Saving Seafood

NORTH CAROLINA: NC shrimp trawling ban bill saga ends

July 11, 2025 — House Bill 442, introduced in April, aimed to extend the recreational flounder fishing season to six weeks and establish a year-round red snapper season with catch limits.

The bill passed the House in May with bipartisan support and was sent to the Senate. After that, the bill’s focus shifted dramatically when the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Energy, and Environment met June 17.

During that meeting, Sen. David Craven (R-Randolph) proposed a committee substitute with a ban on shrimp trawling in all inshore waters, including sounds, estuaries, rivers and within a half mile of the Atlantic shoreline. The change, which would go into effect Dec.1, proposed making it a Class A1 misdemeanor for violating the bill’s ban.

Environmental groups like the North Carolina Wildlife Federation and North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission supported the change, citing rates of bycatch of juvenile fish and various marine habitat damage.

The shrimp industry, including the North Carolina Fisheries Association and Southern Shrimp Alliance, opposed the ban. They argued that 70-80% of shrimp come from inshore waters, and many small boats can’t operate offshore. Also cited were existing regulations addressing environmental concerns, like weekend trawling bans and nursery areas closed since 1978.

The Senate’s changes were added without prior notice to House sponsors or the shrimp industry. The Senate passed the amended bill June 19 with a 39-4 vote.

Coastal area Sens. Tom Lazzara (R-Onslow) and Norman Sanderson (R-Pamlico) voted against it in committee. Lazzara and Sen. Bobby Hanig (R-Currituck), who also opposed the change, were not present at the Senate vote sending the measure to the House.

Read the full article at North State Journal

NORTH CAROLINA: Proposed coalition to N.C. coastal counties seeks to protect fishing industry

July 11, 2025 — At the end of June, a bill that would have banned shrimp trawling on the North Carolina coast was killed in the North Carolina House of Representatives.

Dare County Board of Commissioners Chairman Bob Woodard is now proposing a coastal community coalition.

This proposal comes with future fights on the issue in mind and amplifying the voices of coastal communities under one umbrella.

“We’re trying to save an industry that’s been around since mankind began,” said Woodard.

Read the full article at WTKR

NORTH CAROLINA: Lawmakers shoot down ban on controversial fishing practice after community outcry: ‘Without warning or consultation’

July 7, 2025 –North Carolina lawmakers kept a ban on shrimp trawling from advancing in the General Assembly.

What’s happening?

The House of Representatives on June 25 declined to hear Bill 442, which would have prohibited the practice within a half-mile of the coast, the Island Free Press reported. The legislation had passed the Senate but was derided by shrimpers and the fishing industry.

Commercial anglers said 75% of their shrimp is harvested in the area that would have become off-limits, WUNC noted. In 2023, the state issued 270 licenses to shrimpers, who caught 6.5 million pounds of the crustaceans. The haul was valued at $14.1 million.

Bill 442 would have lengthened the southern flounder and red snapper seasons, but an amendment added the ban, making it untenable for those who make their living in the field.

Read the full story at The Cool Down

NORTH CAROLINA: What they’re saying on scuttled “Shrimpgate” trawling ban proposal

June 30, 2025 — Following the surprise introduction of legislation that would ban shrimp trawling in nearly all of North Carolina’s coastal waters, a host of groups and individuals have weighed in on the “Shrimpgate” proposal running aground.

They have included expressions of relief the ban will not be moving forward in the General Assembly, while one group believed to have pushed the proposal denied the accusations and another left their involvement unclear.

The state Senate passed House Bill 442 on June 20 that would make it a misdemeanor to operate a shrimp trawl in the sounds and up to one-half mile off the Atlantic coastline, which was tacked on to a bill requiring state regulators open flounder and red snapper seasons through a four-year pilot program.

That bill was then sent back to the state House for concurrence, since they passed the legislation before it was amended.

Hundreds of commercial watermen and women, restaurateurs, local political leaders, and others, from Currituck to Calabash and elsewhere across the state, walked the halls of the Legislative Building earlier this week to meet with members of the General Assembly and voice their opposition.

Outside, dozens of tractor trailers and box trucks that would normally be on the road hauling seafood up-and-down the East Coast were cruising the streets of Downtown Raleigh on Tuesday adorned with banners supporting North Carolina’s seafood industry and decrying the ban proposal.

Just steps away from the main entrance to the Legislative Building, an impromptu curbside seafood market with giant insulated boxes filled with thousands of pounds of fresh, brown shrimp on ice that was caught just a few days ago by the same trawlers that would be put out of business by the legislation.

Read the full article at Island Free Press

Southern states lay down the law on seafood labeling

June 30, 2025 — Over the course of the past year, Dave Williams, a commercial fishery scientist and founder of SeaD Consulting, has been testing shrimp in restaurants all around the Gulf states, Georgia, and the Carolinas to find out if they are selling imported farmed shrimp as Gulf shrimp. The results have been astounding, with restaurants tested in Charleston, South Carolina, showing a 90 percent fraud rate.  

Williams’s work, sponsored by the industry group Southern Shrimp Alliance, has prompted the passage of new laws and increased enforcement of existing laws aimed at protecting the U.S. domestic shrimp fleet.  

Alabama’s Seafood Labeling Law was passed in May 2024 and took effect on October 1, 2024. It requires food service establishments including restaurants, grocery store delis and seafood retailers, to list the country of origin of its fish and shellfish, or that the product was imported.

The law also requires labels to state if the seafood was farm raised or wild caught.  Suppliers must provide the seafood’s country of origin to the restaurants and delis. The law is enforced by the state Department of Public Health and consumers who believe there is a violation of the law can file a complaint via an online form.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

NORTH CAROLINA: A proposed inland trawling ban left NC shrimpers boiling hot. Now what happens?

June 27, 2025 — As if it already wasn’t hot enough in the Tar Heel State in late June, a small crustacean that’s long been a popular food staple at the N.C. coast has succeeded in sending temperatures surging at the N.C. General Assembly in Raleigh.

But this has nothing to do with a polite squabble over the best way to cook shrimp. This, shrimpers and their supporters say, is about protecting their livelihoods.

About 70% of the state’s shrimp catch is caught in waters that would have been declared off limits under House Bill 442, according to NC Catch, an advocacy group for the state’s commercial fishing industry. According to statistics from the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries, more than 9 million pounds of shrimp annually were caught by commercial shrimpers in the four years pre-Covid, worth upward of $20 million a year.

But supporters of the ban also say the proposed bill is about survival, in this case protecting the future of the state’s fisheries, many of which are overfished and struggling.

State Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, has said continuing to allow trawling in inland waters is detrimental to the state’s fish populations that use the shallow near-shore waters as spawning and nursery areas and, in the long run, damaging to the state’s commercial fishing industry, noting that North Carolina is the only state along the East or Gulf coasts that allows the practice.

Read the full article at Star News Online

NORTH CAROLINA: North Carolina House lawmakers kill proposed ban on inshore shrimp trawling

June 27, 2025 — Lawmakers in the North Carolina House of Representatives have effectively killed a ban on inshore shrimp trawling, a proposal that was hailed by conservation groups but widely rejected by shrimpers and seafood providers in the state.

“When a coordinated assault was launched to kill North Carolina’s shrimp industry with junk science, hundreds of dedicated fishermen and supporting businesses walked the halls of the state capital, meeting legislators face to face and sharing the truth about their livelihood,” Southern Shrimp Alliance Chief Executive John Williams said in a release about the news. “We are immensely grateful to the NC House of Representatives for doing the right thing.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

NORTH CAROLINA: Shrimp trawling ban defeated in House Republican caucus

June 26, 2025 — Shrimpers spoke, and the Republican caucus of the North Carolina House of Representatives listened.

Legislation potentially fatal to the coastal industry, its leaders said, will rest in the Rules Committee of the lower chamber. A Wednesday afternoon session was delayed more than 90 minutes awaiting the decision that rejected the Senate’s insertion of a shrimp trawling ban within a half mile of the shoreline.

The North Carolina Fishers Association, at 3:30 Wednesday afternoon, posted in all caps to its social media, “HB442 trawl ban is dead!”

Sen. Phil Berger, the Rockingham County Republican and president pro tempore, stood by his chamber’s move. Speaker Destin Hall, R-Caldwell, pushed for a deeper dive on the decision. Steve Troxler, sixth term Republican state agriculture commissioner, on Monday respectfully confirmed opposition to the trawling ban.

Read the full article at The Center Square

NORTH CAROLINA: Shrimp trawling ban in NC sounds dies in the state House, Republicans say

June 25, 2025 — North Carolina House Republicans won’t take up a bill that would ban shrimp trawling in North Carolina sounds, they said Wednesday — a decision met with jubilation from shrimpers in the Legislative Building.

Republican Rep. Mitchell Setzer, the House speaker pro tempore, confirmed the decision with The News & Observer.

House Bill 442 was revised early last week to include an amendment banning trawling within a half-mile of the coast. Before the amendment, the bill originally sought to expand fishing seasons for flounder and red snapper.

Read the full article at The News and Observer

Controversial N.C. shrimp trawling bill passes senate, Outer Banks continues to voice opposition

June 24, 2025 — A bill with an amendment that’s targeting the shrimping industry has passed the senate. Fishing communities continue to hold their breath and feel that if this bill passes, it will be devastating to their livelihood.

“Everything I’ve worked for my entire life would be erased in a week,” said fisherman John Silver.

“I’ve been a commercial fisherman for about 35 years. I started out working at fish houses, and up to owning my own boat,” said fisherman Dewey Hemilright.

For John Silver, Dewey Hemilright and thousands of other fisherman, being out on the water isn’t just their job, it defines them.

“For everybody that does this, they’ve built their entire lives around it. It makes them who they are. So this passes, who are we then,” said Silver.

Read the full article at WTKR