Fourth Annual Johnston Coastal Sustainability Symposium

We hosted the 4th Annual Johnston Coastal Sustainability Symposium on April 8. As good as the event was in 2024, this year’s event was even better and again had sold-out audiences for both the morning session at BHA’s Generator Society Hall and the dinner lecture at the BHI Club that featured UNCW researcher Joe Long discussing his Frying Pan Shoals project.

The theme for the 2025 Symposium was Decision-Making, and it was chosen because of the many important and complex decisions that need to be made to promote the sustainability of Bald Head Island. Morning session presentations ranged from the philosophical underpinnings of how humans make decisions to the practical realities of how current coastal management decisions are made on Bald Head Island and across the southeast US.

Among our speakers was Brittany Morse, a graduate student at UNCW and the 2024-25 Johnston Graduate Fellow in Coastal Sustainability. Brittany discussed her research that evaluated how Bald Head Creek’s salt marsh may migrate as sea levels rise in the decades ahead.

Please check out all of the talks below. We promise you will learn a great deal about our fragile barrier island and just how critical it is for us to make wise and informed decisions now to help protect BHI for future generations!

Thanks to our attendees and our speakers for another successful event, especially Dylan McNamara, Joe Long, Molly Mitchell and Chris McCall who have participated in all four Symposiums. A very special thanks to Pat and Dick Johnston for continuing to support the Conservancy’s Coastal Sustainability initiative on Bald Head Island!