Featured Image Credit: ABC News
It was May when Chad Koczera, captured a new island off the coast of North Carolina with his drone. Koczera was picking up seashells on a nearby beach when he noticed the large land mass. His curiosity took over and he decided to fly his drone over the area to get a better look at the undiscovered island with a sandbar-like area that has never been identified until now.
This new island, who’s been nicknamed “Shelly Island” by some visitors because of the large amounts of untouched seashells, is located near Cape Hatteras, which is part of the Outer Banks. A month or so ago this island was nothing but a little chunk of sand. But now, it’s a beautiful island that stretches roughly a mile in length and three football fields in width.
Because of different factors like sea level rise, urban development, and storm damage, the future of this new found island isn’t crystal clear yet. Surprisingly, it is very common for landmasses and sandbars, like the one that Koczera discovered, to form and then disappear along the coast line.
This new island has also brought along some chaos with it. People wanting to visit the island can only access it by swimming or by boat, but because the area is such a popular fishing spot, there could be discarded fishing hooks that have been left on the bottom of the sea floor, along with sharks and stingrays that like to hunt those waters that are “as large as a hood of a truck,” said Bill Smith, president of the North Carolina Beach Buggy Association.
Many North Carolina locals and visitors hope that Mother Nature lets “Shelly Island” stay around, but only time will tell what will happen to this little shelly slice of untouched paradise. Who knows, maybe Chad will find more undiscovered islands!