Shrimping issue continues to simmer among fishing groups

Kudos to the copy editor at The Star-News in Wilmington, N.C., who wrote the clever play-on-words headline that appeared in the June 27 edition, introducing an article written by reporter Gareth McGarth. The headline read: “A proposed inland trawling ban left NC shrimpers boiling hot.”

 

Indeed, temperatures did surge in Raleigh as hundreds of commercial fishermen and their supporters showed up to lobby for the future of their industry and oppose anti-trawling restrictions that had been proposed by the North Carolina Senate.

North Carolina’s wild-caught seafood industry contributes nearly $300 million a year and 5,500 jobs to the state’s economy, according to North Carolina Sea Grant, a government-university partnership that focuses on coastal and marine issues. (Sea Grant applies university research to promote sustainable use of North Carolina’s coastal resources.)

Shrimp is the state’s second largest fishery, behind only blue crabs, so it’s vitally important in the grand scheme of commercial fishing.

However, McGarth noted that the state’s recreational fishery is even bigger business, “dwarfing N.C.’s commercial fishing sector.” 

“Recreational fishing pumps almost $2 billion annually into North Carolina’s economy,” according to reports from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the American Sportfishing Association.

Is this shaping up as a “David and Goliath” tussle?

 

McGarth (shown below) noted: “Shrimpers contend that nearly 1 million acres of the most environmentally sensitive areas in the state’s big sounds are already protected from trawling, and North Carolina shrimpers are among the leaders in the country in looking at ways to reduce bycatch.”

 One of the sources cited by McGarth was NC Catch, a nonprofit, volunteer organization that works “to bring together commercial fishers, consumers, seafood dealers and scientists to learn from each other and keep North Carolina seafood on tables from the mountains to the sea.”

 The organization was established in 2011 and is well-supported within Carteret County. The current board chair of NC Catch is Barbara Garrity-Blake of Gloucester, a cultural anthropologist and author, who teaches marine fisheries policy at the Duke University Marine Laboratory on Piver’s Island near Beaufort.

 

North Carolina shrimping is not “industrial-scale fishing,” and according to NC Catch, fewer than 300 shrimp boats are presently working in North Carolina waters, which is roughly half the number that existed 20 years ago.

They are “mostly small family operations where the fishermen have fished commercially for 25 years and are keen to carry on an old profession that is vital to the welfare of their small hamlets,” NC Catch said.

 

Anti-trawling restrictions could eliminate about 70% of the current shrimp harvest in North Carolina,” NC Catch said. “But, this is about more than just shrimp – it’s about preserving North Carolina's maritime heritage, supporting working families and ensuring consumers have access to safe, sustainable, locally caught seafood.”

Micah Daniels, retail/wholesale seafood market owner and commercial fisherman, runs Fresh Catch Seafood in Wanchese, N.C., along with her husband, Matt Huth.

To help separate myths from facts on the shrimping issue, NC Catch published “Trawling Truths,” which Garrity-Blake and others regard as “one of the most significant, comprehensive, well-researched products ever produced by NC Catch.”

The document provides data-based facts in response to falsehoods spread by groups opposed to trawling.” It can be accessed on the NC Catch website. 

There’s also a link to correspondence from attorney Stevenson L. Weeks of the Wheatly Law Group in Beaufort that was sent to all members of the North Carolina House of Representatives offering a legal perspective on the matter.

Moving shrimp trawlers from inshore waters, like the Pamlico Sound, out into the ocean may seem on the surface to be a “simple solution,” but Weeks contends that 80% of the working shrimp boats are too small to operate safely in the ocean environment.