Mark Hibbs

Framing it as a saltwater flavor of technology hubs, officials broke ground this week on the planned Shellfish Mariculture Hub in Carteret County that will feature a 2,500-square-foot structure next to the boat ramp at Straits Landing, cold storage, equipment, an outdoor workspace and water access for growers.

Rep. Celeste C. Cairns, Carteret County commissioners and others staged a ceremonial groundbreaking Friday for a new boat launch facility on Bogue Sound in the western part of the county.

A small gathering watches 2025's final sunset Wednesday over Taylors Creek from the wooden deck at Harborside Park at 322 Front St. in Beaufort. Here are some of Coastal Review's most-read stories of the year. We thank you for reading. Photo: Mark Hibbs

Fingerstyle guitarist and vocalist Noah Cobb, 18, of Greenville, performs Saturday at the New Village Brewery in Oriental as part of the Pamlico County village's two-day Ol' Front Porch Music Festival, which was free to attend and brought together folk, Americana, bluegrass, country, gospel, blues and jazz performers on numerous stages sited within walking distance of one another. Photo: Mark Hibbs

Don Dixon, Jim Wann and Bland Simpson, collectively known as the Coastal Cohorts, are bringing "King Mackerel and the Blues Are Running" back for its 40th year and debuting their musical homage to Rachel Carson.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin told a Senate committee Wednesday that news reports about the EPA weakening PFAS were inaccurate and that the standards could instead get tougher.

An angler recently tries his luck from beneath the Scuppernong River Bridge on the the Scuppernong River Boardwalk at the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge visitor center in Columbia, in Tyrrell County. Money from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was appropriated to replace the boardwalk, a project that was announced to take place in fiscal 2026. Congress directly appropriated $455 million to the refuge over five years for programs related to the previous administration’s America the Beautiful initiative announced in 2021. The nonprofit National Wildlife Refuge Association has said that continuing resolutions, such as the emergency funding bill signed into law last week, throw refuges into chaos and uncertainty and can prevent new project starts. Photo: Mark Hibbs

A tiny Z-scale model train operated by Mike Basher of Basher and Sons Hobbies rounds the bend during an appearance earlier this month at the 30th annual John Costlow Train Show at the North Carolina Maritime Museum Harvey W. Smith Watercraft Center in Beaufort. The three-day show included model train layouts of various scales, including working antiques. Photo: Mark Hibbs

A rainbow reaches skyward from the Newport River as viewed from the marsh at Radio Island following Sunday showers. The island was formed by the placement of dredge spoils from an early channel-deepening project at the Morehead City port in the 1930s and takes its name from Carteret Broadcasting Co.'s WMBL, which began broadcasting in 1947 at 740 kHz. Photo: Mark Hibbs

The faint tail of Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS pointing away from the setting sun is visible Sunday evening over Taylors Creek in Beaufort. NASA says the "dirty snowball's" appearance is "a once-in-80,000-years sight." The comet believed to be from the Oort Cloud at the edge of our Solar System was expected to swing close by at about 44 million miles from Earth -- its closest pass -- on Saturday. Discovered in 2023, it is named for both China’s Tsuchinshan, or Purple Mountain, Observatory and an Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS, telescope in South Africa. Photo: Mark Hibbs