Orrin Pilkey, ‘America’s most important coastal science communicator,’ has died at 90
Orrin Pilkey, a Duke University geologist who spent decades as one of North Carolina’s foremost communicators about the risks of coastal development in the face of sea level rise, has died.
Pilkey was 90 years old, according to an obituary prepared by his family. Pilkey spent decades as a Duke University geologist, founding the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines even as he publicly advocated for development policies that more carefully considered the risks of building on land at the edge of the ocean.
In a 2006 interview, Grist magazine asked Pilkey what one thing he wished every reader would do. He responded, “Think of ocean beaches as being sacred, and do everything in your power to preserve them.”
From the fate of the Cape Hatteras lighthouse to the construction of seawalls to decisions about the future of N.C. 12, Pilkey spent decades embroiled in almost every debate about North Carolina’s coastal policy. The Duke professor’s views, expressed across dozens of books and hundreds of written pieces, carried heavy influence with environmental groups while meeting strong resistance in places that saw development as key to their economy.
“I don’t think that he would ever say that he was America’s most important coastal scientist, but he was probably America’s most important coastal science communicator,” Rob Young, the director of West Carolina’s Program for the Study of Developed Coastlines, told The News & Observer.
Pilkey founded the coastline program that Young now leads, and Young spent six years as a Pilkey doctoral student at Duke.
As a professor, Young recalled, the Hillsborough home Pilkey shared with his wife, Sharlene, was a hub for all of the students in Duke’s geology department.
The door to that house was literally never locked, Young said. Even after leaving Duke, Young said, he would stop in at the house when he was driving by. If the Pilkeys weren’t home, he would let himself in, make himself lunch and continue on his way.
“Everybody at Duke in his orbit just spent so much time out there socializing. That department would not have been the same without Orrin Pilkey in it,” Young said.
Pilkey retired to Croasdaile Village in Durham, Young added, where several colleagues from the department also lived.
‘The man who saved our beaches’
When he first arrived at Duke, Pilkey studied continental sediment off of the East Coast. Then his parents’ home in Waveland, Mississippi, was destroyed in 1969’s Hurricane Camille. While cleaning up from that storm Pilkey was inspired to write a book called “How to Live With An Island,” about the shifting nature of North Carolina’s Bogue Banks.
That work changed Pilkey’s trajectory in academia and his public profile. Pilkey, Young said, was the first person to publicly explain that barrier islands are dynamic systems, moving landward as sea level rises with overwash during storms carrying sand from the ocean side to the landward side.
Shoreline erosion, Pilkey argued, should be recharacterized as “shoreline retreat.”
“His greatest legacy is helping people understand how human activities on those barrier islands interfere with all of those natural processes,” Young said.
Pilkey’s influence extended well beyond his own students. Braxton Davis, for instance, became aware of Pilkey’s work while studying coastal policy in Virginia, Florida and Rhode Island. Davis would go on to lead coastal management agencies in South Carolina and North Carolina before being hired as executive director of the N.C. Coastal Federation in 2023.
At every level of government, Davis wrote in an email, Pilkey’s “impacts and influence” were clear. In 2008, the Coastal Federation gave Pilkey a Lifetime Achievement Award, calling him “the man who saved our beaches.”
“Orrin helped set the stage for legislative bans on seawalls and hard erosion control structures in North Carolina and other states. Those bans are generally still in effect, which today some may take for granted but which have saved many public beaches over the years from disappearing between private oceanfront properties and the constant forces of Mother Nature,” Davis wrote.
Davis is referring to a 1985 Coastal Resources Commission decision that banned oceanfront seawalls in North Carolina, a policy Pilkey championed. The N.C. General Assembly unanimously voted the rule into statute in 2003.
Building seawalls gives the illusion of safety, Pilkey argued, while redirecting wave energy to destroy the beach right in front of them and increasing erosion rates at nearby beaches. That means that once a seawall is built, it is likely to result in increased demand for more seawalls nearby, leading to more destruction.
“That’s Orrin. He was the first person to really point out that if you draw a line in the sand with a seawall on a beach that’s trying to move, the beach is going to disappear in front of that seawall,” Young said.
In his own words
A prolific author, Pilkey wrote or co-wrote 45 books. Another project, with West Georgia University’s David Bush, was underway at the time of his death. Pilkey was also a frequent contributor to opinion pages, including The News & Observer’s.
In a May 2022 opinion piece, for instance, Pilkey argued that homes collapsing around Rodanthe are a sign of what’s to come for the Outer Banks as the land the region’s homes and businesses are built on erodes in the face of sea level rise.
“By any objective view, the Outer Banks of North Carolina are a hazardous place to live, the most hazardous place, taken as a whole, on the entire East Coast, and the coming climate events from the ongoing climate change will make it worse,” Pilkey wrote.
In 2021, Pilkey wrote in response to a News & Observer series about the challenges sea level rise poses for N.C. 12, the often-two-lane highway that runs the length of the Outer Banks. The road faces particular peril, Pilkey wrote, because by bordering the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds the narrow strip of pavement is vulnerable not only to ocean overwash but also to water coming from the west.
“There is not the slightest doubt that N.C. 12 is a goner,” Pilkey wrote. “The only question is when.”
Pilkey’s wife, Sharlene, preceded him in death, as did his brother, Walter, and a grandson. He is survived by his children: Charles, Linda, Diane, Keith and Kerry, six grandchildren and one great grandchild.
This story was produced with financial support from the Hartfield Foundation and Green South Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. If you would like to help support local journalism, please consider signing up for a digital subscription, which you can do here.
This story was originally published December 17, 2024 at 3:29 PM.