THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 3, 1996 TAG: 9602290136
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY ANNE SAITA, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 166 lines
THERE WAS a time when Yates Barber could stand at the end of a pier, glance downward and see every sprig of vegetation thriving three to five feet below the Currituck Sound's surface.
``As they say, you could read the label on a Pepsi-Cola bottle on the bottom. The water was just as clear as gin,'' Barber recalled with a reflective grin.
All around him, boats full of anglers would cast lines and come up with a bevy of black bass rivaling anything found elsewhere on the East Coast.
But that was back in the late 1960s.
``We have not seen the bottom there since 1975,'' Barber said, his voice carrying a note of both sadness and concern.
Barber is among those hoping to restore Currituck Sound to its former glory and bring back the large stocks of freshwater fish and wintering waterfowl that once blessed the area.
You could think of the snowy-haired Barber as the area's version of Dr. Seuss's Lorax, the fictitious figure who incessantly spoke for the trees as they were being decimated.
Here, Barber - dubbed by some as an ambassador for the environment - is pulling for the flora and fauna that were once so pervasive in these parts.
``He was always a staunch defender of environmental quality in Currituck Sound,'' recalled Carolyn Hess, who served with Barber and 28 others on a citizens committee for the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine Study, which led to the state's Comprehensive Conservation Management Plan a few years ago.
Barber's persistence and determination were ``rather outstanding,'' said Hess, who lives in Hertford.
It's been 14 years since the 74-year-old biologist and ardent protector of fish and wildlife formally retired. But, as Barber himself likes to say, that doesn't mean he's stopped working.
``I have always been interested in natural things and natural systems,'' he said. ``And I have just seen so many things go to pot in my time.''
Almost daily he retreats to familiar shores or travels to the sound's tributaries to study the waters, hoping his findings will swing more governmental support toward his beloved body of water.
``It's a labor of love with him. I mean, clearly it's a labor of love,'' said Joan Giordano, who has known Barber for the past eight years.
``He just has such a wealth of experience and expertise and connections. Above all, he has an abiding love of the region,'' said Giordano, the public involvement coordinator for the North Carolina Department of Environmental Health and Natural Resources' Division of Environmental Management. ``All that mixture yields success, and someone who will make a difference,'' she said.
The difference may be in Barber's unwavering campaign to draw public attention to restoration of the 100,000-acre Currituck Sound and the 26,000-acre Back Bay in Virginia Beach.
``Keeping everyone involved and informed is our best hope for solutions to these complicated problems,'' Barber wrote a few years ago to Currituck County Manager Bill Richardson.
In December, Barber again made an appeal to the county's commissioners to take seriously the problems that he says have plagued the sound and robbed the county of untold millions of dollars in tourist-related revenue.
Currituck officials, he said, ``have been very supportive of this, and they have been because they're very concerned about Currituck Sound not being very productive.''
In Currituck and elsewhere around the Albemarle, Barber is greatly admired for remaining the passionate wildlife conservationist and biologist that he was when he began his career in 1950.
By then, the Edgecombe County native had done a stint in the Army, gotten married and was ready to make use of his new degree from what was then North Carolina State College in Raleigh.
He spent six years as a waterfowl project leader with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission before going to work for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He also earned a master's degree during that time in wildlife conservation and management.
From 1956 to 1973, Barber moved through a variety of jobs beginning with fish and wildlife biologist in the agency's Raleigh office and culminating with acting chief for the Office of Environmental Quality in Washington.
He then spent nine years with the National Marine Fisheries Service until he officially retired in 1982 and moved with his wife, the former Mavis Sue Ballance of Maple, N.C., to Elizabeth City the next year.
Throughout his civil service career, Barber kept close ties to Currituck, where he once lived as a teenager. The couple made frequent trips back home that included fishing expeditions from a family camp.
Back in the 1950s and early 1960s, the Currituck Sound was widely regarded as one of the most prosperous freshwater fishing areas on the East Coast. Healthy crops of aquatic plants provided the perfect breeding grounds for croakers, spot, mullet, blue crab, white perch and other marine species.
Waterfowl also migrated to the dense and delicious vegetation, helping Currituck earn its name as a sportsman's paradise and drawing part-time residents like MacMillan publishing magnate Joseph Palmer Knapp and railroad tycoon Edward Knight.
Dozens of Currituck County residents supplemented their income as weekend fishing guides, taking parties out for the day and usually returning with a bevy of bass or other fish.
``Those people who had those guide licenses don't have them anymore. There's no need for them. There's nothing out there,'' Barber said.
According to Barber, the Currituck Sound has since hit its nadir and is badly in need of Congressional attention.
Some manmade alterations to the landscape -like the construction of of the Dismal Swamp Canal more than 200 years ago - have actually helped the Currituck Sound.
The famous swamp canal reduced the water volume flowing into the sound, but it also produced the brackish water that made it a wonderful recreational site for the next 150 years.
But a more recent canal in Virginia Beach's Lynnhaven area has brought enough saltwater to interfere with the present ecosystem, Barber said.
The 45-foot-wide canal that runs between a mall area and Oceana Naval Air Base heads at the eastern branch of the Lynnhaven River and is believed to have increased the salinity of the sound, he said.
Southerly winds move freshwater out of the Currituck Sound, while strong northern winds blow a higher concentration of saltwater into the waters.
The net result is fluctuations in salinities that cannot support bass or other freshwater fisheries, Barber said.
Along with the rampant development that began in the 1970s came the introduction of Eurasian milfoil - an aquatic plant as prolific and tenacious as kudzu.
Motorized boats would churn up the pesky water weed, which would drift and eventually settle to the ground with new shoots ready to take root.
``We were wrapped up in no time,'' Barber said.
Some of the waterfowl so abundant back then would nibble on the milfoil, ``but it doesn't have the food value that the native plants had there before,'' he said. ``And the milfoil overshadowed a lot of the other plants.''
Milfoil, along with a lot of other submerged vegetation, was killed off during the saltwater intrusion. ``But it's coming back just as the other plants are coming back,'' Barber said.
The sound's current cloudy conditions can be attributed to an overabundance of nutrients, and still-sparse plant life that leaves too much room for waves to kick up mud on the bottom.
The water's cloudiness prevents sunlight from reaching plants, while the nutrients contribute to the growth of phytoplankton, which also prevents light penetration, Barber said.
Among the solutions Barber is proposing is to plug or divide the Virginia Beach canal, thus restoring the original flows, or drainage boundaries, at the heads of two creek basins.
The canal's stoppage would prevent saltwater from entering the northern end of Currituck Sound.
More state and federal agency monitoring also is needed to return the Currituck Sound to its heyday, Barber said.
With a good supply of freshwater again feeding into the waters, it's possible Currituck Sound will start to resemble its old self in five to 10 years, Barber said.
``It will take a little time,'' he cautioned. ``But we fully expect to get some good done here.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff color photo on cover by DREW C. WILSON
Yates Barber
Staff photos by DREW C. WILSON
Yates Barber walks to the edge of the Currituck Sound to take a
water sample and test it for the salinity level.
Yates Barber is among those hoping to restore Currituck Sound to its
former glory.
"As they say, y;ou could read the label on a Pepsi-Cola bottle on
the bottom. The water was just as clear as gin," Yates Barber said.
But that was in the late 1960s. "We have not seen the bottom there
since 1975."
Maps
by CNB