North Carolina Archives - Page 11 of 74

NORTH CAROLINA: Can endangered right whales and charter fishing boats co-exist off the NC coast?

April 11, 2024 — The 2024 hurricane season doesn’t officially start for more than a month.

Yet a storm is already raging off the North Carolina coast, and this one involves the future of two of the most iconic symbols of the state’s coastal areas − whales and fishing.

But to save one, whether one of the most highly endangered animals in the world or an industry that supports thousands of jobs and is worth millions to coastal communities, must the other go?

“We’re not against species protection at all,” said Frank Hugelmeyer, president and CEO of the National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA). “But we don’t think you solve one existential problem by creating another one.”

Read the full article at USA Today

NORTH CAROLINA: Thousands of pieces of fishing gear removed from coastal NC waters over past decade

April 1, 2024 — Protecting our state’s coastal waters is an ongoing effort, and one nonprofit recently hit a major milestone in that endeavor.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation marked 10 years of working with commercial fishing crews to find and remove thousands of pieces of lost fishing gear from the water.

Matt Littleton and Carson Whetherington spend their mornings in Swansboro searching for bouys — but these crab pots aren’t providing their next meal; they’re looking to pull lost and forgotten gear from the water.

“The areas we’re working, continuously we’re seeing lost pots or leftover or one that might have gotten moved around from a storm. In this area we’re running up on just pots that are derelict, debris that’s been discarded somewhere or it’s been hit by a boat or hit by a prop because it’s been in the water for so long,” says Littleton, with Friendly City Fishing Charters.

For years Littleton, who’s a charter boat captain in Swansboro, worked alongside his father as part of the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s lost fishing gear recovery project- but now he continues that effort with his own team.

Read the full article at WRAL

NORTH CAROLINA: North Carolina fishermen battle falling prices, foreign imports, and regulations

February 28, 2024 — Local seafood is a favorite in Eastern North Carolina, but with falling prices and more foreign imports local fishermen say they are struggling.

Fishermen battle regulations and imports while trying to keep their business afloat. A fisherman we spoke to says the imported seafood industry squeezes out their ability to provide affordable options.

Monica Smith / Miss Gina’s Fresh Shrimp owner says, “I feel like we’re fighting for the right to go to work. Commercial fishermen get singled out an awful lot. “

Consumers might have to play the ‘price is right’ for locally caught seafood in eastern North Carolina. For fishermen like Kayden Daniels, they are now seeing a potential downturn in business.

Read the full article at WCTI 12

NORTH CAROLINA: Extensive study aims to help state better manage fisheries

February 13, 2024 — A study ordered by the legislature has scientists taking a deep dive into North Carolina’s fisheries management to help the future of state-regulated coastal marine species.

The North Carolina General Assembly in the 2021-22 state budget tasked researchers with a “Study of the Coastal and Marine Fisheries of the State” to come up with recommendations on ways the state might improve how it manages 13 regulated species.

To do this, researchers are examining a multitude of information gathered over the past few decades and study trends in everything from water temperatures to commercial harvest patterns.

The study, led by a team of nine researchers who fall under the umbrella of the North Carolina Collaboratory, is expected to wrap sometime next year. The legislature created the policy research entity in 2016. The Collaboratory is to share its recommendations to state lawmakers no later than June 30, 2025.

That deadline was bumped from June 30 of this year, which marks the 27th anniversary of the Fisheries Reform Act of 1997 and the 50th anniversary of the Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA.

Read the full article at CostalReview.org

From Bubba Gump to bust? American shrimpers face extinction

January 31, 2024 — On a chilly December morning, the captain of the Miss Patti is ready to throw his lines and go shrimping – well, almost. Brian Jordan’s deckhand is in a foul mood, and it’s no wonder why. Is any of this worth it?

Here on the tiny working waterfront of Tybee Island, Georgia, the hesitancy is logical. Shrimp prices cratered this year, and hundreds of boats from Brownsville, Texas, to Harkers Island, North Carolina, remained dockside.

The problem hasn’t been a lack of shrimp or the price of diesel. Instead, freezers across the United States are filled to the gills. A glut of imported shrimp has dropped the price to about half of what shrimp boats received in the 1980s.

At stake is the livelihood of Mr. Jordan and shrimpers like him nationwide. They can’t compete with overseas rivals who raise and harvest shrimp in lower-cost “aquaculture’’ farms. There, baby shrimp essential to the marine life food chain are raised in artificial saltwater ponds, then harvested in bulk and sold for reduced prices around the world.

Because shrimp is the most valuable marine product traded in the world today – growing from a $10.6 billion industry in 2005 to over $60 billion in 2022 – the shift is consequential on many fronts. The practice is generating substantial income for developing countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Brazil, Ecuador, and Bangladesh.

But the trend, some experts say, hurts more than just seafaring boaters like Mr. Jordan: Much of the overseas aquaculture industry is damaging to the environment, they say

Read the full article at the Christian Science Monitor

NORTH CAROLINA: NCCF Lost fishing gear recovery program underway

January 10, 2024 — Throughout this month and with the help of 25 commercial fishermen and women, the N.C. Coastal Federation will undertake efforts to find and remove potentially harmful lost fishing gear. This is the tenth year the federation has held the annual Lost Fishing Gear Recovery Project.

Throughout the month watermen will scour parts of the northern and central coast looking to find and remove lost crab pots. Every year, crab pots and other fishing gear are lost in our sounds in various ways.

Agencies acknowledge confusion fisheries conflict creates

January 9, 2023 — Third and final in a series investigating why, after years of consistent seasons for inland, joint and coastal waters, recreational anglers found themselves negotiating different flounder and mullet rules in 2023.

Disagreements between the two commissions that manage state waters began to flare in 2019 after they formed an interagency committee to work on the required 10-year review on rules for the joint waters they both manage.

With the threat of these rules expiring in 2022 looming over the Wildlife Resources Commission that manages inland waters and the Marine Fisheries Commission manages coastal waters and the two never coming to an agreement, the governor’s office directed the agencies in February 2022 to adopt the existing joint rules without any changes.

The joint rules address scope and purpose, the classification of inland, coastal and joint waters, posting dividing lines, applicability of rules and special regulations for joint waters, and estuarine striped bass management.

Though there was mounting conflict evident between the agencies, what highlighted the impasse was the two recreational flounder seasons in September 2023. The WRC season was the first two weeks and MFC’s was the second two weeks, leading to confusion and even warnings issued to some fishers for breaking one agency’s rules.

North Carolina Fisheries Association Executive Director Glenn Skinner told Coastal Review that with the two agencies trying to decide who has authority over what, “you’ve got a lot of stakeholders that are really caught in the middle. And that’s a shame whenever it comes to that.”

What kept the inland and coastal seasons concurrent was a 2011 Wildlife Resources Commission rule to mirror the recreational seatrout, flounder and red drum seasons set by the Marine Fisheries Commission or Division of Marine Fisheries, which carries out the Marine Fisheries Commission’s rules. The Wildlife Resources Commission amended this rule in late 2021 to establish its own flounder season and limits as well as dozens of species-specific rules that went into effect March 2023.

Read the full article at CoastalReview.org

NORTH CAROLINA: Hook, line and sinking: What’s the future of NC’s commercial fishing industry?

January 3, 2023 — With a well-trained hook of the line by one of the founders and co-owners of Wilmington’s Seaview Crab Company, a few loops around the puller and a flick of a switch, the crab pot soon emerged.

Inside the pot, a dozen or so blue crabs scampered around, some using their impressive claws to attach themselves to the mesh-sides of the cage.

“It’s not always easy, but this never gets old,” Romano, 44, said as he emptied the crabs into a holding bin before checking to make sure they were all of legal size, the lucky ones getting tossed back into the waterway. The others were divided by size into containers to be sold individually − “These are the ones everyone wants,” Romano joked as he held up a good-sized crab − or to be sent to a crab house to be picked apart for their meat.

“It just clears my head when I’m out here,” Romano said with a Cheshire cat-like grin as he prepared to toss the now-empty pot back into the water. “I can leave most of my other problems behind for a few hours.”

For generations, fishing has been a way of life in coastal North Carolina. The industry, which used to provide much of the seafood served along the U.S. East Coast, provided jobs and a good livelihood for the hardy souls who put in the long hours on the water. Communities evolved around the routines of fishing and the requirements of different fisheries, and local traditions and histories became intertwined with water.

But driven by factors as varied as rising operational costs, the declining health of many fisheries, the changing face of coastal towns as more retirees and property investors move in, increased foreign competition and even climate change, commercial fishing and the fishermen themselves are changing in North Carolina.

The industry isn’t in danger of disappearing, but what it will become in the coming years and decades is still to be determined.

Read the full article at the Star News Online

NORTH CAROLINA: Fisheries association not satisfied with state’s striped mullet plan

November 21, 2023 — The N.C. Fisheries Association (NCFA) is urging its members to come up with a unified position on an alternative to the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries’ (DMF) initial recommendation on a plan to reduce the harvest of striped mullet.

The N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission (MFC), policy-arm of the fisheries division, voted 9-0 Thursday during its quarterly business meeting in Emerald Isle to approve Amendment 2 to the striped mullet management plan for a public comment period and review by the commission’s advisory panel.

The division’s initial recommendation includes:

* 50-pound trip limit Jan. 1-31 and Nov. 16-Dec 31.

* Year-round Saturday through Sunday 50-pound trip limit.

* 500-pound trip limit Feb.1-Oct.15.

* 30,000-pound stop net catch cap.

* 50 fish recreational individual bag limit.

* For-hire vessel bag limit equal to the number of anglers they are licensed to carry (including possession in advance of a trip).

* Adaptive management, by proclamations from the division director.

Read the full article at the NEWS-TIMES

Bluefin Tuna Get It On off North Carolina

November 15, 2023 — In November 1981, a fleet of briefcase-toting lobbyists, scientists, and political negotiators gathered in sunny Tenerife, Spain, to decide the fate of Atlantic bluefin tuna. Representing more than a dozen countries, including Canada, the United States, Spain, and Italy, the besuited men knew crisis loomed. Since the early 1970s, rising global demand for bluefin flesh had spurred fishing fleets—hailing from ports on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean—to kill untold thousands of the wide-ranging predator every year. Under this heavy fishing pressure, primarily driven by the Japanese appetite for sushi-grade tuna, the species careened toward collapse.

During the meeting in Tenerife, the American delegation to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas proposed a disarmingly simple solution: they would draw a line down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and split the bluefin into two separate stocks. The Europeans could only fish east of the line, while the Canadians, Americans, and Japanese would fish west of it, limiting their catches to let the population recover.

The proposal passed and, eventually, for a variety of reasons, Atlantic bluefin tuna did bounce back. For more than four decades, that proposal has shaped how the fish are managed and understood. The only problem is that, as one former delegate put it, the two-stock idea may have only ever been a “convenient fiction.”

Since the 1950s, scientists have broadly accepted that Atlantic bluefin tuna live in two general populations: an eastern stock, which spawns in the Mediterranean Sea, and a western stock, which spawns in the Gulf of Mexico. But a growing body of evidence, including one study published in February 2023, now threatens to upend that binary theory. This developing research points to the existence of a third spawning site in a patch of ocean off North Carolina called the Slope Sea.

Read the full article at Hakai Magazine