THE BACK PAGE 



"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 publications. 

 For more information on any of 

 the projects described, contact the 

 Sea Grant offices in Raleigh 

 (919/737-2454). 



When it comes to fer- 

 tilizing the land, it may 

 be best to look to the sea. 

 Hans Paerl, a Sea Grant 

 researcher at the Uni- 

 versity of North Caroli- 

 na Institute of Marine 

 Sciences in Morehead City, has found 

 that codium seaweed stimulates 

 growth in plants. 



Codium grows thick in shellfish 

 beds, often choking the bed's occu- 

 pants. Paerl wanted to find a use for 

 the nuisance seaweed, one that would 

 make harvest economically feasible 

 and control the seaweed's abundant 

 growth. 



Using agricultural methods in an 

 oceanographic laboratory, Paerl set 

 out to see how codium affected plant 

 growth. Other seaweeds, such as 

 sargassum, had been shown rich in 

 plant hormones that stimulated 

 growth. But tests indicated codium did 

 not produce a high concentration of 

 these hormones. 



Trying another approach, Paerl 

 tested codium as a soil conditioner for 

 corn. He found that soil conditioned 

 with codium yielded greater harvests 

 than soil dressed with horse manure. 



Paerl says the codium is best when 

 dried, washed of excess salts and then 

 applied during the fall months as a soil 

 applicant. 



Paerl says harvesting codium for use 

 as a soil conditioner depends on three 

 things: a willingness by fishermen to 

 harvest the seaweed, the economic 

 benefits of harvest and processing, and 

 the acceptance of codium as a fertilizer 

 in place of more traditional soil dress- 

 ings such as manure. 



Surf fishing, sailing, 

 snorkeling and traveling 

 are just a few of the ac- 

 tivities planned for a 

 summer workshop for 

 young people. The 4-H 

 Marine Environment 

 Workshop will concentrate on marine 

 resources, coastal ecology and marine- 

 related careers. The workshop will in- 

 clude programs at the Bogue Banks 

 Marine Resources Center, the Division 

 of Marine Fisheries and the NCSU 

 Seafood Lab. 



The workshop will be held August 7- 

 12 at Mitchell 4-H Camp in 

 Swansboro. Registration is open to 

 teens ages 14-18 and is not limited to 

 4-H members. The fee for the week- 

 long workshop is $90 and the deadline 

 for registration is July 1. Participants 

 will be accepted on a first-come, first- 

 serve basis and the workshop is limited 

 to 40 students. 



The workshop is one in a series of 

 4-H activities that have grown out of a 

 Sea Grant project conducted in 1981 

 and 1982 to promote marine 

 awareness. 



For more information, contact 

 Jaynee Medlicott, P.O. Box 5157, 

 North Carolina State University, 

 Raleigh, N.C. 27650 or call (919) 737- 

 3243. 



Battery Island, just 

 across the Cape Fear 

 River from Southport, is 

 the site of the largest 

 heronry in the state. 

 And, each spring and 

 summer, at least 4,000 

 pairs of herons make the island their 

 home. 



According to James Parnell, a 

 biologist at UNC-Wilmington who has 

 done Sea Grant research on water- 

 birds, "Many birds, in the process of 

 nesting and raising their young, 

 damage the habitat. Herons are like 

 this. For example, they produce so 

 much excrement that they actually 

 over-fertilize the vegetation. They also 

 just physically break a lot of it down." 



For the past year, one of Parnell's 

 students has studied the birds of Bat- 

 tery Island. He's trying to find ways to 

 maintain the nesting site so the birds 

 will return to the island year after 

 year. 



Parnell has received Sea Grant 

 mini-grant funds to survey popula- 

 tions of nesting colonial waterbirds. In 

 an earlier Sea Grant project, Parnell 

 and Robert Soots, an associate in- 

 vestigator, developed a census 

 methodology for calculating waterbird 

 populations. They used the 

 methodology to find out where and 

 how many colonial waterbirds were 

 nesting along the North Carolina 

 coast. Now Parnell wants to check the 

 waterbirds to see if populations and 

 nesting sites have changed. 



"Birds are an important barometer 

 of the environment that should be 

 monitored periodically," says Sea 

 Grant Director B.J. Copeland. 



Soots and Parnell's Atlas of 

 Colonial Waterbirds of North 

 Carolina Estuaries, written at the 

 completion of their project, is available 

 from UNC Sea Grant, Box 5001, 

 Raleigh, N.C. 27650. The 274-page 

 book costs $7. Ask for publication 

 UNC-SG-78-10. 



Larry Crowder, a 

 North Carolina State 

 University zoologist, has 

 received mini-grant 

 funds to study the pred- 

 ator-prey relationship 

 among fishes in the es- 

 tuary. Crowder, who recently joined 

 the NCSU faculty, comes to North 

 Carolina from Wisconsin, where he has 

 just completed a three-year Wisconsin 

 Sea Grant project. 



Crowder will be sampling fish in 

 Pamlico Sound's Rose Bay to establish 

 predator diets and size. He plans to 

 develop a predator-prey model for the 

 area. 



Continued on next page 



