BY MILES LAYTON

SWAN QUARTER — The General Assembly is busy again, which never bodes well for anyone.  

A proposed amendment to Senate Bill 442, which seeks to prohibit shrimp trawling for four years within our coastal waters, such as the Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds, and within ½ mile of the Atlantic shoreline, has been introduced in the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Energy, and Environment by Sen. Bill Rabon, R-Brunswick.  

Shrimpers in Tyrrell and Hyde counties – let that sink in for a minute. Yeah, this amendment is like that one rogue wave ahead of a sudden squall where you know you’ll have to turn the bow head-on into that tall wave, floor the gas, hang on and pray for dear life. 

Dale Newman knows the Sounds, he’s been fishing the Pamlico since he was a boy — comes from a long line of fishermen, probably four or five generations.

“Raleigh needs to listen to us about what we’ve seen, what we know, but they won’t,” said Newman of Newman Seafood in Swan Quarter. “I’m the last person who wants to see something like this happen — the stocks collapse. I want to see it go on and on. This law, this is a bad idea that’s not going to help, but hurt fishermen.”

If this bill becomes law, the shrimping ban will expire on August 1, 2029.

“This is an amendment that must be defeated,” Senator Bobby Hanig, R-Currituck posted to social media.  “Please call your state senator and tell them you don’t want this amendment.”

If you want to make your voices heard, that Senate Committee meeting starts at 10 a.m. Tuesday in the Legislative Building in Room 1124. If you are able to attend, please arrive early to allow for parking and going through security.

The General Assembly switchboard number is 919-733-4111.

The North Carolina Wildlife Federation argues that the nets used on shrimping boats cause significant damage to the seafloor ecosystem. These weighted nets not only capture shrimp but also other marine species, like flounder, that the Federation aims to protect.

After talking with a shrimper, if memory serves me correctly from a few years back, trawlers drag their nets across the bottom – forgive my analogy from farming – sort of like turning over the soil before planting begins. From farming — turning over the soil provides air and such to help the seeds grow a little easier — it’s a good thing.  

When applied to a trawler “dragging” the bottom, which may need to be done in the Sounds, that may be a good thing too, may even help water quality and help aquatic ecosystems to thrive.

Newman appreciated my analogy — he said it goes deeper than that based on an ECU study that confirms what he’s long know after a life time spent on the water. If the Sounds and even the rivers are not trawled on a regular basis, Newman said, then it affects the eco-system from the bottom up, making it more difficult for fish to feed and live in those waters which why fishing is not what it used to be. He noted that the Pamlico Sound has several 100,000s of acres that are not touched, so it’s not the same as tiny coastal sounds in the southern end of the state — meaning that any thought given to the damaging the ecosystem should be reconsidered because of the size and scope of the Pamlico Sound, other coastal waterways in our region too.

And then there’s this — Newman said this amendment will harm, sink, local commercial fishermen, especially in the Pamlico Sound and coastal waters in the northern end of the state. And forget about one of the best things about living on the coast — buying fresh shrimp caught from our waters. Newman said a bill like that favors out-of-state interests, shrimp farmed in other countries.

In related news, Tara Carawan Forehand, a strong critic of the proposed limits on crabbing, said that’s on hold until at least November for more study by the General Assembly.

North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF) formulated a study that says there has been overfishing of Blue Crabs – the study suggests cutting crabbers’ catch by half. If DMF puts measures in place to restrict the number of bushels of crabs that can be harvested, that’s going to be disastrous to crabbers and seafood companies in our region.

Manager at Captain Neill’s Seafood of Columbia, Forehand challenges DMF surveys, saying that the surveys rely on outdated means of data collection, circa methods from the Brady Bunch era of the 1970s, so that needs to be updated to get a better snapshot of fishing, particularly since seafood is one of the state’s biggest industries.