The North Carolina House of Representatives will not consider a bill that would ban shrimp trawling in inland and nearshore coastal waters.
After a long caucus, House Republicans announced Wednesday afternoon that they would not take up House Bill 442, a decision praised by North Carolina shrimpers.
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“As you can imagine, there’s a lot of back-slapping and crying and cheering,” North Carolina Fisheries Association Executive Director Glenn Skinner told Coastal Review in a telephone interview late Wednesday afternoon. “I know it’s possible to bring it back up, but, for now, we made passage.”
Little more than a week has passed since a member of the Senate amended the bill, which had been originally written to expand recreational fishing access to southern founder and red snapper, to include the ban.
Advocates of the amendment say a ban would protect bottom habitats. Opponents, including a group of coastal legislators, say allowing trawling in waters no closer than a half mile from the coast would essentially kill the state’s shrimping industry.
The Wednesday afternoon announcement also effectively kills House Bill 441, a companion bill that would subsidize qualifying shrimpers if the ban were made into law.
