CCU faculty and students are taking a comprehensive approach to the study of the coastal shoreline, and the research world is taking notice.

Every month or so a proposal will land on Paul Gayes’ desk inviting the Burroughs & Chapin Center for Marine and Wetland Studies to take part in a research project somewhere around the nation. The proposals come from other universities or government agencies or independent research organizations that know, by reputation or firsthand, about the center’s technical expertise in the field of marine research.

Above: CCU student Jamie Phillps, Liz Johnstone ’00, Professor Paul Gayes and Wayne Baldwin ’97 of USGS Below: A series of snapshots depicting research conducted by the Burroughs & Chapin Center for Marine and Wetland Studies

Gayes, the center’s director since 1989, is able to accept only a fraction of such invitations, but just in the last year he and his crew (always including one or more Coastal undergraduates) have traveled to Lake Tahoe and Alaska’s Bering Strait. During the summer of 2003 center staffers worked off Iceland and in the North Sea. In these and other far-flung places they have joined research teams on several high profile projects sponsored by the country’s elite marine research organizations, including the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California.

The reason the center is in such high demand so far from home is because of the pioneering work it has done in its own backyard. Through some $6 million in grants the center has received over the past 10 years from a number of federal and state agencies, Gayes and his staff have developed a series of studies of the South Carolina coastline that combine to form a comprehensive chronicle of coastal geological processes—past, present and (inasmuch as possible) future—from the dunes (or hotels) to five miles offshore. In the course of refining research techniques for the numerous projects it conducts, the center has built some unique and highly sophisticated equipment that is the envy of the marine research establishment.

“We’re getting recognized because of our capabilities,” says Gayes. “I’ve spent a lot of time at other institutions and agencies and what we have here is remarkably advanced.”

Ongoing projects directed by Gayes and coordinated by center assistant director German Ojeda can be grouped into three distinct but overlapping areas.

1. On the beach. Marine science professors Eric Wright and Scott Harris and a cadre of students are studying the geological history of the coast concentrating on inland areas above the shoreline. The aim of their work is to learn how (and how fast) the area’s shoreline has changed in the last 10,000 years and to predict its future behavior. By learning how geological and climatological processes work in shaping our beaches in a long historical context, they can better predict future trends that can help guide official management practices.

2. Under the surf. The BERM (Beach Erosion Research Monitoring) program tracks short term, seasonal changes within the entire active beach system of South Carolina from the dunes to the inner continental shelf about 800 meters offshore. Now in its 10th year, the BERM program provides essential data used by the South Carolina Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management (OCRM) to regulate the state’s beaches. BERM data also helps assess the results of beach renourishment projects throughout the state. Center staffers Dave Bernstein and Mike Forte gather the data for the program. They can be seen up and down the state’s coastline on the dune buggy-like craft—built by the center’s master engineer, Neal Gielstra—that uses global positional systems to measure the topography of the beach and the near inner shelf.

3. Offshore. When the NOAA research ship Ferrel was decommissioned in November 2002, Paul Gayes was asked to give the keynote farewell address. It was an emotional occasion for Gayes, who had spent a large chunk of the last decade aboard the ship conducting research, teaching students and customizing equipment to be used from the deck. The Ferrel, recently replaced by the Nancy Foster, has been key to the offshore component of the center’s studies, which focuses on the floor of South Carolina’s continental shelf from approximately one to five miles out.

From the Ferrel and other vessels, using video and sonar technology, center staffers and students have mapped many square miles of the seafloor, gathering essential data about mineral and sand resources as well as biological habitats. They also go under the ocean floor, vertically, using seismic reflection technology that sends sound waves deep into the subbottom and turns them into computer images depicting layers of sediment and rock. These efforts have helped augment the regional mapping efforts of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Sea Floor Mapping group based out of Woods Hole, Mass.

To verify or “ground truth” the sonar data, they drill cores 20 to 30 feet into the seafloor, pulling out long cylinders of layered sediments that tell scientists the story of our geological past, from last year to prehistoric times. The center is well known for its coring technology. The “Vibracore” system developed and continually upgraded by Gielstra is considered the best in the business. (A feature article in the March 2003 issue of Nature magazine describes the center’s vibracore apparatus and its importance to a major geological study in the Bering Strait that is shedding new light on the migration of prehistoric man from Asia into North America.)

This integrated approach, examining many facets of one geographical area, is not common, according to Gayes, but in a state where the top industry is tourism—overwhelmingly led by the coastal regions—it is necessary. The center’s work is vital to beach renourishment, which for all its drawbacks is seen as the most viable and effective short-term response to erosion. Center scientists and students play a major role in locating offshore sand deposits suitable for renourishment; they track how and where the sand moves after the projects are completed; and they anticipate the impact these projects could have on the environment and on wildlife habitats. The center also houses Coastal’s Environmental Quality Lab, which provides essential analysis for EPA ocean water testing and other programs.

“Going to Alaska to study sea level and climate change, or to Lake Tahoe to research earthquakes—that’s just the flashy part of what we do,” says Gayes. “The bread and butter is right here.”

In fall 2003, Coastal inaugurated its master’s degree program in coastal marine and wetland studies. In the summer of 2003, the center was awarded more than $500,000 in grants for state-of-the art seismic equipment and software that will put Coastal on a technological par with the best marine research institutions in the nation.