Mid-Atlantic Region

Delaware Sea Grant
Sea Grant survey shows support for wind power

• Delaware residents are strongly in favor of offshore wind power (whirling wind turbines as tall as 40-story buildings would be erected off the coast to generate electricity) as a future source of energy for the state, according to a survey conducted by University of Delaware researchers.
• When asked to select from a variety of sources to help the state increase its energy supply, more than 90 percent of the 949 Delaware residents supported an offshore wind option, even if wind power were to add between $1 and $30 per month to their electric bills.
• Fewer than 10 percent voted for an expansion of coal or natural gas power at current prices.
• This summer, the Sea Grant scientists and their graduate students will survey out-of-state visitors to Delaware's beaches to further explore how an offshore wind farm would affect tourism.
• The interim report on the survey and a one-page executive summary are available at http://www.ocean.udel.edu/windpower

Maryland Sea Grant
Sea Grant drives critical thinking and decision making in Chesapeake Bay watershed restoration effort

• Building on Sea Grant's role as an unbiased platform for discussion and synthesis, Sea Grant is frequently called upon to facilitate Bay-wide efforts to develop innovative consensus on the choices stakeholders will need to make if Chesapeake Bay restoration is to succeed.
• Chesapeake Futures, a groundbreaking analysis of plausible scenarios for restoration and Chesapeake Bay Blue Ribbon Finance Panel Report have become essential documents for policymakers and managers.
• These efforts have generated wide public discourse and legislative interest.

North Carolina Sea Grant
Working waterfronts becoming "things of the past"

• In North Carolina, commercial fishing docks, fish houses, piers, boat builders, public marinas, and marine repair shops are disappearing as waterfront property values escalate and more property is converted to residential use.
• Sea Grant researchers found that the number of fish houses in the state dropped from 136 to 95 over the last five years.
• As a result, legislators created the Waterfront Access Study Committee (WASC) to study the loss of working waterfronts and public access points along coastal shorelines.
• The WASC, with help from Sea Grant, is looking at management tools and legislative actions that could protect businesses dependant on a waterfront location.
• The committee will identify ways to preserve working waterfronts in a report to state policy makers in April 2007.

New Jersey Sea Grant
Sea Grant conducts boat ramp count and condition assessment

• The New Jersey Marine Sciences Consortium/New Jersey Sea Grant Extension Program is conducting a count and condition assessment of all boat ramps located in tidal waters of New Jersey.
• The assessment is supported by funds from I BOAT NJ. Facility information such as type of ramp surface, accessibility, parking, facilities available at or near the ramp, condition and other pertinent attributes will be collected.
• This data will be used to produce a New Jersey Boater's Ramp Guide that will promote the location and use of boat ramps located on tidal fresh and marine waters in the state of New Jersey. This Guide will be made available to the boating public at no charge.
• In addition, a report will be produced that contains information on the condition of all boat ramps and makes recommendations on enhancements that can be made to improve the condition, accessibility and facilities available at publicly owned boat ramps.
• Field verification has documented the existence of 200 state, county, municipal and privately owned boat ramps on tidal marine waters in New Jersey. Approximately 170 ramps are open to the public.

Virginia Sea Grant
Sea Grant researcher featured on cover of National Fisherman

• The cover story for the February 2007 issue of National Fisherman features a collaborative project headed by Chris Hager, fisheries bycatch specialist with Virginia Sea Grant. 
• The research will estimate the impact of Chesapeake Bay's gillnet fishery on sturgeon populations; sturgeon are caught as bycatch in gillnets.
• The project also seeks to determine sturgeon spawning grounds. Sturgeon once supported the second largest commercial fishery on the U.S. East coast, with a peak landing in 1890 of 7.5 million pounds.
• Decades of over-fishing and habitat loss forced the sturgeon population into a steep decline.
• Populations of Atlantic sturgeon are now extirpated in Maryland and at historically low abundance in Virginia, where remnant populations exist in the James and York rivers.
• Funding came from the Virginia Fishery Resource Grant Program, NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.