Twenty years It is hard for me to believe that the S.C. Sea Grant Consortium is celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year. Consortium faculty and staff are engaged in studies and outreach programs that address aquaculture, coastal hazards, marine biotechnology, nature-based tourism and recreation, coastal environmental quality, land use, ecosystem studies, coastal ocean research, shoreline change, and others. Our programs have been created to serve the needs of residents and visitors who live, work, and play along the coast. The S.C. Sea Grant Consortium has been able to survive and grow because of the continued support, interest, and involvement of the Consortium's member institutions and their faculty and staff, the S.C. General Assembly, the National Sea Grant College Program and our other federal partners, our sister state agencies, and, most importantly, the citizens of South Carolina to whom we direct our programs and activities. We must now look to the future and the emerging issues that will shape the Consortium's programs over the next 20 years.
Visitors continue to flock to the South Carolina shoreline.
Studies by the Clemson University's Strom Thurmond Institute suggest that urbanization will continue to have profound effects on our coastal landscape, and communities will experience ever-increasing pressures on their abilities to accommodate this growth.