OU T D O O R S
A WORLD
Above The night sky sparkles above Bodie Island Lighthouse. Photo courtesy of John McCord.
The dark sky could bring tourists from all over to enjoy stargazing and animal watching along the Outer Albemarle Peninsula. BY ARABELLA SAUNDERS
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astern North Carolina is home to vinegar-based barbeque sauce, boiled peanuts and – somewhat lesser known – some of the darkest skies on the entire East Coast. In 2018, North Carolina Land of Water (NC LOW) and the nonprofit A Time for Science Learning Center joined forces on a new initiative called the Night-Scape Resource Project in order to better understand the night skies and the nocturnal environment of the four counties – Dare, Tyrell, Hyde and Washington – that make up the Outer Albemarle Peninsula (OAP).
Led by East Carolina University professor and NC LOW chair Dr. Stanley Riggs, the study concluded that the OAP is the largest area of public lands – approximately 758 square miles – with the darkest night skies between Boston and Miami, making it ripe for ecotourism opportunities. FROM JULY 2018 THROUGH MAY 2019, Stanley and a team of Coastal Studies Institute-affiliated scientists, staff and student volunteers surveyed sites in the region on 11 new and 11 full moon nights. Altogether, the researchers made 250 visits to 83 sites. Kira Foster is an Outer Banks local and an environmental studies student at Appalachian State University. In the summer of 2018, Kira volunteered with the study and often drove from her home in Southern Shores to the woods in East Lake, where she helped record observations such as wind speed, barometric pressure, brightness, noises from wildlife and the positions of the stars. “It was rewarding because I had been to all those places before, but I had never thought to go there at night,” Kira says thoughtfully. “I felt like I was doing something good in my field because I was helping the area where I grew up in an environmental way.”
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