EDENTON – For Joel Lordson, working with fish isn’t just a job — it’s a childhood dream come true.
“Ever since I was a little boy, I love just catching frogs and fish and being out in the wilderness,” he explains in a YouTube video by Sci NC, part of the state’s PBS programming. Now, as a marine fisheries technician with nine years of experience, Lordson combines that passion with critical conservation work at the Edenton National Fish Hatchery.
Visitors can access the public aquarium and hatchery grounds at 1102 W. Queen St., Edenton, from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays. The hatchery is closed on weekends and federal holidays.
The hatchery recently celebrated an important milestone: successfully tagging over 3,000 Atlantic striped bass in close partnership with the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries (NCDMF). While the tags themselves are small — often called “spaghetti tags” because of their appearance —their impact on fisheries management is enormous.
“Right now, we’re tagging 3,000 stripe bass with little spaghetti tags and making little incisions along one of the lateral lines there and just popping a tag in, rotating, and flipping it over the other side of the tank,” Lordson describes as he works alongside several other technicians at the facility.
Why Tagging Matters
These tiny tags help biologists track the movement, survival, and habitat use of striped bass throughout North Carolina waters and beyond. The data collected through this program strengthens conservation efforts, informs management decisions, and helps ensure healthier fisheries for future generations.
Once the tagged fish are released into North Carolina rivers, anglers who catch them play a crucial role in the research. “As they grow, they’ll be caught by anglers, and hopefully those anglers will call into our tagging program and report the size and where they caught these fish at,” Lordson explains.
Responding to a Conservation Crisis
The tagging program exists because of a troubling trend: North Carolina’s striped bass populations have experienced poor natural reproduction over the last decade or two. The Edenton National Fish Hatchery has stepped up to fill this gap, raising between 100,000 and 200,000 striped bass annually.
“If there’s a river that’s struggling or they have a year where maybe there’s a bad spawn, we can supplement it until they figure out what’s going on,” Lordson notes.
Tracking Wild vs. Hatchery Fish
The conservation strategy goes beyond external tags. All stocked fish also receive a genetic tag, allowing biologists to take fin clips and determine whether a fish was raised in a hatchery or born in the wild.
“So when these fish get two, three, four, five years old, we’ll be able to tell how many stocked fish versus how many wild fish may have been produced in this particular year class,” Lordson explains. “The tagging information is very important for movement and migration and also lets us kind of know the abundance of how many fish are in the population and how well our stocking and hatchery program is working out.”
A Collaborative Effort
After the 3,000 fish are tagged and weighed, they’re loaded onto trucks and transported to rivers where they’re released into their new habitat. This achievement wouldn’t be possible without the dedication of the hatchery staff and the strong partnership with NCDMF.
The collaborative work represents a vital investment in the future of North Carolina’s fisheries—ensuring that striped bass populations remain healthy and abundant for generations to come, while also providing valuable scientific data that will guide conservation decisions for years ahead.
About the Hatchery
Congress established Edenton National Fish Hatchery in 1898 to supplement the American shad population, according to the hatchery’s website. It was located near what is now Edenton Marina, near the mouth of Pembroke Creek.
In 1900, hatchery staff collected 10 million American shad eggs, incubated their first batch of eggs and stocked more than 6 million shad larvae into local waters. In 1906, the staff hatched 2 million Atlantic striped bass eggs at a nearby Roanoke River facility.
In the late 1950s, the hatchery moved to its current location on West Queen Street due to limited space at its original site. At its new location, largemouth bass, channel catfish, bluegill, and redear sunfish were the major cultured species.
During the 1960’s and 1970’s development of striped bass production became the hatchery’s focus.
Within the last decade, the Agency added lake sturgeon, Cape Fear and white shiners, and gopher frogs to the list of species cultured at the hatchery.
Watch the full story: Edenton National Fish Hatchery Tagging Program