Thank you to the Hench Lab for hosting my visit to the Duke Marine Laboratory and Beaufort, NC. Dolphin pods were meant to swim by the windows of the seminar room, but no such luck. This area has certainly seen a lot. Pamlico and Algonquian Native Americans to the town of Beaufort, established in 1713. It was a port-of-call in the trans-Atlantic and trans-American slave trade, Blackbeard the pirate ran aground, and marine research since the 1800s.