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Friday, March 29, 2024

Touch tank in WB introduces visitors to marine life

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By Katie Dickens

Intern

This Tuesday, the North Carolina Coastal Federation hosted another session of its Touch Tank Tuesdays, allowing visitors to get up close and personal with ocean creatures.

The organization’s southeast office at the Fred and Alice Stanback Coastal Education Center, 309 W. Salisbury St., offers guests an excuse to rest in the outdoor shade and learn about local marine wildlife.

Upon walking up to the center, guests are immediately greeted with fish tanks to their right, followed by a touch tank whose contents are open for guests to touch and feel. The left side of the outdoor space is an educational section with coloring book sheets, markers and stuffed animals.

“We go every Monday and catch all the fish and crabs and everything and then sometimes we go out on Tuesday mornings, too,” said Nina Quaratella, who has been working for the federation for 15 months. “Then we go back and release everything we’re showing here in the afternoon after Touch Tank Tuesday ends.”

Although many guests are regulars, they are always surprised by the varied selection of local wildlife, which changes from week to week. Tuesday’s fish tanks included black sea bass, pin fish, an anemone and sea spiders.

“We’ve come here a few times before,” said David Deweese with his daughter Harper. His family is living in Wilmington while his wife is stationed here with the U.S. Coast Guard, and he said he loves how Touch Tank Tuesdays are a creative way to get out of the house.

“I love seeing how excited Harper gets about the animals and how she’s learning a lot about them. The whole thing is great — she loves to hold the sea spiders and the crabs, especially.”

Tuesday’s touch tank included mussels, hermit crabs, sea pork and a decorator spider crab, which can attach sea anemones and seaweed to its legs to hide from predators. A definite kid favorite in the touch tank is also the sea squirt, said Jessica Gray, who is in charge of outreach at the federation.

“One of the main objectives of the federation is to protect and restore the local water habitat,” Gray said. “We also do advocate work and outreach projects like this so that people will feel more inclined to protect these guys, because they all live here, too.”

A salt marsh habitat was also on display, complete with sea grass and fiddler crabs buried in the sand. Guests could also see a pregnant blue crab in a tank, which typically carries around 2 million eggs, but less than 1 percent of those eggs will survive in the wild, Quaratella said. Sea urchins, oysters, and an oyster toadfish, whose strong jaws and teeth can bite through oyster shells, were also on display.

The weekly event is always free and open to all ages, and visitors are not required to register beforehand. Gray and Quaratella said that as many as 150 people have dropped in before, and the minimum is usually 60-70 during the three-hour period.

“It’s a drop in, so a lot of people are walking or running the loop and they see the sign so they pop in to see what’s going on,” Quaratella said. “We also have a lot of families and groups like camps and homeschool organizations, so we reach a wide audience. Monday and Tuesday are now my favorite days of the week, for sure.”

 

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