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The Albemarle is the northernmost estuary in the state. It borders the northern Outer Banks, northwestern North Carolina, and southern Virginia. The Roanoke, Chowan, and Pasquotank rivers all drain into the Albemarle Sound. The greater size of the Albemarle includes three smaller water bodies: the Currituck Sound, Roanoke Sound, and Croatan Sound.
In 1828 the Currituck Inlet closed, changing the water composition from salty to exclusively freshwater. The Albemarle is largely freshwater as there are only 4 ocean inlets in over 190 miles of barrier islands and the large freshwater flow from the Chowan and Roanoke Rivers. Without an oceanic influence, the Albemarle is only influenced by wind and storm tides. In summer months, the lack of tides can cause mass fish and shellfish kills. Wind tides during northeaster storms can push water from the sound onto the barrier islands, cutting off one of the two evacuation routes for the outer banks.
Large-scale commercial fishing for Shad, Striped Bass, and Herring began in the late 1700s. Quickly overfished, the fishing industry collapsed, unable to support large cities on the coast. Since it was overfished, the Albemarle sound area is known for small towns, although it experiences pollution effects from larger cities in the Chowan and Roanoke river basins. Recently, there has been some large development due to the growing tourism industry in North Carolina.
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Due to industrial and urban pollutants, the Albemarle Sound is subject to a variety of environmental problems. A chemical analysis for four years between 1989 and 1993 identified 18 areas of concern, compared to 10 for the Pamlico sound, the biggest estuary in North Carolina. The albemarle sound is affected by large cities within the Roanoke and Chowan watersheds as well as industrial facilities and wastewater treatment plants along the Roanoke and Chowan rivers. The area has been subject to Pfiesteria outbreaks, the same microbe that caused a mass fish-kill in the Chesapeake Bay in 1997, leading to much tighter regulation in Maryland, prompting N.C. officials to do the same.
The Albemarle is known for its dense layer of peat that is dense in organic matter and biological diversity. Peat provides natural habitat for marshes and grasses giving the area natural shore stabilization. With sea level rise and saltwater overwash, anaerobic bacteria (in saltwater) digest this pear layer at a much faster rate than freshwater bacteria. Thin barrier island formations and low elevations, like Duck in particular, could be spots of future inlets and there is already overwash fans in high-energy storms. An influx of saltwater would transform the water bodies’ biological composition, tidal influences, and currents.