Saving Seafood

N.C. officials to write definition of old profession – commercial fishing

January 5, 2018 — WANCHESE, N.C. — North Carolina officials plan to write the definition of one of the state’s longest-standing professions – commercial fishing.

The definition seems simple – a licensed person who sells seafood for money. But some anglers could be getting a commercial license just to allow them to catch more fish than they are supposed to, said Sam Corbett, chairman of the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission.

“They’re going around the bag limits,” Corbett said. “It’s such a crazy issue.”

The evidence is in the number of licenses sold compared to those who sell their harvest to dealers, Corbett said.

Last year, 2,973 licensed fishermen sold seafood to a dealer totaling 59.9 million pounds worth $94 million. Roughly 4,000 others bought licenses without selling a catch to a seafood dealer.

People have caught and sold fish for centuries, but the industry became more profitable in the late 1800s with the advent of better ways of preserving and transporting the product. There is a boat and a set of nets in nearly every yard in coastal villages such as Wanchese.

Corbett, a lifelong waterman, will chair a three-person committee set to meet Thursday to determine who should be allowed a commercial fishing license. The report will go before the state’s commission and then to state lawmakers, he said.

The definition could cover a wide range of rules including requiring a certain number of fishing trips or a minimum amount of income earned from seafood sales, Corbett said.

Read the full story at the Virginian-Pilot

 

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