Author: Molly Seelinger

New Evidence Concerning the Dinosaurs’ Extinction

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18, Issue 25

The extinction of the dinosaurs has been a mystery that has gripped the attention of people of all ages, from children with plastic dinosaur figurines to adults eagerly awaiting the release of the next Jurassic Park film. Recently, scientists have uncovered some clues that may help lead to obtaining the full story of how the dinosaurs went extinct, but these clues lie in a much more familiar animal than dinosaurs: birds.

Birds trace their ancestry all the way back to the dinosaurs. Many, including chickens, can trace their ancestry to a specific species of dinosaur, Archaeopteryx. Scientists have now begun to classify birds as being related to either ancient ground-dwelling or tree-dwelling species. They also discovered that the tree-dwelling birds, discovered via fossils, all became extinct due to the asteroid that killed the other dinosaurs 66 million years ago. In other words, all the birds that we see outside today, from cardinals to penguins, can be traced back to only ancient ground-dwelling birds. What does this tell us about the mass-extinction event that killed the dinosaurs? It also killed all the trees!

This deforestation is further confirmed by the species of ferns that exist today. Paleobotanist Antoine Bercovici of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC studied the spores and pollen of ferns found in rock layers that formed in the years after the asteroid impact. He discovered that all these ferns could be traced back to only two species of ferns. This indicated that there was a mass extinction of ferns species, resulting in rapid recolonizing by the two surviving species of ferns. Bercovici says this is seen today as well “when ferns recolonize lava flows in Hawaii or landslides after volcanic eruptions.”

This new evidence may seem small, but it is another piece in the giant puzzle that is the extinction of the dinosaurs. Scientists may now know why tree-dwelling birds living in the Cretaceous period died after the asteroid hit, but they still cannot explain why certain species of ground-dwelling ancient birds also died in this event. Scientists are excited to continue piecing together the evidence that will one day, completely answer the question, “What really happened when the dinosaurs went extinct?”

Sources:

Pickrell, John. “How did Dino-Era Birds Survive the Asteroid Apocalypse?” National Geographic. National Geographic. May 24, 2018. Web. May 30, 2018.

Zero Waste: An Emerging Reality

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 22

“Paper or plastic?” It’s a question often heard at the checkout line at the grocery store. For some, this question is insignificant, just another part of the customer service process. But for others, this question is very important, a step needed to help end the mass production of trash that is choking our planet.

Every week on some assigned day, almost all of us perform a necessary ritual. It is the day where we take our trash to the street. It is almost second nature at this point: take the trash outside to the street and by the end of the day, it will have all disappeared. But that trash goes to a landfill and that landfill does not completely break the trash down into non-harmful substances that can go back into the earth. Much of that trash cannot be broken down and can sometimes leak chemicals that poison groundwater that eventually makes its way to the ocean. What follows is often the destruction of ocean habitats and damage to our ecosystems. True, there are a plethora of regulations in place that try to prevent this from happening and they are helpful to a degree. However, a better way would be to just reduce the amount of trash that we produce.

The so-called “zero-waste movement” aims to reduce the amount of trash created each year. This movement is headed primarily by a group of women who have been able to cut down on the amount of trash that they create so much that their yearly trash is able to fit into a Mason jar. The zero-waste movement has five main principles: refuse, reduce, reuse, compost, and recycle. The first principle (refuse) is considered the most important. In order to minimize waste, zero wasters do not buy food that comes in packaging. And if they do, they buy in bulk. The small wrappers on vegetables we buy may seem insignificant, but the amount of plastic really adds up over the course of a year. Additionally, buying in bulk not only cuts down on the plastic waste, but it also saves zero-wasters lots of money. Kathryn Kellogg, a proponent of the zero-waste movement from Vallejo, California, states, “We also saved about $5,000 a year by purchasing fresh food instead of packaged, buying in bulk, and making our own products like cleaners and deodorant.”

Kellogg and other supporters of the zero-waste movement realize it is not an easy task to go from producing an average of 1,500 pounds of trash a year to zero pounds. However, they believe that every act which reduces trash is important. They point out that making even the simplest of changes can help the planet, such as switching out paper napkins with a cloth towel. When people hear of the zero-waste movement, they often initially believe it is some new radical idea. Kellogg says. “But it’s not a radical act to clean up a kitchen spill with a cloth towel instead of a paper towel.” Every little action counts.

You may not be able to limit yourself to a Mason jar’s amount of trash, but even producing one pound of trash less per person on earth could be extremely significant. The zero-waste movement may not radically change your life, but it does make you think about the importance of the tiny plastic wrappers that cover our vegetables and other unnecessary packaging. Just changing one wasteful habit could start to change the world.

Sources:

Leahy, Stephen. “How People Make Only a Jar of Trash a Year.” National Geographic. National Geographic. 18 May 2018. Web. 22 May 2018.

The Cost of Horseshoe Crab Blood

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 21

Horseshoe crabs are fascinating animals. They may look like prehistoric crabs but are actually more closely related to scorpions and spiders. They also happen to be one of the most important animals when it comes to keeping humans alive. Much more than the strange looking arthropods your children can pet in an interactive tank at the local aquarium, these animals are vital to human medicine.

The pale blue blood that circulates within the bodies of horseshoe crabs is extremely sensitive to bacterial pathogens. This has allowed biomedical scientists to use the blood of horseshoe crabs to test whether or not potentially life-saving medicines and medical devices are safe for humans. While this is extremely helpful for humans, it may not be so for horseshoe crabs. Scientists extract blood from the horseshoe crabs and then return them to the ocean. This is relatively safe; however, around 50,000 horseshoe crabs die during this process every year. Additionally, Asian horseshoe crabs have experienced dramatic population losses from habitat loss, as well as overfishing. In order to keep the horseshoe crab populations constant, some change needs to occur. If not, the biomedical industry could be seriously threatened.

Jeak Ling Ding is one scientist who has decided to expedite the change needed to preserve horseshoe crabs. Thirty years previously, Frederick Bang had discovered the amebocytes (or blood cells) in horseshoe crabs were especially resistant to bacteria. Over the course of thirty years, Bang standardized a way to remove these amebocytes in order to test if the certain medical equipment was sterile. Ding worked in a hospital attempting to discover the reason for the death of in-vitro fertilization embryos and she needed one of the kits developed by Bang. However, they were too expensive for her. So, she decided to make her own.

Factor C is a specific molecule in horseshoe crab amebocytes that detects the bacterial toxins. So, if she could find the gene that made factor C and could manipulate the DNA, she could make the factor C without the need to harm more horseshoe crabs. After many trials and errors, Ding discovered she could splice the DNA from the horseshoe crabs into insects that would then manufacture the factor C. This meant it was no longer necessary to bleed horseshoe crabs.

Although Ding has arrived at a solution, biomedical companies have been slow to adopt her method. They could potentially lose money if they adopt the factor C method and drop the traditional way of bleeding horseshoe crabs. But the population numbers of horseshoe crabs are dwindling, and they will continue to dwindle if nothing is done to help them. Additionally, many other species of animals rely on horseshoe crabs to survive, such as the red knot, a threatened species of bird. If we want to save the horseshoe crab, other threatened species, and our own biomedical industry, the factor C method should be adopted. By continuing to use the old method of blood extraction, horseshoe crabs may become fascinating animals of the past.

Sources:

Zhang, Sarah. “The Last Days of the Blue-Blood Harvest.” Atlantic. Atlantic. May 9, 2018. Web. May 15, 2018.

https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Invertebrates/Horseshoe-Crab

Glowing Puffin Beaks Surprise Scientists

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 20

We know that light in the visible spectrum is necessary for humans to be able to see. Since our eyes are able to observe only a relatively limited number of wavelengths on the entire light spectrum, we must rely on artificial lighting to guide us when the sun is down or we are in enclosed areas with no additional lighting. However, many other animals in our world use light in different ways. Some we know about and some have yet to be discovered. The Atlantic Puffin is just one example of an organism that utilizes light in a very interesting way.

Jamie Dunning, a research student at the University of Nottingham, was more than surprised to turn on a black light over a deceased Atlantic puffin and discover that its beak glowed. Now, the Atlantic puffin is considered to be one of 180 animals considered “biofluorescent,” meaning they reflect blue light and reemit another color—the most common being green, red, or orange.
This is different from bioluminescent animals who are able to create their own light which they emit through chemical reactions in their bodies. In other words, biofluorescent animals use light and bioluminescent animals create light.

Most of the animals that are able to be used or create light live in the world’s largest habitat: the ocean. Animals like fish and squid that live so far below the ocean’s surface where light cannot reach, use light in a variety of ways. Most of the time, light is used as a way of defending oneself from a predator. Deep sea squids use light to startle and distract predators before they quickly dart away back into the darkness. Other creatures, such as dinoflagellates, light up to summon a predator of the predator attempting to eat them. Additionally, some species of shrimp and dinoflagellates, who live near the surface of the water, may light up to blend in with the silhouettes created in the water by the sun at dusk. This makes these creatures invisible to predators, as their light matches the light on the water.

But why would a puffin’s beak light up? Tony Diamond, an ornithologist at the University of New Brunswick, had observed the same glowing orange light from a deceased puffin as Dunning, so they have put their data together. Right now, the team is aiming to discover whether living puffins also have glowing beaks, but they had to develop “puffin sunglasses,” first, so as not to harm the puffin’s eyes under the blacklight. The team hopes to be able to observe whether the beaks glow on live birds and hopefully discover why the beaks glow. Is it for the purpose of preventing predation or is it something else? This question has no answer yet, but researchers are hoping to find this out soon.

Sources:

Arnold, Carrie. “Puffin Beaks Glow in Surprising Discovery.” National Geographic National Geographic. 27 April 2018. Web. 4 May 2018.

Judson, Olivia. “Luminous Life.” National Geographic. National Geographic. March 2015. Web. 4 May 2018.

Preserving our Wetlands on Earth Day

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 19

With the arrival of spring comes one of the most underrated holidays: Earth Day. Although potentially talked about in schools as the day arrives, Earth Day is hardly the type of holiday that gathers media attention or is used for mattress sales like Christmas or Mother’s Day. However, Earth Day is a very important holiday, and it is also a relatively new holiday.

In 1962, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, a book that became so much more than an expose on pesticides. This book aroused public attention for environmental welfare and public health, not just in the United States, but in 24 different countries. Enter Gaylord Nelson, a senator from Wisconsin with a particular interest in the 1969 Santa Barbara, California oil spill. Seeing the passion that college students across America had for issues such as the Vietnam War, Nelson believed that he could put this passion to use in helping our environment. Nelson organized a committee, and on April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day was celebrated by over 20 million Americans. Various environmental groups from around the country with interests in pollution, wildlife, and many other issues realized their common goal: to protect the planet. By the end of 1970, the EPA was formed and the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act were passed as a result of this new concern for the environment.

Almost 50 years later, Earth Day is still very relevant. Groups around the country put in extra effort on Earth Day to clean up our environment. Instead of having great parties, clean-ups are organized at rivers, lakes, parks, and forests around America. One such clean-up taking place this year is at the Potomac and the Anacostia River. Located in the Washington DC area, both these rivers suffer from concerning amounts of pollution. Loaded with trash and chemicals from the great metropolitan area, the Anacostia an F for its level of health from the Anacostia Watershed Society. The Potomac received a D+ in 2007, but today, due to efforts of clean-up crews, it has a B rating. Crews kayak up and down these rivers, cleaning out the trash, and truly making a difference.

Rivers like the Potomac and the Anacostia are crucial to the environment as part of wetlands. Although not often picked as tourist destinations, wetlands are homes for thousands of organisms and are important for water quality. Just some functions of wetlands include feeding downstream waters, recharging groundwater supplies, and removing pollution from the habitats of plants and animals. In addition, many endangered species make their homes in wetlands. Economically, wetlands are beneficial, as well, due to being popular destinations for fishing and other recreational activities.

Unfortunately, wetlands have seen increasing exploitation in recent decades. Because they have valuable resources, they are often harmed in order to obtain these resources. Also, they are often deemed “unproductive” and drained for the use of developers. Not only is this dangerous for the many endangered species that live in these wetlands, but this is also harmful to us as humans who need water to be alive. Without wetlands, our ability to obtain clean water is seriously threatened.

Earth Day may lie on April 22, but what it represents should be celebrated throughout the year. Wetlands, as well as many other ecosystems across America, need to be protected for the health of our environment. We need to protect these ecosystems for the sake of ourselves and for the sake of the organisms that do not have a voice.

Sources:

Elasar, Dara. “This Earth Day, Head to the River.” Washington Post. Washington Post. April 16, 2018. Web. April 19, 2018.

“The History of Earth Day.” Earth Day Network. Earth Day Network. Web. April 19, 2018.

“Why are Wetlands So Important to Preserve?” Scientific American. Scientific American. Web. April 20, 2018.

 

Arbor Day and its Roots

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 18

Over the past few weeks, the landscape seems to have finally begun to make the transition from a cold, bleak winter to a bright and colorful spring. The world is starting to become green again and for this, we must certainly thank one group of organisms especially, the trees. Earth Day is on April 22nd, but just as important is Arbor Day which lies on April 27th this year. Slightly less well known or celebrated than Earth Day, Arbor Day is dedicated to the propagation and preservation of one of our most important resources, trees.

Arbor Day’s origins begin in 1854 when a man from Detroit moved to the Nebraska Territory. His name was J. Sterling Morton, and he was very passionate about trees. As editor of a prominent Nebraskan newspaper, Morton constantly wrote articles concerned with environmental and agricultural issues. He was especially concerned with the need for trees. He and his fellow pioneers certainly missed the aesthetic beauty of the trees they remembered from the east, but they also needed them for fuel, building materials, and windbreaks to help prevent soil erosion. He strongly advocated the planting of trees throughout the Nebraska Territory.

On January 4, 1872, Morton proposed that April 10, 1872, be “Arbor Day” to honor the importance of the trees he cared about so much. The new holiday was so popular that it is estimated that over one million trees were planted in the Nebraska Territory on that day. Arbor Day became a yearly celebration, but the date has moved around several times since. Soon, other states and territories began to adopt the holiday until it became a nationwide event. Today, Arbor Day is nationally celebrated on the last Friday in April and celebrated locally whichever weekend is the best for tree planting. Similar events now take place around the world.

Sterling Morton recognized the vast importance of trees which is still relevant 146 years later. Trees are an integral part of any ecosystem. Their leaves filter pollutants, improve air quality and help manage the effects of erosion, thereby improving water quality.  Without trees, we would be much hotter and spend a lot more money on our energy bills. It has been shown that shade can reduce air conditioning costs by up to 3o% in certain situations. Shade trees significantly decrease the temperature of asphalt by up to 36 degrees Fahrenheit and the temperature of car interiors by up to 47 degrees Fahrenheit. “All up, the shade provided by trees can reduce our physiologically equivalent temperature (that is, how warm we feel our surroundings to be) by between seven and 15°C, depending on our latitude. (The Conversation -2018) Additionally, without trees, many animals including birds, insects, and small mammals would be homeless. Psychologically, some studies have even shown that areas with more trees have less crime and that children with ADHD benefit from living in areas with more trees. The benefits trees bring to our environment are many. A world without trees would be very different from the world we now know.

Arbor Day is just as important today as it was on April 10, 1872. Local environments and ecosystems everywhere can still benefit from new trees being planted. The Arbor Day Foundation is a nonprofit conservation and education organization founded in 1972 in Nebraska, by John Rosenow and it is the largest nonprofit membership organization dedicated to tree planting. The Foundation’s stated corporate mission is “to inspire people to plant, nurture, and celebrate trees.” The Foundation programs are supported by members, donors, and corporate sponsors that share the same vision of a healthier and greener world. The Arbor Day Foundation has many different resources available to help you celebrate this important holiday at arborday.org. Simple as it may sound, every tree counts.

 

Sources:

“The History of Arbor Day.” Arbor Day Foundation. www.arborday.org/celebrate/history.cfm. Accessed 16 April 2018.

“How Trees Make a Difference.” National Wildlife Federation. www.nwf.org/Trees-for-Wildlife/About/Trees-Make-a-Difference. Accessed 16 April 2018.

“Can trees really cool our cities down?” The Conversation. http://theconversation.com/can-trees-really-cool-our-cities-down-44099 Accessed 19 April 2018

Swine Production and the Environment

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 17

Pigs, hogs, or swine, no matter what you call them, for many states they are a major industry. North Carolina is one of the top swine-producing states in the country and this is clear if you have ever traveled to the Tar Heel state. Not only are barbecue restaurants plentiful, but in some places, most notably eastern North Carolina, pigs outnumber the number of humans living in the area. In Duplin County, pigs outnumber humans by a ratio of 39:1. In 2012, hog farming and pork-product, processing industries employed nearly 13,000 people in North Carolina and were (and still are) a major source of revenue with pork sales totaling $2.9 billion. However, while this is something for swine producers to be proud of, some residents of eastern North Carolina are less than pleased.

With nearly 8.9 million pigs living in North Carolina, how to handle their waste becomes an enormous issue. While this may seem like a rather uncomplicated issue, it is quite the opposite. Anyone involved in food animal production is well aware of the fact that nuisance complaints are not a minor consideration. Swine farms, as well as any other types of animal farms, are loud and foul-smelling. Smells due to the feces produced by the animals can result in highly volatile altercations with neighbors. Some neighbors of swine farms have experienced the problem of having feces sprayed into their yards. Besides the powerful stench that can deprive neighbors of their right to use and enjoy their own property, feces can find its way into waterways and contaminate the water. Another problem is the lagoons which hold the excess feces from the farms. Meant to contain the potentially harmful chemicals from swine excrement, these can also pose a major problem in the case of extreme flooding. Hurricane Floyd is one example of this where the environment took a hit from overflowing lagoons.

But there is more to the story. Swine producers are not “evil” and not trying to hurt the environment. Swine producers are residents of the state where they produce, and some have come up with some very inventive solutions to the waste problem.  Tom Butler, a swine producer in Lillington, North Carolina, has slats on the floor of his barns where the feces fall through. It then travels to a manure digester where bacteria break down the feces. The methane gas produced in this process travels to a generator building where it is burned to create electricity. The left-over waste resides in lagoons that are covered with green plastic. Not only does the operation smell much better, but enough electricity is also produced to power 90 refrigerators.

A drawback to this solution is the price. It is a lot cheaper to just not install this type of waste management. There are other farms around the country that have similar digestors to manage their waste, but the price of such a digestor discourages many more farmers from adopting them. So, while there are solutions, it has yet to be seen if the solution can be reconciled as a cost of doing business and become more widespread. Until then, the local environment is still at risk.

Sources:

Peach, Sara. “What to Do About Pig Poop? North Carolina Fights a Rising Tide.” National Geographic. National Geographic. October 30, 2014. Web. April 6, 2018.

Food and Water Watch. (2010, August). Factory Farmed Hogs in North Carolina. January 17, 2014.

The Importance of Vultures

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 15

Vultures, many things may come to mind upon hearing this word. You may think of someone particularly unpleasant, someone who takes but never gives. Perhaps an image of a particularly ugly looking bird sitting on the side of the road, towering over roadkill comes to mind. Whatever the image, when you hear the term “vultures,” you might want to hold it in higher regard than you used to.

What is a vulture? Most people recognize this bird from while driving, seeing them on roadsides feasting on the carcasses of dead animals, but there is much more to a vulture. “Vulture” is actually a pretty general term, referring to a great many species of birds of prey that eat decomposing animals. Turkey vultures, black vultures, and California condors are just a few species of vultures that may be seen throughout the United States. Additionally, vultures have somewhat of a bad reputation. Not only do they eat dead, rotting animals, but they also have some pretty strange personal habits you may not be aware of. One of these habits is to vomit when feeling threatened and another is to urinate on themselves in order to clean themselves. Due to this bad reputation, vultures tend to be coined “vermin” or “pests.” Just type the word “vulture” into Google, and numerous sites will pop up concerned with how to get rid of vultures. Now, vultures may nest in inconvenient areas and cause damage, but the small amount of harm they may cause is more than offset by the greater good they bring to local environments.Vultures recycle many important nutrients into the environment. An ecosystem without vultures would be like a city without waste removal services. (Picture this in your mind.) Vultures do their work for the ecosystem very efficiently. They consume the meat of dead animals very quickly, which reduces the risk of large colonies of insects gathering around dead bodies. Give them a niche and they’ll take a mile! In doing so, vultures limit the risk of disease in ecosystems by keeping insect populations in check. Not only is this beneficial to us as humans, but also to the agricultural industry, since vultures also help prevent livestock from getting sick.

Although, this is not how everyone sees vultures. In Kenya, vultures are threatened due to livestock farmers poisoning the dead carcasses of the animals that predators have killed. When vultures feast on these carcasses, they also consume the poison, and this has led to the elimination of the Cinereous vulture in Africa, as well as the endangerment of more than seven other species of native African vultures. As noted above, the lack of carrion elimination has caused problems for ecosystems all over Africa. Darcy Ogada, assistant director of Africa programs at the Peregrine Fund, says African vultures “are the most threatened avian functional group in the world.” Species such as Egyptian vultures are nearly extinct.

When most people think of some of the important, endangered animals struggling to survive, they don’t often think of vultures. But vultures play a crucial role in our world and, in many places, are in danger of being eliminated. It is more important than ever to recognize not only how fascinating these birds are, from their strange behaviors to their monogamous mating patterns, but also how important they are to our world. Atticus Finch argued that it was a sin to kill a mockingbird, but perhaps it is an even greater sin to kill a vulture.

Sources:

Royte, Elizabeth. “Vultures are Revolting. Here’s Why We Need to Save Them.” National Geographic. National Geographic. January 2016. Web. March 27, 2018.

 

 

Penguins: Windows to the Past

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 13

Penguins have captured the hearts of many of us, long before March of the Penguins debuted in movie theaters. They are one of the most unique birds on our planet, from their habit of mating for life to their ability to “fly” not in the air, but through the water. For many years, scientists have used penguin populations to study the effects of a changing climate on the home of the penguins, the Antarctic. Recently though, large amounts of valuable new data have been collected and not just from penguin population numbers.  The data demonstrates not only the effects of a changing climate but many other environmental changes, created by humans, that need to be prevented in order to preserve the Antarctic.

At the American Geophysical Union’s 2018 Ocean Sciences Meeting held on February 12, 2018, researchers discussed the growing importance of penguins in the fight to preserve the Antarctic. As the “heart of the Antarctic food web,” researchers have found that penguins’ feathers and eggshells tell the story of the changing Antarctic environment. Penguin tissue cells capture important details concerning the food they take in. These particular tissues contain different amounts of certain chemicals that are specifically found in the fish and other sea life the penguins consume. For instance, krill may be high in the nitrogen-14 isotope and a fish may be high in nitrogen-15. If a penguin consumes a lot of krill, its eggshells and feathers will contain more nitrogen-14 than nitrogen-15.

Over-fishing has been a persistent problem in the Southern Ocean for many years. By observing the food penguins ingest, scientists can discover just how much over-fishing has affected the Antarctic environment, especially in regards to the declining krill population.

Kelton McMahon, an oceanic ecogeochemist at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston,  is using this information to track the changes in the environment. McMahon and his team compare penguins from the wild to captive penguins at the Omaha Henry Doorly Zoo in Nebraska to observe how much wild penguins’ diets have changed. They use different amino acids, as well as the different types of nitrogen isotopes, to study dietary changes. From this information, it has been determined that penguins’ diets consisted primarily of fish approximately 80 years ago, then krill, and now fish once again with the declining krill population. This information is extremely valuable in determining food web changes that may have resulted from over-fishing or climate change. Once scientists have determined what these changes are, they can take the best action needed in order to fix potentially negative effects.

Recently, scientists have found yet another characteristic that makes penguins even more fascinating. From eggshells preserved by vast sheets of ice and collected by researchers, scientists believe that they can determine what the Antarctic food web looked like as long as 10,000 years ago. Just as geologists use radioactive decay of certain isotopes to date the earth, scientists can now use the fossil remains of penguins to see into the past, and give us a new image of a time long ago, another chapter in the history of the home we call Earth.

 

Sources:

Gramling, Carolyn. “Look to Penguins to Track Antarctic Changes.” Science News. Science News. February 14, 2018. Web. March 20, 2018.

The Mysterious Case of Shelly Island

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 12

As spring draws nearer, the weather is supposed to gradually become warmer and warmer, until walking outside without a jacket is no longer outrageous. However, if you happen to live in North Carolina, the weather cannot seem to decide whether it wants to welcome spring or desperately hold on to winter. Today, snow falls, but tomorrow could bring temperatures in the high 70s or 80s. However, this is not the only phenomenon that North Carolina cannot seem to make up its mind about. Enter Shelly Island.

Shelly Island appeared overnight in July 2017. It is located in the famous Outer Banks off the coast of Cape Point, which is part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore. Scientists are not completely sure how the island originally formed, but they think it has something to do with the weather conditions of July 2017. Last summer, the winds, and currents appeared to be just right to bring sands from the northern barrier islands to the southern tip of Cape Point to form Shelly Island. This island became a new attraction for tourists interested in snorkeling and kayaking, and it grew to be about 27 acres in area. However, do not start planning your trip to Shelly Island for the summer of 2018. New photos from NASA show that Shelly Island disappeared just as quickly as it came. Moreover, the island is now beneath the waves once again.

How did this happen? The blame can be thrust upon the many hurricanes of the fall of 2017: Hurricanes Irma, Jose, and Maria. The erosion created by these storms first split the island in two and have now completely erased what was once Shelly Island. By October 2017, Shelly Island was “ninety percent gone,” according to Virginia businessman Ken Barlow who was one of many seeking ownership of the new island. Only a small crescent, about 100 acres in area, was left after the fall, and by February 2018 the island was no more.

Could Shelly Island return? Possibly. Again, scientists are not positive how Shelly Island came to be in the first place. However, people such as Barlow suspect the formation of the island had to do with nearby dredging operations, which are resuming. So hold on to your kayaks and your snorkeling equipment: Shelly Island could come back. This would be good news for local businesspeople interested in buying parts of the island and for the local economy that could benefit from growing interest from tourists. Shelly Island may be a mystery, but it is a mystery that comes with positive outcomes.

Sources:

Ghose, Tia. “Mysterious Sandbar Island that Formed Last Summer is Gone Once Again.” Live Science. Live Science. March 8, 2018. Web. March 12, 2018.

Price, Mark. “The strange new NC island mystifies the world yet again.” Charlotte Observer. Charlotte Observer. October 1, 2017. Web. March 12, 2018.