July 8, 2026 — On a late March morning, barrels full of slippery bluefish straight off the boat glistened in the sun at O’Neal’s Sea Harvest in Wanchese. Within hours, the fresh catch would be shipped to seafood markets stretching from Canada to Louisiana.

“You try to get it in and out as quick as you can because it’s perishable,” said Ashley O’Neal. “They go on a truck today, and they’ll be wherever they are going by 2 or 3 o’clock tomorrow,” he said.

O’Neal’s Sea Harvest is one of several competitive fish houses on the southern tip of Roanoke Island on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The family-owned company also operates a seafood market and restaurant in front of its fish process center in Wanchese Seafood Industrial Park.

Benny and Linda O’Neal started the business in 1995. Today, their three children, Nicole Harper and brothers Colby and Ashley O’Neal, along with their respective wives, Lara and Abby, operate it.

Read the full article at the Miami Herald