Aquarium project aims to ease pier pressure.

• Position: Eastern

If you want to lure fishermen to your pier, it helps to sell beer and undercut competitors. But that's not how the state plans to operate the one it's building in Nags Head. Prices will be at least as high as those of private operators, and it won't use beer as bait. "We want a place where you can drop your granddaughter off for the afternoon and not worry," says David Griffin, director of the Aquariums Division of the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

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Lawmakers and Gov. Beverly Perdue gave the $22.5 million project a green light in April. Construction, set to begin this month, will take about two years. That's good news for anglers, but the pier represents more than another spot to wet a line. Public access to the ocean is vanishing as developers buy up coastal property for hotels and houses (cover story, September 2007). The North Carolina Fishing Pier Society says the number of Tar Heel piers has dropped from 36 in 1980 to fewer than 20. A new one would at least slow the trend.

The nonprofit North Carolina Aquarium Society, which raises money for the three state-owned aquariums, bought a private pier and its 5.5-acre site in 2003--right before Hurricane Isabel clobbered the pier. In a controversial deal brokered by Sen. Marc Basnight, who lives in nearby Manteo, the society obtained state and local grants to help finance the purchase, then...