Educational Series & Seminars

Join the Oak Island Beach Preservation Society, Inc. fall lecture seminar featuring the Oak Island Water Rescue on September 11, 2025, at 7:00pm. The lecture will be held at the 801 Event Center.

Learn about mission and history of Oak Island Water Rescue and more broadly water rescue capabilities on the island. Understanding the partnership between OIWR, Oak Island Fire Department and other public service agencies.

Discussions will include risks that residents and visitors may face on the strand as well as our back water areas. This will include rip currents, rip tides in the inlet, strong offshore winds, marine life, boating challenges, medical issues on the water. Also, will discuss and touch the aerial drone, our surface water drone, Drysuits, Type 5 rescue PFDs, throw bags, rescue tubes, etc. We'll spend some time on our recent Hurricane Response Technician certifications.

Each summer Oak Island Beach Preservation Society, Inc. hosts monthly visits to the Oak Island Recreation Center by outreach educators from the NC Aquarium at Ft. Fisher. The free, hour-long programs (starting at 2:00 PM) engage visitors, families, and summer campers in learning about and interacting with the animals that live in the sea. More info may be announced by flyers around town and notices on Facebook. 

Join BPSI and the Aquarium for these excellent programs!

On Thursday, November 14 at 7:00 PM, we were educated during a one hour lecture on how our beaches respond to extreme weather events. The event was held at the 801 Ocean Center, 801 Ocean Dr on Oak Island.

Dr. Ryan Mieras, Assistant Professor in Coastal Engineering at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, lead the lecture.

Dr. Mieras earned both his Ph.D. and M.C.E. in Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of Delaware in 2017 and 2014, respectively. He holds a B.S in Ocean Engineering from Texas A&M University (2011). Prior to academia, Mieras worked at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory – Stennis Space Center as a National Research Council, Postdoctoral Fellow from 2017-2019, where he developed technology to measure sediment concentration in the coastal swash zone (US patent pending). To date, he has secured nearly $2 million in federal funding from agencies including the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. 

His research encompasses nearshore sediment transport and hydrodynamic processes via field and laboratory studies, serving to improve our understanding of the physical processes driving coastal flooding and geomorphology in a changing climate. His recent research activities include applied instrumentation development, extreme event reconnaissance observation platforms, post-storm beach recovery, and affordable LiDAR and remote sensing coastal observation systems.