• Shoreline in this area is the Chesapeake Bay.
• This area includes Small Coastal West and Small Coastal East subwatersheds in Virginia Beach.

• Comprehensive Plan page 112

• Densely populated

• Comprehensive Plan

• Mostly federal and state 
• Minimal commercial 

• Comprehensive Plan page 8

• Joint Expeditionary Base-Fort Story
• First Landing State Park

• Chesapeake Bay 
• About 20-30 ppt (parts per thousands)

• Lunar Tidal

• Public beach access

• Trees: Dogwood, live oak, beech, holly, loblolly pine, persimmon
• Prickly-pear cactus: a fleshy edible fruit sometimes used to make jelly. This plant stores large quantities of water in their stems. The large, fleshy parts of the plant are actually the stems while the prickly spines are the leaves.
• Yucca plant: A member of the lily family; sword-shaped leaves; Symbiotic relationship exists between the yucca plant and the tiny yucca moth.
• Huckleberry

Crabs, Finfish & Shellfish

• Blue crab (market names: hard-shell crab, soft-shell crab)
• Spot, striped ass (aka rockfish, striper, bass, linesides)
• Croaker (Also known as the “talking fish”, croakers emit a croaking sound, both in the water and when caught)
• Black sea bass (aka rock bass, blackfish, sea bass, tallywag)
• Bluefish (market names: tailor, snapper
• Summer flounder (market names: fluke, northern fluke, plaice)
• Shellfish (aquatic invertebrates belonging to phylum mollusca): Eastern oyster or American oyster, sea scallops, hard clam, channeled whelk (market names: conch, scungilli)

Birds

• Brown pelican, belted kingfisher, bufflehead, common loon, DBL-Crested cormorant, hooded merganser, laughing gull, ring-billed gull, royal tern, barn swallows

Other

• Bottlenose dolphins, horseshoe crab, fiddler crab, stingray, jellyfish, skate, sea turtles

•  VIMS Virginia Seafood Guide. 2018
• VIMS: Chesapeake Bay Birds. 2021

• Sandy soil

• Cape Henry Second Tower Light Station- Virginia Landmark
  • The Cape Henry Lighthouse was built in 1792 and was the first public works project of the new United States of America government
  • Lighthouse development plans began in the colonial period but were never executed.

• Cape Henry development:
  • late nineteenth century
  • 1873 United States Weather Bureau Observation Center established
  • 1874 United States Life Saving Station
  • 1881 new lighthouse built and became operational in place of the nearly century old beacon
  • 1890s land was bought by a group of investors
  • Early 1900s: Resort area was becoming increasingly popular
  • Small community of frame cottages

• In late October, 1792, Laban Goffigan of Norfolk lit the fish oil-burning lamps of the new Cape Henry Lighthouse for the first time.

• Comprehensive Plan  page 207, 212
• National Register of Historic Places Sites page 205
• The Beach: A History of Virginia Beach 1998

• Algal blooms, sometimes referred to as a “red tide”: cluster of algae that forms when the water around it is warm, slow-moving and full of nutrients. (CDC, 2021)
• Flooding
• Sea-level rise
• Erosion

• The Virginian-Pilot Katherine Hafner. 2021. “Harmful algae is blooming around Hampton Roads…”