

 we were way out," says Roberta. The 

 powerful current was whisking them 

 out to sea. 



Six others were caught — frightened 

 and frantic to paddle their raft to 

 shore. 



But Roberta stayed calm. 



The day before, she had read a Sea 

 Grant poster in her rented cottage tell- 

 ing the dangers of rip currents and how 

 to swim to safety. 



"If I had not read that poster I would 

 have thought the tide had pulled me 

 out." But when she felt the pull and 

 realized how fast she was moving, she 

 knew it was more than an undertow. 



The force quickened just past a sand 

 bar. Swimming back was impossible. 

 For about 10 minutes, the current kept 

 pushing them out to sea. 



As the two women swam to meet the 

 raft, Roberta recalled tips in the poster. 



"I remember shouting, 'They're only 

 30 feet wide! Swim diagonally!'" she 

 says. 



The group clung to the raft and 

 swam across the current. Soon they 

 were able to get close enough to the 

 beach for rescuers to pull them in. 



Later the Naimarks found out rip 

 currents ran one after another for miles 

 along the beach that day. One swimmer 

 had drowned. Hurricane Charley and 

 a full moon were playing havoc with 

 the tides. 



Roberta's level head and a few tips 

 from the Sea Grant poster saved her- 

 self and seven others from tragedy. 



A copy could save your life, too. 

 For a copy of the free poster, write Sea 

 Grant and ask for publication number 

 UNC-SG-86-09. 



Last year will be hard for Wayne 

 Wescott to forget. The Sea Grant ma- 

 rine advisory agent spent days — and 

 months — spreading the word about 

 crab shedding. And it paid off. Rec- 

 ords show last year was the best year 

 yet for the booming soft-shell crab 

 industry. In Dare County alone, fisher- 

 men sold more than 600,000 pounds of 

 soft crabs. That figure topped pre- 

 vious sales for the whole state by more 

 than 100,000 pounds. 



Most of the crabs were shipped to 

 markets in New York and Baltimore. 

 But North Carolina residents got a 

 taste of the success, too. 



§In August, 16 North 

 Carolina and Puerto 

 Rican teachers left Ra- 

 leigh for a week-long trek 

 across the Tar Heel state. 

 One alligator, a raft 

 trip down the Nantahala 

 River and 1,300 miles later, the group 

 returned from their outdoor class- 

 room. 



Lundie Spence, Sea Grant's marine 

 educational specialist, organized the 

 trip to expose teachers to the state's 

 natural water systems. 



"We try to get the teachers into the 

 systems — into the marshes, into the 

 rivers. This experiential method of 

 learning gives teachers a better under- 

 standing of the aquatic systems they're 

 studying," Spence says. 



Along the way, the group looked at 

 how people used water in the past and 



how it affected their lives. And they 

 studied the ways people use, change 

 and manage these waters today. 



Spence and the junior high and high 

 school teachers began their tour in 

 Wilmington. They visited the N.C. 

 Aquarium at Ft. Fisher, Bald Head 

 Island and the Brunswick Town His- 

 toric Site. 



They studied the sandhills of Caro- 

 lina Beach, saw a cypress swamp and 

 released baby loggerhead turtles. 



Then they moved west to Charlotte 

 and to Cherokee, stopping at Dis- 

 covery Place, a Christmas tree farm, 

 waterfalls and a Cowee ruby mine. 



The workshop is part of an ongoing 

 venture with the Puerto Rico Sea Grant 

 Program. Last year, the North Caro- 

 lina teachers traveled south to study 

 the island's ecosystems. They'll get 

 another chance next summer. 



\ The summer of 1986 



— hot, dry and sunny. 

 Conditions seemed right. 

 Residents along the Neuse 

 River from Goldsboro to 

 New Bern waited. 



They expected the foul 



blue-green algae to pop to the surface 

 of the sluggish Neuse and form mas- 

 sive green mats that would coat boats, 

 swimmers and docks. 



But the Neuse River never bloomed, 

 and scientists wanted to know why. 



Sea Grant researchers Hans Pearl, 

 Bob Christian and Don Stanley sampled 

 the waters of the Neuse River for some 

 answers. 



"It takes a wet spring and plenty of 

 runoff coupled with a hot, dry summer 

 to produce a bloom," says Hans Pearl. 



But it's not the large volumes of 

 water produced by the rains that trigger 

 the bloom. It's what's in the runoff — 

 millions and millions of tiny molecules 

 of nitrogen and phosphorus. "Nutri- 

 ents" they call them. 



These nutrients wash off of farms, 

 forests, parking lots and roof tops. And 

 they're just what nuisance blue-green 

 algae need to survive and bloom. 

 Continued on next page 



