September 29, 2026 — The 40th annual North Carolina Seafood Festival will bring crowds back to downtown Morehead City starting Friday, and organizers say they are cracking down on imported seafood.
For the first time, officials said an outside organization will conduct DNA testing on seafood cooked and sold by festival vendors. The goal is to help ensure the seafood comes from North Carolina or other U.S. states, not from other countries.
September 29th, 2016 — Large crowds are expected to flood the Morehead City Waterfront during this years North Carolina Seafood Festival. The festival begins Friday and lasts throughout the weekend. Restaurants are already preparing fresh local seafood for the three day event.
Chef Fabian Botta is the head chef at waterfront restaurant Ruddy Duck Tavern. Chef Botta is a veteran to the seafood festival and knows a thing or two about seafood.
He said an event such as this requires several months of planning.
“We’ll serve in three days about 1,500 to 2,000 pounds of shrimp. The shrimp harvest has been great so far so we’re going to take advantage of it,” Chef Botta said.
The shrimp Chef Botta will be serving is courtesy of Pamlico Packing Company in Vandemere North Carolina.
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.