September 30, 2025 — On the Outer Banks, everybody’s cell phones are buzzing with mandatory evacuation orders, but Hurricane Erin has turned northeast, and not a lot of people are on the move. In Pamlico Sound, it’s business as usual as Gregory Brooks steers his 40-foot shrimp boat, the Rebait, alongside the dock at Newman’s Seafood in Swan Quarter, North Carolina.
He’s got a nice load of mixed shrimp aboard, brown and white, or green tail as they’re called. “Right now, the season’s changing,” Brooks says. “From the brown to the white.” He and his uncle, Tommy Brooks, have been out for less than 24 hours and they’ve landed more than 30 baskets.
“They had 2,200 pounds,” says Michelle Newman, manager of Newman’s Seafood. “That’s not bad for the time they were out.” According to Newman, her family’s packing house has about five or six boats that come in every week. There are about 15 packing houses here in Hyde County,” she says. “Others have more boats. Only the smaller ones can get up in here.”
When a boat comes into Newmans, the crew comes down from the village of Swan Quarter to snap the heads off the shrimp. “It’s money for them to buy school clothes for their kids and things,” says Newman.