The Marine Laboratory > Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment

he Pamlico Sound is the major fishery for North

Carolina. The estuary serves as a nursery area for many species of recreational and commercial fish with seventy-five percent of the commercial landings in the state occurring inside the estuary. Water quality is critical to support fisheries and tourism in the state. The fate of the Pamlico Sound not only impacts North Carolina, but it is symptomatic of problems occurring nationally in the coastal zone.

As urbanization, agriculture

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and other land uses increase in Larry Crowder and Crew sample the Pamlico. the coastal zone, more nutrients and chemicals are added to the system. According to the American Rivers Founda­tion, the Neuse River is on the list of the top 20 most polluted rivers in the United States. Low oxygen levels have continually plagued coastal rivers with associated fish kills. Most people think this condition has yet to occur in the Pamlico Sound. The popular belief is that the sound is healthy, but recent evidence suggests otherwise. "The estuary is a fish production system that is being compromised by nutrient loading and low oxygen problems," notes Dr. Larry Crowder of the Duke Marine Lab.

"We are entering a heightened period of tropical low activity which brings a lot of energy in the form of high winds and precipitation. Both of these stimulate productivity and change the basic composi­tion of the ecosystem," said Dr. Joe Ramus of the Duke Marine Lab.

The long term goal of research on the Pamlico Sound is to understand the ecosystem's response to event scale forcing such as noreasters and hurricanes.

"We don't even know how the Pamlico Sound operates under normal conditions let alone event scale conditions," said Ramus. "No one has collected data on the system. A lot is known about the tributary rivers, but little is known about the Sound proper. The challenge is that the sound is just so big that no one has had the resources to take on a project of that size."

Forethought and rapid response have positioned Duke as a leader in Pamlico Sound research. Crowder and his students began studies in the Neuse River in 1997 responding to the problems the state was experiencing with fish kills and nutrient enrichment.

"We've emphasized effects on fish productivity instead of just fish kills," said Crowder. "We were more interested in sub-lethal effects. Ten million dead menhaden makes a lot of headlines but when you talk to the people who estimated the number of menhaden out there, ten million isn't that big a number. It's more likely that the major fishery effects are on growth and fish health."

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Since 1997 Crowder's group continues to look at how the fish respond to variations in nutrient loading and rainfall. Each year was significantly different. In 1997 we had a very dry spring followed by a wet summer resulting in a fresh water cap over the salt water, leading to low oxygen problems. A wet spring characterized 1998, with little rain in the summer. The Neuse River was fresher, but it didn't stratify, so low oxygen problems didn't occur until the end of the summer. In 1999 it was fairly dry with high salinity (seawater

is 35 parts salinity) in the Neuse and Pamlico. Much of the lower Neuse and Pamlico Sound, which are usually between 10 and 12 parts seawater, were in excess of 20 parts during 1999. The team had collected good long-term data on what the system looked like with some year-to-year variability. Crowder used the Fall '98 Marine Ecology class to begin similar surveys of the Pamlico Sound.

Crowder and Ramus began a program on a shoestring, knowing that at some future date the information would be valuable. Eventually the Sound would be hit by a major scale event. "If we were to begin to understand what the impact of that event was, we had to get some baseline data," said Ramus. "We produced the first baseline data on the Pamlico Sound, and we did it without any funding using existing resources. We had a year's worth of data before the hurricanes of 1999."

Conventional wisdom held that the Pamlico Sound would not have the same water quality problems and low oxygen

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levels that were seen in the coastal rivers because it's so large, and it was thought that the wind would easily correct any low oxygen problems. Yet in the fall of 1998, prior to the hurricanes, researchers found parts of the Pamlico stratified with fresh water over low oxygen saltwater.

"Everyone talks about what hurricane Floyd did," said Crowder. "What actually happened was a combined set of effects that involved hurricane Dennis, Floyd and a couple of fronts that came through between these hurricanes added up to an estimated 25 inches of rainfall above the long term average for September." With that much rain in already saturated watersheds, large amounts of fresh water entered the system. This resulted in huge flooding on land that continued to flood into the estuary, peaking about two months after Hurricane Floyd.

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The Pamlico Sound "We began picking up the increase in a couple of weeks, but it kept coming in for months," said Crowder.

It was estimated that the influx of fresh water associated with these events was approximately 85% of the volume of Pamlico Sound. Over three quarters of the volume of the sound was replaced with fresh water!! "Pamlico Sound only reaches 27 feet deep and we saw 18 feet of fresh water on top. It started as a thin layer, became a thick layer, and now is back to a thin layer again," said Crowder. This put a fresh water cap, 6 - 18 feet thick, on the top of the sound. Winds mixed the fresh water layer, but did not mix oxygen into the lower salt water layer resulting in large low oxygen zones.

Fortunately, when Floyd came along the Duke researchers had their sampling program in place. "We already had plans to be on the river," said Crowder. "We

had Marine Ecology cruises set for that fall, and we actually did our first cruise the week before Floyd came by. As soon as the boat was back at the lab after Floyd, Lisa Eby was on the Neuse River. I was in California when I saw her results. I got on the phone and booked the next available ship time."

Crowder and Ramus worked with students on the Pamlico Sound as often as possible, nearly every two weeks through­out the fall of 1999. They're still doing trips about every month.

Initial findings showed a lot of fresh water sitting on top of the salt water, and oxygen in the lower levels had dramatically decreased. Fish catches are normally low in these low oxygen zones. But in this case, despite the fact that there were low oxygen levels, there were high fish catches. The hypothesis was that the fish were unable to escape the area of low oxygen because it was so large. To move out of that area they would have to move into nearly fresh water. The fish were sitting on the bottom of Pamlico Sound when fresh water moved in over 20 feet above them. They didn't notice this until the system was capped by fresh water and the oxygen began clicking down in the lower layers. Then they started moving into shallow waters. When they got there they found the salinity seriously down which had a stressful effect on their physiology. They're likely in that circumstance to move back into the area of low oxygen. "They're between a rock and a hard place," said Crowder.

A month later Crowder's crew began seeing serious health problems in the fish. When fish are exposeq to low oxyge11 stress their immune systems which normally fight off skin infections are suppressed. The bacteria in the waters are enhanced due to the increased nutrient loading causing the fish to be stressed and more vulnerable to disease.

"We found two things that were new -the disease problems were widespread across species and we found systemic bacterial infections spread throughout the fish. We saw more serious health problems in the Pamlico Sound than we've ever seen before," said Crowder. Fish began showing up with skin disease problems. Their tail fins would rot. Their skin got soft and would slough off scales. They had lesions. Six weeks after Floyd 70 - 80% of the fish caught had these systemic bacterial infections. Fish in such a condition have very little chance of recovering. Hurricane Irene mixed oxygen back into the system in mid October; fish disease

joe Ramus filters water samples.

still increased, dropping off later as the stratification decreased.

Epic levels of fresh water that entered the system brought high levels of organic material which sank out in the western end of the Pamlico Sound. The organic material and nutrients that came in weren't fully utilized. "We're going into the spring with excess nutrients and organic material. We expect the bacteria population to be up to process the additional organic material and the algae population to be up because of the nutrients," said Crowder.

The effects on the fish will ultimately depend on what happens with future rainfall and wind levels. Anything that will lead to stratification will be problematic for the fish. Climatilogical predictions are for more storms and rainfall. If this occurs there will likely be problems in the Pamlico Sound down the road. Will the impacts be limited to the upper rivers? Will the entire Pamlico Sound be affected? Researchers are waiting to see what the spring and summer bring. The quantity of organic and nutrient materials entering the system was so large it may take years for scientists to come close to understanding the full effects of this scale event.

Public response to the research has been mixed. The human effects of the storm were so severe that environmental issues were not a priority for many people. Water quality is crucial to tourism and fisheries in North Carolina. A cadre of state regulatory agencies has management responsibility in the Pamlico Sound, yet they don't have any data to help them respond to potential management issues. No one truly knows how to respond because the impacts of these events on the fisheries are not yet known. There are serious regulatory issues associated with events of this magnitude. Basic knowledge of how the system works is critical to help agencies make effective decisions dealing with the health of the

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Pamlico Sound and livelihoods of those who make their living from its waters.

In the normal funding cycle, proposals are written six months to a year in advance. Catastrophic events can't be anticipated. Funding which becomes available a year after the fact isn't helpful unless there is data obtained immediately before and after the hurricane, though it does help on the long-term effects.

"It's fortunate that we're right here and could run out and get some data before funding was in place," said Crowder.

Joe Ramus and Hans Pearl of the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences found funding scarce for proposed Pamlico Sound research prior to Hurricane Floyd. The project recently received funding from the Department of Natural Resources. "It's because we had that year's worth of data and a sense of what the impacts of the hurricanes were on

Five scholars from the Coastal Envi­ronmental Management Program at

the Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment are heading to Wash­ington, D.C., after being selected as the 2000 Dean John A. Knauss Fellows. Created in 1979, the fellowship offers a unique educational experience to students with an interest in marine, ocean and Great Lakes resources, and in the national policy decisions affecting those resources.

The fellowship, sponsored by the National Sea Grant College Program, matches highly qualified graduate students with hosts in the legislative or executive branches of the federal government.

North Carolina recipients are Tanya ]. Dobrzynski, Matthew C. Huggler, Daniel Lyons and Elizabeth E. Nicholson. Also receiving this award was Emily Lindow, who applied through the University of Michigan Sea Grant Program. All are completing their master's degree in environmental management at the Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment.

Dobrzynksi, who speaks Spanish, served as a Marine Reserves Intern last summer with the Environmental Defense

the Sound that we're beginning to get funding now," said Ramus. "We're the only game in town. No one else has the data. We an~fcipated what was coming and got to work.

According to Ramus, "what is needed to conduct future water quality research on a system as large and as shallow as the Pamlico Sound is a fleet of large boats that don't draw much water. The North Carolina ferry system is ideal for this purpose. They're free and there are a lot of them." The ferries operate five routes on the Pamlico with 15-20 different ferries maldng frequent crossings in varied locations covering critical areas of the sound. This type of sampling combined with frequent biological sampling aboard the R/V Susan Hudson should give a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of the Pamlico Sound.

Fund, researching social, economic and policy issues related to a national marine reserves policy initiative.

Her master's thesis will assess the social and economic impacts of new Florida Keys' marine reserves on local groups. Dobrzynsld is assigned to the National Marine Fisheries Service, Office of Habitat Conservation.

Huggler's research focuses on the success of partnerships between the public and private sectors in preserving wetlands and estuaries.

As an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he worked at the UNC Institute of Marine Science, where he studied the role of heterogeneity in defining ecological processes. Huggler is assigned to the House Resources Subcommittee on Wildlife, Fisheries and Oceans.

Lindow is studying the use of purchase of development rights for coastal open space protection. The Orrin Pilkey advisee did her internship last summer with South Carolina's coastal conservation league on a purchase of development rights case study. Lindow has been assigned to the Senate Majority Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Subcommittee on Oceans and Fisheries.

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Research of this type affords incredible opportunities for the Coastal Environmen­tal Management students at the Marine Lab. They are involved in research and policy development on current live issues ranging from state to international issues. "They're doing real research that has real importance on a wide variety of projects. I see us putting together talented students with opportunities to do important analysis that will have an impact on the science and policy dealing with coastal issues. It's exciting," said Crowder. "It's real stuff that's having an immediate impact on policy. And a lot of it is getting published."

The future of the Pamilco Sound is in the hands of the people of North Carolina. Researchers at the Duke Marine Laboratory hope to provide the public with a sound set of data to guarantee our state quality, productive waters for generations to come.

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Lyons is pursuing two graduate degrees - a master's in regional planning at UN C-CH and a mastee s of environ­mental management at the Nicholas SchooL He is the first student to work on both degrees simultaneously. As an undergraduate at Princeton University, Lyons earned a bachelor of science degree in engineering and completed a senior thesis on "Saving the Sound: An Evaluation ofWater Quality Monitoring." Lyons has been assigned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Elizabeth Nicholson is focusing her graduate studies on marine ecosystems and U.S. fishery policy.

Nicholson has worked as a naturalist for the Massachusetts Audubon Society and a park ranger in Denali National Park in Alaska. For the past two years, she has helped identify, analyze and map marine protected areas in the Gulf of Mexico through the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She has been assigned to the National, Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Ocean Service, Coastal and Oceans Program, where she will be working on a national initiative on marine protected areas.

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Joe Bonaventura visited the Stanford Linear Accelerator Synchrotron Facility in November and the Molecular Biology Labs of Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, to work on protein crystals. In January he presented a paper on "The Biology of Nitric Oxide" at the Society of Comparative and Integrative Biologists Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.

Tim Boynton received the Meritorious Service Award in the Administrative/ Professional category at Duke University. He was honored by President Keohane for his achievements at a special luncheon on April12.

Bill Campbell and Sly Murray attended a week long professional cooking school at the University of California in San Diego in March.

Tara Cox was head coach of a Special Olympics basketball team, The Carteret County Galaxy All-Stars 2000. Also assiting the team were Caron Whitaker (CEM '98), Tim Boynton, Damon and Janet Gannon, and Danielle Waples. The season ran from November to March, culminating in State Games (March 3-5) in Greensboro and a local "March Madness" exhibition for friends and family.

Kevin and Tara Craig announced the birth of a baby girl, Riley Grace, on Saturday, November 20.

Caterina E. D' agrosa presented "Assessing the physical habitat of cetaceans in the southeastern U.S. Atlantic Ocean during the summer of 1998 with GIS, remote sensing and spatial statistics" during the thirteenth biennial meeting of the Society for Marine Mammalogy, Maui Hawaii, in November and at the 8th Atlantic Coast Dolphin Conference, March 2000, in Wilmington, NC.

Between research trips to the Florida Keys Will Figueira passed his prelims on February 4th.

Don Gagnon received the Facilities management (FMD) employee of the third quarter 1999 award.

Eunice Godette retired December 1999 after 23 years of service.

Richard Barber, Mike Hiscock, Anna Hilting, Zack Johnson, and Veronica Lance presented posters at the 2000 Ocean Sciences Meeting, in San Antonio, Texas. The conference was hosted jointly by the American Geophysi­cal Union and the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography.

Jennifer Keller attended the 20rh Annual Sea Turtle Symposium this February in Orlando, Florida.

Heather Koopman won the John Shedd award for best overall student presentation at the 13th Biennial Confer­ence on the Biology of Marine Mammals, held in the first week of December 1999 in Maui. The conference was attended by over 1200 people, with 90 students giving talks and 236 presenting posters.

She worked at Dalhousiie University in Nova Scotia from mid-March through mid-May analyzing blubber lipids from harbor porpoises and other species of odontocetes as part of her dissertation work

Lillian Lorenzsonn-Willis became a grandmother with the birth of Michael McAlister Styron on March 16, 2000.

Karen Magnus joined the lab in July oflast year from Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio, where she studied oxygen transport and actin cytoskeletal proteins. She will be working with Joe Bonaventura and Celia Bonaventura on hemocyanins and phenol oxidases.

Mike Mascia participated in a work­shop sponsored by the Marine Conserva­tion Biology Institute and the Cousteau Society in Washington, DC, on January 20-21. The meeting was entitled "Estab­lishing a National System of Marine Protected Areas in the United States". I was one of 12 scientists who were invited to participate. Participants were from the USA, Canada, England, Australia, and the Philippines. Mascia successfully defended his dissertation on April 5, 2000.

On March 11, Mike Orbach moder­ated a panel entitled, "In the Eye of the Storm: Coping with Natural and Unnatu­ral Disasters in the 21st Century" at the Stanford Law School Sea Change Confer­ence in Palo Alto, CA., sponsored by the

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National Association of Environmen­tal Law Societies. Sylvia Earle, a Duke alum and member of the DUML Advisory Board, was the featured speaker at the conference. Orbach also moderated the opening Plenary Session ,"The Human Dimension in Coastal Management" at the annual NOM Ocean and Coastal Manager's Meeting in Washington, D. C. on March 28.

Andy Read, Andrew Westgate, Dave Johnston, Heather Koopman, and Damon Ganon attended the Annual Meeting of the European Cetacean Society in Cork, Ireland in the first week of April. They all presented papers at the meeting and Andrew Westgate chaired a workshop on Telemetry.

Andy Read and Kim Urian lead a Duke Alumni College trip 'Among the Great Whales' to Baja California in March.

Melissa Snover attended the 20th Annual Symposium on Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation in Orlando, Florida. She gave a talk titled 'Skeletochronology in juvenile Kemp's ridleys: Validation, settlement and growth' and won first runner-up for best student paper in Biology.

Heather Walton gave an invited talk entitled "Transport ofViable Phytoplankton in Ballast Water, Ballast Water Exchange" at the Strategic Planning Workshop for the Canadian Atlantic Region in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, January 2000. She also spoke at a workshop for the Maritime and Scientific Communities, Tampa, Florida, November 1999 on "Reduc­ing Biological Invasions due to Ballast Water Discharge, Aquatic Invasive Species and Shipping the Eastern Gulf of Mexico". In addition, Walton presented a poster on "Invasion of the Indo-Pacific Swimming Crab Charybdis hellerii in the Florida crab community" at the Benthic Ecology Meeting, in Wilmington, North Carolina, March 2000.

4

What do you get when you add 300 km2

ofbradcish water, 900,000 fish, a sturdy boat with crew, three years of hard work and a group of young scientists led by an energetic Ph.D. candidate? You get a recipe for knowledge that will serve the people of Eastern North Carolina for years to come.

Hailing from Madison, Wisconsin, with a Master's degree in Limnology, Lisa Eby brought an enthusiasm for field studies to the Duke Marine Lab. "Field work is definitely my favorite part of the work. I love going out on the river," said Eby. She has conducted more than 90 research cruises in over three field seasons covering over three-quarters of the Neuse River from New Bern to the mouth of the Pamlico Sound. In 1998 alone she pulled over 700 trawls.

"Lisa is probably the best student that I've had and I've had some outstanding students," noted her advisor, Dr. Larry Crowder. "She's really tal<.en the initiative. She's written grant proposals, raised hundreds of thousands of research dollars, directed research teams, and has won the J Francis Allen scholarship, a national award given by the American Fisheries Society for the outstanding Ph.D. student in fisheries."

Eby' s work focuses on the environ­mental effects of human intervention on the Neuse River from New Bern to the Pamlico Sound. "I'm looking at how environmental variables drive fish distribution and how that effects species interactions," said Eby.

The Neuse River estuary serves as a nursery ground for many species of recreational and commercial fish. Juvenile fish spend their first year in the estuary before they move off shore. The Neuse River/Pamlico Sound region is one of the most valuable pieces of fish habitat real estate in the United States. It is essential to determine the overall health of the system and provide a body of sound scientific data for future river management plans.

Severe landscape alterations on the river cause fresh water to move more quickly into the estuary, changing the salinity, creating a freshwater lens on top. Because fresh and salt-water layers don't readily mix the result is a low oxygen problem. Nutrient loading compounds the effect by increasing the productivity of

Lisa Eby measures a blue crab.

algae which eventually sinks to the bottom, uses up what's left of the oxygen, and creates large low oxygen zones in the estuary.

The focus of Eby' s work is on short term variability. In 1997, on average half of the bottom habitat of the Neuse River was at oxygen levels so low it wasn't useful to fish. In 1998, the River showed improve­ment averaging only 10-15% low oxygen. Her research indicates that fish respond to these problems by moving. But when they move into the shallow sides of the river to get into oxygenated areas, they stack up at very high densities which intensifies predation and competition, and increases interactions that might not normally occur.

Fish that are crowded into the shallow areas because of low oxygen eat less and don't grow as well. More importantly, the fish's food resources, benthic invertebrates, are killed by low oxygen. So even if the low oxygen is temporary, invertebrates can't move as quickly as the fish, and they die sooner. This environmental variability has impacts on the fish populations that ultimately effect fish productivity and fishery yields.

On a typical research trip, which lasts from 12 to 14 hours, the crew, many of whom volunteer, leaves the Marine Lab bright and early on the R/V Susan Hudson. Once they're on the Neuse River they perform a variety of water quality measurements and pull trawls which last

for no more than two minutes, with a goal of sampling 20 locations per day. A typical summer trawl will net 500 fish, but they have caught up to 2000 in the two-minute period. They work with an average of 10,000 fish a day, counting, measuring, and identifying each and every fish. Most of the fish are returned to the estuary live, while some are brought to the lab for analysis. In these often arduous conditions Eby truly shines. "Lisa works very well with people," notes Crowder. "She keeps everybody happy and working hard under a whole variety of conditions that can be unpleasant at times."

During the third year of sampling, Hurricanes Dennis and Floyd came along pushing huge volumes of fresh water into the Neuse River. This turned her entire study site into fresh water. The unprec­edented occurrence offered Eby the opportunity to compare a disturbance of great magnitude with previous short term disturbances, allowing for a direct compari­son. W auld the study of small-scale disturbances tell us anything that will help us manage the occasional large-scale disturbances?

"With Floyd I've seen a lot of what we saw in previous smaller scale hurricanes," said Eby. "It's not often that you see an event of this magnitude and just happen to have three years of baseline data. That's exciting."

This baseline data proved critical to post hurricane research on the overall effects of these events on the Neuse River and the Pamlico Sound.

Eby is creating mathematical models that will be able to predict the impact of environmental variables on fish produc­tion. Her models could tell policy makers if decreases in nitrogen levels brought on by new state mandates might have a substan­tial effect on fish production. Her work isn't just about fish lcills, it's about supporting a fishery.

"Lisa's work is going to have a big impact on how people feel about these systems and the field of fisheries. It's great fun to have students this good working on issues this important," said Crowder. When her work is complete, Ph.D. in hand, Eby will leave behind a body of science that will promote well-informed management decisions for years to come.

Spring2000 EXPERIENCE 5

Leigh Ann Lather (formerly Carris) (Summer '87) went to medical school at UNC in Chapel HilL interned at UVA in Charlottesville, and is now one of the two pediatricians with Eastern Carolina Internal Medicine group in New Bern.

Steve Lindley (Ph.D., 1974) and his wife Catharina had a baby girl, Anika Alison Lindley, born March 27, 2000, in San Francisco, California.

John Oeltjen (Fall '88) is finishing medical school at Baylor University in Houston, Texas where he is working on an MD and Ph.D. in molecular genetics. He spent two months living at a Catholic medical mission in a fairly remote community of Guatemala working on his Spanish, doing a little medicine, and resting before beginning a six year residency at Baylor.

Spring 1990 Class photo taken on the beach at Fort Macon

John Reisenweber (Fall '91) is working as a marine environmental consultant with Booz-Allen and Hamilton in DC. He received his Master's degree from Oregon State in Environmental Policy and Marine Resource Management in 1997. He worked for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and then National Marine Fisheries Service before coming to Booz-Allen.

Reisenweber is also very involved in the local political scene in WV, trying to make his hometown a better place and is appointed to several Boards in the county. His dogs are doing fine. His address is: John Reisenweber, 2105 Tuscarora Pike, Martinsburg, WV 25401

Megan Weidmann (Fall '97) is in New Orleans working as a Geometry I Algebra II teacher for the Teach for America program. Her students come from underprivileged backgrounds and often have bigger problems to worry about than geometry, such as taking care of their

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Sp;ing 2000

babies or protecting themselves from the rival neighborhood's gang. Megan writes, "It's been an eye-opening experience and one of the most challenging of my life. They're great kids, and I really enjoy working with them."

BEAUFORT Experience Newsletter of the Duke Univeristy Nicholas School of the Environment, Marine Laboratory, Beaufort NC http:/ /www.env.duke.edu/marinelab/marine.html

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More than half a century has passed since Reade Yates Tompson (G'45) and his wife, Sarah Bond Tompson (N'45, BSN'47) graduated from Duke University. Though they left Durham, they didn't leave Duke altogether. Their travels have led them across the United States and back to Duke, its marine laboratory in particular. "When we first sailed, literally, to the Marine Lab with a friend of ours whose boat we were helping to crew, we were immediately interested in learning more about their marine biology approach," Reade Tompson said. "We've always loved the shore and the sea, and the Marine Lab welcomed our interest in their research and findings."

The Tompsons' interest in the marine lab reaches beyond the shores of Beaufort, North Carolina. They recently established a charitable remainder unitrust that provides lifetime income for them and endowment support for the marine lab. "We've always been concerned about preserving the flora and fauna of our coastal areas," Reade Tompson said. "This planned giving vehicle allows us to support the efforts of the Marine Lab and supplement our retirement, so we can enjoy both even more." The trust has also enabled the Tompsons to diversify their investments; defer, reduce, or eliminate capital gains taxes; and claim a charitable income tax deduction for the year in which they made the gift. "The Marine Lab was just getting on its feet when Sarah and I were at Duke," he said. "We knew that environmental study would gain more focus as society progressed, and we were glad to see Duke

leading the way. It is our hope that this trust will benefit society as it supports the Marine Lab's endeavors."

Reade Tompson is a Massachu­setts native who came to Duke after earning a bachelor of science degree in chemistry from Brown University in 1940. He earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1945, after which he spent three years in the New York and Delaware research and development laboratories of the Allied Chemical Company's General Chemical Division. He spent the next two years as a research chemist in the experimental station of E. I. Dupont de Nemours Company's Polychemical Department. From 1950 until his retirement in 1980, he served as the personnel assistant to the technical organization of Dupont's Textile Fibers Department. Mter Sarah Bond Tompson earned R.N. and B.S.N. degrees from Duke, she taught anatomy and physiology there before moving to a private practice in her hometown of Augusta, Georgia. Mter the Tompsons married, she concentrated on what her husband termed "household engineering," including raising their three daughters, whose Girl Scout troop she helped lead, volunteering at their local church, and participating in AAUW and Junior Women's Club activities. Reade Tompson's love for and expertise in boating has kept him involved in the U.S. Power Squadrons's boating safety education program for over 50 years.

The Tompsons, who make their home in Hockessin, Delaware, have logged many

miles on land and sea since retiring, exploring and discovering the United States and its nature. Mter spending the better part of 12 years sailing up and down the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway in their boat, the Tompsons "traded their keel for wheels," and now pack up their RV every fall and head south for the winter to visit friends and relatives, perhaps stopping along the way at appealing historic sites, state parks, or wildlife preserves.

He says their active lifestyles keep them going strong, even after 20 years of retirement. "We're excited about helping Duke and the Marine Lab stay active and become stronger, too," he said. "We all have a lot more living, and learning, to do."

Story courtesy of the Duke University Office of Planned Giving

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The last of the 1900s brought us hew and interesting challenges. I believe that four evacuations in one semester is a record for the Marine Lab! I still remember the look on the faces of the newly arrived fall undergraduates on Sunday morning when I told them that they were going to have to be on their way to Durham by Sunday evening!

However, the fall semester gave those students a bonding experience in excess of the 'normal' Beaufort Experience. Luckily the disruption to the course schedule was actually minimal, and flexibility and preparedness skills developed in response to the storm events were added to the students' repertoire. In fact, I have begun to characterize the Marine Lab as more akin to a sailing craft on the ocean than to

Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment Marine Laboratory Beaufort, NC 28516-9721

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a normal terrestrial dwelling. On a boat, you assume that stormy weather may be a part of your passage. When the weather comes, you batten down the hatches and reef the sails, ride out the storm, and then unbatten and shake out the reefs. As the next weather decade is shaping up, we may do well to view our island in this way, and prepare to periodically batten and reef. With our excellent and committed faculty and staff, we are well positioned to do this.

On a related front (no weather pun intended!), we are also well positioned to adapt our science to the challenges of climatological events. As the lead article in this issue points out, Larry Crowder and Joe Ramus - and in fact almost all of our faculty in one way or another -leapt at the opportunity to take advantage of the fall weather events to gauge the response of the Albemarle-Pamlico system and its inhabit­ants. Our Marine Lab is well positioned to take advantage of such opportunities. Not only are we centrally located in terms of direct access to both sound and ocean, but with the RJV Susan Hudson we are capable of immediate and almost all-

weather access to the areas of the estuary most affected by the storm events. The willingness of our faculty and staff to seize the truly unique opportunities presented by the fall storm events represents a fine example of' going the extra mile', of the fantastic energy and enthusiasm that characterize the Duke Marine Lab. This energy and enthusiasm is infectious, and the results can be seen in the eyes (and resumes) of our students, who of course are also significant participants in our scientific endeavors.

As the buds come forth on our recently shorn crepe myrtles and recently planted magnolias, we look forward with some trepidation to the effects of the warming estuarine waters on the post­Floyd soup in the Pamlico Sound. We can hope that our delight in discovery associ­ated with the monitoring of these effects will not be too dampened by the direction of the effects themselves. In any event, we will hoist full sail into the future, in pursuit of the satisfaction that only challenge can bring.

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