CABW History

CABW History as I Know It

by John Morse, 2018

Before I left Clemson in March 1971 to get my PhD degree at UGA, I was unaware of any regional meetings in the Carolinas concerning freshwater biology. Sometime shortly after I returned to Clemson in October 1974, Paul Carlson alerted me to the meetings being held annually at Duke Power Company's McGuire Nuclear Station on Lake Norman (northern Mecklenburg County, NC)--If Arnie Gnilka is still living, he may be able to provide information about when and how the meetings started. I began participating in these meetings about 1976. At that time, "CABW" referred to the "Carolinas-Area Benthologists' Workshop," with the "workshop" aspect intended to make it easier for participants to convince supervisors that the event was not merely an excuse to take a vacation. The "Duke Manual" (Brigham et al. 1982) became a focus project of the group soon thereafter. By the mid 1980s, the benthological team at Duke Power began to be reduced and we started holding meetings in other locations around the Carolinas (Raleigh, Columbia, Clemson, Durham, Oconee Nuclear Station, Shearon Harris Nuclear Power Plant, etc.). There has never been any official membership list, bylaws, officers, dues, meeting registration, or other features of an actual organization; whoever volunteered to host the meeting each year was responsible for inviting the taxonomic specialist to provide a workshop on the featured organism and for organizing the rest of the program. Meeting costs have been kept to a minimum and paid by the host. Participants made their own arrangements for transportation, housing, etc.

Who attends CABW?

CABW brings together interested parties across an incredibly wide spectrum.  Here are some of the participants in the 2019 meeting.  

• Graduate Students (x 10)

• Appalachian State Professor

• University of Tennessee Retired Professor

• Georgia Environmental Protection, Retired

• State Aquatic Biologist

• Environmental Quality Institute at Black Mountain, non-profit

• University of Tennessee Fisheries

• US Fish and Wildlife

• South Carolina DHEC

• Duke Energy Employee

• Clemson University Collection Manager

• Mecklenburg County Environmental Quality

• Citizen Science/ Environmental Advocate

• Cherokee Indians Tribe

• Computer Scientist (developing app for bug ID)

• Lake James Environmental Association, volunteer 

• University of Iowa, Limnologist

• West Liberty University, Algal researcher

• Michael Baker, International (stream restoration)

• North Carolina Rare and Endangered Program

• TVA Stream Assessment