- [Teacher] And you'll probably, at least,
see some little plant matter in there,
and maybe we'll find some other stuff moving around.
- [Frank] It's another day of learning at Sturgeon City,
an environmental education center on Wilson Bay
in Jacksonville.
- Get it focused here a little bit
and see if I can find anything for you.
- [Frank] It's a unique setting, with a special purpose.
Sturgeon City is housed
in the former waste water treatment plant.
- Built very similar time to the base,
Camp Lejeune, and the other bases, in this area,
and, so, population boomed.
It never really kept up with capacity like it should have.
And so, the effluent that was going out into this bay
was discharged directly into Wilson Bay, here,
wasn't technically, you know, treated as properly
as it should be, so it polluted this bay
and pretty much killed it off completely.
And so, the idea was bring life back to the bay,
utilize this closed-down plant
to learn from our past mistakes
and educate future generations
to make sure they don't make those same mistakes
and that they appreciate this great, beautiful access
that we have to the water, here.
- [Frank] The combination of raw sewage
and pollution turned Wilson Bay into a toxic,
and, essentially, dead body of water
in the 1980s and 1990s.
Bacteria counts were so high,
fishing and swimming were prohibited.
- You're allowed 200 organisms per 100 mls of water,
for recreational uses, and we had about 35 to 70,000.
So, yes, it was closed
to recreational and commercial uses.
- [Frank] Public pressure and federal environmental laws
changed that.
- You had a council that when pressed to this,
they said, "It's our moral obligation
"to try to help clean up Wilson Bay."
- [Frank] It's taken years, but Wilson Bay is alive again.
It's also a living laboratory
for effective environmental restoration.
A new waste water treatment plant was built,
natural habits were restored.
You can see fish swimming near the shore.
- [Researcher] And a lot of times,
restoration projects will happen.
People invest a lot of time and money and effort,
like here in Wilson Bay,
and there's not always the opportunity to go back
and figure out what went well, what's worked,
how the different restoration goals have been met.
- [Frank] Now, scientists want to find out what's happening.
[water dripping]
- [Researcher] We're interested in the mud
because the mud lets us measure microbial processes
that are going on in these habitats.
So, by measuring the mud, by collecting these mud samples,
bringing them back to the lab,
and running them through our instruments,
we're able to ultimately get at how the microbes
that live in and around the oyster reefs
and salt marshes are removing nitrogen from those systems,
and then that nitrogen, in turn, has impacts
on the algae populations.
- [Frank] The microbes and other creatures
that researchers find living in the mud are an indication
of how well natural ecosystems are continuing
to clean up Wilson Bay.
Oysters clean the water.
Oyster reefs provide habitat for microbes
that remove excess nitrogen.
Nitrogen is delivered through stormwater runoff,
and too much nitrogen leads to rapid algae growth,
that makes for poor water quality.
- We found that the restored marsh is particularly effective
at removing extra nitrogen.
So, all of the habitats are removing nitrogen,
but the restored marsh, in particular,
is able to remove nitrogen faster
than those other habitats.
- [NOAA Scientist] It also has a bubble-level, back here,
and a series of adjustments so we can make sure
that we've got this, again, in the exact same position
every time and that our measuring device is perfectly level.
- [Frank] Scientists are also studying
whether the shoreline is growing or receding.
- [NOAA Scientist] So, once we have this established,
we kind of go through and make sure all the pins
are making good contact with the surface sediment.
- [Frank] This device is a surface elevation table.
- So, we would measure this distance,
and it's changes in this distance
that we can measure to millimeter-level accuracy
and we have multiple measures.
We've got nine measures here.
We would put another nine pins on that side.
After we measure these two,
we would pick it up, rotate it 90 degrees,
and we would get another two readings, this way.
So, now we've got a lot of measures
over this approximate square meter area.
- [Frank] Marshes are important not only as habitat,
but also for preventing shoreline erosion.
- This change in surface elevation is due to two processes.
One is the trapping of the sediments building from above,
sediments coming from above.
The other process is below-ground root production
and building up from below.
- [Frank] North Carolina Sea Grant is funding the research
on Wilson Bay.
Findings will help guide more coastal restoration projects.
- This marsh system is a primary example
of why we want good, healthy coastal ecosystems.
We want to make certain they're keeping up
with sea level rise.
We want to make certain they're providing services
like protecting infrastructure back behind these marshes.
But it is habitat, it is truly habitat
for a variety of species.
- [Paula] Absolutely, I mean,
and we have a long way to go, still,
and a lot of other projects we have in mind
for this facility and hope that it will continue to grow
and expand into the future
so that we continue to reach people for years to come.