NC State MEAS

08/27/2026

This Friday we’re excited to host Associate Professor and Fulbright Scholar Muhammad Shafique for a seminar on the hazards faced by mountain communities, from northern Pakistan to North Carolina ⛰️

Shafique will discuss how earthquakes, floods and other geohazards combine with community vulnerability and infrastructure to shape the risk of areas like Chitral, Pakistan. He’ll also present a case study of Hurricane Helene’s impacts on Craigtown in NC.

Together, these findings can be used to better inform emergency preparedness and disaster management policies.

Stop by the Jordan Hall Addition, room 1214, this Friday for some free food starting at 3:00 p.m. 🍪🍓☕ Then, head next door to room 1216, where this impactful seminar will run from 3:30-4:30 p.m. You can also attend virtually at go.ncsu.edu/meas_seminar. More details available at https://meas.sciences.ncsu.edu/event/meas-seminar-dr-muhammad-shafique/

08/17/2026

The semester's already off to a great start!🐺

08/13/2026

We want to welcome the 2026 Climate Change and Society Program class! Pictured here are, from left, Oz Tellez, Leah Turk, Chloe Fanelli, Ricky Price and Zoe Tobien. Our other students, Sara Luber, Nikki Steward and Mike Gloss will join us in the classroom next week NC State Department of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences NC State College of Sciences

08/13/2026

08/13/2026

Look closely — can you spot the fish in each of these videos? Even the third one shows a sheepshead swimming around, promise 🤞

Collected by graduated student Rebecca Ruiz, these videos show different restored oyster reefs in June, July, September and October of 2024. Oyster reefs play crucial roles in our ecosystem, such as water filtering and erosion control. The amount of fish that roam around a reef can help indicate how healthy it is 🐟

For her master’s thesis, Ruiz monitored restored oyster reefs in Pamlico Sound with videos like these and created a fish detection model. First, she went through about 20 hours of footage and identified the fish and other animals that showed up. She made more than 6,000 labels!

She then used her work to train a machine learning model to detect and identify fish, creating a better snapshot of species diversity at the various reefs. She also used sonar to track the size and movement of fish. All of that data can be used to determine how healthy the restored reefs are.

Her work shows that sonar and video are effective survey methods to better understand how fish and other species use the reefs. The data is robust, consistent and scalable, so Ruiz’s survey methods are expected to have applications in both the government and private sectors. 

She defended her thesis last month. Congratulations Rebecca Ruiz, and good luck on your next chapter!

07/22/2026

This spring, sixteen NC State students studied and scuba dived on the island of Bonaire for the field component of their spring semester class, “Ecological and Geological Processes in an immersive scientific diving experience”.

🌊 CMAST Director Dave Eggleston, along with College of Sciences Dean Lewis Owen, NC State’s Dive Safety Officer Steve Broadhurst, and NC State’s Physical Education and Scuba Instructor Matt Rever, taught the class in Bonaire, where the students gained experience in collecting data on the health of coral reefs, participated in coral restoration, and learned about the geology and culture of this Dutch Island.

NC State MEAS NC State University State Study Abroad

07/21/2026

Registration is now open for the 2026 North Carolina Coastal Conference!

Join researchers, resource managers, educators, students, community leaders, and coastal professionals from across the state for two days of learning, collaboration, and conversations about North Carolina's coast.

Whether you work on the coast or simply care about its future, this conference is an opportunity to connect, share ideas, and explore the latest coastal science, policy, and management.

🔗 Register: https://ncseagrant.ncsu.edu/coastal-conference/
📅 November 17–18, 2026
📍 Chapel Hill, NC

07/09/2026

During June 2026, CMAST Director Dr. David Eggleston participated in a working group at the University Salento, Italy as part of the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES).

The ICES Working Group on the Value of Coastal Habitats for Exploited Species is an international scientific expert group. It aims to assess, quantify, and model how coastal environments influence the survival, growth, and abundance of commercial fish and shellfish stocks to improve fisheries management and marine conservation. Members of the group are based in Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, Portugal, UK and the USA.

07/09/2026

A huge CONGRATULATIONS to Assistant Professor Maggie Ellis Curry, who has earned an NSF CAREER award! This award is considered one of the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious awards for early-career faculty.

The award will support Curry’s tectonic systems research and outreach efforts for the next five years.

“It’s an honor to receive this award,” Curry said. “Geologists are critical toward many aspects of our economy and our society, and critical minerals are really bringing that into the spotlight. I’m incredibly excited, and I’m looking for undergraduate and graduate students who may want to get involved.”

Using numerical modeling approaches, Curry and her students will reconstruct the landscape of North Carolina between 60 million and 300 million years ago, looking at how the coastal plains region has changed over time and how that change has led to the development of critical minerals. Her end goal is to establish a framework to better understand why critical mineral deposits exist where they do, where they came from and where more deposits might be.

While her research will be extensive, so too will be her outreach efforts. By partnering with middle school teachers, Wake Tech and the NC Geological Survey, Curry will work to show more students the exciting world of geology 🪨🔨

Learn more at https://meas.sciences.ncsu.edu/2026/07/08/geologist-maggie-ellis-curry-nsf-career-award-tectonic-systems-critical-minerals-outreach/

07/06/2026

Check out this curious sea turtle!

Students and staff in the Eggleston Lab have been monitoring the oyster sanctuaries in western Pamlico sound for three years. In early June, their fieldwork included testing out the new clearvue camera system to see if they can see better in turbid water. The clearvue camera videos will be used to count, measure and ID fish that utilize the oyster sanctuaries.

🌊 This data is valuable because these fish can be used as an indicator of health for the reef.

🌊 In this video a juvenile green sea turtle inspected our camera system for over 2 hours while it was deployed at the Cedar Island oyster sanctuary in western Pamlico sound.