Albemarle Sound

The Albemarle Sound is a large estuary on the coast of the State of North Carolina in the United States. It is located at the confluences of a number of rivers, including the Chowan and Roanoke River. The Albemarle Sound is separated from the Atlantic Ocean by the Outer Banks, a peninsula and offshore islands, at the eastern end of the town of Kitty Hawk is located. At the southeastern end of the island of Roanoke Sounds Iceland is, there the Albemarle connects with the Pamlico Sound. Large proportions of the amount of water of the sound, thanks to the rivers that empty into the sound, sweet or brackish, as opposed to the salt water that penetrates from the compounds to the open sea in the sound.

Small parts of the sounds have their own name in order to distinguish the subregions of the great lakes of the Albemarle sounds can, the Croatan Sound, which lies between the mainland in Dare County and Roanoke Iceland, and the eastern part of this island, as Roanoke Sound is called. The long stretch of water between the southern border of Virginia and the southern boundary of the Currituck County is called the Currituck Sound.

The strait is part of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. On the coast of present-day North Carolina sounds in the continent was first settled by English colonists. Many of the city on the shores of Albemarle Sound cities and towns are among the Inner Banks.

History

Before the Europeans settled the Albemarle Sound, living Native Americans, Indians from the tribe of the Algonquian, in the region. They navigated the sound with dugout canoes and fished the waters.

1586 sailed the first European explorers in the Albemarle Sound, half a century later hiked the first settlers of the colony of Virginia to the south and established agricultural settlements and trading posts along the sound. Soon after, the sound was an important trade route, small vessels, the so-called Coasters, brought merchandise from the other colonies. Larger commercial vessels transported spices, silk and sugar from the West Indies to exchange these goods against tobacco, herring and wood.

Ferries were a common method of transporting goods through the swamps surrounding the sound. One of them connected the town of Edenton and Mackey from 1734 to the year 1934, when a bridge was built across the Sound. Another, longer bridge with almost 5 km long was built in 1990. During the Civil War, the Battle of Able Marle sound took place in the Sound in April 1864.

The main industry was fishing, especially in late spring herring, shad and sea bass was caught, the networks of the fish were in part about a mile long and were often 24 hours a day used. The herring was salted for export to Europe, while Alsen was stored on ice and transported for sale on the Chowan River in the northern colonies. Regional tournaments in bass fishing brought many anglers in the region, and the sound was regarded as one of the best bass fishing areas in the world. Overfishing of the sound in recent years led to a reduction of fish stocks by 70 percent.