Sharks of Onslow County

Tag: North Carolina coast

How Sharks, Rays, and Ghost Sharks Read an Invisible Ocean

A shadow moves beneath the surface.

At first, it is only a darker shape inside darker water. Then the shape shifts, and the human mind does what it always does. It tries to make sense of what the eyes are seeing.

Fish? Ray? Shark? Something else?

We look harder. We search for a fin, a tail, a clear outline, some familiar clue that lets us name the animal before it disappears again. That is how we enter the ocean. We enter it as visual animals.

We rely on sight first.

On land, that makes sense. We look both ways before crossing a street. We recognize faces. We read signs. We notice color, distance, motion, and shape. Even when our other senses help us understand the world, sight usually leads the way.

But the ocean is not built for human sight.

Light bends and scatters. Sand clouds the water. Storms stir sediment. Tannins darken creeks and estuaries. Waves break the surface into fragments. A fish can vanish into shadow. A ray can disappear beneath one thin layer of sand. A shark can move through water we are staring directly into and still be almost impossible to see.

To us, the ocean often becomes less clear the moment we step into it.

To sharks, rays, skates, sawfish, and chimaeras, that same water is not empty. It is not silent. It is not blank.

It is filled with signals.

These animals belong to a group called chondrichthyans, fishes with skeletons made of cartilage instead of bone. Sharks, rays, skates, sawfish, and chimaeras all belong here. We often separate them by the way they look: sharks with their familiar fins and teeth, rays flattened against the bottom, skates moving quietly over sand, sawfish carrying a toothed rostrum, and chimaeras drifting through deeper water like something half-remembered from another age.

But they are connected by more than cartilage.

They share sensory worlds that are difficult for us to imagine because they include abilities we do not have in the same way. They use sight, smell, hearing, touch, and temperature, but they also read movement through the water with the lateral line. They detect weak electrical fields with ampullae of Lorenzini. They interpret the ocean through pressure, vibration, chemistry, contrast, motion, and life itself (Collin, 2012; Hart & Collin, 2015).

We may look into murky water and see almost nothing.

They may be reading an entire landscape.

The Ocean as a Different Kind of World

Sometimes, we do sense the world in ways that remind us we are not only visual.

A storm approaches, and some people feel pressure before the first drop of rain falls. Sinuses tighten. Migraines build. The air feels different. We walk into a dark room and suddenly sound becomes more important. A creak in the corner, a moving shadow, or a change in the air near our skin, these matter.

We still try to confirm everything with sight, but when sight weakens, the rest of the body steps forward.

Now imagine living in a world where sight is helpful, but never enough.

Water carries information differently than air. A fish swimming does not simply move from one place to another. It pushes water aside. A tailbeat sends movement outward. A struggling animal leaves a different pattern than a calm one. A crab moving under sand may be hidden from view, but its body is still alive. Muscles contract. A heart beats. Nerves fire. Gills pump. Chemicals dissolve and drift.

Every animal changes the water around it.

For chondrichthyans, that matters.

A shark does not have to wait until prey forms a perfect picture in front of its eyes. A ray does not need the seafloor to look busy in order for it to be busy. A skate does not need color to know the bottom is alive. A sawfish does not carry its rostrum only as a weapon. A chimaera in deep water does not move through darkness without information.

Their sensory systems allow them to gather information across different distances and conditions. Smell, hearing, vision, lateral line detection, and electroreception do not work as separate switches. They overlap, reinforce, and sometimes compensate for one another depending on habitat, prey, visibility, and behavior (Gardiner et al., 2014; Hart & Collin, 2015).

Their world is not less detailed than ours.

It is detailed differently.

Their world is not less detailed than ours.

It is detailed differently.

A Shark’s World

A shark moving through shallow water can be almost impossible to see until it is already there.

Its body color may match the shifting bottom. Sunlight breaks over its back. Ripples blur the outline. The water may be green, gray, brown, or blue depending on the tide, weather, and sediment. Even in clear water, the shark can appear as a shadow before it appears as an animal.

To us, the shark is barely more than a shadow. To the shark, the water is already full of information — movement, pressure, chemistry, and weak electrical signals that help it read the world before sight alone confirms what is there. | Image credit: D. Remmers

But the shark’s awareness does not begin when our eyes finally notice its shape.

Long before sight confirms what is nearby, other senses may already be gathering information. A fish moving ahead sends pressure changes through the water. A school changing direction creates a pattern of motion. A wounded or stressed animal moves differently than a calm animal. Muscle contractions and heartbeats create weak electrical fields. Odors move through the water as chemical trails.

To us, the ocean may look open.

To a shark, it is full of clues.

The lateral line runs along the body and head and helps detect movement, vibration, and changes in water flow. It is not vision, but it can reveal that something nearby is moving. It can help an animal sense direction, intensity, and disturbance (Webb, 2023).

The ampullae of Lorenzini add another layer. These small, jelly-filled pores are concentrated around the head and snout. They detect weak electrical fields produced by living animals. This is especially useful at close range, when prey is hidden, when light is low, or when the final decision about an object must be made (Bellono et al., 2017; Hart & Collin, 2015).

A hammerhead makes this easier to picture.

Its wide head may look strange to us, but that shape spreads sensory structures across a broader surface. Moving over the bottom, a hammerhead can sweep its head across the sand. A buried ray may be invisible to human eyes. To the shark, the sand may not be silent at all.

This is where our imagination reaches its limit.

We can compare electroreception to the feeling of standing near an electrical charge or sensing the strange energy in the air during an intense lightning storm. But even that comparison is weak. We do not move through the world constantly reading tiny electrical fields from other living bodies.

Sharks do.

Their world is not a human picture with extra details added. It is a different kind of picture altogether.

Sight Still Matters

Sharks have eyes, and those eyes matter.

They detect contrast, motion, light, shadow, and shape. Many sharks are well suited for low-light conditions. Some have reflective structures behind the retina that help make better use of dim light. This is part of why shark eyes may appear to glow when light catches them underwater. Vision is one piece of a broader sensory strategy that changes by species, habitat, and ecological role (Collin, 2012; Hart & Collin, 2015).

But shark vision is not human vision.

Humans rely heavily on color. We use it to separate objects, judge ripeness, read warning signs, choose clothing, and notice differences in our surroundings. Sharks appear to rely less on color and more on contrast, brightness, movement, and shape. They only have one type of cone photoreceptor with many rods. This makes them more likely to be color blind or have very limited color discrimination (Hart et al., 2019).

That does not mean sharks see poorly.

It means color may not be the priority in their world.

In water, color disappears with depth and distance. Red fades quickly. Light changes constantly. Suspended particles blur edges. A fish flashing silver, a silhouette against the surface, or a sudden burst of movement may matter more than whether something is red, green, or blue.

A shark’s visual world may be built more from shadow, contrast, motion, and form than from color.

This is important when we talk about shark-human encounters. A swimmer, surfer, or splashing person at the surface is not being interpreted through human categories. The shark is not thinking “person.” It is receiving a mixture of signals: movement, vibration, silhouette, chemical traces, electrical fields, contrast, and the surrounding activity of fish or bait.

Sometimes, those signals may be confusing.

The phrase “mistaken identity” is often used to explain shark bites, but it should be used carefully. It does not explain every bite. It does not mean sharks are foolish. It does not mean they are unable to tell anything apart. It means that, in some situations, the clues available to the shark may overlap with the clues produced by prey. This is why some human silhouettes at the surface can resemble seal and sea lion prey to a shark, especially when viewed from below and under certain movement conditions (Ryan et al., 2021).

We know a version of this ourselves.

Walk through a dark house at night and hear something move in the corner. Your eyes search for shape. Your ears sharpen. Your body tenses before your mind has enough information. You move closer. Maybe you speak into the darkness. Maybe you reach out with your hand or nudge with your foot.

Then the light turns on, and the intruder becomes a chair with a jacket over it.

You were not hunting the chair.

You were investigating a signal you did not fully understand.

A shark does not have hands. Its fins move it through the water, but they do not investigate the way our fingers do. Its mouth becomes one of the ways it tests the world. That does not make the animal cruel or mindless. It means its body solves a sensory problem differently than ours does.

For people, that difference can be dangerous. An investigative bite can still cause serious injury. But it is not the same thing as a shark deciding humans belong on the menu.

Most of the time, we do not match the full pattern of shark prey.

We smell different. We move differently. We do not behave like fish, rays, turtles, seals, or other natural prey. But in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong signals around us, we can become part of a confusing sensory scene.

This is why swimming near active fishing, bait, chum, or dense schools of baitfish matters. The shark is not being summoned by evil intent. It is following information.

The ocean is speaking in the language it knows.

The Ocean as Touch and Sound

A school of fish turns all at once.

There is no visible leader. No signal we can see. One moment the school moves in one direction, and the next it shifts like one silver body. Each fish keeps its place without crashing into the others. The turn happens faster than sight alone seems able to explain.

This is one of the easiest ways to understand the lateral line.

Fish do not only see their neighbors. They feel the water their neighbors move. Each tailbeat, each change in direction, each surge away from danger creates tiny changes in water motion. Those changes travel across the bodies of nearby fish.

The lateral line detects those movements.

This sensory system is found in many fishes, not only sharks and rays. It helps animals orient in currents, avoid obstacles, respond to predators, follow prey, and move together in groups. It turns water into a kind of touch-field. The structure and function of the lateral line vary across fishes, but its role in detecting water motion is central to how aquatic animals interpret movement around them (Webb et al., 2023).

In sharks, this sense is closely tied to the way sound and vibration move through water. We often think of hearing as something that happens only through ears, but underwater, the whole body can become part of how an animal detects vibration. The lateral line helps a shark feel nearby water movement across its body, while the inner ear detects sound and orientation. Together, these systems make the shark’s body seem less like a body moving through water and more like an instrument tuned to it (Collin, 2012; Hart & Collin, 2015; Webb, 2023).

For a shark, this means the ocean is never simply open space.

It has texture.

A mullet swimming calmly leaves one kind of disturbance. A frightened fish leaves another. A crab moving across the bottom creates a different pattern than a shrimp flicking backward. Waves break. Boat motors pulse. Rain hits the surface. Feet shuffle through sand. A fish struggles on a line. A school turns.

Each movement changes the water.

We might stand at the edge of an inlet and see only ripples. A shark, ray, or skate moving through that same water may sense layers of motion overlapping one another. Some signals fade into background noise. Others stand out.

A calm fish and a frantic fish do not write the same message.

Along the Onslow County coast, this matters. Our nearshore waters are not always clear. Wind, tide, storms, suspended sand, tannins from creeks, plankton blooms, and wave energy all change visibility. Animals living here cannot depend on sight alone in a world where the water can cloud overnight.

A shark does not need a perfect view to know something is moving.

A ray does not need to see every small animal beneath it to know the bottom is alive.

A fish in a school does not need to wait for its neighbor to bump into it before turning.

Water carries the conversation.

The Hidden Electricity of Living Things

The sandy bottom can look blank.

A flat stretch of seafloor may seem empty to us, especially when nothing obvious moves. But beneath that surface may be worms, clams, crabs, shrimp, small fish, or rays. Some are hiding. Some are resting. Some are feeding. Some are waiting for the tide to shift.

To our eyes, they disappear.

To an animal with electroreception, hidden does not always mean gone.

Ampullae of Lorenzini allow sharks, rays, skates, sawfish, and chimaeras to detect weak electrical fields. These fields are extremely small, but they are part of what living bodies produce. Muscles contract. Hearts beat. Nerves fire. In saltwater, and especially at close range, those signals can become useful information (Bellono et al., 2017; Collin, 2012).

The sand may cover the animal.

It does not erase it.

This is especially important for animals that feed along the bottom. A shark searching a flat may combine smell, movement, vision, and electroreception. A ray may use similar signals to locate prey in sediment. A sawfish carries this ability into one of the strangest-looking structures in the sea.

Electroreception also reminds us that the ocean is not only a visual habitat.

It is a habitat of fields and traces.

We are used to thinking an animal is hidden when we cannot see it. But concealment depends on who is looking, and how.

A crab hidden from a bird may not be hidden from a ray.

A ray hidden from us may not be hidden from a hammerhead.

A fish buried beneath sand may still be detectable to a predator passing overhead.

This does not make the ocean more frightening.

It makes it more alive.

A Ray’s World

A stingray resting in shallow water can vanish beneath a thin covering of sand.

Only the eyes may remain visible. Sometimes even those are difficult to see. The body becomes part of the bottom: a soft outline, a slight rise, a place where the sand seems smoother than the sand around it.

To us, a buried ray may feel like a surprise.

To the ray, the world is still open.

Its eyes sit high on the body, watching the water above. Its mouth is underneath, positioned for feeding along the bottom. Its spiracles allow water to move across the gills while the animal rests or feeds close to the seafloor. Its lateral line and electrosensory system help detect movement and electrical signals nearby (Bedore et al., 2014; Collin, 2012).

The ray does not need to see the world exactly as we do.

It lives in layers.

Above, there may be predators, shadows, swimmers, boats, birds, and changing light. Below and around it, there may be worms, shrimp, crabs, clams, and small fish hidden in or on the sediment. A ray’s flattened body makes sense in this in-between place. It is shaped for bottom life, but it is not cut off from the water column above it.

Its eyes are important, but they are not everything.

Rays can detect contrast, shape, motion, and orientation. Some rays may have stronger color discrimination than sharks. Some also have a reflective layer in the eye, the tapetum lucidum, that helps make better use of dim light (Hart et al., 2019). We often compare this to the eye shine seen in cats and other animals at night.

But a ray buried in sand is not simply waiting with its eyes.

It is reading pressure. It is reading smell. It is reading electrical traces from animals moving nearby. It is receiving information through more than one doorway.

This is why the stingray shuffle matters.

A stingray spine is not used to chase people. It is a defense. When a ray is stepped on or startled from above, the spine can rise quickly. The injury is real, but the behavior is not personal. The ray is responding to pressure and threat in the only way its body allows.

A shuffled foot gives warning.

It tells the hidden animal that something large is moving through the sand and gives it a chance to leave before contact happens.

That small human behavior recognizes something important: the shallow edge is shared space.

We may be wading through it.

The ray may be living in it.

A Skate’s World

Skates are often confused with rays.

From above, the difference may not seem important to a casual observer. Both are flattened. Both move close to the bottom. Both can disappear into the shape and color of the seafloor.

But skates are not simply stingrays without drama.

They are their own kind of bottom reader.

Like rays, skates use sensory systems that help them understand the seafloor without relying only on sight. Their eyes are positioned on top of the body, while the mouth is underneath. Their flattened form allows them to move close to the bottom, where many small animals hide in sand, shell hash, mud, and seagrass.

A skate moving over the bottom is not only looking.

It is sampling the landscape through touch, smell, pressure, and electricity.

This makes the bottom less like a floor and more like a page. Each small animal leaves some sign: a movement, a chemical trace, a disturbance, a weak electrical field, a change in sediment (Bedore et al., 2014).

Skates remind us that not every chondrichthian is built around speed, teeth, and open-water pursuit. Some are built for patience. Some are built for closeness. Some read the world by staying near the place where water meets sediment.

Along our coast, that meeting place matters.

Sand flats, tidal creeks, inlets, oyster edges, and shallow nearshore bottoms are not empty spaces between “real” habitats. They are habitats. They hold the smaller lives that larger animals follow.

To understand the skate or ray, we have to stop seeing the bottom as blank.

A Sawfish’s World

A sawfish looks almost impossible the first time you really consider it.

It has the flattened body of a ray, but extending from the head is a long, tooth-edged rostrum — the “saw” that gives the animal its name. It looks like a weapon, and it can be used that way. Sawfish can swing the rostrum through schools of fish, stunning or injuring prey. It can also help defend the animal.

But the saw is not only a blade.

It is also a sensory surface.

The rostrum contains electroreceptive organs, ampullae of Lorenzini, that help detect weak electrical signals from nearby animals. In other words, the part of the animal that looks most like a weapon is also part of how it reads the world.

That changes the way we see it.

A sawfish is not blindly sweeping through water with a strange tool attached to its face. It is carrying a detector through the habitat ahead of its body. The saw helps locate prey. It helps interpret the space in front of the animal. It turns the water ahead into information (Wueringer et al., 2011; Wueringer, 2012).

This is different from the way we usually imagine rays and skates sensing the bottom.

A ray or skate often reads the world close to and beneath its flattened body. Its mouth is underneath. Its eyes look upward. Its sensory systems help it interpret the bottom as it rests, glides, or feeds along the sediment. A sawfish, however, extends part of that sensory world forward. The rostrum projects into the water ahead of the body, giving the animal information about prey before the prey reaches the mouth or passes beneath the disc.

That changes the animal’s sensory shape.

A sawfish does not only sense what is under it.

It can sense what is ahead of it.

The saw becomes a leading edge of perception. As the animal moves, the rostrum samples the space in front of the body. A fish hidden in murky water, a prey item moving near the bottom, or a school passing just ahead may be detected through electrical signals before the sawfish strikes. The same structure that can stun prey can also help find it (Wueringer et al., 2011; Wueringer, 2012).

That is what makes the sawfish so fascinating.

The feature that looks most dramatic to us is not simply for attack or defense. It is part of the animal’s sensory map. It stretches the invisible world forward.

Smalltooth sawfish were historically found as far north as North Carolina, but today they are generally associated with Florida waters in the United States (NOAA Fisheries, 2025). Seeing one along the Onslow County coast would be unusual. Still, they belong in this story because they show how far the chondrichthian sensory world can go.

A body part we notice for its shape may be important because of what it senses.

The ocean often works that way.

The feature that looks strange to us may be perfectly sensible in the world where the animal lives.

A Chimaera’s World

Far from the beach, beyond the bright shallows and beyond the places most of us will ever swim, chimaeras move through deeper water.

They are sometimes called ghost sharks, though they are not true sharks. They are relatives within the larger chondrichthian group, with cartilage skeletons and a long evolutionary history. Their bodies seem stitched together from familiar parts in unfamiliar ways: large eyes, winglike fins, smooth skin, and tooth plates instead of the replaceable teeth we associate with many sharks.

They look like animals from the edge of imagination.

But their strangeness is not random.

Many chimaeras live in deep, dim environments where sight has limits. In that world, an animal cannot depend on color and daylight the way we do at the surface. Light fades. Pressure increases the deeper you go. The landscape becomes colder, darker, and harder for human senses to understand.

A chimaera still has eyes, and those eyes can be large. But like other chondrichthyans, chimaeras also use sensory structures that detect electrical fields. In deep water, where prey may be sparse and visibility limited, the ability to detect life without needing a clear visual image becomes essential (Bottaro et al., 2022).

A chimaera reminds us that “seeing” does not always mean forming a bright picture.

Sometimes it means detecting what is alive in darkness.

That may be the hardest part for us to imagine. We tend to picture the deep sea as emptiness because our senses fail there. But the animals that live there are not moving through emptiness. They are moving through a world shaped by pressure, chemistry, temperature, vibration, faint light, and electrical traces.

The deep sea is not empty.

It is written in a language we barely read.

Reading the Ocean Instead of Fearing the Shadow

It is easy to turn sharks into symbols.

Fear does that. So do movies, headlines, and stories told from the shoreline after something frightening happens. A fin becomes a threat. A bite becomes proof of intent. A shadow becomes a monster.

But the real animal is more interesting than the symbol.

A shark is not moving through the water thinking like a person. A ray is not buried beneath the sand waiting for a human foot. A skate is not a flat shadow without a story. A sawfish is not only a saw. A chimaera is not only a ghost.

Each animal is built for a sensory world we do not naturally share.

That does not mean we ignore risk. Quite the opposite. Understanding these senses helps us behave with more respect in the water. We can avoid swimming near fishing activity, bait, or chum. We can pay attention when baitfish are schooling near shore. We can shuffle our feet in ray habitat. We can remember that murky water changes the way animals rely on different senses. We can stop assuming that clear human intent matters in an animal’s sensory landscape.

The ocean does not interpret us the way we interpret ourselves.

We may enter the water as swimmers, surfers, paddlers, anglers, or beachgoers. But to the animals already living there, we are also movement, pressure, chemistry, vibration, shadow, sound, and electricity.

We are part of the signal.

That is humbling, and it should be.

Our world is three-dimensional, but it is still mostly built around what we can see. Their world is three-dimensional too, but it includes layers we barely notice.

They are not seeing less of the ocean than we are. They are reading more of it differently. And maybe that is the point.

Standing at the edge of the ocean, we see waves, color, and surface. Beneath that surface, other animals are reading movement, pressure, chemistry, and electrical traces in ways we cannot naturally feel.

The shark may not be looking for us.

The ray may not be hiding from us.

The fish may not be moving randomly.

They are reading the ocean.

We are only beginning to learn the alphabet.

Standing at the edge of the ocean, we see waves, color, and surface. Beneath that surface, sharks, rays, skates, sawfish, and chimaeras read movement, pressure, chemistry, shadow, and electrical traces in ways we cannot naturally feel. | Image credit: A. Mitchell

References

Bangley, C. (2026, January 26). Sharks of NC. Coastwatch. https://ncseagrant.ncsu.edu/coastwatch/the-sharks-of-north-carolina/

Bedore, C. N., Harris, L. L., & Kajiura, S. M. (2014). Behavioral responses of batoid elasmobranchs to prey-simulating electric fields are correlated to peripheral sensory morphology and ecology. Zoology, 117(2), 95-103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.zool.2013.09.002

Bellono, N. W., Leitch, D. B., & Julius, D. (2017). Molecular basis of ancestral vertebrate electroreception. Nature, 543(7645), 391-396. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature21401

Bottaro, M. (2022). Sixth sense in the deep-sea: The electrosensory system in ghost shark Chimaera monstrosa. Scientific Reports, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-14076-2

Collin, S. P. (2012). The Neuroecology of cartilaginous fishes: Sensory strategies for survival. Brain, Behavior and Evolution, 80(2), 80-96. https://doi.org/10.1159/000339870

Gardiner, J. M., Atema, J., Hueter, R. E., & Motta, P. J. (2014). Multisensory integration and behavioral plasticity in sharks from different ecological niches. PLoS ONE, 9(4), e93036. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0093036

Hart, N. S., & Collin, S. P. (2015). Sharks senses and shark repellents. Integrative Zoology, 10(1), 38-64. https://doi.org/10.1111/1749-4877.12095

Hart, N. S., Lamb, T. D., Patel, H. R., Chuah, A., Natoli, R. C., Hudson, N. J., Cutmore, S. C., Davies, W. I., Collin, S. P., & Hunt, D. M. (2019). Visual Opsin diversity in sharks and rays. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 37(3), 811-827. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msz269

NOAA Fisheries. (2025). Smalltooth sawfish. NOAA. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/smalltooth-sawfish

Ryan, L. A., Slip, D. J., Chapuis, L., Collin, S. P., Gennari, E., Hemmi, J. M., How, M. J., Huveneers, C., Peddemors, V. M., Tosetto, L., & Hart, N. S. (2021). A shark’s eye view: Testing the ‘mistaken identity theory’ behind shark bites on humans. Journal of The Royal Society Interface, 18(183). https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2021.0533

Webb, J. F. (2023). Structural and functional evolution of the mechanosensory lateral line system of fishes. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 154(6), 3526-3542. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0022565

Wueringer, B. E. (2012). Electroreception in elasmobranchs: Sawfish as a case study. Brain, Behavior and Evolution, 80(2), 97-107. https://doi.org/10.1159/000339873

Wueringer, B., Peverell, S., Seymour, J., Squire, Jr., L., Kajiura, S., & Collin, S. (2011). Sensory systems in Sawfishes. 1. The ampullae of Lorenzini. Brain, Behavior and Evolution, 78(2), 139-149. https://doi.org/10.1159/000329515

July 3, 2026
The Marsh’s Quiet Workforce: More Than a Rabbit

More Than Meets the Eye

Spend enough time walking along a salt marsh and you’ll eventually stop noticing the marsh rabbits.

Not because they’ve disappeared.

Because they’ve become part of the landscape.

They feed quietly along the marsh edge, slipping into the grasses when startled before appearing again somewhere you didn’t expect. Some evenings you may count half a dozen. Other days you wonder if there were ever any there at all.

Unlike the brighter cottontails many people are used to seeing, marsh rabbits are darker, with coarse brown to reddish-brown fur, a grayish underside, and a rusty cinnamon patch along the back of the neck. Even the tail gives them away. Instead of flashing bright white, it appears darker and more bluish, one reason marsh rabbits have sometimes been called “bluetails” (Chapman & Trani, 2007; Chapman & Willner, 1981).

Like so much of the marsh, they’re easy to overlook.

A marsh rabbit may look like a familiar backyard visitor, but its role reaches far beyond the grass beneath it. | Image credit: skylarkymalarkey, iNaturalist

For more than a century, naturalists have described marsh rabbits (Sylvilagus palustris) by documenting where they lived, what they looked like, and what they ate (Rhoads & Young, 1897). Those observations gave us our first understanding of the species. Today, ecology invites us to ask a different question.

What happens because marsh rabbits are here?

The answer reaches far beyond the rabbit itself.

We often measure an animal’s importance by how exciting it is to watch.

The marsh doesn’t.

The marsh measures importance by how many lives are connected to one another (Soulé et al., 2003).

Following One Rabbit

If you’ve ever taken a science class, you’ve probably learned the First Law of Conservation of Energy: energy cannot be created or destroyed. It only changes form.

For many of us, that idea remained in a textbook or written across a classroom whiteboard. It became something to memorize rather than something we expected to witness.

Yet every walk beside a salt marsh quietly brings that principle to life.

Standing beside a marsh, it’s easy to underestimate what you’re seeing. From a distance, much of it appears to be little more than grass. Yet every growing season those grasses capture enormous amounts of energy from the sun, making salt marshes among the most productive ecosystems on Earth (Frizzell, 1988).

That productivity, however, cannot remain in the plants.

It has to move.

Imagine following a single marsh rabbit through its life.

Following one marsh rabbit means following the grasses, cover, and hidden pathways that connect it to the larger marsh. | Image credit: jorgenols, iNaturalist

At only about 2.5 to 3.5 pounds, its small body holds energy gathered first by the marsh plants around it (Chapman & Trani, 2007; Chapman & Willner, 1981).The grasses it consumes become muscle, bone, blood, fur, and new life. That rabbit may one day feed a hawk, an owl, a fox, a bobcat, or a snake. Throughout its life it supports parasites. After its death it feeds scavengers, fungi, bacteria, and countless decomposers before eventually returning nutrients to the marsh where another season of growth begins.

Nothing has appeared from nowhere.

Nothing has truly disappeared.

The energy has simply changed form.

Every day, marsh rabbits transform marsh vegetation into something that can support an entirely different community of organisms (Chapman & Trani, 2007; Chapman & Willner, 1981).

The rabbit isn’t the end of the story.

In many ways, it’s where the story begins.

More Than a Meal

Spend a few minutes watching a marsh rabbit and it may not seem particularly busy.

It grazes along the marsh edge, pauses to listen, slips into dense cover, then returns to feeding when the danger seems to have passed. At first glance, it looks like a small animal moving through its day.

But even before a marsh rabbit becomes food for something else, it is already shaping the marsh around it.

Every bite influences which plants are grazed and which continue growing (Conner & Cherry, 2017). As it moves between the marsh edge, nearby cover, and slightly higher ground, the rabbit is also moving through the boundary between habitats most of us see as separate. The same dense vegetation that protects the rabbit also provides shelter for insects, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and countless other small lives moving through the marsh (Canepuccia et al., 2023; Larsen & Gray et al., 2021; Wigley & Lancia, 1998).

A marsh rabbit browses at the edge, where each ordinary bite helps move energy through the landscape. | Image credit: cadecampbell, iNaturalist

This is why the rabbit matters before the hawk ever appears.

Its value is not limited to becoming prey. Its ordinary life helps move energy, shape vegetation, and connect habitats long before that energy travels farther up the food web (Chapman & Trani, 2007; Chapman & Willner, 1981; Conner & Cherry, 2017).

Perhaps that is the quiet work of a marsh rabbit.

Not simply feeding something else.

But helping hold together the conditions that allow so much else to live there.

Why There Are So Many

Sometimes marsh rabbits seem to be everywhere — in yards, along road edges, near parking lots, and wherever the Spartina meets slightly higher ground.

A young marsh rabbit beside an adult shows the visible side of abundance, but reproduction is only part of the story. | Image credit: Wolfgang, iNaturalist

The easy explanation is that rabbits reproduce quickly. They can produce several litters in a year, often three to seven, with roughly 15 to 20 young produced annually under favorable conditions (Holler & Conaway, 1979).

That is true, but it is not the whole story.

Nature rarely invests heavily in something that does not matter. In a marsh, abundance is not waste. It is part of the system.

Marsh rabbits live under constant pressure. Every choice — where to feed, when to move, when to freeze, and when to disappear into the grasses — is shaped by predators, tides, weather, and the daily balance between finding food and becoming food (Hill et al., 2019; Holler & Conaway, 1979).

Predators influence far more than the animals they catch. Their presence can change where prey feed, how long they remain exposed, and how energy moves through the landscape (Suraci et al., 2019). When predator communities shift, those changes can ripple through the food web in ways that affect many other species (Bransford et al., 2024; Jiménez et al., 2019) .

Seen this way, abundant marsh rabbits are not simply evidence of successful reproduction.

They are evidence of how much work this one ordinary species performs.

The Rabbit You Didn’t See

Perhaps this also explains something you’ve probably noticed yourself.

One moment several marsh rabbits are feeding along the marsh edge.

You look away for only a moment.

When you look back, they’re gone.

They haven’t left the marsh.

Unlike many rabbits people are used to seeing, marsh rabbits are strong swimmers. Water is not simply something they avoid; it is part of the landscape they know how to use. In a place shaped by tides, wet ground, and narrow edges of cover, the ability to move through water helps explain how they can vanish so completely without ever leaving the marsh (Chapman & Trani, 2007; Chapman & Willner, 1981).

The same dense vegetation that feeds them also protects them. Slight changes in elevation, the rhythm of the tides, the angle of the evening sun, and generations of natural selection have shaped an animal that survives by knowing exactly when to be seen — and when not to be (Chapman & Willner, 1981; Holler & Conaway, 1979).

The rabbit disappeared from sight.

Its place in the marsh never did.

Looking at the Marsh Differently

The next time you notice a marsh rabbit quietly feeding along the marsh edge, pause before it disappears.

What once looked like an ordinary rabbit is now something entirely different.

Not because the rabbit has changed.

But because you can now see the countless connections passing through it (Soulé et al., 2003).

And once you see those connections, the marsh becomes harder to overlook.

A marsh rabbit slips back into the edge, leaving only a glimpse of the connections still moving through the marsh. | Image credit: maxnel, iNaturalist

References

Bransford, T. D., Harris, S. A., & Forys, E. A. (2024). Seasonal variation in mammalian Mesopredator spatiotemporal overlap on a barrier island complex. Animals, 14(16), 2431. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani14162431

Canepuccia, A. D., Fanjul, M. S., & Iribarne, O. O. (2023). Global distribution and richness of terrestrial mammals in tidal marshes. Diversity and Distributions, 29(5), 598-612. https://doi.org/10.1111/ddi.13683

Chapman, B. R., & Trani, M. K. (2007). Marsh Rabbit (Sylvilagus palustris). In The Land Manager’s Guide to Mammals of the South (pp. 247-251). Durham, NC: The Nature Conservancy; Atlanta, GA: U.S. Forest Service.

Chapman, J. A., & Willner, G. R. (1981). Sylvilagus palustris. Mammalian Species, (153), 1. https://doi.org/10.2307/3503947

Conner, L. M., & Cherry, M. J. (2017). Considering Herbivory and Predation in Forest Management. In Ecological Restoration and Management of Longleaf Pine Forests (1st ed., p. 12). CRC Press.

Frizzell, E. K. (1988). Mammals and Wetlands. In The Ecology and Management of Wetlands: Volume 1: Ecology of Wetlands (1st ed., pp. 213-226). Croom Helm Ltd.; Timber Press.

Hill, J. E., DeVault, T. L., & Belant, J. L. (2019). Cause‐specific mortality of the world’s terrestrial vertebrates. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 28(5), 680-689. https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.12881

Holler, N. R., & Conaway, C. H. (1979). Reproduction of the marsh rabbit (Sylvilagus palustris) in South Florida. Journal of Mammalogy, 60(4), 769-777. https://doi.org/10.2307/1380192

Jiménez, J., Nuñez-Arjona, J. C., Mougeot, F., Ferreras, P., González, L. M., García-Domínguez, F., Muñoz-Igualada, J., Palacios, M. J., Pla, S., Rueda, C., Villaespesa, F., Nájera, F., Palomares, F., & López-Bao, J. V. (2019). Restoring APEX predators can reduce mesopredator abundances. Biological Conservation, 238, 108234. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2019.108234

Larsen-Gray, A. L., Loeb, S. C., & Kalcounis-Rueppell, M. C. (2021). Rodent population and community responses to experimental, large scale, long-term coarse Woody debris manipulations. Forest Ecology and Management, 496, 119427. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2021.119427

Macarthur, R., & Levins, R. (1967). The limiting similarity, convergence, and divergence of coexisting species. The American Naturalist, 101(921), 377-385. https://doi.org/10.1086/282505

Rhoads, S. N., & Young, R. T. (1897). Notes on a Collection of Small Mammals from Northeastern North Carolina. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 49, 303-312. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4062279?seq=1

Soulé, M. E., Estes, J. A., Berger, J., & Del Rio, C. M. (2003). Ecological effectiveness: Conservation goals for interactive species. Conservation Biology, 17(5), 1238-1250. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1523-1739.2003.01599.x

Suraci, J. P., Clinchy, M., Zanette, L. Y., & Wilmers, C. C. (2019). Fear of humans as APEX predators has landscape‐scale impacts from mountain lions to mice. Ecology Letters, 22(10), 1578-1586. https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13344

Wigley, T. B., & Lancia, R. A. (1998). Wildlife Communities. In Southern Forested Wetlands (1st ed., p. 32). Routledge.

June 26, 2026
When the Water Feels Different: What Warmer Summers Mean Along the Onslow County Coast

Most changes in the ocean happen long before we notice them.

The water still looks blue. Waves continue to break across the sandbars. Beachgoers spread their towels beneath the same summer sun, children chase ghost crabs along the tide line, and anglers cast into the surf hoping for a bite.

Yet beneath the surface, a warming ocean is altering the conditions that shape life along the coast.

The changes begin with microscopic organisms drifting through the water column and ripple outward through fish, shellfish, jellyfish, and eventually the people who swim, fish, and play in these waters. Scientists have documented rising ocean temperatures worldwide, with the ocean absorbing the vast majority of the excess heat generated by a warming climate (IPCC, 2023; NASA, 2025).

For beachgoers along the Onslow County coast, these changes often appear as small observations. Water that feels warmer than it once did. Green swirls visible in drone photographs. Jellyfish gathering along the shoreline. Questions about bacteria, shellfish closures, and changing fish patterns.

At first glance, these may seem unrelated.

In reality, they are all connected.

A Longer Summer Beneath the Surface

The ocean does not warm as quickly as the air above it, but it holds heat much longer.

As coastal waters warm earlier in spring and remain warm later into autumn, marine organisms experience something similar to a longer growing season on land. Processes that once occurred over a few summer months may now persist for much longer periods – lasting later into the year or shifting the timing of organisms that are responding to environmental conditions (IPCC, 2023; Menzel et al., 2006).

For marine life, temperature influences nearly everything. Growth rates, feeding behavior, reproduction, migration, and metabolism are all affected by the warmth of the surrounding water (Pörtner & Knust, 2007).

For many species, warmer water means increased biological activity. But every response carries consequences that ripple through the food web.

The first organisms to respond are often the smallest.

When Tiny Things Respond First

Most beachgoers never think about what is suspended in the water around them.

Unlike a forest, marsh, or coral reef, much of the ocean’s life is not immediately visible. Looking across the surf, the water may appear empty except for an occasional fish, jellyfish, or diving bird.

Yet the water column itself is home to countless drifting organisms. Some are microscopic plants. Others are microscopic animals. Together, they form a community known as plankton.

Among the most important are phytoplankton—tiny plant-like organisms that drift with currents and tides. Though nearly invisible to the naked eye, they capture sunlight, form the foundation of marine food webs, and produce much of the oxygen found in Earth’s atmosphere (Falkowski et al., 1998).

Feeding on them are zooplankton, a diverse group of drifting animals that includes tiny crustaceans, larval fish, and the early life stages of many marine organisms. Nearly everything in the ocean depends on this microscopic world in some way.

As temperatures rise and sunlight remains abundant, phytoplankton growth can increase. In many cases, this increased productivity benefits marine ecosystems by providing more food for zooplankton, shellfish, and small fish.

Sometimes, however, the changes become visible.

Drone photographs, fishing reports, and satellite imagery occasionally reveal ribbons and swirls of green water along the coastline. Many people assume these colors indicate pollution, but the explanation is often more complex.

In some cases, the green color reflects increased concentrations of phytoplankton. In others, it may result from suspended sediment, river discharge, or other naturally occurring materials in the water (Behrenfeld et al., 2006).

Green water does not automatically mean unhealthy water.

More often, it is a visible reminder that biological activity is taking place beneath the surface—activity that most beachgoers never see.

In fact, many periods of greener water reflect productive conditions that support marine food webs. Increased phytoplankton can provide more food for zooplankton, shellfish, and small fish, creating benefits that ripple through the ecosystem. The presence of abundant microscopic life is often a sign that the ocean is actively supporting the organisms that depend upon it.

Not all blooms are beneficial, however.

Occasionally, beachgoers hear news reports about harmful algal blooms and wonder whether the water they are seeing is part of one.

Under certain conditions, a small number of phytoplankton species can reproduce so rapidly that they begin affecting the ecosystem around them. These events are known as harmful algal blooms.

Along U.S. coastlines, some of the better-known examples include Karenia brevis, which causes many Gulf Coast red tides; Alexandrium species, which can produce toxins associated with paralytic shellfish poisoning; and Pseudo-nitzschia, which produces domoic acid and has been linked to shellfish closures and wildlife impacts in several regions (Anderson et al., 2012; Trainer et al., 2012).

Unlike the seasonal increases in phytoplankton that help support marine food webs, harmful blooms can stress marine life and create concerns for people. Some produce toxins that accumulate in shellfish, leading to temporary harvesting closures. Others contribute to oxygen declines as large concentrations of algae die and decompose (Anderson et al., 2002).

For beachgoers, the challenge is that harmful blooms do not always look the way people expect. A bloom may appear as a patch of unusually dense water, a streak of discoloration, or sometimes little different from surrounding water. Color alone rarely tells the whole story.

In some cases, blooms may discolor the water, turning it red, rust-colored, brown, orange, or an unusually dense green. Some may also produce odors that people describe as sulfur-like, fishy, or similar to decaying vegetation (Gilbert et al., 2005; Gobler, 2020).

Not all green water is the same. Satellite imagery can reveal differences in phytoplankton concentrations across coastal waters. Many blooms support productive marine ecosystems, while others may become dense enough to affect water quality and ecosystem health. | Image credit: EPA cyanWeb, https://qed.epa.gov/cyanweb/

Fortunately, most periods of pale green, emerald green, or slightly tea-colored water along the Carolina coast are not harmful algal blooms. More often, they reflect normal concentrations of phytoplankton, suspended sediment, river discharge, or other natural processes.

The challenge is that the water does not always reveal which is which at first glance. What appears to be a simple color change may be telling a much more complicated story beneath the surface.

The Oxygen Paradox

Warm water creates a biological contradiction.

As temperatures rise, marine organisms require more oxygen to stay active and carry out basic life processes. At the same time, warmer water naturally holds less dissolved oxygen—the tiny oxygen molecules mixed into the water that fish, crabs, and many other marine animals breathe. Unlike oxygen in the air around us, this oxygen must remain suspended within the water itself, and warmer water cannot hold as much of it as cooler water (Keeling et al., 2010).

In other words, as the demand for oxygen increases, the supply decreases. Scientists refer to this growing challenge as ocean deoxygenation, a phenomenon driven in part by warming oceans and documented in coastal waters around the world (Breitburg et al., 2018; Diaz & Rosenberg, 2008).

The effects are often invisible to beachgoers. Unlike a jellyfish bloom or a patch of green water, low oxygen leaves few obvious clues for someone standing on the shoreline.

Fish may become sluggish, gather near inlets or channels, or disappear from places where they are normally common long before any obvious signs appear at the surface. Crabs, shrimp, and other marine organisms must work harder to find places with enough oxygen to survive. Some may move into shallower water, concentrate in tidal channels, or bury themselves in sediment where conditions remain tolerable. Some areas become less favorable, while others provide temporary pockets of suitable habitat.

The ocean begins to rearrange itself.

Following the Fish

Stand on the beach long enough and patterns begin to emerge.

A stretch of water that looked empty an hour ago suddenly flickers with baitfish. Birds gather over a patch of surf. A school of fish appears just beyond a sandbar, then vanishes as quickly as it arrived.

Most of these movements happen without drawing much attention. To someone walking the shoreline, the ocean can seem unchanged from one day to the next.

Beneath the surface, however, marine life is constantly adjusting.

Fish are not fixed to one place. They move through the water searching for conditions that suit them, often responding to changes that people cannot see. A slight difference in temperature, a pocket of water with more oxygen, or a concentration of prey can be enough to shift where fish gather (Pörtner & Knust, 2007).

Along the beaches of Onslow County, these adjustments may be playing out right in front of us.

Anglers sometimes notice schools of mullet, menhaden, silversides, or other baitfish stacked along a sandbar. Predatory fish such as bluefish, Spanish mackerel, red drum, or even small sharks may linger near an inlet. Feeding activity may suddenly erupt close to shore, with baitfish leaping from the water as predators chase them, birds diving repeatedly into the surf, and flashes of silver visible just beyond the breakers. Tides, currents, and seasonal migrations all help shape these patterns, but fish are also responding to the changing conditions around them.

Even the breaking surf can matter.

Where waves tumble across shallow bars, the water is constantly being mixed and stirred. Oxygen from the atmosphere is worked back into the water, creating conditions with higher oxygen levels than nearby areas where the water is calmer and moves less. What looks like nothing more than a line of breaking waves can become a place where marine life gathers.

Most beachgoers never notice these subtle shifts.

They simply see fish where fish happen to be.

Yet changing ocean conditions are becoming an increasingly important part of the story. Fish may feed in a different stretch of surf than usual, baitfish may gather in unexpected places, or seasonal arrivals may occur a little earlier or later than expected. Most of the time, the reasons remain hidden beneath the surface, but the movements themselves reveal that marine life is responding to a changing ocean (Pinsky et al., 2013).

The ocean is not standing still.

And neither are the fish.

The Species That Thrive

Not every organism responds to warming water in the same way.

Some struggle.

Others thrive.

For many beachgoers, one of the most noticeable signs of seasonal change arrives as translucent shapes drifting through the surf. As plankton populations increase and warm conditions persist, the same environmental changes influencing fish and other marine life can also create favorable conditions for jellyfish.

Jellyfish are a familiar part of coastal life in Onslow County, but their numbers can vary dramatically from season to season. During late spring, summer, and early fall, when air and water temperatures commonly reach about 68–86°F (20–30°C), conditions often become more favorable for larger jellyfish populations than during the colder months.

Most people first notice them while wading in the shallows, scanning the water from a pier, or walking the beach after a storm. A shoreline that seemed empty a few weeks earlier may suddenly hold dozens of stranded jellyfish along the tide line. Depending on the season, visitors might encounter moon jellies pulsing just beneath the surface, cannonball jellies washing ashore in clusters, or the unmistakable blue floats of Portuguese man o’ war carried in by winds and currents.

A shoreline covered with cannonball jellies can appear almost overnight. In reality, the conditions supporting these blooms often develop over weeks or months as water temperatures, food availability, and ocean currents change. | Image credit: Cape Hatteras National Seashore

These appearances can feel sudden, but they rarely are.

A shoreline that seems free of jellyfish one week may be dotted with them the next. To someone standing on the beach, it can feel as though they arrived overnight.

Much of a jellyfish’s life unfolds out of sight. Many drift offshore, while others pass through life stages that most people never notice. As waters warm and food becomes more abundant, conditions can support larger populations. Sometimes the result is a bloom—a period when unusually large numbers gather in coastal waters and become difficult to ignore.

In reality, the conditions that support them may have been developing for weeks or even months. While warmer water does not automatically mean more jellyfish everywhere (Condon et al., 2012), seasonal warming can contribute to periods when jellyfish become unusually abundant in nearshore waters. Currents, food availability, and other environmental factors also influence when and where these blooms occur (Purcell, 2005; Richardson et al., 2009).

For observers on the shore, jellyfish are often among the first visible reminders that changes in ocean conditions do not stay hidden beneath the surface for long.

Not every organism has the ability to drift or swim away.

The Organisms That Cannot Leave

Fish can relocate.

Jellyfish can drift with currents.

Shellfish remain where they are.

For many beachgoers, oysters, clams, and mussels are simply part of the coastal landscape—something encountered at low tide, served at a seafood restaurant, or harvested during shellfish season.

Yet these animals spend their lives doing something remarkable.

Oysters, clams, mussels, and other shellfish continuously draw water through their bodies, removing microscopic food particles as they feed. This is why they are known as filter feeders. A single adult oyster can filter up to 50 gallons (190 L) of water per day, depending on temperature, salinity, and other environmental factors (Jansen, 2023; zu Ermgassen et al., 2012).

An oyster reef does not simply sit on the bottom. Day and night, every oyster is quietly filtering the estuary around it.

Because they process so much water, shellfish become closely connected to the conditions around them. Changes in temperature, oxygen levels, harmful algal blooms, and water quality can all affect their health and survival (Shumway, 1990).

For this reason, shellfish often serve as some of the earliest indicators that environmental conditions have changed.

When shellfish harvesting areas are temporarily closed, many people assume pollution is the only explanation. In reality, closures may occur for a variety of reasons, including elevated levels of bacteria such as fecal coliforms, Escherichia coli (E. coli), or Enterococcus, harmful algal blooms, or other conditions that could affect human health (Food & Drug Administration (FDA), 2023).

In many cases, these closures are evidence that monitoring programs are working exactly as intended.

The shellfish are not causing the problem.

They are revealing it.

By filtering the surrounding water day after day, they provide a glimpse into conditions that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Sometimes, what they reveal is a bacterium that has received increasing attention in recent years.

The Bacteria That Was Already Here

Few marine organisms have generated more public concern in recent summers than Vibrio bacteria.

News headlines often make it sound like a new arrival.

It is not.

Like the phytoplankton, zooplankton, and countless other organisms drifting through coastal waters, Vibrio vulnificus has always been part of the hidden community beneath the surface.

Most beachgoers never notice it. They cannot see it. They do not think about it while wading through the surf or collecting shells along the shoreline.

Yet these bacteria have long occupied an important ecological role.

Vibrio species occur naturally in coastal and estuarine waters around the world. They help break down organic matter and recycle nutrients, returning materials to the food web where they can be used again by other organisms. If they were somehow eradicated, scientists would expect dead plants, algae, fish, and other organic material to break down more slowly. Over time, beach wrack could linger longer along shorelines, decaying material could accumulate in marshes and tidal flats, and nutrients normally returned to the water and sediment would become less available to the organisms that depend on them. These changes might not be obvious at first, but they could gradually alter the health and productivity of coastal ecosystems (Oliver, 2005).

The organic material accumulating along a wrack line supports a hidden community of decomposers. Among them are naturally occurring bacteria that help recycle nutrients and keep coastal ecosystems functioning. Image credit: S. Hilldebrand, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service

What often changes first is not the presence of these organisms, but their abundance.

Just as warmer conditions can influence phytoplankton growth, they can also affect microbial communities.

Most of the time, these changes remain invisible.

The water may look the same. The beach may feel the same. Nothing about a morning walk along the shoreline suggests that microscopic populations are shifting beneath the surface.

Yet they are.

When water temperatures rise well above the normal seasonal range for a region and remain elevated for extended periods, conditions can become more favorable for certain Vibrio species. Their populations may increase, raising the likelihood of human exposure (Baker-Austin et al., 2012; Baker-Austin et al., 2018).

For most healthy beachgoers, swimming in coastal waters remains a normal part of enjoying the beach.

However, individuals with open wounds, compromised immune systems, or underlying health conditions may face greater risks and should pay closer attention to local advisories and public health guidance.

The story is not really about a dangerous bacterium suddenly appearing where it did not belong.

It is another example of a broader pattern that runs throughout coastal ecosystems.

As environmental conditions change, the organisms already living there respond. Some become more abundant. Others become less common. Together, their responses reveal something easy to miss while standing at the water’s edge: the shoreline is alive with countless forms of life that most of us never see.

Even the smallest inhabitants are connected to the larger changes unfolding around them.

Reading the Signs

Most beachgoers will never measure dissolved oxygen or monitor water temperatures.

What they will notice are the signs: water that stays warm later into autumn, green swirls visible from a fishing pier or drone photograph, jellyfish gathering along a tide line, fish appearing in unexpected places, temporary shellfish closures, or questions about bacteria that have long existed in coastal waters.

None of these observations tells the whole story on its own.

Taken together, however, they reveal an ecosystem responding to warmer conditions one species, one season, and one degree at a time.

Looking Beneath the Surface

Most changes in the ocean begin out of sight.

Long before beachgoers notice a jellyfish drifting through the surf or a patch of green water offshore, microscopic organisms are already responding to changing conditions. Fish adjust their movements. Oxygen levels shift. Shellfish filter whatever the water brings.

By the time we notice the signs, the ecosystem has often been responding for weeks or months.

The water may feel the same as it always has beneath our feet. Yet each summer offers new clues about the changes taking place below the surface—if we know where to look.

The ocean often appears unchanged from one day to the next. Beneath the surface, however, countless organisms are responding to shifting temperatures, oxygen levels, food availability, and water quality. The more we learn to observe, the more the shoreline reveals. | Image credit: A. Mitchell

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Shumway, S. E. (1990). A review of the effects of algal blooms on shellfish and aquaculture. Journal of the World Aquaculture Society, 21(2), 65-104. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-7345.1990.tb00529.x

Trainer, V. L., Bates, S. S., Lundholm, N., Thessen, A. E., Cochlan, W. P., Adams, N. G., & Trick, C. G. (2012). Pseudo-nitzschia physiological ecology, phylogeny, toxicity, monitoring and impacts on ecosystem health. Harmful Algae, 14, 271-300. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hal.2011.10.025

Zu Ermgassen, P. S., Spalding, M. D., Grizzle, R. E., & Brumbaugh, R. D. (2012). Quantifying the loss of a marine ecosystem service: Filtration by the eastern oyster in US estuaries. Estuaries and Coasts, 36(1), 36-43. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12237-012-9559-y

June 12, 2026
Where the Sand Breathes: Life Beneath the Tide Line in Onslow County

Most beachgoers look across the shoreline and see a boundary.

The ocean ends. The land begins.

But the strip of sand where waves wash ashore and slide back toward the sea is not really either one. It is a threshold—a place that becomes ocean and land again with every passing wave.

At first glance, this narrow band of wet sand appears empty. There are no marsh grasses, no oyster reefs, and no obvious schools of fish. Yet beneath the surface, the sand is alive with animals digging, filtering, feeding, hunting, and breathing.

This is the swash zone: the constantly shifting seam between ocean and land.

It is one of the most overlooked ecosystems on the North Carolina coast.

The swash zone is the narrow strip of shoreline where waves wash ashore and then retreat back toward the sea. Though it may appear to be little more than wet sand, it supports a diverse community of animals adapted to life between ocean and land. | Image credit: J. Morales

The Beach That Never Stops Moving

Unlike a marsh, oyster reef, or seagrass meadow, the swash zone never stays still.

Each wave pushes seawater into the sand and then pulls it back out again. Water moves through the spaces between sand grains, carrying oxygen, microscopic algae, bacteria, and organic matter. The sand itself acts almost like a living filter, supporting communities of organisms adapted to conditions that change minute by minute (Brown & McLachlan, 2018; McLachlan & Defeo, 2018).

To survive here, animals must tolerate burial, shifting sediments, crashing waves, changing salinity, and predators arriving from both land and sea.

Few species can endure such instability.

Those that do are specialists (Defeo et al., 2009).

The Living Wave Riders: Mole Crabs and Coquina Clams

If you’ve ever noticed the wet sand suddenly shimmer or seem to move as a wave retreats, you’ve likely witnessed two of the swash zone’s most abundant residents.

Atlantic Mole Crabs (Emerita talpoida)

An Atlantic mole crab, in Surf City, NC, briefly exposed at the surface of the swash zone. Within seconds, these specialized crustaceans can bury themselves beneath the sand, where they spend most of their lives filtering food from the surf. | Image credit: johnnybirder, iNaturalist

Known locally as sand fleas, Atlantic mole crabs spend nearly their entire lives buried beneath the surface of the swash zone.

They are not true crabs. Instead, they belong to a group of highly specialized crustaceans adapted for life where waves break on the shore. Their bodies are smooth, streamlined, and shaped almost like a small bean. Using powerful rear legs, they can bury themselves in saturated sand in seconds (Abude et al., 2024).

When waves wash overhead, they extend feathery antennae into the water and filter microscopic plankton and organic particles from the surf (Abude et al., 2024).

Rather than remaining stationary, mole crabs occupy the constantly shifting swash zone, where food and oxygen are delivered by breaking waves. Their abundance makes them one of the most important food sources for shorebirds, fish, and ghost crabs (Abude et al., 2024).

Coquina Clams (Donax variabilis)

Sharing the same habitat is one of the most recognizable shells on Atlantic beaches.

Coquina clams are the tiny, brightly colored shells scattered across the tide line in shades of pink, yellow, purple, blue, orange, and white.

Most people only notice the shells.

The living animal beneath them is remarkably adapted to life in moving sand.

Coquinas live just beneath the surface of the swash zone where they filter microscopic algae and suspended particles from the water. As waves advance and retreat, they repeatedly rebury themselves, using a muscular foot to dig into the sand with astonishing speed (Ellers, 1995).

Like mole crabs, coquinas are adapted to the dynamic conditions of the swash zone. Their abundance provides food for fish, crabs, and shorebirds, making them a critical link between microscopic plankton and larger coastal predators (Wilson, 1999).

Standing at the water’s edge, it is easy to think the beach is motionless.

In reality, thousands of coquinas and mole crabs may be moving beneath your feet with every wave.

The Night Shift: Atlantic Ghost Crabs (Ocypode quadrata)

Higher on the beach, above the reach of most waves, another resident waits.

Atlantic ghost crabs spend daylight hours hidden inside deep burrows excavated into the sand. Their pale coloration blends almost perfectly with the beach, making them difficult to see unless they move.

Atlantic ghost crabs spend daylight hours hidden in burrows above the tide line. Their pale coloration provides excellent camouflage against the sand, making them surprisingly difficult to spot until they move. | Image credit: A. Mitchell

While the swash zone below is dominated by animals filtering food from the surf, ghost crabs are hunters and scavengers.

After sunset, they emerge to patrol the shoreline, feeding on mole crabs, coquina clams, stranded marine organisms, insects, carrion, and whatever other opportunities the beach provides (Wolcott, 1978).

Many beachgoers never see them at all. Instead, they notice the evidence they leave behind. Round burrow openings dot the upper beach. Fresh tracks crisscross the sand overnight and disappear with the next tide. Occasionally, a pale shape darts sideways through the beam of a flashlight before vanishing into darkness.

Those burrows tell a story of their own. Beaches with abundant ghost crab burrows often support richer communities of animals living both above and below the sand, which is why scientists sometimes use ghost crabs as one way of assessing beach condition and disturbance (Schlacher et al., 2016).

The next time you notice a round hole in the upper beach with a pile of freshly excavated sand nearby, you are likely looking at the entrance to a ghost crab burrow—and evidence that the beach is still very much alive after dark.

Between the Grains

The largest residents of the swash zone are only part of the story.

Beneath the surface lies an even larger community that most beachgoers never see. Between individual grains of sand are tiny water-filled spaces that form a hidden habitat known as the interstitial zone. To us, a handful of wet sand looks solid. To these organisms, it is an underwater landscape of tunnels, chambers, and passageways (Higgins & Thiel, 1988).

The beach is layered with hidden communities. From amphipods and ghost crabs higher on the shore to coquina clams and mole crabs at the water’s edge, different species occupy distinct zones shaped by waves, moisture, food availability, and shifting sand. | Image credit: Michel et al., 2016

Amphipods: The Cleanup Crew

The line of seaweed, shells, and debris left behind by the tide may look messy, but it is often one of the busiest places on the beach.

Hidden among the wrack, in the upper intertidal zone, are amphipods, small crustaceans often called Atlantic beach hoppers (Americorchestia longicornis). If you sift through a pile of damp seaweed or drift algae, you may catch a glimpse of them springing away before disappearing back into cover.

Much of what washes ashore eventually becomes food for something else. Amphipods feed on decaying seaweed, dead animals, and other organic material stranded by the tide. In doing so, they help break down material that would otherwise accumulate along the shoreline. They also become food themselves, supporting shorebirds, fish, and other invertebrates that forage along the beach (Dugan et al., 2003).

Polychaete Worms: Engineers Beneath the Sand

Most beachgoers never see the worms living beneath the tide line, but their work is happening constantly beneath the surface.

As polychaete worms burrow through the sand, they create tiny pathways that allow water and oxygen to penetrate deeper into the sediment. In many ways, they perform the same role that earthworms do in a garden, except their garden is the beach itself.

Some species spend their lives feeding on organic material trapped between the sand grains, such as Lugworms (Arenicolidae). Others hunt small crustaceans and worms moving through the sediment such as Bloodworms (Glyceridae) and Paddle Worms / Shimmy Worms (Nephtyidae). As they burrow, feed, and move through the beach, they continually mix the sand and help create conditions that allow countless other organisms to survive there (McLachlan & Defeo, 2018).

Ribbon Worms: Hidden Predators

Not every animal beneath the sand is feeding on algae, bacteria, or decaying material.

Ribbon worms (Nemertea) are predators, though few people ever realize they are there. Hidden beneath the surface, they hunt some of the same tiny animals that share the spaces between the sand grains, including small worms, crustaceans, and other invertebrates moving through the sediment (Thiel & Kruse, 2001).

Many possess a remarkable feeding structure called a proboscis that can be rapidly extended to capture prey (Thiel & Kruse, 2001).

Most beachgoers will never see a ribbon worm, yet they are part of the same hidden food web as the amphipods, copepods, and nematodes surrounding them. Even beneath a seemingly empty stretch of sand, animals are feeding, avoiding predators, and competing for resources every hour of the day.

Nematodes: Life at Microscopic Scale

If you could shrink yourself down and explore a handful of wet sand, the landscape would look very different.

What appears solid to us is actually filled with tiny spaces between the grains. Moving through those water-filled passages are microscopic animals called nematodes (phylum Nematoda).

These tiny roundworms feed on bacteria, algae, fungi, and organic matter coating the sand. Though nearly invisible, they are among the most abundant animals on many beaches and play an important role in breaking down organic material and recycling nutrients throughout the sediment (Coull, 1999; Schratzberger & Ingels, 2018).

Harpacticoid Copepods: Tiny Links in the Food Web

Sharing those same microscopic spaces are harpacticoid copepods (Paraleptastacus wilsoni), tiny crustaceans that spend their lives moving between individual sand grains.

They graze on algae and microbial films coating the sediment, feeding on resources too small for larger animals to use directly. In turn, they become prey for larger invertebrates and juvenile fishes.

Most beachgoers will never see a harpacticoid copepod. Yet every handful of wet sand may contain a community of animals like these, quietly connecting the microscopic world to the larger food web of the beach (Schratzberger & Ingels, 2018).

Individually, these animals are easy to overlook.

Collectively, they form much of the living foundation of the tide line. The coquinas, mole crabs, ghost crabs, fishes, and shorebirds visible along the shoreline all depend, directly or indirectly, on countless small interactions taking place beneath the sand.

Following the Birds

One of the easiest ways to observe this hidden ecosystem is not by looking down.

It is by looking up.Anyone who spends time on the beach has likely watched sanderlings (Calidris alba) racing along the edge of the surf. They dart forward as a wave retreats, stop suddenly to probe the sand, and then sprint away from the next incoming wave. A little farther up the beach, ruddy turnstones (Arenaria interpres) pick through wrack lines left behind by the tide. Along the surf edge, Eastern willets (Tringa semipalmata semipalmata) walk deliberately through the shallows, searching for movement beneath the water.

To many beachgoers, they are simply birds feeding along the shoreline.

What they are actually doing is reading the beach.

Each probe into the sand is a search for prey hidden beneath the surface. Mole crabs, small worms, amphipods, coquinas, and other invertebrates living within the tide line provide food for these birds (Dugan et al., 2003; Hubbard & Dugan, 2003).

The birds go where the food is.

When shorebirds gather along a stretch of beach, they are often revealing an ecosystem that would otherwise remain invisible. Their presence tells us that the sand beneath them is alive with prey, even if we cannot see it ourselves.

In many ways, shorebirds act as interpreters of the tide line. By watching where they feed, pause, and congregate, we gain a glimpse into the hidden community supporting them below.

Reading the Beach

From a distance, the tide line can seem almost empty. A narrow strip of wet sand separates the ocean from the rest of the beach. Waves arrive, waves leave, and little appears to change.

Spend a few minutes watching, however, and a different picture begins to emerge.

Shorebirds gather where the surf is most active. Tiny shells appear and disappear with the retreating waves. Fresh ghost crab burrows punctuate the upper beach. Even the wrack line left behind by the tide becomes a gathering place for scavengers and foraging birds.

What first appears to be a simple boundary between land and sea begins to look more like a busy shoreline neighborhood.

At first glance, the tide line can appear almost empty. Look a little longer, however, and the clues begin to emerge—feeding shorebirds, scattered shells, and the constant movement of the surf all hint at the hidden community living beneath the sand. | Image credit: A. Mitchell

The animals living here are responding to the same thing: the constant movement of the tide. Food arrives with the surf, becomes available for a brief moment, and is quickly claimed by whatever creature is best adapted to find it. Some filter it from the water. Some collect it from the sand. Others hunt the animals already feeding there.

Because these organisms live so closely tied to the conditions of the beach, changes in their numbers can provide clues about the habitat itself (Defeo et al., 2009). A shoreline where birds are feeding, ghost crab burrows remain active, and life continues to reveal itself at the edge of the surf is often a sign that this narrow strip of beach is supporting the community that depends upon it.

When those communities decline, the change may not be immediately obvious. Yet over time the beach can begin to feel quieter. Fewer birds stop to feed. Fewer burrows appear in the sand. The signs become harder to find. Those changes can ripple outward through the food web, affecting species both on the beach and beyond it (Peterson et al., 2006).

The Threshold

The next time you stand at the edge of the surf, watch where the waves pause before sliding back toward the sea.

It is easy to see this narrow strip of shoreline as a boundary. Ocean on one side. Land on the other.

But the tide line is not really a dividing line at all.

It is a place where both worlds meet.

With every passing wave, food, oxygen, and life arrive from the ocean. Beneath the sand, animals capture it, consume it, recycle it, and pass it on. Shorebirds search for it. Ghost crabs emerge after dark to hunt it. Countless organisms spend their entire lives within a space that is neither fully ocean nor fully land.

Most people walk across this strip of beach without ever noticing it.

Yet it is one of the busiest places along the coast.

The next time you see shells appearing and disappearing in the surf, a flock of sanderlings racing the tide, or ghost crab burrows scattered across the upper beach, remember that these are not separate observations. They are pieces of the same story.

What appears to be an empty stretch of wet sand is actually a living threshold—a place where ocean and land remain connected through countless interactions happening beneath every step.

And once you see it, it becomes difficult to look at the shoreline the same way again.

The tide line in Surf City, NC may appear to be little more than wet sand. Yet beneath every retreating wave lies a hidden community connecting ocean and land through countless interactions, most of them unseen. | Image credit: A. Mitchell

References

Abude, R. R., Lôbo-Hajdu, G., Moreira, D. A., & Cabrini, T. M. (2024). Sandy beach mole crabs (Decapoda: Hippidae: Emerita): A systematic review of the anthropic impacts, populations density, and conservation strategies. Marine Environmental Research, 202, 106745. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marenvres.2024.106745

Coull, B. C. (1999). Role of meiofauna in estuarine soft‐bottom habitats. Australian Journal of Ecology, 24(4), 327-343. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1442-9993.1999.00979.x

Defeo, O., McLachlan, A., Schoeman, D. S., Schlacher, T. A., Dugan, J., Jones, A., Lastra, M., & Scapini, F. (2009). Threats to sandy beach ecosystems: A review. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, 81(1), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecss.2008.09.022

Dugan, J. E., Hubbard, D. M., McCrary, M. D., & Pierson, M. O. (2003). The response of macrofauna communities and shorebirds to macrophyte wrack subsidies on exposed sandy beaches of Southern California. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, 58, 25-40. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0272-7714(03)00045-3

Ellers, O. (1995). Behavioral control of swash-riding in the clam Donax variabilis. The Biological Bulletin, 189(2), 120-127. https://doi.org/10.2307/1542462

Hubbard, D. M., & Dugan, J. E. (2003). Shorebird use of an exposed sandy beach in Southern California. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, 58, 41-54. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0272-7714(03)00048-9

McLachlan, A., & Defeo, O. (2018). The ecology of sandy shores (3rd ed.). Academic Press.

P, H. R., & Thiel, H. (1988). Intro study meiofauna. Smithsonian Books (DC).

Peterson, C. H., Bishop, M. J., Johnson, G. A., D’Anna, L. M., & Manning, L. M. (2006). Exploiting beach filling as an unaffordable experiment: Benthic intertidal impacts propagating upwards to shorebirds. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, 338(2), 205-221. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jembe.2006.06.021

Pilkey, O. H., Rice, T. M., & Neal, W. J. (2014). How to read a North Carolina beach: Bubble holes, Barking sands, and rippled Runnels. UNC Press Books.

Schlacher, T. A., Lucrezi, S., Connolly, R. M., Peterson, C. H., Gilby, B. L., Maslo, B., Olds, A. D., Walker, S. J., Leon, J. X., Huijbers, C. M., Weston, M. A., Turra, A., Hyndes, G. A., Holt, R. A., & Schoeman, D. S. (2016). Human threats to sandy beaches: A meta-analysis of ghost crabs illustrates global anthropogenic impacts. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, 169, 56-73. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecss.2015.11.025

Schratzberger, M., & Ingels, J. (2018). Meiofauna matters: The roles of meiofauna in benthic ecosystems. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, 502, 12-25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jembe.2017.01.007

Thiel, M., & Kruse, I. (2001). Status of the nemertea as predators in marine ecosystems. Hydrobiologia, 456(1-3), 21-32. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1013005814145

Wilson, J. G. (1999). Population dynamics and energy budget for a population of Donax variabilis (Say) on an exposed South Carolina beach. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, 239(1), 61-83. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0022-0981(99)00027-1

Wolcott, T. G. (1978). Ecological role of ghost crabs, Ocypode quadrata (Fabricius) on an ocean beach: Scavengers or predators? Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, 31(1), 67-82. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-0981(78)90137-5

June 5, 2026
Where Wings Meet Water: Reading Birds Along the Edges of Onslow County

At the Line Where Air Meets Water

On a late spring morning along Surf City, the first movement is often above the water, not within it. Brown pelicans travel low and steady just beyond the breakers, their wingtips nearly touching the surface as they follow a line that seems invisible from shore. Farther out, a group of terns holds in place against the wind, hovering, adjusting, then dropping sharply into the water before rising again. Closer to the sound side of Topsail Island, an osprey circles once, then folds into a dive toward a channel edge that looks, at first glance, no different than the water around it.

Nothing about these movements is random. They are responses to structure that exists beneath the surface—structure shaped by tide, wind, and the movement of other organisms. What appears as scattered bird activity is, in practice, a map of where the water is concentrating life.

For someone standing at the edge of it, that movement is one of the most accessible ways to read what cannot be seen directly.

What Birds Are Following Beneath the Surface

The birds that move along this stretch of coast are not searching broadly; they are tracking concentration. Along barrier island systems like those in Onslow County, physical processes—tidal exchange through inlets, wind-driven surface currents, and subtle differences in bottom shape—create zones where small fish, shrimp, and other prey accumulate (Peterson & Peterson, 1979; Piersma, 1997).

When the tide moves through places like New River Inlet, water does not flow evenly across the landscape. It accelerates through constrictions, slows along marsh edges, and bends around sandbars and channels. These shifts in speed and direction compress organisms into tighter spaces, particularly along boundaries where moving water meets something that resists it—an edge, a drop-off, or a change in depth (Wright et al., 1985).

Small schooling fish respond to that compression by tightening their formation. In doing so, they become more visible and more vulnerable. Larger fish—bluefish, Spanish mackerel, and juvenile coastal sharks—often move in from below, using that same concentration to feed. The pressure from below pushes prey upward, sometimes all the way to the surface.

Coastal birds feeding where prey has been concentrated near the surface along the breakers. | Image credit: A. Mitchell

What appears overhead depends on which part of that concentration each species is built to exploit.

Terns hovering and diving are often responding to prey that has been driven upward by predatory fish (Safina & Burger, 1985). Brown pelicans, which rely on plunge-diving, tend to follow more stable schools of fish that remain near the surface for longer periods (Shields, 2014). Ospreys, in contrast, depend on clear water and individual fish they can visually isolate, which is why their activity often aligns with calmer conditions and defined channel edges (Poole et al., 2002).

Each species is not simply feeding in the same place; each is reading a different layer of the same system.

When Surface Activity Signals Pressure Below

From the shoreline, bird activity can appear as isolated events—one dive, then another, then a sudden shift down the beach. Watched over time, a pattern emerges. A cluster of terns may concentrate in one location for several minutes, then disperse abruptly, reforming farther along the shoreline. Pelicans may align along a narrow band just beyond the breakers, following it as it drifts.

These shifts often reflect changes in how prey is being compressed and released beneath the surface. When predatory fish move through a bait school, the school tightens, rises, and becomes briefly accessible from above. When that pressure dissipates, the school spreads out again, and the birds move on.

This movement of energy—from smaller organisms to larger predators, and upward through the water column—is one visible expression of a trophic cascade. The term itself is often used to describe longer chains of ecological influence, but along the coast it can be observed in compressed moments, where the effects of predation become visible within seconds (Heithaus et al., 2008).

Birds do not initiate this process. They respond to it. Their presence marks where the system has already intensified.

Indicator Species at the Water’s Edge

From the beach, the difference is subtle. The water does not change color dramatically, and the waves continue to break as they did before. The level of activity shifts within that band—first visible in the air, then inferred below– marking places where the system has tightened, energy is moving through multiple layers at once, and the distance between surface and depth has, for a time, narrowed (Heithaus et al., 2008; Estes et al., 2011).

For someone entering the water, these differences in bird behavior can offer practical information, not in a predictive or absolute sense, but as indicators of what is happening just below the surface.

Brown pelicans traveling low in a consistent line often indicate schools of fish moving parallel to shore. Terns repeatedly diving in a tight area suggest smaller prey being pushed upward, frequently by larger fish feeding below. Ospreys focusing on a specific channel edge reflect clearer water and individual prey availability, rather than broad schooling events. Along the shoreline, shorebirds probing the sand at low tide are responding to invertebrates exposed by receding water, signaling a different layer of the system entirely—one tied to sediment and tidal timing rather than active predation (Colwell, 2010; Piersma, 1997).

None of these signals point directly to a specific species beneath the surface. What they indicate is concentration, and concentration is what draws larger predators closer to shore.

Along the coast of North Carolina, nearshore and juvenile shark presence is often associated with areas of high prey density, particularly where schooling fish aggregate (Heupel & Hueter, 2002). These conditions are not constant, and they shift with tide, temperature, and time of day. Birds make those shifts visible in real time.

At times, that activity stretches into lines that run the length of the breakers.

For someone stepping into the water, that narrowing matters. Not as a warning in the abstract, but as a recognition that the conditions supporting visible feeding above often extend below, linking organisms that are rarely seen together into the same moving structure.

Where the System Tightens

The patterns become easier to see near places where the water is forced to narrow, turn, or accelerate. The most consistent bird activity along this coast tends to occur where water movement is constrained and redirected. Inlets, marsh edges, sandbars, and the transitions between the Intracoastal Waterway and adjacent sounds create these zones (Wright et al., 1985).

At New River and its inlet, tidal flow compresses water into narrow channels before releasing it into broader areas, creating gradients in speed and depth. Along these gradients, prey accumulates, predators follow, and birds gather above.

These are not fixed points. As tide rises and falls, and as wind reshapes surface conditions, the locations of these compression zones shift. The birds move with them, tracing patterns that are constantly changing but not random.

For someone watching from shore, these movements can be read as lines, clusters, and absences—places where activity intensifies, and places where it suddenly drops away.

Standing Within It

Entering the water along this coast means stepping into a system already in motion. The surface may appear uniform, but the activity above it often reveals where that motion is focused.

Birds diving repeatedly in a confined area, or tracking a narrow band just beyond the breakers, indicate where prey is concentrated. Those same conditions are what draw larger predators into closer proximity to shore, not as an anomaly, but as part of the same process.

Watching the birds does not eliminate risk, and it does not provide certainty about what is beneath the surface. What it offers is context—a way to recognize when the water is more active, more compressed, and more connected across its layers.

What appears as feeding from above is part of a larger structure moving through the water. The birds do not create it, and they do not remain once it passes. They mark it, briefly, making visible what is otherwise difficult to see.

Bird movement along the shoreline often draws attention toward activity that remains unseen beneath the surface. | Image credit: A. Mitchell

References

Castro, J. I. (1993). The shark nursery of bulls Bay, South Carolina, with a review of the shark nurseries of the southeastern coast of the United States. Environmental Biology of Fishes, 38(1-3), 37-48. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00842902

Colwell, M. A. (2010). Shorebird ecology, conservation, and management. University of California Press.

Estes, J. A., Terborgh, J., Brashares, J. S., Power, M. E., Berger, J., Bond, W. J., Carpenter, S. R., Essington, T. E., Holt, R. D., C. Jackson, J. B., Marquis, R. J., Oksanen, L., Oksanen, T., Paine, R. T., Pikitch, E. K., Ripple, W. J., Sandin, S. A., Scheffer, M., Schoener, T. W., & Wardle, D. A. (2011). Trophic downgrading of planet Earth. Science, 33(6040), 301-306. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1205106

Heithaus, M. R., Frid, A., Wirsing, A. J., & Worm, B. (2008). Predicting ecological consequences of marine top predator declines. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 23(4), 202-210. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2008.01.003

Heupel, M. R., & Hueter, R. E. (2002). Importance of prey density in relation to the movement patterns of juvenile blacktip sharks ( Carcharhinus limbatus ) within a coastal nursery area. Marine and Freshwater Research, 53(2), 543-550. https://doi.org/10.1071/mf01132

Peterson, C. H., & Peterson, N. M. (1979). Ecology of intertidal flats of North Carolina: A community profile (79/39). FWS/OBS. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/fwsobs79_39

Piersma, T. (1997). Do global patterns of habitat use and migration strategies Co-evolve with relative investments in Immunocompetence due to spatial variation in parasite pressure? Oikos, 80(3), 623-631. https://doi.org/10.2307/3546640

Poole, A. F., Bierregaard, R. O., & Martell, M. S. (2002). Osprey (Pandion haliaetus). In The Birds of North America (1st ed.). Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Safina, C., & Burger, J. (1985). Common tern foraging: Seasonal trends in prey fish densities and competition with bluefish. Ecology, 66(5), 1457-1463. https://doi.org/10.2307/1938008

Shields, M. (2014). Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis). In Birds of North America (1st ed.). Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Wright, L., Short, A., & Green, M. (1985). Short-term changes in the morphodynamic states of beaches and surf zones: An empirical predictive model. Marine Geology, 62(3-4), 339-364. https://doi.org/10.1016/0025-3227(85)90123-9

May 9, 2026
Where the Water Moves Before the Storm: Sharks, Estuaries, and the Illusion of Shelter in Onslow County

Where the Water Turns Before the Storm

There’s a version of this story that shows up often—sometimes in films, sometimes in passing explanations—that when a large storm approaches, sharks move into estuaries to escape the violence of the open ocean.

It makes intuitive sense.

The ocean becomes something unmanageable—waves building, wind stacking energy across the surface. And just inland, the estuary appears contained. Narrower. Protected. A place where the water feels like it should be quieter.

But if you stand at the edge of a tidal creek before a storm, what you see first isn’t protection.

It’s change.

The surface tightens. Wind presses across it—not yet breaking it into waves, but organizing it into long, directional movement. The irregular texture of a normal day disappears into something aligned. Purposeful.

Water levels begin to rise before rainfall arrives. The boundary between water and marsh softens. Spartina no longer holds a sharp edge. The ground beneath your feet gives way more easily, saturated beyond its usual resistance.

Water moving through a beach access during storm conditions along the North Carolina coast, as rising levels and wind-driven flow begin to overtake the boundary between ocean and land. | Image credit: J. Armstrong

This is the first shift.

Not force, but redistribution.

And everything in the system is already responding.

What Lives Here When the System Starts Moving

The sharks that use estuaries are not here because these places offer protection from storms.

They are here because of what you can’t always see at first glance.

A juvenile blacktip shark (Carcharhinus limbatus) doesn’t move through open water the way people imagine sharks do. It stays in the shallows—along the edges where the water darkens slightly, where small schools of fish break apart and reform, where the bottom shifts from sand to scattered shell. These areas are harder for larger predators to move through quickly. Not impossible—but slower, more complicated.

Blacktip sharks move through estuaries in Onslow County, North Carolina, using shallow water where depth, structure and movement shape where they travel. | Image credit: kseym001, iNaturalist

That difference matters when you’re small.

What scientists describe as “structure” is this: broken bottom, uneven depth, patches of grass, oyster shell, shadow, current seams. From the shoreline, it just looks like variation. To a young shark, it’s the difference between being exposed and being able to disappear for a second.

That’s why these areas are used as nurseries—not because they are safe, but because they are less predictable in a way that favors smaller animals (Heupel et al., 2007).

From a distance, it looks like open water. Up close, it’s a series of edges—grass, mud, and channels—where movement slows, shifts, and concentrates. | Image credit: A. Mitchell

An Atlantic sharpnose shark (Rhizoprionodon terraenovae) uses that same space differently. You wouldn’t see it cruising the center of a channel. You’d find it where things intersect—along the drop where shallow water slips into deeper flow, near the edges of grass beds, or where current carries small prey out of the marsh and into open water.

It’s not avoiding predators in the same way a juvenile blacktip is.

It’s positioning itself where food moves, while still staying just out of the most exposed water (Ulrich et al., 2007).

Even the bonnethead shark (Sphyrna tiburo)—often described as a “benthic feeder”—is easier to understand if you ignore the word and watch the behavior. It spends time over the bottom, moving slowly across seagrass beds and sandy patches, nosing through the substrate for crabs and small invertebrates.

You’re most likely to notice it not by seeing the whole animal, but by the movement it leaves behind.

A subtle disturbance. A shift in the grass. A shape that doesn’t hold still long enough to resolve.

It’s also one of the few sharks you’re likely to find deeper into the estuary, where the water begins to lose its salt edge. Bonnetheads can tolerate lower salinity than many coastal sharks, which allows them to follow food farther into these mixed waters rather than staying closer to the inlet (Bethea et al., 2007).

Not because it’s calmer there.

Because the feeding opportunities extend into that space.

These sharks are here because the estuary offers layers—places to feed, places to pass through, places where movement is broken up just enough to matter (Knip et al., 2010; Bangley et al., 2018).

But all of those layers depend on something staying consistent—edges holding their shape, water moving in predictable directions, and clarity allowing animals to track one another.

And those are the first things a storm begins to take apart.

The Problem With “Shelter”

When a hurricane approaches, an estuary does not become a refuge.

It becomes harder to read.

If you stand on the ocean side of Topsail Island, you’ll see the change first as energy—waves building, spacing tightening, the surface lifting and falling with more force than it did the day before. But if you cross to the other side of the island—along the Intracoastal Waterway or into Stump Sound—it doesn’t look like that.

There, it rises.

Steadily. Quietly. Without the same visible force.

And that difference is exactly why the idea of “shelter” feels convincing.

On the ocean side, the storm is easier to recognize. Energy builds into waves, making the movement visible in a way it isn’t on the other side of the island. | Image credit: WITN-TV. On the sound side, it doesn’t look like a storm in the same way. The water rises and shifts along the shoreline, even as the system is already building offshore. | Image credit: A. Mitchell

Under normal conditions, these waters are connected—but they don’t move together. Ocean tides enter through New River Inlet and New Topsail Inlet, then work their way through the back-barrier system—the marshes, the Intracoastal, the sounds. That movement slows as it spreads out, which is why tides behind the island can lag the ocean by hours (Friedrichs & Aubrey, 1988).

From the shoreline, it feels like separation.

Like the ocean is doing one thing, and the water behind the island is doing another.

As a storm approaches, that timing begins to compress. Wind pushes water through the inlets faster than the system can distribute it, while water already inside has less opportunity to drain back out.

What was once staggered in time begins to overlap.

Storm surge doesn’t just raise water levels—it disrupts the normal exchange between ocean and estuary, forcing water inland and holding it there longer than a typical tidal cycle (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2023).

That’s why the sound side doesn’t look violent at first.

It’s not because it’s protected.

It’s because it’s filling.

You can watch it happen without measuring anything. The usual drop after high tide doesn’t come when you expect it. Water continues to rise or holds in place. The difference between ocean and sound begins to disappear—not because the ocean calms down, but because the back-barrier system begins to behave more like a single body of water under pressure.

Edges blur as marsh grass floods from below. The bottom disappears as suspended sediment increases, and runoff and resuspension mix material into the water column faster than it can settle (Mallin et al., 1999).

The system is no longer cycling. It’s shifting faster than it can recover, with the patterns that usually hold it together breaking down in real time (Resh et al., 1988).

It’s accumulating.

And once that happens, the things that made this environment usable begin to disappear with it.

Where the Larger Sharks Actually Go

If an estuary loses the very structure that makes it usable during a storm, then the question shifts.

Sharks are not staying in place and enduring that change.

They are moving with it.

But not in the way we tend to imagine.

They don’t need to move into something more protected, because the ocean itself isn’t uniform. What looks chaotic at the surface is layered, and that layering holds even as a storm passes overhead. Wave energy dissipates quickly with depth, which means that the violence you see from the beach does not extend indefinitely downward.

A few meters below the surface, movement changes.

Deeper still, it stabilizes.

From above, the structure becomes visible—shallow bars, deeper channels, and the connections between ocean and estuary that shape how water moves through the system. | Image credit: Town of Topsail Beach

For larger coastal sharks like the bull shark (Carcharhinus leucas), that difference matters more than distance from shore. They are not choosing between rough ocean and calm estuary.

They are moving within a three-dimensional space.

And they sense the change before it arrives. It’s the same shift you feel before a storm—the air getting heavier, the pressure dropping, something changing before you can point to it. In the water, that change travels differently, and sharks begin responding to it well before anything looks different at the surface (Papastamatiou et al., 2015).

From the shoreline, it can feel like the storm suddenly arrives. But for animals in the water, it doesn’t. The change builds, and they are already moving within it—shifting position, adjusting depth, following the parts of the system that are still holding together as everything else begins to change long before it’s visible from the shoreline (Heupel et al., 2003).

Where the Shallow-Water Sharks Go

The sharks that spend their time in these shallow systems don’t have the same options as those offshore, because there is no deeper layer to move into when conditions begin to change. Instead, their response is tied to what parts of the system still hold together. As water levels rise and flow patterns begin to shift, the backs of creeks and the shallowest flats are often the first places to lose definition. These are areas where water can become cut off or overly mixed, where direction is no longer consistent, and where the features that usually structure movement begin to disappear.

What follows is not a movement further inland, but a gradual pulling back toward places that remain more stable. That often means deeper channels, intersections where water is still moving in a defined direction, or areas closer to inlets where exchange is still occurring. Rather than leaving the estuary entirely, many individuals consolidate within the portions of it that continue to function in a recognizable way. This kind of movement—shifting position as conditions change rather than holding in place—has been observed in coastal sharks as these systems begin to break down (Heupel et al., 2003).

At the same time, the system itself is expanding beyond its usual boundaries. Storm surge and flooding connect environments that are typically separate, allowing water to move across marsh, into low-lying land, and through built spaces like roads, canals, and retention areas. When that happens, animals already present in the water column move with it, not because they are selecting those environments, but because the physical structure that normally contains them is temporarily absent. Observations of sharks and other marine species in flooded coastal areas are most often associated with these short-lived hydrological connections rather than deliberate movement into unfamiliar habitats (Snelson et al., 1984).

As water spreads across the landscape, the system expands with it—connecting marsh, channels, and developed areas into a single, continuous space. | Image credit: C. Mitchell, AccuWeather

As water recedes, those connections close just as quickly as they formed. The system contracts, and the pathways that briefly allowed movement into those spaces disappear. Animals either move back with the retreating water or are left in conditions that no longer support them. What appears from the outside as unusual behavior is, in most cases, the result of a system that has temporarily lost its boundaries and then reestablished them.

Where the Assumption Breaks

The idea that sharks move into estuaries for shelter during storms rests on a simple assumption: that calmer-looking water offers protection. From the shoreline, that assumption is easy to make. The ocean side of Topsail Island shows the storm first—waves building, energy increasing—while the waters behind the island, along the Intracoastal Waterway and within Stump Sound, often appear quieter in the early stages. But that difference is not a separation of systems. It is a difference in timing.

Under normal conditions, tidal exchange through New River Inlet and New Topsail Inlet distributes ocean energy into the back-barrier environment with a delay, shaped by channel geometry and friction. That lag creates the appearance that one side of the island is responding differently than the other, when in reality both are part of the same connected system (Friedrichs & Aubrey, 1988). As storm conditions intensify, that delay compresses. Water is pushed through the inlets more rapidly than the system can accommodate, and the distinction between ocean and estuary begins to collapse into a single, continuous response driven by surge, wind, and pressure (NOAA, 2023).

Sharks are responding to that shift the entire time, not by seeking out calm water, but by staying within parts of the system that hold their structure for as long as they can. Offshore, that structure exists vertically, allowing movement into deeper, more stable layers. Within estuaries, it exists horizontally and can disappear quickly as gradients break down. The concept of “shelter” depends on the persistence of those gradients—clear edges, directional flow, and predictable relationships between different parts of the system—but during a storm, those features are among the first to be altered.

What remains after the storm is not evidence of animals moving into safer spaces, but the memory of contrast between what those spaces usually are and what they became under changing conditions. That contrast is compelling enough to shape interpretation, even when the underlying processes point to a different explanation.

After the water recedes, the boundary remains shifted—marking where movement passed through, rather than where it began. | Image credit: J. Lester

References

Bangley, C. W., Paramore, L., Shiffman, D. S., & Rulifson, R. A. (2018). Increased abundance and nursery habitat use of the bull shark (Carcharhinus leucas) in response to a changing environment in a warm-temperate Estuary. Scientific Reports, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-24510-z

Bethea, D., Buckel, J., & Carlson, J. (2004). Foraging ecology of the early life stages of four sympatric shark species. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 268, 245-264. https://doi.org/10.3354/meps268245

Ebert, D. A., Dando, M., & Fowler, S. (2021). Sharks of the world: A complete guide. Princeton University Press.

Friedrichs, C. T., & Aubrey, D. G. (1988). Non-linear tidal distortion in shallow well-mixed estuaries: A synthesis. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, 27(5), 521-545. https://doi.org/10.1016/0272-7714(88)90082-0

Heupel, M., Carlson, J., & Simpfendorfer, C. (2007). Shark nursery areas: Concepts, definition, characterization and assumptions. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 337, 287-297. https://doi.org/10.3354/meps337287

Heupel, M. R., Simpfendorfer, C. A., & Hueter, R. E. (2003). Running before the storm: Blacktip sharks respond to falling barometric pressure associated with tropical storm Gabrielle. Journal of Fish Biology, 63(5), 1357-1363. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1095-8649.2003.00250.x

Knip, D., Heupel, M., & Simpfendorfer, C. (2010). Sharks in nearshore environments: Models, importance, and consequences. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 402, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.3354/meps08498

Mallin, M. A., Posey, M. H., Shank, G. C., McIver, M. R., Ensign, S. H., & Alphin, T. D. (1999). Hurricane effects on water quality and benthos in the cape fear watershed: Natural and anthropogenic impacts. Ecological Applications, 9(1), 350. https://doi.org/10.2307/2641190

NOAA. (2024, June 16). What is storm surge? National Ocean Service website. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/stormsurge-stormtide.html

Papastamatiou, Y. P., Watanabe, Y. Y., Bradley, D., Dee, L. E., Weng, K., Lowe, C. G., & Caselle, J. E. (2015). Drivers of daily routines in an ectothermic marine predator: Hunt warm, rest warmer? PLOS ONE, 10(6), e0127807. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127807

Pine, W. E., Pollock, K. H., Hightower, J. E., Kwak, T. J., & Rice, J. A. (2003). A review of tagging methods for estimating fish population size and components of mortality. Fisheries, 28(10), 10-23. https://doi.org/10.1577/1548-8446(2003)28[10:arotmf]2.0.co;2

Resh, V. H., Brown, A. V., Covich, A. P., Gurtz, M. E., Li, H. W., Minshall, G. W., Reice, S. R., Sheldon, A. L., Wallace, J. B., & Wissmar, R. C. (1988). The Role of Disturbance in Stream Ecology. Journal of the North American Benthological Society; Freshwater Science, 7(4). https://doi.org/10.2307/1467300

Ulrich, G. F., Jones, C. M., Driggers III, W. B., Drymon, J. M., Oakley, D., & Riley, C. (2007). Habitat Utilization, Relative Abundance, and Seasonality of Sharks in the Estuarine and Nearshore Waters of South Carolina. American Fisheries Society Symposium, 50, 125-139. https://lowcountryinstitute.org/images/research/dox/Ulrichetal2007.pdf

Valiela, I., & Cole, M. L. (2002). Comparative evidence that salt marshes and mangroves may protect seagrass meadows from land-derived nitrogen loads. Ecosystems, 5(1), 92-102. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-001-0058-4

April 17, 2026
When the Bottom Moves: Rays in the Shallows of Onslow County

What People Are Seeing

In the last few weeks, the water along the edges of Onslow County has felt different.

Not because the water itself has changed—but because something beneath it has become harder to ignore.

Schools of cownose ray (Rhinoptera bonasus) move just below the surface nearshore, their wingbeats lifting faint clouds from the bottom as they pass. In the soundside shallows, where the water thins over sand and mud, Atlantic stingray (Hypanus sabinus) settle into the substrate, half-buried and nearly invisible until a step comes too close and the outline breaks.

People are seeing them more often now—but they’re also reacting to them.

A pause mid-step in shallow water.
A quick shift backward when something moves.
Fishermen lifting a line and stopping for a second longer than usual—not what they expected to find.

There is awe in it.

And sometimes hesitation.

Because the same thing that makes them easy to notice now also makes them easy to miss.

The question follows quickly:

Are there more of them this year?

Maybe.

But that question lingers longer than the answer.

Cownose rays migrating in Swansboro, NC. | Image credit: Pogie’s Academy

What Brings Them Here

As spring settles in along the North Carolina coast, the system begins to reorganize.

Water temperatures rise, and with that rise comes a shift in metabolism. Rays—like many coastal species—become more active as conditions move into a narrower range that supports feeding and movement (Smith & Merriner, 1987; Schwartz & Dahlberg, 1978).

For cownose rays, this seasonal transition includes a northward migration along the Atlantic coast, bringing large groups into nearshore and estuarine waters (Smith & Merriner, 1987).

Large groups of cownose rays like these move north along our coast each season, arriving together in shallow water. | Image credit: Vidyacharan A. Alchi

But movement alone does not explain what people are seeing.

What matters is where that movement meets the structure of the environment.

The water does not always look the same—some days it is flat and clear enough to see straight to the bottom, and other days the slightest movement turns it cloudy, changing what can be seen and what remains hidden (Peterson et al., 2001).

And beneath all of it is food.

Cownose rays move through the shallows, sweeping across the bottom and disrupting what lies beneath them, crushing clams, oysters, and other shelled invertebrates with broad, flattened tooth plates (Collins et al., 2007; Fisher, 2010).

Atlantic stingrays hold low against the bottom, burying into the sand as they feed and working within the sediment itself—not moving across it—uncovering and drawing in small invertebrates hidden below (Snelson et al., 1988; Schwartz & Dahlberg, 1978).

Atlantic stingrays hold close to the bottom, often blending in until something shifts and gives them away. | Image credit: Andy Murch

Where prey is accessible, rays follow.

Where prey is concentrated in shallow, warming water, rays do not just pass through—they stay, turn, feed, and linger.

And in doing so, they cross into the same narrow band of space where people enter the water (Bangley et al., 2018).

They are not simply “here more.”

They are here in ways—and in places—that make them visible.

What Happens When They Feed

When a ray feeds, the bottom does not remain the same.

A cownose ray moving across a flat is not just searching—it is actively restructuring the surface beneath it. As it passes, the bottom is turned over behind it, patches of sand and mud disturbed where clams and other buried life have just been uncovered and crushed (Peterson et al., 2001; Smith & Merriner, 1985).

Feeding pits left behind by rays. Easy to mistake for crab holes at first—until you start to recognize the pattern and what’s actually shaping the bottom. | Image credit: Giaroli et al., 2024

Atlantic stingrays leave a different kind of trace. Where they settle, the surface shifts more subtly—small depressions, softened patches, places where the sediment has been worked rather than overturned, as buried invertebrates are uncovered and drawn in (Snelson et al., 1988; Schwartz & Dahlberg, 1978).

This is bioturbation—the bottom being reworked by the animals moving through it and within it (Thrush & Dayton, 2002).

As they feed, the bottom lifts into the water—fine particles rising and hanging there, turning clear water slightly cloudy (Thrush & Dayton, 2002).

The water does not stay still—the bottom here is constantly shifting, the way much of this coastline does, even when it appears unchanged.

And neither does the system.

Oysters and clams quietly filter the water as they feed, and when their numbers shift—even in small areas—the water and everything moving through it begins to change with them (Newell, 2004; zu Ermgassen et al., 2013).

In places where rays have been feeding, those filtering communities can be reduced or redistributed (Peterson et al., 2001).

Not removed entirely—but changed.

And that change does not stay in one place.

It moves outward, carried in the way the water looks, the way it settles, and what it can hold.

Layers of the Food Web

Rays do not sit at the top of the system, and they are not at the bottom of it.

As mesopredators, they feed on what is buried in the sediment, but they are also available to what moves through the water above. That position—between—links parts of the system that do not often meet directly (Myers et al., 2007; Heithaus et al., 2008).

What they do in that space matters.

As cownose rays move through andAtlantic stingrays work within the bottom, they are not just feeding—they are shaping what persists there. Clams, oysters, and other invertebrates do not simply accumulate unchecked. Their numbers are reduced, redistributed, and in some places kept from becoming dominant (Peterson et al., 2001).

Movement like this doesn’t stay in one place for long.

That pressure shapes the bottom itself.

Bivalves filter the water. Invertebrates stabilize sediment. When their abundance shifts, the system responds—sometimes toward clearer water, sometimes toward more suspended material, depending on what remains and where (Newell, 2004; zu Ermgassen et al., 2013).

Rays do not create those conditions alone—but they influence which direction the system moves.

At the same time, they carry that energy upward.

Juvenile sharks moving through these shallow waters encounter not just prey, but a system already in motion—areas where the bottom has been disturbed, where feeding has recently occurred, where something has been uncovered or displaced (Bangley et al., 2018).

And in some cases, the rays themselves become part of that exchange.

This is what it means to sit in the middle.

Not just connecting layers—but regulating how energy and movement pass between them.

If that middle shifts, the balance does not disappear.

It changes direction.

Why It Feels Sudden

There is a moment, standing in shallow water, when the bottom stops feeling like something you can trust.

What looked like sand shifts.
What felt still is no longer still.

Sometimes you notice it in time—a shape lifting away, a shadow moving just beneath the surface. A plume of fine sediment rising to the surface under a paddleboard with a trail following it.

The moment when the bottom stops looking empty. | Image credit: iStock

Sometimes you don’t.

A step comes down where something is already settled.
Hidden in the sand.
Working within it.

The reaction is immediate.
Surprise first. Then pain. Then the realization of what was there all along.

It is easy, in that moment, to think something unexpected has happened—the same kind of sudden awareness that comes when something just beneath the surface reveals itself.

But what you are stepping into is not a single event.

It is a convergence.

Water temperatures have risen, bringing rays into the shallows as they feed and move through these systems (Smith & Merriner, 1987; Schwartz & Dahlberg, 1978).

Tides narrow the space, concentrating movement into a thinner band of water.

The bottom has already been worked—turned by cownose rays moving through, disturbed by Atlantic stingrays holding within it.

And at the same time, people have returned to the water.

For a brief window, all of it overlaps.

Not more.
But more visible.

It feels sudden because you are standing at the point where all of these things meet.

And for a moment, the system lets you see it.

References

Bangley, C. W., Paramore, L., Dedman, S., & Rulifson, R. A. (2018). Delineation and mapping of coastal shark habitat within a shallow lagoonal Estuary. PLOS ONE, 13(4), e0195221. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0195221

Giaroli, M. L., Byrne, I., Gilby, B. L., Taylor, M., Chargulaf, C. A., & Tibbetts, I. R. (2024). The distribution and significance of stingray feeding pits in Quandamooka (Moreton Bay), Australia. Marine and Freshwater Research, 75(18). https://doi.org/10.1071/mf23247

Heithaus, M. R., Frid, A., Wirsing, A. J., & Worm, B. (2008). Predicting ecological consequences of marine top predator declines. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 23(4), 202-210. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2008.01.003

Kolmann, M. A., Huber, D. R., Motta, P. J., & Grubbs, R. D. (2015). Feeding biomechanics of the cownose ray, Rhinoptera bonasus, over ontogeny. Journal of Anatomy, 227(3), 341-351. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/joa.12342

Myers, R. A., Baum, J. K., Shepherd, T. D., Powers, S. P., & Peterson, C. H. (2007). Cascading effects of the loss of APEX predatory sharks from a coastal ocean. Science, 315(5820), 1846-1850. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1138657

Newell, R. I. (2004). Ecosystem influences of natural and cultivated populations of suspension-feeding bivalve molluscs: A review. 23(1), 51–61. Journal of Shellfish Research, 23(1), 51-61. https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA118543914

Peterson, C. H., Fodrie, J. F., Summerson, H. C., & Powers, S. P. (2001). Site-specific and density-dependent extinction of prey by schooling rays: generation of a population sink in top-quality habitat for bay scallops. Oecologia, 129, 349-356. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s004420100742

Schwartz, F. J., & Dahlberg, M. D. (1978). Biology and ecology of the Atlantic Stingray, Dasyatis Sabina (Pisces: Dasyatidae) in North Carolina and Georgia. Northeast Gulf Science, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.18785/negs.0201.01

Smith, J. W., & Merriner, J. V. (1985). Food habits and feeding behavior of the Cownose ray, Rhinoptera bonasus, in lower Chesapeake Bay. Estuaries, 8(3), 305. https://doi.org/10.2307/1351491

Smith, J. W., & Merriner, J. V. (1987). Age and growth, movements and distribution of the Cownose ray, Rhinoptera bonasus, in Chesapeake Bay. Estuaries, 10(2), 153. https://doi.org/10.2307/1352180

Snelson, F. F., Williams-Hooper, S. E., & Schmid, T. H. (1988). Reproduction and ecology of the Atlantic Stingray, Dasyatis Sabina, in Florida coastal lagoons. Copeia, 1988(3), 729. https://doi.org/10.2307/1445395

Thrush, S. F., & Dayton, P. K. (2002). Disturbance to marine benthic habitats by trawling and dredging: Implications for marine biodiversity. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 33(1), 449-473. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.33.010802.150515

Zu Ermgassen, P. S., Spalding, M. D., Blake, B., Coen, L. D., Dumbauld, B., Geiger, S., Grabowski, J. H., Grizzle, R., Luckenbach, M., McGraw, K., Rodney, W., Ruesink, J. L., Powers, S. P., & Brumbaugh, R. (2012). Historical ecology with real numbers: Past and present extent and biomass of an imperilled estuarine habitat. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 279(1742), 3393-3400. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.0313

April 11, 2026
Alligators in North Carolina Coastal Waters: What Their Presence Really Means

The Surface That Holds

There are mornings along the edges of the water in Onslow County when the surface looks still enough to trust.

The marsh grass has not yet reached its summer height. What stands there leaves more water exposed between the stems, and without sustained wind, the surface holds its shape. You can see farther into it now than you will in a few weeks, before suspended sediment and constant movement return it to opacity. The water carries less of the season, and because of that, more of what moves beneath it becomes visible—if you are willing to wait long enough to see the difference between movement and reflection.

This is when people begin to notice them again.

Not all at once. Not everywhere. Just a change that does not follow wind or tide. A line that holds where the rest of the surface releases. Something that holds its position in a system that is always adjusting.

An alligator does not arrive in that moment.

It becomes visible.

Alligator emerging from the mud. | Photo credit: Gilbert Grant, iNaturalist

Seasonal Absence Is Not Absence

Through winter, they remain within these same creeks, marsh edges, and quieter channels. What changes is not location, but how they occupy it. As temperatures fall, activity narrows. Movement slows, and the need for it slows with it. Energy is conserved, not spent. And the surface carries fewer signs of what lies beneath it. Individuals hold in deeper water or along softer margins where mud retains heat longer than the surrounding water column, remaining within conditions that allow them to persist without constant movement (Nifong et al., 2014; Rosenblatt & Heithaus, 2011).

The same stretch of water that in spring will hold a visible form can pass through winter without interruption, its stillness mistaken for absence.

But the system does not empty.

It compresses.

The System Wakes in Layers

By early spring, that compression begins to release—not all at once, but in layers that build on each other before they are recognized. Shallow water warms first, taking in solar heat more quickly than deeper channels. Along these edges, fish begin to hold longer. Movements that in winter passed through quickly begin to extend into areas that had remained quiet. Invertebrates return to the sediment surface, and the water column begins to carry more suspended life, even before it becomes visible as turbidity.

Birds respond to this before most other changes are noticed. Their movements tighten. Landings become more frequent, departures more abrupt. What they are tracking is not random. It is the redistribution of energy into places where it can be accessed.

The alligator moves within that shift.

Not as a trigger. Not as something layered on top. But as part of a system reorganizing itself across temperature, light, and movement at the same time.

Great blue heron and alligator are part of an interconnected system. | Photo credit: Audubon North Carolina

Reading What It Is Responding To

When one becomes visible along the edge of a creek or marsh, it is easy to reduce that moment to temperature alone. Warmer water allows for more activity.

But what draws it into that position is more specific than warmth.

It is the arrangement of prey.

Along the margins where water meets land, movement compresses. Fish traveling with the tide encounter shallow gradients that limit how long they can remain. Small mammals moving between marsh and upland must cross exposed edges. Birds landing to feed do so in places where depth and access align for only short intervals.

These are not isolated events. They are recurring patterns shaped by tidal cycles, substrate, and seasonal change.

The alligator positions itself within those patterns.

Its diet reflects that flexibility, spanning invertebrates, fish, birds, reptiles, and mammals depending on size and availability (Nifong, 2016). But the diet alone does not explain its placement. What matters is where energy becomes concentrated, even briefly.

That concentration is not constant. It forms and dissolves with tide, with light, with movement.

And the predator tracks that.

And what appears as a single movement—a fish turning, a bird lifting, something crossing the edge of the marsh—is part of a larger structure that holds only briefly before dissolving again.

The alligator does not respond to the individual movement.

It responds to the pattern that produces it.

Where Freshwater Meets Salt

These are not just places where water mixes.

They are places where movement is forced—and where that movement becomes available to something waiting at the top of it.

There are places along this coastline where those changes concentrate.

At the mouths of creeks, along the edges of the Intracoastal Waterway, and near the shifting bars of New River Inlet, the water does not settle into a single condition. Freshwater moves outward with tide and rainfall, meeting saltwater pressing back in with tidal exchange. The result is not a fixed boundary, but a gradient that shifts continuously—sometimes visible as a faint line, sometimes only detectable in how the surface moves differently from one side to the other.

This is where alligators are most often encountered—because this is where the system compresses into something they can use.

They are not marine animals. They do not possess the specialized salt glands that allow for extended life in high salinity environments. Over time, saltwater carries a physiological cost, requiring a return to freshwater to restore balance (Rosenblatt & Heithaus, 2011; Fujisaki et al., 2014).

But that limitation does not exclude them.

It defines how they move through them.

In these mixing zones, salinity is not constant. It rises and falls with tide, with rainfall, with wind direction. A location that carries higher salinity at one stage may shift toward fresher conditions hours later. What appears to be a boundary is, in practice, a moving field.

Within that field, movement compresses.

Fish traveling with the tide are funneled into narrower pathways. Shallow gradients limit how long they can remain in deeper water. Schools tighten. Individuals encounter edges that restrict escape. The system concentrates energy into space.

The predator does not need to range widely in these conditions.

It needs to hold where movement is forced.

And so it does.

An alligator near the tall grass near Marine Corps Air Station New River | Photo credit: Martin Egnash

At the Edge of the Open Water

There are moments when that pattern extends beyond the mixing zones, into places that appear, at first, outside of where an alligator belongs.

Along the shoreline, in the breaking waves where the ocean meets sand, one will sometimes appear—rising and falling with the swell, holding position just beyond where the water turns over onto the beach. It looks misplaced, as though it has moved beyond the system that defines it.

It has not.

The surf zone is one of the most compressed environments along the coast. Waves reduce depth, disrupt orientation, and concentrate movement into a narrow band where escape is limited. Fish pushed into breaking water lose some ability to maintain direction. Schools fragment. Individuals become briefly exposed in ways that do not occur in deeper, more stable water.

For a predator capable of stillness followed by short bursts of movement, that compression creates opportunity.

But the cost is higher.

Salinity is elevated. The water is in constant motion. There is no stable refuge within immediate reach. Time in this environment cannot be extended indefinitely.

And so it does not.

Movements into higher salinity water tend to be brief—extensions outward, followed by a return to freshwater or lower salinity conditions where balance can be restored (Nifong et al., 2014).

What appears as an anomaly is part of a larger pattern.

The predator crosses the boundary not to remain, but to use it, moving where the system briefly offers more than it costs.

The same forces that shape the marsh edge—compression, constraint, and brief exposure—are recreated here, just for a moment, in a different place.

An alligator rests at the ocean’s edge in North Topsail. | Photo credit: Fox8 Digital Desk

What Its Presence Changes

Most of what that presence changes cannot be seen when it is observed.

Long before any direct interaction occurs, it is already altering how other organisms use space.

Fish moving along the edge do not simply pass through. They adjust their depth, their speed, the amount of time they remain exposed. Birds land with shorter intervals between contact and departure. Mammals approaching the water shift their paths or their timing. These changes are not dramatic in isolation. But they are continuous.

Over time, they accumulate into structure—the kind that determines who feeds, where they feed, and how long they remain.

The influence of a predator at this level extends beyond what it consumes. It shapes behavior across multiple species, redistributing where and how energy moves through the system. The possibility of predation—present even when not observed—alters interactions in ways that regulate access to habitat and resources (Heithaus et al., 2008; Ripple et al., 2014; Estes et al., 2011).

What holds the system in place is not removal alone.

It is pressure.

What is being shaped is not just movement, but access—and access is what determines how energy moves through the system.

More Than Predation

The influence of the alligator does not end with what it hunts, but extends beyond those interactions.

As it moves through shallow systems, it disturbs sediment, creating depressions and pathways that alter how water is retained and how nutrients are redistributed. These small changes in physical structure create conditions that other species use—temporary refuges, feeding areas, and zones where organic material accumulates (Eversole et al., 2018; Subalusky et al., 2009).

In wetland systems, these disturbances have been linked to broader effects, including nutrient cycling and carbon storage, where the presence of large predators contributes to the retention of organic material within the system rather than its export (Murray et al., 2025; Atwood et al., 2015).

These processes do not occur in isolation.

They intersect with the same patterns of movement, feeding, and behavior that define the system at larger scales.

Seeing the Surface, Reading the System

When one becomes visible along the surface, it is easy to treat the moment as singular.

A sighting. An encounter. Something separate from everything around it.

But that form at the surface is supported by layers extending beyond what can be seen.

It reflects water temperatures crossing into ranges that support sustained activity. It reflects prey moving into positions where access becomes possible. It reflects a system where behavior is still shaped by the presence of something at the top.

The alligator is not an interruption to that system.

It is an expression of it.

What Becomes Visible

Seeing one does not indicate that something has entered the water.

It indicates that enough beneath the surface is functioning to hold it.

Not in a static sense. Not as balance in the way it is often described. But as a set of interactions that remain connected—movement, response, pressure—each shaping the others even when they are not directly observed.

What becomes visible at the surface is only a fraction of that structure.

But it is enough to know that the rest is still in place.

An alligator in Onslow County sits at the edge of the saltmarsh. |Photo credit: Gilbert Grant, iNaturalist

When That Pressure Is Reduced

If that pressure is reduced, the system does not leave an obvious gap.

It shifts.

Movements that were once constrained begin to extend. Species that passed quickly through exposed areas begin to remain longer. Edges that functioned as transition zones become used differently—not because the physical environment has changed, but because the conditions that shaped behavior within it have relaxed.

Mid-level predators expand their activity under these conditions, increasing their access to prey and space when not constrained from above (Nifong et al., 2013).

The change is subtle.

It appears in how long something stays. In how often it returns. In where it lingers. In how quietly the structure of behavior begins to loosen.

The food web and trophic cascade of the American alligator in the Florida Everglades.

A System Written Into Temperature

There is another layer to this that does not show itself at the surface.

The structure of that presence is set years earlier, in a place that can be overlooked when standing at the water’s edge. Along the margins of marsh and wetland, slightly above the reach of regular water movement, nests are built from vegetation and sediment, forming mounds that hold heat as they decompose.

Within those mounds, temperature determines something that will not be visible for much later.

Sex is not fixed at fertilization. It emerges during incubation, shaped by the thermal conditions held within the nest. A difference of only a few degrees is enough to shift the outcome, producing more males or more females depending on where within that range the nest remains (Lang & Andrews, 1994; Janzen, 1994).

Under variable conditions—differences in shading, rainfall, timing, and placement—those outcomes are distributed across the landscape. Some nests produce more females, others more males. That variability holds the population in a form that can sustain itself over time.

When conditions become more consistent, that variation narrows.

Warmer nights hold heat longer within the nest. Seasonal transitions extend. The range of outcomes compresses. What was once distributed begins to align.

And that alignment carries forward into the structure of the population—into how individuals occupy space, into how pressure is applied across the system, into what will eventually be visible at the surface.

Alligator eggs hatch after 65 days of incubation in the fall. The babies will chirp to alert their mom, who then digs out the nest while the babies use their egg tooth to hatch from their eggs. Their mom will then safely carry them to the water.

Where the Next Generation Is Set

The placement of those nests depends on something even more constrained.

A narrow band of land that remains above water just long enough to hold them.

That band is not fixed.

It shifts with tide, with rainfall, with the gradual reworking of shoreline that occurs across seasons and years. With rising sea levels, water reaches farther into areas that once remained above it. Flooding becomes more frequent, not always through singular events, but through repeated intrusions that saturate and destabilize what had previously held (Joanen & McNease, 1989; Sweet et al., 2022).

Human alteration compresses this space further.

Hardened shorelines, dredging, and development reduce the gradual transition between land and water. Where there was once a slope capable of holding multiple elevations, there becomes a defined edge. That edge does not provide the same range of conditions required for successful nesting.

The number of suitable sites decreases.

More importantly, the variability between them narrows.

And with that, the system loses one of the mechanisms that allowed it to absorb change.

Alligator on her nest that can hold up to 60 eggs. | Photo credit: National Park Service (NPS)

What Its Presence Means

When an alligator becomes visible along the surface, it reflects conditions that have aligned across multiple layers.

Temperature has reached a range that supports activity. Prey has moved into positions where access becomes possible. Behavioral pressure remains in place across the system. Reproduction has held across enough years, in enough suitable places, to sustain what is now present.

What is seen at the surface is not separate from them.

It is supported by them.

Seeing one does not signal that something has entered the water.

It signals that enough of what lies beneath it—movement, pressure, response, and continuity—remains intact.

And that—even when most of it is not visible—the system is still holding together.

And that is what becomes visible—just long enough to be seen, before the system closes back over it again.

The system does not end at the water’s edge.

Epilogue: Chicken Nugget

We came across him along the New River, near the courthouse in Jacksonville.

We were there to clear what had been left behind—fishing line caught along the walkways, hooks, and the overflow from a trash can that had spilled out onto the edge. Fast food containers, grocery store chicken trays, scattered along the bank. The signs were clear enough. People had been there for a while—crabbing, fishing, eating, leaving what remained.

He was directly below us.

Small enough to miss at first. Still enough to blend into the water until you stopped looking for movement and started noticing what held its position.

A juvenile alligator, watching.

He stayed there while we worked, then slipped beneath the surface and crossed the small bay. On the opposite side, someone tossed a piece of food into the water. He surfaced almost immediately, took it, and remained.

Waiting.

I came back later and stayed longer.

The pattern repeated. He would disappear until footsteps approached, then return to the same place along the edge. Holding position. Watching. Waiting for something to fall.

No fishermen or crabbers passed through while I was there, but the behavior was consistent with what happens when food becomes predictable. Bait, catch, scraps—anything that can be taken without the cost of searching or pursuing.

Energy, without effort.

It is easy to see something like that and respond to what it looks like in that moment. A small animal. Still. Attentive. Something that feels close enough to interact with.

But what is being shaped there is not just a single interaction.

It is behavior.

A shift away from the conditions that formed it—toward something more efficient, more immediate, and less stable over time. The system that once required movement, patience, and response begins to narrow into expectation.

And expectation changes how an animal uses space.

What happens when that animal is no longer small is not a separate question.

It is the continuation of the same pattern.

Alligators do not forget where food has been easy to obtain. They return to it. They hold in those places. They begin to associate presence—human presence—with opportunity.

What begins as something that feels harmless becomes something that alters how the system functions around it.

Not just for the animal, but for everything that responds to it.

There are instincts at work here that were shaped long before any walkway, any dock, any place where food might be dropped from above. Those instincts are not just about survival in isolation. They are part of how pressure is applied, how movement is shaped, how the system holds.

When those instincts are replaced with something easier, the effect does not remain contained.

It carries outward.

He stayed there while I watched. Returning to the same place. Holding the same position. Waiting for something to fall.

There is a kind of kindness in wanting to give something to an animal like that.

But there is another kind in leaving it as it is.

Not interrupting the conditions that shape it. Not narrowing what it has learned to expect. Not replacing a system built on movement and response with one built on waiting.

Let it remember the water as it is.

And you, only as something that passed through it.

We affectionately named this juvenile alligator in the New River in Jacksonville, NC “Chicken Nugget” for all of the chicken nugget boxes left behind on the walkway from an overflowing trash can. | Photo credit: A. Mitchell

References

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Nifong, J. C., Nifong, R. L., Silliman, B. R., Lowers, R. H., Guillette, L. J., Ferguson, J. M., Welsh, M., Abernathy, K., & Marshall, G. (2014). Animal-borne imaging reveals novel insights into the foraging behaviors and Diel activity of a large-bodied APEX predator, the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis). PLoS ONE, 9(1), e83953. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0083953

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Ripple, W. J., Estes, J. A., Beschta, R. L., Wilmers, C. C., Ritchie, E. G., Hebblewhite, M., Berger, J., Elmhagen, B., Letnic, M., Nelson, M. P., Schmitz, O. J., Smith, D. W., Wallach, A. D., & Wirsing, A. J. (2014). Status and ecological effects of the world’s largest carnivores. Science, 343(6167). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1241484

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April 3, 2026
Where the Coast Keeps Its Wrecks: Shipwrecks Along Onslow County, North Carolina

Encountering the Past in the Sand: When the Beach Opens

There are mornings when the beach feels newly made.

The tide has pulled back just enough to smooth the sand into a long, pale sheet, the wind from the night before erased except for faint ripples that catch the light at an angle. Ghost crab tracks cross and recross the surface, stitching together small territories that vanish with the next wave. The wrack line sits just above the reach of the water—shells, grasses, fragments of offshore life placed carefully along a boundary that shifts a little each day.

And then, walking that line, something interrupts the pattern.

At first it looks like driftwood. Dark. Angular. Out of place, but not unusual. But the closer you get, the more it resists that explanation. The pieces are too regular, too aligned. The sand around it feels different underfoot—firmer, compacted, as though something beneath it has been holding shape long before this tide receded.

What emerges is not debris, but structure.

Ribs of timber curve in a way that only makes sense once you recognize them as part of a hull. Iron fastenings stain deep into the grain. The geometry of a vessel that once moved across this water now rests within it.

The beach has not received this. It has revealed it.

What remains of the William H. Sumner when shifting sand briefly reveals it along the shoreline. | Photo credit: A. Mitchell

Along the Onslow County coast, shipwrecks do not arrive as singular events. They exist in cycles of concealment and return. Storms strip sand away. Longshore currents redistribute what was settled. A wreck that has been buried for decades can appear in a single tide cycle, as if placed there overnight, only to be covered again before the week ends.

The shoreline is not a surface. It is a moving archive (Riggs & Ames, 2003).

A Coast That Does Not Hold Still

Standing at the edge of the water, the coastline can appear steady, almost fixed, as though the boundary between land and ocean has settled into a reliable position. The horizon holds its line. Waves repeat their approach in familiar intervals. Even the inlets, from a distance, seem to occupy defined openings in the land.

But that stability is a surface impression.

Beneath it, the coastline is in constant adjustment. Sand moves even when the water appears calm, carried alongshore by currents that shift direction with changing wind and wave conditions. Bars form offshore, migrate, and dissolve. Channels deepen and fill. The openings at places like New River Inlet or Topsail are not permanent features so much as temporary alignments of water and sediment, reshaped seasonally and sometimes abruptly after storms.

For someone approaching from offshore, especially before modern navigation, this would not have presented as a clear pathway but as uncertainty. Depth changes could occur over short distances. A channel that allowed passage one season might be obstructed the next. What looked like open water could rise into a shoal just beneath the surface, invisible until it was encountered.

Ships moving along this coast were not simply traveling past it. They were moving across a landscape that was itself in motion.

When a vessel grounded here, it was often not because of a single error, but because the environment it relied on for passage had already changed. The ship met a bottom that no longer matched expectation, and once contact was made, wave energy did the rest—breaking the structure apart and distributing its remains across the same shifting system that had caused the grounding.

Over time, those remains became part of that movement. Buried, exposed, and buried again as sand continued to migrate, they settled into the coastline not as isolated events but as elements within an ongoing process.

What appears now as a sudden discovery—a line of timbers revealed after a storm—is not the arrival of something new, but a brief moment when the motion of the coast allows what has long been present to be seen again.

Vessels Carried Into This Coast

An early French map depicting the coastal regions of the Carolinas and Georgia before the American Revolution from an antique map, the “Carte de la Caroline et Georgie” by Jacques-Nicolas Bellin, published around 1773.

Walk this shoreline long enough and shipwrecks begin to feel less like isolated events and more like recurring encounters with the same conditions. Different vessels, different centuries, but the same meeting between movement and a coast that does not stay where it was. What changes is not only the vessel, but the way it is lost.

Two Ways a Ship Becomes Part of the Sea

Not all shipwrecks begin the same way. Some are lost far offshore, where depth replaces sand as the defining feature. A vessel may be damaged by storm, fire, or attack, take on water, and settle downward through open water until it reaches the seafloor. The descent is vertical, the structure often remaining largely intact as it comes to rest in deeper, more stable conditions. These wrecks lie beyond the horizon, where the bottom changes more slowly and the surrounding water does not rearrange them in the same way (Ward et al., 1999; Hoyt et al., 2021).

Others meet the coast itself. Along barrier shorelines like Onslow County, ships often do not sink all at once. They run aground. A hull meets sand where water had been expected, forward motion stops, and the energy of waves and tide begins to work against the structure. The vessel lifts, pivots, and settles unevenly as water moves beneath and around it. Over time, it breaks apart. What remains is not a single intact form, but a field of structure distributed across the seabed and shoreline (Riggs & Ames, 2003; Pilkey, 1998).

Both are shipwrecks, but they belong to different processes. One settles into depth. The other becomes part of a coast that does not hold still.

Pirate Waters

Model of the Queen Anne’s Revenge | Photo credit: Qualiesin, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Long before modern navigation, these waters were already understood as difficult to pass through cleanly. The channels around what is now Topsail Island were narrow, shifting, and often uncertain from offshore. What appears now as a continuous coastline is, and always has been, a series of openings that do not hold their shape for long.

Even today, that instability can be seen without leaving shore. After a strong storm or a week of changing wind, the edge of the waterline shifts, bars appear where there had been none, and shallow areas extend farther out than expected. A stretch of water that looked open a few days earlier begins to break differently, waves lifting and folding over something just beneath the surface. The bottom has moved, even if the horizon has not (Riggs & Ames, 2003; Pilkey, 1998).

For a vessel approaching from offshore, especially without precise depth measurements, that change would not be visible until it was too late. The hull would meet sand where water had been expected. Forward motion would slow abruptly, then stop, while the energy of the sea continued to act on the vessel. Waves begin to lift and drop the structure unevenly, pivoting it sideways, driving it further onto the bar. What had been a path forward becomes a fixed point under pressure (Riggs et al., 1995; Delgado, 1997).

Stories persist that pirates used this uncertainty to their advantage, positioning themselves within these shifting inlets where passing ships were forced into slower, more confined routes. Whether or not every account is precise, the setting itself made such encounters possible.Further north along this same coastline, in 1718, Blackbeard ran his flagship Queen Anne’s Revenge aground while entering what is now Beaufort Inlet. The ship struck a shallow shoal at the mouth of the inlet, where water depths even today remain modest—on the order of twenty to twenty-five feet at the wreck site. Rather than sinking intact into the deep ocean, it remained within a high-energy, shallow environment where waves and tidal currents gradually broke it apart. Its remains settled into the seabed and have since been buried and re-exposed as sediment continues to move across the inlet (Wilde-Ramsey & Carnes-McNaughton, 2016; Wilde-Ramsing & Carnes-McNaughton, 2018).

To learn more about Blackbeard’s Queen Anne’s Revenge Shipwreck, watch the Nautilus Productions video.

Colonial Trade and Storm-Driven Wrecks

By the mid-eighteenth century, heavily loaded merchant vessels were moving along this coastline as part of transatlantic trade. Their routes followed currents that offered efficiency, but those same currents carried them close to a shoreline that did not remain fixed.

In 1750, the Spanish ship El Salvador, part of a treasure fleet transporting gold and silver, encountered a hurricane that pushed it northward along the Gulf Stream. The storm did not introduce danger so much as concentrate it. Wind and current worked together, driving the vessel toward a coast already defined by shifting shoals and unstable inlets. Other ships in the same fleet were carried along the same path, driven ashore at different points along the Outer Banks, separated from one another by the same forces that moved them north (Shomette, 2008; Pilkey, 1998).

When El Salvador met the shoals, there was little margin left for recovery.

Only a small number of crew survived, carried ashore as the vessel came apart in the surf. The hull did not settle into the water as a whole. Instead, waves lifted and broke it against a bottom that would not hold it in one place. For a short time, portions of the structure remained visible—rigging, fragments of timber, the outline of something that had recently been intact. And then the shoreline resumed its movement. Sand shifted across what remained. Water moved through it. What had been a vessel became something distributed, its structure absorbed into sediment and carried within the same system that had stopped it, continuing to migrate along the coast (Riggs & Ames, 2003; Pilkey, 1998; Shomette, 2008).

The pattern holds: a vessel enters under force, meets a shifting bottom, and becomes part of it.

Steam and Certainty: Pulaski (1838)

The Pulaski is depicted during its boiler explosion | Image credit: C. Elms

By the early nineteenth century, steam navigation had begun to change expectations. Routes were more regular. Travel felt more predictable. Distance could be measured in time rather than uncertainty.

The coastline, however, had not changed.

When the steamship Pulaski exploded offshore of North Carolina in 1838, the rupture was immediate. What followed did not resolve as quickly. Survivors, separated into lifeboats and fragments of wreckage, were no longer traveling across water with direction. They were moving within it (North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources [DNCR], 2016).

They drifted for more than a day, in some cases closer to two.

There was no fixed path in that movement. Coordinates were not precisely recorded, and what direction remained was shaped by current, wind, and wave rather than intention. The horizon held its line, but offered no reference. The sun marked time without marking progress. Salt settled into the skin. Thirst extended the length of the day. Movement continued, but without a way to measure where it led.

Some survivors eventually reached the barrier islands along this stretch of North Carolina, carried by those same forces rather than guided toward land. Their arrival was not coordinated or immediate, but scattered—individual landings along a shoreline that did not announce itself as destination, only as the end of exposure (DNCR, 2016). Of its 150 passengers and 37 crew, only 59 survived (Falk, 2025).

The wreck remains offshore, beyond the shifting bars where waves no longer break it apart in the same way. It does not return to the surface in the way some grounded vessels do. It settles instead into deeper water, where structure changes more slowly and remains largely out of view.

The shoreline holds something else. Not the wreck itself, but the moment when motion without direction became arrival. A place where drifting resolved, not into discovery, but into contact—where water gave way to land, and movement, at last, found its edge.

Want to learn more about the Pulaski? Listen to a podcast from Shipwrecks and Seadogs about its history.

War Along the Inlets: New River

Blockade runner, Teaser, near Fort Monroe, Virginia, is an example of the blockade runners along our coastline. | Photo credit: MPI/Getty Images

During the Civil War, this coastline was not only a place of navigation, but of control.

New River Inlet, leading inland toward what is now Jacksonville, served as a potential access point between coastal waters and interior routes. Union naval forces patrolled the coast as part of a broader blockade, attempting to restrict movement of goods and supplies, while Confederate forces relied on smaller vessels and local knowledge of the waterways to move through the system (Browning, 2002; Stick, 1990).

For any vessel entering New River, the challenge would have been familiar.

The inlet itself was shallow and shifting, defined by sandbars that changed position with storms and tides. Navigation required timing, local knowledge, and an ability to read water that did not present itself clearly from offshore (Riggs & Ames, 2003).

Unlike some of the more widely known Civil War wreck sites along the North Carolina coast, there is no clear record of a major vessel sinking within New River itself. But the absence of a wreck does not mean the absence of difficulty. The conditions that prevent passage do not always leave a visible record. Any ship moving through that inlet would have encountered the same conditions that shape it today.

Shallow approaches, moving sand, and water that changes faster than it can be mapped. The difference is not in the coastline, only in the ships that attempt to pass through it.

Farther south along this same stretch of coast lies the Cape Fear Civil War Shipwreck District, a cluster of documented wreck sites near the approaches to the Cape Fear River and the port of Wilmington. These wrecks, concentrated off Brunswick, New Hanover, and parts of Pender County, represent vessels involved in the Confederate blockade-running trade. Ships attempting to slip past Union naval patrols carried cargo that ranged from military supplies and weapons to manufactured goods and cloth desperately needed in the South. Many were narrow, fast steamers built with shallow drafts and reinforced hulls designed to move quickly through inlets and across shoals. Their loss was not incidental, but patterned—occurring in a region where shifting channels, shallow bars, and the pressure of pursuit converged. Archaeological surveys of this coastline describe a dense concentration of wreck sites associated with these movements, forming one of the most significant Civil War maritime landscapes along the Atlantic seaboard (North Carolina Office of State Archaeology, n.d.; Browning, 2002; Hall, 2004).

Working Maritime Coast: William H. Sumner (1919)

The William H. Sumner circa 1919 and what remains today. | Photo credits: Cape Fear Museum of History and Science (left); A. Mitchell (right)

In 1919, the schooner William H. Sumner approached this same coastline carrying cargo northward. The conditions it encountered were not new. The channel it relied on had shifted beyond what the vessel could safely cross.

The grounding was not violent, but it was final.

Accounts from the time suggest that by the final days of the voyage, conditions aboard the vessel had already begun to shift. Rations had reportedly run low, and attention moved away from navigation. In the hours after the grounding, the captain was found dead in his cabin from a gunshot wound, and the ship’s mate was later charged with mutiny and murder. Testimony conflicted. Some described tension among the crew, others described familiarity and routine. The trial that followed ended without resolution, leaving the cause of the captain’s death uncertain (North Carolina Shipwrecks, n.d.; Wrightsville Beach Magazine, 2015).

Once the hull met the sandbar near Topsail Inlet, where multiple vessels have grounded over centuries of shifting channels, wave energy began to work against it, gradually breaking the structure apart (Riggs & Ames, 2003; Pilkey, 1998; Hall, 2004). Salvage efforts removed what could be taken. What remained did not leave with it. It settled into the shoreline system, where it was taken in and buried beneath moving sand (Riggs & Ames, 2003; Pilkey, 1998).

Over time, and then at intervals shaped by storms, it appeared again.

Storms and low tides continue to strip away the sand that covers portions of the wreck, exposing curved timbers that seem, for a short time, to return. These exposures are often described as discoveries, but the structure has been present throughout, shifting between visibility and concealment as sediment moves across it (Riggs & Ames, 2003). When these timbers reappear, they are not simply objects to be collected. As registered historic shipwreck remains, they are protected under state law, and removing or disturbing them is prohibited, preserving both the structure and the record it represents (ABC45 News, 2024).

The wreck does not travel. The coastline moves around it.

Wrecks Beyond the Shoals

Farther offshore, beyond the shifting bars and inlets, the nature of shipwrecks begins to change.

In deeper water, vessels are less likely to run aground and more likely to be lost through damage that begins within the ship itself—fire, structural failure, or, in the case of the North Carolina coast during World War II, torpedo strikes from German U-boats operating just off the continental shelf (Hoyt et al., 2021; Blair, 2000).

By the time of World War II, this stretch of coastline was already part of what is often called the “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” a name shaped by centuries of shipwrecks driven by storms, shifting shoals, strong currents, and difficult navigation along the North Carolina coast (Stick, 1990; Hoyt et al., 2021). The war did not create this pattern, but added to it, concentrating losses offshore as vessels were targeted in transit. Tankers and cargo ships moving along the eastern seaboard were struck at sea, often at night, their hulls breached below the waterline as they traveled.

The process is different. Instead of grounding, there is descent.

A vessel lists, loses buoyancy, and slips beneath the surface, settling onto the seafloor often in a more intact form than those broken apart in shallow surf. Once compromised, these ships took on water rapidly and sank into deeper channels where the seabed lay far below the reach of waves (Wells & McNinch, 1991).

In some cases, even when a wreck is located, its identity remains uncertain. Historical comparisons of structure, propulsion, and location have led to tentative identifications—such as the possible association of certain offshore remains with Civil War–era blockade runners—but these connections are not always definitive and may remain unresolved despite decades of study (Stallman, 2011).

Off the coast of Onslow County, these deeper wrecks remain present, though rarely visible from shore.These wrecks are not isolated features, but part of a broader offshore field of structure, scattered across the continental shelf. Some have been mapped and studied, while others remain only partially defined, their forms intact below the reach of waves. What defines them is not their visibility, but their persistence—structures that remain in place long after the events that created them, shaping the surrounding environment in ways that are not immediately seen.

Storm Without Shore: Normannia (1924)

The Normannia | Photo credit: Library of Congress

Vessels in deeper water faced a different kind of exposure than those nearer to the shoals.

In 1924, the Normannia foundered during a storm offshore. The forces at work were not those of shifting shoals, but of sustained wind, wave height, and structural stress. Far from the influence of the coastline’s sandbars, the vessel did not run aground. It remained in open water until the structure failed (Gentile, 1992).

As the hull lost integrity, water entered faster than it could be expelled. Stability gave way. The vessel listed, settled, and slipped beneath the surface (Gentile, 1992).

There was no bar to hold it, no shoreline to break it apart—only depth to receive it.

March 1942: A Concentrated Loss Offshore

In March of 1942, multiple vessels moving along this coastline were struck within a matter of days, part of a concentrated period of U-boat activity along the North Carolina coast.

Other vessels from this same period reflect the intensity of offshore loss during the war. The tanker Naeco, more than 400 feet in length, was struck by a torpedo from U-124 and broke apart before sinking, its bow and stern sections settling separately on the seafloor miles apart. The tanker Esso Nashville was also torpedoed that year; its bow section sank offshore while the stern remained afloat long enough to be recovered, later refitted and returned to service. When the tanker John D. Gill was struck by U-158, where 23 were lost and 26 survived, burning oil ignited on the water, creating a fire visible from shore, extending the event into the night sky itself (Taylor, 2025).

The John D. Gill (left) and the Naeco (left) | Photo credits: G. Gentile (left) and Marines Museum {right}

These vessels did not meet the coast through sand. They were lost to force applied below the waterline, their structures descending into deeper channels beyond the reach of waves (Hoyt et al., 2021; Blair, 2000; Wells & McNinch, 1991).

Over time, these wrecks become stable structures in deeper water, less influenced by shifting sand and more by currents, corrosion, and biological growth. They are still part of the same coastal system, but they are shaped by depth rather than motion (Paxton et al., 2023).

Likely a picture of the Esso Nashville, due to its stern configuration (left) and the starboard and bow anchor of the Esso Nashville (right) | Photo credits: G. Gentile (left) and P. Hudy (right)

War Along the Shore: Observation Without Contact

While vessels were being lost offshore, the coastline itself became part of the wartime landscape.

Along Topsail Island, a series of observation towers were constructed as part of Operation Bumblebee, where military personnel tracked missile tests and coastal activity from elevated positions above the shoreline. From these towers, the ocean was not empty space but an active field—ships moving along the horizon, and at times, evidence of conflict unfolding beyond direct reach (Island Life NC, 2025).

The coastline did not receive these wrecks.

But it witnessed them.

Collision in Transit: Cassimir (1942)

Not all vessels lost during this period were the result of attack.

The Cassimir, built in 1920, sank in 1942 following a collision with the freighter Lara. The loss occurred offshore, in deeper water, where the structure did not ground but instead descended to the seafloor. Its presence reflects a different kind of vulnerability—navigation intersecting with proximity rather than conflict or storm (Gentile, 1992).

The outcome, however, remains consistent.

The vessel did not meet sand.

It entered depth.

The Cassimer circa 1920 (left) and its anchor at the wreck site (right) | Photo credits: G. Gentile (left) and P. Hudy (right)

Modern Abandoned Vessels: Those That Become Something Else

Along the coast today, abandoned vessels follow a similar trajectory, though their timeline is still unfolding. Shrimp boats grounded on shoals or left after mechanical failure may remain in place for years, shifting slightly with storms but never fully leaving.

Abandoned shrimp vessel in Stump Sound | Photo credit: L. Caldwell

During that time, they begin to change.

Osprey use the elevated structure for nesting. Barnacles attach to submerged surfaces. Fish gather beneath the hull where shade and form offer protection. In a sandy coastal system, any stable structure creates opportunities for life to organize around it.

But what develops on these vessels depends strongly on where they come to rest.

When a boat grounds on a shoal or nearshore bar, the surrounding environment remains in constant motion. Waves pass through the structure with each tide cycle, sand migrates around the hull, and storms periodically bury or expose different portions of the wreck. Habitat in these places is shaped by disturbance. The organisms that establish themselves must tolerate shifting sediment, abrasion, and periodic exposure to air.

The first arrivals appear quickly. Within weeks, thin microbial films and algae coat the surfaces of exposed wood, steel, or fiberglass. Barnacles and oysters follow, attaching themselves wherever water continues to move across the hull. Mussels cluster along beams and ribs where currents deliver suspended food. Small fish begin to gather in the shadows beneath the structure—pinfish, blennies, and juvenile black sea bass slipping into crevices created by broken ribs or propeller shafts. Sheepshead move in to feed on barnacles and shellfish, while blue crabs and shrimp occupy pockets where sand collects between fragments.

Over time, the wreck becomes less a single object than a patch of structure embedded in the moving beach system. Sandbars migrate across it. Portions disappear beneath sediment, only to reappear after storms. Habitat here is temporary and episodic, shaped by the same forces that buried the vessel in the first place.

View interactive Map of Derelict Vessels in North Carolina.

Farther offshore, the process unfolds differently.

When a vessel sinks into deeper water beyond the reach of breaking waves, the surrounding seabed is more stable and the structure often settles largely intact. Steel hulls, decks, and internal compartments create vertical relief in a landscape otherwise dominated by sand. Hard surfaces are scarce along this portion of the continental shelf, and life responds quickly when they appear.

Shipwrecks in North Carolina reflect rich maritime history and are home to a diversity of marine life. | Photo credit: T. Casserley, NOAA.

Within weeks, bacterial films coat the structure. Barnacles, hydroids, and tube worms attach soon after, followed by sponges, anemones, and soft corals that require firm substrate to establish. Over months and years, these organisms layer over one another, transforming the wreck from bare metal or timber into something resembling natural reef.

Within weeks, bacterial films coat the structure. Barnacles, hydroids, and tube worms attach soon after, followed by sponges, anemones, and soft corals that require firm substrate to establish. Over months and years, these organisms layer over one another, transforming the wreck from bare metal or timber into something resembling natural reef.

Fish respond just as quickly. Small schooling species—tomtate, baitfish, and spadefish—begin to circle the structure, drawn to shelter and feeding opportunities. As prey accumulates, larger predators follow. Snapper and grouper hold close to the hull, amberjack patrol the upper water column, and barracuda and sharks move through the surrounding water where prey becomes concentrated (Bohnsack & Sutherland, 1985; Paxton et al., 2023).

In waters off North Carolina, these offshore wrecks are also known for attracting one of the coast’s most recognizable predators. Sand tiger sharks often patrol the edges of wreck sites along the continental shelf, moving slowly through the water column where schools of fish gather around the structure (Castro, 2011; Paxton et al., 2023). Unlike fast-moving pelagic sharks, sand tigers tend to hover deliberately near reefs and wrecks, conserving energy while watching the dense concentrations of prey that form there (Castro, 2011). Divers frequently encounter them circling shipwrecks in loose groups, their presence marking the final stage of a habitat that began as bare metal or timber settling onto an otherwise sandy seafloor (Paxton et al., 2023).

Over decades, these deeper wrecks can support complex communities that persist long after the vessel itself begins to corrode. The structure weakens slowly, but before it collapses it may host a dense network of organisms comparable to natural hard-bottom reefs.

A sand tiger shark patrols the SS Tarpon shipwreck. Scientists believe these sharks use shipwrecks as “rest stops” on their long migratory path from New England to Florida and can be beneficial for their conservation. | Photo credit: NOAA

Artificial Reefs and Intentional Sinking

Recognizing this ecological potential, many coastal states—including North Carolina—have intentionally sunk vessels as part of artificial reef programs. Before sinking, ships are stripped of fuels, wiring, plastics, and other materials that could pollute surrounding waters. What remains is the structural framework: steel decks, beams, and bulkheads that provide vertical complexity.

Once placed on the seafloor, these vessels follow much the same ecological trajectory as accidental wrecks, often more quickly because the structure is intact and positioned on a stable bottom. Fish communities can begin forming within months, with predators arriving as prey species establish themselves (Bohnsack & Sutherland, 1985; Pickering & Whitmarsh, 1997).

The resulting reef does more than host new organisms. It changes the surrounding environment. Currents interacting with the hull create eddies that trap plankton and organic material. Sand that once held little structure becomes a landmark on the seafloor where life gathers.

But the distinction between prepared artificial reefs and abandoned vessels remains important. Ships intentionally sunk for reef programs are cleaned to reduce contamination, while vessels left to deteriorate in place undergo corrosion and material breakdown that can introduce contaminants into surrounding waters as their structure degrades (MacLeod, 2006).

Even so, the ecological impulse is the same. Wherever the coast receives structure, life organizes around it.

In some cases, this ecological response has led coastal managers to intentionally place vessels on the seafloor as artificial reefs, recognizing that stable structure can support complex marine communities. Along this coastline, however, similar structures are not treated in the same way. Some wrecks are preserved as part of the historical record, protected because they represent events that cannot be reconstructed once disturbed. Others are managed as hazards, their removal shaped by environmental risk and navigational safety. Still others are placed deliberately, prepared and sunk to provide habitat without the long-term effects of deterioration. What appears similar from the surface carries different meanings depending on how it is understood—as a record, a risk, or a design.

Along the Topsail Island coast, vessels have been intentionally placed on the seafloor as part of North Carolina’s artificial reef program, where cleaned ships are sunk to create habitat for fish and other marine life while providing new structure in otherwise sandy environments (Report, 2024).

What the Coast Does With What We Leave Behind

Shipwrecks are often described as endings, but along the Onslow coast they function more as transitions.

A vessel moves through stages. It carries people and cargo, meets a coastline that does not hold still, and becomes structure. That structure gathers life, shifts within the movement of sand, and settles into memory. The boundaries between these stages are not fixed. They move with the same currents and tides that shape the shoreline itself.

Nothing here is entirely lost. It is redistributed.

Wood, iron, fiberglass, and story all enter the same system, resurfacing when conditions allow. What appears after a storm is not new, but newly visible—a brief alignment of movement and exposure that allows what has long been present to be seen again.

The beach does not keep everything in sight. But it keeps everything, waiting for the moment the sand moves and the past becomes visible again.

The surface returns to quiet. The system does not. | Photo credit: A. Mitchell

References

Blair, C. (2000). Hitler’s U-boat war: The hunted, 1942-1945. Modern Library.

Bohnsack, J. A., & Sutherland, D. L. (1985). Artificial Reef Research: A Review with Recommendations for Future Priorities. Bulletin of Marine Science, 37(1), 11-39(29). https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/umrsmas/bullmar/1985/00000037/00000001/art00003

Browning, R. M. (2002). Success is all that was expected: The south Atlantic blockading squadron during the Civil War. Potomac Books.

Castro, J. I. (2011). The sharks of North America. Oxford University Press.

Delgado, J. P. (1997). Encyclopaedia of underwater and maritime archaeology. British Museum Press.

Falk, C. (2025, November 26). The wreck of the S.B. Pulaski (1838). Sedwick Coins Blog. https://sedwickcoins.blog/2025/11/10/the-wreck -of-the-s-b-pulaski-1838/

Gentile, G. (1992). Shipwrecks of North Carolina from Hatteras inlet south. Gary Gentile Productions.

Hall, W. (2004). Archaeological Remote Sensing Survey of Topsail and West Onslow Beaches Offshore Borrow Areas (DACW54-03-D-0002-003). U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Wilmington District. https://www.saw.usace.army.mil /Portals/59/docs/coastal_storm_damage_reduction/TBGRR/Appx_U_Cultural%20Resources%20Report.pdf

Hoyt, J. C., Bright, J. C., Hoffman, W., Carrier, B., Marx, D., Richards, N., Sassorossi, W., Davis,

K., Wagner, J., & McCord, J. (2021). Battle of the Atlantic: A Catalog of Shipwrecks off North Carolina’s Coast from the Second World War (BOEM IA M10PG00048). BOEM’s Office of Renewable Energy Programs and NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries. https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GOVPUB-I –b4c8d5485d6e8270384848d0e6d5efbc

Island Life NC. (2025, September 3). Operation bumblebee— the story of the topsail towers. https://islandlifenc.com/operation-bumblebee-topsail-towers/

Macleod, I. D. (2006). Corrosion and conservation management of iron shipwrecks in Chuuk

lagoon, Federated States of Micronesia. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites, 7(4), 203-223. https://doi.org/10.1179/135050306793137359

NC DNCR. (2016, June 14). The Pulaski explosion, 1838. North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. https://www.dncr.nc.gov /blog/2016/06/14/pulaski-explosion-1838

NC OSA. (n.d.). Shipwrecks of North Carolina. North Carolina Office of State Archaeology. https://archaeology.ncdcr.gov/programs/uab/education /shipwrecks

Paxton, A. B., McGonigle, C., Damour, M., Holly, G., Caporaso, A., Campbell, P. B.,

Meyer-Kaiser, K. S., Hamdan, L. J., Mires, C. H., & Taylor, J. C. (2023). Shipwreck ecology: Understanding the function and processes from microbes to megafauna. BioScience, 74(1), 12-24. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biad084

Pickering, H., & Whitmarsh, D. (1997). Artificial reefs and fisheries exploitation: A review of the ‘attraction versus production’ debate, the influence of design and its significance for policy. Fisheries Research, 31(1-2), 39-59. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0165-7836 (97)00019-2

Pilkey, O. H. (1998). The North Carolina shore and its barrier islands: Restless ribbons of sand. Duke University Press.

Report, S. (2024, March 23). Artificial reef program sinks vessel off topsail. Coastal Review. https://coastalreview.org/2020/07/artificial-reef-program-sinks -vessel-off-topsail/

Riggs, S. R., & Ames, D. V. (2003). Drowning the North Carolina coast: Sea-level rise and estuarine dynamics (0-9747801-0-3). North Carolina Sea Grant. https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/38437

Riggs, S. R., Cleary, W. J., & Snyder, S. W. (1995). Influence of inherited geologic framework on barrier shoreface morphology and dynamics. Marine Geology, 126(1-4), 213-234. https ://doi.org/10.1016/0025-3227(95)00079-e

Shomette, D. G. (2008). The price of amity: Of wrecking, piracy, and the tragic loss of the 1750 Spanish treasure fleet. The Northern Mariner / Le marin du nord, 18(3-4), 25-48. https://doi .org/10.25071/2561-5467.354

Stallman, D. A. (2011). Echoes of topsail: Stories of the island’s past (3rd ed.). Carlisle Printing.

Stick, D. (1990). The Outer Banks of North Carolina, 1584-1958. The University of North Carolina Press.

Taylor, A. (2025). John D. Gill. Sunken Ships OBX. https://sunkenshipsobx.com/john-d-gill/

Ward, I., Larcombe, P., & Veth, P. (1999). A new process-based model for wreck site formation. Journal of Archaeological Science, 26(5), 561-570. https://doi.org/10.1006/jasc.1998.0331

Wells, J. T., & McNinch, J. E. (1991). Role Of Inlet Dynamics In Scour And Burial Of Marine Artifacts In Energetic Coastal Settings. In Maritime heritage (65th ed., pp. 87-96). WIT Press. https://doi.org/10.2495/MH030081

Wilde-Ramsey, M. U., & Carnes-McNaughton, L. F. (2016). Blackbeard’s Queen Anne’s Revenge and Its French Connection. In Pieces of Eight: More Archaeology of Piracy (pp. 15-56). University Press of Florida.

Wilde-Ramsing, M. U., & Carnes-McNaughton, L. F. (2018). Blackbeard’s sunken prize: The 300-Year voyage of Queen Anne’s revenge. UNC Press Books.

March 21, 2026
Dolphins of Onslow County Waters: Ecology and Shared Shoreline

Dolphins of Onslow County: A Coastal Population

There is often a moment before you see them.

A breath breaks the air first — a soft exhale that sounds almost human — and then a dorsal fin lifts from the channel like a line drawn through moving water. The tide is falling. Gulls hover over the seam where current tightens. Fishermen pause mid-cast because everyone knows the rhythm: if the dolphins are working the edge, the fish are already gathering.

These encounters feel spontaneous, but they are not accidents. The dolphins that surface beside our piers, marsh creeks, and inlets are not anonymous travelers passing through. Many bottlenose dolphins show long-term site fidelity and structured community patterns in estuarine systems, returning to the same places across years (Urian et al., 2009; Wells, 2014). To live on this shoreline is to share space with minds moving just below the surface — residents of the tidal edge.

Who they are: a coastal population

The dolphins most frequently seen along Onslow County’s waters are common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus), a species whose “coastal” lives can look very different from “offshore” lives. Across the western North Atlantic, genetic studies show fine-scale population structure that can separate dolphins using nearshore coastal waters from dolphins using inshore estuarine waters (Rosel et al., 2009). More broadly, integrative work continues to support meaningful coastal vs offshore divergence in the region (Costa et al., 2022).

In estuaries, photo-identification research (matching dorsal-fin markings) repeatedly shows that bottlenose dolphins can form discrete social communities with limited spatial overlap — a pattern consistent with long-term residency and local familiarity (Urian et al., 2009). In practical terms, the dolphin a child watches from a dock in spring may be seen again the following winter, and again the next year: not a rumor, but a biological possibility supported by long-term studies of resident dolphins elsewhere on the coast (Wells, 2014).

Photo-identification doesn’t always rely solely on human matching of fin shapes; new tools such as machine learning are being developed to improve accuracy in identifying individual dolphins and whales in the wild. For example, researchers in Hawaii are using advanced algorithms to distinguish individuals from large photo libraries of dorsal fins. As technology improves, methods like photo-ID only get more reliable — which means studies of habitat overlap and seasonal return become more precise over time.

An inside look at how scientists “read” dorsal fin shapes and markings to track the same dolphins over time.

Reading the geometry of the estuary

Dolphins do not simply occupy estuaries; they interpret them.

Tidal channels function as moving architecture. Falling tides compress fish schools toward narrowing exits. Sandbars redirect flow into faster seams. Marsh edges trap prey against shallow gradients. Dolphins exploit these features with precision, repeatedly targeting conditions that make prey capture more efficient (Barros & Wells, 1998; Torres & Read, 2009).

This is one reason dolphins so often appear where the water “looks alive” — at convergence lines, inlet throats, and channel bends. In Florida Bay, for example, foraging tactics are mapped onto habitat features that define where dolphins have spent their time, thus turning behavior into geography (Torres & Read, 2009). What seems like play from shore can be highly strategic predation.

Bottlenose dolphins breaching off Seaview Pier, N. Topsail Beach, North Carolina. The arc of the body and column spray reflect the mechanics of propulsion – force directed through the tail, momentum carried into the air. | Photo credit: Howard Crumpler Photography, 2026

Reader Question:

Why do dolphins seem more active on rainy or overcast days?

Weather, light, and the illusion of play

You may notice that dolphins seem especially active on overcast or rainy days — surfacing more frequently, breaching, or moving in tight arcs through wind-rippled water. It can look like preference, even mood. But dolphins are responding less to cloud cover than to what cloud cover does to the water.

When the sky darkens, baitfish don’t stay arranged the same way. They may bunch together or rise toward the surface. For a predator already working those upper layers, that shift can make hunting more efficient (Benoit-Bird & Au, 2003). Wind and rain can also stir the surface and cloud the water, changing who sees whom first (De Robertis et al., 2003).

There is also a perceptual component. Overcast skies reduce glare, making dorsal fins and splashes easier for human observers to detect. Wind-textured water highlights movement. What appears to be “more play” may sometimes be improved visibility — a reminder that observer experience and animal behavior are not always the same phenomenon.

In short, dolphins are responding to ecological conditions. The weather alters the water; the water alters the fish.

Two bottlenose dolphins break the surface beneath the gray horizon off Surf City, North Carolina. Overcast light and wind-roughened water can change how fish move – and how easily we notice the dolphins following them. | Photo credit: Johnny Provost, Jr., 2025

Communication and social intelligence

Bottlenose dolphins have been studied for decades not just because they are charismatic, but because their social lives depend on constant communication in a shifting, three-dimensional world. One of the strongest findings to emerge from that research is the existence of signature whistles — individually distinctive call types that function as learned identity signals, something very much like the individual name a dolphin goes by within its community (Janik & Sayigh, 2013).

Social learning runs just as deep. Some dolphin foraging habits spread from one animal to another rather than through genetics — passed along socially, a rare pattern among nonhuman species (Krützen et al., 2005). Mothers and calves stay together for years, giving calves time to learn not just how to hunt, but where — which channels to follow, which bends of water hold fish (Wells, 2014).

In some populations elsewhere in the world, dolphins even use tools — carrying marine sponges on their rostrums while foraging or trapping fish inside empty shells — behaviors that are socially learned and culturally transmitted (Krützen et al., 2005).

That learning shapes how dolphins fit into the estuary. In many tidal systems they sit near the top of the local food web, influencing the fish communities beneath them. Yet beyond those protected waters, they are not beyond risk. Large sharks prey on dolphins, placing them within a broader coastal hierarchy where even predators can become prey (Heithaus, 2001). The role shifts with scale. The ecology remains layered.

Two bottlenose dolphins surfacing together off Seaview Pier, N. Topsail Beach, North Carolina. Close positioning and timing are hallmarks of the complex social bonds that define dolphin societies. | Photo credit: Howard Crumpler Photography, 2026

Dolphins are not guardians

Popular culture has assigned dolphins a role they never chose: protector. People repeat a comforting shoreline myth — “If you’re scared of sharks, find the dolphins; they’ll protect you.” But that story is not grounded in how dolphins behave in the wild.

Bottlenose dolphins are powerful predators. They compete, establish dominance hierarchies, and can deliver forceful blows when defending calves or asserting space. Dolphin–shark interactions occur, but they are not “rescue missions” staged for humans; they are ecological encounters shaped by risk, competition, and opportunity (Heithaus, 2001).

Wild dolphins are also capable of injuring people. Research examining human–dolphin interactions show that close approaches — and especially feeding wild dolphins — increase the likelihood of risky contact and harmful outcomes for both dolphins and people (Cunningham-Smith et al., 2006; Vail, 2016). Over time, those interactions leave visible consequences. Long-term data from Sarasota Bay show that dolphins who have learned to associate people with food are more likely to carry injuries linked to boats and fishing gear (Christiansen et al., 2016).

The danger is not that dolphins are “evil.” The danger is assuming they share human intentions.

Swimming near a pod does not create a protective shield. Dolphins are not lifeguards. They are wild animals navigating their own priorities in a shared environment. Respecting that boundary is what allows coexistence.

A bottlenose dolphin pursuing prey near a recreational vessel in a waterway in Surf City, North Carolina. Foraging behavior can bring dolphins into close proximity with boats – not as companions, but as active predators focused on fish. | Video credit: Cynthia Dirosse, 2024

Winter dolphins

A persistent assumption is that dolphins vanish when the water cools. In reality, seasonal distribution can be more nuanced — changing with prey, temperature, and coastal movement patterns rather than following a simple on/off presence.

Along the mid-Atlantic coast, research shows that bottlenose dolphins shift their movements with the seasons, appearing in different areas at different times of year (Torres et al., 2005). Studies focused on estuarine dolphins in southern North Carolina document similar seasonal patterns closer to home (Silva et al., 2020). From shore, those changes can look like disappearance. But winter quiet does not always mean absence. It may simply mean dolphins are working deeper channels or less visible pathways beyond the easy reach of our eyes.

The estuary in winter is quieter, but not empty.

Dorsal fins in winter light off Surf City, North Carolina. Dolphins may appear less active this time of year, but changes in light, water depth, and travel corridors often influence what we notice from shore. | Photo credit: Surf City Parks, Recreation, and Tourism, 2017

Living beside them

Living near dolphins is a privilege — and it places us within the same waters they navigate. Vessel traffic, fishing gear, and repeated close approaches can shape the lives of animals that live for decades and raise calves slowly (Wells, 2014). Studies of dolphins that have been fed or closely approached by people show that these interactions can shift behavior, making dolphins more likely to approach boats and increasing the risk of injury and conflict (Vail, 2016). Distance, in that sense, preserves the patterns people come to watch.

The presence of dolphins is not guaranteed. It is a sign that the system still functions — prey, water quality, shoreline structure, and the complex social knowledge dolphins carry from year to year. As long-lived predators near the top of the food web, they are indicator species, reflecting the condition of the waters they inhabit — estuary, inlet, and nearshore coast alike.

And so when a dorsal fin rises beyond the channel markers, it means more than a moment of spectacle. It means the currents are still working, the fish are still moving, and the layered relationships that shape this shoreline are still holding.

There is always more to learn about dolphins than fits in a single post. For those who’d like to go further, this episode of the All Creatures Podcast offers a thoughtful exploration of their biology and behavior.

References

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February 21, 2026