A group of state lawmakers vow they will fight for North Carolina shrimpers to continue trawling in inland and nearby offshore waters.
Several legislators on Tuesday spoke out against a last-minute amendment injected into a House bill originally aimed at expanding recreational access to southern flounder and red snapper. They called the revision an “injustice,” “bad,” “wrong,” and one that would shutter the state’s shrimping industry.
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“I have spent a lot of the last few days being very angry, and I admit that,” said Rep. Celeste Cairns, R-Carteret, during the Tuesday morning press conference in Raleigh. “It’s better to be angry than to be sad because I will end up in tears. I have been in tears several times during this last week.”
A week has passed since two Senate committees pushed forward amended House Bill 442, one that has since its introduction to the House in March been “hijacked,” according to the bill’s sponsor.
“We’re used to the Senate acting this way, but not to this degree,” Rep. Frank Iler, R-Brunswick, said. “As much as I wanted a flounder season, I urge everyone to vote to oppose this bill every chance they get.”
Sen. David Craven Jr., R-Anson, introduced the amendment, arguing that it would align North Carolina’s trawling laws with those in Virginia and South Carolina and reduce the amount of bycatch, or unwanted species, captured in nets.
Advocacy groups, including the Coastal Conservation Association – North Carolina, and the North Carolina Wildlife Federation, have long argued that shrimp trawling harms other fisheries, including juvenile fish, and degrades essential habitats.
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But lawmakers, who were joined by commercial shrimpers on Tuesday, pushed back on those claims, saying that the state’s fisheries management plan for shrimp already protects sensitive habitat and juvenile fish. Commercial fishing is heavily regulated in North Carolina, where trawlers are required to have equipment on their boats that prevent and reduce bycatch.
“This is not an environmental issue,” said Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford. “This is an allocation issue. In fact, if we were focused on the environment and the sustainability of fish, we would be talking about water quality. We’d be talking about coastal development. We’d be talking about protecting our wetlands, restoring our buffers,” and about warming sea temperatures.
House Bill 442 was last week sent back to the House, where it and proposed legislation to supplement shrimpers’ income, should the trawling ban become law, now await a vote.
Just hours after the press conference, the Senate voted 43-2 in favor of House Bill 441, which would establish a program that would pay out annual payments over three years to qualifying shrimpers.
The bill includes a provision to temporarily increase license and registration fees for recreational fishers, fishing, and some commercial fishers to cover the cost of the program.
The bill directs the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries to establish and administer the program, one that would allow shrimpers to use trip-ticket forms submitted to the state between Jan. 1, 2023, through June 30, 2025. Each month, dealers submit these forms to the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries, which uses the information reported on the tickets as a means to help manage fisheries resources.
Iler also sponsored House Bill 441, which, when introduced earlier this year, called for adopting the loggerhead sea turtle as the state’s official saltwater reptile.
“Without getting into the merits of either bill, I’m here because I am very upset about what happened to these two bills,” Sen. Ted Davis Jr., R-New Hanover, said Tuesday morning.
Sen. Bobby Hanig, R-Currituck, called the advancement of House Bill 442 a “disgusting process.”
“This amendment wasn’t discussed with our caucus,” he said. “This amendment was a calculated, precision move by a couple of leadership in the North Carolina Senate. When I came to committee prepared to talk about this I was completely shut down. I was completely shut down by my own party and by my own leadership. Last week, I was ashamed to be a member of the North Carolina General Assembly. This is a couple of people in the Senate that are pushing an agenda, an agenda pushed by money, influence, whatever you want to call it. We can’t stand for it and if we in the North Carolina Senate don’t take a stand against this type of activity then we’re not better than they are.”
Last week, an angry Hanig asked fellow senators why they would not wait for the results from an ongoing lawsuit the Coastal Conservation Association – North Carolina filed in 2020 to ban shrimp trawling and for the results of a study on the state’s fisheries that the General Assembly commissioned three years ago.
Hanig said Tuesday that the study was expected to be presented to the legislature in the coming days.
“They know what’s in that study and they know the condition of our fisheries and they know the false narrative they have been pushing for decades,” he said.
Rep. Keith Kidwell, R-Beaufort, also questioned why the call to ban trawling could not have waited until the report is released.
“Did they get a heads up and find out that maybe they’re wrong and that’s why they’re trying to rush it across before the report gets here,” he said. “There’s something dirty going on here people.”
Kidwell said that, in his district, shrimping is not a career, but a way of life.
“Are we going to shut down the people who go to work every day making an honest living because some branch of the government finally decides, in some slimy backroom deal, that they don’t want to do this anymore,” he said. “Well, by God, Down East, we didn’t ask them what they want to do. We want to fish. We want to have the fruits of our labors. We’re not going to stand and take this.”
