Title: Coast watch
Identifier: coastwatch00uncs_12 (find matches)
Year: 1979 (1970s)
authors: UNC Sea Grant College Program
Subjects: Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology
Publisher: (Raleigh, N. C. : UNC Sea Grant College Program)
Contributing Library: State Library of North Carolina
Digitizing Sponsor: North Carolina Digital Heritage Center

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Top: A kayaker paddles the tranquil waters of a Cape Fear tributary. Commer- cial traffic on f/ie river has almost ceased, and it's a haven for those seeking solitude and a close brush with nature. Middle: Robin Hall, lockmaster at the Cape Fear Lock & Dam No. 1, points out American shad ready to move upstream to their breeding grounds. Bottom: Solemn cypress trees line the riverbanks, looking just as they must have hundreds of years ago, when sailors first braved the Cape Fear waters. Photos by Scull D. Taylor the coastal plain, reaching deep into the Carolina Piedmont — past the mouths of the Northeast Cape Fear and Black Rivers, and on towards Elizabethtown, Fayetteville, Lillington. On maps, the Cape Fear begins where the waters of the Haw and Deep Rivers commingle, southeast of tiny Moncure. But in spirit, the river pushes far deeper into the state, draining land as distant as Rockingham County, up on the Virginia line. We launch our exploration of the little-traveled lower river at King's Bluff, where Lock & Dam No. 1 marks a spot 39 river-miles above the Wilmington waterfront. Opened in 1915, this is the first of three low dams built between Fayetteville and Wilmington, with corresponding locks to raise and lower vessels between the upper and lower pools. Until the railroads outran the steamers, pine-burning paddlewheelers brought the Cape Fear to life. Scores of landings lined each bank, from Wilmington to Cross Creek, ancestor of Fayetteville. Now commercial traffic has all but ceased. Lockmaster Robin Hall says that he hasn't locked a barge through Lock & Dam No. 1 in four years, although a new project to move cypress logs from Charleston, S.C., to Elizabethtown is expected this summer. The big excitement at King's Bluff this morning isn't commercial traffic, but fish. As chance would have it, we've arrived during the peak of the American shad migrations up the Cape Fear River, and untold thousands of fish are surging from the ocean upstream to breed. Stymied by the dam, the fish stack up in the tailrace, attracting equally large numbers of fishers. To help the fish over the dam, Hall oversees a program to "lock through" as many anadromous fish as possible. Three times a day, from the end of February through June, the 200-foot-long lock is "turned around," lifting fish from the lower pool to the upper. The program has the approval of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the Cape Fear locks, and has been extended to all three dam sites.

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