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JANUARY 19, 2024
THE LOCAL VOICE OF YOUR COMMUNITY.
Fenwick opts out of wind farm payments By Kerin Magill Staff Reporter Fenwick Island officials have said “no thanks” to an offer from a wind energy company to receive payment from the company in return for agreeing not to speak out negatively against efforts to place wind turbines within visibility of the Delaware coast. U.S. Wind has been making the rounds of coastal towns in recent weeks, offering up to $2 million over 20 years to towns that accept the company’s Community Benefit Agreement. So far, Fenwick Island and Lewes are the only towns that have turn it down. “When you start passing money around ... money gets in the way of the truth,” Fenwick Island Mayor Natalie Magdeburger said in a recent interview. “I just want honest, unbiased answers,” Magdeburger said. The town has in the past opposed plans to place 900foot-tall wind turbines within view of the Delaware coastline. She mentioned that the Center for the Inland Bays had accepted a grant from wind energy company Ørsted, which it later returned. “I’m not questioning their inSee FENWICK page 2
Aquaculture Task Force becomes a reality By Mike Smith Staff Reporter Delaware’s local aquaculture industry and oyster lovers of this sweet and succulent variety have new hope for future growth, thanks to a new support bill that will stand up an Aquaculture Task Force to expand oyster farming. Senate Resolution 103 was introduced by State Senator Stephanie Hansen (10th) and passed last Tuesday, Jan. 9, with strong co-signers, including Sens. Gerald Hocker, Russell Huxtable, David Sokola and Jack Walsh. “Our local watermen (and women) See AQUACULTURE page 8
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A whale of a find Fossil bone discovered on Bethany Beach By Susan Canfora Staff Reporter Reed Glasmann was out for a morning walk near the ocean in Bethany Beach last week when he was surprised to notice what he later described as “a big, long item.” “It was about an hour after high tide, about 9:30 in the morning. I saw a neighbor who goes up and takes pictures. As I went up I saw a log she photographed but this other item was to the north. I walked down to see what it was and it was nicely curved. I said, ‘Well, this is a bone,’” the Oregon resident, who is a geologist, said. “If you looked at one end you could see how porous it was. I figured, ‘It’s not a tree’ and I’m not sure how big whale bones are. I picked it up and moved it a little bit to get a full picture of the curvature and I told my wife, Peggy, about it. I said, ‘This is such a big thing. Somebody ought to know about it,’” he said, adding he wouldn’t have tried to keep it, or any part of it, for a souvenir He called the Bethany Beach Police, who said they didn’t have jurisdiction at Sussex Shores, where he was walking, but someone there gave him the number for the Marine Education, Research & Rehabilitation Institute in Lewes, better known locally known as MERR. Glasmann was there around noon when institute specialists arrived and their arrival caught the attention of passersby. “People were shelling and walking on the beach and nobody even came up and looked at it. Everybody thought it was tree log or something. After these MERR guys showed up with, like, 10 people, we had an instant crowd there,” he said. They wanted to haul it to their van and take it back to MERR to have it analyzed, but had difficulty
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An Oregon geologist recently happened across a whale bone thought to be more than 1,000 years old. moving it because it weighs about 350 pounds, Glasmann said. The Bethany Beach Fire Company came in a four-wheel drive vehicle but it wasn’t big enough, so the town of Bethany Beach offered a tractor. “They put a strap around the bone and towed it. They just pulled it in the sand. It was pretty harsh treatment of a nice bone. The bone was dark and it looked like it was partly fossilized. It was not a recent thing. It was probably more than 1,000 years old,” Glasmann said, speculating the whale died and the bone was buried offshore “maybe in the mud.” “It really turned black. Usually, a fresh bone would not be black,” said Glasmann, of Philomath, Ore.
“I was very surprised to see it. I never saw a whale fossil on the east coast. I know we have whales off shore. That’s why I invested the whole day, hoping somebody who cared about it would take care of it,” he said. MERR officials told him they would test the bone and ask experts at the Smithsonian Institution to get a DNA sample, which would probably involve drilling a hole to get to the interior, Glasmann said. “They will try to get an age with carbon dating and they will want to try to determine the species and how old it is. And once they know that, they would know how fossilized it is,” he said.