Saving Seafood

BOB WOODARD & BEN CAHOON: No to seismic testing off North Carolina

December 17, 2018 — LAST WEEK, the administration of President Donald Trump approved requests by five companies to search for oil and gas deposits along the Atlantic coast by conducting seismic surveys.

This approval was granted despite the opposition of every governor on the East Coast except Maine’s and despite opposition from hundreds of coastal municipalities, and without holding listening sessions in the affected coastal communities.

As elected representatives of Dare County and Nags Head, we share concerns over threats to North Carolina’s coast. We are both Republicans and conservationists. We both recognize the importance of a healthy coast to maintain our prosperity and way of life. Our combined history of listening to our constituents and neighbors allows us to speak out about risks to our coastal business sector and livelihoods, and we can say with certainty: Offshore oil-drilling activities are bad for business, and North Carolinians don’t want them.

Seismic testing alone, even if it doesn’t lead to wells being drilled, will be harmful enough. Seismic surveys use  air gun arrays towed by ships to produce powerful sound waves. Sudden releases of pressurized air create the sound, with up to 20 guns fired simultaneously. Most air gun arrays can be 200 to 240 decibels in water, equivalent to about 140 to 180 decibels in air. A loud rock concert is about 120 decibels, and a jet engine from 100 feet away is about 140 decibels. And a typical seismic air gun array might fire such sound waves into the ocean five or six times a minute — more than 7,000 shots in 24 hours.

Read the full story at The Virginian-Pilot

On North Carolina’s Outer Banks, A Preview Of What Might Be In Store For Mass. Barrier Beaches

August 9, 2017 — The first truly global disaster resulting from climate change may come from rising sea levels.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Committee on Climate Change has projected sea level rise of 1 to 3 feet by the end of the century, and more recent estimates by NASA and other scientists have projected a rise of up to 8 feet.

In Massachusetts, the rising sea will mean more frequent flooding, more severe storms, and dramatic change.

It’s a problem we will share with every coastal community on every continent. A bit farther down the Atlantic Coast, there’s a place that’s on a faster track to where we too may be headed.

‘These Beaches Are Doomed’

Leonardo Da Vinci wrote that “water is the driving force of all nature.”

Fascinated by great storms and terrible floods, DaVinci would have loved the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Nearly 200 miles of low-lying, shifting sand islands link into a high energy system of waves and storms.

“These beaches are doomed,” says Orrin Pilkey, a professor at Duke University and an octogenarian prophet. “The buildings are doomed too.”

Traveling through a shanty town of triple-decker McMansions on stilts, motels and condos too close to the sea, we stop in the town of Nags Head. Pilkey predicts catastrophe in vacationland.

“The future is one of retreat,” Pilkey says. “It’s the only way to save the beach. It’s the only way to save the buildings.”

Read and listen to the full story at WBUR

For North Carolina seafood festivals, there’s a small catch

June 27, 2016 — WANCHESE, North Carolina —Dewey Hemilright has spent more than half his life in North Carolina’s commercial fishing industry, but he says he has never heard a bigger fish story than the claim by the Outer Banks Seafood Festival that it promotes the harvest he and his colleagues work so hard to haul in.

“It’s a deception,” he said, after first using a colorful phrase that rolls more easily off the tongue of a career waterman. “They’re telling people – or at least implying to people – who come down here that they’re going to get local North Carolina seafood. They’re not. What they’re getting is imported. But put that on your sign and see how many people show up. It’s not right. You shouldn’t have to read the fine print.”

A handful of small events along the coast each year feature the blue crabs, brown shrimp, yellowfin tuna and some of the dozens of other shellfish and finfish species that fishermen wrestle from the state’s oceans and sounds. But two of the most heavily promoted festivals – the Outer Banks Seafood Festival in Nags Head and the North Carolina Seafood Festival in Morehead City – predominantly offer the same foreign imports that American consumers typically buy in grocery stores and eat at restaurants.

Festival organizers say they encourage, but can’t force, vendors to serve North Carolina products. They add that those who offer flounder platters and baskets of deep-fried shrimp from booths, between the band performances and the craft tents, say that cost and limited availability make it difficult, if not impossible, to sell only what is homegrown.

Read the full story at The News & Observer 

Fisheries panel places emergency limits on flounder catches

November 19, 2015 — After five hours of motions, amendments and haggling over details, the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission approved an emergency measure Thursday that will close down most fishing for southern flounder in the state’s sounds after Oct. 16.

The restrictions, which are aimed at allowing larger numbers of fish to migrate into the ocean to reach spawning age, were deemed necessary by the Division of Marine Fisheries even though the usefulness of a 2014 stock assessment was challenged by a peer review.

While the closings will also apply to recreational anglers, commercial fishermen will take a big financial hit because the fall months are generally the most productive for catching flounder with gill and pound nets.

The measure, approved as the commission met at Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head, comes in the form of a supplement to the Fisheries Management Plan. A supplement allows the MFC to act on its own in an emergency without the usual vetting by special committees and public comment that an amendment would require. In this case, however, public comment was invited.

Read the full story from The Outer Banks Voice