North Carolina’s oyster aquaculture industry is growing rapidly. Simultaneously, coastlines across the East Coast are eroding as sea levels rise and weather patterns change. Sam Holberg, a doctoral student in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering at NC State University, is exploring a potential solution that involves using oyster farms to preserve our shorelines.  

Holberg, recently named a 2025 Sea Grant Coastal Research Fellow and a Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center Global Change Research Fellow, finished his master’s project on the effects of North Carolina’s oyster aquaculture industry on water quality in July. For his doctoral studies, he is working with Celso Castro-Bolinaga, an associate professor of biological and agricultural engineering who leads the Environmental Sediment Mechanics Research Group, to leverage oyster farms as a nature-based solution to halt erosion along the coast. 

Originally from Florence, South Carolina, Holberg spent many summers outdoors. It was amongst nature in South Carolina’s coastal plain, where his interest in the natural world blossomed.

 “I was outside a lot as a kid camping, so I was always interested in plants, animals and water,” he says. 

In high school, Holberg found he gravitated toward biology. His interest in engineering began after his calculus teacher suggested he look into engineering programs. 

Holberg took this advice and attended Clemson University, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biosystems engineering. As a biosystems engineering major, he felt he could combine his love for the natural world with his drive to solve grand challenges. 

“I tried a few different focus areas within biosystems engineering,” Holberg says. “I did renewable energy, water quality and then, finally, through an internship my junior year, I decided I wanted to do coastal work.”

As a graduate student at NC State, Holberg is applying his passion to practical solutions. For his oyster aquaculture and erosion research, he spends his time taking measurements around oyster farms and collecting data for models. 

Holberg’s passion stems from how actionable his work is. “That’s one reason I like graduate school — you’re working towards solving issues,” he says. He hopes to demonstrate that oyster farms can help preserve shorelines as well as produce food. 

Currently, man-made sea walls are used to reduce the impacts of erosion. “Imagine you put up a concrete wall — the stuff behind the wall is not going to move, but it’s also not going to get better,” Holberg says. 

His project aims to implement a solution with an ecological function. “My research looks at whether an oyster farm is putting more sediment behind it, while also producing food sources at the same time.”

Another project he has participated in as a doctoral student involved heading to the coast of Florida to collect data after hurricanes Helene and Milton as part of a multidisciplinary team from the National Science Foundation’s Nearshore Extreme Events Reconnaissance (NEER) Association. This data collection effort will continue over the next two years through a recently funded National Science Foundation award.

“There’s not a lot of field data in general around extreme event-induced barrier breaches,” Holberg says. The measurements and data they collected in Florida will be used to create models around how extreme weather events interact with coastal systems and infrastructure. 

It’s that adaptability in his research that Holberg has come to value in graduate school. “Coming up with new creative ideas to solve problems, I feel like is one of the strengths of biological engineers, because sometimes biology is confusing, and nature doesn’t behave the way you want it to. You always have to be flexible and try out new things,” he says. 

Researching the effects of oyster farms on our shorelines could provide the data needed to adapt current methods, such as man-made infrastructure like sea walls, to lasting nature-based solutions. 

“Shoreline erosion is a very big problem, and a lot of people live on the coast,” Holberg says. “If we can protect our shorelines through either oyster farms and nature-based methods, or even create models to know when extreme storms are going to cause catastrophic openings in inlets … coastal management agencies can make more informed decisions for coastal communities.”

This post was originally published in College of Agriculture and Life Sciences News.