Masonboro Island is one of 10 reserve sites in North Carolina, and got its accolades on a statewide tour highlighting the importance of these nature preserves.
NCDEQ Secretary Reid Wilson visited Masonboro Island as part of his tour highlighting the beauty and ecological diversity of the North Carolina coastal reserves.
“North Carolina's coast is one of our state's great, wonderful, tremendous treasures. I grew up in Maryland. Nothing wrong with Maryland, but I first came to North Carolina when I was 11 - I think I was 11 for a one week vacation in Nagshead," Wilson said. "Wow. This is so much better than Maryland beaches! Don’t tell anyone up there I said that.”
Ken Halanych runs UNCW’s Center for Marine Science – he says the island is a beloved spot for school children, and every 5th grader gets the chance to visit it for a school trip with Marine Quest.
"Marine Quest literally takes hundreds, if not 1000s of kids out there every year," he said. "This is super important next generation, getting kids excited about the environment, taking care of the environment. ”
The island is open to the public continuously, and a great place for locals and tourists alike to enjoy the beach, camp, and recreate. Though it’s a great place for scientific research as well. "One of the big things is monitoring shoreline change," Halanych said. "We also have a good bit of work not just looking at sort of biological change, but geological change. Obviously, there are concerns with sea level and things like this, which ultimately lead to flooding. We also have a bunch of work in ecosystem health.”
The island also plays an important role in scientific research. Byron Toothman is North Carolina Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Research Reserve Research Biologist, and his daily work is the System Wide Monitoring Program, or SWMP.
"The SWMP program is our environmental monitoring program that's been around for almost 30 years now," Toothman explained. It uses the same data tracking system as every other SWMP site in the country, making it a national dataset. "what we do is we collect all of these data in 15 minute increments, 365, days out of the year. So after you've been doing it for decades, like we have, that allows you to take a look at things that are happening on very, very fine timescales, like 15 minute increments."
That means this deeply valuable data is available to any researcher in the country, and they don't have to expend resources individually to study phenomena in the area. "it's a very, very powerful system for providing local and regional and national data to people that are working here," Toothman said.
Masonboro Island is undeveloped, and it’s a short ride there, and Secretary Wilson said there was one animal he really wanted to see when he went. "I love pelicans…. And you know, what a life! You live at the beach. You glide across the tops of the waves, you fly up in the air, you plunge down in the water, which is probably fun. You get raw seafood, right there, sushi, and then you sit in the water and you eat it. And I don't think they have any predators.”
Beachside, there was plenty to see. Plants, dunes rising in the middle of the island that protect against the erosion, and according to Elizabeth Pennix, the Southern Sites Manager for the reserve, ghost crabs. That’s what makes the tiny burrows in some of the dunes.
"They'll burrow down in the sand during the day, because it gets really hot on the sand, and at night, they'll come out and they kind of feed in the surf zone,” she explained.
Animals of all kinds live on the island. “Masonboro is home to many endangered species, threatened species, listed species, and so it's really important that we provide a natural habitat as well as a healthy habitat for those species to thrive," Pennix said. Some of those include the diamondback terrapin, which is a marsh turtle. So it's the only turtle that's found exclusively in our estuaries where salt and freshwater meet,” she said. “There's a lot of mammals that live on the island, possums, raccoons, deer are even out here. We do occasionally have foxes and coyotes out here as well. There are otters. Yes, we do have otters.”
The tour didn’t get to see all those animals, unfortunately for Secretary Wilson. Asked how he'd feel about missing out on pelicans, he said, “I will be extremely disappointed, but I'll get over it.”
Seems like a good excuse to revisit Masonboro Island.
