Saving Seafood

NORTH CAROLINA: Commercial fishers invited to join annual lost gear recovery effort along N.C. coast

November 12, 2025 — The North Carolina Coastal Federation is seeking commercial fishers to take part in its annual Lost Fishing Gear Recovery Project, a large-scale effort that removes derelict crab pots and other debris from coastal waters each winter.

The project, which began in 2014, employs local commercial captains and their crews to help clear lost crab pots and abandoned gear from North Carolina’s sounds. The 2026 cleanup is scheduled for January 1–31, and applications are open through December 12 on the federation’s website.

Participating captains must hold a valid North Carolina standard commercial fishing license. Those working in the state’s southeast region will have a later window — March 1–15 — with a separate call for applicants expected early next year.

“Every year, crab pots and other fishing gear are lost in our sounds in a variety of ways,” the Coastal Federation stated. “Lost gear can get hung up or drift into channels, creating serious hazards for boaters, wildlife, and fishermen.”

The initiative is conducted in partnership with the North Carolina Marine Patrol, and in 2025, participating crews retrieved 2,136 crab pots from select coastal areas.

Read the full article at Island Free Press

NORTH CAROLINA: NC lost gear recovery effort pulls more than 2000 pots

November 12, 2025 — Each winter, when the North Carolina blue crab fishery closes for the season, a kind of clean-up effort happens. Rather than hauling in traps full of crab, local fishermen turn their efforts into what has been left behind.

Now in its 11th year, the Lost Fishing Gear Recovery Project, led by the North Carolina Coastal Federation in partnership with the N.C. Marine Patrol and the Division of Marine Fisheries mobilize commercial fishermen to remove derelict gear from state waters. The 2025 cleanup drew 50 participants who collected 2136 lost crab pots from sounds and estuaries stretching from the Virginia line to the South Carolina border.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

NORTH CAROLINA: N.C. Coastal Fisheries Coalition expands advisory team, adopts resolutions on blue crab and sheepshead regulations

November 10, 2025 — The North Carolina Coastal Counties Fisheries Coalition met on Wednesday, November 5, in Morehead City, where members advanced several new initiatives and voiced unified opposition to recent regulatory proposals from the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF).

During the meeting, chairs of the coalition’s four standing committees—Education, Fishing Limits and Water Quality, Legislative, and Predation Management—shared updates on their initial work and priorities. The committees were formed in October to address key issues affecting the state’s commercial fishing industry.

Read the full article at Island Free Press

NORTH CAROLINA: Pamlico Sound survey continues without longtime research boat

November 7, 2025 — A state agency has been conducting research on aquatic life in an important North Carolina body of water since the late 1980s.

It’s collected valuable information that’s helped the state keep adequate fish stocks while protecting wild species.

Now, the boat that’s been used in this research for decades has been pulled out of the water.

Researchers have a plan to keep a valuable study afloat without their prized vessel, continuing a data set they’ve been building for decades.

“Our data is collected in the Pamlico Sound, it’s a very important region.” said Holly White, north district manager for the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries.

White said the Pamlico Sound survey began in 1987.

Read th full article at Spectrum 1

NORTH CAROLINA: Pound for pound, North Carolina’s pound net fishery delivers

October 31, 2025 — For more than 150 years, North Carolina fishermen have been using pound nets. Gaither Midgette is among those keeping the fishery going.

Before the Civil War, the American shad fishery in the South was dominated by aristocrats, including George Washington. Plantation owners with deep pockets invested what would be millions of dollars today into the gear and infrastructure needed to harvest shad with haul seines of 2,000 yards or more. They depleted the resource, and during the Civil War in North Carolina, the Union Army destroyed most of the boats, nets, and buildings needed for the haul seine fishery. In 1863, North Carolina outlawed the fishery for the duration of the war in order to keep shad from being commandeered by, or sold to, Union Army commissaries.

The pause in the harvest during the war led to rebounding stocks, and in 1869, the Hattrick brothers brought the pound net to North Carolina. Pound nets required a much smaller investment and provided a higher return than haul seines. A few haul seine operations remained, but increasingly, the shad fishery belonged to the common people. In addition, the pound nets often caught higher-value species at a time when ice was introduced to preserve the catch, and those fish could be shipped to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York.

Over a hundred years later, the shad fishery has shrunk to almost nothing, but small-scale fishermen are still working the pound nets in Pamlico, Albemarle, and Croatan Sounds, and Gaither Midgette of Wanchese is among them. At 5:30 on a warm August morning, he fires up the 30-HP Honda 4-stroke on his pound skiff, a 20-foot by 6-foot wooden boat planked crossways on its flat bottom. “It’s all juniper-planked,” says Midgette. “The sides are all juniper, too. Glen Bradley built it about 20 years ago.” He steers down the canal from Spencer Yachts to the open water of Croatan Sound, between Roanoke Island and the mainland. “It won’t take too long. We’ll be finished by 7:30,” he says.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

NORTH CAROLINA: Committee to select candidates for Mid-Atlantic council

October 13, 2025 — North Carolina candidates for the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council will be selected next week during a meeting of the state Marine Fisheries Commission Nominating Committee.

The committee is scheduled to meet by webinar at 5 p.m. Oct. 20.

The Mid-Atlantic Council consists of 21 voting members, including a federal representative, constituent states’ fish and wildlife agencies, and 13 private citizens with knowledge about recreational or commercial fishing, or marine conservation. The council also includes four nonvoting members who represent the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Department of State, and Coast Guard.

Read the full article at CoastalReview.org

NORTH CAROLINA: Fishermen rally at Blessing of the Fleet

October 8, 2025 — As commercial fishing boats processed past crowds gathered for the annual Blessing of the Fleet at Radio Island, North Carolina, on Sunday, fishermen made their feelings clear about recent state legislation efforts to ban shrimp trawling. Nearly 30 vessels hoisted signs reading: “NC SEAFOOD FOR ALL. NO TRAWL BAN.”

The push to ban shrimp trawling came unexpectedly earlier this year. In June, the proposed legislation ultimately failed, thanks to what Carolina Coast Online describes as “massive protests by area commercial fishermen, their families and other supporters.” The protest reflects a united front from the state’s fishing families following the failed legislation.

According to an article from National Fisherman from June 25, House Bill 442, originally drafted in the lower House of the legislature to set fishing seasons for southern flounder and red snapper, was amended June 18 and passed by the state Senate to include the trawl prohibition. That ignited intense protests from shrimp fishermen and supporters, who suspected the Coastal Conservation Association of using the amendment as a vehicle.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Storm warnings for Carolina shrimpers

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.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Study Challenges Theory Behind N.C. Blue Crab Decline

September 24, 2025 — In a new study, researchers from North Carolina State University compared numbers of juvenile blue crabs across three nursery habitats in Pamlico Sound, both pre- and post-fishery decline, and found that while adult populations declined and have remained low, juvenile populations remained the same during both periods. The work points to a potential population bottleneck for crabs post-nursery but pre-maturity.

The Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine System (APES) supports the majority of North Carolina’s blue crab population and provides key nursery habitat. Larval blue crabs are released by mature female crabs from narrow inlets along the Outer Banks during the late spring, progressing through several planktonic molts in the Atlantic Ocean before returning to the estuary in the fall through a combination of wind- and storm-driven transport. The newly arrived juvenile crabs settle in near-shore habitats, like seagrass beds and shallow marsh peat habitats, along the eastern and western shores.

“These juveniles hang out in the nurseries until they’re basically big enough to pick a fight and win, then they move into the rest of the estuary,” says Erin Voigt, a Ph.D. candidate at NC State and first author of the study.

Read the full article at NC State University News

NORTH CAROLINA: Fighting for a fishing future

September 23, 2025 — Fate brought Mark Vrablic to Wanchese, N.C., at a young age. He grew up in the Etheridge family – more specifically, he grew up in the Willie R. Etheridge Seafood Co. Established in 1936, the Etheridges’ fish company has seen decades of history in southeast and Mid-Atlantic fisheries.

On a hot August afternoon, Vrablic, now manager of Etheridge Seafood, is sitting upstairs in his office, contemplating the past and the future and how he can help keep the North Carolina commercial fishing industry alive and healthy. “I ain’t got time, buddy,” he says when I first arrive. “Come back when I got some boats in and I’m in a better mood.”

But Vrablic is always ready to fight for the industry he’s given his life to. As soon as he answers one question, he’s engaged and telling the story of change on the Wanchese waterfront, a story he hopes the Willie Etheridge Seafood Company will survive.’

Read the full article at the  National Fisherman